Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  Too bad for them.

  “Thank you for rescuing me,” Giovanni said as they plodded forward.

  Jess didn’t reply. She kept her head down and pushed the bike, keeping an eye on Hector. She didn’t want to start the bike, not yet. The whine of its engine would alert the men. Still too close. The sandy bottom near the shore gave way to thickening mud less than a hundred feet from shore. On each step, Jess had to pull her feet from the muck, and she felt her prosthetic almost coming away more than once.

  “Thank you, Jessica,” Giovanni repeated.

  They trudged past a mound of seaweed covered rocks, crabs scuttling away from them. The moon had already set. It would have been pitch black save for the ghostly light show above their heads. Coming over the ridge of a sand bar, a large fish flopped back and forth, its mouth opening and closing.

  Giovanni grunted and took three quick steps toward Jess. “What’s wrong? Are you mad at me?”

  Gritting her teeth, Jess shoved the bike forward, but Giovanni put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Jessica?”

  She turned to him. “When were you thinking of telling me?”

  Giovanni stared at her, pressing his swollen lips together, grimacing but saying nothing.

  “That our families are mortal enemies?” Jess snorted and turned away, pushing the bike up across a sand bank and sliding down the other side into a mess of mud and seaweed. “Didn’t you think that might have been an important detail?”

  It all made sense now. Why Giovanni acted strange when her mother first said her maiden name, and why he locked her and Jess up when Hector was kidnapped. Why didn’t he just say something?

  “I’m sorry.” Giovanni hurried behind Jess.

  “Sorry? You’re sorry?” She waved a hand at the luminescent sky. “It’s a little late for sorry, no?”

  “This thing, it consumed my father. I think it was how my mother was killed, when I was a child.” Giovanni did his best to run forward, to get in front of Jess. “But I wanted no part of it. It’s why I was always away, why I wasn’t here when my father died.”

  “Is this some kind of game to you?” Jess pushed past him, climbed onto the top of another sandbank. “Were you and I some kind of twisted part of it?”

  “No, no. I had no idea this feud was still going on, didn’t suspect until Hector was kidnapped. But even then, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to spoil—”

  A brilliant green ribbon of light flared through the sky, interrupting him, bathing them in radiance. As they watched, the ribbon wobbled and split into orange and blue, fluorescing the heavens with neon tendrils. Beside them, in a dark pool, fish tried to splash away. The twinkling lights in the houses of the village winked out. Jess glanced behind them, at the villa. The lights went out there as well.

  And someone yelled.

  Men stood on the terrace of the villa, three hundred yards away. One of them pointed at Jess and Giovanni, the others staring into the sky. Another man came out, holding what looked like a broom handle. He pointed it their way.

  A chunk of rock exploded next to them, followed by a sharp crack.

  Not a broom handle.

  The man reloaded his rifle.

  Turning, Jess raised the gun still in her right hand. She fired four, five times. The men scattered. Jess swung her right leg over the bike, jammed the muzzle of the gun into her pocket and reached to turn on the ignition.

  “Get on!” Jess kicked the starter down. The engine sputtered.

  Another bullet thudded into the sand at her feet. She kicked the starter down again as Giovanni deposited Hector on the seat behind her. He jumped on himself, grabbing tight to Jess’s waist, cradling Hector between them. The engine roared to life and Jess clicked it into gear, spraying up sand. Glancing back, she saw men sprinting onto the dock, not more than two hundred yards away. They jumped off the dock into the mud, running at them.

  Jess coasted across the sand, lit in orange and greens from the glowing skies, and looked for a way through the channel of water still separating them from the shore. The waters weren’t receding anymore; the churn of whitewater out of the bay had stopped. She gripped the throttle, pulled it all the way back, her fear of the men behind her eclipsed by the fear of what she felt was coming.

  Scanning the thick band of dark water, Jess saw no way through.

  She raced along the edge of it weaving past rocks, crab traps and piles of discarded fishing nets, and there, in the distance, by the breakwater of the fishing village, a path of dry ground. She’d need to backtrack a half mile, but there wasn’t any other way. Crouching low, feeling Giovanni’s fingers digging into her stomach, she gunned the throttle for everything it had.

  Behind them, the running men reached the channel of water. They saw what Jess was doing, realized they could cut her off by wading and swimming through the channel to run up the bank to the other side.

  Pulling up to the jetty beside the breakwater, Jess slowed to pick her way through the rocks, trying to keep her balance. More than once, Giovanni kept them upright, bouncing his legs beside the bike.

  They reached dry pavement as a deep reverberation shook the ground. Seagulls squawked, birds filling the dark skies above them. The roar came from the ocean, but Jess didn’t look back. She clicked the bike into its highest gear, held the throttle all the way back, and kept her head low.

  Speeding past the pickup truck that she’d been dragged here in, Jess glanced left, at the men from the villa scrambling up the rocks from the bay. They weren’t more than fifty feet away, but they didn’t stop to shoot at Jess and Giovanni.

  Jess saw the terror in their eyes, and she allowed herself to look behind them. An explosion of glowing foam, hundreds of feet high, burst around the villa, still nearly a mile away. A wall of black water surged behind it, towering above them.

  She reached the first turn in the road that zigzagged up the valley. Leaning into the turn, she gunned the throttle again. Racing up the hill, she watched one of the men jump into the pickup truck, squealing its tires as he reversed, the other men throwing themselves into the back. A rushing sheet of water slammed into the truck, picking it up, turning it end over end before disappearing in the roaring foam.

  Jess stopped looking. Keeping her eyes on the dark pavement rushing toward her, she ignored the rumbling behind her and raced over the hilltop.

  36

  TUSCANY, ITALY

  LOW HILLS AND farmland glowed under the walls of shimmering light towering high into the skies. Jess knew they were sheets of high energy particles, thrown off the sun in vast coronal ejections triggered by Nomad. Funneled by the Earth’s magnetic field, the high energy particles concentrated in sheets that impacted atoms high in the ionosphere, kicking off electrons and photons—exactly the same way that neon tubes glowed bright, except that these were shifting neon walls stretching a hundred miles into space.

  They sped through towns and villages. Here and there, a few people stood in the streets, some staring up, some packing cars, but it was mostly deserted. Jess hoped her father, Ben, was secure in the castle with her mother by now.

  Everything was dark. And not just lights out. No power.

  The high energy particles streamed all the way into the ground, raising the ground voltage, frying power grids. And at these intensities, it wasn’t just frying power grids, but even exposed electronics and bombarding the DNA of living cells of plants and animals.

  They had to get underground, as soon as possible.

  If the streaming lights in the night sky were frightening, even more frightening was the horizon they raced toward. Gaining color. Sunrise. Or rather, they rotated toward the sun. Toward Nomad rushing toward them. Every fiber in Jess’s body wanted to turn around, to run. But run where? Back into the raging waters? She knew they needed to head east, toward the glowing horizon and the safety of the castle.

  But they also raced toward Nomad.

  Giovanni tapped Jess’s arm from time to time, yelling to turn left or rig
ht as they wound through the roads. After escaping the bay, the huge wave that crashed in had receded. It was just the first. Jess was sure more were on the way.

  Every turn, she thought they’d finally reached Saline valley and could climb up and escape into the hills. Each time Giovanni pointed her forward, told her to keep going. Jess tried not to allow herself to think, forced her mind into the now, on the next stretch of pavement, and the next after that. No time for fear, not now.

  Her arms burned, her back ached.

  And always, she felt the small package of Hector, sandwiched between her and Giovanni.

  “This is it!” Giovanni yelled. He pointed up a gravel road.

  To Jess it looked like any of a hundred others they passed, but she veered off the road, started to climb, eager to get some altitude. Up through olive groves, Jess recognized a wooden shed. Two more switchbacks and they cleared the trees, the walls of Ruspoli Castle appearing over lines of vines. She skidded to a stop by the wooden door next to the main portico gate. Everything looked locked down with gates barred and windows shuttered, no lights on anywhere.

  Giovanni picked Hector up from between them, and Jess felt them getting off the back. Panting, she dropped the bike to one side. Her hands shook. Then her legs. Was it the effect of gripping the bike for so long? Jess’s vision seemed to wobble, the world shook around her. She turned to Giovanni. Was she having an attack of some kind?

  “Get down!” Giovanni yelled, pulling at her, crouching. “Earthquake!”

  Her legs buckled and Jess tumbled to a ground that seemed to slide from side to side, hammering up and down. She’d never experienced an earthquake before, and she dug her fingers into the rattling earth and gritted her teeth. Debris and rocks scattered from the ancient walls of the castle, showering them in dust, and she put an arm around Giovanni, coming together with him to shield Hector between them.

  The shaking subsided.

  But Jess didn’t stop shaking. It felt like the Earth wanted to swallow them, eat them whole. The fear she’d been pushing away broke through and she curled into a ball in the dirt, trembling.

  Giovanni got to one knee, then forced himself to stand, his battered face covered in dirt and dust. “Come on, it’s okay. It stopped.” He offered her a hand, and she took it and stood unsteadily.

  Squeezing her hand, Giovanni let go and hobbled to the wall of the castle, kneeling in the semi-darkness. Jess dusted herself off, rubbed her shaking hands together and looked at the horizon. Streaming lines of fire danced from the dark skies behind her to the brightening spot where the sun would rise, just over the horizon. Nomad had to be halfway from the Sun to the Earth, tearing off the Sun’s corona, a stellar-mass rag doll being shredded before her eyes.

  She forced herself to look up from the horizon. Nomad should be right there, but she saw nothing.

  “Jess!” Giovanni yelled. He opened the wooden side door in the castle wall, Hector at his side. “Inside! Now!”

  Nodding, she tore her eyes from the horizon and limped to the door. They stepped inside and slammed it shut. Panting, they closed the latch. Together they turned around.

  Nico stood in the middle of the gravel courtyard, pointing a gun at them.

  Jess’s mother appeared from a doorway behind Nico. “Oh, my God,” she cried, running across the courtyard to scoop Jess into her arms.

  Staggering back, Jess put her arms around her mother.

  Celeste squeezed Jess, then let go, stepping back to inspect her. “Are you—”

  “I’m okay. We’re okay.”

  “We’ve been listening to the short wave radio,” Celeste said breathlessly. “India and China have been devastated by tsunamis, a massive earthquake destroyed Japan, and Yellowstone is erupting, it's…” She glanced at Giovanni, at his beaten face, one eye almost swollen shut. She looked down, at Hector. “Oh, thank God.”

  “Yes, thank God,” echoed Nico from behind Celeste. He slowly lowered his gun. “What happened with Enzo?”

  “He’s right behind us,” Jess lied, keeping an eye on Nico.

  Nico’s arm relaxed, the gun swinging down to his side. Jess took a step forward, opening her arms to hug him. Nico glanced at Celeste, now wrapping her arms around Hector, and opened his arms to Jess.

  But she didn’t hug him.

  She grabbed the hand that held the gun and tried to wrestle it from him, but he reacted too quickly. He pushed her back and raised the gun again, and Jess pulled hers from her front pocket.

  “Giovanni!” Jess yelled. “Get Hector away.”

  “Jess, what are you doing?” Celeste shrieked.

  “And get my mother out of here, too.” Jess kept her eyes on Nico.

  They stood feet apart, pointing their guns at each other’s heads. Scrambling on the gravel behind her, she saw Nico’s eyes dart to her right.

  “No, no, no,” Jess growled, shoving her gun closer to Nico’s head. “Eyes on me.”

  Bewildered, Nico took two steps back, alarm opening his eyes and mouth.

  “Get out,” Jess commanded. “Enzo isn’t coming. I killed him, and his men.” She took three steps toward Nico. “And I’ll kill you too.”

  The ground shook, a low rumble shaking the walls of the castle, a cascade of dust and pebbles showering onto the courtyard around them.

  The look on Nico’s face shifted, a storm of anger and frustration bringing his brows together. “You don’t know what you’re doing. His family, the Ruspolis, they killed our family,” he growled, his voice low and menacing. He shoved his gun at Jess. “Your family.”

  “One more word, and I’ll put a bullet in your head,” Jess said in a flat voice, advancing toward him. “What’s one more dead in all this?”

  He snarled, but scrambled back, toward the door in the wall. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he repeated.

  Jess stood her ground, her arm steady, her gun pointed at Nico’s head. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Nico turned, unlatched the lock and opened the door.

  “No,” he said, pausing to look Jess in the eye. “No, you do not.” He stepped through the door.

  Jumping forward, Jess slammed her shoulder into the door and twisted the latch closed.

  “Giovanni!” she yelled. “Go and check the other entrances. Make sure we’re locked down.” Her hand with the gun shook, the adrenaline flooding her bloodstream finally getting the better of her.

  Giovanni nodded and scrambled off, limping, toward the stairs that led into the main building. Celeste held Hector, both of them crouching beside a large terracotta urn flowering with azaleas.

  “It was Nico,” Jess explained, seeing the look of utter confusion on her mother’s face. “It was always Nico. I talked to Enzo. He said he was the one that emailed you on Facebook, but he lied when I said we exchanged mail. He barely understood what Facebook was. And Leone, when we arrived, said Nico and I looked like brother and sister, don’t you remember? And the security guards? Nico told us to take them. He hired them. He was behind it all.”

  Celeste looked wide-eyed at Jess, still not understanding.

  “There’s some kind of blood feud between Giovanni's and Nico’s families.” Jess pointed at her own chest. “Our family. Nico is our family. The Tosettis. That’s why he emailed you on Facebook. He wanted to get us here.”

  The ground rumbled again, a distant thunder echoing beyond the walls.

  “I’ll explain more later.” Jess looked up. A black cloud billowed high, obscuring the bending and patterning tendrils of light in the brightening sky. “We need to get underground.” She took a deep breath, gulping in air. “Where’s Dad? Did he get here?”

  Celeste shook her head. “He never arrived.”

  Jess sobbed, bringing one hand to her mouth. What happened to him? She had so much she wanted to say, but it was too late now. She held back her tears.

  “JESSICA!”

  It was Nico’s voice, yelling over the top of the walls.

  She ignored it. “Com
e on, let’s get into the caves.”

  “JESSICA!” screamed Nico again. “Your father wants to speak with you.”

  Halfway across the courtyard, Jess froze, her face tingling. She turned to Celeste. “You never saw Dad?”

  Celeste shook her head. “No.”

  “You take Hector into the basement. I need to check.” Jess turned, sprinted to a stone staircase leading to the top of the portico gates, hopped up them as quickly as she could.

  Reaching the top, the rising sun momentarily blinded her. She shielded her eyes. White tendrils snaked out of the sun, fiery spider legs spreading into the sky, enveloping the Earth.

  A thudding detonation startled her and she glanced to her right. Red flame gorged from the top of Monterufoli volcano. Lightning crackled through thick black clouds billowing from its cauldron. The ground rumbled. Past Monterufoli, the plains stretched into the distance—to the Mediterranean—but in the brightening twilight, the water wasn’t on the horizon as it usually was. An undulating sheet of liquid had swallowed the entire plain and was churning into the foothills below.

  “Quite the family reunion, no?” Nico stood in the gravel driveway, standing behind her father with his arm around Ben’s neck, a gun pointed at his head.

  Jess squinted to see in the dim light.

  “I’m sorry,” Ben croaked, his voice hoarse. “This is my fault—”

  “Shhhh,” Nico hissed, tightening his grip around Ben’s neck, choking off his words. “We can have touching words later. A trade. The Baron for your father, and I will leave.”

  Jess closed her eyes. “This is insane.” She gripped the gun. A tremor shook the castle walls, the sky blistering in yellows and reds.

  “Throw the gun down,” Nico commanded. “And get the Baron out here. Then you can have your father.”

  “I’ll go,” said a voice behind Jess. Giovanni put an arm around her.