Omega Plague: Collapse (19 page)

Chapter 18

Bruno and DeLuca spent the entire afternoon and into the
evening transcribing the information from the small screen onto paper. They
decided it was too risky to connect the radio to Filippo’s computer to try and
download the notes to a larger screen. If something went wrong, they could lose
everything. Bruno’s hand ached from the hours of scrawling handwriting. Once
they had transcribed everything, they sat at the kitchen table in Filippo’s
home, poring over their notes, oblivious to the rain and wind smashing against
the windows.

“Look at all of this—storage points for materiel—weapons,
vehicles, fuel—it amazes me that our noble government did this kind of detailed
preplanning,” said Bruno.

“Just because they say something’s there doesn’t make it so,
but still . . . sounds like the old ‘Operation Gladio.’”

“What’s that?”

DeLuca smiled. “How old were you when the Wall fell?”

“In 1989? I was six years old.”

“That explains it! After the Berlin Wall fell, the Prime
Minister at the time admitted that the CIA had set up networks to organize
guerrilla groups all over Western Europe, in case the Soviets ever invaded.
That way, there’d be an armed resistance already in place.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It was quite the story at the time—secret weapons caches
all over Italy and other countries, too. Intelligence agencies with supposed
ties to right-wing terrorism—like a bad Cold War spy novel, except a lot of it
was true.”

“Well,” said Bruno, “the government probably never totally
eliminated that program. Organizations like that are too useful to die.”

“Yes, they keep going—until everyone in them is dead,”
DeLuca said, with sadness.

Bruno nodded, his thoughts turning to the death of Europe.
Thoughts of loss and death had been a constant companion since the Shakes hit.
Not a day went by that he didn’t think of Carla. But he had become quite adept
at forcing those thoughts aside. If he hadn’t, he doubted he would have
survived this long. When he spoke, his voice sounded more animated.

“Still, it explains why these caches exist at all and why
whatever is left of the government knows about them. Hopefully, if their
locations stayed secret, looters never found them.”

“Yes, it does explain why they know,” said DeLuca, “and it gives
us a fighting chance.”

“A fighting chance? At what?” Bruno asked.

“Getting the blood of San Gennaro. That’s what they want us
to do.”

Bruno laughed as he stood up. “No. We’re going to get the
weapons and everything else that we can transport back to the island.”

“But they told us they need the phial with his blood,” said
DeLuca.

“So what? I don’t care what insane plots the leftover
zombies from the Ministry of Defense are cooking up. Omega fried their brains.
We can use those weapons and whatever else is there for the defense of Capri,
or maybe to relocate somewhere else—I’m not sure yet.”

“But the blood—”

“Is a fake, like—like the Shroud of Turin. Don’t you know
the Church was full of liars, just like the government?”

DeLuca wagged his index finger. “You’re wrong. The Church
never, ever,
ever
said what happened with San Gennaro’s blood was a true
miracle. The Church was neutral on the whole thing, just like they were on the
Shroud of Turin. It was left up to the faithful to decide what to believe.”
DeLuca pointed at Bruno. “Now who’s lying, eh?

“Fine! Then whoever sent this message must be deluding
themselves—that’s the only explanation.” Bruno sat back down and folded his
arms across his chest.

DeLuca leaned towards Bruno. “Bruno, think about what the
message said: they need San Gennaro’s blood because he lived before the rise of
industrialized society, because it’s been sealed from environmental
contamination for centuries, at least. I’m not a medical doctor, but I am a
pharmacist. There is a ring of truth to what they’re saying. I remember an
article I read that talked about how chemicals, maybe other things, could cause
heritable epigenetic changes that—”

“What does that mean?”

“There were studies that said man-made chemicals, toxins,
could cause permanent genetic changes that could be passed down from one
generation to the next. And that these changes were factors in certain
diseases.

“We’ve all been exposed to multiple chemicals and drugs that
didn’t exist in pre-industrial times—like—like . . .” DeLuca paused in thought
then snapped his fingers. “Like DDT! Everyone alive on the Earth during the
twenty-first century had trace amounts of chemicals like DDT in their system,
even though that chemical was banned for decades before HAV hit. Sometimes even
more than a trace, depending on the chemical.”

“Yeah, and they tried to bring back DDT to kill the
mosquitoes and stop Omega from spreading. Helluva lot of good that did.”

DeLuca shook his head. “That’s not the point. Think about
it—the transmission said the Americans believe that a sealed, preindustrial
blood sample is what they need to help find a cure, maybe that’s why. Maybe
we’ve all been exposed to some modern chemical, some toxin—or who knows
what—that rendered us susceptible to the disease.”

“But why here? Why don’t they look in the United States for
a sample?”

“The blood of San Gennaro has been sealed from outside
contamination for centuries,” said DeLuca. “Maybe the Americans could find a
pre-industrial blood sample from somewhere on their side of the Atlantic. But
even so, how would they find one that’s been hermetically sealed from the
environment for that long? Who in America would have thought to preserve blood
like that over the centuries?”

The notion that a relic from the patron saint of Naples
rested at the heart of the message struck Bruno as so utterly ridiculous that
he cackled. “This whole thing sounds like a crock of shit. But I’m still
listening.”

“The miracle is real, Bruno, I’ve seen it myself. You grew
up not far from Naples, right? Didn’t you ever go during the feast of San
Gennaro?”

Bruno’s mind wandered to that day, so long ago now, when he
and Cristian laughed and joked about the blood. The memory felt like something
that had happened when he was a child. “I saw it on TV once. So what? Anything
like that could be faked. I saw a lot of fake vids. You probably never saw that
fake with the French president’s ex-wife.” Bruno laughed. “You could have sworn
it was her!”

“I’m not talking about some sick Internet video! I’m talking
about a miracle! The blood transforms from a solid to a liquid when the priest
turns the ampoule in his hand. That’s the miracle.”

DeLuca continued, now in a reverie. “They used to say that
if the blood didn’t liquefy, Naples would be in for a bad year—earthquakes,
Vesuvius erupting, that sort of thing. I wonder . . . you know, I think there
might be another saint whose blood—”

“Well, the blood didn’t liquefy this past year—have you seen
Naples lately? Did they ever mention ‘plague that wipes out humanity’? Was that
on the Church’s list?”

“We all have trace amounts of radioactive material in us
from all the nuclear tests since the 1940s. That, and the meltdowns from
Chernobyl and Japan, and not to mention the Koeberg meltdown after that
attack.” DeLuca shook his head. “Anyway, I don’t know—maybe the radiation, even
the small doses, affected us somehow—maybe rendering us more vulnerable to this
infection, damaging our DNA. Who knows?”

“You said ‘we all.’”

“So what?”

Bruno stared at DeLuca. “There is no ‘we all’ anymore.
They’re all dead! Do you understand? Everyone’s fucking dead!”

“The Americans are still there!” DeLuca pounded his open
hand on the table. “The message said the Americans are patching together a
network of surviving governments—and that they’ve made progress in researching
the disease. There
are
more survivors out there.”

“The Americans? They couldn’t even keep their own country
intact after Omega spread to—”

“What’s the matter? You thought you were the only one with
enough balls to live through this? Does it piss you off that other people
survived, too? You feel like a pussy now, is that it?”

“I don’t want to listen to your bullshit.” Bruno sounded
weary.

“Well, you’d better listen, if you want to keep your ass
intact. Get it through your head—we can’t stay here forever. That bunch of animals
knows we’re here.”

DeLuca leaned back in his chair. “You killed two of them in
Naples. You killed them on their own turf. And you don’t think they’ll come
after us? Especially if it is
him
? You’re not just someone he’d like to
get revenge on. You’re a threat now, don’t you get that? You’re dumb, even for
a Carabiniere!”

Bruno leaned back in his chair hard enough to make it
squeal. “I’d like to see
you
do anything to stop them,” Bruno said.
“I’ll give you credit, old man. After the way I found you, it takes balls for
you
to call
me
a pussy!” Then Bruno laughed, but it was a real laugh, not
one of derision.

“So, what are we going to do?” DeLuca spoke with caution,
not wanting to reignite an argument.

Bruno exhaled loudly. “Well, whatever we do, we’d better
find one of those weapons caches. I think we should try Sorrento first. It’s
closer, and the cache there is more likely to be intact than one in Naples,
don’t you think?”

“Agreed. Naples got pretty bad; I could see the flames from
here.”

Bruno remembered watching the city burn and his own brush
with death that night. Thoughts of Naples in chaos and Il Serbo made his
stomach tighten, but Bruno forced those feelings down.

“Time to get started,” said Bruno.

Chapter 19

September 18

Bruno, with DeLuca’s assistance, spent the next week
planning and preparing for what would have been, not long ago, a simple day
trip by ferry. Now, of course, Bruno treated it like the Allied invasion of
Normandy, or Caesar’s invasion of Gaul, preparing and scouring parts of the
island for any usable items. The day of their departure dawned cool, but with
the promise of a fine summer day to come. The sun burned through the morning
mist as they took supplies and made their way down to the main marina, where
they again set out across the bay.

To help their memory they quizzed each other, discussing the
most important parts of the message, particularly the weapons cache access
codes. They took no notes or any evidence of the message with them. “In case
something happens, better not to have anything that gives anything away,” Bruno
reasoned. “We’d better have rally points, too, in case we get separated in
Sorrento.”

“What about Naples?” asked DeLuca.

Bruno looked at him, puzzled. “Rally points for Naples?
Why?”

DeLuca shrugged. “I know we’re not going there now, but just
in case, better sort it out before . . .”

“Okay, sure.” Bruno nodded in agreement. “Good idea. We
can’t be too careful.”

They were low on fuel, so they proceeded slowly, trying to
conserve what they had.

Bruno rummaged in his backpack and drew out a bulky handheld
radio. He was careful not to pull on the “rubber duck” antenna. In the middle,
a small LCD screen lay above an alphanumeric keypad. Though somewhat thicker
than a mobile phone, it could still be slipped into a vest or jacket pocket.
Bruno pushed a red button and the LCD screen flashed to life. He handed the
radio to DeLuca.

“So,” smiled Bruno, “you remember how to use it?”

“I think so,” said DeLuca as he studied the radio. “I can’t
believe the municipal police station still had these!”

“I tore that place apart, hoping to find some radios like
this. Guess if it hadn’t been for this little trip, I’d never have ransacked
what was left of the local police station the way I did.”

Bruno put his hand in his pack. “When it all went to shit,
everything went so fast, I suppose there wasn’t anyone left to take them. Not a
single fucking weapon or ammo, though.” Bruno started to talk to himself.
“Where the hell could they all be, I wonder.”

“Too bad you didn’t find these before,” said DeLuca.

“Why?”

“Well, wouldn’t it have been convenient to have
communications that—”

Bruno laughed. “Until you showed up, who the hell was I
going to talk to?”

DeLuca laughed too. “Good point.”

“Ah, found it,” said Bruno. Turning his radio on as well, he
checked both radios, keying one down and hearing the other beep in
acknowledgment of the transmission.

“Charged up and ready to go, courtesy of our solar setup!”
Bruno looked at the one in his hand. “They used to be part of a trunked radio
network, same type as the Carabinieri used. With relays, a radio like this
could get nationwide coverage. Now it’s just point-to-point, radio-to-radio.
Still, it’s fairly powerful for a radio this size. If we’re lucky, you might
get a usable signal even at thirty kilometers. Important if we get separated.”

Bruno noticed that their boat rode low in the water, as each
of them carried a backpack with food, water, and gear. Bruno sat in the bow of
the motorboat, while DeLuca sat facing Bruno, with his right hand on the
tiller. When DeLuca spoke, he sounded more upbeat than he had ever been. “They
said once we get the blood, to take it to Assergi in Abruzzo. You ever heard of
Assergi?”

“No. Can I see the map again? Where is it?”

DeLuca gestured to the backpack just in front of him. Bruno
extracted a worn map. He unfolded it and it spilled out over his lap, almost
touching DeLuca’s legs. Bruno studied it for some minutes and then, with a
pencil, he drew a line starting in Naples and moving northeast, up a snaky path
into the spine of the Italian peninsula, and circled a small dot. He folded it
back so that the path he traced was on top. “That town’s in the mountains of
Abruzzo, near the Gran Sasso. It’s just outside of L’Aquila.”

“Gran Sasso,” said DeLuca. “I’ve seen pictures of that
mountain. Rugged. Beautiful. But I’ve never been there.”

“Well, from the size of the speck on the map, this Assergi
probably had less than a thousand people living there, if even that many.”
Bruno looked out towards the approaching shore. “I bet it was a great place to
ride out the Apocalypse,” he said, as he leaned forward and handed the map to
DeLuca.

“No doubt,” said DeLuca, taking the map and slipping it into
his jacket pocket. “There were worse places for sure. Like Naples. Or any large
city, for that matter.” For a moment, DeLuca looked around, lost in thought.
Then he looked over at Bruno.

“So, after we find the cache, we’re going to Assergi?”

“Look, I never said we
should
go there! I said we should
get to the cache. Then, we’ll see.”

“But you just drew a line on the map, so I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” Bruno said. “I’m not sure what we’re
going to do after we find the cache, if there is even a cache at all.” Bruno
shook his head. “Gran Sasso! More like Gran Cazzo, for all I give a shit! I
can’t believe you still just want to up and leave Capri, for what? For this
speck on a map? I told you about the hospitals, the exterminations. Were you
listening? This is another one of their lies.”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why lure people they don’t even
know to that place? Why—”

“Who knows? You have no idea who they are or what they want.
I don’t believe a damn thing they say.”

“I believe them,” DeLuca snapped. “I have faith.”

“Oh, you believe? You have faith? Everyone’s dead, the
world’s fallen apart, and
you
,” Bruno punctuated his words with his
finger, pointing at DeLuca once more, “
you
believe in them?
You
have
faith, in
them
? Well, let me tell you something . . .
you
, my
friend, are a bloody idiot.”

After a long silence, DeLuca spoke, his voice clear. “Per
chi crede, nessuna spiegazione è necessaria; per chi non crede, nessuna
spiegazione è possibile.”

Having attended an old-fashioned classical grammar school
for a time as a kid, Bruno had heard the medieval quotation before.
For one
with faith, no explanation is necessary. For one without faith, no explanation
is possible.

Bruno turned away, gazing out over the sea. They spent the
remainder of the boat ride in silence as Bruno stared at the water, his mind
adrift on those words from long ago.

***

They arrived more quickly than Bruno thought they would,
rounding the Sorrento peninsula and making landfall mid-morning at the marina
just below the town of Sorrento itself. Bruno and DeLuca surveyed the marina.
Two covered boats bobbed along the dock in the strong sun. The street wound
around the marina along the water. While the restaurants and shops stood
shuttered, to Bruno the scene along the water looked almost peaceful. Nothing
was burned, nothing looted, nothing destroyed.

DeLuca echoed Bruno’s thoughts when he spoke. “It almost
looks like nothing happened here, just that everyone’s left, on holiday or
something.”

Bruno looked around. “Reminds me of Rome during Ferragosto;
the city empty and everyone at the beach.”

“Yeah, empty all right, except they’re definitely not at the
beach.”

Bruno looked right and left. “We can’t let our guard down,
there’s no telling who might still be lurking about.” Bruno instinctively kept
one hand rested on the butt of his pistol.

“Understood.”

Bruno glanced toward the two boats. “We need to see if
there’s anything we can use.”

As they searched the two moored boats, to their surprise,
they found both had some fuel in their tanks.

“This should be enough to get us back to Capri, maybe even a
little more,” said DeLuca.

They moved as fast as they could to transfer fuel to their
boat. As they worked, DeLuca continued to press Bruno, asking about leaving.
“So, did you notice how far it is to Assergi?”

“Let me see the map,” said Bruno.

DeLuca reached in his jacket and handed Bruno the map.

“Looks like about two hundred fifty or three hundred
kilometers northeast of Naples. More than a few days’ walk, that’s for sure.”
Bruno returned the map to DeLuca for safekeeping.

DeLuca folded it and placed it in the pocket of his
windbreaker. “Walk! You want to walk there? What about food? What about
mosquitoes?”

“I know. We’d have to be careful. You’re the one who’s dying
to go there, right? You have any better ideas? You’d like to drive? You think
we can find enough fuel? Or even a car with a battery that works?” Bruno
snapped his fingers. “Oh, now I get it—you want to fly, is that it? Come on,
you know there’s no easy way to get there.”

“But walking? I’ll be a walking corpse! And anyway, how will
they know when we get there? Do you think anyone
will
be there?”

Bruno didn’t think for one second that in the unlikely event
they made it to Assergi anyone would be there to greet them. But he decided to
indulge DeLuca’s optimism for a change.

“Well, it would be completely foolish for them to broadcast
their exact location, even using ALE. They can’t be sure who we really are. No,
I doubt whoever is left is actually in that village. But I think their
shelter—bunker—or whatever it may be, must be somewhere in that area. And if
they have enough working technology to send an ALE message, I’ll bet they have
some way of monitoring the area.”

By the time they finished transferring the fuel, the sun had
moved well past its high point. “We’ve got to get moving,” said Bruno. "If
we don’t hurry up, we might not get to the cache before twilight.”

“How long do you think we have?”

Bruno glanced at his watch. “A few hours. Maybe more. But
I’d rather not take any chances getting caught outside with mosquitoes.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Bruno laughed. “The plan? Well, the plan, such as it is, is
to get to the cache ASAP and find shelter. Simple, yes?” He patted DeLuca on
the shoulder. “Now stop asking questions and follow me.” DeLuca kept his mouth
shut and fell in line behind Bruno as he moved up the winding streets towards
the center of town.

Arriving at the main square, Piazza Tasso, took Bruno longer
than he would have thought.

“I’d forgotten how high Sorrento was above the water.”

“Well,” said DeLuca between breaths, “we finally made it.”

They looked up and down the piazza, taking time to drink
from their bottles of water. The low, pastel-hued buildings stood in quiet,
splendid loneliness in the afternoon sun. The wind moved scraps of paper here
and there, but Bruno could see no evidence of fires, riots, or mayhem. Though
they were tattered and fading, the ragged flags of many nations still flew over
the Hotel Sorrento, right on the square. Oblong terracotta flower pots still
stood in neat lines in front of the remains of restaurants, their flowering
plants clinging tenaciously to life against the encroaching weeds. And the
statue of St. Anthony still faced east, one hand on his shepherd’s crook, the
other raised in a blessing to no one. Bruno pictured all the people who once
frequented this place, laughing, talking, and filling the piazza with life. But
all of them were dead now. Dead and gone.

As they lingered on the edge of the piazza, DeLuca said,
“Guess when people in a place with money like Sorrento died, they just went
quietly. Unlike poor Naples.”

Bruno shoved the bottle of water back in his backpack.
“Yeah, well, good for them.” He wanted to focus on the task at hand. “Follow
me. And stay sharp.”

Bruno crept into the piazza, with DeLuca two steps behind.
Although they hugged a building, Bruno felt exposed as they gazed about. DeLuca
saw their target first. “There!” he said, a little too loudly for Bruno’s
liking. DeLuca pointed to the only building in the square with a clock tower.
The transmission had been quite specific about the clock tower.

Bruno nodded. “That’s it. Let’s go.”

They jogged across the piazza to the light-pink building
with the stopped clock. A glass-enclosed patio surrounded its base. Vines grew
wild about the glass walls, climbing from the pots below into the weeds hanging
from the low balcony above. Narrow streets stretched along both sides of the
building into the rest of Sorrento. On one side of the patio, just where the
street met the piazza, Bruno spotted double metal doors nearly flush with the
asphalt of the street just in front of the building.

“I think this is it,” said Bruno. “Hell of a place to put a
weapons cache—right in the middle of Sorrento!”

DeLuca nodded. “Yeah, but who would have ever imagined
they’d put one under a restaurant.”

There was a chain and padlock wrapped around the handles. He
gave the handles on the doors a tug. They moved a few centimeters, but that was
all. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

He turned to DeLuca. “Hand me the crowbar, and keep your
eyes open.”

Bruno slipped the end of the crowbar into the handles on the
metal doors. Leveraging the crowbar with all his bodyweight, Bruno heard the
metal groan, then give way with a crack. Bruno, still huffing from his effort,
tossed the chain and padlock into overgrown weeds growing out of the pots.

DeLuca raised his eyebrows. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t want to leave signs of our presence,” Bruno said.
Bruno looked around, then motioned for DeLuca to stand behind him. He took a
black metal flashlight out of his backpack with his left hand, then slung it
over his back. In his right hand, Bruno held his pistol.