On the plain below, all that remained of the port city of Civitavecchia, that once existed here just three weeks before, was fractured remains of razed buildings, all smoothed over by a coating of ash and ice. The luminous sky they’d been enjoying all day turned dark, a shadow moving quickly through the skies. The blue of the Mediterranean was dotted with flecks of white.
Following Giovanni’s arm, Jess took a closer look. Near the edge of blue was a massive cruise ship, twenty stories high. But it wasn’t in the water. It was halfway into the city, one end perched atop a crumbled building. It was coated in ice that glimmered even in the dim light.
“That can’t be it,” Jess whispered.
They topped the ridge, coming to a plateau that edged the city. Leone drove past an airstrip and semicircular airdrome buildings. An orange windsock snapped to attention in a sudden breeze, whipping up the snow.
Her eyes adjusting to the scene below, Jess scanned the edge of the city. The dark blue water came almost to the edge, but an unbroken white strip of varying thickness ringed the edges. Ice. Sea ice was already forming.
“Where are the ships?”
Apart from the cruise liner tipped half on its side in the middle of the destroyed city, she couldn’t see any other ships. She couldn’t even see any break in the ice at the edge of the water.
13
SEAGULLS SQUAWKED AND wheeled in circles high above. They skimmed the scraped hull of the Ocean Princess cruise liner. Pregnant clouds scudded by, their distended bellies almost touching the ship’s superstructure of masts and funnels towering more than twenty stories up.
Jess craned her neck back to get a better look. Some of the birds alighted on the ship’s railing, staring back at her. Others swooped down, fluttering overhead, fighting for position to get closest to this group of humans. They were hoping for a meal. So was she. They didn’t have much food left.
“It looks deserted,” Jess said.
To break a trail and negotiate the mile and a half from the ridge down through the city to the ship took two hours. Civitavecchia, though, was no longer a city. It had become a debris field, a collection of matchstick telephone poles, twisted metal, slabs of shattered concrete and husks of cars piled in clumps and waves. The ship itself looked almost undamaged, apart from gouges and dents across the lower hull. It listed at almost thirty degrees, one side propped up on brick rubble two stories high. Roger had scampered up the wreckage to get a better look, while Leone and Raffa scouted around the other side. Lucca sat in the front seat. He still wasn’t feeling well.
“Was this our ship?” Giovanni asked, his mouth agape, staring up.
“Look at the ice.” Jess pointed at the edge of the debris pile under the hull. It was covered in a thick layer of ice-and-ash-snow. “I’d bet this washed up when Nomad hit two weeks ago.”
Roger came scrabbling and skidding down the rubble toward them. “Maybe we just push it back in the water? Use the winch on the Range Rover?”
Giovanni ignored the attempt at humor. “It might have washed up yesterday.” The ground was wet, streams of water running through the debris toward the bay. “Maybe one of those meteors hit the water, brought up a wave? You heard the explosions.”
Jess took another look at the ash-snow covering the upper decks. Last night there was an intense storm squall after the meteor shower.
“Maybe. But it looks abandoned. Don’t you think there’d be someone around? What did they say?” She pointed at a family, a man and woman with two young children, cowering next to the Range Rover. Rita was making them something to eat from the meager supplies they had left. Leone had objected, but Jess had insisted. A gesture of kindness, but they also needed information.
“They came down from the hills when they saw us,” Giovanni replied. “They say that nobody comes near the water. Too afraid after what happened, but they came when they saw us. They’re desperate.”
“And there’s more like them coming,” Roger scoffed. “We don’t even have food for ourselves. I’m telling you, as bad as all this seems, this is just the tip of the goddamn iceberg. A lot of people survived, and now they’ve run out of food. What are they going to eat? I’ll tell you what—”
Jess held a back-up-you’re-not-helping hand at Roger. “But did they see anything here?” she asked Giovanni. “Any people, trucks, equipment?”
“No…but—”
“Doesn’t sound like much of an evacuation center,” Roger quipped. “Not even any people to evacuate.”
“He’s right,” Jess muttered. “If there was a wave yesterday, that sea ice at the edge of the water would be fractured, wouldn’t it? And it doesn’t look like any ships came in close to here and broke through it. Not lately.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Roger’s eyebrows raised in mock debate. “That the person we talked to on the radio was lying? Giovanni was the one talking to them, in Italian. What did they say? Why can’t we get them back on the radio?”
They hadn’t been able to contact the evacuation group since morning.
“Maybe the ship hasn’t arrived yet,” Giovanni suggested. His eyes narrowed. “And it was you, Roger, who first contacted them.”
The accused held his hands up. “You talked more to them than me.”
“Are we in the right place?”
“They said the port near Civitavecchia.”
“Near?”
“I assumed—”
“Are there any other ports?”
“This is the coast, there are ports in every city.”
“This is a trap,” Roger said, his voice flat. “How do you even know who you’re talking to on that thing?” He waved a hand at the shortwave sitting on the truck’s tailgate. “This Jolly Roger guy, Ballie Booker, how do you even know he’s real?”
“Stop being paranoid.”
“Are you kidding me? Someone is hunting for you. You said it yourself. That’s not paranoia.” Roger’s face was slick with sweat, his eyes glassy. “Someone with the ability to destroy a goddamn fortress is trying to get to you. In this Godforsaken mess, the powers-that-be, whoever they are, are hunting you down…and it’s got to be on account of that bag.” He reached for Jess’s backpack.
Giovanni pushed his way between them. “What are you saying, Roger?”
“That backpack is cursed. Almost killed me a couple of times already. Let’s ditch it.”
Jess swiveled herself away, keeping the backpack out of reach. “My father died for this.”
“And that’s something I”—Roger thumped his chest—“don’t want to do.”
“You would be dead if we hadn’t rescued you.” Giovanni shoved Roger away.
“You want a piece of me, Italian?” Roger threw his weight into Giovanni, tried to push him, but Giovanni didn’t budge an inch.
“Bastardo maledetto, you want to fight? You little junky piece of shit. You don’t think we’ve noticed?”
Roger’s face flushed scarlet. “It’s for the pain. You know how much this hurts?” He held his left shoulder with his right hand and turned to face Jess. “You shot me with a goddamn crossbow.” He glared at them, but turned and stalked away through the sludge of snow of ice. “Screw all of you. You’re going to get what you deserve.”
Giovanni watched him go. “Should we contact the Jolly Roger again? Maybe he can get us?”
“Talking on the shortwave might be dangerous,” Jess replied. “Anyone could be listening.” The sudden turn of events, from expecting rescue to feeling trapped, had her off balance.
“They’d need to be tuned into that exact frequency at just the right time—”
“And we talk to Ballie more than anyone else, on most of the same frequency—”
“But still, it would be luck—”
“They don’t need luck,” Jess said, her voice rising. “Most of the world has been pushed back into the Stone Age, and some of us have a few scraps like these shortwaves working…but what I saw in Vivas? That’s fully equipped modern technol
ogy. Data centers. Communications gear. They had goddamn pictures of me in Rome. Where did they get those?” Her voice reached a keening edge.
“Jessica, please keep calm—”
“I can’t believe we came this way. We should have kept going south.” She balled her hands.
“We had no choice.”
A noise startled Jess. But it wasn’t an explosion. It wasn’t gunfire.
It was children laughing.
Hector kicked a ball of knotted cloth to the little boy of the family they’d just met. They were about the same age, and had the same twinkle of glee in their eyes as they chased each other. A little girl squealed and chased them around the other side of the Range Rover. Their father met Jess’s look with a sad smile, and he held the small bowl of rice and chickpeas aloft in a gesture of thanks.
The ball appeared from the front of the Range Rover, Hector and the boy in pursuit. Jess watched them, wondering what memories they’d keep of this time. Would they grow to be old men? Regale their wide-eyed grandchildren of stories of the Great Disaster while sitting in leafy sunrooms?
She wondered what memories children of the Holocaust retained. The generation that survived that became great citizens of the world, witnesses of horror but also of the glory of the human spirit. She wanted Hector to be that old, wise man she pictured in her mind. She just had to keep him alive.
Giovanni took her hand. “I know.”
“What do we do?” she whispered. “Maybe drive back?”
“To the castle? Certain death. We need to continue south to the warmth.”
“Then it’s back to the main highway?”
“The Rover’s engine is overheating. We’d need to pass Vivas, or what’s left of it. Even so…”
“What about coastal roads?” she asked.
“Very difficult. Mountains. Small roads. Maybe impassable in places.”
“But there’s a chance, a slim one, that this evacuation center is in the next town.”
“We need to take care of ourselves, first. You’re soaking wet.” A fine mist had begun to fall. “Inside and out. Sweat. Jessica, the cold is dangerous, but wet and cold together is deadly. We need to wash. It’s more than a week we’ve been on the road. Rashes can be dangerous, debilitating. When we fight, you’re the leader, but listen to me about cold, about survival.”
He was right. In their headlong dash for the south, she’d thought of it as a sprint, but it had become a marathon. A long, slow grind. “Okay, let’s set camp and get everyone washed. We can use the climbing gear to get into the ship, see what we can scavenge.”
“And I have an idea.”
Jess pulled open her parka and caught her own smell. She reeked. “Go on.”
“On the plateau before the city,” Giovanni continued, “we passed an airfield.”
“Yeah, I saw,” Jess said. A row of planes with wings flattened under ice.
“Some of the airdromes looked intact. There might be something in them.”
“Are you serious? Can you fly a plane?”
“I did my private pilot training—”
“And did you get a license?”
“I don’t think anyone will be checking.” He smiled thinly. “I never got my license. I only flew with my trainer. But Roger, he’s a qualified pilot, yes?”
Jess closed her eyes and exhaled long and slow. “He had a few hundred hours when I dated him. Yeah.”
“You’re the one that said you needed him. Go talk to him.”
Jess held a hand up at the dark clouds churning just hundreds of feet overhead and imagined trying to fly through them.
“It’s a low ceiling, but we’ve heard of propeller aircraft flying at other survivor camps,” Giovanni added.
“I don’t know…”
“Someone is looking for you. This Ufuk Erdogmus. He must want your father’s data. Do you want to let him take it? Or do you want to find out what’s on it yourself? We need to get away from here. Fast.”
“If we get a plane up, how can we find a place to land?”
“One step at a time. It is an idea.”
“We’ll go look in the morning,” Jess conceded after a long pause. “Right now we need to make camp.”
“Let me help with that.” Jess stepped through the snow to help Leone, who staggered in from the darkness with what looked like a dining table balanced on his broad shoulders.
The old man grunted and lowered the table so they could carry it the last twenty feet together, to stack on the pile of other collected scraps next to the crackling fire. A pot of water was perched above the flames, set on an improvised chimney of bricks built to reflect the fire’s heat. Two tents had been erected to each side of the fire, with the Range Rover forming a barrier between them. Inside the truck, Giovanni was helping Hector get cleaned up, using the hot water they prepared. Tonight was washing night. It was also his turn to read the nighttime story. Everyone else was out foraging for anything flammable but non-toxic to burn.
Leone paused for a moment, then turned to go back out and search again through the wilderness of destruction, but Jess gently held his arm. “Sit with me?” She motioned at two camp chairs unfolded next to the fire. “I need a rest. Just for a second?”
She was tired, that was true, but she was more worried about Leone. His breath wheezed in and out, his face slick with sweat, but the old workhorse never let up. She guessed he was in his mid-seventies, but he worked harder and longer than anyone else. He seemed more wild bear than human, sometimes, but he was a gentle giant. And she’d never seen him sleeping, not once this past two weeks. He always literally had one eye open, always watching over them.
The old bear grunted again, looked into the darkness, then back at Jess. “Okay.”
“Tea?” Jess offered as he sat. She took his scowling nod as a yes and filled a cup from a kettle she just filled. “So, no pipe today?” She’d noticed his signature item, usually clamped between his teeth, was absent.
He took the proffered cup. “Pipe, yes. Tobacco, no. Left in other truck.” An awkward smile of broken teeth. “Stupid. No think.”
“Ah, but we had to leave in a hurry.” That had to be frustrating. Jess imagined that if she smoked, right now would be about the worst time to try and quit. Or be forced into it. “Maybe we find some.”
“Maybe.” The old man took a sip of tea and stared into the fire.
The hulk of the abandoned ocean liner loomed above them, the firelight casting dancing shadows onto its hull. In the dim light of day, it seemed a perfect place to camp, almost like a cave, but with night Jess felt an irrational fear that it would tip over onto them. She pushed the thought away.
“I wanted to thank you. For saving my life, back at the castle,” Jess said, breaking the silence. It was the first time she’d been alone with Leone. “I know you were looking for Hector when you found us on that ledge, but you rescued me too.”
The fire crackled and popped.
“I was also looking for you,” Leone said after a pause, glancing at her.
“And I wanted to thank you for doing your best”—Jess took a breath—“to try and find my mother and father.” Such a simple thing, to thank someone, but the effect of saying the words seemed to radiate warmth into the cold air around them. “Do you have any family, Leone? Daughters? Sons?” She’d never asked before.
The old man stared into the fire. “A son, yes. My wife, she died many years ago.”
“And where is your son?”
“Also dead.” He stared straight ahead.
“I’m so sorry—”
“No sorry. Very proud. My son was Italian army, went to Lebanon in eighty-three. Was in bombing at Beirut barracks.”
“He died there?”
“Was injured. Came back to Italy. The Baron, Giovanni’s father, took care of him.”
“And what happened?”
“How do you say…long story? But the Baron did everything to help.” The wry smile faded from Leone’s face. “And I fail
ed him.” He returned to staring into the fire.
“Who?”
A heavy pause. “Giovanni’s father. Nico killed him. I failed the Baron.”
Jess hadn’t thought of it like that. Giovanni’s father had died more than a year ago from a protracted illness, but it turned out it had been Nico, poisoning the elder baron. Another fresh wound in this damaged world.
“I will not fail again,” the old man added. He swigged down the remainder of his tea and handed the cup back. “I do have a family, and it is Giovanni, my Baron’s son, and Hector.”
From the darkness, two more shadows shuffled into the light. It was Lucca and Raffa, dragging a huge tree branch behind them. Seeing Leone, they dropped it, their faces lighting up. The old man got up from the chair and advanced on the boys, throwing an arm around each.
“And these two, these are my family,” Leone rumbled, his face breaking into a craggy grin. “So, yes, I have family.”
Jess settled back into her chair, squeezing the hot mug of tea in her hands, and watched the horseplay as the teenagers tried to squirm out of the big bear’s embrace. Their smiles were infectious and she found herself laughing. Ripples of laughter echoed off the ship’s hull, for a moment drowning out the silence around them.
NOVEMBER 8th
Fifteen Days A.N.
14
“LOOKS AIRWORTHY TO me.” Giovanni patted the underside of the Cessna, sliding his hand along the wing as he walked the length of it.
The metal exterior was dented, shiny new rivets clear evidence where a new strip of metal had been placed over another. Jess gave him a stern look. She hadn’t slept the night before, camped out at the base of the cruise liner through the night, but she remained alert. And skeptical. “This thing looks as though its best days were before I was born.”
Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2) Page 10
