“They’re coming to get me tomorrow night. I have to—”
“Find your sister! You don’t have to do anything they tell you!” his father shouted, slamming his hand on an unseen table.
“You can’t leave the island—you’re safer there. Find Carla, she’ll know what to do. Bruno, please listen to me. Do not come back. The city is full of death.”
“Maybe I can come with Carla to Nusco after—”
“No! Bruno, you know it’s spreading all over. You’ve got to stay where you are—stay away from people—anybody! It’s too late for us here, Bruno. We’re not going to make it. But you—you have a chance. I want you to live. Do whatever you need to do. Please—your mother—your brother—they—they would have wanted you and Carla to live. Just live!”
Bruno nodded, not wanting to answer his father’s request. Instead, he simply said, “I love you, Papà.”
“I love you too Br—”
His father’s voice cut off, and Bruno found himself looking into a dark screen, the words “connection failed” blinking brightly. Bruno began to weep as he tried to reestablish a connection to no avail. He sobbed until numbness replaced sorrow. His limbs felt weighed down, and it was a struggle just to move an arm, like someone fighting his way to wakefulness from a deep slumber. Pulling himself from the brink of he didn’t know what, Bruno wiped his face on his sleeve and dragged himself out of the chair away from his desk. He gathered up the radio, turned it off, and made his way to the back storage room.
Bruno looked around. The room’s narrow walls and lone fluorescent tube flickering overhead made him feel cramped and claustrophobic. Bruno spotted his body armor leaning against the wall in the far corner, its dark-blue shape standing out against the whitewashed wall. Bruno grabbed it, threw it over his head, and cinched the Velcro tight. The firmness across his chest comforted Bruno, made him feel stronger. Along with the radio, he began to gather anything he thought might be useful and put it in an old olive duffle bag he found on the floor. Bruno looked at the name stenciled on the bag in dark capital letters: “VERI, B.” He paused briefly, then continued to rummage around the shelves in the back room, while the lights still worked. He found a flashlight, a toolbox, some paracord, a first aid kit, and a few other items that he might be able to put to use. He set the toolbox to the side, but put the other items into the duffle bag. Then he turned his attention to the storage shelf bolted into the wall.
At chest-height, a square metal box stuck out about a half-meter from the wall, looking dull under the fluorescent light. The box had a seam running down the middle, bisecting the front into two doors that opened outward. In the center, just to the right of the seam, was an indentation with a tiny glass window just the size of a thumb. Bruno stared at it a moment, then put his index finger in the indentation. A white light shone from under his finger, soon followed by a buzzing sound. Of course, his fingerprints had never been registered. That was not going to stop him, not now. He opened the toolbox, and at the bottom, his hand grasped a long, cold length of metal. The crowbar was just what he needed, as there were two 9mm submachine guns to be had.
He cursed as each blow hit the box. He labored for a long while. It was much stronger than it looked. Finally, the door buckled enough for him to insert the crowbar into the seam. He jammed the crowbar in and pulled with all his strength. The screech of rending metal filled the air as the doors gave way. Bruno peered inside, expecting weapons. But what he found was emptiness and betrayal.
Chapter 7
Bruno pounded the remnants of the metal shelf with his fist. The duty pistol strapped to his hip was now Bruno’s only firearm. Cristian had left one box of 9mm ammo. Fifty bullets, that’s it. All that bullshit about not having access—the son of a bitch! He yanked the duffle bag’s zipper open, grabbed the box, and shoved it in.
“Thanks for nothing, prick liar!” Bruno shouted out loud to no one. Bruno’s hands shook as he zipped the duffle bag closed. Anger like this would make him careless. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a time, gathering his thoughts.
Bruno sat down on the floor and removed the radio from his bag. He wanted to hear someone’s voice other than his own while he thought about what to do next. He turned on the radio. It was buzzing with the voices of the same two commentators. He set the radio to scan and found the government-run radio channel. A woman’s voice filled the room.
“. . . rats have tested positive for HAV—I repeat—the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has found that rats may become infected with HAV, yet remain asymptomatic. Whether or not rats, or other mammals, may be carriers, infecting people directly, or by way of mosquito bites, is still an open question. Remember, hospitals have now reopened. If you have any signs of illness, please make your way to your nearest hospital. We—”
On a whim, Bruno tuned the radio to the end of the AM stations, close to the start of the amateur radio band where the pirate radio station had broadcast those many months ago. To his shock, through the static, Bruno heard a male voice. The pirate radio station had returned.
“For years the global elites have been watching, waiting, planning our extermination. You didn’t believe me. You thought I was out of my mind, didn’t you? But I was right! The day has finally come. They have found a way to kill us all so that they can—”
Bruno could tell by the audio quality that it was probably a low power station, so it couldn’t be that far away. Maybe it was even transmitting from Capri itself, like the provincial command had suspected. But its exact location would be impossible to find without specialized equipment. Bruno turned the radio off and put it in his bag. Though he would have gladly listened for hours to any voice, just to distract himself, he couldn’t stand to hear what was said. He needed to get back to his home; there was no point in lingering here any longer. Twilight had long past, and mosquitoes, if there were still any this late in the year, were gone for now. It was about an hour’s walk from the station to his apartment. He resolved to make it back in less than forty minutes. As he rose from the floor, the sickly florescent light flickered and went dark. Panic leapt from his gut to his throat, but he shoved it down. Blackness blanketed the storage room, and he could barely see his hand in front of his face. “It’s just the dark—it’s just the dark,” he mumbled. Bruno felt around inside the bag until his hands found the short metal tube of the flashlight. With a click of the button on the back end of the tube, the flashlight sprang to life, casting a bright beam of light into the darkness. He gathered up his duffle bag, slung it over his shoulder, and made his way back to the hallway and the central office.
From where he stood in the short hallway, Bruno could make out the outlines of the back entrance to his right, with its square glass portal to the outside, as well as the large reinforced glass separating the office from the waiting area. He didn’t want to waste time moving all the barriers he and Cristian had placed in front of the main entrances, so he turned towards the back entrance, shining the light down the hall.
From the front of the station, the sound of breaking glass stopped Bruno short. Turning off the flashlight as he crouched down, Bruno moved carefully into the central office and took shelter behind the desk. Beyond the thick glass window separating the office from the waiting area, he saw no movement. He couldn’t quite tell in the dark, but he guessed that someone had smashed the window on the door leading to the outside. Before Bruno could say for sure, something flew into the waiting room, smashed against the inner glass window, and exploded into flames. In seconds, fire engulfed the waiting area. He heard someone shout “That’s what you get, pigs!” Bruno snatched up what was now his duffle bag, hoping that whoever they were hadn’t discovered the back exit. He ran to the back door, checking out the window as best he could to make sure the alley was empty. Then, as flames flowed into the central office, he burst into the cold air. The damp autumn night bit into him as he looked around, trying to orient himself in the dark. The half-moon, though, provided a silvery
glow, giving him some light to watch where he stepped.
The alley behind connected the station to clusters of buildings to his right and his left off the main square. To his right the alley terminated in a postage stamp parking lot; to his left, the alley wound back towards the main square. Directly in front of him, a grove of scrubby pine trees blocked his vision, as the terrain stepped down in terraced levels to houses toward the sea far below. Body armor or not, Bruno didn’t dare wind around back to the square, not knowing how many attackers still lingered. He would have bet his right arm that the assailants on the station and the looters he had spared were one and the same. He should have killed them when he had the chance. The sudden anger of the thought startled Bruno, but he recognized that if he wanted to live, matter-of-fact violence would have to become second nature. But violence alone would not be enough. Bruno would have to act with the ruthlessness of a frontline soldier, not with the controlled aggression of a law enforcement officer. If he acted like a cop, he wouldn’t last long.
Shaking off his anger, he plunged into the copse of pines. The soft silver light of the moon now gave way to a brighter orange glow behind him as the station burned in earnest. The flames’ glow let him get a better look around. He found himself in a narrow, grassy clearing on the terrace, on the next level below the station. He knew if he continued down in this direction he would eventually stumble on the road that wound up from the bottom of the island, starting at the Marina Grande and leading all the way to Anacapri at the top of the island. As he stood on the terraced hillside looking at the shadowy houses to his left just below, his eyes wandered across the water towards the coast. He saw orange specks dotting the arc of the coastline from the peninsula of Sorrento jutting out towards the island, all the way around the bay. Cristian’s words about Naples were not just hyperbole; they were prophetic. The city was in flames.
The silent burning of Naples mesmerized Bruno, and he stood for a time before plunging down the terrace, scrambling through an open field, and ending up on a side street. He followed the side street, past darkened houses, onto the Via Marina Grande, the main road that wound up the side of the island back up toward his flat in Anacapri. But he was only going partway home. First, he needed to get to the hospital. He needed to find Carla, make sure she was all right.
Concrete buildings and stone houses crowded right up to the street’s edge to his left, while to his right, a low wall punctuated by gates to private dwellings ran along the side of the island on the downward slope. There was no sidewalk to speak of. Bruno looked up the narrow road towards Anacapri. In happier times, the road would have been brightly lit, with streetlights and houses casting a glow into the night. Now, the darkness made the already narrow road feel even more claustrophobic than before. Bruno adjusted the duffle bag on his left shoulder and started up the long road. His breath billowed in a white cloud as he quickened his pace. He followed the road up and away from the station, above and behind him, then came to an intersection, and a road sloped down to his right. He continued up the road and found what he was looking for: the traversa, a long staircase and paved path winding up between houses and buildings. It would save him some time. Instead of following the road as it wound up the slope of the island in a long S-shape, he would take the traversa, cutting off the bend and leading directly to the higher level of the road. The danger was that the narrow staircase and landings with doors into each dwelling limited his options if anyone caught him there. But the quicker he could get to the hospital, the better, and he judged it worth the risk.
He retrieved the flashlight from the duffle bag and held it in his left hand, but then he hefted the bag onto the same side. It was awkward, but Bruno wanted to keep his right hand free, in case he needed to use his pistol. He debated even using the flashlight at all, as he didn’t want to draw attention, but his fear of twisting an ankle or breaking a wrist outweighed the fear of detection. A sprained ankle in this new world might be a death sentence.
Bruno’s heart pounded in time with his footfalls as he started up the stairway. He progressed as rapidly as he dared, fearing the clanking of the duffle bag would draw unwanted attention. He did not stop to pause on any of the landings, but noted the shut doors of silent apartments. They stood in mute testimony to their owners’ absence, or worse. He pushed the burning in his legs and lungs aside as he bounded up the stairs, sometimes two at a time. But the duffle bag weighed him down, his pace slowed, and his footfalls became louder and heavier. Breathing heavily he finally stopped, perhaps ten steps above a landing. Looking up, Bruno saw that the stairs ended, and the path straightened and flattened out. Once he made it over this last flight of stairs he was nearly at the end and would soon be back on the street. With a sigh, Bruno started once more.
A great crash behind Bruno made him shout out loud. He whirled around, but the duffle bag unbalanced him and he fell onto his side on the hard concrete stairs with a clang. The bag took some of the force, but Bruno felt a stabbing pain shoot through the ribs on his right side as he looked down the stairs. The vest he wore had a rigid plate in front, but Bruno had fallen on his side, and the soft fabric, while bullet resistant, provided only scant protection for that kind of blow.
The door leading to the landing was flung open and in the half-moon’s weak light, Bruno could see a figure standing there a few meters below him. By some fortune, he still held the flashlight clenched in his left hand, and he pointed it down the stairs.
The beam splashed onto the figure’s face. The shirtless figure’s long, dark hair couldn’t obscure the oozing sores on her face and neck, nor could it hide the coffee-colored fluid running down from her face to her breasts. Her hands trembled as she shambled towards him.
“Please, help me!”
Bruno slithered backwards up the stairs, the pain biting into his ribs as he tore his pistol from its holster. “Stop! Don’t come any closer!”
“Please don’t hurt me!” she shouted, insistent. “My son, he’s dead—I need help!” She shuffled toward him faster than he thought someone that sick could. He dropped the flashlight and took aim at the center of the dark figure below him as he rolled to his back. “Stop! Don’t make me shoot!” he cried, and yet still she came. He yanked the trigger hard. He lost count after the third shot. He saw her stumble backwards, falling onto the landing. Ears still ringing from the shots, he held the pistol at eye level until he noticed his hands trembling. Forcing them lower, Bruno holstered his pistol and scrambled back to his feet. Pain shot through his ribs, making him wince as he gathered his flashlight from where it lay next to the duffle bag.
“Please don’t kill me!” the voice below him shouted. Bruno shone the light down onto the woman. Instead of clean shots to a vital area, he must have hit her low in the gut. Her face was twisted with pain and she lay in a pool of blood.
She sobbed as she spoke, her words coming out in stutters. “P—lease, I don’t want to die!” He dared not get any closer, though he may have already been exposed, for all he knew. Her sobs grew louder as she bled out below him. He knew he should end her suffering; he knew it in his bones, but he feared what more gunfire would bring. And yet, he couldn’t just leave her like this, no matter what the risk. He pulled out his pistol with his right hand and aimed the flashlight towards her with his left hand. He braced the pistol over his left wrist and aimed.
By now, she had stopped writhing and was lying on her stomach, moaning. As the light fell on her, she lifted her head and looked up at Bruno. Everything else around her faded to darkness, but the light shone on her face, spotlighting her eyes. She fell silent as her eyes burned into his. Her mouth opened, dark spittle running down her chin, but she made no sound. Instead, she raised her trembling hand towards him, fingers outstretched, pleading with Bruno to spare her life with that quiet gesture. Bruno squeezed the trigger as he gazed into her eyes. This time, the bullet found its mark, shattering her forehead. He holstered his pistol and turned off his flashlight. Though shadows shrouded the bloodsh
ed below him, his gaze stayed fixed on what he had done.
His second execution cut more deeply than his first. Wiping away tears with the back of his hand, Bruno wondered if he had made too much noise and she had heard his footfalls, or if the woman had simply wanted to find someone, anyone. Anger welled up inside him, masking his fright. Damn her, why did she have to come out? Why couldn’t she have just died in her house? She was going to die anyway! His anger at the dead woman distracted him for a moment from the pain in his ribs. But as the adrenaline ebbed, every breath made him wince. He wanted to go down to her dwelling to see if there was anything he could use, but he had no doubt her body could still spread disease.
That woman was an innocent. He didn’t even bother lying to himself and hope it would be the last time he ever killed anyone. Thoughts like that belonged to a civilized era, a dying era. Killing, he knew, would become second nature to the survivors of this plague, if they themselves wanted to survive.
Bruno’s gaze lingered on the unseen carnage for a while before he turned and stepped up the last bits of stairs. He stepped with care, trying to jostle the duffle bag as little as possible. If his ribs were cracked, if he couldn’t move with speed, his next encounter might very well be his last. After only a few minutes more, he came to the end of the traversa. Of course, after encountering what awaited him on those steps, he knew he would have been better off taking the long way. But second guessing that decision now might be a fatal distraction. Bruno pushed aside the memory of the stairs, focusing on what was in front of him. He walked with care down the last steps onto the sidewalk. He looked to his left and right. The wind gusted down this higher part of the dim and empty Via Marina Grande. In front of him, a long, stone wall ran the length of the street, slowly sloping down and fading to an end at an intersection down the road. The chill night air heightened Bruno’s senses as he turned to his left, continuing as fast as he could toward the piazza ahead. He made his way down the street, hugging the wall and shuffling as fast as his hurt ribs would let him. He felt so exposed on the street that keeping close to the stone made him feel safer, irrational though the thought was. The vegetation ran along the top of the wall, but beyond the tops of the low trees, a white light shone. If anywhere still had power on the island, it would be the Capomonte Hospital. As he reached the end of the wall, he crouched down. He surveyed the piazza as best he could. Something in Carla’s voice when they had last spoke made him cautious. Something was wrong.
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