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  Author Matthew Mather

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  PART ONE

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  NOVEMBER 1st

  Eight Days A.N.

  (After Nomad)

  1

  A BULLET RICOCHETED off the open truck door.

  “Get out!” Jessica Rollins screamed at Lucca and Raffael.

  The faces of the teenaged brothers shone white in the dim light, their eyes wide. A second bullet punched a frosted hole through the windshield and lodged itself in the metal screen behind the seats. Jess crouched lower and stole a glance around the door. “Andare!” she yelled.

  That did the trick. Keeping low, Raffa slithered over the driver seat, opened the opposite door of the Humvee and disappeared. Lucca climbed over Jess and gracelessly tumbled into the dirt and snow at her feet. Jess pointed at her own eyes, then at a pile of twisted metal and bricks ten feet away. One, two, she mouthed silently, and on three she swung around the truck’s door and squeezed the trigger on her AK-47. Pop. Pop. Two controlled rounds. She felt Lucca move behind her and fired again, then rolled through the gray snow to scramble next to him. Raffa slithered on his stomach to join them.

  A bullet whined overhead.

  She had sensed something was wrong the moment they drove up to the bottleneck in the road. A jumble of car parts blocking the street seemed a little too neatly placed. She’d stopped short of the road’s choke point, but there had been no easy way to back out.

  “Giovanni,” Jess whispered into her walkie-talkie, in as low a voice as she could manage. She sucked air in between her teeth and exhaled heavily, trying to ease the flood of adrenaline. Her hands shook. “Do you have Hector?”

  The walkie-talkie crackled softly. “In the brick schoolhouse half a block behind you.”

  Jess turned the volume down. She peered behind her through the murk and saw an arm waving, a hundred feet back on the opposite side of the street, behind the Range Rover. Schoolhouse. Indistinguishable from other piles of snowdrift-covered rubble. “And Leone?”

  “He’s with me. What can you see?”

  What can I see? Jess almost laughed. In the dying light, dirty snowflakes fell through an indistinct soup. Daytime was an oozing sludge-brown twilight that clawed its way from the suffocating black of nights. The feeble rays of flashlights and headlamps drowned in the murky aerosolized soup they breathed. It stank of rotten eggs, the sulfurous-brimstone stench burrowing its way into the brain and filling their lungs with black phlegm, smothering everything in a pasty layer that scratched the eyeballs and coated tongues.

  Removing her goggles, Jess rubbed her eyes and strained to see through the semidarkness. The temperature had dropped ten degrees in the past two hours. Another frigid night. The Humvee’s headlights barely pierced the muck.

  There. A head peered around the corner of what looked like the entrance to an open garage. No more than a hundred yards away. A second shape appeared behind the first, the body and head twitching, more like a cornered animal than predator. Jess pushed the talk button. “I see two, probably men. Do you see anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Jess brushed snow from her face and pulled her gloves back on. Three-story buildings lined the street, some with windows still strangely intact. It reminded her of bombed-out villages she’d seen on her tour of duty in Afghanistan; almost everything destroyed, buildings reduced to twisted piles of brick and steel. Yet every now and then a reminder of civilization endured, like the marble statue that stood untouched and defiant at this town’s entrance as they drove in.

  The two figures ran, doubled-over, behind the jumble of car parts blocking the middle. Had they seen Giovanni exit the rear car and run into the school? She had to act fast. This had been planned as an ambush, but the playing field was level now. Whoever had lain in wait for them had lost their advantage.

  “Leave Leone with the shotgun to protect Hector,” she instructed Giovanni over the walkie-talkie. “Then take Lucca and Raffa down the side street, south. Sending them to you now.” She looked at Lucca, his rifle gripped in white-knuckled fists, and flicked her chin in Giovanni’s direction. The teenager crouched and took off at a half-run with his brother trailing. “I’m going up to the roof. When we get into position, toss two grenades into the open garage door of the red building. That’ll force them out. Open fire from one side; I’ll pick them off from the other.” Flank-and-flush.

  Static hissed over the walkie-talkie. “Maybe we just turn the trucks?”

  Two heads bobbed out from behind the burnt-out car in front of her, and one of the men jumped into the open to duck behind a pile of rubble twenty feet closer to Jess. Her hands tightened on the AK-47. “We need to scare them off.”

  Hissing silence. “Okay. I have the boys.”

  “Tell me when you get there.”

  “You’re sure you want to do this?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to take a deep lungful of air, but a wet cough erupted mid-breath. She pushed the talk button. “We have to.”

  A pause. “We’re on our way.”

  Jess tried to steady her shaking hands by clenching them into fists. Her army consisted of two teenagers, the elderly groundskeeper Leone and the Baron Giovanni Ruspoli, who’d probably never shot at anything more threatening than a clay pigeon before. It was on her to keep them safe.

  A third head appeared carelessly out from the doorway ahead. She hoped a few grenades and some well-placed sniper fire would be enough to scare them off, but people were desperate. Beyond desperate.

  Jess slung her assault rifle over her back and tightened the strap snug. She shuffled behind the Humvee on her knees and kept going until she reached the cover of a fallen wall on the other side of the street. She stopped. Listened. Peered into the gloom. Sensing nothing, she got to her feet and jogged to the drainpipe going up the side of the three-story building. She removed her gloves, stuffing them into the pockets of her parka, then blew on her hands and gripped the frozen pipe to begin climbing. She pulled herself up onto the railing of the first floor balcony and slid over into a pile of snow, but landed awkwardly and her prosthetic leg wrenched loose.

  She cursed and pulled it back into place, feeling it rub into the raw stump just below her left knee. Getting to her feet, she balanced against the wall and propped herself against the railing. She shimmied her way onto the second floor balcony and stopped there, straddling the railing so she could pull her gloves back on to warm her already frozen hands
. Leaning out, she saw one of the scavengers emerge from the pile of car wreckage to take a potshot at their Humvee.

  “In position,” Giovanni’s voice whispered over the walkie-talkie.

  Jumping up to grab another drainpipe, Jess pulled herself up to the edge of the roof. She held herself there as she scanned the debris for signs of movement. Nothing. She hauled herself up and twisted through more ash-ridden snow onto her back.

  She thumbed the talk button and whispered: “One second.”

  Rolling onto her knees, she pulled her rifle off her back and popped the cover of its telescopic sight. She hunkered low and moved to the edge of the rooftop, then dropped flat onto her stomach. The lead scavenger had almost reached the Humvee. “Okay, in position. Drop those grenades in.”

  She slowed her breathing, steadying herself as she zeroed the crosshairs in on her target. The man turned, almost to face her, and her breath caught. He was no more than a teenager. Just a boy.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the shadows of Giovanni and Raffa dart out from behind the building across the street. With the crosshairs on the boy’s chest, Jess’s felt the pressure of the trigger beneath her finger, but released. How many had she killed already? She shifted the sight down, leveling the crosshairs on the fleshy part of the boy’s leg, and pulled the trigger as a blinding flash burst in the street below. The first grenade’s heaving concussion was followed by another a second later.

  Windows blinked and shattered.

  Screams filled the air.

  A man ran out of the building beneath her, both hands to his belly. Another sprinted out, a gun clutched in shaking hands that he pointed at Giovanni. Jess swung her rifle left, this time aiming mid-torso, and fired. A red mist puffed from the man’s chest and he fell. She glanced to her right. The boy held his leg, hopping back toward the wall.

  More screaming.

  An engine roared, and a second later a vehicle skidded out of the garage entrance.

  Jess squinted hard, trying to understand what she was seeing. The body of an old Volkswagen Beetle, but with the wheel wells torn away. Large, circular rollers with jagged spikes had been welded onto the back axle, replacing the tires. Rudimentary skis had been placed where the front wheels should have been.

  Slipping to a stop, the boy staggered to get in the passenger door, while two more of the scavengers perched in the open front-trunk. They fired random shots in Giovanni’s direction. Jess lifted her rifle, locked a round into the chamber, aimed and fired. Her bullet punched through the roof. The two men ducked and the strange vehicle accelerated, kicking up a spray of dirty snow. It veered up the street and disappeared into the gloom.

  It had been enough, but it could so easily have been worse. The man she had shot lay motionless. A seeping pool of black spread around him in the light of the Humvee’s headlamps.

  “Help.”

  Was that the man in the snow? She held her breath. Listened.

  “Help me.”

  Was Giovanni hurt? In the sudden silence, she strained to hear.

  “Please, help me.”

  No. It was coming from inside the building. Below her. Not Italian either; a distinctly American accent.

  Giovanni, accompanied by Raffa and Lucca, appeared from the darkness on the other side of the street. Jess heaved a shaky sigh of relief and gave them a quick wave. Stepping through the foot of snow and ash covering the roof, she found the stairway down. The door was locked. She chambered a round and fired into the lock. The door kicked open. Clicking on her headlamp, she inched her way down to the first landing, scanning the frozen gloom, leading with the rifle.

  “Please, help me,” came the muffled call again.

  Her finger dropped onto the trigger.

  She swept each room with the AK-47, barrel just under her line of vision. Stomach tight, constantly searching behind and up. Clearing doorframes first, then into each room. Eyes wide, sucking in every detail. Sweat gathering despite the cold. Something kicked in her gut. Even scavengers should have been more prepared, put up more of a fight. Had it been too easy?

  She shoved the thought aside and focused. Clearing the last set of stairs, she entered the lobby and opened the door to the garage. In the light of their headlamps, Giovanni, Raffa and Lucca stood encircling three people, all of them tied by hands and feet to a radiator. Rough sack bags covered their heads.

  “Please, whoever you are, please let me go,” one of them moaned. A man whose voice she recognized.

  She marched to the pleading man, pulled the bag off his head, and stared in open-mouthed disbelief. “Roger?”

  “Jessica?” The man’s eyes bulged. “Thank God.”

  Her knife already out, she knelt and brought the blade to his face. Her hand trembled.

  “Jess…” Giovanni took a step forward.

  In one quick motion, Jess grabbed Roger’s arms and wrenched them to the side. She cut the cords binding him, then the ropes around his feet.

  Roger pulled his arms free and rubbed his wrists. He winced and extended a hand to be helped up. Instead she seized him by the throat, pulled him to his feet and pushed him back against the wall, the knife still in her hand. “What the hell happened?”

  “Jesus Christ, what are you—”

  “My father?”

  “I don’t know,” Roger gurgled. “Where is he?”

  “He’s dead. They’re both dead.”

  Giovanni put an arm on her shoulder and tried to ease her back with gentle pressure. She released her grip on the man’s neck.

  Roger wheezed and doubled over.

  “How did you get here?”

  “I was knocked unconscious when I went out with your father.”

  Wind whistled outside.

  “Jessica?” A woman’s voice echoed from the darkness.

  Giovanni and Lucca raised their rifles.

  Dropping her hands, Jess turned. Someone limped across the dirt-streaked marble floor, but even in the dim light she recognized the shining blue eyes.

  “Massarra?”

  2

  JESS EXHALED A long plume of vapor, which quickly dissipated in the dry air despite the cold. The air was the first thing she noticed every morning. She could smell it before she opened her eyes. A cloying thickness devoid of life that suffused itself into the last moments of her dreams, the belching stench of the inner Earth, its underworld of brimstone and sulfur, but without heat. Dante, an Italian Jess had spent time thinking about, understood cold. He’d placed circles of ice beneath the circles of fire in his vision of Hell’s inner sanctum.

  She panned her flashlight around the room. Two wrought-iron chandeliers hung from a wooden ceiling twenty feet overhead, a border of family crests and shields painted around the top edge. Wood paneling lined the walls to half-height, the hallway about sixty feet long with a huge wooden door flanked by cathedral windows in the front, next to a set of extra-wide double doors leading to a concrete-floored garage. “What is this place?”

  “Comune, ah, how do you say…” Giovanni’s face was lit by the glow of his headlamp, the shadows exaggerating the creases of his frown. “Town hall. I think this is a town hall.”

  Jess swept her light across the front wall. In block letters over the door, she found the name of the town. “Bandita.” She snorted. “Fitting. Let’s set camp here for the night.”

  How many days now? Eight days since the destruction, since Nomad had repaved the surface of the Earth, churned its oceans to submerge the continents and tore the crust apart to belch a miles-thick layer of dust and vapor to blanket the globe. America was gone, the Midwest torn apart and covered in a chest-deep blanket of ash from the eruption of Yellowstone, the coasts blasted by thousand-foot tidal waves and rocked by apocalyptic earthquakes. Sea levels surged upward as glacial icecaps tipped into the oceans, drowning everything left behind. The Baikal rift had detonated, wrecking Asia’s interior, along with dozens of secondary yet massive eruptions around the Pacific Rim and mid-oceanic ridge. In just da
ys, the entire planet had been plunged into a shadowy new world, the dawn of a dark new ice age.

  Nomad, two black holes—massive in the experience of the Earth, but tiny on any cosmic scale—had ripped the solar system apart, and either thrown the planets into radical new orbits, or slung them away into interstellar space. Because of the lucky geometry of the encounter, Earth’s own orbit had only shifted into a slightly more elliptic one around the Sun. One still within the habitable range.

  Lucky.

  This stinking hell was lucky. A mass extinction event as the Earth hadn’t witnessed in two hundred and fifty million years. Little had survived. The plants, the animals, almost everything was dead or dying.

  But not quite everything.

  Like warm-blooded cockroaches, humans couldn’t be stamped out so easily. Everywhere from the gloom, bloodied and battered survivors appeared. While electric grids and most electronics had been fried in the intense barrage of solar irradiation during the event, older, solid-state electronics, like shortwave radios, had survived. Giovanni had contacted dozens of survivor groups, and along the roads small encampments of people appeared, marked by the luminous mushrooms of glowing artificial light and buzzing generators.

  “You think they won’t come back?” Giovanni asked.

  Jess surveyed the room again. “I’m not sure.”

  How could she be sure about anything? The whole day today she’d been on edge, the distance growing between their small convoy and the relative safety of the Castello Ruspoli. The point of no return was fast approaching. Maybe it had already been crossed. Their plan had seemed the only way forward when she was sitting in the safety of the castle’s catacombs, but out here?

  “They sure as hell looked like they were going somewhere when they left.” She clicked off her flashlight. “Then again, we killed one. Might have been someone’s brother.”