“The bodies—what do you do with the bodies?” murmured Bruno.
“We have an incinerator for medical waste.”
Bruno turned away from Carla. “You’ve turned hospitals into death camps.” God only knew what was happening in places like China, Russia, or the United States. What had they resorted to, if on Capri, playground for the glitterati of Europe, the hospital facilitated government-sanctioned slaughter? He paced for a moment, then turned towards her. “They’re fools if they think they can contain this. It’s way too late.”
“Maybe they are fools. But they needed to try something, anything. Even this.”
Carla’s participation in the lies and death shocked Bruno, but in his heart, he knew she was right. He was beginning to understand that in this new world, only the lucky and the ruthless would survive. Her cold-blooded attitude might keep her alive for a while. But no matter how cunning, how ruthless you were, there would always be someone more ruthless, more cunning. Maybe just more lucky.
He breathed a long breath before speaking. “The old world is dead. There’s no hope to stop the Shakes.”
“Who knows? You call it the Shakes. That’s what the Brits call it. So many different names for the damn thing. The French call it la grippe africaine, the African Flu, the Irish call it the Blood Trots, and the Spanish—Brown Fever. And here, every region has its own name for it.” She smiled a bit. “As usual. But I think the Americans have got the right name for it.”
“Omega Plague.” The words chilled Bruno even as he said them. “The Final Plague.”
She nodded. “The plague that ends humanity.”
“But this virus . . . this plague . . . isn’t there anything that can be done to help the sick? A treatment—antivirals, something?” Bruno asked.
“There’s a rumor the potent ones might, just like they do against the AIDS virus. But you’d have to stay on them the rest of your life. And there’s far too many people sick, too many people dying, for there ever to be enough antivirals for everyone.”
Carla took his arm. “Come on. You’ve got to get going. This way.” She led him to the far side of the storage room. A wooden door stood in their path. Judging by the rust-coated padlock, no one had opened it for a long while. Carla’s key was no use. “It’s so damn old,” she said. “From before the renovations.”
Bruno removed the crowbar from his bag and jammed it between the lock and the door. With one motion the padlock tumbled off, taking part of the door with it.
He poked his head in and looked around. The chamber smelled of water and mold, its bricks the color of dirt. A ladder led up to a manhole. The chamber was tiny and they would have to climb one at a time.
“Do you know where it comes out?” asked Bruno.
“I think on the street beyond the hospital, up the road towards Anacapri.”
“Let’s get going! If we jog, it won’t take that long to get to my place.”
Carla shook her head.
“What’s the matter?”
“They need me here,” Carla answered, her gaze steady.
“Carla, you’ve got to come. Christ, you said they’re all going to die anyway. And Battisti, he’ll—”
“I’m not talking about the patients. The Ministry of Health goons need me. They’ll make sure I’m well taken care of. Those are their orders. And Battisti follows orders. Healthy nurses and doctors are more valuable than gold, trust me. I’ll be much safer here than running around on the island like you . . . but you need to know something.”
Carla paused before continuing. “Very, very few people survive this disease—we’re not sure just how few. But the ones who do, become—”
“What, vampires, zombies?”
“This isn’t one of Cristian’s stupid fucking movies!” She took a breath before continuing. “Look, back when the Spanish Flu hit in 1918, some people who survived had a kind of brain trauma, made some of them lethargic, almost catatonic. They called it the Sleeping Sickness. This virus also changes brain chemistry in survivors. But this one makes them dangerous.”
“More contagious?”
Carla shook her head. “No, if they survive, they’re not contagious any more. We think it damages parts of the brain, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re the parts of the brain that process emotion. The reports I’ve seen say it makes survivors highly unpredictable, almost psychopathic.”
“What the hell is this thing?”
“We don’t know. Whatever it is, one thing is for sure: it can’t be natural. Some group, some country, did this deliberately. Someone made this thing. Look for jaundice in the whites of their eyes; the survivors have liver damage. But if you get that close to one, it’s probably too late. They’d just as soon choke someone as talk to them.” Carla glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get back. Time to go.”
Bruno nodded and turned his back to her as he moved into the chamber. He climbed two rungs and opened the manhole cover above him as quietly as he could. Eyes just breaking over the edge, he looked around, but saw no one in the gloom. He pushed his duffle bag through the opening and climbed the rest of the way up. Once he stood on the street, Bruno gathered his bag and turned around. There below him stood Carla in the chamber, looking up at him. Her eyes glinted in the dark, but he could barely see the rest of her, even though she stood only a meter below him.
“I love you, Bruno,” said Carla. “Now, find a safe place, stay there, and don’t come out.”
***
Bruno found his flat cold and humid, but there was nothing for it; he had no fuel or generators, and with the power off, all he could do was bundle himself in blankets to ward off the chill. The ache in his ribs kept him awake for a long while, even after he took some meds. As he lay there, finally in his own bed, he tossed and turned. He got out of bed, threw on some clothes, and went out onto his balcony.
The autumn air, laden with moisture, wrapped Bruno like a cool blanket. Bruno could see just a few flickering flames dotting the coast.
“Concrete and stone,” said a voice from the darkness.
“What?” The voice startled Bruno. He looked and saw a figure on the dark balcony to his right. “What are you talking about?”
“Naples is made of concrete and stone,” said Father Tommaso. “She won’t burn all the way. Even if there’s no one left to put out the flames.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say, Father? No comforting words while everything crumbles to shit?”
Bruno heard a shrug in Father Tommaso’s voice as he answered. “Everything in this world ends. Civilizations, cities, people. All of it. I talked about it during my sermon. You should have come. You can’t fight this, Bruno. This is the end of our song.”
“You can’t fight it. Or you won’t fight it. But I will.”
“How?”
Bruno thought for a moment. “I’ll live to see tomorrow.”
“Someday, sooner or later, it will be the end—your end.”
“But not today. I’ll take one more day and call it victory.” Bruno tired of this debate. “Buona notte, Father Tommaso,” said Bruno as he returned to his flat. Bruno heard a response, but shut his balcony doors before Father Tommaso had finished speaking.
Bruno looked around his gloomy flat. Still restless from pain and fear, his mind raced. He began to wonder if they were going to come for him anyway, even though they were so few. He blocked the apartment door with the dresser and got back in bed. The slightest bump or creak caused him to reach for his pistol. Bruno had resolved that he’d die fighting if he had to. Images lingered in his mind, keeping him from sleep, though he was bone-tired; images of that woman’s eyes fixed on his and her head shattering into bone and blood and brains. But after a long struggle against his own mind, Bruno fell asleep sitting up, with pillows propped against the headboard, his last thoughts not of murder and death, but of his sister, alone.
Chapter 10
/> November 6
The rain had stopped, but the wind still blew strong enough to rattle the balcony door. Bruno pulled blankets over his head and huddled against the cold. It was ten days since he’d set foot outside his apartment. Ten days of listening to the world fall apart on his radio and battling more fear than he’d ever known. Twelve days since he’d escaped the hospital. Twelve days since he saw Carla.
Bruno rubbed his itchy beard and looked over at the radio on his nightstand.03:43. The more he fought to sleep, the more awake he became. Not for the first time, he wondered if the ship had come the night he and Cristian were supposed to evacuate. When they didn’t show up, had their colleagues looked for them? How long did they stay? As he lay there, staring at the ceiling, he thought of his father. And he thought of Carla.
Bruno gave up; there was no retuning to slumber now. After a week, the ache in his ribs had finally subsided, and the last few days he had slept on his side again. He rolled onto his back and looked around his apartment. In the dark, water-filled bottles glinted here and there from the scattered moonlight. Condensation covered the bottom halves of the glass doors to his balcony. Bruno yearned for fresh air, as the air in his apartment weighed stuffy and close on him. He knew he stank. With the grid down for so long, running water had finally gone too. And he’d been loath to waste his bottled water on bathing. But while he craved the smell of the outdoors, the cold wind dissuaded him from opening the balcony door. That, along with the plastic bags of his own feces that he’d been tossing on the balcony. He didn’t know what else to do with them; he was afraid to throw them off the balcony lest someone spot the obvious sign of habitation in the alley below. Bruno figured if his own balcony got full, he could start tossing the bags onto Father Tommaso’s. That would get the old bastard’s attention. If he was still there. If he was still alive.
For what seemed like the hundredth time over the last few days, Bruno got up and knocked on the wall separating his apartment from Father Tommaso’s.
“Father, are you there?”
He knocked a few more times and called out, but got no response.
Bruno went back to his bed and sat down. Fumbling in the darkness, he found the “on” switch on the radio. Even though extra batteries lay under his bed, Bruno rationed his radio use as much as he could stand. Can’t just go to the store anymore.
When a female voice roared out, Bruno turned the volume down to almost nothing, just enough to hear over the cry of the wind.
The synthvoice was good, almost good enough to fool even Bruno, but not quite. It was too perfect to be real. She (even Bruno couldn’t bring himself to think “it”) spoke about safe zones, hospital openings, and checkpoints. Bruno had spent the last week listening to her lilting speech. Her voice had that same resonant ring he remembered from the recordings of his great-aunt Teresa’s opera singing. But none of what the voice said impacted him here on the island. Probably all fucking lies anyway.
What he wouldn’t give for a good, old-fashioned shortwave radio, now that the power grid was off-line, seemingly for good. Shortwave! Bruno almost laughed at himself for thinking such a thought. What good would it do anyway? He couldn’t think of one European—or other major international broadcast radio station—that still used shortwave. Only religious nuts and right-wing propagandists used shortwave. And, of course, cranky old radioamatori, ham radio operators, too. Those damned pads, tablets, e-books, and most every other electronic device ever invented were no better than bricks now. Bruno wondered, if maybe—
A sound snapped him back to his musty apartment. Bruno’s body tensed. Did he hear something? Was it the wind? Bruno shut off the radio and listened. Nothing but howling wind and rustling branches. His shoulders slumped. Then tat-tat-tat-tat again. The sound, more insistent now, came from the door to the outside hallway of his apartment building. Whatever caused the noise was just outside his front door. He reached for his pistol and holster, strapping it around his waist.
Tat-tat-tat.
He crept towards the low dresser blocking his door so that he could look through the peephole. He leaned towards the hole, pistol in his right hand. Darkness in the hallway, yet Bruno felt as much as saw a dark shape.
Tat-tat-tat.
Bruno readied his pistol. Then a whisper floated in from the outside.
“Ricasso, are you in there?”
It was a male voice.
He knows who lives here, Bruno thought. He knows who I am! Whoever was outside wasn’t seeking just anyone. Bruno’s thumb moved the safety up with a satisfying click and he backed off the dresser, pistol raised. He wondered how much the door’s mass would affect a bullet’s speed and trajectory.
“If you’re in there . . . they’ve got Carla.”
Bruno froze for a moment, then scrambled onto the dresser and pressed his eye to the peephole. The man turned on the flashlight he’d used to knock on the door and Bruno now saw him. Even though the respirator covered the bottom half of his face, Bruno recognized him instantly.
Son of a bitch!
“Battisti! Why are you here?”
“They’ve got Carla!”
“Who’s got her?”
“Look, just let me in. I can explain—”
“Don’t bullshit me! Why shouldn’t I shoot you right through this door, you prick?”
“Because if you do, you’ll never find her. For Christ’s sake, let me in!”
Bruno stared at the pistol in his hand. He heard more than just anger in Battisti’s voice; he heard fear. Bruno backed away from the dresser and holstered his pistol.
“Wait where you are,” said Bruno.
He donned his uniform pants and the respirator Carla had scavenged from the hospital, then moved the dresser just far enough so the door would open halfway. Bruno unlocked the door and stepped back, a flashlight in his left hand. He aimed the pistol with his right hand and braced it over the flashlight.
The door creaked open, exposing the yawning gloom of the hallway beyond and the dark figure of Battisti. Bruno swept the flashlight up and down, taking note of the streaks of soot and blood on Battisti’s wet uniform and face.
“Let me see your hands.”
Battisti sidled into the doorway, hands in the air. Battisti’s hands were empty. But they trembled.
“You’re infected!” Bruno recoiled. “Get the fuck out of here before I shoot you!”
“Bruno, just listen, I know where you sister is—she can help me—but I need your help to get her.”
Bruno gripped his pistol even tighter. He didn’t know what Battisti meant, but the hope of finding his sister overcame his fear of infection.
“Take your weapon out of your holster and place it on the dresser behind you,” Bruno ordered.
“But—”
“Do it slowly or I’ll blow your head off.”
“All right, take it easy.” Battisti, now fully in Bruno’s apartment, un-holstered his pistol and placed it on the dresser. Bruno stood by his bed, keeping his pistol trained on Battisti.
“Put your hands on your head and clasp your fingers together.”
Battisti complied without a word.
“Now talk. Who’s got her?”
Bruno shone the flashlight directly in Battisti’s eyes and Battisti squinted. “I don’t know. Raiders, looters, whatever you call them. They’ve got her.”
“How?”
“There were only six Ministry of Health guards when you escaped. And as of a few hours ago, only three were left . . .” Battisti exhaled loudly. “And they captured one of them. Poor bastard, DiFalco. The others are dead.”
Bruno couldn’t give a damn about Battisti’s goons, but he wanted to know where Battisti’s information came from.
“How did you find me?”
“I took a look at your records before the interrogation. That was when things were still working, more or less.” Battisti paused. “Not that long ago, was it? When things were working, I mean. Couldn’t remember your exact apartment num
ber, though.”
Battisti shook his head. “Took me longer that I thought it would to find you, even after I got to your building. But as you may have noticed, you seem to be the only one home, so that made finding you a little easier, at least.”
Wanker, Bruno thought. “If you knew where I lived, why didn’t you come get me before?”
“Couldn’t spare the men. Like I said, there were only six guards and me. Seven for the whole hospital. Not nearly enough to run around to try to find you.”
“So what happened?”
“What the hell do you think happened? We had a containment breach, the disease got loose, so most of the others bolted. Simple as that. I got infected. And then they came. Nine of them. But we didn’t have a combat mission. We had to try to protect what was left of the hospital staff. Made things more difficult when the enemy doesn’t care who they kill. At least now there are four less looters to deal with.”
“So, we need to go back to the hospital. You must have had weapons, rifles, supplies—”
“We did.” Battisti looked down. “The drone ran out of fuel. So we didn’t have any surveillance. And before we spotted them, they dropped I don’t know how many Molotov cocktails on us.” Battisti met Bruno’s eyes again. “They burned us out. Now it’s torched. I was lucky to escape.”
“And the patients, the staff?”
“Dead. All dead—all except Carla. Instead of just helping you escape, she should have gone with you.”
Bruno needed a second to absorb the news. “How did you know that Carla . . .”
Battisti laughed.
“Come on! Do you think I’m an idiot? She is your sister, of course if she found out you were there, she’d help you. You couldn’t have escaped without help. So, I tried to have her removed and turned onto the street, let her fend for herself, like everyone else. But the high-IQ boys at the Ministry of Health wanted all doctors treated with kid gloves, no matter what they did—Infection Control Protocol 151 said so. So, I followed orders. But I’m done following orders now.”
Bruno’s patience grew short and his arms tired from keeping the pistol trained on Battisti.
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