Jess's eyes followed his hand. Past the breakwaters of the fishing village, a rocky crag of an island, less than a mile offshore, stood out of the still waters of the Mediterranean. Dark green trees sprouted at the base of the island, a small jetty just visible. The walls of a structure rose up from the stony cliffs, lights twinkling in the upper rooms.
Someone grabbed Jess’s arms, almost pulling them out of their sockets. She cried out. It was Vlad, one of Giovanni’s men who had turned on them, and he dragged Jess out of the back of the pickup.
“You don’t need her,” Giovanni whispered from between cracked lips. The other traitor guard pulled him to his feet.
“Oh, but we do.” Enzo walked ahead of them, to a wooden dock the pickup was parked next to. A green and red fishing boat, paint peeling from its sides, sat at the end of the dock.
“Not for this,” croaked Giovanni, stumbling forward.
“Exactly for this.” Enzo smiled as he jumped into the back of the boat.
Vlad pulled on Jess’s arms, pain lancing through her shoulders. “Come on,” he commanded.
Jess ambled forward, her prosthetic loose. How humiliating if it came free and she sprawled spinning into the dirt. She kept her head low, watched the seaweed-covered rocks at the edge of the dock. The seaweed covered only a foot or two of the rocks coming out of the water. A foot or two. It had to be low tide.
The boat was filled with a tangled mess of white netting and orange floats, and stank of rotten fish. Jess realized it would be futile to try and resist, so she did her best to step carefully into the boat. Giovanni wasn’t as accommodating. Vlad shoved him from the dock and Giovanni fell into the bottom with a sickening thud.
The large man who had attacked Jess in the apartment in Rome came behind them, holding tiny Hector, who squirmed in his arms. Once they were all aboard, they threw off the lines and the boat’s engine roared to life, belching blue fumes out behind it. The boat left the dock and growled into the bay.
Pinned in the big man’s arms, terrified Hector stared at Jess, his eyes wide.
“Don’t worry,” Jess whispered, “it’ll be okay.”
But she didn’t know if it would be.
Giovanni’s body hadn’t moved since he landed in the bottom of the boat.
Seagulls squawked, wheeling in the sky over the boat, expecting a meal. Jess looked up, squinted into the sun. She felt its heat and warmth, but more than that, she sensed malevolence. Nomad was coming from behind the sun. In a few hours it would pass the sun, and might be visible to Earth-based observatories for the first time. This close, they might be able to see it.
She looked into the blue sky. Would it arrive earlier than her father predicted? Would she be able to see the auroras in the sky, even during the day? She didn’t see anything. Her dad said it would knock out the electricity grids. Glancing left, she saw lights on in the fishing village. So she still had time.
Gritting her teeth, she pulled on the ropes. Goddamn it.
The boat churned across the water.
Jess performed a calculation in her head. Twenty-four hours until Nomad made its closest approach. If her father was right, it was closing the distance at thirty million kilometers an hour. It had already passed Jupiter’s orbit on its way in, and was halfway to Mars by now. That meant it was in the Asteroid Belt. If it collided with something there, they ought to see a flash, a momentary accretion disk. At least they’d be able to see it.
But probably not. Not at that speed; it would have to be a perfect hit. And the Asteroid Belt, for its name, was mostly empty.
An idea flashed into Jess’s mind. Tidal forces.
She leaned over the side, kept her eyes looking down. It flashed blue, then beige. A sandy bottom, not more than twenty or thirty feet. She glanced at the island. Maybe a bit more than a half mile from shore. She looked over the side again, kept her eyes on the bottom. Not deep blue, still light blue. Maybe fifty feet.
The two men in front of her laughed and Jess looked up. They looked at something on a phone’s screen, then glanced back at her with sick grins. She squinted to see what they looked at. Two bodies, writhing together. Were they watching porn? Her skin crawled as she realized it was a video of her and Giovanni. They’d recorded them last night, in that apartment.
One of the men looked at her, realizing she knew what it was. He said something in Italian, laughing with a mouthful of broken teeth.
Enzo came out of the boat’s cabin and glanced at what the men were looking at. “Would like to get her legs wrapped around my head, too,” he laughed, but seeing Jess watching him, his face hardened. He smacked the man holding the phone. “Spegnerlo!” Enzo spat. “Show a little respect.” He took the phone away, turned it off.
Jess hadn’t expected that reaction. What was that about?
On the floor of the boat, Giovanni groaned and rolled to one side. He squirmed to sit upright and looked at Jess, then glanced at Hector and Enzo.
Enzo grinned at him. “We’re going back to where this all started, Baron Ruspoli.”
This whole time, Jess had a feeling she’d been missing something. “Where what started?” She looked at Enzo, then at Giovanni.
Giovanni avoided her eyes and looked down grimly.
Enzo laughed. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
Jess looked back and forth, at Giovanni staring down, at Enzo smiling at the both of them. “Tell me what?” she demanded.
31
CHIANTI, ITALY
CELESTE SAT AT her favorite spot in the western gardens of the castle, at a stone table set under the huge oak trees with a view down the valley to the village of Saline. Sparrows darted overhead in an endless sky, songbirds sang in the boughs of the oaks. The gravel paths crisscrossing the lawns were now littered with fallen leaves. Old Leone, the groundskeeper, still hadn’t returned.
In fact, nobody had returned.
Since the flurry of emails from Ben the day before—detailing everything he knew, saying he was crossing into Italy and just hours away—nothing. Just silence, the sound of the wind through the leaves, the crickets chirping peacefully through the long night. The evening before, Jess and Giovanni had left a message with Nico saying they found Enzo and Hector, and expected to be back by morning.
Yet here Celeste was, having breakfast alone.
Actually, not alone.
“More coffee, Madame Tosetti?” Nico asked. He deposited a tray of fruit and cheeses and cured meat on her table.
Celeste admired Nico’s gentle eyes. “You’ve been so kind to me. A real gentleman.” She took his hand. “And I mean a gentle man.”
Nico bowed and kissed her hand. “It has been an honor to serve you, Madame Tosetti.”
Celeste felt a tenderness from Nico, a closeness, as if he were family. Perhaps because she ached for hers. Her mother and father were long dead, and she was an only child. So her only family was Jess. And Ben. And if Ben was right, this was the final day before Nomad. What television stations remained broadcasting were filled with hysterical rants or endless, depressing snapshots of riots and burning cities, scenes impossible to reconcile with this beautiful, peaceful mountaintop.
“Would you sit with me for a moment?” Celeste asked Nico.
“Of course.”
Nico sat opposite her, but instead of facing Celeste, he turned to admire the view, letting her enjoy the moment, sensing that she just didn’t want to be alone. In the morning she’d tried to convince him to drive with her to Vaca, to try and find Jess, but he’d gently pointed out that they might miss them, or might not be here when Ben came.
They had to stay here, he’d argued.
Nico had locked the place down tight. It was a castle, after all. Designed to be defended.
“Don’t you have people you want to go to?” Celeste asked Nico. “Family, loved ones…?”
Taking a deep breath, Nico turned to her. “I am where I want to be.” He turned back to the view.
She turned up the volume on the
digital satellite radio on the edge of the table. The news was frenzied, but she couldn’t disconnect. She needed to know what was going on.
“…NASA saying that Nomad has entered the inner solar system, past Jupiter’s orbit, confirming reports from independent observers and amateur astronomers that it will pass Earth in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. New fighting in Kashmir…”
So Ben was right.
Celeste glanced at Nico, but he didn’t react, didn’t look at the radio.
Had the governments been purposely evasive? Or was it just bureaucratic ineptness? In any case, it didn’t matter. Riots had destroyed whole cities; the world plunged into pre-death spasms with wars erupting in the Middle East, Congo, Indonesia and the Indian sub-Continent. She turned the volume down. She could only take it in small doses.
Pressing her lips together, Celeste turned to stare at Nico. He was sweet, but it was odd. He didn’t react to any of the news, not to anything they heard.
Something beeped, and Nico looked at his phone. “Excuse me,” he said, getting up. “I need to talk to someone.”
“Of course.” Celeste smiled as he walked away. She was glad he had someone. She stared back at the beautiful view, dappled sunshine falling through the oaks onto her. It was peaceful.
She just wished Jess was here with her.
But then that was her daughter. Always running away. She knew her daughter’s pain, and now, she wished she’d done more. An image of a long-ago snowy day filled Celeste’s mind, of two children running in the yard, of her sitting at her desk. The day she lost her family, the day she lost Jess.
“…this just in. A reporter from NewsCorp alleges that Dr. Ben Rollins…”
Celeste put one hand to her mouth hearing her husband’s name. What happened?
“…the celebrity astronomer who spoke to media when Nomad was announced, had evidence of Nomad over thirty years ago. The revelation has sparked a massive backlash. Why did he hide his research paper, and why did he lie to the media? With more, we go to…”
Jess had told Celeste about Ben’s research paper, but he hadn’t hid it. It was never published. She hoped Ben wasn’t listening to this. They made it seem like he was to blame. Hateful vitriol oozed from the radio. Celeste turned it down.
And where was Ben?
Celeste always thought she’d be scared when the end came, but she didn’t feel fear. She should have been a better wife. A better mother.
Guilt.
Guilt filled her.
Was she afraid? A little perhaps, but knowing there was nothing to do, all her thoughts came back to her family. Why hadn’t she done more to keep them together? Why hadn’t she spent more time with them?
Now there was no more time.
Tears fell into Celeste’s coffee as she sobbed, bringing one hand to her mouth.
All she could hope for was to see Jess and Ben again, to be able to say goodbye, to say all the things that had remained unspoken.
“…breaking news…”
Sighing, she leaned forward to turn the radio up.
The announcer coughed and let out a long sigh. “We…there…are reports of nuclear detonations in the Middle East, over Beirut, Mosul, Damascus and Tehran…Israel is claiming responsibility, invoking its right to existence after attacks on three fronts by Arab nations…”
Seconds ticked by in silence and Celeste was about to check the radio to see if it had turned off.
“…we all want to exist,” continued the anchor. “I think, in this final hour, perhaps this is the only thing that humanity can agree on: that we all want to exist.” Another pause. “This is as good a moment as any to announce that BBC World News is signing off. Our skeleton staff is no longer able to maintain the broadcast, and I know we all want to go home.” He took a deep breath. “To everyone listening out there, good luck, and may God be with you.”
The radio beeped once, twice, followed by a long continuous tone. Celeste cycled through the other preset channels on the satellite radio. All of them were blank. She turned it off.
Giovanni had shown Celeste all the trekking gear he used on expeditions, stored in the basements, including the communications gear. Celeste had retrieved a shortwave the day before and shown Jess how to use it. It was time to revert to older technology. There had to be chatter from amateur broadcasters on shortwave frequencies, from all over the world. She’d go and find it in a minute. Right now she needed to digest everything.
On the stone table in front of her, she had a world map from Giovanni’s office spread out. She spent the morning scribbling on it, red dashed lines for major faults lines, hash marks at geologic hot spots. There were over a thousand potentially active volcanoes spread across the Earth. As a geologist, she dredged as much as she could from memory, never having suspected she might need to use her knowledge like this.
Nuclear war in the Middle East.
In another time, the news would have shocked her, but she was already numb. Just another nail in a coffin already going into the ground. It surprised her how easily her mind seemed to absorb news of the death of millions. It had to be millions. The announcer hadn’t said, hadn’t even hazarded a guess, because it didn’t matter anymore.
Even a nuclear war was a sideshow to the coming main event. These wars were one last chance to enact revenge, one last chance to show God was on their side.
Celeste grew up Catholic, her mother and father devout followers of the Pope. She’d gone to church on Sundays, read the Bible, but it had faded as she got into college, more so after she met Ben. Passing the Vatican four days ago, hearing that the Pope was going to speak, she had to admit she felt a thrill, wanted to join the crowds.
The destruction of the Vatican had an effect on her she hadn’t expected. Terrified, of course, horrified at the carnage she’d witnessed. Now she found herself praying, to a God she’d abandoned, to a God humans seemed determined to destroy.
But she’d lived a good life, hadn’t she?
She just wished she’d spent more of it with Jess. And Ben.
Celeste took a red marker and drew hash marks from Lebanon to Iran to Egypt, her guess at areas already destroyed.
When Nomad passed, major fault lines were sure to slip. She circled the Pacific Northwest of America, drew a thick line down the San Andreas and across the New Madrid fault running through the Midwest. Staring at America, with her thick red marker she circled the supervolcano under Yellowstone.
She looked at Europe, then stared at the view in front of her. Italy had its own recently active volcanoes. In the distance, a flat-topped mountain—Monterufoli—was ten miles away, maybe fifteen? A volcano almost next door.
A wind rustled the leaves above her, and she could have sworn it whistled her name. She listened hard, but heard nothing more. Sitting back she refilled her coffee and dried her tears. It was a beautiful day for the end of the world.
Ben leaned his head out of the farming truck’s open window, looked up through the olive trees at a beautiful blue sky. The truck bounced along a gravel road, climbing up the side of the mountain. The farmer had picked them up in the morning, after they'd spent last night walking five miles off the main A1 highway that ran from Milan to Rome. Roger sat beside Ben in the back seat, on a long bench of torn green plastic in the back of the old Chevy. Wedged between them was Ben’s backpack, the one with the tape spools and CDs of old data. Roger had a bandage taped over his right eye, and a bloody cloth tied around his left arm.
They’d managed to salvage Ben’s laptop from the wreck when their car slid over the railing. Roger was still upset about Ben trying to rescue the backpack before saving him. They walked the last five miles, over the top of Gotthard Pass out of Switzerland, and then managed to hitchhike their way down the other side where the highways started into Italy.
They had their cell phones, but there was no service, not since Switzerland. Ben sensed it was more than just overloaded circuits. While half the world burned from riots and war, the other hal
f had gone home to loved ones. Communication networks still needed humans to maintain them, and the humans were gone. Not there today.
And probably not tomorrow or ever again.
A clearing opened in the olive trees. Stone walls rose into the sky. “Castello Ruspoli?” he asked the driver.
“Si,” the old farmer replied, his face tanned and creased old leather. He held out a shaking hand. “Ruspoli.” He stopped the truck.
Ben could hardly believe they made it. Still twenty-two hours to Nomad. Time enough to talk to Celeste, to talk to Jess, to get ready. Could they survive it? Maybe for a few days. That was all he could hope for right now.
“Can you walk?” Ben asked Roger.
Roger nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Ben knew he wasn’t fine, but nodded and got out of the truck, grabbing his backpack with his laptop and the data spools. Roger jumped out behind him, wincing as he hit the ground, shouldering his own bag. The farmer waved and put the truck into gear to crunch off across the gravel. Ben started walking up the roadway to the castle walls, a closed entrance not more than a hundred yards away.
“What’s so important about that old data?” Roger asked. “Christ, I almost died back there.”
“You almost killed yourself getting your own bag. I could ask you the same thing.”
Roger dusted himself off and shrugged. “Just reflex, I guess. But you practically crawled over me to get to your pack.”
Ben kicked a pebble from the packed earth underfoot. He looked into Roger’s eyes, studied him for a moment. “When we were in Darmstadt, I said not all the data was in that paper I published thirty years ago, the one you read…” He looked down and kicked another rock. “I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“I was just a grad student, still learning the ropes. I didn’t transform the coordinates of the location of the flashes properly in the paper I submitted. I realized it after I sent it in, but when it wasn’t accepted for publication…”
“You didn’t make a correction.”
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