Omega Plague: Collapse

by P. R. Principe

  Bruno gasped. Father Tommaso, wearing an unkempt, grey beard, stepped over the twitching body of the boy.

  Chapter 13

  The priest’s eyes narrowed. “Bruno? Is that you?”

  Bruno holstered his own pistol and pulled his respirator down. “Yes, it’s me, Father.”

  Father Tommaso’s eyes searched Bruno’s face. Then the priest nodded.

  Bruno looked around at the carnage. Two teenage boys lay dead. Their blood decorated the floor and walls. Bruno put his respirator back on. If they were infected, Bruno didn’t know if his respirator would be enough to protect him.

  Stepping toward the boy closest to the balcony, Bruno picked up the revolver. It was a .38 Special. He opened the cylinder. Empty.

  Bruno looked at the dead boy he had shot. He hadn’t given the boy a chance to surrender.

  “Unloaded. Why didn’t you say something?” Bruno said to the dead boy.

  “What did you think he was going to say? You think he would admit he didn’t have any bullets?”

  Bruno stepped back towards the balcony doors, away from Father Tommaso, who still held the bloody kitchen knife in his hand.

  “Father, are you all right? You should cover your face with something.”

  “Did they follow you here?” The priest had just cut a boy’s throat, yet Bruno detected not a hint of remorse in the man’s voice. What Bruno heard was anger. Father Tommaso took another step toward Bruno. The priest left bloody shoe prints behind him.

  “I don’t know—I think they—”

  “You’re fucking careless! You led them right to our building!” The priest shook his head. “Help me get these bodies out into the hallway for now.”

  After moving the bodies and wiping up the blood as best they could, Father Tommaso put his small table back in the kitchenette near the balcony doors. Bruno sat with his back to the cabinets, with the glass doors on his right. His respirator hung loosely around his neck. Father Tommaso had said almost nothing while they were moving the bodies. Bruno thought the killings—or whatever else the priest had been through—must have left him traumatized.

  Father Tommaso stood to Bruno’s left. “I don’t have much to eat. I’ve got some prepackaged toast. You want some?” said the priest.

  “Sure.”

  The priest rummaged around in one of the cabinets above his sink. Then Father Tommaso walked around the table and sat across from Bruno. They were so close their knees touched. Bruno’s back was to the balcony doors, while Father Tommaso had his back to the exit. The priest opened the small package of toast. He handed a piece of the toast to Bruno.

  “I’m glad you’re still here,” said Bruno. “I thought for sure you were dead or gone. What happened to you?”

  The crunching of the dry bread sounded loud in Bruno’s ears, as it was the only noise in the room. The priest absentmindedly drew circles on the table with his knife, the same knife the priest had used to kill the boy. He didn’t look Bruno in the eye. Father Tommaso must have wiped the blade clean at some point, but Bruno could still see a smear of blood near the handle.

  “I saw sin and sinners, Bruno. My faith was tested, tested like I couldn’t believe. But I’m still here. Still alive. I still have my faith. Do you?”

  Bruno bit the toast and chewed for a moment in silence. Then he swallowed. “How could anyone still have faith after all that’s happened?”

  Father Tommaso smiled. “That was always your problem, wasn’t it, Bruno. Your lack of faith.”

  The priest continued to scratch the table as he spoke, staring at the marks. “But how could you not see what was coming? You know San Gennaro’s blood didn’t turn to liquid this year? You know what that means?”

  Bruno put the toast down on the table. “The legend says bad things are supposed to happen to Naples.”

  “Legend? Look around you. Bad things did happen! So, why don’t you believe?”

  “Look, Father, I know it’s been hard, being alone, I know because—”

  “It’s a lack of faith that brought about this judgment from the Lord. The lack of faith of people,” Father Tommaso pointed the knife at Bruno, “like you.”

  “Listen, Father, you can’t stay here. Why don’t you come with . . .” Bruno’s voice trailed off when he noticed the other man’s eyes. The whites of Father Tommaso’s eyes were a pale yellow.

  “Father, look, you need to put down the knife. Then we can talk.”

  “This is your fault!”

  Bruno shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He kept his voice as soothing as he could. “Just calm down and put the knife on the table.” Bruno stood up slowly as his hand crept towards his back and his pistol.

  Without a sound, Father Tommaso launched himself at Bruno. The knife flashed toward Bruno’s gut. Bruno caught the priest’s arm with both hands, pushing it to one side, but his momentum smashed them both through the balcony doors. Father Tommaso’s wiry strength shocked Bruno but he clung to the priest, fighting to disarm him. If his knife hand got free, the priest would cut Bruno to shreds before he could get to his pistol. A head butt to Bruno rocked him and his knees buckled. Bruno’s sudden change in level took the priest by surprise, and Father Tommaso lurched forward. Bruno took one hand off the priest’s arm just long enough to yank as hard as he could at Father Tommaso’s calf. Father Tommaso went backwards over the railing with a wail.

  The sound of the knife hitting the ground echoed in the alley, yet Father Tommaso managed to cling to the bottom bar of the balcony’s railing, his legs dangling in the air. Bruno gasped for breath.

  “Help me, Bruno! Please!” the priest shouted.

  Bruno stood up. He swayed back and forth, still unbalanced as he looked down at his friend. Bruno could already feel the swelling on his cheek where the priest had head-butted him.

  “You’re infected!” He pulled off his respirator to breathe more easily.

  “I was, but I’m better now!” Father Tommaso’s hands were white. “Please, I don’t know how long—I can—hold . . .”

  Bruno rolled his head up and looked at the sky. Father Tommaso struggled, cursing, as he tried to hoist his way back up. Bruno focused on a wisp of cloud in the blue sky. Then he looked down at his friend. Father Tommaso continued to babble.

  “Help me! I don’t know why I tried to hurt you, I—”

  Father Tommaso tried to pull himself up, but then he fell back with a cry, gripping the lower rail, clinging for his life four stories up.

  “I’m sorry! Please don’t let me die,” the priest pleaded.

  Bruno watched as Father Tommaso’s grip weakened and his hands began to slip.

  Father Tommaso panted out words between breaths as his watery, jaundiced eyes focused on Bruno.

  “Remember . . . someday will be your end.”

  Father Tommaso fell to the ground screaming. Bruno heard the crunch of his impact and saw the priest’s broken body in the alley.

  For a few heartbeats, Bruno stared down at his dead friend in silence. Then he turned away and looked back into Father Tommaso’s flat. Bruno didn’t want to leave these bodies so close to his own place, afraid that if a warm spell came through, the stench would become overwhelming. Bruno was sick of the smell of death. The upper floors of his apartment block had reeked for a long while, until those poor bastards had finally dried out, turned to mummies, or whatever the hell happened to people when they died in their homes with no one to bury them and no scavengers to eat them. But he didn’t have the strength right then to do anything about the dead. Bruno’s body ached, his face was bruised, and he could feel the blood from the cuts on his head trickling down the back of his neck. Worst of all, he realized that he had twisted his right knee.

  Stepping carefully through the broken glass of the door, he shuffled back into the flat and surveyed the mess inside. One thing was clear: Bruno knew that he didn’t dare risk being seen anymore. He would have to give up the daylight and move only in the dark. He considered abandoning his fla
t for another hideout, but he’d be damned if he’d let some teenage looters frighten him out of his home. Bruno would do his best to move in the shadows now, but if there were more, let them come, and he would take care of them, too.

  Bruno scooped up his pistol and backpack and began his short journey back to his own flat next door, hoping that his knee was just strained. Anything worse would probably mean that the ultimate winner of the fight lay dead in the alley.

  Chapter 14

  June 1

  “Stupid bitch,” Bruno muttered as he fumbled with the radio, scanning through the bands, but hearing only hiss and crackling.

  “Stupid bitch!” he yelled at the radio. He nearly threw the radio against the floor, only stopping himself at the last moment. He dropped the radio at the foot of his bed.

  She was gone. The synthvoice, the last vestige of technological civilization, had disappeared from the airwaves. Teresa had signed off without so much as a farewell to her loyal listener. Bruno’s anger seemed strange even to him, since he didn’t believe a word she had said over the last few months—talking about safe zones, food drops, and the destruction of the Monte Bianco tunnel to stop refugees from streaming south.

  But only now did Bruno realize how dependent he had become on her measured voice, on her punctuality, on the illusion of companionship she provided. Gone. He lay on his bed and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. The bed stank of his own body. He tried to sleep, but though he had been out for hours the previous night, sleep would not come. In the five months since he had killed Father Tommaso, Bruno only left his sanctuary at night, prowling in the dark. He heeded Carla’s advice to stay away from people, lest he, too, succumb to the Omega Plague or become the victim of a survivor’s madness. Bruno last saw a person, some scavenger in the dark, three months ago, and had slipped away before that sorry figure spotted him.

  Each of Bruno’s long nights began the same, his rituals providing some structure to his rudderless existence. Opening a can of whatever he had, Bruno gathered his map and his pen, and sat at the table in his kitchenette. He waited for nightfall before going outside. He waited not just for twilight, but for true night. And yet, though he waited with anticipation for the dark to come, when it finally did, he ached with dread. No streetlights. No lights in houses. No one lighting up cigarettes, laughing in the street, and no gaudy lights at the entrances to the dance clubs. No brightly lit yachts plying the waters between the island and the Amalfi coast. No light anywhere, unless the moon and stars were overhead or he made his own light. But in his mind, when he prowled outside, turning on a flashlight or lighting his Zippo in that velvet blackness was a flare, advertising his presence and making him feel naked in the dark. No, he thought, better to brave the dark and remain unseen than expose himself to who knew what. Afraid that he might be followed after what had happened before, he always returned well before dawn to avoid being caught in the light or by mosquitoes.

  Most of the time, Bruno now believed he survived alone on the island. But sometimes he noticed things out of place, things that made him realize others, too, may still lurk in dark places: a trash bin moved, a door open, a window shattered. Yet he saw no one. Did he think something had moved when it really hadn’t? Was it paranoia? He could never be sure. Bruno wondered if loneliness had poisoned his mind. Increasingly, he had felt the gaze of someone drilling into the back of his head during his nightly runs. But every time he turned, there was, of course, no one there. Two nights ago, the surprise sound of a skeletal cat meowing as it followed him, looking for food, had nearly caused him to shoot. That cat had tasted surprisingly good for something so mangy.

  But today as he lay on his bed, almost impatient for darkness to fall, Bruno decided he could stand the dark no more. The night sickened him; he had finally had enough of skulking and hiding.

  Bruno got up and moved to his kitchenette, muttering to himself. He pulled open the curtains in front of the glass doors to his balcony and sat at the table. He dragged his backpack from under the table and pulled out a map of the island of Capri. All along the road, stretching into the center of Anacapri, he had placed tiny “X”s denoting the places that he had visited, almost down to the individual house. “Strange,” he said out loud, at the thought that he now called what he did “visiting,” despite it almost always involving a crowbar and looting. Undoubtedly, the former patrician owners would not have approved. On the bottom of the map he had made notes of anything he’d seen that was of interest.

  Bruno realized that he needed an alternative location, another base of operations, in case someone discovered his apartment block or some natural event destroyed it. After killing the old priest, he had found some other places here in Anacapri, in case his own flat was ever looted. But Bruno needed a retreat on another part of the island, just in case something unexpected happened . . . like if Il Serbo came knocking. The thought shocked him. Where had Il Serbo’s name come from? Il Serbo was likely long dead. Still, Bruno reasoned, there might be others as bad or worse, or maybe something could happen in Anacapri that he couldn’t anticipate. So, Bruno needed to return to the village of Capri. Capri. Bruno hadn’t been back that way since the day Carla died. When he had nightmares, they almost always ended with Bruno falling in Carla’s place.

  Bruno looked out through the glass doors of his balcony and glanced at his watch. Not even noon yet. Time enough to get to Capri and back, if he had to.

  He debated whether or not to take his motorcycle. He smiled to himself. Anyone left could hear an engine’s roar halfway across the island. So, on foot it would be. He threw on a battered leather jacket. The chiodo hung on him open, unzipped, to keep him from overheating. On each side of the jacket, perfectly round holes reminded Bruno every time he wore it of the fate of its previous owner. He was never really sure why he took that jacket. Maybe it was a trophy. Maybe it was guilt. Or maybe it was just a reminder of how things are. Bruno gathered his backpack and made his way out of his apartment and onto the street.

  He looked around. Though grey clouds covered the sky, the light still made his eyes water, so he put on his sunglasses. The whitewashed building where he lived stood behind him. In front of him a stone wall overgrown with ivy and bushes ran along the street. He looked up Via Pagliaro to his left. The street wound east toward the center of Anacapri, and he saw Monte Solaro, a ridge running across the island, dividing Anacapri above from Capri below. That’s where he needed to go. He knew he should check on his water collection contraptions on the roof. The garbage barrels, lined with plastic and covered with screens, served to gather rainwater, but he needed to make sure they stayed covered and didn’t become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. He also wanted to rig up some tarps to increase the surface area collecting water. But, anxious to begin his trek, he decided it could wait.

  Bruno shouldered his backpack and began his return to Capri full of trepidation. The grey afternoon, odd for this time of year, begged for silence. Only a whisper of wind ran down the narrow street. More often than he wanted, Bruno found himself glancing behind him as he half-jogged past shuttered storefronts, through empty piazze with their low pastel buildings quaint in their solitude, and motorini strewn about like fallen leaves after a spring storm.

  Bruno made his way to Piazza Vittoria, the heart of Anacapri. He stopped and rested for a moment on a patch of rough grass with two neat rows of bushes, a tiny park in the middle of the piazza. As he sipped his bottle of water, he looked up at the bronze statue of winged Victory, sword held high. Bruno remembered the place, although he hadn’t been here in months. The stores and boutiques seemed a hair’s breadth from liveliness, and Bruno half-expected to see people coming out. The bushes had not yet overgrown their final trimming, but the grass had turned to hay. Bruno put away his water and slung his pack over his shoulder. Time to go.

  He walked on the Via Provinciale, the main road out of Anacapri. The narrow road wound out of the village, past villas with their walls and gates, and onto the side of the
ridge separating Anacapri above from Capri below. To his right, the sheer rock face stretched into the sky. To his left, a guardrail ran along the side of the road, and he could see out across the bay. The top of Vesuvius poked out from the clouds, but the shoreline of Naples could not be seen, shrouded in the grey haze.

  After snaking around the side of the ridge, the road straightened. Houses now grew up along the stone wall to his right, and in front of him the lower part of the island came into view. Capri lay before him, the white stone of its dwellings still splendid even in the dull light.

  Bruno lingered on the outskirts of Capri, pausing for a moment while he took another sip from his water bottle and admired the view. Before the Omega Plague, he rode his motorcycle on this street almost every day. He remembered flying down the curves of this road, and yet in all that time he had never really noticed this part of the island, the outskirts before the heart of Capri.

  Thoughts from happier days played in his mind until he realized he wasn’t far from the hospital. Or what was left of it now. As he surveyed the area, he shivered, the wind picking up speed. It was cool today. He thought of Carla. Then he wondered if maybe he should leave the island. Leave? But where could he go where there were no mosquitoes? The Alps? Switzerland? How would he get there? On foot? By bike? How would he find food? Could he survive the trip? The rational part of Bruno clamped down on the thought of leaving. As far as he knew, all of Europe had mosquitoes at some point during the year. And if the disease was endemic in the environment, then no place was safe. That wasn’t even considering the dangers other people might pose, people like Father Tommaso, or even just some gang of scavengers. He knew the island now like an old lover. No, better to stay here.

  Bruno’s internal debate was interrupted when he spied something he’d never noticed before. A long metal spike stuck straight up maybe ten meters into the air. It projected from amid a red-tiled roof on a grey stone building just down the street on his left. Bruno walked closer to the two-storey building and saw small spokes jutting out in all directions from the top of the spike. He studied it for a moment. An antenna? Then he noticed something else on the roof: flat, dark panels oriented roughly south. Bruno approached the building. He could tell from the two wooden green doors at street level that the building contained two dwellings. Given what he remembered about grounding wires and lightning protection, what he sought would most likely be found on the lowest floor. He needed to find a way in.