Thick snowflakes fell onto her face and shoulders. “I will take the Humvee, drive south and lead them away. You take the road east. I will meet you in Civiteveccia.”
She swung a sack into the passenger seat of the Humvee. A pile of greasy spark plugs spilled out.
“How did you—”
“No time to explain.” Massarra shook the snow off and pulled back her hood. “Whoever is doing that”—she pointed at the fire rising into the snow-driven sky—“will soon find us if we don’t hurry.”
She turned to Roger, sitting in the driver’s seat of the Humvee. Her smile widened, revealing her teeth. But it wasn’t a smile. “And if any harm comes to her, Mr. Roger,” she said, pointing at Jess. “I will personally skin you alive, do you understand?”
You killed me, said the boy, Aberto. Not more than nineteen. So young. Another man’s face appeared, this one grizzled, a week’s worth of stubble on his cheek, his eyes wide with surprise, a switchblade stuck deep into his throat. We know who you are, said the man.
“They had pictures of me,” Jess whispered.
Giovanni’s face hovered and came into focus. At the same moment came the pain.
She screamed, “Jesus Christ,” her voice whining into high-pitched agony.
“Give it to me,” Giovanni yelled at Roger.
The man fumbled and handed something over.
Jess felt a pinprick in her arm, submerged somewhere below the flames burning her fingers and toes, and a moment later a cool wave washed through her body. Giovanni’s face retreated from in front of her, disappeared up a tunnel. Her fingers and toes still burned, but it was a fire in another building now.
“Stay with me,” Giovanni said, his voice low and soft. “The pain is from frostbite. Your foot, your fingers…it’s going to hurt a lot worse before it gets better. I just gave you morphine.”
Jess fought back, her mind swimming back to the top of the tunnel. Giovanni’s face came back into focus. “Where are we?”
“We’re in the Range Rover. You passed out. We had to leave, go back the way we came.”
Gritting her teeth, Jess forced her mind out of the fog. She blinked and looked around. She was in the third row of the Range Rover, her body stretched across Raffa and Giovanni. Elsa, Rita, and Roger sat in front of them, in the second row. Leone was driving, with Lucca in the front passenger seat holding Hector. Seeing Jess awake, Hector waved, his face frightened. “Buongiorno, Jessica.”
“Buongiorno,” Jess replied as loud as she could manage, but it came out barely more than a whisper.
She smiled at Hector, trying to convey that everything was all right. He knew it wasn’t. He wasn’t stupid. But he was brave. Jess could hardly imagine what this world must look like to a six-year-old.
Children adjusted, learned ways to survive and thrive even in hostile environments. As much as she’d imagined children to be fragile, it was actually the other way around. Children were robust, hardy, and easily adaptable. Adults had the more difficult time shifting to new realities, of letting go, of dealing with pain.
Outside the truck’s windows, white-orange snow fell in a semi-bright murk. Daytime. Jess took another look around the truck.
“Where’s Massarra? Did she come back?”
It was coming back to her now. Someone had taken down several of the mercenaries. Someone very good with a rifle. An expert. A sniper.
“She took the Humvee and went south,” Giovanni explained. “To lead them away from us. Said she could circle around Rome, then make it on foot to intercept us again. She insisted.”
“Doubt we’ll be seeing her again,” Roger muttered.
“We stuck an LED searchlight on the top of the Humvee to make sure they won’t miss her,” Giovanni added, frowning at Roger.
“She saved us.” Jess tried to sit upright, but the fire flared again in her toes and fingers as she moved. “It must have been her.”
She looked at her hands for the first time. They were wrapped in thick bandages. Dread surged through her. What was underneath those bandages? A black, twisted, gangrenous mess? She lost a leg, but could she stand to lose her toes, her fingers? She’d be worse than crippled. She couldn’t hide that. In this new and ravaged world, disabled like that, she’d be dead soon enough.
“Don’t worry,” Giovanni said, watching her eyes and face. “I don’t think you’ll lose any of them. I’ve seen worse.” He paused. “Raffa told us what he could. Said you escaped on a snowmobile, then left it and walked in the dark. Two hours, he says, no jacket or gloves…”
That’s right, Jess remembered, the memories seeping back. They had walked along the spine of earth in the dark. No way to get lost. They just had to walk along the ridge, keeping it to their left in the pitch black, and stumble forward. They knew that the Humvee was somewhere along there, a few miles.
“Raffa said they took you prisoner almost as soon as you entered the camp. That someone recognized you? You were mumbling about photos when you were asleep.”
“They had pictures of me,” Jess said. “In Rome, with my mother. An Englishman looking for my father.”
“English?”
“He took me into some kind of underground bunker. For billionaires, he said.”
“Vivas,” Giovanni muttered under his breath.
Jess squirmed upright, ignoring her pain. “You knew it? Why didn’t you tell us that was—”
“I didn’t know that was Vivas. A few years ago, an American salesman came calling, asking us if we’d be willing to pay a hundred millions dollars for a two bedroom unit in a massive bunker. Said it came with underground swimming pools—”
“—movie theaters too, I heard.” Jess interrupted. “They wanted my father, but I don’t know why. Before he died, my Dad told me to find Ufuk Erdogmus. You remember?”
Giovanni frowned but nodded.
“I mentioned Erdogmus to this Englishman. He knew him.”
“So why didn’t you wait to speak to Ergodmus? Was he there?”
“Because Massarra appeared and told me to get out of there as fast as I could.”
“Good thing,” Giovanni said. “Because Vivas was destroyed.”
“What?” Jess’s mouth fell open. “That place was designed to withstand anything.”
“The ground shuddered, explosions a thousand feet into the air. Looked very bad.”
“And Massarra rescued you?” Roger snorted and shrugged theatrically. “Who is she? Do you know?” He paused. “Really?”
“I know that she saved all our lives today, perhaps.” Giovanni pulled Jess closer. “And is risking hers now.”
Roger was about to object, then reconsidered. Instead, he said: “Jess, while you were away, I talked to Al-Jawf again. Your friends in Libya.”
“And?”
“They had a clear night two days ago. I got a new reading on the position of Venus. Look at this.” He produced a laptop. “Look at these new simulations.”
NOVEMBER 6th
Thirteen Days A.N.
10
“LET’S STOP THERE.”
Jess pointed at a collapsed set of buildings just off the road.
Giovanni craned his neck forward to get a better look. “Leone, andiamo là.”
“Sì.” The old man pulled the steering wheel and the Range Rover skidded through the slush and churned its way up a winding road.
The light was falling. Time to make camp for the night.
In the distance, a sheer rock wall loomed. Lights twinkled at its top.
“Pitigliano,” Giovanni said, watching Jess’s eyes. “An ancient medieval town. Beautiful to visit, but maybe another time.”
“Another time,” Jess agreed.
When Jess awoke to the pain, the ash fall brought in on the southerly wind was thick enough to make it very slow going. They missed the off-ramp to the coast road on the first pass. They followed their own tracks back, but found other tire tracks in the snow and muck as well.
If they were being followe
d, they didn’t see anyone.
In silence, they wound their way through the rubble of small towns and past stripped-husk olive groves of half-buried trees. A thick yellow haze replaced the ash fall, stripes from a painter’s brush that oozed across the landscape. The sulfurous stench returned, but Giovanni said that they were near the town of Saturnia, where sulfurous hot springs had existed before; tourists came to bathe in them. Jess couldn’t imagine anything worse.
As the ash fall stopped, Jess’s pain began to ease.
Her fingers and toes still ached, but reduced to a dull throb below another dose of morphine. She’d unwrapped her hands, trembling, expecting the worst. They were raw-red and mottled purple, but not black. Her fingertips tingled. A good thing, Giovanni had laughed, winking, saying that amputating his girlfriend’s fingers was always the beginning of the end in his relationships.
The Range Rover skidded to a halt beside a mound of wind-blown ice and brick. One of the farm buildings, two stories of gray brick with terracotta tiles, looked almost intact. Only the windows were shattered.
“Leone, Lucca, Raffa, guardate dentro,” Giovanni said, motioning at the building. “And take your weapons.”
They only had one AK semi-automatic rifle left, which Giovanni kept with him, but Leone kept the other rifle and the two teenagers the pistols. Jess had stolen an AK from her victim, but on the long trek through the cold she had used it as a crutch and eventually let it fall by the wayside.
Roger, Elsa and Rita opened the back doors of the Range Rover and slid out, while Raffa exited the front passenger side with Hector. Eight adults and one child crammed into a Range Rover for ten hours made it feel as though they were in a cattle car. Jess had gotten used to her own body odor, but mixed with the others, the smell was almost overpowering. Giovanni stepped out from the third row of seating to hold Jess as she came out. Pain flashed through her foot as it hit the ground.
“First time I’ve been glad I only have one foot,” Jess tried to laugh, grimacing, Giovanni’s arms still around her. She gamely pushed him away and hobbled a few steps. “Hey, Roger, could you run the new simulations again?”
It’d been almost impossible to use the laptop all day, bouncing around over the rough terrain, and anyway, Jess’s mind was half gone under the drugs.
“Jessica,” Giovanni protested, holding up one hand, “is now really—”
“And set up the shortwave,” she added, gritting her teeth, forcing away the pain.
“Sure.” Roger stepped back to the truck to retrieve his bag. “Do you want me to look at the data too?” He pointed at Jess’s backpack that she clutched in her arms.
“Just get the sims and the shortwave going.”
Giovanni didn’t say anything more and began tossing equipment from the back of the Range Rover with more energy than the task required. He winced picking up each bag. His own wounds, from the fight at the castle two weeks ago, still hadn’t fully healed.
“It’s important,” Jess said, joining him. “The simulations are important.”
“As you wish.”
From the farmhouse, Raffa waved the all-clear signal from the second floor. Giovanni waved back.
Jess pulled a food crate from the back of the Range Rover. “Is this all we have?” She counted four of the brown plastic containers they used to store the ration packs.
“It’s all we had time for.”
“That’s it? Is there more in the roof rack?”
Giovanni dropped his head low and sat heavily on the truck’s tailgate. “How do you say…all hell was breaking loose when you returned. When you were in Vivas, we pulled across to the other side the most important supplies first—mostly the food. When we had to leave fast, I had to leave it on the other side. We had to drag you unconscious on one of the sleds. Vivas burned before our eyes.”
“So what’s in the roof rack?”
“Mostly stuff I thought was least important. Most of the stuff I was going to leave.”
“Like?”
“The scuba gear, the parasailing kit…”
“Jesus Christ.”
“We’re halfway to the coast. We’ll make it tomorrow.” Giovanni sucked air between his teeth. “I talked with the coastal people yesterday, with Roger while you were gone. A ship leaves the day after tomorrow.”
“And can we get on it?”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “I took the gold bars from the Humvee when we fled.” He’d insisted on taking the gold when they left the castle. Said it would still have some value for trading.
“You took gold instead of food?”
He stood quickly and shook his head. “What would you have me do? Leave you there, frozen, half-dead?”
“I want you to make smart decisions. You’ve been wanting to head for these ships ever since Roger contacted them.”
“Madonne Merde.” He raised one hand and stared at her for a moment, body tense, then shook his head. “I am going to set up camp, yes?” He turned and walked around the far side of the Range Rover, away from her.
She sighed and cursed softly, “Shit.” She could have cut him some slack—the situation back there hadn’t been an easy one. He’d saved her life and she should be grateful, but dammit, they needed that food.
Time to do inventory.
“Look at this.” Roger pointed at his laptop screen.
An oak dining table had collapsed from ceiling debris, but Roger had propped up the broken legs on stacks of ash-smeared frozen books. He’d then swept a corner of the table clean to set up his computer. Beside him, the shortwave crackled and hissed. He hadn’t managed to reach anyone tonight.
Worrying, but not unusual.
At nightfall, the yellow haze had thickened into an electric pea soup as dusk turned to dark. Coils of snow-lightening crackled across distant hillsides.
Jess finished hammering a final nail into a tarp covering the kitchen window, while Lucca and Raffa sealed a tarp over the stairs. The gas generator hummed outside, and a single LED lamp shone in the middle of the room, connected to the generator by a snaking yellow cord. A fire of broken furniture burned in a fireplace adjoining the kitchen and dining room of the farmhouse. Outside, Leone and Giovanni stood watch, while Rita and Elsa did their best with what food rations remained. Hector sat on Rita’s knee. Everyone had his or her own job.
“What did you want me to see?” Jess asked, walking over to Roger, a hammer in her hand.
“Those Venus coordinates I got from Al-Jawf.” Roger swiped across the laptop’s touchpad. “Look at this. Two hundred and forty thousand kilometers.” He pushed a button, and a three dimensional image of Earth sweeping past Saturn filled the screen. “In seventy-eight weeks, that’ll be us.”
“That puts the Earth going through Saturn’s rings?” Jess pulled up a chair.
“Not quite, but almost. The Earth is above the plane of the rings, but it still puts us at risk of striking one or more moons.”
“What’s the error?”
“About two hundred thousand kilometers.”
“Any way to refine it? Get more data?”
Roger raised his chin. “Let me have a look in there?” He pointed at Jess’s backpack. “Three days ago you were dying for me to decode it.” He patted a disk drive on the table beside the laptop. “I could give it a crack.”
“It’s not the time.”
“Why not?”
“We have other things to think about.”
“More than the Earth hitting Saturn?” Roger folded his arms.
A flash of light lit up the room. Jess crouched and spun around, checking where Hector was. The light dimmed. It seemed to come from every direction at once.
“Jess, get out here!” Giovanni yelled from the front of the house.
Looking again at Hector, wrapped in Rita’s arms, Jess took off in a shuffling run to the front door. She grabbed Leone’s rifle from the umbrella rack before swinging the door open.
A crackling shudder reverberated through the dark sky,
shaking the old farmhouse. On the horizon, a dying light faded, but the sound echoed through the ground, vibrated up through Jess’s prosthetic and into her bones. A bright orb of light streaked across the sky. It ended abruptly in an expanding glow that pierced the dark skies brighter than the sun.
“Another attack?” Giovanni crouched behind the Range Rover with Leone. “The people who attacked Vivas?”
“Worse than that.” Roger stood in the open doorway. “It’s a meteor shower.”
“Worse?” Giovanni slowly stood up straight.
Another brilliant streak overhead, ending in another distant roar that thundered through the blackness.
“And there’s a million more coming from where these came from.”
A gray Mercedes truck crouched hidden behind a pile of rock and rubble, hidden amid the swirling snow atop a ridge a half-mile from the farmhouse.
Salman licked his lips. He angled the rear view mirror to try and get a better look at his lip. It was cracked, bleeding. He needed Vaseline, or some cream. Something to protect it from the arid cold. He angled the mirror to the right, catching a glimpse of a truck, its wheels mounted on tractor treads, parked beside a snowmobile. Streaks of light flashed in the sky. A thunderous boom echoed through the darkness.
He craned his neck forward to get a better look at the sky. “A new terror from God?”
“Afraid so, old chap,” the blond-haired Englishman replied. He sat next to Salman in the passenger seat of the Mercedes. “Our astronomers told me to expect something like this.”
“One can never be sure of God’s plan.” Salman struggled not to slur his s’s. He licked his lip again.
“Were we to be in possession of the data Miss Rollins carries, I suspect we might in fact be very sure.”
Salman turned his mirror to look at two of the man’s mercenaries—thickly muscled beneath black battle armor. Night vision goggles perched atop their helmets. These military men made his own people—one an injured young boy and the other his cousin—look like peasants. He grunted and picked up a pair of binoculars and focused on the farmhouse atop the next ridge.
Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2) Page 8