Nomad

by Matthew Mather

  “I’m so happy.” Ben kissed Celeste back. A happiness he hadn’t felt in years. Here, at the end of times, buried alive, his love burned bright.

  Jess came around the corner from the other room. The cavern walls shook.

  “Come sit with us.” Celeste held one hand out to her daughter.

  Standing and stopping for a moment to admire her parents sitting together, Jess took her mother’s offered hand and squeezed in between them.

  Ben kissed his daughter’s head. “I thought I’d never see you again. My God, you’re crazy, you know that? You should have just left me.”

  “I couldn’t do that.” Jess craned her head sideway and kissed her father’s cheek. “Neither could Giovanni.” She felt her mother putting both of her arms around her, squeezing her tight.

  Closing his eyes, Ben shook his head. “He’s a good man, Giovanni.” He put his hand on Jess’s chin and pulled her face to look him in the eye. “He’s a good man. We’re lucky to have him.” He chewed his lip. “And Leone, Lucca, Raffael…these are good people.” He looked away, his voice trailing off.

  “I can believe it took this to get us together.” Ben’s face creased up, his eyebrows high. “How on Earth did you convince Celeste to come to Italy?”

  Jess hadn’t ever mentioned it to him. “It was a Facebook message sent to Mom, from a someone who said they were family and wanted to meet us.”

  “And did you talk to them?”

  Jess shook her head. “No, they never responded after we got here. It must have been Nico, trying to drag us into the middle of this insane blood feud.”

  “How did he…” Ben didn’t finish his sentence, but looked at the ceiling. “But thank God.”

  “Nico denied it,” Jess said. “Even when it made no difference, he still denied he sent any messages. He said it was God.”

  “The man was deluded,” Celeste said.

  Jess took a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess so.” But she understood Nico. His wife and daughter—he had something precious beyond comprehension stolen from him. In the final moment, she understood. She forgave him. But why would he lie about sending the Facebook message? At the end, she saw rage and pain in his eyes, but no deception.

  Ben took off his eyeglasses and wiped his face with one hand. “Speaking of Nico, he’s really gone?” He put his glasses back on and looked Jess in the eye. “Did you kill him?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Jess said, her voice quiet and flat. “I almost did, but I let him go. He tried to escape on a cable car that connects to the other hilltop. He fell into the valley. Into the…” She wasn’t even sure how to describe what was out there.

  “Good,” Ben whispered. “Good.” He looked at his hands and clasped them together.

  Jess wasn’t sure if he meant that Nico was dead, or that she wasn’t the one that killed him.

  “What’s happening, the world will be changed forever,” Ben said after a pause. “I need you to promise me something.” He looked at Jess again.

  “What?” Jess took his hands in hers. “Anything. What do you need?”

  “I want you to promise me that you’ll never give up, that you’ll always struggle to survive, no matter what.”

  An ear-splitting detonation shook the cavern. The lights flickered, dust spilling onto them from the cavern walls. Jess held her breath. The shaking subsided. “Why are you saying it like that?” she asked her father. “Of course, we’ll be together.”

  “I need you to live, to want to live. For us. For Billy. For Giovanni and Hector.” Ben took Jess’s and Celeste’s hands in his and squeezed hard. He looked her in the eye. “Promise me.”

  Jess stared into his eyes. “I promise.”

  His grip eased, but just a little. “And don’t lose your humanity. Never give up, but not at the expenses of sacrificing your humanity.”

  Jess stared deep into his eyes. She hadn’t told me about the Aberto, the boy she killed at the villa, or Enzo. One thing at a time, and now definitely wasn’t the time. “I promise.”

  Ben smiled. “Good.”

  He let go of her hands, and put then down to push away from Jess and Celeste. He sat cross-legged in front of them. “What they said about me. That research paper, the one they said I hid—”

  “I know you didn’t,” Jess said. “Why would you?”

  “But somebody leaked that,” Ben said grimly. It was a short list of suspects. But why? “As soon as this is over, we need to try and get in touch with a man called Ufuk Erdogmus. Use the shortwave, try and track him down.”

  Jess frowned. “You mean the famous entrepreneur? The Mars First mission guy? You knew him?”

  “Not really. I mean, a little. He was at the hotel in Rome when Dr. Muller discussed Nomad. And he was in ESOC, at Darmstadt. He said he needed to talk with me, no matter what, but I left to come here.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He said something about sanctuary. Maybe he has a bunker? If anyone could survive this, he’d be the one to do it.”

  “We’ll do it together.”

  “Yes.” Ben pressed his hands against the rock floor. “But just in case, remember that name.”

  It wasn’t a difficult name to remember. Erdogmus was famous. “Okay,” Jess replied.

  Ben looked left and right. “I have a question.”

  “What?”

  “When you were with Roger, back in New York…”

  Jess looked away and exhaled. “I was going to tell you about that.”

  “No, no, that doesn’t matter.” Ben inched closer to his daughter. “Was Roger…ah, how do I put this…was he religious? I mean, not Catholic, but Taoist? Did he have yin-yang symbols on stuff, maybe tattoos?”

  The question took Jess completely off guard. “Huh?”

  “Like a special cellphone, I saw a yin-yang symbol on it. Not a sticker, but engraved. Ring any bells?”

  Shaking her head, Jess shrugged. “No. I mean, no, he wasn’t the least bit spiritual.”

  Ben held her gaze for a long moment. “Okay.”

  “What’s this about?” Jess asked.

  “I’m not sure…” Ben looked up, over her shoulder. “Speak of the devil.”

  Jess swiveled her head around. Roger walked toward them, coming from the other cavern. He glanced at them, but avoided looking at Jess.

  “Roger,” Ben called out, “why don’t you come and sit with us?” He pushed down with both hands and got to his feet.

  “I think I’m going to check on Giovanni.” Jess got to her feet as well. She flashed a tight-lipped smile at Roger and walked past him.

  Ben watched his daughter walk away while Roger tried not to watch her go. Even entombed in the heart of a mountain, the world around them disintegrating, jealousy and pride reared their ugly heads.

  “Lucca and Raffael finished assembling the table,” Ben said to Roger. He strode over and clicked on a butane kettle he’d filled a few minutes earlier. “How about a cup of tea?”

  Nodding grimly, Roger picked his way through the bags and boxes. “Tea? Like we’re in a London tube station during the Blitz.”

  On cue, the ceiling trembled again, a distant roar echoing.

  Ben nodded. “And we’re lucky to be here. This place is a goddamn fortress, dug into the granite heart of a mountain a thousand feet above sea level. Could withstand a nuclear strike.”

  “I think it just about is.”

  The walls shook, glasses inside the crates rattling.

  Ben, Celeste, and Roger sat together at the table. To Ben, it felt like they were kids, hiding in a fort, the fear and terror subdued by the joy of being together with Jess and Celeste. Only hours ago, all had seemed lost—he never thought they’d survive this long, never imagined he’d be reunited with his family. Now there was a chance, one he hadn’t allowed himself to even consider. Despite the eruptions, the massive earthquakes, and the flooding oceans, the Earth hadn’t opened up and swallowed them. Not yet.

  The kettle pinged and turned it
self off.

  “This is the worst of it.” Ben poured hot water from the kettle to plastic cups, then dropped tea bags into them. He looked at his watch. “We’re past Nomad’s closest approach.” He put the kettle down and looked at Roger. “Do you feel lighter?”

  “What?” Roger’s face contorted in a scowl.

  “Lighter. Do you feel lighter?”

  “How do mean, lighter?”

  The edges of Ben’s mouth quivered into the barest of smiles. “Judging by the way the oceans flooded, from what Celeste heard on the short wave radio, and the last data I saw from NASA on my laptop on the drive here—I’d put Nomad at seventy million kilometers away. Should be exerting…" Ben paused, closed his eyes and tapped the table top. “…about a tenth of Earth's gravity, straight up. If we had a scale, you’d be ten percent lighter right now. Incredible, isn’t it?”

  Roger exhaled and rolled his eyes. “Trust you to be fascinated by this.” He picked up his cup of tea and tested it.

  “A piece of creation is flying over our heads right now, a left over fragment of the primordial universe.” Ben looked up, his jaw flexing. “It’s hard not to be awed.”

  Celeste took a sip of her tea. “I wish it would go away.”

  Ben took her hand and squeezed. “And it will. That’s the amazing part. As fast as Nomad arrived, is just as quick as it will leave. In a few hours, it’ll stop bending the Earth’s crust and will release our oceans.” He stared into Celeste’s eyes. “We’re going to survive.”

  Roger snorted and slammed the plastic tea cup down. “For what? A few days until we freeze to death? I think the lucky ones are the ones already dead.” He hung his head, winced and held his bloody left shoulder. “Nomad is going to toss the Earth into deep space like a child’s toy. Two days from now it will be as cold as the arctic here, and a few days after that, colder than Mars.”

  Roger took a sip from the tea cup. “Global warming? All that carbon dioxide we’ve been worrying about?” He lifted his head and laughed. “It’ll be the first to liquefy at minus fifty-seven Celsius, and at minus eighty you’ll see carbon dioxide frost cover the ground. A few weeks from now the atmosphere itself will start to solidify, first oxygen at minus one-eighty, then nitrogen at minus two hundred. We’ll be a frozen chunk of ice, wandering through interstellar space. How long do you think burning those barrels will keep you alive?”

  Ben stared at Roger in stony silence. The ceiling shuddered, sending down a shower of dust. “You’re probably right. Nomad is dragging us along behind it like a dog on a leash, but it’s also dragging the sun. Did you see the last of the simulations?”

  He meant gravity simulations of the solar system. Ben and Roger ran them continuously on their laptops on the long journey in the car over the Alps.

  “Of course I saw. I was the one running them.” Roger put his tea down, mashing his lips together as if he tasted something disgusting. “By now, Mercury and Venus have been ejected away from the sun by gravitational slingshot, and Saturn pulled into a retrograde orbit, and the Earth, well…”

  “Exactly, it was right on the cusp. We don’t know the exact trajectory of Nomad. It all depends on the geometry.”

  Roger shook his head. “And right now, we could be headed straight into the Sun.”

  “At least we wouldn’t freeze.” Ben grimaced. A bad time for jokes. “But that’s not possible. We know the trajectory of Nomad down to one degree of resolution, and none of the solutions near that throw the Earth into the sun.”

  This didn’t have the effect of cheering anyone up.

  Ben took another sip of his tea and put the cup down. He squeezed Celeste’s hand, stared into her eyes, then looked back at Roger. “We need to go outside. Right now.”

  Roger looked Ben in the eye. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “What?” Celeste pulled her hand out of Ben’s. “Why?”

  “To get my backpack. I left it in that half-basement, outside the walls, when Nico kidnapped us.”

  Celeste pulled Ben to face her. “What on Earth could be so important?”

  “The long axis coordinates of Nomad appearing thirty years ago. That bag has my old data, maybe the only data that still exists that could pinpoint the exact trajectory.”

  “What about all the satellites? The government agencies?”

  “When Nomad finally appeared from behind the sun, we were bombarded by a massive solar flares. Hopefully my laptop was deep enough in that basement not to get fried by the radiation, but there’s no way any satellites survived that. They had an hour or two at most to get a direct view of Nomad when it came from behind the sun, and even then, it’d still be invisible. And who the hell would be sitting at a desk to monitor all this during Armageddon?”

  “He’s right.” Roger balled both of his hands into fists. “Even if they did pinpoint it in space, that would be only one point. They’d need a long axis to determine the trajectory.”

  Celeste looked back and forth at Ben and Roger. “And why would that be important, for God’s sake? It’ll be gone in a few hours. That’s what you said.”

  “Because,” Ben said slowly, “if we know the exact trajectory, we can use modeling software to predict where the thousands of large and small asteroids and debris will be kicked out.”

  “And if they might hit Earth.” Roger added.

  “Exactly.”

  “Assuming the planet doesn’t fall into the sun or freeze solid.” Roger took a deep breath. “I’ll go.” He glanced at the opening in the cave wall, to where Jess was. He sighed. “There’s nothing for me here, anyway.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Ben squeezed Celeste’s hand. “You don’t know exactly where I put it. And two of us will be safer than one.”

  Roger stared at Ben. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Ben returned his gaze. “Tell me on the way. The longer we wait, the more chance that it’ll get destroyed.”

  “Can’t it wait?” Celeste begged, holding his hand tight.

  Ben shook his head. “This is important. We’ve got to get it.”

  Roger got up from the table. “Let’s go.”

  Celeste stared into Ben’s eyes for a long moment. “Be careful.”

  “I will.” Ben stood, then leaned down to kiss his wife. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He stared at her. “Promise me you’ll stay here.”

  Celeste nodded.

  “Don’t tell Jess,” Ben added. “She’ll try to stop us.”

  The tiniest of smiles tugged at the corners of Celeste’s mouth. “She’d just go herself.”

  “Yes,” Ben laughed. “Yes, she would.”

  Clapping Roger on the shoulder, Ben strode through the boxes, taking a turn into the left-hand tunnel, the one leading up into the main castle. Roger followed.

  Celeste watched them go. Crunching thuds shook the ceiling and walls. Her hands shaking, Celeste took another sip of her tea and put the cup down. She stood, turning to grab a thin coat, and ran down the length of the cave, following Ben.

  Leone came into the cave just in time to see her disappear up the stone staircase.

  “Where are my parents?” Jess asked, walking in behind Leone.

  “Out.” Leone pointed at the tunnel with the staircase leading up. “Sono andati lassù”

  “They went out?” Jess pointed at the stairs, raising her eyebrows. “Why?”

  “Non lo so.” Leone’s soot-streaked face creased up, his wisps of white hair matted against his glistening scalp. “I do not know”

  Why would they go upstairs? Adrenaline flooded Jess’s bloodstream, the hair prickling on her exposed arms. She grabbed Leone. “We’ve got to go—”

  A massive concussion rocked the ground, knocking Jess from her feet. She crashed into a wooden crate that split open onto her. The rumbling continued, burying Jess under a mountain of medical supplies spilling. She strained and scrabbled to get out. A wiry hand gripped and pulled her free.

  Gasping for air, she pushe
d her way out of the pile, dragged by Leone. She rubbed her eyes. “Leone, help me, we need to…” She didn’t finish her sentence, but stood in dumb silence.

  Half of the cave had collapsed, rocks and boulders crushing the crates on the other side of the room, the tunnel to the staircase gone.

  “Mom!” Jess screamed. “Dad! Where are you?”

  Ben struggled to his feet, dusting himself off and trying to quell the fear rising inside him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Roger groaned and pulled himself from a pile of rubble. Part of a wooden wall fell onto him. “Maybe we should go back, come later.”

  Ben shook his head. “No, we need to do this.”

  Hot wind blasted smoke and ash through the stable past the open door. Clicking on his headlamp, Ben stumbled forward. He coughed, almost gagged. The air was noxious, stank of rotten eggs and burnt wood. He pulled a cloth around his mouth, his lungs burning, his eyes watering. His headlamp cut a conical pool of light twenty feet in front of him before being swallowed by the gray-black soot swirling in the air. Pushing forward, he reached the door. “That was no quake.”

  Outside was a hurricane of dark ash.

  A boulder the size of a school bus had impacted the main structure of the castle, coming to rest between the main staircase and the two-story museum. In the dim light, it glowed faintly red. L’Olio, the three-thousand-year-old olive tree, remained, just in front of the smoking boulder-projectile. Its leaves were stripped off, but it still stood, naked and defiant.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Ben wheezed as loud as he could.

  The tops of the walls surrounding the courtyard had crumbled, spilling a jumble of boulders and cement across the ground, but the main portico gate and wooden entrance was still intact. Jogging across the courtyard, Ben pulled open the wooden entrance door. His bag should be just to the right, not more than twenty feet away. Stepping through the door, he stopped in his tracks. “My God…”

  The valley of Saline, to his right, glowed red—a carpet of magma stretching from Monterufoli, further than he could see in the dust and dirt. Dark vortexes churned the sky, lightning crackling sideways through clouds that billowed almost to the ground, all lit in a pulsing dull red. A blast of hot wind rose up from the valley, covering Ben and Roger in flaming ashes.