Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2)

by Mather, Matthew

  But now they had Roger.

  He might be able to scavenge what was needed, might be able to program the laptops they possessed to decode the contents of her bag. With his help, getting south might not need to be their top priority.

  Jess glanced at Roger, who was twiddling the dials of the old shortwave. She was glad he was alive, but she was also conflicted, and not only about going south. In the days since her parents’ deaths, the week of time since Nomad had ripped past the Earth, her relationship with Giovanni had deepened. He’d held her, comforted her, and she’d taken to sleeping huddled together with him and Hector, nestled under blankets. She hadn’t healed enough and was too exhausted and drained to give it much thought, but something was changing within her and between them.

  She wondered how much of it was the situation they were in, latching onto whatever solace they could find. Something normal amidst the chaos. Part of her wanted to talk to Giovanni about it, but mostly she retreated. But why? Was it because she could trust nothing, take nothing for granted in this madness? Or was it because she was worried she might be forced to do something cruel—to make a decision that may tear them apart?

  After the argument about going south, Jess had retreated with Giovanni and Hector to get some sleep, but had felt Roger watching her. She had almost lived with him in New York, but that was more than a year ago now and in a very different world. In the old world. She’d run away without explanation, and her father had felt Roger had come to Italy to find her. He was in love with her, her father had said. Almost the last words he had said to her.

  Last night she felt Roger’s eyes following her, and when she went to bed, she’d inched away from Giovanni.

  “Jessica, we need to get going, yes?” Giovanni said, returning to Jess ten minutes later. “Those bandits? Morning will be here soon.”

  Jess blinked, still transfixed, gazing at the corpses. She flicked her chin at the sleeping women, the two who were still alive. “We can’t leave them here.”

  Giovanni frowned. “I thought—”

  “We’re involved now. If those bandits come back for us, no telling what they might do to them. We’ll get them to scavenge when we stop at night, help with the camp. Everyone pulls their weight. We can’t leave them. It’s a death sentence.”

  From across the room, Leone heard this and scowled, glanced at Giovanni, but then shrugged, seeing there was no arguing.

  “I repeat, this is Station Saline. We are now in the town of Bandita in Italy, with Jessica Rollins and Giovanni Ruspoli,” Roger almost shouted into the radio. “This is Roger Hargate with Jessica R—”

  “Hey!” Jess tossed the empty ration package in her hand at him. “What are you doing?”

  Roger ducked, the projectile missing his head by inches. “What?”

  Elsa and Rita startled awake, and Raffa and Lucca came running in from the garage. Jess took three quick strides and raised her hand, but instead of smacking Roger, she switched off the shortwave. “What the hell was that?”

  “Station identification, just like you said to do.”

  Jess balled her fists. “You told him no names?” she said to Giovanni.

  The Italian pulled one hand through his hair. “I did.”

  “You didn’t.” Roger held his palms out. “I thought the whole point was to communicate—”

  “We are identified as Station Saline. That’s all. You understand? Anyone could be listening.” She exhaled loud and hard. “Pack up the radio. Pack everything up.” She turned to the women. “Elsa, Rita, andiamo. Let’s go.” When nobody moved, she clapped her hands together. “Let’s go, goddamn it!”

  A woman raised a child in her arms, held the swaddled infant high. Jess tried not to look at her as they swept past. The Humvee’s engine growled, the improvised snowplow they had welded onto the front scraped the asphalt of the highway. The woman disappeared behind them in a swirl of snow and ash.

  She wanted them to take the baby.

  How long would they survive? Another day. Maybe two? Jess had slowed the Humvee when she saw the woman appear through the fog, but Giovanni tapped her arm and shook his head. She put her foot back on the gas. Of course he was right—they couldn’t stop for every person they swept past. She told herself every one of them represented a danger. Any one of them might have friends, hiding out of sight, ready to ambush the convoy and steal what they could get away with in their own desperate struggle to survive.

  She couldn’t get the woman out of her mind. Why had she brought these two women, Elsa and Rita, with them? Risked their lives, their rations, for people she didn’t know? Maybe the feeling that her father was watching, or maybe she just wasn’t hard enough yet, hadn’t seen enough death to devalue another human life—to reduce it to an equation related solely to rations or risk. Why not exchange them for this woman and her baby? No, rational decisions still had to be made in an irrational world.

  Jess had packed up in silence, shifting some of the gear from the Range Rover to make new space for Hector in the back of the Humvee. Leone had put the two women, along with Massarra, into the Range Rover with him. In their convoy, Leone took the rear, with Lucca and Raffa in the middle in the Jeep, while the Humvee took the rest, with its snow-chained tires and plow, to open a path through the two-foot-deep slurry of snow and ash.

  When they had left the castle, progress through the secondary roads winding through the Tuscan hills was painfully slow, but in the few hours since leaving Bandita, they’d made as many miles as the past two days. The Autostrada A1 highway was the main trunk that ran the length of Italy, and remained in good shape. They were only slowed by the litter of abandoned cars.

  “Do you believe Roger’s story?” Giovanni asked.

  Jess reached down to scratch her stump. Did she believe what? That Roger was separated from her father in an explosion at the castle? Or that he was captured by scavengers? “I don’t know.” She kept her eyes on the road. She had taken the first driving shift, and these were the first words they’d exchanged in three hours since they'd left. “You were the one who let him use the shortwave.”

  Giovanni leaned forward to look out the windshield, up into the gray-brown sludge of a sky.

  Jess downshifted to get around the snow-hump of a car ahead. The truck lurched, and she stomped on the accelerator. The distance between her and Giovanni edged inches wider.

  “Please, be careful.” He looked over his shoulder, into the backseat, at Hector. Not a peep from him all morning.

  Jess eased off the gas but said nothing.

  The wind picked up, and a thin layer of ice crystals whipped sideways over the highway, sheeting across the half-buried cars dotting the road. Her emotions were coiled tight, and deciding the right thing to say or do was a constant struggle. Something caught her eye. A smudge moved through the dark sky. Something moving fast.

  When she was a kid, her father used to take her canoe camping in Upstate New York. The end of each day began a cycle of making camp, preparing dinner, sleeping, then in the morning tearing down camp and getting out on the water. Her father taught her the importance of watching the sky, reading the clouds, noting the wind. Getting out of the way of bad weather was important, especially when that meant getting off the water and under shelter. Her time in the Marines had re-iterated those lessons.

  Jess peered through the grimy windscreen. Something had changed up there. The aerosolized sludge still stung her eyes and clogged her lungs. This morning she had coughed up the same gray phlegm she had every morning since Nomad. But the sky was somehow different. Usually dark during the day, like the thickest thunderhead she’d ever seen—gray tinged with shifting yellows, but now, as she watched, the sky gained form, mushrooms of brown sprouting downward. Any sudden change in air could signal some kind of pressure front. A wave of rain pelted the windshield. No, not rain. Sleet. Ice and snow. The wind picked up and howled. Pellets of ice rattled off the hood.

  “We better get off the road.” Jess shifted into a higher
gear and accelerated, snow exploding in waves off the plow. There it was again. A vague shape that might have been, what? A helicopter? Not possible, not in this wind. Her eyes must be playing tricks, her mind seeing patterns in the swirling sky.

  Giovanni craned his neck forward. “I think there’s an exit up—”

  Before he could finish, the sky lit up, a flashbulb-bright burst illuminating the black clouds towering overhead. It momentarily blinded Jess, the image of the clouds still dancing in fading green in her vision when the thunder hit. A splintering crack followed by a rolling, echoing boom that shook the Humvee. The skies lit up again, and this time Jess watched a halo of lightning flicker through the clouds as a dense squall of sleet hit. The thunder reverberated, echoed off the hills around them.

  Jess eased on her brakes, the Humvee’s headlights illuminating a swirling globe of snow. She switched to fog lights, but that was no better. A total whiteout. The snow, blowing sideways, reduced visibility to “zero-zero”—zero feet upward and zero feet sideways. She screamed into her walkie-talkie: “Stop! Stop!”

  The sky flashed again and again. Blinded in the furious storm, she slammed on the brakes as another splintering crackle rattled the windows, punctuated by hollow thuds and rolling booms.

  NOVEMBER 3rd

  Ten Days A.N.

  4

  A YOUNG MAN stared at Jess, his eyes silent but damning. I’m sorry, Jess tried say, but she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t reach out. She was frozen, stuck in place. With a start, Jess shivered awake. The image of the young man faded, replaced by a thin yellow light. Dreams were the place where wishes and fears came to life, she understood now, and when wishes and fears were the same, the dreams became nightmares.

  Blinking, her mind reassembled, one nightmare replaced by another.

  She leaned into Giovanni, breathing in his now-familiar scent. “Hey,” she whispered, nudging his shoulder. Hector was cradled between them, their sleeping bags piled together in a nest in the back seat of the Humvee.

  Jess pulled her arms free, felt the cold outside of her burrow and wished she could stay wrapped up all day. The windows of the Humvee seemed coated, but not in snow. Something translucent. A dirty yellow light filtered through, just enough to see. They had turned off the Humvee’s engine in the night, turned off the heating, after they got their sleeping bags out. Giovanni jumped up, his eyes wide.

  “It’s okay,” Jess whispered, holding one finger to her mouth, looking down at Hector. “Everything’s fine. I think it’s morning. I’m going to look outside.”

  He nodded and pulled his arms around the boy, who mewled and curled into him. Jess extricated herself from the bundle of sleeping bags and blankets, shivering. The cold of the leather seat seeped into her back. She pulled on a fleece and slid into her boots, then wriggled into the front seat and pulled on her parka, hat and mitts. Taking a deep breath, bracing herself for the cold, she steadied herself and unlocked the passenger side door.

  She pushed, but it didn’t budge.

  A hard edge crept into her chest. With a twinge of desperation she threw her shoulder into it. Not an inch. Her heart rate kicked up. Had they been buried? She remembered grinding to a halt in the white out, the thundersnow, bursts of lightning crackling around them deep into the night. Violent surges of wind had buffeted the Humvee, strong enough to rock the heavy vehicle. It seemed to come from all points on the compass. Between the blasts of wind were stretches of eerie calm, just long enough to think it might be over, until the relentless assault began again. Eventually, they had wrapped themselves up and fallen asleep.

  This time she threw all her weight into the door, and with a tearing crack it opened a couple of inches. Shards of ice fell into the seat. She leaned back and threw her shoulder into the door again, and this time it opened a little further, a mini-avalanche of snow tumbling onto her through the opening. Giovanni was rousing himself behind her, asking her to hang on, but she didn’t stop. Squeezing through the gap, Jess pulled herself upright and stood.

  The Humvee was coated in a smooth layer of ice, the air a mud fog. She took hold of the door in her right hand and put her left onto the roof, then levered herself upward and swung her feet onto the sloping ice. She slid down the embankment, coming to a stop about ten feet away. Slipping and sliding, she got to her feet. Before packing it in for the night she’d registered the outside temperature at minus ten Celsius, but now the air was strangely warm. Definitely above freezing. A layer of wandering mist had settled onto the ice, coating it in a slick ochre film. She kicked one foot down and broke through the inch-thick ice into crystalline gray snow beneath.

  Giovanni’s head stuck up through the doorway.

  “I’m okay,” Jess said before he could ask.

  Behind them, the Jeep and Range Rover were similarly buried under a glimmering yellow veil. The highway divider, a gray metal barrier, was coated as well. The skeletons of trees lining the road looked encased in inches of dirty glass. Ahead, the roadway buckled, knots of frozen magma thirty feet high spilling from a ravine rising up into hills on her left. In the distance to her right, a low building was just visible off the highway, at the intersection of a road leading away to the west.

  “Good thing we stopped.” Giovanni pulled himself from the truck and slid down to join her. He pointed at the magma flows blocking the road.

  She kicked at the ice again. “We can’t drive on this.” She couldn’t fight the elements. This wasn’t an enemy she could beat.

  “We’ll drive as far as we can.”

  “Drive?” She gestured around her. “On this? Through this? This is insane.”

  “If we have to, we walk,” Giovanni said matter-of-factly.

  “We’re still fifty miles from Rome, so that’s five hundred to Tunisia.”

  “So you’d rather give up? And go back to what? Or should we just sit here and wait for the cold to take us?”

  Jess let her eyes slide along the frozen carpet that disappeared into the sulfurous mist. “This is crazy.”

  “I once walked two hundred miles across Greenland. It’s slow and painful, but it can be done. One step at a time.” He pointed at the building just off the highway. “Let’s see what’s inside there. Maybe a little present for us, no?”

  Jess squinted. She hadn’t noticed before, but half-buried machinery dotted the outside of the building, and she needed a mission, something to distract her mind from the yawning abyss. “All right. Wake up the others.”

  With two hard tugs, Giovanni heaved open the metal door. He clicked on his headlamp and peered inside.

  Before leaving to explore the building, they gave Raffa, Lucca and Leone instructions to dig out the trucks with the shovels and picks, and then use the winches to pull them free of the ice. Roger was put back on radio duty while looking after Hector, trying to get updates on conditions from other survivor camps. Jess asked Massarra to watch over Elsa and Rita, as they got together some breakfast.

  Scouting ahead, the highway was rough. Crevasses fractured the ground for as far as they could see through the smog, but Giovanni thought they could still thread their way through. The building was on an off-ramp that led to SS675, a freeway leading west. It looked in much better shape. They could follow that to the Rome ring road, but driving south along the coast was a patchwork of much smaller roads and rougher terrain.

  “Looks like a garage,” Giovanni said. He stepped through the door.

  “Anything we can use?” Jess said.

  “We look around, yes?” he called from inside.

  She clicked on her headlamp and stepped through after him. The lamplight cut a speckled beam through floating dust particles. There were tractors outside the building, what they’d seen from the road, but it was wreckage, not even salvageable. She hoped for a nice surprise inside—maybe a shiny earthmover on treads—but it was empty. She picked up a plastic gas canister by the door and shook it. Also empty. She tossed it and opened the carryall bag she had brought along, scanning a work
bench next to the wall. Wrenches, hammers, but nothing they didn’t already have. She followed Giovanni into a small office off the main room.

  And swore softly.

  A man sat at the desk in the office, cradling a little girl in his arms. They looked asleep, except that they were covered in a glistening blue gel. The window to the office was smashed. With temperatures above freezing today, the coating had partially melted, leaving behind a slick film.

  “Must have been gases from the rupture across the highway,” Giovanni said. Careful not to disturb them, he knelt and began searching through the drawers of the desk. Jess stared at the man and his daughter. They looked so peaceful. No more terror. Cold storage. For eternity.

  “Let’s go.” Giovanni took her hand and led her away.

  On the counter sat a laptop, coated in the same slick blue film. It wouldn’t turn on. Dead, like most of the electronics they found. She pulled a box from the top shelf and was rewarded with a shower of wet ash. Jackpot. A CD player appeared amid the mess of cables, and an ancient disk drive was wedged under an equally ancient laptop. Jess stuffed them into her carryall. She could add them to her growing collection of scavenged electronics.

  Click. Click. Hiss. A blue light leapt from the darkness. “We take it?” Giovanni held up an acetylene torch, its tip flaming and sparkling.

  Jess nodded, her attention on a coil of rusting metal tracks resting against a pile of tractor rims. The tracks were like tank treads, probably for one of the wrecked tractors outside. In her mind she saw the bandits’ car, its rear wheel replaced with spiked rims, skis replacing the front wheels.

  “You know how to use that?” Jess asked.

  Giovanni turned the torch’s gas off, dousing the garage back into darkness. “More or less, but Raffael is our meccanico.”

  “Maybe wrap those treads around the rear Humvee wheels?” They already had spiked wheels on them, but the metal links of the tractor treads were at least three times the width and would sink less on snow. “Maybe make skis on the front of the Humvee? From metal or something?”