Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  Problem was, a vehicle fire closed the tunnel, at least that was what Roger found out when they stopped at a service station. It was what caused the massive traffic jams. Instead of waiting for the tunnel—a modern highway that cut through and under the heart of the Alps—to be cleared, they opted instead to take the surface road high into the mountains.

  That might have been a mistake.

  This small mountain road was never designed to handle this kind of traffic. If the tunnel were open, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Busy, but not a problem. With this volume of people trying to get into the mountains at once, it was like a hundred-mile-long parking lot.

  “What’s our distance from Basel now?”

  Roger exhaled loudly. “One hundred and eighty-two klicks.”

  A hundred and eighty two kilometers in twenty-seven hours. That was how long they’d been stuck in traffic. Ben did a quick mental calculation. Just over four miles per hour. A fast walk. They could have walked here.

  Twenty-seven hours.

  When the angel Gabriel, at the Pearly Gates, asked Ben what he did with the last hours of his life, he might be answering: I was stuck in traffic. He checked the clock again.

  Forty-four hours to Nomad.

  He looked into the sky. Serene. So blue it seemed to go on forever.

  Ben leaned forward to get his laptop out of his bag by his right foot. Something he didn’t recognize was in there, so he pulled it out.

  “Hey, that’s my cellphone,” Roger said, grabbing it from Ben. “I have two of them,” he explained, “that’s my international.”

  Ben glanced down. He’d looked in the wrong bag. His was by his left foot.

  “Sorry. Want me to put it back in?” Not that a cellphone was doing them any good. Ben looked at the device now in Roger’s hand. It didn’t look like any cellphone he’d ever seen. It was fat, at least two inches thick. He tried to take it from Roger, but Roger leaned over to put it back himself.

  Ben caught a flash of an image on the cover of the cellphone as it disappeared back into Roger’s bag. A yin-yang symbol inside a white octagon. Where had he seen that before?

  “What’s with the yin-yang?” Ben asked.

  Roger sat upright and rubbed the back of his neck. “Where?”

  “On that cellphone thing. A white symbol inside an octagon.”

  Roger snorted. “Nothing. Just trying to be cool. You know, Chinese symbols.”

  Ben frowned but let it go. “How’s the gas situation?” he asked.

  “Holding steady at a third.”

  The truck ahead of them advanced a few feet and stopped. Roger inched the car forward, then clicked the engine off. They had to conserve fuel.

  Right after leaving Darmstadt, Ben had stopped to fill up their stolen BMW 3-series diesel. Roger checked online: this car had a range of 1200 kilometers on a full 60-liter tank. Ben constantly had to do the math in his head—3.8 liters to a gallon, 1.6 kilometers to a mile—even as a scientist working in metric when measuring the cosmos, he wasn’t used to using it for day-to-day things like driving. Rome was less than 1100 kilometers drive; the castle less than 900. Easily within the range of this car with a full tank of gas.

  If it wasn’t idling for hours on end.

  But, it seemed to use less than a half a liter of diesel for every hour of idling, as best as they could calculate. And they had hours to calculate and analyze. As they progressed up into the mountains, the shoulder became littered with less efficient cars that ran out of fuel. Stranded motorists begged for rides. The service stations they passed had lines that stretched back for miles. Good thing the drivers were Swiss and German, and not American. Good thing people here didn’t have guns in their cars.

  Roger flicked his chin ahead, at the staircase of winding pavement that zigzagged up the mountainside. “We just need to get over that next ridge, and we’ll be on our way down.”

  “Finally,” Ben grumbled. He’d had to resist the urge to get out of the car and walk more than once.

  “…best estimate of Nomad’s position is ten billion kilometers, and already affecting Earth’s orbit…” They had the radio tuned to the only English news station they could find, BBC Europe. “Scientists are predicting a sharp drop in global temperatures after Nomad passes…”

  “It’s been a day already,” said Roger. “Dr. Müller has the data we gave him. They have to know Nomad is less than two days away. Why haven’t they announced anything?”

  Ben stared at the mountains. “Why do you think?” Thinking of Dr. Müller sparked an image in his mind. The yin-yang symbol. Dr. Müller’s signet ring had exactly the same image on it, Ben was sure of it.

  “…last minute negotiations to avert full-scale war in the Middle East, the Americans have asked both sides to come back to negotiations…”

  The truck pulled forward another few feet. “I just don’t see how it was possible that we missed seeing Nomad until now,” Roger muttered.

  “Ever heard of Trajan’s column?” Ben took a long look at Roger.

  Roger inched the car forward. “No.”

  “It’s a monument in the middle of Rome. It’s been on display for everyone to see for the past two thousand years, maybe one of the most analyzed artifacts in the history of mankind. For hundreds of years, scholars have been studying it and writing papers about it. On its surface is a visual history of the Roman legions.”

  Roger pulled them forward another ten feet, put on the parking brake and frowned at Ben. “What does that have to do with Nomad?”

  “Because, last year, for the first time, they noticed that there were women engraved on Trajan’s column. For hundreds of years, scholars had said that only men appeared on the column, because Roman legionaries weren’t allowed to be married.”

  Roger shook his head. “Still don’t see where you’re going…”

  “People only see what they want to see, that’s my point.” He nodded toward the back seat, at his backpack. “Or someone wanted it to be invisible.”

  “A conspiracy? Hiding something this big?” Roger stared at Ben.

  Ben’s head snapped forward, his laptop slamming into the dashboard, the crunching roar of grinding metal filling the air. Dazed, he looked up. The truck in front had slid backward into them, impacting their car and rolling up the metal of the hood. Cursing, Roger slammed the car into park.

  Ben threw off his seatbelt and jumped out of the passenger side, dropping his laptop into the seat. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he yelled at the truck.

  No reply.

  He was about to walk around the front of the truck when he heard on the radio:“…new report just breaking…”

  “Roger, can you turn that up?”

  Roger nodded and leaned forward, twisting the dial on the radio. The car’s engine whined.

  “Dr. Menzinger of the Swiss astronomical society is now saying that Nomad is not months away, but is already inside the solar system and will be passing the Earth in two days. NASA and the European Space Agency have refused to comment…”

  “Jesus Christ.” Ben raked one hand through his hair. For the past day, he’d been holding his breath, waiting for this news to drop. Now it was out. He had hoped to be at the castle in Italy now. They had to get moving, now. He took a step forward, slapping the truck’s siding, leaning to look into the truck’s cabin. “Hey, can you move forward?”

  Ben and Roger weren’t the only ones that heard the news. All around them, horns started beeping, engines revving.

  “Hey!” Ben yelled, taking another step. “Can you move the goddamn—”

  The truck slid back another two feet, crushing the hood of the car. Another car had jammed into the side of it and was trying to push through between them.

  Roger was still sitting in the driver’s seat, his seatbelt strapped on.

  Ben slammed on the side of the truck again. “HEY!” he screamed.

  The car trying to squeeze past the truck gunned its engine and rammed forward, and at
this impact, the truck slid back again, but this time not just two feet. It released completely, slamming into their car, pushing it sideways into the metal guardrail behind them. Ben glanced back just in time to see Roger’s terrified eyes as the car plummeted over the edge.

  28

  VACA, ITALY

  “THAT’S HIM,” JESS whispered.

  The setting sun cast long shadows down the street, but the man opening the gate across the street was definitely Enzo. Looking left and right, he walked thirty feet to the street corner and dropped a black plastic bag. Scanning the street again, he wiped his hand and returned to the gate to go back inside the house. It was a single-story bungalow, with terracotta roof tiles and white stucco walls, surrounded by a well-maintained six-foot hedge that made it impossible to look into the yard from street level.

  Jess and Giovanni watched from a second-story perch across the street. They lay on a bed mattress dragged out onto the concrete balcony of the small apartment, lying flat, spying through the two-inch-high drain-gap in the bottom of the balcony wall.

  After locating Enzo, Giovanni’s security guards had somehow rented the apartment across the street. It was empty except for a couch and coffee table and the stripped-down bed they dragged onto the balcony. The mattress was surprisingly clean, looked and smelled new.

  Jess was impressed.

  Giovanni’s security guys were definitely professionals, in just a few hours establishing a complete surveillance operation. Driving the ten blocks from the waterfront to the back of this apartment, the men had dropped off Jess and Giovanni, then took up their positions on the ground floor and rear of Enzo’s house.

  “Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo,” Giovanni swore under his breath, staring at Enzo going back in the house.

  Jess grabbed Giovanni’s shoulder, restrained him from getting up. “We need to find out if Hector is inside,” she whispered. “And we need to find out who else is in there.”

  Still holding Giovanni’s shoulder, she glanced back at the house through the drain gap. A garden surrounded the bungalow on three sides, with just the front and side doors as entrances and exits. Beige covering obscured all the windows, something like drapes or sashes but more solid and blacked out. Light still bled out from the edges of the windows. Jess counted the four windows on this side, and from scouting the house knew there were two more in the back. There were maybe two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. Lying with her face flat to the floor, the scent of a flowering chamomile bush in the gardens below managed to overpower the smell of damp concrete and sunbaked skin.

  “How do we find out?” Giovanni growled. “We don’t have time.”

  Jess pushed Giovanni back to the mattress more firmly. “We don’t even know if Enzo has Hector. Maybe he just came home to see his family.”

  Her stomach lurched. She should be with her family. She hoped her father was at the castle by now. They’d called Nico to say they’d located Enzo, but as of two hours ago, Jess’s father still hadn’t shown up.

  The castle was just an hour away, Jess told herself. Just around the corner. She could leave at any time and get back there. And having something to do—a purpose, a mission—felt good, like she was doing something useful, something important.

  “Maybe we should just go and knock on the door.” Giovanni held up his Beretta handgun. “We ask nicely.”

  It was a good thing she had come along. Jess shook her head. “No, your guys are right. We’ve found Enzo, now we need to gather more information and form a plan. Patience.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled softly. “Hai visto?"

  “Si, si,” Giovanni answered.

  “Tell them to hold their positions, only contact us if someone leaves the house.” Jess adjusted herself on the mattress to get a better look. Across the street, the side door of the house opened, spilling light into the garden. She nudged Giovanni’s shoulder. “Look…”

  Enzo came out of the door, holding something in his hands. Another man followed him, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The sun was down now, twilight softening into darkness. A third man came out of the door, hunched over, talking to someone. He straightened up. And there he was, walking beside the third man.

  Hector.

  “Che palle,” Giovanni muttered, his knuckles going white as he balled his hands into fists, but he didn’t get up.

  Enzo dropped what he had in his hands. A soccer ball. He kicked it to Hector, who ran forward and kicked it back. The other two men, their rifles slung across their backs, joined in the game.

  “At least they’re treating him well,” Jess said softly.

  She was almost shocked when Hector appeared through the doorway. A part of her didn’t really believe that Enzo had kidnapped Hector, or that it was even Enzo in Rome who attacked her. It seemed too far-fetched, too much of a coincidence. She squinted, tried to make out the faces of the other men. Were they the ones from Rome? She didn’t recognize them.

  Giovanni gripped his Beretta. “I say we just go now.”

  “No, we wait.” Jess watched soccer game across the street. “Those aren’t the guys that attacked me, so maybe they’re inside. We wait to see who else comes out, goes in. We wait for the light to go out, and then we go in.”

  “We wait?” Giovanni growled. “Time is one thing we don’t have a lot of.”

  Jess checked her watch. “We’ve got time.”

  Across the street, Enzo knelt and picked up the soccer ball. He said something to Hector, then to the two men. They nodded, and one of them collected the soccer ball. They all walked back inside. A few seconds later a light clicked on in the room all the way to the right. It clicked off a minute later.

  “I’d bet that’s the room they’re keeping Hector in,” Jess observed.

  Giovanni nodded. “How long do we wait?”

  “Let’s wait until after midnight. We can watch until then, see who goes in or out. We’re only an hour from the castle. Let’s get this done right, and we can be back home and safe.”

  “And how long do we have?”

  He meant until her father’s estimate of when Nomad would arrive.

  “Thirty hours until things start to get weird.”

  “Thirty hours? That’s what your father said?”

  Jess nodded.

  NASA and ESOC still maintained Nomad was more than a week away, but conflicting estimates flooded the news channels. Dr. Menzinger and several amateur astronomers predicted Nomad was just two days away, as her father had said. There was still some room for uncertainty, and maybe this explained NASA’s position, but Jess suspected worse. There wasn’t enough time to do anything, not enough time to evacuate cities. No way to evacuate an entire planet.

  And Jess trusted her father. “My dad’s best guess is that Nomad will pass eighty million kilometers from Earth.”

  “Best guess?” Giovanni raised his eyebrows.

  Jess nodded slowly. “That’s as good a guess as we’re going to get. Might be closer. If it gets as close as twenty million kilometers, the gravity of Nomad will overcome the pull of Earth’s own gravity for anything on the surface, literally levitating anything not tied down, dragging it into space. At that distance, it’ll pop the Earth’s crust and turn the surface into a sea of molten rock.”

  Giovanni’s face contorted as if he bit into lemon. “And at eighty million?”

  Jess rubbed a hand across her face, calculating in her head. Tricks for performing quick mental arithmetic had been a game her father played with her as a teenager. “We’ll experience a brief tug upward a tenth of Earth’s gravity. It’ll generate tidal forces almost two hundred times the moon’s, with coastal tsunamis hundreds or even thousands of feet high.”

  “And the Earth’s crust? What about earthquakes, volcanos?”

  “Very difficult to predict. My dad did say we’ll probably get huge solar flares on its closest approach to the sun—about five hours before reaching the Earth. It’ll bathe the Earth in a shower of high-energy pa
rticles in the middle of the night. Light up the sky like a neon tube.”

  If her father was right, these auroras would be the warning.

  “In thirty hours the sky should light up. Then we’ll know for sure.” Jess glanced into the darkening sky. No shimmering light, not yet. “That should give us a four or five hour warning, more than enough time to get to the castle.”

  Giovanni looked up and took a deep breath. “Thirty hours until the end.”

  Jess felt him relax.

  She stared at the house across the street, imagining how she would get in—her and Giovanni in the front, the two security men from the back, then quickly cover the side entrance. It would be over in a few seconds.

  A couple walked slowly by in the street in front of the house, hand in hand.

  Jess watched them pass in silence. She took a deep breath and exhaled long and slow. “People seem so calm.” The seaside town was mostly deserted, people having headed inland or into the mountains, but some had remained.

  Jess turned to Giovanni. “In some places they’re burning down cities before Nomad even gets here.”

  Giovanni nodded, his eyes fixed on the house across the street. “To exist is literally amazing—but that same wonder is also burdened with a finite end. There is a self-deception in denying the dark underside of existence, that the question, ‘Why am I here?’ is answered with resounding emptiness.”

  Jess would usually roll her eyes at something like this, but now she nodded.

  “In most of the world,” Giovanni continued, “even talking about death is unseemly; they only view the value of something based on its ability to enhance happiness or enjoyment. Just discussing death is viewed in bad taste, as if we’re immortal. So when the end comes suddenly, it’s no surprise that some people are running around tearing their hair out. But death is the only thing certain in life.”

  Jess frowned. “That’s morbid.”

  “See what I mean?” The edges of Giovanni’s mouth curled in the saddest of smiles. “Most of the time this is a philosophical question, but now…”