The Pompeii Disaster

by Dan Gutman

  “This time, I’m just worried about saving myself,” said Julia.

  GOING THROUGH PORTA MARINA GATE, Isabel typed into the TTT.

  There were no iron gates, pizza parlors, or souvenir sellers this time. Instead, there was one burly guard wearing a helmet and armor and holding a sword. He looked the kids over as they passed by, but didn’t stop them or say anything. People seemed to be allowed to move freely in and out of the city. Or maybe the guards just didn’t hassle kids.

  As they walked through the gate, the Flashback Four stopped in their tracks. Pompeii looked familiar, but very different. The ruins weren’t . . . ruined. The buildings were taller, newer, more colorful, and they had roofs on them. This time, everything was alive.

  Pompeii was a bustling port city, buzzing with activity. The harbor was just a quarter of a mile away. The kids instantly recognized the main road they had walked down previously, Via dell’Abbondanza, even though there were no street signs. But this time it wasn’t filled with blue-jeaned, baseball-capped, picture-snapping tourists who would be going back to their air-conditioned hotel rooms that night. The people on the street actually lived and worked in Pompeii.

  There were shoemakers, bakers, greengrocers, weavers, gem cutters, and barbers. There were mat makers, ointment sellers, and chicken keepers. All over the street, people were hawking stuff from stores and makeshift stalls. Many were selling and buying garum, a fish sauce that was considered a specialty of Pompeii. Merchants rushed around carrying their wares in baskets, carts, and jugs. Many had the help of donkeys, mules, and horses. You could buy just about anything here, from Far East spices to an African monkey.

  There were lots of nice smells in the air—bread, olive oil, grapes, and roses from perfume makers. Fish frying. Oh, and a whiff of urine.

  It was great people-watching. A group of men were kneeling down, playing a dice game. Street mimes acted out stories, trying to attract an audience that might throw them a coin or two. A musician played a lyre—a small harp that looks like a little guitar. Beggars asked for handouts. Some kids were playing a game that looked like handball. Most of the people on the street were men. Women were not allowed to vote or hold power in ancient Rome. A few older women fanned themselves to keep cool as they gossiped on a corner.

  “Man, these guys are short,” David said, and it was true. The average male during the Roman Empire stood about five feet tall. The Flashback Four towered over most of the people on the street.

  The timer counted down: 116 minutes.

  The kids stood and watched the action swirl around them for a few minutes. Everything seemed so much more colorful than it had been the first time they were there—bright whites, deep reds, vivid yellows. The mosaics and paintings on the walls of buildings looked fresh and new. At the intersection, street fountains bubbled with water.

  “E pluribus unum,” Isabel said to a smiling old man pushing a cart.

  “E pluribus unum,” the man replied.

  “E pluribus unum,” she said to a lady carrying a large jug on her head.

  “E pluribus unum,” the lady replied.

  “Why are you saying that to everybody?” asked Julia.

  “It’s the only Latin I know,” Isabel replied. “It means ‘Out of many, one.’”

  “Where did you learn Latin?” asked Luke.

  “I didn’t. It says ‘e pluribus unum’ on the back of every quarter.”

  “Who reads the writing on quarters?” asked David.

  “Me,” Isabel replied.

  “You don’t need to do that, you know,” Julia told her. “We have the Ear Buddy, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  The Ear Buddy that was in each of their ears took a little getting used to. The Flashback Four sidled over near two men standing on the corner in order to eavesdrop on the conversation.

  “I fear the heat may ruin this year’s harvest,” one of the men said to his friend, in Latin.

  A millisecond after he said that, the kids heard those words in their ears—in English.

  “Be hopeful, citizen,” said the other man. “I feel the cool winds will arrive this evening.”

  “It works!” Isabel whispered to the others. “Did you hear that? They’re talking about how hot it is today.”

  “I can’t believe grown-ups made small talk about the weather back in the year 79,” said Julia.

  “Some things never change,” David remarked.

  Emboldened, Julia skipped off down the street, making meaningless chitchat in Latin with every passerby she encountered.

  “Nice day we’re having,” she said to a bearded man with a cane.

  “Lovely,” he replied.

  “They say it may rain on Friday,” she said to another man.

  “That would be good for the crops,” he replied.

  Luke, David, and Isabel rushed to catch up with her. They weren’t about to let Julia get too far ahead. She had a history of running off to go on little adventures of her own.

  “Latin is fun!” she told them.

  “Hey, check this out,” Luke said. He walked over to a bald man carrying a dog and asked him, “What do you think of the Red Sox?”

  The bald man looked at his feet, and then back at Luke.

  “The color of my socks does not much matter to me,” he replied.

  The Flashback Four cracked up.

  “Whew, you should have smelled the breath on that guy,” Luke told the others. “These Romans need to invent toothpaste, fast.”

  LUKE JUST ASKED A GUY IF HE LIKED THE RED SOX! Isabel typed on the TTT.

  Miss Z replied a few seconds later with a smiley-face emoji.

  “Y’know, we should make sure we got here on the right day,” David told the group. “Remember what happened in Gettysburg.”

  Ah yes, Gettysburg. Due to a typo by Miss Z, the Flashback Four arrived in Gettysburg one day early, the day before Abraham Lincoln’s famous speech. That caused all kinds of problems.

  “We need to find a newspaper,” Julia said, looking around for a garbage can. “You can always find one in the garbage.”

  “They don’t have newspapers in the year 79!” Luke told her, rolling his eyes. “I don’t even know if they have garbage cans.”

  David took matters into his own hands, walking up to a man with a dog on a leash.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said politely, “is today Tuesday, August twenty-fourth, in the year 79?”

  The man looked at David blankly for a moment. Miss Z had told the kids that ancient Romans used a calendar similar to ours. Saturday was named for the planet Saturn. Sunday was named for the sun, and Monday for the moon.

  “It is certainly the twenty-fourth day of the month August,” the man replied. “But what do you mean by the year 79? This is the first year of the reign of Emperor Titus Vespasianus Augustus! Hail Emperor Titus!”

  “Hail Titus!” chanted a few passersby.

  “Okay, okay, chill,” said David.

  AUGUST 24 CONFIRMED, Isabel typed into the TTT.

  The timer counted down: 113 minutes.

  The first time they were in Pompeii, the streets were just about bare. Museums had snatched up most of the statues and artifacts that were found when the city was dug up. But this time, statues were all over the place. Every few yards was another large marble representation of a Roman god, emperor, or hero—Jupiter, king of the gods and guardian of the state. Venus, the goddess of love. Mars, the god of war. And of course, the emperor Titus.

  As the Flashback Four meandered down Via dell’Abbondanza, they could see there were cracks in the walls of many of the stores and houses. Seventeen years earlier, in the year 62, a violent earthquake had swept through the region and reduced much of Pompeii to rubble. The town was still getting back on its feet.

  Also on the walls were lots of advertisements, political campaign posters, and graffiti. The kids couldn’t read the Latin words, but they stopped to examine them anyway. . . .

  A copper pot went missin
g from my shop. Anyone who returns it to me will be given sixty-five bronze coins.

  Health to you, Victoria, and wherever you are may you sneeze sweetly.

  Cruel Lalagus, why do you not love me?

  Let him perish who knows not love. Let him perish twice over whoever forbids love.

  “I wonder what they say,” David said.

  “They look sort of like ancient texts or tweets,” said Julia. That reminded Isabel to keep Miss Z informed of their whereabouts every step of the way.

  HAVING A GREAT TIME, Isabel typed on the TTT. WISH YOU WERE HERE.

  On the wall of one building was a poster with a picture of two men fighting. Even though the Flashback Four couldn’t make out the words, it looked like an advertisement for an upcoming gladiator competition.

  Below the poster, somebody had scribbled, in Latin: Celadus, glory of the girls, heartthrob of the girls!

  “I can’t believe that people actually wasted time watching men intentionally hurt each other,” Isabel said. “That’s so barbaric.”

  “Ever hear of professional boxing?” Luke asked her. “Or wrestling? Or mixed martial arts? We still have the same stuff.”

  “Those things are barbaric too,” Isabel replied.

  The timer counted down: 111 minutes.

  One thing that surprised the kids was the number of restaurants in Pompeii. (Over a hundred fifty, according to historians.) Just about every other storefront was selling food. It was late morning, so some people were eating an early lunch—fish, cold meat, carrots, cucumbers, or other veggies. Others were just finishing up breakfast—bread or a wheat pancake with dates and honey. The poor ate simply, while rich people chowed down on luxuries we would consider exotic: boar, wild goat, ostriches, cranes, doves, roasted peacock, and stork tongue. And wine, of course. Lots of wine.

  “Eat, drink, and be merry,” hollered a baker in front of his little shop, “for tomorrow you may die.”

  “He doesn’t know how right he is,” David said.

  “Nobody is selling pizza,” Luke noticed. “How could they not have pizza here?”

  “I don’t think pizza has been invented yet,” guessed Isabel.

  In fact, it would be more than nine hundred years before anything called “pizza” would be eaten anywhere in the world.

  “This stuff looks good,” Luke said, pointing to some meat on a stick. “I’m getting hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry,” noted Julia.

  “Maybe we should ask them for some food,” suggested Isabel.

  “Nah, let ’em enjoy it,” David told her. “This will be their last meal.”

  The timer counted down: 109 minutes.

  EVERYTHING GOING SMOOTHLY, Isabel typed on the TTT. LOOKING FOR PERFECT PHOTO LOCATION.

  They turned a corner onto a little side street, only to be surprised by a disturbing sight. A man was whipping another man with a long stick. The guy getting whipped already had some dark lines on his back.

  “Forty-five! Forty-six! Forty-seven!” shouted the man who was doing the whipping. “How many lashes will teach you to behave, slave?”

  Slave?

  When we think of slavery, we usually think of what happened in our own country before the Civil War. But slavery was an accepted part of life during the Roman Empire. More than a third of the people in Pompeii were slaves.

  It was hard for the kids to watch a man getting beaten. Nobody was coming over to stop it. People on the street just walked by without seeming to notice anything unusual going on.

  “Maybe we should help that guy,” Isabel said.

  “No!” Luke told her. “That’s not what we’re here for, remember?”

  The timer counted down: 107 minutes.

  The kids continued wandering the streets, looking for the right spot to take their photo of Mount Vesuvius. There were a lot of dogs roaming around too, some with their owners and some without. There were no pooper scooper laws, obviously.

  “Watch where you step,” Julia instructed the others. “Remember Gettysburg.”

  Oh, yes. In Gettysburg the streets were filled with horses, which meant the streets were filled with horse manure. Julia had found this out the hard way.

  Just to be on the safe side, she was staring down at the street in front of her, being careful to avoid stepping into anything unpleasant. That’s when a woman shouted from her second-story balcony above.

  “Watch out below!”

  David looked up quickly and saw that the woman overhead had tipped a bucket and was pouring something out onto the street. He gave Julia a hard shove to push her out of the way just before she would have been drenched with raw sewage.

  “What the—did she just—?” Julia sputtered. “I can’t believe she—That is so gross and disgusting! Why would a human being do that?”

  Isabel was grossed out too, but the boys—being boys—found it hysterical, especially when Julia almost stepped in dog poop right after avoiding the flying pee.

  “I thought the Romans were famous for their indoor plumbing,” Isabel said.

  “I guess everybody didn’t have indoor plumbing,” David told her.

  “I don’t care that they don’t have it!” Julia exclaimed, unable to calm down. “You don’t throw the contents of your toilet out the window! It’s just not done!”

  “Calm down,” Luke told her. “You didn’t get a drop on you. Look, we’ll be out of here in less than two hours. Then we can go home to our indoor plumbing while all these people will have to deal with a lot worse than flying pee.”

  David checked the timer. 104 minutes.

  Any concerns about flying pee or stepping in poop vanished when there was a sudden odd rumbling sound in the air. The street vibrated for a few seconds. The Flashback Four stopped.

  “Is that it?” asked David nervously. “Is the volcano about to erupt?”

  “What if Miss Z got the timing wrong?” Julia said, a frightened look on her face. “Maybe Vesuvius is going to blow early!”

  “I don’t think so,” Isabel said. “In the days leading up to the eruption, there was a series of tremors and small earthquakes in Pompeii.”

  “How do you know that?” Luke asked.

  “I read it in a book,” Isabel told him. “You might want to get one sometime. You know, they’re these things with lots of pages and writing on them.”

  “I’m still nervous,” David said. “We’d better find a good spot to take the photo. Then, as soon as the volcano erupts, we’ll get our shot and be ready to get out of here.”

  “Good thinking,” Luke agreed.

  Those words were barely out of Luke’s mouth when a voice from behind shouted, “Seize them!”

  That’s when four thick, hairy arms reached around and grabbed the Flashback Four by the necks.

  CHAPTER 10

  SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

  THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE. IT HAD WORKED PERFECTLY for the Flashback Four when they needed to get the TTT back from that obnoxious pickpocket on their first visit to Pompeii. And it worked perfectly against them now. As a weapon, just about nothing is as effective as the element of surprise.

  “What the—”

  Four big guys had jumped Luke, David, Isabel, and Julia before they had the chance to react, overpowering the kids. With a muscular arm wrapped around each of their throats, the kids were helpless. It wouldn’t take much for any of these guys to give one good yank and snap a neck.

  “Owww!”

  “Get your filthy hands off me!”

  “That hurts!”

  “What’s going on?”

  Their attackers didn’t say a word. The Flashback Four struggled to bite and kick, but it didn’t take long to realize it was useless to fight back. Before they knew what was happening, the kids were being dragged down the street and around the corner.

  “What did we do?” David asked. “We didn’t hurt anybody!”

  “Where are you taking us?” said Luke. “What are you doing?”

  “We don’t h
ave any money!” Isabel shouted. “We don’t have anything at all.”

  “Shut your mouth, slave!” Isabel’s attacker yelled at her.

  “Slave?” said Isabel. “We’re not slaves!”

  “This is a big mistake!” Julia shouted. “My father works for Verizon!”

  “Shut up!” one of the thugs shouted.

  Julia managed to get one arm free. Her attacker grabbed her roughly and slapped her.

  “How dare you!” she screamed.

  The Flashback Four were dragged across a bumpy stone street, trying to keep their wits about them. Luke tried to memorize the street they had turned on, so he would be able to retrace his steps when—and if—they were able to get free. His attacker smelled bad. He was overpowering in more ways than one.

  Luke, David, and Isabel stopped protesting, but Julia was indignant.

  “I have my rights!” she shouted. “You’re going to be in serious trouble, mister! This is a free country!”

  It actually wasn’t truly a free country. It was a republic, and Emperor Titus had the final say. But let’s not get bogged down with that stuff. The Flashback Four are getting kidnapped!

  There were other people out and about, but nobody seemed to pay any attention to the fact that four kids were being dragged through the street in broad daylight. It was nothing unusual. Slaves received this kind of treatment all the time.

  “Call 911!” Julia shouted out to anyone who might be listening. “Hey, aren’t we allowed one phone call?”

  “There are no phones here, you dope!” Luke muttered to her. “They won’t have phones for centuries!”

  “Not even landlines?” Julia asked.

  Isabel had begun to cry. Of the four kids, she was the one who was the least prepared to handle stressful situations like this. Her parents had raised her very carefully, protecting her from the dangers of the outside world. So when she did encounter a problem or crisis, she was the most likely to freak out or shut down completely.

  “They’re going to whip us,” Isabel sobbed, “just like they whipped that slave on the street!”

  “You will not be whipped if you do as we say,” the guy with his arm around her neck told her.

  “Where are you taking us?” David demanded of his attacker. “We haven’t done anything wrong, and we aren’t slaves.”