Sanctuary (Nomad Book 2)

by Mather, Matthew

  “Excuse me?”

  “The parachutes we packed. They’re still in the roof rack. I’d just feel a lot safer flying if I had a parachute on.”

  A rap on the window startled Jess, and she sat upright. Hector mewled in her lap. Raffa’s face loomed outside the window, his own headlamp switched into red mode, the light glinting dully off the window.

  “Si?” Giovanni asked through the glass. He’d have to turn on the Range Rover’s windows to roll them down.

  “Lucca?” Raffa pointed to the back of the truck. His face was tight with concern.

  “Tutto bene,” came a weak voice from inside the truck. Lucca lifted his head and attempted a smile, but all he managed was a weak grimace.

  The poor kid had been throwing up all day. Jess had given him another dose of Ciproflaxin antibiotics, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Jess hoped whatever he had wasn’t infectious, but she’d insisted that they make space for him to sleep in the back of the Range Rover. It was warmer, quieter, and she was sure it felt safer than sleeping outside in one of the nylon tents.

  “I can do it,” Roger repeated, now looking straight at Jess. “I can get you to Tunisia. But my arm”—he held his left shoulder, where Jess had accidentally shot him with the crossbow bolt at Castello Ruspoli—“it hurts. Please. Just a little.”

  “No.”

  “Some Vicodin. Something.”

  “Give him nothing.” Giovanni swiped one hand in the air. “Nothing, you understand? I’m going outside to heat some water for Lucca.” He opened the backside passenger door and stepped out. Freezing cold air rushed in before he could slam the door shut. The blue-white light of an LED floodlight winked on outside the truck, illuminating the cavernous interior of the hangar.

  “Please?” Roger winced as he held his hand to his shoulder.

  “This isn’t a negotiation. You stole from us, from what little we have to keep us all alive.”

  “I’m no good to you in pain…”

  Jess took a deep breath and shivered in the sudden cold. “Get me to Tunisia, and I’ll get you everything I can. You can dope yourself up to hell.”

  The wind whipped the loose fabric of the hangar, shadows danced across the ceiling.

  Roger slumped back in the front seat, squeezing his body against the door, pulling his arms and legs into a ball under the sleeping bag. “Must be what, minus 10 out there?”

  “Maybe.” Jess closed her eyes and pulled Hector closer.

  “You know what’s funny?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “We were worried about global warming, but the Earth was still in an ice age. Did you know that? Everyone said the last ice age ended ten thousand years ago, but that’s not true.”

  Now Jess exhaled, trying to express her displeasure, but Roger didn’t get the hint. Or maybe he did.

  “Technically, the Pliocene glaciation began about three million years ago,” he continued, “and we’re still in it. The big ice sheets covering Europe and North America receded ten thousand years ago, but we still had polar caps.”

  “And that means we’re still in an ice age?” Jess decided to play along, since he wouldn’t shut up on his own, and since she needed him to fly.

  “For most of the last five hundred million years, there haven’t been any ice caps. The oceans were a hundred feet higher. That’s the Earth’s normal. And that’s what we were trying to stop.” He laughed, small and quick, almost a hiccup of a giggle. “We thought we were triggering a mass extinction with all our carbon dioxide, but Mother Nature beat us to the punch.”

  “And you find that funny?”

  “I’ll tell you what I find funny. You ever hear of Snowball Earth?” He waited. The wind howled. “Eight hundred million years ago, the ice caps spread all the way from the poles to the equator. One giant ball of ice, the entire planet. For two hundred million years. That’s what I think is happening out there, so all this running around—”

  Roger stopped mid-sentence. The intensity of the rat-tat-tat of the flapping fabric intensified, and in the stark white-blue light of the LED floodlight, a black hole appeared and grew in the wall of the hangar directly in front of the Range Rover. Giovanni and Raffa, knelt together beside the butane stove, stood quickly. A figure emerged through the black hole in the wall. Jess’s body stiffened and she wrapped her arms around Hector.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Roger grapple at the door handle. He opened the door and spilled out, a blast of cold rushing in. He didn’t even shut it behind him.

  “Who’s there?” Giovanni yelled. “Chi è?”

  The person advanced, their head encrusted in snow and ice. It wasn’t a man. Even under the layers of clothing, the body was small. A boy? The hood and scarf fell from the figure’s head as they advanced. A shock of black hair. Piercing blue eyes.

  “Massarra?” Jess whispered, doing her best to put Hector down to one side on the seat. She grabbed her parka, pulled it on before opening her door to step out. She noticed Roger hovering near the back door of the hangar, ready to bolt.

  Jess jumped around the front of the Range Rover. Even with the hood down, the face was encrusted in snow, but Jess knew those eyes anywhere.

  Massarra wiped the snow from her face. “You’ve been followed,” she said before collapsing onto the hangar’s oil-streaked concrete slab.

  NOVEMBER 9th

  Sixteen Days A.N.

  16

  “IS THAT THEM?” Jess pointed at a small dot, barely visible in the mist.

  She sank into the wet snow as she tried to get more comfortable. Her stomach growled. She had given her breakfast ration to Hector, telling him not to tell Giovanni.

  “That is him, yes.” Massarra adjusted herself on the outcropping of rubble and handed the binoculars back.

  Today was warm again, well above freezing, with a south wind bringing a beige mist whiffing of sewage. The haze around them merged into the clouds, back lit by the sun into a glowing umbrella that seemed to follow overhead. They were soaked from trudging through snow, following the path Massarra had seen the man disappear the evening before. Down into the city. It was warm, but Jess knew the temperature would drop as soon as the north winds began again. All this wet snow would turn into a skating rink of ice and jagged metal and fractured rock.

  Jess focused the binoculars.

  A man came into focus, clad head-to-foot in tight-fitting black clothing. A tent was just visible under the snow, pitched in the hollow under the hulking mass of the cruise liner, almost exactly in the same spot where they’d parked the day before. The pile of equipment she’d discarded was visible a hundred feet to the man’s left, just at the edge of the seawall, the plastic sheet she’d pulled on top flapping in the breeze.

  “It looks like he’s alone,” Jess said.

  The man pulled something from his blue nylon pup tent. He wrapped up whatever it was, then placed the package into a sled attached to the back of his snowmobile.

  “Alone?” Roger asked. “Are you sure?”

  He squirmed in the snow next to Massarra, who moved away from him, her face pinched. Jess was surprised when he volunteered to come on the trek down to the water, and she’d noticed Massarra watching him, an unreadable expression on her face. Now he fiddled with his gloves, pulling one off to play with his finger, and kept glancing at Jess.

  “I think so. Let’s wait here and see if anyone else shows up, or if anyone else is inside that tent. Are you sure that was the man you saw? It was dark, snowing…”

  “I didn’t see the man, but the machine is the same. It was parked in the snow, by your airplane hangar.”

  “And did he see you?”

  “No. I am certain of that. He left with his headlight blazing on the machine. You did not see? You did not hear?”

  When Massarra surprised them the night before, and collapsed after telling them they were being watched, Jess and Leone went straight outside to do a reconnaissance while she rested. Massarra had murmured about wan
ting to go with them, to show them where, but she was barely responsive and Jess had refused. Massarra couldn’t even stand and was shivering violently.

  They left immediately and were out for nearly an hour, but hadn’t seen anyone.

  Then again, trying to see anything in the storm was almost impossible. Jess couldn’t understand how Massarra had even survived out there, much less how she had found them. Giovanni had done his best to inspect her while they were gone. No frostbite. Just exposure, exhaustion and mild hypothermia.

  They’d wrapped her up in blankets and laid her down in the back of the Range Rover, and turned on its engine to warm up. The back of the truck was fast becoming a convalescent hospital, with Lucca back there as well. All through the night the storm raged, while Massarra shivered and mumbled. Giovanni said it was Arabic. Leone kept watch in the driver seat of the truck, with his back to the window so he could see into the cabin. He was like that when Jess had finally dropped off to sleep, Hector in her lap, and he was still in the same position, the same place, when she awoke some hours later. Always watching over them.

  In the first thin light of the morning, the wind tearing at the hangar died down. Massarra roused and wolfed down what food they could scrounge to give her, gulping down great mouthfuls of chicken broth Giovanni boiled from cans they found near the ship the day before. She explained, between mouthfuls, how she drove the Humvee south and then west around Rome’s ring road.

  She had abandoned it two nights before and set off on skis, following the roads to the coast and following it back. Sixty kilometers in two days. Giovanni appeared skeptical. He said very few people could trek sixty clicks across snow that fast.

  How did you find us? Jess had asked her. The airplane, she’d answered, I saw the airplane.

  A lot of people must have seen it.

  “Do you think he’s dangerous?” Jess asked, offering the binoculars back to Massarra.

  “May I have a look?” Roger was still playing with his hand.

  Massarra brought the binoculars up to her eyes and began to scan again.

  Jess nudged her. “Let him look.” She adjusted her backpack, still carrying her father’s laptop and data.

  “The only ones with machines like that are Vivas,” Massarra said. She passed Roger the binoculars without looking at him. “And the brown arm band?”

  Same as the guards when they had driven into the town around the bunker. “When you said I was in danger in Vivas, that we had to leave…why?”

  “Because you were in danger. It was destroyed.”

  “By who?”

  “I do not know. I just knew there was danger.”

  “That’s a bit vague, isn’t it?” Roger moved away from Massarra as he said it.

  She ignored him. “So there are no boats?”

  “Unless that was it, no.” Jess pointed at the snow-covered hulk of the cruise liner dominating the view.

  She was thrilled to have Massarra safe with them. Thankful. But there was also a lingering doubt. Fear was never far from any thought. How did this slight woman, less than a hundred pounds, do what she said she did? And why would she come all the way back here to find them?

  The obvious answer was the boats, the promise of an easy voyage south. But there were no boats. If Massarra was disappointed, nothing in her expression betrayed it. She stared straight ahead, silent.

  “I think we should get back. I don’t think there’s anyone there with him.” Jess took the binoculars from Roger to have another look.

  The man seemed alone. He didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere. Did he know they were here? As the sun rose behind the clouds, the wet yellow smog dissipated, but the man didn’t look their way, nor up at the airfield a half mile up the road. Was he even looking for them? Or was he, too, searching for the mythical boats?

  If he was from Vivas, then he had to be in radio contact. If he found them last night, then he would have contacted them. But why wait here? Wouldn’t he be trying to hide? Or leave while the cavalry arrived? But he looked unconcerned and wasn’t packing up. He sat on the snowmobile and pulled something red from his pocket. He bit into it. An apple.

  “That guy’s definitely from Vivas. Let’s get out of here, and stay low.” Jess slithered backward through the wet snow. “Roger, what are you doing?”

  He was still fidgeting with his hand, but it wasn’t his finger. It was a ring. She noticed the flash of a yin yang symbol on it before Roger pulled on his gloves. He slid down the snow-covered rock pile after her. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

  “Only one?” Giovanni stopped shoveling snow, stood upright and wiped his brow with the back of his arm.

  He stretched backward, letting loose a pained groan. He was shirtless and sweating in this strange heat. A brown-stained bandage covered his right side, where the bullet back at the castle had grazed him. His bruises were fading, but clearly visible on his torso and under his eyes, in the bright light of this dim day.

  “That we could see,” Jess answered.

  “Vivas?”

  She shrugged yes.

  “Then help me dig.” He bent over and pushed the garden spade he’d found into the three-foot-high slush pile ringing the hangar.

  Leone and Raffa followed his lead and went back to trying to move the snow away from the front of the hangar; both of them were armed only with strips of plywood they attempted to use as improvised snow plows. Inside, Elsa bent over a fire of scraps of wood scavenged from collapsed houses just over the fence from the runway. Lucca smiled weakly, sitting in a collapsible camp chair beside the fire.

  The family they had met the day before was gone. Leone told them they had nothing to give. Told them to leave. Jess had seen sadness in his eyes as he said the words, shame even. She saw them now on her walk, scavenging in the twisted remains of the empty city, but there wasn’t much to find. Only ghosts remained.

  “Why don’t you use the truck to push the snow aside?” Roger said, watching them work in front of him. “And we’re never going to get her up in this.” He kicked a pile of the wet snow.

  Giovanni grunted as he lifted a shovel full. “First we need to clear a path, then we use the truck.” He bent to scoop another load. “And if we don’t hurry, this might freeze and we’ll never get it out at all.”

  It took Jess and Massarra almost an hour to climb back up through the wreckage of the town to the airfield. The snow was deep and heavy. In that time, the direction of the wind changed and the temperature dropped. They’d stopped every few minutes to watch the fading dot of the mysterious man-by-the-ship. He didn’t move.

  “We’ll need skis on the Cessna,” Roger said, not offering to help with the snow. “How about I take the sleds strapped to the Rover’s roof rack and cut wheel holes into—”

  “Don’t touch them,” Giovanni growled, throwing aside more snow.

  “But we need skis—”

  Giovanni stood upright. “Then why don’t you go scavenging and find us something we could use?”

  “Like what?”

  “You have a degree in astrophysics. Use it to figure out how to make skis.”

  Giovanni stared at Roger, held his gaze until Roger dropped his eyes and shuffled past him. Massarra followed.

  Jess waited for them to be out of earshot. “Should we drive south? Flying still seems crazy.”

  “You’ve seen the roads.”

  “Massarra just trekked sixty kilometers in two days.”

  “By herself, carrying nothing, and almost dead when she got here. And if you believe her.”

  “You don’t?”

  “We need to get out of here.” He returned to digging.

  “What about Ballie Booker? The Jolly Roger? He must be around the tip of Spain by now. That’s a boat. We’re on the west coast of Italy.”

  “You said it was dangerous to contact anyone.”

  “But Ballie? Really?”

  “You think he could get in past the ice already her
e? He’s driving a lifeboat, not an icebreaker, if that’s even who he is.”

  “What about our friends in Libya? Ain Salah? If we told him what we have, in my father’s bag, maybe they could send someone from Al-Jawf.”

  “It’s two thousand kilometers. And do you really want to broadcast that information to the world? We talked about this. I have a bad feeling. We need to get out of here.”

  Jess exhaled long and hard, shaking her head. “How many can we fit in that thing?” She pointed at the Cessna.

  “Me, you, Hector, and Roger flying it.”

  “So we’ll abandon Lucca, Raffa, Leone?” Her voice rose as she listed each person.

  “Roger comes back for them.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I’ll kill him if he doesn’t.”

  “But can’t you fly?”

  “Not like him.” Giovanni pushed aside another load of snow and stopped. He threw the shovel into the snow. “And he’s right. We need to construct some skis to put on the plane. Raffa can do it, but it will take time. And we need to pump jet fuel from the depot at the end of the runway, carry at least fifty gallons all the way here. There’s a lot to do.”

  “How long?”

  “Two days. We need two days.” He sighed a bone-weary wheeze. “What about this man by the ship?”

  “If he contacted Vivas, they may be here at any moment.”

  “A day in this mess, even for them.”

  “So we need more time.” It wasn’t a question. “I don’t think he saw us.”

  “How can you know?”

  “What we need is to capture him.” Massarra appeared beside Jess, blowing on a steaming cup of soup. “You like some?”

  Jess shook her head. “We need to find out what he knows.”

  “Need to do more than talk.” Giovanni retrieved the shovel.

  “It could be a trap.” Massarra took a sip.

  “It’s probably a trap, but what choice do we have?”

  “We watch him. Massarra and I will watch him. If he comes this way, we’ll take him. And Giovanni, get this goddamn plane ready.” Even if they managed to ready the plane, they’d have to leave behind Leone and the teenage boys. Could she do that?