The City of Mirrors
Page 207

There it was, in her hand. The chain.
As she wound it around Fanning’s neck, his face and body startled; Amy felt a momentary easing of the pressure on her windpipe. The boom had begun to back out the side of the building. She quickly formed a second loop and tossed it over his head.
Fanning released her and sat upright. He raised a searching hand to his throat. The slack was running out.
“Look for her,” said Amy.
He made no cry. He exited the world in a blink. He was there one second and gone the next, plucked into the whirling dust, his body thus to join the ashes of the vanished city.
—
And then it was over.
For a long time Michael waited. The silence seemed like a trick. But as the seconds passed and nothing happened, he realized something had changed. There was, all around him, a deep stillness, as if he were alone in the room.
He uncovered his eyes and looked.
The virals were dead. The one that had knocked the pan away lay at his feet, curled in a fetal position. The other two were on the far side of the room in a similar posture—even the one with the blade in its eye, from which still issued a trail of blood-tinged fluid. There was something tender about their postures. It was as if, overcome by a sudden exhaustion, they had lain on the floor and gone to sleep.
He used the stove to pull himself upright and limped down the hall, following the trail of his own blood. He took a scarf from one of the racks, rebandaged his leg, and ventured outside. A low evening sun, punching through the dust, flared the clouds with color. He made his way east to Lafayette Street and turned north. It wasn’t until he’d traveled another block that he knew for certain what had happened.
The virals lay everywhere. On the sidewalks. On the street. On the roofs of old cars. All in the same fetal posture, curled like children in their beds, worn out by a too-long day. A sight less of death than of a vast, collective repose. Their bodies, like the city of which they had so long been a part, were crumbling to dust. It was a scene of wonder. A great, sad, and joyous wonder, too heavy for one mind to bear. He stumbled forward. Uptown, the rumbling of destruction persisted. For months, years, centuries even, the immolation would continue, the great metropolis finally folding itself into the sea. But now, as Michael moved among the bodies, an infinite quiet prevailed, the world pausing in acknowledgment, history held in time’s cupped hand.
And Michael Fisher did the only thing he could. He fell to his knees and wept.
—
Peter had begun to die.
Amy felt his spirit fade; Fanning was leaving him. His eyes were open, yet the light inside was dimming. Soon it would be gone.
Don’t leave me. She lifted his hand and pressed it to her cheek; his flesh was growing cold. The muscles of his face relaxed toward death. Please, she said, and shuddered with a sob, don’t leave me alone.
The time had come to let him go, to say goodbye, yet the prospect was unendurable; it could not be accepted. There was a way, perhaps. The gravest act—a betrayal, even. She momentarily had the sensation of being outside her body, watching herself, as she took the shard of glass from off the floor and slashed the edge across her palm. Blood rose from the wound and swiftly gathered in a rich, crimson puddle. She took Peter’s hand and did the same. A last flicker of doubt, then she placed his palm against her own and meshed their fingers together. She felt a tiny twitch; with accumulating pressure, Peter folded his fingers over the back of her hand.
She closed her eyes.
* * *
83
At the top of Central Park, away from the destruction, Amy and Michael pitched their camp. It had taken them nearly a week to find each other; the center of the island was blocked by impenetrable mountains of debris. It was on the morning of the sixth day that Amy had heard him calling. Michael emerged from the rubble, a ghostly figure, covered with ash. By this time, Amy knew Alicia was gone; her presence, her spirit, these were nowhere in the world. Still, when Michael told her what had happened, the reality undid her. She sat on the ground and wept.
—And Peter? Michael asked tentatively.
Not looking up, Amy shook her head. No.
They remained there for three weeks to rest and gather supplies. Michael slowly regained his strength. Together they constructed a simple smokehouse and set snares to catch small game. Elsewhere in the park they found a variety of edible plants, even some apple trees, fat with glossy fruit. Michael worried that the water in the reservoir would be tainted by seawater, but it wasn’t; they retrieved the water filter from the Nautilus to clean it of debris. From time to time they would hear the rumble of another building’s collapse, followed by a silence that seemed somehow deeper in the aftermath. At first this unnerved them, but eventually the noise became commonplace, nothing even to acknowledge.
The days were long, the sun hot. One early morning they awoke to a blast of thunder. Storm after storm crashed through the city. When at last the sun returned, the air was different. A sparkling freshness lay upon the park, dust washed from the leaves of the trees.
It was on their final night that Michael produced the bottle of whiskey. He had found it in an apartment building when he’d gone to scavenge tools and clothes. The cap was sealed, the glass caked with dust so thick it was like a layer of soil. Sitting by the fire, Michael was the first to try it. “Absent friends,” he said, raising the bottle, and took a long swallow. As his throat bobbed, he began to cough while also, somehow, wearing an expression of triumph.
“Oh, you’re going to like this,” he wheezed, and handed it to her.