Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  “It’s okay,” Ben said. He got to his feet and stepped forward to open the door fully. It wasn’t every day that a famous billionaire entrepreneur came knocking.

  Ufuk frowned at Roger, and then turned to face Ben and smiled, reaching out to shake his hand. “Dr. Rollins, I can’t tell you what a honor this is. I tried to find you at the IAU meeting. I’ve studied your work in Doppler spectroscopy. My name is—”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Erdogmus.” Ben took his hand. It felt dry and warm. A firm handshake. Ben’s grandfather always said the mark of a good man was a firm handshake. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need to speak to you. Urgently.”

  “Come in, then.” Ben took a step back.

  “Sorry, but this needs to be in private.” Ufuk glanced at Roger, smiling thinly.

  “I can go out,” Roger said after an awkward pause.

  “No, you stay here.” The thin smile disappeared from Ufuk’s face.

  Ben frowned, glancing at Roger and then back at Ufuk. Did they know each other? “I’m sorry, but what is this about, Mr. Erdogmus? I appreciate what an important person you are, but right now…does this have something to do with the Mars First mission?”

  Lines creased the smooth skin around Ufuk’s eyes. He pressed his lips together. “Yes, you could say that.”

  “Mr. Erdogmus, can’t this wait?” asked Roger, stepping forward again. “Right now isn’t—”

  Someone screamed in the hallway. Someone else swore loudly in German.

  “What the hell…?” Ben took two steps around the door and looked down the hallway.

  More loud voices. People ran toward the lounge, a crowd already massed there, staring at the television screens.

  Ben turned and grabbed the remote from beside Roger and clicked on the TV above the couch. A grainy picture of an orange fireball roiled into an overcast sky—not just a fireball, but a mushroom cloud.

  “These images are from webcams in the center of Rome,” said the news anchor, his face ashen. “We have reports of what appears to be a nuclear device detonated over the Vatican…”

  The blood drained from Ben’s face, a ringing in his ears suppressing his senses. “Oh, my, God…” The apartment Jess was in was a mile from the Vatican. He staggered back, his hands numb, and slumped into the chair by his workstation.

  In the hallway, cursing and crying.

  “…perhaps hundreds of thousands dead,” continued the news anchor, “and ten times that many wounded. Over a million people were assembled around the Vatican today for a Papal address. Reports are that the Pope has been killed, a smoking crater and rubble all that remains of St. Paul’s and the Sistine Chapel…”

  Ben stood unsteadily and turned to Ufuk. “I’m sorry, Mr. Erdogmus, but right now isn’t a good time.”

  “Make sure you talk to me, it’s very urgent. It’s about sanctuary,” Ufuk said as Ben pushed the billionaire out the door and closed it.

  Roger stared slack-jawed at the TV screen, but then looked at his laptop again. “Ben, I know this is insane, but you’ve got to look at this…”

  Ben fumbled with his phone and tried Jess’s number again. Busy signal this time.

  “They weren’t at the apartment when the driver came, maybe they were out of the city,” Roger said in a gentle voice. “But you gotta look at this,” he repeated.

  “…initial reports of a blast radius of two thousand feet, suggesting this was a small nuclear device…”

  Two thousand feet. Ben walked from the Vatican to Piazza Navona a few days ago. Piazza Navona was what? At least a mile, Ben calculated in his head. Five thousand feet. And they weren’t at the apartment. There was still a chance…

  “Ben!” Roger shook his arm. “You gotta look at this.”

  “What?” Ben blinked. What could be more important than the destruction of Rome?

  “The gravitational wave detectors at the LIGO facility have been set off.”

  “By a bomb over the Vatican?” Ben was stunned, his mind scrambled.

  Roger shook his head. “Of course not. That wouldn’t affect LIGO.”

  “LIGO?”

  “The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, the physics experiment joint venture between MIT and CalTech, remember? One end in Livingston, Louisiana, with the other two thousand miles away in Hanford, Washington. It was built to measure fluctuations in space-time—”

  “The gravitational wave detector, of course I know what LIGO is.” Ben’s brain recovered from shock and clicked Roger’s words into sense.

  Roger paused before turning his laptop screen to Ben. “So then look at this.”

  Ben blinked and reminded himself to breathe. The room receded from his senses. He turned to look at Roger, then at the screen. LIGO. They spent hundreds of millions on the gravitational wave detector, but it hadn’t spotted a thing. No gravitational waves. It was one of the last of Einstein’s predictions remaining unproven. A few months ago, LIGO was taken offline and new sensors were put in to boost its sensitivity.

  What Ben saw on the screen wasn’t some marginal signal, though. He zeroed his attention on the graphs and tables. LIGO was like a giant guitar string, stretched two thousand miles, waiting to be plucked by a perturbation in space-time, but it wasn’t just vibrating—LIGO sang. LIGO screamed.

  “When is this from?” Ben asked.

  “The advanced sensors came online three days ago with readings almost off the charts. They figured it was an error and recalibrated, but…”

  “It has to be Nomad,” Ben whispered.

  “Maybe, but then what is it…?”

  A slim list of options.

  While anything with mass produced a gravitational field, creating gravitational waves required events of almost unimaginable violence. His colleagues at the LIGO facility said they were waiting and hoping that something violent enough would occur close enough to Earth to be noticeable.

  They may have gotten their wish. Nomad was ripping apart the very fabric of space and time around the planet now.

  Ben pressed his hands together as if praying. “Make a list of what could cause this, and link it back to all the other data. I’ve got to talk to Dr. Müller.”

  “I’m on it.” Roger said and swallowed.

  Ben looked back at the TV, at the mushroom cloud rising over Rome. “My God…”

  19

  ROME, ITALY

  JESS CLAWED HERSELF upright. Her ears rang.

  A hot wind blew through the alley, scorching her skin, the sickening stench of burnt hair and flesh in her nostrils. She blinked. Tears streamed from her eyes. The ground shook, reverberated through her bones. A deafening roar overloaded her senses. An earthquake? The searing wind slackened, then reversed course, sucking bits of papers along the street in the opposite direction. She blinked again. No, not an earthquake. A mushroom cloud roiled into the dark skies above her, fiery orange flames wrapped in fingers of billowing black smoke.

  The reversed wind intensified, dust and debris dragged by it biting against Jess’s exposed arms and neck. She strained to keep her eyes open, transfixed on the surreal billowing blackness that grew above; rising, crackling in red and orange, folding into itself as it climbed toward the cloud layers above. The wind howled around her, whistling through the alley.

  “Jessica!”

  She turned to look at the café entrance.

  Her mother hung onto the railing. “Jessica!” Celeste screamed again.

  “I’m here,” Jess croaked, her throat sandpaper. She sat upright, stunned. The ground vibrated cyclically, a dying thunder echoing between the buildings.

  Celeste staggered down the stairs and turned to the sky and stared. The mushroom cloud roiled ever higher. “My God….” Tearing her eyes away, she stumbled to Jess.

  “Somebody, please help.”

  Jess rubbed her eyes and glanced to her left.

  The couple at the table next to her were splayed on the ground, the woman leaning over the man. She
looked at Jess with wild eyes. “He’s bleeding,” she whimpered.

  Celeste scooped Jess into her arms, pulled her tank top up. “Baby, are you okay?” She inspected Jess’s stomach, turned her to look at her back. She held Jess’s head in her hands and looked into her eyes. “Jess?”

  “I’m fine,” Jess replied automatically.

  But she wasn’t sure.

  Her ears rang, her body felt numb. She fought the feeling of deja vu. The day she lost her leg crowded her mind, images of blood and fire flashing into her senses.

  She shook her head.

  Stay in the now.

  Stay here.

  Focus.

  Behind Celeste, the café manager stumbled out of the doorway and down the stairs. He turned and stared at the sky. The wind slackened, the air suddenly calm. Screams pierced the eerie silence, distant booms echoing. High above, the head of the mushroom cloud impacted the layer of rain clouds, a halo of clearing around it like a door opening to heaven. It punched a hole through the clouds, then sucked them upward after it.

  “Someone call an ambulance!” the woman next to them screamed. She’d pulled the man into her arms, blood soaking the both of them.

  “Go help her.” Jess struggled out of her mother’s embrace. “I’m fine, go help the lady.”

  “You sure?” Celeste stared into Jess’s eyes.

  Her ears still rang, but Jess felt her strength returning. She nodded. “Go, please.”

  From the doorway beside the café, a wood-paneled door opened. A man appeared holding an infant in his arms. Glancing left and right, he jumped into the street, then turned and looked up. His wife followed, holding the hand of a young boy. All along the street, doors opened and people streamed out and stared into the sky. Everyone began stumbling back, away from the explosion. They turned and ran.

  Jess grabbed her crutches and struggled upright. Unsteadily, she stood, then swung over on her crutches to the woman cradling the man in her arms. Celeste crouched over the man, shielding him from the crowd. Jess leaned over to get a better look. The man’s body convulsed, blood spurting from a shard of glass embedded in his neck. His fingers clawed at Celeste, his knuckles white. He gagged, blood spitting from his mouth.

  His grip on Celeste’s shirt slackened.

  “What do I do?” Celeste turned to Jess, her face white. “Do you know what to do?”

  The man’s arms fell to his sides, his body twitching. Jess knew death throes. “There’s nothing we can do,” she whispered.

  “We just got married,” the woman cried, pulling her husband into her, rocking back and forth, a low keening wail rising from her trembling lips.

  Another man crashed into the woman, fell onto the husband and tumbled past Jess. Slipping and sliding on the blood, the man stood, wiping blood from his hands. He glanced at Jess and Celeste, then at the dead man, but returned to staring at the sky. Shaking his head but not saying anything, he turned and ran. People streamed by, running, screaming, all of them looking up at the sky.

  Jess pulled on her mother’s arm. “We need to go.”

  The woman cradled her husband in her arms, rocking back and forth as the sea of people streamed past her. Celeste let go and stood, nodding. Taking one last look, she turned and walked with the flow, reaching to grab Jess.

  But Jess stood still.

  Her instincts told her to run. Away. To follow the herd. But the first rule of tactical decision making was to follow the plan—unless there was a good reason to deviate. Jess gripped her crutches, felt them dig into her armpits, and steeled herself against Celeste trying to pull her with the crowd. She stared up at the disappearing mushroom cloud, the rain clouds now coming together under it, a pillar of black smoke rising to meet them. Sometimes the right thing to do was the thing that felt wrong.

  “Come on, we need to go,” Celeste urged, her voice desperate.

  “No,” Jess said from between gritted teeth. She pulled away from her mother. “This way.” She swung forward on her crutches, straight against the flow of the crowd.

  “JESS! What are you doing?”

  The military Humvee on the corner, the man in the military uniform. That had to be whom her father sent. He said he told the driver to return, and not to leave, not for any reason. She glanced up at the column of black smoke. She hoped that this didn’t exceed any reason for an Italian military attaché.

  “Dad sent someone to get us.” Jess pressed through the crowd. “If he’s still there, that’s our best bet on getting out of here.”

  “We need to go to the American Embassy!” Celeste screamed. She followed Jess anyway.

  “Are you kidding? No way we’ll be getting in there now. And if we weren’t getting out of here by ourselves before, now there’s absolutely no way.” Jess swung forward, swearing and screaming at people to watch where they were going, to get out of her way.

  “Are you sure?” Celeste muscled her way beside Jess. She looked into the sky. “Was that a nuclear bomb? Should we be walking toward it?”

  Jess shook her head. “It seemed too small for a nuclear blast, as big as it was.” She had firsthand experience with conventional munitions, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure. Small tactical nukes existed. “Five minutes this way, and we can see if the driver is still there. If not, then we can go your way.”

  A gamble.

  They crossed the Piazza Navona again, pushing through the crowds choking the streets. The flood of clean-faced, scared-looking tourists clutching their children became interspersed with the staggering, ragged and bloodied. A woman, naked, her body burnt and flayed, ran past them screaming. By the time they reached the other side of the piazza, everyone was covered in soot, their clothing ripped to shreds over fresh scarlet wounds.

  Black smoke billowed up Angela’s street when they turned into the alley, dust and debris scattering into the piazza. Jess stopped to pull her tank top around her mouth. She squinted into the dust. She couldn’t see past the sea of people flowing toward her, the alleyway fading into grayness. Gritting her teeth, she squinted and swung forward on her crutches, doing her best to ignore the wailing people passing her. A woman screamed, appeared out of the grayness holding a bloody mess in her arms. A tiny baby. She disappeared into the brown-gray mist.

  Jess’s eyes teared.

  There.

  On the corner.

  A car pulled up and its driver jumped out and looked around, then waved at her.

  “Mom!” Jess screamed, turning to find Celeste stumbling behind her. “He’s here, the man Dad sent!”

  Jess hopped forward, swung as fast as she could on the crutches. The outline of the car grew clearer. But that was no Humvee. She swung another few steps closer.

  And that was no military attaché.

  It wasn’t even a man.

  “Jessica!” yelled Massarra, the young woman who’d helped them the night before. “Come on, get in.” She ran around the other side of his car, a small Hyundai, and opened the door.

  Swinging the last two paces to the car, Jessica grabbed onto the door and stared at Massarra. “What are you doing here? Did my father send you?” This didn’t make any sense. Jess glanced inside the car. One of Massarra’s uncles nodded at her, urged her to get inside the car.

  “I knew you were here,” Massarra replied. “As I said, we were driving north. We need to hurry.”

  The billowing smoke thinned, and dark droplets inked the cobblestones. Jess looked up, the smoke clearing enough to see the clouds again, churning in the sky. Her hair blew back in a sudden wind, and a squall of raindrops fell across the car. Black streaks ran down the windshield. If that was an atomic blast, this rain could be toxic.

  “Please, help me,” a woman pleaded in front of Jess, half of her face gone, replaced by an angry red mass of blood and blackened flesh hanging under one eye.

  Huge black drops fell from the sky, spattering off the cobblestones. Tactical decision making dictated following the plan, but it also meant being flexible when need
ed. The black rain pelted against the windshield, ran in dark rivulets down Jess’s arms.

  “Mom!” Jess yelled. “Get in!” She opened the back door for Celeste and waited for her mother to get in beside the uncle.

  Jess jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

  20

  ROME, ITALY

  “SORRY, BUT I cannot drive to Germany.” Massarra’s smile turned to a grimace. She shifted gears and accelerated onto the on-ramp of Autostrade 90, Rome’s ring road. “We are driving home to Turkey. It’s a twenty-hour drive, but it’s the only way. I can drive you near to Florence, but I must go east from there.” Her two other uncles had managed to get a flight, she explained. After getting the car, she decided to look for Jess and Celeste. She knew they needed help. Once you became involved in someone’s life, she explained, there was an obligation to stay involved. At least, that was he way her world worked.

  Whomp-whimp…whomp-whimp…the windshield wipers swished back and forth, slicking the rain away. Jess glanced to her right. Through the mist, a gray smudge over the center of Rome stretched into the clouds. Stopped cars lined the Autostrade, the passengers outside them hanging over the guardrails, everyone staring at what was left of the Eternal City.

  Massarra’s uncle sat stoically in the back seat beside Celeste. This one didn’t speak English, Massarra explained, switching into Arabic from time to time to update him.

  In their flight from the center of Rome, the crush of people—ragged and bloody walking corpses—had thinned after a few blocks. There was nothing they could do but get out, get away from the noxious black rain. At the first roundabout, they passed a knot of overwhelmed ambulances, and after a few more blocks, only the noise of sirens and police cars screaming past into the city gave any indication of the destruction behind them. They’d been caught in a heavy downpour, but the rain was almost finished. Just a spattering onto the windshield. The sun broke through the clouds.

  Massarra turned off the wipers. “You said you had a friend you stayed with, in Chianti?” She glanced at Celeste in the back seat. “Giovanni? Perhaps I could drop you there?”