Omega Plague: Collapse (12 page)

“Carla, what is going on? They captured me, they killed that
man . . . and those people trapped on the eighth floor—why?”

Carla looked down. “There was a secret directive adopted by
the EU Ministries of Health not long after that last Ebola scare. I knew about
it, but I was only briefed on the exact details a week ago. In the event of an
outbreak of a previously unknown virus, certain emergency measures are
authorized. Like trying to stop the spread to healthy people by concentrating
the sick in hospitals.” Now she looked Bruno in the eyes. “No one would be
stupid enough to go to a group shelter in a pandemic, but they might go to a
hospital, if they thought they could be helped.”

“I heard Battisti’s guards say something about ICP 151. Is
that it?”

“Infection Control Protocol 151—that’s the directive.”

Bruno frowned. “But concentrating the sick? That doesn’t
make any sense, unless . . .” Bruno’s eyes lit up as he remembered the old
man’s words. Trapped. “So, going to hospital is a death sentence, is that it?
They’re never going to be let out, are they? And the government is lying about
it!”

Carla said nothing.

“I don’t believe it! Ministry of Health? Ministry of fucking
Death! They’re telling people to go to the hospital when all they’re doing is
rounding them up to die like—like—cattle!”

Carla shook her head. “Almost all of them will die anyway.
There’s nothing we can do.”

“Maybe they’re even giving the poor bastards a push!” Bruno
looked at Carla, thinking she would contradict his exaggeration. Then he saw
the look in Carla’s eyes.

Carla held his gaze, with no emotion. “Like I said, Protocol
151 authorizes certain emergency measures. If they’ve come to a hospital,
they’re dead already.”

“But why hold me? Because I saw—”

“The Protocol authorizes detention and, if necessary,
liquidation of individuals who are unauthorized witnesses to infection
control.”

“‘Liquidation’? You mean fucking murder! Christ, you’re a
doctor! How could they do this? How could
you
?”

“The Protocol requires a chief hospital administrator to
countersign the Ministry of Health’s order before liquidation of a witness. I
was waiting to hear what Battisti said you saw before—before—I—”

“Before you signed my death warrant!”

“Bruno, I didn’t know it was you! He didn’t tell me! I
didn’t ask who it was—I didn’t want to know!” Then her voice hardened. “You
judge me? You don’t know how close we came to a real shit-storm when Ebola hit
a few years back—and this is a thousand—no, ten thousand times worse!” She
grabbed Bruno’s arm. “Wouldn’t you kill if there were a chance to stop the
spread? Wouldn’t you kill, if you thought you had to?”

Bruno pulled his arm away and started to speak, to tell her
she was wrong. Then he stopped, the vision of that dead woman’s eyes from last
night freezing the retort in his throat.

“The bodies—what do you do with the bodies?” murmured Bruno.

“We have an incinerator for medical waste.”

Bruno turned away from Carla. “You’ve turned hospitals into
death camps.” God only knew what was happening in places like China, Russia, or
the United States. What had they resorted to, if on Capri, playground for the
glitterati of Europe, the hospital facilitated government-sanctioned slaughter?
He paced for a moment, then turned towards her. “They’re fools if they think
they can contain this. It’s way too late.”

“Maybe they are fools. But they needed to try something,
anything. Even this.”

Carla’s participation in the lies and death shocked Bruno,
but in his heart, he knew she was right. He was beginning to understand that in
this new world, only the lucky and the ruthless would survive. Her cold-blooded
attitude might keep her alive for a while. But no matter how cunning, how
ruthless you were, there would always be someone more ruthless, more cunning.
Maybe just more lucky.

He breathed a long breath before speaking. “The old world is
dead. There’s no hope to stop the Shakes.”

“Who knows? You call it the Shakes. That’s what the Brits
call it. So many different names for the damn thing. The French call it
la
grippe africaine
, the African Flu, the Irish call it the Blood Trots, and
the Spanish—Brown Fever. And here, every region has its own name for it.” She
smiled a bit. “As usual. But I think the Americans have got the right name for
it.”

“Omega Plague.” The words chilled Bruno even as he said
them. “The Final Plague.”

She nodded. “The plague that ends humanity.”

“But this virus . . . this plague . . . isn’t there anything
that can be done to help the sick? A treatment—antivirals, something?” Bruno
asked.

“There’s a rumor the potent ones might, just like they do
against the AIDS virus. But you’d have to stay on them the rest of your life.
And there’s far too many people sick, too many people dying, for there ever to
be enough antivirals for everyone.”

Carla took his arm. “Come on. You’ve got to get going. This
way.” She led him to the far side of the storage room. A wooden door stood in
their path. Judging by the rust-coated padlock, no one had opened it for a long
while. Carla’s key was no use. “It’s so damn old,” she said. “From before the
renovations.”

Bruno removed the crowbar from his bag and jammed it between
the lock and the door. With one motion the padlock tumbled off, taking part of
the door with it.

He poked his head in and looked around. The chamber smelled
of water and mold, its bricks the color of dirt. A ladder led up to a manhole.
The chamber was tiny and they would have to climb one at a time.

“Do you know where it comes out?” asked Bruno.

“I think on the street beyond the hospital, up the road
towards Anacapri.”

“Let’s get going! If we jog, it won’t take that long to get
to my place.”

Carla shook her head.

“What’s the matter?”

“They need me here,” Carla answered, her gaze steady.

“Carla, you’ve got to come. Christ, you said they’re all
going to die anyway. And Battisti, he’ll—”

“I’m not talking about the patients. The Ministry of Health
goons need me. They’ll make sure I’m well taken care of. Those are their
orders. And Battisti follows orders. Healthy nurses and doctors are more
valuable than gold, trust me. I’ll be much safer here than running around on
the island like you . . . but you need to know something.”

Carla paused before continuing. “Very, very few people
survive this disease—we’re not sure just how few. But the ones who do, become—”

“What, vampires, zombies?”

“This isn’t one of Cristian’s stupid fucking movies!” She
took a breath before continuing. “Look, back when the Spanish Flu hit in 1918,
some people who survived had a kind of brain trauma, made some of them
lethargic, almost catatonic. They called it the Sleeping Sickness. This virus
also changes brain chemistry in survivors. But this one makes them dangerous.”

“More contagious?”

Carla shook her head. “No, if they survive, they’re not
contagious any more. We think it damages parts of the brain, the ventromedial
prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re the parts of the brain that process emotion. The
reports I’ve seen say it makes survivors highly unpredictable, almost
psychopathic.”

“What the hell
is
this thing?”

“We don’t know. Whatever it is, one thing is for sure: it
can’t be natural. Some group, some country, did this deliberately. Someone made
this thing. Look for jaundice in the whites of their eyes; the survivors have
liver damage. But if you get that close to one, it’s probably too late. They’d
just as soon choke someone as talk to them.” Carla glanced at her watch. “I’ve
got to get back. Time to go.”

Bruno nodded and turned his back to her as he moved into the
chamber. He climbed two rungs and opened the manhole cover above him as quietly
as he could. Eyes just breaking over the edge, he looked around, but saw no one
in the gloom. He pushed his duffle bag through the opening and climbed the rest
of the way up. Once he stood on the street, Bruno gathered his bag and turned
around. There below him stood Carla in the chamber, looking up at him. Her eyes
glinted in the dark, but he could barely see the rest of her, even though she
stood only a meter below him.

“I love you, Bruno,” said Carla. “Now, find a safe place,
stay there, and don’t come out.”

***

Bruno found his flat cold and humid, but there was nothing
for it; he had no fuel or generators, and with the power off, all he could do
was bundle himself in blankets to ward off the chill. The ache in his ribs kept
him awake for a long while, even after he took some meds. As he lay there,
finally in his own bed, he tossed and turned. He got out of bed, threw on some
clothes, and went out onto his balcony.

The autumn air, laden with moisture, wrapped Bruno like a
cool blanket. Bruno could see just a few flickering flames dotting the coast.

“Concrete and stone,” said a voice from the darkness.

“What?” The voice startled Bruno. He looked and saw a figure
on the dark balcony to his right. “What are you talking about?”

“Naples is made of concrete and stone,” said Father Tommaso.
“She won’t burn all the way. Even if there’s no one left to put out the
flames.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say, Father? No comforting words
while everything crumbles to shit?”

Bruno heard a shrug in Father Tommaso’s voice as he
answered. “Everything in this world ends. Civilizations, cities, people. All of
it. I talked about it during my sermon. You should have come. You can’t fight
this, Bruno. This is the end of our song.”

“
You
can’t fight it. Or you
won’t
fight it.
But I will.”

“How?”

Bruno thought for a moment. “I’ll live to see tomorrow.”

“Someday, sooner or later, it
will
be the end—
your
end.”

“But not today. I’ll take one more day and call it victory.”
Bruno tired of this debate. “Buona notte, Father Tommaso,” said Bruno as he
returned to his flat. Bruno heard a response, but shut his balcony doors before
Father Tommaso had finished speaking.

Bruno looked around his gloomy flat. Still restless from
pain and fear, his mind raced. He began to wonder if they were going to come
for him anyway, even though they were so few. He blocked the apartment door
with the dresser and got back in bed. The slightest bump or creak caused him to
reach for his pistol. Bruno had resolved that he’d die fighting if he had to.
Images lingered in his mind, keeping him from sleep, though he was bone-tired;
images of that woman’s eyes fixed on his and her head shattering into bone and
blood and brains. But after a long struggle against his own mind, Bruno fell
asleep sitting up, with pillows propped against the headboard, his last
thoughts not of murder and death, but of his sister, alone.

Chapter 10

November 6

The rain had stopped, but the wind still blew strong enough
to rattle the balcony door. Bruno pulled blankets over his head and huddled
against the cold. It was ten days since he’d set foot outside his apartment.
Ten days of listening to the world fall apart on his radio and battling more
fear than he’d ever known. Twelve days since he’d escaped the hospital. Twelve
days since he saw Carla.

Bruno rubbed his itchy beard and looked over at the radio on
his nightstand.03:43. The more he fought to sleep, the more awake he became.
Not for the first time, he wondered if the ship had come the night he and
Cristian were supposed to evacuate. When they didn’t show up, had their colleagues
looked for them? How long did they stay? As he lay there, staring at the
ceiling, he thought of his father. And he thought of Carla.

Bruno gave up; there was no retuning to slumber now. After a
week, the ache in his ribs had finally subsided, and the last few days he had
slept on his side again. He rolled onto his back and looked around his
apartment. In the dark, water-filled bottles glinted here and there from the
scattered moonlight. Condensation covered the bottom halves of the glass doors to
his balcony. Bruno yearned for fresh air, as the air in his apartment weighed
stuffy and close on him. He knew he stank. With the grid down for so long,
running water had finally gone too. And he’d been loath to waste his bottled
water on bathing. But while he craved the smell of the outdoors, the cold wind
dissuaded him from opening the balcony door. That, along with the plastic bags
of his own feces that he’d been tossing on the balcony. He didn’t know what
else to do with them; he was afraid to throw them off the balcony lest someone
spot the obvious sign of habitation in the alley below. Bruno figured if his
own balcony got full, he could start tossing the bags onto Father Tommaso’s.
That would get the old bastard’s attention. If he was still there. If he was
still alive.

For what seemed like the hundredth time over the last few
days, Bruno got up and knocked on the wall separating his apartment from Father
Tommaso’s.

“Father, are you there?”

He knocked a few more times and called out, but got no
response.

Bruno went back to his bed and sat down. Fumbling in the
darkness, he found the “on” switch on the radio. Even though extra batteries
lay under his bed, Bruno rationed his radio use as much as he could stand.
Can’t just go to the store anymore.

When a female voice roared out, Bruno turned the volume down
to almost nothing, just enough to hear over the cry of the wind.

The synthvoice was good, almost good enough to fool even
Bruno, but not quite. It was too perfect to be real. She (even Bruno couldn’t bring
himself to think “it”) spoke about safe zones, hospital openings, and
checkpoints. Bruno had spent the last week listening to her lilting speech. Her
voice had that same resonant ring he remembered from the recordings of his
great-aunt Teresa’s opera singing. But none of what the voice said impacted him
here on the island. Probably all fucking lies anyway.

What he wouldn’t give for a good, old-fashioned shortwave
radio, now that the power grid was off-line, seemingly for good. Shortwave!
Bruno almost laughed at himself for thinking such a thought. What good would it
do anyway? He couldn’t think of one European—or other major international
broadcast radio station—that still used shortwave. Only religious nuts and
right-wing propagandists used shortwave. And, of course, cranky old
radioamatori
,
ham radio operators, too. Those damned pads, tablets, e-books, and most every
other electronic device ever invented were no better than bricks now. Bruno
wondered, if maybe—

A sound snapped him back to his musty apartment. Bruno’s
body tensed. Did he hear something? Was it the wind? Bruno shut off the radio
and listened. Nothing but howling wind and rustling branches. His shoulders
slumped. Then
tat-tat-tat-tat
again. The sound, more insistent now, came
from the door to the outside hallway of his apartment building. Whatever caused
the noise was just outside his front door. He reached for his pistol and
holster, strapping it around his waist.

Tat-tat-tat.

He crept towards the low dresser blocking his door so that he
could look through the peephole. He leaned towards the hole, pistol in his
right hand. Darkness in the hallway, yet Bruno felt as much as saw a dark
shape.

Tat-tat-tat.

Bruno readied his pistol. Then a whisper floated in from the
outside.

“Ricasso, are you in there?”

It was a male voice.

He knows who lives here, Bruno thought. He knows who I am!
Whoever was outside wasn’t seeking just anyone. Bruno’s thumb moved the safety
up with a satisfying click and he backed off the dresser, pistol raised. He
wondered how much the door’s mass would affect a bullet’s speed and trajectory.

“If you’re in there . . . they’ve got Carla.”

Bruno froze for a moment, then scrambled onto the dresser
and pressed his eye to the peephole. The man turned on the flashlight he’d used
to knock on the door and Bruno now saw him. Even though the respirator covered
the bottom half of his face, Bruno recognized him instantly.

Son of a bitch!

“Battisti! Why are you here?”

“They’ve got Carla!”

“Who’s got her?”

“Look, just let me in. I can explain—”

“Don’t bullshit me! Why shouldn’t I shoot you right through
this door, you prick?”

“Because if you do, you’ll never find her. For Christ’s
sake, let me in!”

Bruno stared at the pistol in his hand. He heard more than
just anger in Battisti’s voice; he heard fear. Bruno backed away from the
dresser and holstered his pistol.

“Wait where you are,” said Bruno.

He donned his uniform pants and the respirator Carla had
scavenged from the hospital, then moved the dresser just far enough so the door
would open halfway. Bruno unlocked the door and stepped back, a flashlight in
his left hand. He aimed the pistol with his right hand and braced it over the
flashlight.

The door creaked open, exposing the yawning gloom of the
hallway beyond and the dark figure of Battisti. Bruno swept the flashlight up
and down, taking note of the streaks of soot and blood on Battisti’s wet
uniform and face.

“Let me see your hands.”

Battisti sidled into the doorway, hands in the air.
Battisti’s hands were empty. But they trembled.

“You’re infected!” Bruno recoiled. “Get the fuck out of here
before I shoot you!”

“Bruno, just listen, I know where you sister is—she can help
me—but I need your help to get her.”

Bruno gripped his pistol even tighter. He didn’t know what
Battisti meant, but the hope of finding his sister overcame his fear of
infection.

“Take your weapon out of your holster and place it on the
dresser behind you,” Bruno ordered.

“But—”

“Do it
slowly
or I’ll blow your head off.”

“All right, take it easy.” Battisti, now fully in Bruno’s
apartment, un-holstered his pistol and placed it on the dresser. Bruno stood by
his bed, keeping his pistol trained on Battisti.

“Put your hands on your head and clasp your fingers
together.”

Battisti complied without a word.

“Now talk. Who’s got her?”

Bruno shone the flashlight directly in Battisti’s eyes and
Battisti squinted. “I don’t know. Raiders, looters, whatever you call them.
They’ve got her.”

“How?”

“There were only six Ministry of Health guards when you
escaped. And as of a few hours ago, only three were left . . .” Battisti
exhaled loudly. “And they captured one of them. Poor bastard, DiFalco. The
others are dead.”

Bruno couldn’t give a damn about Battisti’s goons, but he
wanted to know where Battisti’s information came from.

“How did you find me?”

“I took a look at your records before the interrogation.
That was when things were still working, more or less.” Battisti paused. “Not
that long ago, was it? When things were working, I mean. Couldn’t remember your
exact apartment number, though.”

Battisti shook his head. “Took me longer that I thought it
would to find you, even after I got to your building. But as you may have
noticed, you seem to be the only one home, so that made finding you a little
easier, at least.”

Wanker, Bruno thought. “If you knew where I lived, why
didn’t you come get me before?”

“Couldn’t spare the men. Like I said, there were only six
guards and me. Seven for the whole hospital. Not nearly enough to run around to
try to find you.”

“So what happened?”

“What the hell do you think happened? We had a containment
breach, the disease got loose, so most of the others bolted. Simple as that. I
got infected. And then
they
came. Nine of them. But we didn’t have a
combat mission. We had to try to protect what was left of the hospital staff.
Made things more difficult when the enemy doesn’t care who they kill. At least
now there are four less looters to deal with.”

“So, we need to go back to the hospital. You must have had
weapons, rifles, supplies—”

“We
did
.” Battisti looked down. “The drone ran out of
fuel. So we didn’t have any surveillance. And before we spotted them, they
dropped I don’t know how many Molotov cocktails on us.” Battisti met Bruno’s
eyes again. “They burned us out. Now it’s torched. I was lucky to escape.”

“And the patients, the staff?”

“Dead. All dead—all except Carla. Instead of just helping
you escape, she should have gone with you.”

Bruno needed a second to absorb the news. “How did you know
that Carla . . .”

Battisti laughed.

“Come on! Do you think I’m an idiot? She is your sister, of
course if she found out you were there, she’d help you. You couldn’t have
escaped without help. So, I tried to have her removed and turned onto the
street, let her fend for herself, like everyone else. But the high-IQ boys at
the Ministry of Health wanted all doctors treated with kid gloves, no matter
what they did—Infection Control Protocol 151 said so. So, I followed orders.
But I’m done following orders now.”

Bruno’s patience grew short and his arms tired from keeping
the pistol trained on Battisti.

“How do you know where Carla is?”

“After I escaped I followed them. But there was nothing I
could do. I’m one person. So I gambled. I came here, hoping I’d find you.
Gamble paid off, didn’t it? Still, it took me a couple hours to get back across
the island.”

Hours? God knows what they had done to her by now. “Where
did they take her? What the hell took you so long to get here?”

“So long? I didn’t know I was on a goddamn schedule. I
wasn’t sure where I was going, and I had to make sure I wasn’t spotted. They
took her to a house outside of the village of Capri. I don’t know the island
very well, but I think it’s on that road on the way to Villa Jovis.”

Bruno paused, recalling that part of the island.

“I think I know what you’re talking about—that building
borders on an open field, just before the path winds up to the ruins on Monte
Tiberio. They’ll have good sightlines, since there’s not much cover until the
path starts. We need to get there before dawn. It’s five or six kilometers from
here, but it’s hardly a straight shot on the roads.” Bruno holstered his
pistol. “But tell me one thing. Why do
you
care about finding Carla?
You’ve got the disease. What good does it do you to find my sister? You’re
going to die.”

Battisti unclasped his hands from his head and lowered them.
“When I told HQ that we had a containment breach, their last comm said backup
or extraction would be provided as ‘circumstances permit.’” Battisti scoffed.
“Lies. All lies. They weren’t going to save us. They cut us loose, good-bye!
Except they didn’t have the balls to tell us. They’re liars, Bruno. And they’ve
lied to us from day one about this Omega Plague. Antivirals
can
stop
it—I heard your sister say it. I’m just at the early stages. She—she can help
me find antivirals; she can help me live. She’ll know what to do—I know!”

Bruno remembered what his sister had said about the
antivirals, but he wasn’t about to tell Battisti that he was mistaken. Or just
delusional.

“How do I know she’s still alive?” said Bruno.

“They wanted information from her. They were asking her
things.”

Bruno’s eyes narrowed. “What things?”

Battisti shook his head. “I couldn’t hear exactly. She just
kept screaming ‘I don’t know.’ Until they get what they’re after, they’ll keep
her alive. Unfortunately for her.”

Alive. Screaming. The full impact of what must be happening
to his sister began to burrow into his mind. He needed to hurry. “We leave
now,” said Bruno. “I have a motorcycle, but we’ll have to go on foot. They’d
hear us long before they saw us, even with this wind.”

Of course, Bruno didn’t trust Battisti. Battisti’s
irrational hope that Carla could save him showed he was becoming unhinged. A
man like Battisti, desperate and egomaniacal, would do anything to save his own
life. But the blood and soot on Battisti’s uniform spoke more about what had
happened than any words Battisti could have said. That, and the tremors in his
hands. Sweat, too, beaded on Battisti’s forehead. And it was not a warm night.
Battisti was probably lying about how far along his infection had progressed,
but what choice did Bruno have?

“Let’s do this,” said Bruno.

***

Light had yet not broken over the mainland to the east when
they came to the point where the road became a footpath. The wind and rain from
earlier that night had died down and the sky was clear, but the storm left
everything moist and slick. Wearing the respirator made Bruno’s breathing
labored and fatigued him. Listening to Battisti’s increasingly paranoid raving
was almost as fatiguing. And Battisti’s cough, much worse in just the last
hours, made his voice hoarse.