Omega Plague: Collapse

by P. R. Principe

  Omega Plague

  Collapse

  P. R. Principe

  Copyright © 2015 by P. R. Principe, Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, organizations, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America by Grey Mountain Press

  First edition 2015

  ISBN 978-0-9963264-0-7

  Edited by M. J. Hyland and Trevor Byrne

  Cover design by Ivan Zanchetta

  Visit www.prprincipe.com

  To my family

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Bruno Ricasso gazed at the husk of a once-proud city. What was he thinking, coming back here? He must be out of his mind. The only sound he heard was the wind and the sea and the gulls behind him, and the pounding of his boots on the cobblestones. The late summer sun, while already past its peak, still shone brightly and cast sharp shadows. With the strong headwind, it had taken much longer to cross the bay than he had anticipated, and he needed to hurry. Bruno didn’t want to be caught outside at dusk. Or dawn. He had made a point never to be out at those times. Which is probably what had kept him alive this long.

  The pistol and baton strapped to his side were the last vestiges of a uniform long abandoned. He wore sweats, and had cinched his sleeves with rubber bands over his light leather gloves and tucked his pants into the boots. While chafing and hot, he much preferred being uncomfortable to risking exposure to infection. The black leather of the gun belt around his waist contrasted with the dark-blue fabric underneath. Had anyone else been there to observe, they might have noticed the grey hairs beginning at his temples and shading down into his beard, uncommon for a man in his early thirties—but perhaps not so uncommon for anyone who had managed to survive the past year.

  Bruno paused for a moment to get his bearings, the sunken blue eyes behind his dark sunglasses surveying the scene. Ever-present to the southeast, the volcano menaced the city, its grey rock slopes stark in the daylight. He stood on the long road that meandered along the seaside, concrete and stone piers stretching behind him. Vulgar graffiti decorated the façades of the long, stone buildings that lined the street in front of him. A steamy breeze blew trash back and forth at his feet. The breeze carried the smell of the sea with it, but it was also tinged with the damp scent of ashes from fires that had long ago burned themselves out. The state of the city reminded him of how things had been after a garbage strike, minus the syrupy stench of rotting food. Now, the public bins were filled with refuse so old they smelled mostly of dust, not decay. Bruno peered into one of the bins. There was little point in rummaging; anything of use had long since been scavenged.

  And he’d left paradise for this?

  But there was no point in dwelling on what he’d left behind just across the bay. Unwisely or not, he was committed. If, against all hope, what he searched for was still here, then he would find it and get out. He headed east. While it wasn’t the most direct route, he wanted to stay on main avenues, for fear of losing himself in the warrens of streets.

  Cars and motorini with flat tires were scattered here and there. He moved briskly, but stayed as close as he could to the left side of the street: concrete barriers topped with translucent plastic screens along their lengths bordered that side, with a row of regularly planted trees behind. Beyond the trees, cranes and other construction equipment rose over an open pit. He watched for movement. Passing the half-excavated construction site, he noticed a sign on the building to his right. “Centro Storico.” Good. He was headed in the right direction, towards the city center.

  The street opened onto a large square with an overgrown park in the middle. As Bruno entered the square, he paused and took a wide look around. He remembered this place. It had once been lively, full of people laughing, talking, complaining. In all its long history, the city had never been this empty, this barren. He looked north and saw the trattoria where he and his father had celebrated the good fortune of his assignment so close to his father’s town. The tables and chairs that had once been arranged on the sidewalk surrounding the eatery now lay mostly upturned, like fantastic four-legged creatures, dead on their backs. The long terracotta pots defining the outside dining area were filled with dry scrub weeds. He thought of the city as it had been, and continued northward.

  The two-lane street lengthened into the distance and veered left, rising beyond his sight. Bruno walked on the low concrete divider between the lanes, four times the width of a normal curb. He wasn’t sure if it was better to try to stick to the sides of the street, where there was more cover, or remain on the straight, unobstructed path of the divider, where he was less likely to be surprised. He decided to opt for speed over stealth, as a quick glance at the sun told him he had spent too long drinking in the sights, wasting precious time.

  There were far fewer vehicles on the street than he might have otherwise thought. Before he arrived here, he had steeled himself for scenes like footage from a World War II documentary, with bodies lying naked in the streets. But he saw none. Made sense, he supposed, since most people had tried to leave the city if they could. Or they would have died at home; maybe there were tens of thousands of desiccated cadavers hidden away, unseen, all around him, lying in their beds. He tried not to dwell on that thought.

  The low-rise stone and concrete buildings on either side all had balconies facing the street. The shops and storefronts on the ground floors were either empty, ruined, or locked down behind steel serrande. Black streaks ran up the outside of many of their windows, and many of the buildings were charred. A few buildings were relatively intact, and some of the balconies had overgrown plants spilling out. Some looked like pear trees. He took out a small pad from his sweat top and wrote down the street and cross street. Perhaps something to remember for the next time he came into the city. If he came back.

  He reached the end of the divider and the street curved sharply to the left. The street opened onto a wide intersection of three other streets. The buildings facing the intersection terminated not in hard angles but were rounded, softening the otherwise sharp architecture. He scanned the corners of the buildings in front of him and spotted the street name on a concrete plaque mounted on the building to his right. Via Monteoliveto. Street of the Mount of Olives. This was it. He quickened to a jog.

  Finally, Bruno arrived at a small intersection. A gridiron-style building rose almost directly in front of him. The streets continued sloping upward, rising sharply around the gridiron building,
and they met in a triangular intersection with a similarly shaped fountain in a pedestrian square to his left. He recognized this place instantly. He had lingered many a time at that fountain, reading a magazine and smoking after his shift. With its white marble eagles, tapering up to an obelisk crowned by a bronze Spanish king, the fountain seemed defiantly elegant in the ruined silence, even though the marble lions had run dry. When water had poured into the basin, the air about the fountain had always been crisp. But now it was filled with stagnant rainwater the color of seaweed. It was not somewhere to linger anymore.

  Bruno walked past the fountain and into the small square. On the left side of the square was a green metal newsstand still plastered with tattered posters and full of the last newspapers and magazines ever printed. The square itself sloped gently upward, ending in a long, three-storey building arranged perpendicular to the square. Arches framed the tall windows and stretched along the ground floor. Two navy blue vans were parked nose-to-nose across great, wooden double doors, as if to provide cover for them. The back doors of the van to his left were flung open. He approached the van with caution, drawing his pistol in his right hand and cutting a wide angle around the door, controlling his breathing as best he could. The van was empty, except for a thick, brown streak framed with handprints that stretched from the middle of the interior to the lip of the door, a gash in the otherwise white space. Dwelling on the streak and what had happened to make it would do him no good. Keeping his pistol ready, he searched the other van and found registration and insurance paperwork, in the glove compartment, and a small penlight with an LED that gave off a feeble, but still usable, white glow. He slipped it into a pocket.

  Bruno turned now to the building looming over him. The wooden doors stood directly in the middle of building’s façade, framed by the tallest arch. Above the arch, affixed to the second-storey balcony, were two fraying flags on masts reaching into the square. One was il Tricolore, the national flag. The edges of the faded red end flapped over his head. The other was the Flag of Europe. He had known as soon as he came to the square with the fountain that he was in the right place. The flags, marking a government building, only served to confirm what he already knew. There was a gold-plated plaque streaked with grime mounted just to the right of the door. He read the words: “Commando Provinciale: Napoli.” Bruno pulled the large steel ring that served as a handle, but the doors stood firm. He holstered his pistol, lowered his backpack to the ground and, after first removing and stowing his gloves, pulled out the crowbar, then began to pry the seam. He worked the tool back and forth until the wood began to give and finally, with a sharp retort, a chunk of the door flew out. The crowbar fell to pavement with a clang that reverberated around the square. He had hoped for speed and stealth during this trip back to the city, but he felt sluggish and loud. He looked around before reaching in and turning part of the mechanism that was now exposed. He heard the scrape of metal on metal and the bolt withdrew into its housing.

  He remembered the courtyard of his old duty station well, and knew exactly where to go. The rational part of him knew that what he sought was probably long since removed or destroyed, but the other part smoldered with hope that what he might find here would provide him with answers—maybe even the answer.

  He slid his pistol from its holster and stepped into the courtyard.

  ***

  Hours later, he emerged back into the square. He paused in front of the door he had broken. His t-shirt was stained with moisture, but it wasn’t from exertion. Each time he had pried or broken open a door, window, or cabinet with the crowbar, the noise had made sweat pop out from under his arms. Yet, against all hope, there it had been, sitting intact in the electronics storage cabinet, gleaming, almost waiting for him. He knew that it probably would not work, for any number of reasons: it might be broken, it might not be the right kind, it might simply be beyond his ability to use. Yet the weight of it in his backpack comforted him.

  In the square, everything looked the same. The blue vans, their doors still open, were as he had left them. The sun, though, was now low in the sky. He was not sure how much time he had. He moved forward with haste, thinking only of the sea, where he would be safe. He made it only as far as the middle of the square when a long, low growl froze him in place.

  He turned to his right and saw, emerging from behind the remains of the newsstand, an emaciated dog. It was a feral mongrel and looked like a German shepherd mixed with a wolf. The dog crouched slightly, its hackles raised, and began to bark. For all Bruno knew, it may never have seen a human before.

  He did not want to use his pistol as he was afraid of who might hear the gunshot, but there was no way he could outrun the dog, not weighed down like he was. He eased his baton from his gun belt.

  The dog stepped towards him and Bruno leapt towards it, swinging the baton. The backpack unbalanced him and he only just managed to clip the dog’s snout. The dog staggered, blood staining its teeth, one of which was now missing, an incisor. Bruno dropped the baton, drew his pistol, and the dog leapt at him as he fired.

  He backpedaled almost to the vans without realizing it, his ears ringing with gunfire. He stared at the dog, lying on its chest with its legs splayed out.

  With a loud exhalation, Bruno released the magazine, dropping it into his left hand. He had shot three rounds. As he swapped the magazine for a full one, he reflected that his firearms instructor—God only knows what had happened to him—would probably have berated him.

  He shoved the full magazine into the grip and re-holstered the pistol, then found the baton and hurried back into the square, past the fountain.

  As he was turning right to head back down the Via Monteoliveto, he spotted two figures at the top of the street, past the gridiron building. His stomach tightened. He was in the middle of the street, exposed. They were not much more than two hundred meters away from him; they must have been drawn his way by the gunfire. For an instant he hoped they hadn’t seen him. Then he heard what sounded like a referee’s whistle, and he turned and ran back down the street, towards the seaside.

  He darted down a narrow side street, which wound around and opened onto another four-lane street heading north-south. He crossed the wide avenue into a warren of narrow streets laid out in a grid pattern. He knew exactly where this was. I Quartieri Spagnoli, the old Spanish Quarter, named for when Spain ruled this city. Most of the streets were only three meters across. Tattered clothes still hung from rusting balconies, and leftist political posters, their vibrant reds long faded, hung in shreds from the sides of stone buildings. Once a breeding ground for poverty and crime, the Quarter’s run-down apartment buildings now stood only as a reminder of an infamous past. He made his way through the streets, dodging around cars and overturned motorbikes and zig-zagging south, back towards the sea and salvation.

  Bruno hoped the lack of a long field of view would give him some kind of advantage. He took cover behind a delivery van that had been turned over on its side. The van cut across the small street, nearly blocking it, rear doors butting right up to a building. After his breathing slowed he could hear no movement, but he wanted to make sure he had lost them. He held onto the van’s undercarriage and leaned just around the front bumper. With the detritus of the city cluttering the street, he could only see three blocks behind him. But he saw no one. And the only whistle he heard now was the wind through the streets. The rush of adrenaline from the chase ebbed from him, leaving him spent. His legs felt like they were weighed with cement as he continued to trudge his way south, half-expecting to hear the sound of a whistle coming from one of the buildings around him.

  At last, Bruno exited the Quartieri, the street opening up into a large square. He stayed in the shadows, making sure the square was clear, before covering the distance. He realized he had come further southwest than he’d intended. He found himself on the edge of a large open space covered in cobblestone, the Piazza del Plebiscito. He skirted the piazza, hugging the wall of the old Royal Palace, and emer
ged near a small park.

  Bruno picked his way through the tall grasses and bushes that had grown up between the palm trees until he reached the edge of the park. He knew he was not far from where he had left his motorboat. He squatted down and slung his pack behind a palm tree; it hit the ground with a metallic clank. Bruno cursed his own carelessness. Though it was built to mil-spec standards, it could still break. And if it did, this trip would be for nothing.

  He pushed himself into a thicket of bushes from where he could survey the scene. The street was flat, with three lanes; the outside lanes were for cars, while the middle lane bore the long scar of trolley tracks. He could see a long, narrow pier stretching into the sea, and just beyond it, the Beverello Pier. His motorboat was on the other side of some buildings on that pier, a relatively short and square wharf compared to some of the others that stretched hundreds of meters into the bay.

  Bruno took some deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down, but as he did he saw a pair of figures walking the lungomare, the street that hugged the shore behind the piers. They had just emerged from around the building on the Beverello Pier. Beyond them, he thought he could see movement, maybe two or three more figures. They must have realized that they would never find him in the remnants of the city; there were simply too many places to hide. So, they made the gamble that he had come in by sea, and tried to cut off the most logical escape route. He prayed that they hadn’t noticed his motorboat, pulled up on some rocks just below an overhang.

  He was able to get a better look at the pair closest to him. Two men. Their clothes were loose, everything greens, blacks, and greys. Each wore netting around their head that obscured their features, and each carried weapons. The rifles they carried stood out above all: they weren’t automatic weapons, but looked like scavenged long guns, made for game hunting.

  The two figures were moving down the street towards his position. He crouched low, leaning his left shoulder against the tree. The sun was in descent behind him, and with luck, he’d be lost in the glare and vegetation. Slowly he retrieved his pistol from its holster with his right hand.