The mouse ran up his shoulder and chirped in his ear.
“Shhhhh, piccolo amico,” Piero whispered. He still needed to come up with a name other than “little friend.” The mouse moved again, claws scratching his vest.
“You just want me to find you food. You don’t care if I kill myself.”
The mouse chattered back as if it understood. Piero set his rifle against the wall. He opened his pocket, picked up the mouse, and dropped him inside. The tiny creature looked up at him, his little black eyes pleading.
“Fine,” Piero said. “I’ll find you something to eat, but you have to be quiet.”
He picked his rifle up and continued down the tunnel. The warm glow of the candle spread over damp walls, revealing more ancient art of religious figures.
Piero recognized one of the images as Judas Iscariot. The farther he walked, the darker the scenes became. He saw a demon with horns and flames around its eyes. Feathered wings hung from the monster’s back. He roved his candle back and forth to illuminate the entire battle between demons and angels.
He shivered and turned away from the fresco to check his map. The tattered paper he had picked up in the church overhead months ago was almost unreadable. He held up the flame and studied the wavy lines and blurred markings, but it was no use—he was lost. He only knew he was in a passage under the western part of the Vatican.
Raising his rifle, he pushed on. He took a right at the next bend and entered a familiar looking tunnel, pausing for a second to study a cross on the wall that he swore he had seen before.
Have I been here already?
Piero shook his head and kept moving. He hadn’t ever been this far west.
A drop of water hit him in the face a few paces later. He backpedaled and opened his mouth. He waited for several seconds, and was rewarded with a drip that stung his tongue. The water tasted like metal. But he was too thirsty to care. His tongue arced, anxious for more.
The mouse moved again inside the pocket of his vest.
Another drop hit Piero’s tongue. He stood there for what could have been a minute or an hour. He lost track of time as he waited for drip after drip. His arms shook from holding the candle and the rifle, but he didn’t dare put either of them down.
It wasn’t until the mouse started squeaking that Piero finally set the candle down and wiped his mouth off with a filthy sleeve. He licked his cracked lips and opened his vest pocket. Then, very carefully, he positioned it under the dripping water.
The mouse sniffed the air and poked its head out of the pocket. A drop landed on the small creature, slicking its whiskers to its cheeks. It reached up with tiny paws and scooped some of the water into its mouth.
Light from the flame fell on a puddle at Piero’s feet. He bent down and set his little friend next to the puddle. It scampered over and began drinking greedily.
“Stay,” Piero whispered. He raised his rifle and turned on the night vision optics to scope the tunnel. They flickered at first; the battery was dangerously low. Nothing moved in the green hue. He clicked off the optics to listen for the monsters. There was only the sound of dripping water and the mouse lapping up the puddle at Piero’s feet.
The silence had grown on him over the months. He wasn’t just used to it—he enjoyed it. And anything that broke the quiet sent Piero diving for the shadows.
Once, he had been a brave man. He had been a Special Operations soldier with the 4th Alpini Parachutist Regiment. But the months of solitude had taken their toll on his mind. He knew he was going mad—but then, if he knew it, then was he really mad?
“What do you think? Am I crazy or not?”
The mouse continued drinking.
The slurp-slurp reminded Piero of his childhood dog, Ringo. The dog had been a hundred times bigger than the mouse, but they drank the same way, lapping water up like it was the last bowl on earth.
Piero bent down and held out his hands. “Time to move, Ringo.”
The mouse looked up but then went back to drinking. It might take Ringo some time to get use to the new name, but Piero already felt pleased by it. He felt the tickle of a smile on his face.
“Let’s go, Ringo.”
The mouse’s white ears suddenly perked, and his black beady eyes went wild. Before Piero could pick the creature up, the mouse scampered into the darkness, squeaking in terror.
“Ringo!” Piero cried. He spun at another sound, one that sent a chill up his spine—a sound the mouse had already detected. The scratch of talons on stone.
Piero scooped the candle up and blew it out. Darkness washed through the tunnel like a tidal wave. He raised his rifle toward the noise and clicked on the NVG optics.
Motion flickered in his crosshairs. A meaty creature with a bulbous torso clung to the ceiling like a vast, hairy spider. It dropped to the floor and bolted forward on all fours before he could see more of it.
The soldier Piero had once been would have stood his ground and fought. But now he turned and ran. The piercing wail of the monster followed him down the passage.
The shrieks continued as another joined the fray. The terrifying noises struck his ears like poorly-tuned instruments. They were so loud he couldn’t think straight.
He nearly tripped, his boots sliding across the ground. Piero regained his balance and then raised the scope to darkness. Fumbling with the optics, he clicked it on, over and over.
His heart caught in his chest.
The battery had finally died.
He was blind, but those creatures could see in the dark.
The sounds of the monsters closed in from both directions.
“No, no, no!” he said, slamming the side of the gun. He fired off a shot to the west, and then another to the east. The muzzle flashes lit up the passage for only about ten feet, and the afterimages lingered like sunbursts in his eyes.
“Ringo,” Piero called. “Ringo where are you?”
Clicking joints echoed all around, and Piero released another burst. Rounds chipped away at the stone ceiling and punched through flesh.
The creature shrieked in pain. A hissing noise, like air being let out of a tire followed. Piero ducked down, waiting for the sting and burn of acid to spray his flesh. But it didn’t come. He stayed crouched and pivoted on his heels, jerking his rifle first in one direction and then the other. He had to choose: left or right?
There’s another option.
Piero had nine bullets left. Not nearly enough to kill the monsters if they were armored juveniles, but plenty to end his life.
But he had to make a decision now.
In his mind he saw the faces of all his friends and family. They sat on the steps overlooking the Trevi Fountain, eating gelato in the late summer sunshine. The pretty girl from the shop waved at him, beckoning Piero over.
He angled the smoking muzzle toward his mouth, but before he could pull the trigger, he heard a chirp and a curious squeak. Ringo jumped onto his arm, climbed up his shoulder, and then dove into his vest pocket.
Piero pulled the gun away from his face and fired a shot to the west. This time the flash captured the creature stalking him. An emaciated Varianti with a swollen, hairy belly crept toward him. Every inch of its bony flesh was covered in rashes. Yet another creature that had escaped to the tunnels to avoid the bioweapon they had dropped on Rome.
He squeezed off two more shots that missed. The creature seemed to twist and distort in the waning light. It jumped to the wall in a swift motion.
Piero tightened his grip on his gun and centered it in the direction the monster had leapt.
Six more bullets, make them count!
He fired again, and this time the flash lit up a mangled corpse wearing tattered vestments.
The sight made Piero’s heart kick even harder. It was the priest he had killed. That meant his old hiding place, which he had abandoned days earl
ier, wasn’t far. But how was that possible? He had been going west, not east. Had he been wandering in circles?
The scream of the Varianti dragged him back to the present moment. He fired bullets five and four. The blasts captured the creature hanging upside down from the ceiling. The smack-smack of swollen lips covered in open sores made him cringe.
He lined up a shot and squeezed the trigger just as something grabbed his leg.
Piero fell so fast he had no time to brace himself. He only just turned in time to land on his left shoulder so he didn’t crush Ringo. His bones ground together at the joint, but the hot slash of a talon on his ankle was what made him scream.
He remembered the horror of three Varianti stripping one of his old friend’s legs to the bone.
No, I will not go out like that!
Piero kicked at the beast and tried to struggle free. Another claw grabbed his shoulder from behind. He was lifted off the ground, squirming and screaming at the top of his lungs. The pair of beasts pulled him in different directions like two hyenas fighting over meat. His left shoulder flared with agony, and claws sank deeper into his ankle.
“Run, Ringo! Get out of here!”
The mouse squirmed in his pocket, squeaking frantically. Piero’s left leg went numb as the monster behind him gave a mighty heave.
“Please, please let me go!” Piero yelled. Hot tears blurred around his eyes. He swatted with his free right hand, striking the cold, clammy flesh of a creature that had no ability to reason and no capacity for mercy.
The numbness worked its way up his body. This was it—his time had finally arrived. Where there should have been terror, Piero felt only a strange, floating sensation. It felt a lot like relief.
After avoiding death for so long, the last man on earth, Piero Angaran, was about to die.
The monsters pulled harder, stretching his muscles and tendons to their limits. He stopped screaming, or maybe he just couldn’t hear himself anymore. He went limp. There was a silence, almost peaceful, until a screech shattered it into a million pieces.
Piero felt the pressure release on his arms and legs. Claws struck sparks on the walls as the two monsters retreated into the darkness.
“Ringo,” he whispered. “Are you okay?”
The mouse moved in his pocket as he sat up. Piero reached over his shoulder and felt blood running from a deep gash. His legs weren’t in much better shape, but he got to his feet and scrambled for his rifle.
A blast of air caught him in the face as he stood. It carried the sour, rotting fruit scent of the monsters.
Piero pulled a lighter from his pocket and struck it to look for his rifle. He found his candle in the process. He snatched it off the ground and lit it with a shaking hand. He grabbed his rifle and ran for the bars of his old hiding spot.
Another draft of air hit him as the approaching demon flapped wings nearly the width of the hallway. He didn’t dare turn to look.
“Hold on Ringo, don’t jump out,” Piero whispered. He set the candle near the bars, slung the rifle over his back, got onto his belly, and crawled under the gap.
His boots hit the floor of the tomb below with a thud. He snatched the candle and pulled his rifle through just as the winged juvenile reached the passage. It bent down to sniff the bars and grabbed them with claws the size of butcher knives. A quick yank ripped the entire pallet away from the stone.
Piero fell on his butt and palmed the ground to scoot backward. The candle fell on its side, but the flame continued to burn. He tried to grab it, but the monster stuck its bulbous head through the opening and snapped at him.
He stared in horror at the creature’s horned nose and wart-covered face. It tilted its head, then let out a bellowing shriek that covered him in mucus.
Piero pushed himself off the ground and called for Ringo to hold on. He limped across the small room and jumped onto the stairs as the beast tried to squirm through the entry into the tomb. Armor screeched against the stone behind him. He stopped on the fourth step when he realized he had left the candle. He looked back and saw the beast’s head and shoulders were stuck in the opening.
You’re still a soldier. Stay and kill it.
The mouse chirped for him to run.
No, run. Run and hide. Ringo is right.
His last candle was on the ground just feet away from the monster’s jaws. But the monster was wedged in the gap. There was no way the thing could get inside.
Raising his rifle and taking stuttering breaths, Piero slowly walked back down the steps. Ringo kept up his desperate chirping sounds, but Piero had made up his mind. The creature watched his every move, lips popping and jagged teeth dripping saliva. The reptilian eyes focused on him as he aimed his rifle.
Piero saw a flash of something like fear in its gaze.
Does it know it is about to die?
Piero didn’t care. He was done running and hiding like a cockroach.
He approached the beast as it squirmed again, armored shoulders cracking the foundation around the grate. Flecks of stone pattered the floor at Piero’s feet.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, he stayed to fight.
Piero pushed the rifle into the monster’s sucker mouth and pulled the trigger, once, then again just to be sure. A cracking sound echoed as the bullets ping-ponged inside the monster’s skull. The beast let out a final breath that smelled like a fish market left to rot in the summer sun. Its eyes were still locked onto Piero, even in death.
He almost fired another bullet for good measure, but he needed to save it for himself. If and when the time came, he wasn’t going to let them take him—or his friend. His knife would do for Ringo first, and then he would end this nightmare once and for all.
He grabbed the candle and limped up the staircase that snaked up through St. Peter’s Basilica. Piero and Ringo were returning to the light. They weren’t going to live in the darkness anymore.
Piero Angaran was a man, not a monster.
And if he was going to die, he was going to do it on a full stomach.
-19-
Fitz did his best to keep the impact of his blades minimal on the narrow stone steps leading up to the balcony, but they had been built when humans had shorter strides—and he doubted the medieval architects had considered mobility prosthetics like his in their plans. Every time Meg’s hatchet clanked against his thigh or the speared tips of his blades scraped across a step, Dohi glared at him.
Fitz paused to reposition the hatchet and Michel bumped into him from behind.
“What’s the holdup?” the kid whispered. “We’re almost there.”
“Sorry,” Fitz mumbled. He patted Apollo and let the dog go ahead. Moonlight streamed through small gaps between boarded-up windows and filled the balcony with ghostly rays of light.
Fitz stopped and pressed his eye against a gap, but he could only make out indistinct shapes and shadows below. Wind whistled past the basilica, followed by something else he couldn’t quite place—a rumble, like a far-off earthquake.
He continued on, moving slowly up the balcony. Michel hurried past Fitz to the next set of windows, where a girl with braided blonde hair sat on a crate. She stood as they approached, a revolver in her hand. She acknowledged their presence with a contemptuous glare.
“It’s okay, they’re friends,” Michel whispered.
The girl sat back down on the crate and said something in French that didn’t sound friendly at all.
“Take a look,” Dohi whispered, beckoning Fitz over to another window.
Fitz raised the loose top board and leaned forward. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
“What am I looking for?”
Dohi’s response was lost in the same rumbling sound from before.
Fitz squinted and focused on a bulging mound of soil. He stepped back, then push
ed his rifle out of the small opening to zoom in using the scope. The raised earth suddenly moved toward the wall of the basilica right underneath them. He cursed as a dozen more of the mounds emerged and darted forward. Something was moving just below the surface.
“What the hell are those things?” Fitz whispered.
Michel stepped up. “Let me see.”
At first he just stood there looking through the gap in the boards, his back slowly moving up and down as he took in calm breaths.
How is this kid so calm? Fitz wondered.
“Yup, those are Wormers,” Michel announced a moment later. “The most I’ve ever seen. And if they’re out there, the Pinchers and Black Beetles aren’t far.”
Fitz caught Dohi’s worried gaze. It was the first time Fitz had ever seen a hint of fear in the man’s features.
“I’ll try Command again.” Fitz flicked his comm mic back to his lips. “Lion 1, Ghost 1. Does anyone copy? Over.”
Fitz bent back down to the small window while he waited for a reply. Static rushed into his ear, then a muffled voice, more static, and finally, a response.
“Copy Ghost 1. This is Lion 1. We’ve been hit by another wave of Reavers. Took down our comm tower for almost an hour. How about a SITREP?”
“Roger, Lion 1. I have the intel.”
“Good job, son. Relay your intel to Lion 2. Wait one.”
“Wait, sir. We have enemy forces movement, and, uh—” Fitz didn’t know how to describe what he’d just seen. What could he say?
“You there, Ghost?”
“Roger, Lion 1. I’m here. These things…whatever they are, they’re big, and they’re moving underground now.”
“Repeat. Underground?”
“That’s right, Lion 1. They’re tunneling.”
“We’ll cook those ugly bastards no matter where they’re hiding. Our bombers are standing by. Operation Reach is a go. We are just waiting on your intel and the intel from several other recon teams in Spain and Germany.”
Fitz remembered what Mira had told him about the radiation.
Extinction Aftermath (Extinction Cycle Book 6) Page 25
