“Amy?”

She startled, breaking the circuit. It seemed to take her a moment to assemble her sense of her surroundings. Then she said, very calmly, “Of course.”

“And you’ll be all right here?” Peter said.

Another smile, but not the same—more of reassurance than something genuine. There was something hollow about it, even forced.

“Perfectly.”

* * *

63

“Mirrors,” Chase repeated.

Around the conference table, clockwise from Peter’s left, sat the players, Peter’s war cabinet: Apgar, Henneman, Sara, Michael, Greer.

“It doesn’t have to be a mirror specifically. Anything reflective will work, just as long as they can see themselves.”

Chase took a long breath and folded his hands on the table. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not crazy at all. Thirty years ago, in Las Vegas, Lish and I were running from a pod of three and got cornered in a kitchen. We were out of ammunition, pretty much defenseless. A bunch of pots and pans were hanging from the ceiling. I grabbed one to use as a club, but when I held it out at the first viral, it stopped the bastard cold, like it was hypnotized. And this was just a copper pot. Michael, back me up here.”

“He’s right. I’ve seen it, too.”

Apgar asked Michael, “So what does it do to them? Why does it slow them down?”

“Hard to say. My guess would be some kind of residual memory.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning, they don’t like what they see, because it doesn’t conform to some other aspect of their self-image.” He turned toward Peter. “Do you remember the viral you fought in Tifty’s cage?”

Peter nodded.

“After you killed her, you said something to Tifty. ‘Her name was Emily. Her last memory was kissing a boy.’ How did you know that?”

“It was a long time ago, Michael. I can’t really explain it. She was looking at me, and it just happened.”

“Not just looking. She was staring. You both were. People don’t look a viral in the eye when it’s about to rip them in half. The natural impulse is to look away. You didn’t. And just like the mirror, it stopped her flat.” Michael paused, then said, with deeper certainty, “The more I think about this, the more sense it makes. It explains a lot of things. When a person gets taken up, their first impulse is to go home. Dying people feel the same way. Sara, am I right about that?”

She nodded. “It’s true. Sometimes it’s even the last thing people say. ‘I want to go home.’ I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard it.”

“So a viral is a person infected with a virus, strong, superaggressive. But somewhere deep down, they remember who they were. During the transitional phase, let’s say, that memory gets buried, but it doesn’t go away, not completely. It’s just a kernel, but it’s there. Eyes are reflective, just like mirrors. When they see themselves, the memory rises to the surface, and it confuses them. That’s what stops them, a sort of nostalgia. It’s the pain of remembering their human lives and seeing what they’ve become.”

“That’s quite…a theory,” Henneman said.

Michael shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I’m just talking out of my exhaust pipe, and it wouldn’t be the first time. But let me ask you something, Colonel. How old are you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sixty? Sixty-three?”

He scowled a little. “I’m fifty-eight, thank you.”

“My mistake. Ever look in a mirror?”

“I try to avoid it.”

“Precisely my point. In your mind, you’re the same person you always were. Hell, between my ears I’m still just a seventeen-year-old kid. But the reality is different, and it’s depressing to look at. I don’t see any twenty-year-olds around this table, so I’m guessing I’m not alone.”

Peter turned toward his chief of staff. “Ford, what do we have that reflects? We’d need to cover the whole gate, and it’s best if we have at least a hundred yards on either side, more if we can do it.”

He thought for a moment. “Galvanized roofing metal could work, I suppose. It’s pretty shiny.”

“How much do we have?”

“A lot of that stuff has moved out to the townships, but we should have enough. We can strip some houses if we come up short.”

“Get engineering on it. We also need to reinforce that gate. Tell them to weld the damn thing shut if they have to. The portal, too.”

Chase frowned. “How will people get out?”

“ ‘Out’ is not the issue right now. For the time being, they won’t.”

“Mr. President, if I may,” Henneman cut in. “Assuming this all works—a big if, in my opinion—we still have a couple hundred thousand virals running loose out there. We can’t stay inside the walls forever.”

“I hate to contradict you, Colonel, but that’s exactly what we did in California. First Colony stood for almost a century, with a fraction of the resources. We’re down to just a few thousand people, a sustainable population if we manage it right. Within these walls we have enough arable land for planting and livestock. The river gives us a good continuous source for drinking water and irrigation. With some modification, we can still run oil up from Freeport in smaller loads, and the refinery itself is defensible. With careful rationing, using all of our refined petroleum for the lights, we should be fine for a very long time.”