Omega Plague: Collapse (23 page)

Chapter 22

Bruno glanced behind him. Grim, Soviet-style apartment
buildings now blocked any view of Vesuvius to the southeast. Turning the engine
off, Bruno dismounted the motorcycle. DeLuca followed.

They surveyed the area. “Porca troia!” muttered Bruno as he
pulled off his sunglasses. “Fucking hell! I should have known this would
happen.”

The A3 Autostrada ran right into the heart of Naples. But
now instead of ending in an intersection that flowed in and out of the city, as
Bruno remembered, military trucks parked length-wise blocked both lanes and the
narrow median. In front of the small space that wasn’t blocked by the trucks,
thick tangles of barbed wire and metal barriers that looked like large jacks
painted yellow barred the way. Bruno could see the nondescript apartment
buildings and billboards of this part of Naples that lay behind the barrier.
Apart from some ragged posters, half-stuck on streetlamps, flapping in the
wind, Bruno saw no movement.

Motioning to DeLuca to stay back, he approached one of the
trucks with one hand on the pistol at his back. Bruno looked in the cab. Empty.
He scrambled in, looking for anything of use. To his surprise, he found the
keys, put them in the ignition and turned. But to no avail. The engine didn’t
even turn over.

Bruno put his head back on the seat and sighed. He kept his
sunglasses off. A sheet of clouds had rolled in, blotting out the sun, but the
still oddly warm temperature for this time of year made him sweat. Bruno
wondered exactly what day or even what month it was. October he thought, or
maybe the end of September? He glanced at his watch. October, if the thing was
still right. Amazing how little something like the date meant anymore.

He walked back toward DeLuca.

“Strange,” DeLuca said. “Less than an hour’s ride from
Sorrento to Naples, but it feels like we’re on another planet.”

Bruno grunted in acknowledgement, wiping his forehead with
his sleeve. Noticing his watch as he raised his hand, Bruno unhooked it.

“Here,” said Bruno. “You’ve got the radio. You need the
watch, too.”

As DeLuca fastened the watch on his wrist, they both looked
around, each seeking a way through. On their right, a high brick wall topped by
a metal fence separated the road from what Bruno thought must be railroad
tracks, the once-electrified wires running in the air a telltale sign. To their
left, a shorter vertical fence made of metal slats ran along the side of the
road. Bruno glanced behind them. Both ran for kilometers back in the distance
from whence they had come.

DeLuca followed Bruno’s gaze. “We’ll have to backtrack. Take
the last off-ramp.”

Bruno shook his head. “No. We’ll go on foot from here.”

“On foot? Why?”

Bruno looked around. “The military probably blocked all the
roads in and out of the city at the end, trying to keep Omega from spreading into
or out of the city. We might run out of fuel long before we could find some
side road that they forgot. Not to mention the noise of this thing would wake
the dead.” Bruno looked back up the road from where they had come. “If we find
the blood, we should go back to Sorrento, regroup before we decide what to do
next. So, we need to leave the moto here. I’ll move it close to the truck so
that it’ll be harder to spot.”

Without turning on the engine, Bruno rolled the motorcycle
closer to the truck. As he did so, he nodded towards central Naples. “Check the
map. We’re not that far from the cache now, I don’t think.”

DeLuca pulled the map out of his jacket pocket and unfurled
it. He turned it over from the side that had the whole of the boot of Italy to
the one with a focus on the major urban areas. He folded it again, leaving
central Naples the only square exposed. “Yes, two kilometers or so. Can you
believe it’s in a church, let alone
that
church?”

Bruno maneuvered the bike parallel to the part of the truck
just behind the passenger cab. Then he glanced about, his eyes focusing on the
low rooftops beyond the trucks in front of them, while DeLuca folded up the
map. “We’d better get a move on. This used to be a key access point to the city
from the south. They might have patrols here.”

DeLuca frowned. “Patrols? But aren’t they just savages, they
can’t have—”

“They can,” interrupted Bruno. “Don’t you remember the last
time we were here? They called it
organized
crime for a reason.”

Bruno rummaged through the backpacks, took some things out,
and left them at the bottom of the passenger side of the truck, hidden under
the mat. He hoped his things would still be there if he ever managed to come
back.

“We’ve got to travel light,” said Bruno. “Some food, water.
A couple of tools. That’s it.”

He tightened the straps on his backpack, handed DeLuca’s to
him, and checked his pistol. Safety on and a round in the chamber. Bruno was
ready. “We’ve wasted enough time already. Come on.”

He clambered into the truck with the open door and DeLuca
followed. Bruno moved over to the driver’s side and looked out the window. The
bright sun illuminated the open intersection. In the middle stood a stop sign
amid a triangle overgrown with brown grass, the only remnant of nature. Harsh
right angles of five- and six-storey grey concrete buildings dominated the
area. A low stone wall festooned with faded billboards ran on the other side of
the intersection, perpendicular to them, maybe a hundred meters away, until it
reached the end of the block.

“Make for the wall and stick close to it. That’ll make us
harder to hit.” Bruno pointed at what looked like a parking garage and some
apartment buildings looming on the other side of the wall. “See those buildings
beyond the wall? If someone is up there, they’ll have a clear shot at the whole
area, so we’ve got to move fast.”

DeLuca moved forward a bit, tightening the pack on his back.
“Ready when you are.”

Bruno put his hand on the driver’s side door handle. He
peered out the window one last time, but saw nothing except the bones of an
empty city. He turned to DeLuca.

“Stay low.”

Bruno threw open the door and jumped out. Without looking
back, he ran in a crouch across the asphalt, his breath loud in his own ears.
Bruno fixed his eyes on the wall. Though his feet churned beneath him, his
backpack slowed him down and the wall seemed only to creep closer. As he
approached the wall, Bruno almost felt like a fool as he ran, crouched, like a
thousand eyes were watching. He knew Il Serbo couldn’t be everywhere. He could
hear DeLuca’s footfalls just behind him, but then the sound of gunfire filled
the air. Between bursts of gunfire, sounds of a nearby referee’s whistle filled
the air. More whistles answered it. A grim realization swept over Bruno. They
are coming.

Struggling through what felt like spider webs, Bruno lurched
into the wall, with DeLuca next to him. Bruno yanked his pistol out and DeLuca
followed suit.

The shots stopped once they reached the wall, but those
goddamned whistles wouldn’t stop. Bruno crouched down and spoke to DeLuca, his
voice struggling to contain his rising panic. “I can’t tell where it’s coming
from. We’ve got to find cover!”

“But how could they know? How could they—”

“No time for that now! Follow me!”

They hurried to the end of the wall, and Bruno risked
peeking his head beyond it. The street moved into the heart of Naples. The
dingy parking garage dominated the newer buildings at this end of the street.
Bruno saw a flash of movement at the top of the garage. He pulled back, put his
back against the wall and looked up at the overcast sky. He knew more were on
their way, converging on this area and coming for them.

“Bruno,” hissed DeLuca. “What now?”

For the first time in a long while, Bruno’s confidence
faltered. He had no answers and did not know what to do. Still, Bruno
understood they needed to move quickly, or they would surely be found and
killed, or worse. If they escaped back to Sorrento, they might never find the
blood, the cache, or any chance of destroying Omega. And if the gang had a
working vehicle and could follow, they might lead this bunch of murdering thugs
back to Paola and their new friends.

For long seconds, Bruno struggled with himself. Then he
turned to DeLuca.

“Come on,” said Bruno. “We’re heading for the garage.
Sniper’s on the top. Stay low, and follow me, as fast as you can.”

Bruno holstered his own pistol, then put his hand on the
barrel of DeLuca’s. “Put it away—won’t do much good if you drop it. Once we’re
in, he can’t shoot us. We’ll have to get out the other side, and hope we can
lose them in the narrower streets.”

Bruno knew that not many people could hit a moving target
from a distance like the top of the garage to the street. He hoped that the
bullets to come held to the law of averages, since he was risking not just his
life, but that of DeLuca as well.

“There’s a door, I think it’s open. That’s where we’re
going.”

DeLuca nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Bruno took two breaths and emerged running from behind the
wall in a semi-crouch. Shots echoed around as they ran toward their goal. His
heart in his throat, Bruno blasted into the entrance bar on the door, almost
knocking it off its hinges.

The sound of DeLuca’s huffing filled Bruno’s ears as he shut
the door behind him and looked around.

“Find something to block the door!”

DeLuca and Bruno both scrambled around the small area. They
stood in a narrow room at the bottom of a staircase that led up to the other
levels of the garage.

“There’s nothing here!”

Bruno glanced around, searching as much for an idea as for
something to block the entrance. Going up the stairs would be suicide. They’d
end up trapped on a higher level with no escape. Bruno peered into the
semi-gloom of the lower level of the garage, just opposite the door they had
used to enter. It was half-filled with cars coated in grey dust, but at least
the inside offered the hope of an alternate exit.

“Come on, maybe there’s an exit back there!” hissed Bruno.

Bruno burst out of the room and hurried along a row of
vehicles, heading towards the far side of the garage. He darted between a van
and a car, just as he heard the metallic smack of a door being thrown open.

Bruno crouched behind the van, taking care to make sure the
tires hid his feet as best he could manage.

Bruno realized DeLuca was missing. He looked across the
aisle where cars used to meander to find parking. A long row of abandoned cars
stretched the length of the garage. There he spotted DeLuca, squatting between
two cars, making himself as small as he could.

He and DeLuca locked eyes, but before they could even mouth
any words, the sound of many footsteps echoed from the cold concrete walls.
Bruno couldn’t tell how many pursuers followed, but he knew there were more
than enough to take both of them out.

Though they were on the ground floor, concrete slats running
above the wall were too narrow for anyone to fit through.

He glanced behind him. In the back corner of the garage, he
could just make out the once-illuminated green lettering of an exit sign. But
Bruno’s row of cars ended not far from where he stood, at least fifty meters
before the exit. DeLuca’s row of cars extended all the way to the back wall.
Bruno had no chance to escape without being seen. He couldn’t make a run for it
without completely exposing his back to these thugs. With any luck, though, if
DeLuca stayed between the wall and the cars, he could use his row of cars as
cover all the way to the back exit, but only if he acted quickly.

DeLuca had a chance for escape, but everything rested on
Bruno. He had to do something, to create a distraction and give DeLuca a chance.
Voices wafted over the vehicles and footsteps approached. Bruno gritted his
teeth and tears of anger welled in his eyes. Bruno’s random act of darting
behind this row had doomed him. His heart sank and he bowed his head as the
realization washed over him: today his luck ran out—today, there would be no
escape. But while he could not escape, Bruno knew he still had a choice to
make: he could end it all now. He could fight and die, killing as many as he
could before they killed him, and give DeLuca the time he needed. Or Bruno
could choose another way: he could choose life and suffering, and maybe give
DeLuca even more time to escape.

Bruno turned his head towards DeLuca. Jerking his thumb
towards the back, he mouthed the words: “You-Go-Exit.” DeLuca’s eyes widened in
silent protest, but Bruno shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on DeLuca.

The footsteps grew closer. Bruno closed his eyes and took a
breath. Then he spoke.

“Don’t shoot! I’m coming out! I give up!”

The footsteps stopped, then Bruno heard scrambling.

A man’s voice responded. “Come out with your hands up, and
we won’t shoot!”

Bruno responded, “I’m coming out now!”

He stood up straight, coming out from behind the van, his
hands at shoulder height. As he did, he looked across to the other row. DeLuca
was gone. At least he made it.

Bruno walked in the middle of the two rows of vehicles.
Completely exposed, he spotted his pursuers. In the semi-light of the garage,
Bruno saw seven, maybe eight figures, ten or fifteen meters away. Three of them
approached. One had a rifle, and the other pointed a revolver. The third had no
visible weapon. Veils, fabric, and other makeshift materials hid their faces.

Bruno focused on the coverings over their faces. He never
wore one, feeling that the impairment to his vision outweighed the risk of a
bite. But though they approached, Bruno still could not see their eyes in the
twilight, and the odd coverings over their faces rendered them alien, travelers
from a world that knew only torture and death.

They stopped a few arms’ lengths from where Bruno stood. In
silence, they looked at Bruno. Two of them kept their weapons trained on Bruno.
Then the tallest one, the one without a weapon spoke, breaking the silence with
a bark.