Then, a miracle: a city appears to her, a bright walled city on a hill. Her prayers have been answered! Shining like a beacon, it has the aspect of a prophecy fulfilled. The key turns in the lock; the door swings open. Ensconced within its walls she discovers a wondrous race of men and women who have, like her, endured. They become hers, after a fashion. In the eyes of this wordless child, the most prescient among them perceive an answer to their most persistent questions; as they have relieved her loneliness, so has she relieved theirs.
A journey commences. The world’s dark arrangement is revealed. The child grows; she leads her companion to a glorious victory. By her hand, seeds of hope are scattered over the land, promise bubbles forth from every spring and stream. And yet she knows this flowering is an illusion, the merest respite. There can be no safety; her triumphs have but scratched the crust. Below lies the dark core, that great iron ball beneath all things. Its compressed weight is fantastic; it is older than time itself. It is a vestige of the blackness that predates all existence, when a formless universe existed in a state of chaotic un-creation, lacking awareness even of itself.
She falters. She has doubts. She becomes indecisive, even fearful. Hers is the greatest of all errors; she has grown attached to life. She has dared, unwisely, to love. In her mind a contest rages, that of one who questions fate. Is she merely a lunatic’s puppet? Is she destiny’s slave or its author? Must she turn away from all the things and people she has grown to love? And is this love a reflection of some grand design, a taste of an ordered and divine creation? Is it truth or a departure from the truth? Romantic love, fraternal love, the love of a parent for a child and the love returned in kind—are they a mirror to God’s face or the bitterest gall in a cosmos of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
As for me: there was a time in my life when I put aside all doubt and supped at the flower of heaven. What sweet juice was there! What balm to all suffering, the soul’s holy ache! That my Liz was dying did not countermand my joy; she had come to me like a messenger, in the hours when all is laid bare, to reveal my purpose on the earth. All my days, I had scrutinized the tiniest workings of life. I had gone about this task blandly, never fathoming of my true motive. I gazed upon the smallest shapes and processes of nature, seeking divinity’s fingerprints. Now the evidence had come to me not at the end of a microscope but in the face of this slender, dying woman and the touch of her hand across a café table. My long, lonely hours—like yours, Amy—seemed not an exile or imprisonment but a test that I had passed. I was loved! Me, Timothy Fanning of Mercy, Ohio! Loved by a woman, loved by a god—a great, fatherly god, who, measuring my trials, had found me worthy. I had not been made for nothing! And not just loved; I had been charged as heaven’s escort. The blue Aegean, where ancient gods and heroes were said to dwell; the whitewashed house one climbed a flight of stairs to reach; the humble bed and homespun furnishings; the workaday sounds of village life, and a terrace with a view of olive groves and the wild sea beyond; the soft white light of eternal mornings, growing brighter and brighter and brighter still. In my mind’s eye I saw it, saw it all. In my arms she would pass from this life to the next, which surely existed after all, love having come to me—to both of us—at last.
Not an hour would have gone by, her body grown cold in my embrace, before I would have followed her from this world. That, too, was part of my design. I would take the last pills, the ones I’d saved for myself, and slip away in silence, so that together we would be bound eternally to each other and to an invincible universe. My resolve was implacable, my thoughts lucid as ice. I possessed not an iota of doubt. Thus at the anointed hour of our rendezvous I took my position at the kiosk, waiting for my angel to appear. In my suitcase, the instruments of our mortal deliverance slept like stones. Little did I know that this was but a foretaste of the wider ruin—that the hurrying travelers flowing around me possessed no inkling that death’s prince stood among them.
Thrice have I been fathered; thrice betrayed. I will have satisfaction.
You, Amy, have dared to love, as once I did. You are hope’s deluded champion, as I am sworn to be its enemy. I am the voice, the hand, the pitiless agent of truth, which is the truth of nothing. We were, each of us, made by a madman; from his design we forked like roads in a dark wood. It has ever been thus, since the materials of life assembled and crawled from nature’s muck.
Your band approaches; the time grows sweeter by the hour. I know that he is with you, Amy. How could he fail to stand at your side, the man who made you human?
Come to me, Amy. Come to me, Peter.
Come to me, come to me, come to me.
82
It emerged like a vision, the great city, soaring from the sea like a castle or some vast holy relic. A ruin of staggering dimensions: it boggled the senses, its scope too massive to hold in the mind. The morning sun, low, slanting, blazed off the faces of the towers, ricocheting from the glass like bullets.
Peter joined Amy at the bow. She seemed almost preternaturally calm; a profound intensity radiated off her like heat from a stove. Minute by minute the metropolis loomed higher.
“Good God, it’s enormous,” Peter said.
She nodded, though this was only half the truth. Fanning’s presence saturated the city. It was as if a background hum she’d been hearing all her life, so omnipresent as to be barely noticeable, were increasing in volume. She felt a heaviness. That was the only word. A terrible exhausted heaviness with everything.
They had decided to come in from the west. On tepid air they sailed up the Hudson, searching for a place to dock. Daylight was everything; they needed to move quickly. The tide was strong, pushing against them like an invisible hand.
“Michael …”
He was working the lines and tiller, seeking to harness any breath of wind. “I know.”
The river was dark as ink; its force was immense. The day turned toward afternoon. At times they seemed stopped cold.
“This is impossible,” said Michael.
By the time they found a place to tie off, it was four o’clock. Clouds had moved in from the south; the air was sultry, smelling of decay. Four, perhaps five hours of daylight remained. From the cabin, Michael retrieved the backpack of explosives
,
as well as a long spool of cable and the detonator, a wooden box with a plunger. It seemed primitive, but that was the point, he explained. The simple things were always the most reliable, and there would be no second chances to get this right. In the cockpit, they armed themselves and reviewed the plan a final time.
“Make no mistake,” Alicia said, “this island is a deathtrap. It gets dark, we’re done.”
They disembarked. They were in the West Twenties. The roadway was choked with the skeletons of cars; glassless windows stared at them like the mouths of caves. Here they would diverge, Michael and Lish south to Astor Place, Peter and Amy across midtown to Grand Central. Michael had fashioned a crude crutch for Alicia from a boat oar.
“Sixty minutes,” Peter said. “Good luck.”
They parted cleanly, no goodbyes.
Peter and Amy walked north along Fifth Avenue. Block by block, the vertical core of the city rose, fashioning narrow fjords between the buildings. In places the pavement was buckled with the roots of trees, in others collapsed into craters that varied in size from a few yards to the width of the street, forcing them to creep along the edge. As they moved up the island, Peter took note of the landmarks: the Empire State, dizzyingly tall, like a single imperious finger pointing to the sky; the Chrysler Building, with its curved crown of burnished metal; the library, sheathed in a feathery cloak of vines, its broad front steps guarded by a pair of pedestaled lions. At the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, the half-constructed tower Alicia had described came into view. The exposed girders of its upper floors possessed a reddish appearance—the product of decades of slow oxidation. An exterior elevator ascended to the top of the structure; from there, the crane rose another ten or fifteen stories, its horizontal boom parallel to the building’s west flank, high above Fifth Avenue.
So far, they had seen no trace of Fanning’s virals—no scat or animal carcasses, no sounds of movement from the buildings. Except for pigeons, the city seemed dead. Each of them had a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol; Amy also carried the sword. She had offered it to Alicia, but the woman had refused. “Peter’s right,” Alicia said. “I’ve got no use for it. Just do me a favor and cut the bastard’s head off.”
They approached from the west, via Forty-third to Vanderbilt; between the buildings, a view of Grand Central emerged. Compared to what was around it, the structure seemed modest in its dimensions, nestled like a heart in the bosom of the city. The streets around it were open to the sun, though an elevated roadway encircled the perimeter at balcony level, creating a zone of darkness beneath.
Amy checked her watch: twenty minutes to go. “We need to scout that door,” she said.
A risk, but Peter agreed. If they moved cautiously and kept low, maintaining an upward line of sight, they would be able to detect any virals beneath the overpass before they got too close.
Which was, Peter later realized, precisely what Fanning had intended them to do: to look
up.
Never mind Alicia’s warnings not to underestimate their adversary. Never mind that the street was suspiciously carpeted in vines, or that with each step forward the air thickened with the damp, septic odor of an open sewer. Never mind the faint sound of rustling, which might have been caused by rats but wasn’t. One careless moment was all it took. They crept beneath the overpass, every ounce of their attention focused on the empty ceiling.
Peter and Amy never even saw them coming.
Michael watched the numbers of the streets decline. A few were impassable, choked with vegetation or debris, others empty, as if forgotten by time. In some of the buildings, trees were growing; flocks of startled pigeons burst forth in their path, wheeling upward in huge, flapping clouds.
At the corner of Eighteenth and Broadway, they paused to rest. Alicia was breathing hard, her face glazed with sweat. “How much farther?” Michael asked.
She coughed and cleared her throat. “Eleven blocks.”
“I can do this on my own, you know.”
“Not a chance.”
The crutch was too unstable; they left it behind and went on, Michael supporting Alicia from one side. A rifle dangled over her shoulder. Her steps were labored, more hobble than walk. From time to time, she issued a tiny gasp he knew she was trying to hide. The minutes dripped away. They came to a small shelter of elaborate iron scrollwork, painted white with pigeon guano. The smell of the sea had grown strong.
“This is it,” she said.
From his pack, Michael removed a lantern and lit the wick. As they descended the stairs, he detected small movements along the floor. He paused and raised the lantern. Rats were scurrying everywhere, long brown ropes of them hugging the edges of the walls.
“Yuck,” he said.
They reached the bottom. Arched brick columns supported the roof above the tracks. On the tiled wall, a sign in gold lettering read
ASTOR
PLACE.
“Which direction?” Michael felt turned around in the dark.
“This way. South.”
He dropped onto the rail bed. Alicia handed him her rifle, and he helped her down. As they passed into the tunnel, the air became colder. Water sloshed at their feet. He counted their steps. At one hundred, the light of his lantern caught a frisson of movement: the hissing spray of water that shot from the edges of the bulkhead. He stepped forward and pressed his hand against the thick metal. Behind it lay untold tons of pressure, the weight of the sea, like an unfired cannon.
“How much time?” Alicia asked. She was leaning against the wall, scanning the tunnel with the rifle.
They had used forty-five minutes. He stripped off his pack and removed his supplies. Alicia was keeping watch on the far end of the tunnel. He twisted the wires of the blasting caps together, then clipped the end to the cable from the spool. Keeping everything dry would be a challenge; he had to prevent water from contacting the fuses. He returned the dynamite to his pack and searched the door for something to hang it on. Its surface was absolutely smooth.
“There,” Alicia said.
Beside the bulkhead, a long rusty screw jutted from the wall. Michael hung his pack on it, handed Alicia the detonator, and began to pull out the cable from the spool.
“Let’s go.”
They emerged into the Astor Place station and scrambled onto the platform. Unspooling the cable behind them, they headed for the stairs and ascended to the first landing. A particle-filled daylight filtered down from street level. Kneeling, Michael placed the plunger on the floor, split the cable with his teeth, and threaded one wire into each of the two slotted screws on the top of the box. Alicia was sitting on the step below him, goggles pushed up onto her forehead, her rifle pointed into the blackness below. Circles of sweat drenched her shirt at the throat and armpits; her jaw was tight with pain. As he tightened the wing nuts, their eyes met.
“That ought to do it,” Michael said.
Ten minutes to go.
Amy in darkness: First came the pain, a sharp-edged thudding at the back of her skull. This was followed by the sensation of being dragged. Her thoughts refused to organize. Where was she? What had occurred? What force was pulling her along? Solitary pictures drifted by, pushed by mental winds: a television screen of spitting static; fat, feathered snowflakes descending from an inky sky; Carter’s garden, a carpet of living color; the tossing, blue-black sea. There was the floor—dirty, scuffed. Her tongue was dense and heavy in her mouth. She tried to make a sound, but none would come. The floor passed by in aortal jerks, timed to the rhythm of the tugging pressure on her wrists. The idea of resistance took hold, but when she attempted to move her limbs, she found she had no power to act; her body had been sundered from her will.