Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  “Signor, if I may?” Nico almost whispered.

  Giovanni let out a guttural roar. “What?”

  “As I said before, I did a background search on Enzo…”

  “And…?”

  “And I found his family home, his relatives all live in Vaca.”

  Giovanni spun around. “Vaca?” His brows came together in a scowl.

  “Yes, and I’m sure he doesn’t know that I know. He’s not very—” Nico paused to choose his word. “Smart.”

  “Vaca,” Giovanni muttered, pacing back and forth in tight circles.

  “What’s going on?” Jess asked. Something was happening between the lines.

  “And you have an address?” Giovanni asked Nico.

  “Yes,” Nico replied. “We can be there in an hour and see if I’m right.” He added something in rushed Italian.

  Giovanni continued to pace. “No, I will go alone.”

  “Where’s Vaca?” Jess prickled in annoyance. “Giovanni, what’s happening?”

  “It’s a village on the coast, not far.” He stopped pacing and faced Jess, bringing his hands together. “Nico thinks this is where Enzo may have taken Hector. It will only take a few hours to check.” He turned to Nico again. “You stay here, close all the gates, call our bankers in Florence and start loading gold and silver from the museum into the Land Rovers. We will give them what we can. We need to get Hector back.”

  “At least take the two guards with you.” Nico held his hands wide. “For protection.”

  He meant the security guards Jess had seen earlier. They stood on the entrance walls, watching for anyone else that might approach the castello.

  Giovanni nodded, the crimson red in his face washing away. “Good.”

  Jess glanced at her mother, then looked Giovanni square in the eyes. “I’m coming.”

  “This is too dangerous.” He turned on his heel and walked through a doorway leading out of the hall.

  “Dangerous?” Jess followed. “The whole world is about to be incinerated, and you’re worried about dangerous?”

  “Stay with your mother. It is a gift that you have her, that you are together at this moment.” Giovanni didn’t turn as he stalked down the hallway. He stopped at a metal door and fumbled with his keys. “Your father will be here soon. Do you know what I’d give to have my father here now?” He opened the door and flicked on the light switch inside. A brick-lined staircase wound down.

  “This is my fault.” Jess followed him down the stairs, limping, not used to the new prosthetic. “If I’d been more careful, not opened my mouth in public like that.”

  And it was her fault. She hadn’t realized the enormity of the words coming out of her mouth when she spoke to Giovanni at the observatory. A death sentence to the world. And she hid it, purposely, from people nearby. Jess thought she understood Enzo’s anger, if not the bizarre way he seemed to be acting it out.

  But then, Jess had anger of her own. Steal her leg?

  She wanted to help Giovanni, that was true. But she also wanted to satisfy her own anger, right the wrong done to her, the burning humiliation of being turned into a cripple and stranded in the street. She wanted to look Enzo in the eye. After that, she wasn’t sure. But she wanted to be there.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairwell, Giovanni fumbled with the keys again before opening a reinforced metal door. It swung inward heavily. He clicked the inside light switch. “Those security men, they’re professionals. Ex-military, Interpol, they’ll be able to find Enzo if he’s in Vaca. This is no place for…” He stopped and winced, sensing his misstep.

  “What?” Jess pushed her way into the room behind him. “No place for a woman?”

  She looked around. It had to be the castle armory. Two pairs of assault rifles, which she recognized as AK-47s, hung on one wall, with a row of handguns on shelves on the other.

  Jess whistled, impressed. “Is this legal?”

  Giovanni snorted. “As if legal matters to you.” He leaned over to pull out a cardboard box, ripped open the cover and pulled out an ammunition magazine, then grabbed one of the AKs from the wall. He looked at the magazine, turned it around. “And no, Jessica, this is not going to be any place for a woman.”

  It was Jess’s turn to snort. He obviously had no idea how to load an AK-47. Shoving her way in front of him, she grabbed the rifle and magazine, and in one quick motion snapped them together. She stood in front of him defiantly. “Let me ask you a question.”

  Taking a step back, Giovanni frowned at this woman, in front of him, holding a loaded assault rifle. “What?”

  “How do you think I lost this leg?” She swung the rifle’s barrel down and tapped her new prosthetic.

  “I don’t know. A climbing accident?”

  “Relax, Giovanni. The safety is still on.” Jess flipped down the safety lever and pulled back and released the charging handle. She smiled. “Now it’s loaded. And now answer the question.”

  Giovanni’s face reddened. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Afghanistan. An IED explosion hit our Humvee on a reconnaissance mission. I was in the Marines for two years.” She clipped the safety back into place. “I’m coming with you.”

  NOMAD

  Survivor testimony #GR3;

  Event +52hrs;

  Survivor name: Heidi Hilfker;

  Reported location: Zermatt, Switzerland;

  Please stay on this frequency. We haven’t been able to contact anyone else yet. You need to send help. The road’s out, there is no way…

  We knew it was coming, so we hid in the mountains. We knew it was coming, but nothing prepared us for the earth opening up. When the lights came in the sky, I watched, terrified, and the tremors started so I ran outside into the flat ground. All the buildings collapsed, so many dead…the roads torn apart. I watched the Matterhorn crumble like chalk. Send help. Please. The ash and snow, waist deep…not many of us left.

  Transmission ended in sign-off. Freq. 4644 kHz/NSB.

  OCTOBER 22nd

  26

  VACA, ITALY

  MOORED SAILBOATS BOBBED on gentle swells inside stone breakwaters just off the gravel-and-seashell beach. Jess watched them, her mind exhausted. How nice it would be to stretch out on the deck of one of those boats, feel the sun on her skin, drop off to sleep.

  Giovanni sat next to her on the pizzeria terrace, his face impassive behind dark sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low. Jess’s wide-brimmed hat fluttered in the breeze, and she glanced around the cobblestone piazza in front of them. A decorative anchor was set in poured concrete at the center. Wind-swept juniper trees faced the ocean to the west, and European Union and Italian flags snapped in the breeze to each side of a plaque proudly emblazoned with the town’s name: VACA.

  Scooters parked shoulder to shoulder, just off the terrace, bordered a long line of people waiting to get inside the restaurant. It was one of the few still open. When Jess and Giovanni, with the two security men, drove in at dawn, it had the feeling of a ghost town, but the hot sun drew what few people remained from their homes, to herd together and eat.

  “Anything?” Jess asked Giovanni, flicking her chin at the walkie-talkie on the table between them.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Mounting a manhunt wasn’t like stepping outside for a walk. Once they committed to the idea, they had to plan it out. They started by bringing in the security guards Nico had hired, explained the situation to them. Giovanni told them that Nomad might be arriving sooner than expected, but the sum he offered both men sealed the deal—gold, and lots of it. Giovanni had a safe filled with bars of it in the basement of the castle.

  Giovanni turned up the volume on a battery-powered satellite radio he brought with them. “…riots continue in America, with a bomb this morning in a Washington mall and an explosion reported at government buildings in Sacramento, claimed responsibility by a cult saying Nomad is Nibiru returning…” They had it tuned to the BBC. “…global stock markets and
currency exchanges have crashed, sending gold prices skyrocketing…”

  After a series of terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv, Israel took control of the Gaza strip, prompting a wave of attacks by the PLO from neighboring Lebanon. Continued fighting in Kashmir had pushed the United States to send armed air support to Indian troops. In America, a renewed explosion of riots from LA to Detroit, at least from what they could tell from the radio. The situation in Europe seemed calmer, more resigned.

  The night before, Giovanni arranged for delivery trucks to bring supplies to the castle. On the ramparts, Jess had improvised human-sized wooden dolls, their heads covered with large hats. Good enough to fool someone watching the castle from a distance, at least for a few hours.

  In the small hours of the morning, under cover of night, Jess and Giovanni and the two security guards had smuggled themselves out in one of the delivery trucks, just in case someone was watching. Nico seemed to try to dissuade Giovanni from bringing Jess, a heated argument behind a closed door, but in the end they left Nico and Celeste to arrange collecting as much gold as they could in case they needed to produce the ransom.

  The yeasty warmth of fresh bread wafted out of the door next to Jess, mixing with the salty freshness of the sea air and ever-present hint of coconut oil that seemed to permeate every seaside vacation town Jess had ever visited. She glanced inside, at an old couple happily serving customers. They looked like they were doing what they wanted to do—like the brothers from Giovanni’s story—and were where they wanted to be. She watched the old man take a twenty Euro bill as payment. Twenty Euros. It wasn't even worth the paper it was printed on. If death came today, Jess sensed the man would be freed by angels, not torn by demons.

  What she would give to be him.

  A woman in short shorts and flip-flops, with a pink bikini top, stopped in the doorway. “Veni,” she urged, waving her hand.

  Glancing inside, Jess saw a small boy, with a Sponge Bob-printed beach towel around his neck, standing and staring at the gelati freezer. He wanted ice cream. The mother urged him forward again, but he stamped his foot and pouted. The mother glanced at Jess, shaking her head, but shrugged and went back in.

  What do you do when the world is ending? Come to the beach.

  The futility of it annoyed Jess. Go and do something useful, she wanted to shout at the people in line. But then life was futile. What was the point? Why do anything? Sitting by the ocean under a blue sky, her sense of detachment had shifted into a deep melancholy of hopeless dread. She stroked her finger along the trigger of the handgun in her purse. Just lift it up, put it in her mouth and pull the trigger—it would be over.

  The waiting. The tension. The futility. All of it over. And the guilt, that would be over too.

  She glanced inside at the young boy, not more than five. He got his ice cream.

  The image of a black hole ringed in white danced through Jess’s mind, and she looked down and away from the boy. She dragged the black duffel bag at her feet, filled with assault rifles, grenades and ammunition, back under the table.

  Many of the people lining up to get into the pizzeria had backpacks. How many had guns or knives in them, how many of these innocent-looking people had dark thoughts like Jess did, even as she smiled back at them?

  Looking out at the sprawl of houses that stretched up into the hill, she knew people had to be barricading themselves in, protecting themselves and their families. Soon they would be crawling over each other to survive, even this peaceful place literally a hell on Earth.

  Jess checked her watch again. Seventeen minutes past eleven. One minute past the last time she checked her watch. Giovanni glanced at his wrist as well. Checking the time had become obsessive, impulsive.

  Forty-three hours to Nomad.

  Or, forty-three hours until when her father said Nomad would be here. Conflicting stories and scientific reports flooded the Internet and news channels. It was impossible to decipher one from the other, to trust one source more than another. In the past twelve hours, amateur astronomers cataloged a dramatic shift in the outer gas giants’ orbits, but some said it meant Nomad was headed away. Earth’s orbit had already shifted, but there wasn’t one straight story.

  NASA’s official stance: Still weeks away.

  But it wasn’t weeks, but hours. Jess felt it in her bones. She leaned back, squinted up at the midday sun. Nomad was still behind it, but soon it would be exposed. Be upon them. The hand of God.

  “Zio,” crackled the walkie-talkie.

  Zio—the code word they had chosen for Giovanni. He picked it up. “Si?”

  A stream of Italian flowed from the walkie-talkie. “What’s going on?” Jess asked.

  Giovanni exchanged a few more words. “They’re coming.”

  “The security guards?”

  “Yes.”

  They had sent them out to look at the address Nico had given them. Better them than Jess and Giovanni. Enzo didn’t know the security guards, wouldn’t recognize them even if he ran into them. And they were surveillance professionals.

  “Did they find him?”

  Giovanni shook his head. “I don’t know.” He put the walkie-talkie down. “They’re on their way here.”

  An elderly couple walked past them toward the beach. They held hands, and the man looked at the woman and kissed her. She kissed him back, long and hard. Public displays of affection turned Jess off, but she stared, fascinated. The way the man looked at his wife, the love. The tenderness. She glanced back at the people in line. Most of them were elderly.

  Two weeks ago, if you asked Jess about getting old, she would have laughed. I doubt I’ll ever get old, she liked to joke. Except it wasn’t just a joke. Her recklessness, a death wish her mother called it, was one of the reasons her mother had difficulty spending time with her. Celeste often said that part of her was waiting for the call. About an accident.

  And part of Jess was waiting for it as well. The same drive that pushed her to quit school, quit her degree in astronomy, and join the Marines.

  But now, faced with the real prospect of imminent death, perhaps days away, she didn’t want to die. She watched the elderly couple walk onto the beach, hand in hand, the old man stealing glances at his wife. Jess didn’t want to die. She wanted someone to look at her like that.

  Leaning forward, Jess took Giovanni’s hand in hers. “We’ll find Hector, I promise.”

  Taking a deep breath, Giovanni nodded, his jaw muscles flexing. “Thank you. And thank you for coming.”

  “Of course.” Jess squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry. All this is my fault.”

  “I thought you said you never apologized?” Giovanni managed a wry smile.

  Jess smiled back. “You’ve been very good to us, very nice to me.” She leaned closer. “You don’t deserve this, not at the…”

  “At the end?” Giovanni squeezed her hand back. “We don’t know what the future holds, Jess. And this isn’t your fault. It’s Enzo; he is the one causing this.”

  The mother, in her flip flops and bikini top, dragged the little boy, ice cream cup in hand, out the door past Jess.

  “…breaking news…” Jess glanced at Giovanni and turned up the radio’s volume. “…Islamic Caliphate forces from Iraq have taken the Golan Heights after flooding through Syria, and have now invaded Israel with fierce fighting in the West Bank. Egypt is amassing forces in the Sinai, saying that the Israeli occupation of Gaza…”

  “Scusi, signora,” said a gruff voice.

  The two security guards, in matching black suits and aviator sunglasses, stepped around the mother and her boy. Giovanni stood and fired off an excited question in Italian.

  “…the Israelis are now fighting a war on three fronts as the United States has withdrawn its representatives from last-minute peace negotiations. Israel is threatening use of nuclear…”

  “What’s happening?” Jess got up.

  “They found him.”

  One of the security guards held up his phone. On the screen
was an image of someone opening a door, trash bags in hand. Pork pie hat, mole on his left cheek. It was Enzo. “Si, all'indirizzo.”

  “He’s at the address Nico gave us,” confirmed Giovanni. “They’ve rented an apartment across the street we can do surveillance from.”

  “…Dr. Menzinger of the Swiss astronomical society is now saying that Nomad is not months away, but may be entering the inner solar system in under a week. NASA has refused to comment…”

  Giovanni reached down to turn the radio off.

  “Let’s go.” Jess stooped to grab the duffel bag, but one of the security men held up a hand and took it for her.

  She shrugged and followed them through the lengthening line of people outside the pizzeria. She checked her cell phone. Still no messages.

  By now her father should be at the castle.

  27

  SOUTHERN ALPS, SWITZERLAND

  PAST THE FORMED-metal guardrail, the hulking shoulders of snow-capped Alps stretched into the distance under a brilliant sky. The highway coiled down the slope behind them like a snake, clinging to the cliffs, sliding through the trees into the bottom of the valley where a lake glistened. Cool wind blew through Ben’s hair as he hung his head out of the passenger side window of the car, breathing deep the mountain air.

  It was a beautiful view.

  Or would be if they weren’t inching along.

  When he planned this, the route seemed simple: down the Rhine into Switzerland, cross the Alps, then down into Italy. Simple because there was only one road through central Switzerland and into Italy—through the Gotthard Pass.

  Simple.

  Unless the Gotthard Pass was jammed.

  Actually, there were two routes that paralleled each other. There was a surface road through the Gotthard Pass itself, but at nearly two miles in altitude, it was often impassible from snowfall. To create a year-round route from Zurich to Milan, the Swiss had constructed the Gotthard tunnel, the third longest in the world at over ten miles in length.