Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  Her father’s conference ended in three days. That was when Jess planned on trying to get them together. “No, we’re not in a hurry.”

  “Good, then we can stay a few days,” Celeste said cheerfully. “I like it here, and I think you could use a day off your feet.” Her mother winced, looking at her left leg. “Sorry, you know what I mean.”

  “A warning,” said a voice from the hallway. It was the Baron, his face hanging in the doorway.

  Jess flinched. Were the police back? “Wh…what?” she stuttered.

  “The doctor will be here in two minutes, just giving you a warning.”

  Enzo watched Baron Ruspoli hanging in the doorway ahead of him, fawning over this new American girl and her mother. He could see the way the Baron looked at this young woman, Jessica. This little dove with her broken wing. “Here are the rest of the bags,” Enzo called out as he barged past the Baron, dropping what he carried onto the floor.

  He smiled at the Baron, then at Jessica. He had to admit, she was beautiful—long blond hair, slender, but with fire in her eyes. There were so many things he’d like to do to her himself. Hold her, protect her, show her his love…

  But he had to smile, to pretend.

  He couldn’t let anyone know what he was thinking, who he was. And he couldn’t go back to jail, couldn’t go back to those men. Not after the last time. Never again.

  “Is that all, Baron?” Enzo asked.

  The Baron put a hand on Enzo’s shoulder. “Yes, thank you. And please, whatever Jessica and Celeste need, you make sure you give it to them.”

  Enzo turned to smile at the women. “Yes, of course. Whatever they need.”

  Looking at the Baron, Enzo smiled at him as well. Soon the Baron would be getting what he needed as well. Soon the pig would pay for his crimes.

  NOMAD

  Survivor testimony #JR6;

  Event +55hrs;

  Name: Sergio Solano;

  Reported location: Salt Lake City, Utah;

  We took off from the Seattle area just after half past three. All airspace was officially closed, but by then the water had already dropped ten feet in the Tacoma Narrows. We still had six or seven hours, that’s what they said. Enough time for me to get my son and fly back the three hours to Dallas in my Cessna Citation jet. But it wasn’t. Not enough time. Forty-five minutes into the flight, I’d climbed to thirty-three thousand feet, scanning the airspace for any oncoming aircraft as all ATC were down; clear blue skies, no pressure fronts along the whole route. Perfect day.

  That’s when it happened. Bands of white light appeared in the deep blue sky, rippling, and a second later all the electronics went blank. Just like that. Everything gone. No GPS, no digital displays. My old Citation works off manual hydraulics, thank God, so I switched to dead reckoning and the six-pack of analog controls. Then straight ahead, a black smudge appeared. It seemed to engulf the entire horizon. Never seen anything like it. It stretched up, high into the sky, higher than any thunderhead I’d ever seen. Those usually flatten out at the tropopause, at the edge of the stratosphere, thirty or even forty thousand feet. But this was a black wall, shooting into the sky, way beyond that.

  I changed course away from it and was picking up my altitude when a shock wave hit us. Damn near tore the plane apart, dropped us to twenty thousand before I regained control. By the time I looked back, the wall had mushroomed out at over a hundred thousand feet, an inky black pool spreading across the sky… I put us down in Salt Lake after the second shock wave ripped into us. The black cloud enveloped us by the time we secured the jet on the empty runway. That was two days ago. Now there’s three feet of it in the streets, a suffocating sludge coating everything… I don’t know how long we’ll be able…

  Transmission ended high ionization static. Freq. 9660 kHz.

  Subject not reacquired.

  OCTOBER 17th

  7

  CHIANTI, ITALY

  JESS AWOKE TO birds chirping in juniper trees outside the open windows of her room. In the huge bed, set high from the floor with a sash draped along the headboard and with tapestries flowing over the stone walls—fairytale princesses came to mind. Would she let her hair down? Let the prince climb up and save her? The idle daydreaming screeched to a halt almost before it started. She was the last person on Earth who needed saving.

  And fairy tales were just that.

  She’d spent the balance of the day before in bed, enjoying the doting attention of her mother. Maybe that's why she dropped off to sleep early. She had awakened earlier than she usually did, but Jess got up and showered. After toweling off, she didn’t feel like leaving her sanctuary, so she deposited herself back in the luxurious bed and pulled her pajamas back on. For a while she just lay there and listened to the chirping birds, but she eventually opened her laptop, answered some emails and started a game of online chess.

  Jess pondered the long-lost relative Facebook-messaging her mother. Jess had nothing to do with the message, but it had given her the perfect excuse to convince her mother to come to Italy. A cover for Jess’s real motive of getting her in the same country as Jess’s father. Now she just needed to connect her mother and father in Rome. They had honeymooned here, and as infantile as it sounded, Jess wanted to get them to meet and spend time together here in Italy with her as a family. For once.

  She’d tried pinging her dad that morning, but he wasn’t available, and didn’t return any of her calls. Unusual, but then Jess didn’t take it the wrong way when people didn’t answer their phones right away. She liked to have her own space too.

  A knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me.” Her mother didn’t wait for a reply. She opened the door, asking, “You spending today in bed as well?” Closing the door behind herself, she dropped a cup of coffee next to Jess and draped herself across the foot of Jess’s bed. “Giovanni already took me on a tour of the castle, but we didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her mother frowned. “Do I detect sarcasm?”

  “No, really, I mean thanks for letting me be.” She pushed her laptop forward and picked up the cup of coffee to take a sip.

  Her mother glanced at the laptop screen. “Are you still playing chess with your father?”

  “Sometimes, but not today.” Jess put the coffee down and pulled her legs to the side of the bed. She noticed her mother watching her. “Mom, could you give me a minute?”

  Celeste smiled. “I’m your mother, sweetheart.”

  Jess sighed. “Fine.” She swung her legs off the side of the bed, pulling off the covers, and her right foot dropped to the ground. Her left leg, however, ended in an angry red stump just below the knee.

  Her mother tried not to stare. “Does it hurt?”

  “See, that’s why I asked for some privacy,” Jess groaned. “And no, it doesn’t hurt.” But it did. In the fall yesterday, she’d twisted her stump painfully.

  Leaning over, she picked up her prosthetic from the floor next to the bed, angled her lower leg upward, and pulled the socket into place. It was a custom fit, with a new suction valve that kept it on securely. A smooth stainless steel rod connected the flesh-colored socket to her new foot. She’d just gotten it a few months before—a multiple-axis stored-energy one in lifelike plastic. Better than her old leg, she liked to joke.

  Six years now, and she could hardly remember the difference. Six years ago she’d lost her leg. It was the last time that her parents had come together, that day when she’d been shipped back to the US, damaged and broken. They’d been like a real family again, for a short time at least. But she didn’t have another leg to spare. This time she hoped they could do it without her needing to lose a limb.

  After attaching her leg, she pulled on a pair of jeans and stylish gold flats, then a red short-sleeved blouse. Searching through her luggage, she found her makeup kit and walked into the bathroom, clicking the light on.

  Her mother watched her, smiling. “Makeup? You’re putt
ing on makeup?”

  Jess rolled her eyes but grinned. “Give me a break, huh?”

  Knocking on the heavy wooden door, Jess said, “Mr. Ruspoli, ah, I mean, Baron Giovanni?” The door was open just a crack, and she heard paper shuffling. “Sorry, Nico told me to just come up.”

  The shuffling stopped. “Jessica, yes, please, come in! And please, call me Giovanni.”

  Jess swung open the door, expecting a dim medieval interior with suits of armor and swords on the walls, but instead she found a bright open space. Giovanni was sitting behind a computer monitor at a large L-shaped desk in the corner of the room. Bookcases lined the wall to her left, behind the open door, filled with a jumble of books and odds and ends.

  The wall to her right had an enormous flat screen television covering most of it, but was otherwise lined with shelves of electronic gear to both sides. The other two walls were floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the tops of the castle walls to the rolling vineyards and hills beyond. Pictures hung on the walls between the bookcases; one of them, Jess noticed, showed the Baron sailing on rough waves, sea foam spraying around him. Another picture was of him atop a mountain, distant peaks stretching into the distance, and beside that a large print of him in full arctic gear, smiling in front of a frozen wasteland.

  “How are you feeling today?” Giovanni asked, turning to face her. He’d been staring at the computer screen. Littered across the floor were large cardboard boxes, stacked up, with backpacks scattered between in clumps. A set of scuba tanks sat in the corner. “Please excuse the mess, I’ve just moved back. Please, come, sit.” He indicated a chair next to his desk.

  Jess picked her way through the boxes. “I’m the one that should be apologizing. And I’m feeling great, thank you. How are you?” She sat.

  “Good, good.” He glanced back at the computer monitor. “I’m just trying to understand the family business, so much to do.” His voice faded. Shaking his head, he looked back at Jess and smiled.

  “Giovanni, thank you for…” Jess started to say, but then stopped. She hated apologizing. In her world, either you did something or you didn’t. If you did it, then you meant it, and there was no need to apologize. If you didn’t mean it, then don’t do it. It was that simple. But in this case… “Thank you for keeping the police out, yesterday, I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am.”

  “Nonsense, the police have no business here. This is my sovereign ground. My family has defended this place for a thousand years. Two little police officers are nothing.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was being funny or not. Was this really his sovereign ground? Like his own country? “Still, they were here because of me.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just, this guy I was—”

  “No need to explain.” Giovanni clicked off his computer. “So, how about that personal tour of the castle?”

  Was this guy for real? Some kind of Italian machismo? Fending off the police, rescuing the damsel in distress? Jess felt a prickling of resentment under her gratitude, but said nothing.

  “Are you ready?” Giovanni stood and came around his desk.

  Jess took a deep breath and smiled, consciously smoothing down the hackles in her mind. “Sure, that would be great.”

  Giovanni took Jess on a whirlwind exploration of the castle, explaining when each wall and tower had been built, what battles had been fought and won. They stopped in at the kitchens first, where he explained they only had evening staff for three nights a week, usually for the guests. He mostly cooked his own food.

  Then he took her on a quick march around the periphery of the outer walls, through the olive groves, pointing out the vineyards that stretched down the sides of the mountain. Olive oil was still an important family business, he said, as well as the wine that the estate produced. From there they went down below, into the catacombs of the wine cellars, ancient Etruscan caves carved out thousands of years ago. For three thousand years, he said, the caves had withstood every earthquake and disaster Mother Nature threw at them.

  They ended the tour at the southwest corner, the highest point where the top of the castle walls met the peak of the mountain. They climbed up through one of the tunnels to a ledge, then up a ladder to the top. A cable stretched across the small valley to the next property, a much smaller castello on the side of a hill opposite, so that a small cable car could be ferried across. Below, the town of Saline nestled in the foothills. The view to the west was breathtaking, the flat plains of Tuscany stretching into the distance, the Mediterranean visible as a blue line on the horizon forty miles away.

  “Is that your property as well?” Jess asked, squinting down the length of the cable that strung across the valley, looking at the smaller castello on the opposite side.

  “No,” Giovanni replied, then corrected himself. “Well, yes, it is, but much more recent. We’ve only owned it for a hundred years.” He grinned. “A new addition. We built the cable car to connect them.”

  “A new addition?” Jess held one hand over her eyes to shield the sun, taking a closer look at the structure on the other side of the gorge. “What, you bought it?”

  The grin evaporated from Giovanni’s face. “Not exactly, it was…” He looked away, exhaling, then looked back at Jess. “It was a rival family, but they left.”

  Jess glanced at him, noticed a strange look in his eyes. “Like a feud?”

  “Yes, like that.”

  “Huh.” Jess shook her head, not sure what to say. She shifted her gaze down the cliff wall under the cable car shack where they’d come from. It was thirty feet of sheer rock, with a large grassy ledge at least twenty feet across, then a drop of a few hundred feet beyond that. “Great for rock climbing,” she observed.

  “Jessica, I do have another confession.”

  She was still staring down the rock wall, her mind constructing possible routes for climbing up it. “What’s that?”

  “Yesterday, at the museum, I overheard you telling your mother that your boyfriend hit you, that you needed money.”

  Lifting her head up from looking down the cliff face, Jess shielded her eyes again from the setting sun. “Is that why you’re being so nice to me?”

  “Partly.” Giovanni nodded.

  “And the other part?”

  Giovanni looked uncomfortable. “The videos of you on YouTube, the famous American girl, BASE jumping, sky diving and rock climbing, the…” His voice faltered.

  “What, the cripple?” Jess finished the sentence for him. Her cheeks flushed, and she struggled to keep her temper from flaring. He was being nice. He didn’t mean anything.

  “Sorry, I don’t know—”

  “It’s okay. Disabled, that would be the right word. But I’m not a cripple. I don’t need any special treatment.”

  Shaking his head, Giovanni agreed, “No, you are no cripple. I was so surprised when I saw you here. You are magnificent, beautiful.” He winced. “Sorry, my English is a little rusty, perhaps not the right words?”

  Jess laughed, her flash of temper burning into one of embarrassment. “No, those are nice words.”

  Giovanni’s smile returned. “I was wondering if you might do me a favor.”

  Squinting into the sun, Jess took a long look at him. “What did you have in mind?”

  “If you might give my little Hector a rock climbing lesson, perhaps?”

  She looked down the rock face. “What, now?”

  Giovanni looked down. “Yes. I have all the equipment. We could set a top rope, no?”

  She looked down at the rock face. “Sure, we could do that. One thing though.”

  The Baron looked at her. “Anything.”

  “If we’re going to be friends, call me Jess, okay?”

  Giovanni stored his climbing equipment just inside the doorway of a tunnel carved into the side of the rock face, on the twenty-foot-wide ledge of grass below the cable car station. While he went to fetch Hector and Nico, Jess set up two ropes from a metal gantry sticking ou
t from the top of the cliff face, and having enough cord, she also rigged a rope swing from the cable car platform to let someone drop from there to the grassy ledge thirty feet below.

  She’d just finished when Giovanni returned with Nico and Hector. Only five years old, Hector scampered around the low rocks like a monkey, smiling a big grin at Jess as he jumped around. He was fearless, and earned large return grins from Jess.

  She attached the two topes to Giovanni and Hector in their climbing harnesses. Jess and Nico strapped into harnesses and attached themselves to the other ends of the ropes, taking up the slack as Hector and Giovanni climbed, with Jess calling out suggestions and encouragement.

  “So what brought you to Ruspoli Castle?” Nico asked Jess. With Giovanni and Hector twenty feet overhead, Jess and Nico stood shoulder to shoulder, carefully taking in the excess rope as the two ascended.

  Jess glanced at Nico, then returned to watching Hector, taking up the slack with the braking mechanism attached to her. “Funny story. My mom got a Facebook message from a long-lost relative a few weeks ago, said he still lived here and wanted to meet us.”

  Nico jammed his brake into place and looked at Jess. “What? Who? Did you meet him?”

  “No, not yet.” Jess frowned at Nico. What had gotten him so excited? “He hasn't responded since we've arrived. Why?”

  Nico stared at Jess for a long second, then looked up at Giovanni and released the brake. “Just curious. So your family is from here?”

  “My mom’s side, but from years ago. We didn’t think anyone from our family still lived here. So we came to investigate.”

  “You came all the way from America just for that?” Nico nodded. “Family must be very important to you.”