Nomad (16 page)

Celeste came to support Jess, and they slowly made their way through the downpour to the
piazza
. Water streamed into Jess’s eyes, and she strained to remain stable on the slick cobblestones. All the shops were shuttered; all the restaurants closed. Not another soul around. They walked across the square to the other side, past the fountain, and continued two more blocks to
Via Rinascimento
where they stood in the sheeting rain and waited. No taxis. No police. A car appeared and Celeste almost threw herself in front of it, but it honked and swerved, then sped off in a spray of water.

The rain hammered down. Leaning against a stone wall, Jess shivered violently. She couldn’t stop her teeth chattering now. Her leg ached. A cold fire burned in her thigh. “Let…let’s try the phone box,” she stuttered. They’d been out in the rain for maybe two hours already, and Jess felt her core temperature dropping, her fingers going numb.

Celeste stood at the edge of the road, her hands in tight fists, her arms shaking. Water poured down her face. “Okay, let’s try it.”

“Excuse me?”

Jess glanced to her left. Someone stood under an umbrella, huge raindrops exploding like staccato gunfire off it.

“You need help, yes?”

The person stepped next to Jess. It was a young woman, slender, shorter than Jess. Smooth skin with freckled cheeks, her eyes so blue they seemed to pierce the darkness.

“I have somewhere warm,” the woman said. “I am Massarra, come. Come with me.”

“Yes…yes,” Celeste stammered, coming to hold Jess. “Please.”

“This way.” Massarra turned and disappeared into the rain.

Jess and Celeste followed. Jess hobbled and leaned onto her mother. “Do you think this is a good idea?” she whispered to her mother.

“We don’t have much choice. We need to get out of this, get warm somehow. Maybe I can go and try the phone.”

“Don’t leave me alone.” Jess said this without thinking. “I mean, that’s fine, but don’t go—”

“Don’t worry.” Celeste squeezed Jess.

They followed Massarra back across the empty
piazza
, back down Angela’s street. Water flowed in torrents around their feet as they struggled. Jess was about to ask where they were going when Massarra pointed at a gap between the buildings, barely two feet wide. She peered down it through the rain. A light glimmered at the end.

“It’s okay, it’s safe,” Massarra assured her, and she turned sideways and shimmied her way through the gap.

Celeste and Jess stood shaking in the rain. “What do you think?” Celeste asked.

Jess didn’t answer, but hopped forward. Anything to get out of this rain. She pushed herself between the buildings and edged forward. Empty beer cans and discarded food containers littered the gap, a waterfall pouring from the tops of the buildings onto her. The light at the end glimmered brighter. A fire. The gap widened into an interior courtyard between the buildings, and, finally, no rain. Looking up, awnings stretched between the walls, interlacing one over the other for four stories. Rainwater gushed from drainpipes. Reaching the end of the gap, she hopped forward, steadying herself with one arm against the wall.

Three old men sat around a low concrete urn containing a bright fire. They looked at Jess and nodded before returning to staring into the fire.

Massarra came to Jess with a blanket. “I saw you in the street.” And she had crutches. “One of my uncles had this from an old accident.” She offered Jess both.

“Thank you,” Celeste said from behind Jess, taking the blanket and wrapping it around her daughter.

“Come, sit.” Massarra indicated a wooden bench to the side of the fire. She smiled at Jess. “These are my uncles. Two of them speak English, just so you know.” She said something in what sounded like Arabic, and all three of them nodded.

Jess convulsed in a fit of shivering, her leg almost buckling. She held back. Four of them, and just her and Celeste. She doubted anyone would even hear them scream from the alleyway. Even if the streets weren’t deserted. Even if the rain wasn’t pounding, drowning everything out.

“Come on,” Celeste whispered into her ear. “They look nice.”

They didn’t look nice. The three old men sat like goblins, hunched over, their beards hanging between their knees. The closest turned and looked at Jess, one eye seeing, the other an opaque silver pool reflecting the firelight. She shuddered again, this time only half from the cold.

But the fire’s warmth beckoned.

Leaning on Celeste, she muttered, “Thank you,” to Massarra and stumbled to sit on the bench. Celeste sat beside her. Jess put the crutches down but kept them close, in case she needed to stand quickly. Or fend off one of the goblins. Shivering, she held her hands to the fire, beautiful life-giving warmth spreading into her fingertips.

“Most of our luggage was stolen.” Massarra brought Celeste a blanket she took from a backpack next to the fire. “My uncles and I were traveling home. Tomorrow we get money, drive north.”

“Really?” Celeste took the blanket and wrapped it around herself and Jess, pulling her closer on the bench. “That’s what happened to us, too.”

“I suspected,” Massarra said as she sat opposite them. “I heard you asking for help.” She pointed out the gap between the buildings. “The world is going crazy today.”

Jess stopped shivering. “Yes.”

“You heard, then? About Nomad?” Massarra asked.

“Yes.”

“And you believe it? There was a man on television today that said they didn’t know yet. The one with a graying goatee, black rimmed glasses…did you see him?”

Jess leaned toward the fire, watched the flames dance. She had to mean her father. Jess nodded, clenching her fists. Where was he? “He’s lying,” she grunted. Celeste clutched her under the blanket, frowned at her.

“Lying? Why would you say that?”

Jess pushed her mother away, ever so slightly. “Because they had to know, for a long time.” And that was true. When she spoke to her father two nights before, he said he had evidence of Nomad over thirty years ago. Data he recorded when he was a grad student. Mysterious flashes in the night sky.

One of the old men, the one with the silver eye, asked, “So, they’ve been hiding it?”

It wasn’t true her father had exactly
hidden
it. He’d theorized about it in a research paper—rejected by his peers as far-fetched speculation. But why had he abandoned Jess and Celeste? Why hadn’t he called? “Yes, that man on television is a liar.”

Her mother’s nails dug into Jess’s arm under the blanket. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

The old men exchanged glances, muttering in a guttural language Jess didn’t understand. Silver-eye looked at Jess again. “And now the world is unprepared to meet God.”

Jess clenched her fists. “Nobody is ever prepared to meet God.”

Silver-eye erupted into a phlegmy laugh. “Not true. You only fear God if you haven’t made your peace, haven’t placed death at the center of life.”

Thawed out, blood pumped through Jess’s veins again. “Now that sounds cheerful.”

“The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of life.” Silver-eye worked his mouth around into a rotten-toothed grimace. “Hell is no punishment, but a process of freeing the soul. If you are frightened of dying, you’ll see devils tearing your life away when death comes. But, if you’ve made peace, then you’ll see angels freeing you when death comes.”

Rubbing her hands together, Jess stared at Silver-eye. “I appreciate you letting us sit here, but I don’t want to talk. Is that okay?” It creeped her out.
He
creeped her out.

“Sorry, my uncles, this is affecting them,” Massarra apologized.

Silver-eye looked at the other two old men and shook his head. He looked back at Jess, held her gaze. “As you wish. But you might want to think, what is it that holds you here? What demons tear at your soul, keeping you from freedom?”

Jess stared at the man’s silver eye, a puddle of light, a boy’s face disappearing into it. Clenching her fists, she turned away and huddled under the blankets with her mother.

NOMAD

Survivor testimony #GR17;

Event +68hrs;

Survivor name: Eveline Goff;

Reported location: Nuuk, Greenland;

Ah, where to start, my God…I was part of a University of Cambridge expedition, studying the aquifers under the Greenland ice sheets. Makes the bedrock slippery. That was the idea, you know? We spent a month trekking across the high glaciers, installing cameras and sensors, and were on our way back when the buzz about Nomad hit. We got into Nuuk, but all flights were canceled. No way of getting to Reykjavik, but maybe that was a good thing…
(long pause)
Sorry. Right. On the day.

About 4 p.m., the ocean swelled right up over Nuuk’s sea walls, and it just kept coming, flooded half of the city, but slowly, like a foot an hour. Everyone just got out of the way, hoping this was the worst of it. By 9 p.m., the sea started to pull out, but much faster, and the Northern Lights intensified. They aren’t unusual. But these, they flared. By midnight it was almost as bright as daylight, and that’s when we felt the first tremor. I was inside, glued to my monitoring station readouts, not believing my eyes. The ground shook continuously, and the glaciers, they weren’t moving at feet per year, they started moving at feet
per second,
sliding down off the highlands.

That’s when Piers grabbed me, rushed us into the helicopter, a terrible roar filling the air. Barely got off the ground when Nuuk was razed, ice boulders the size of skyscrapers sweeping the city into the half-empty bay. We kept aloft until we were almost out of fuel, maybe four hours, circling over ice shelves sliding into the oceans. Hundreds of miles of it from what I saw on the sensors before they went dark. We found a patch of high ground to land on, but there are still tremors, and the skies are black with ash clouds that came with the easterly winds. We’ve set up camp, been trying to radio for help. Do you have any idea how much water…

Transmission ended ionization static. Freq. 4135 kHz/NSB.

Subject not reacquired.

OCTOBER 20
^th

17

R
OME,
I
TALY

PITTER-PATTER, PITTER-PATTER.

Jess opened her eyes. In front of her, in the middle of a crabgrass-infested courtyard, smoke curled from charred embers in a low concrete urn. Windowless, red brick walls surrounded her on all four sides. She looked up. Waxy light filtered down from a gray sky. Water dripped from awnings above her, onto the slick flagstones and puddles by her foot. She tried to move, but her bones ached. Her arms were stiff. A throbbing pressure banged behind her eyes.

“Mom?” she whispered, stretching her neck forward.

She shook herself awake.

Adrenaline sharpened her senses.

“Mom?!” Jess cried out. The three old men, the goblins around the fire—where were they? She threw off her nest of blankets. What did they do to her? She didn’t remember falling asleep. Was she drugged?

“I’m here.” Celeste appeared from the gap between the buildings. She held out a Styrofoam cup.

“What happened? Where is…”

“Massarra? She left early this morning. You were asleep against the wall, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Jess groaned and stretched. The morning air was cool, but warming up, and at least it wasn’t raining. She took the coffee, smelled it, and took a sip. She felt its warmth slide down her throat. “Oh, that’s good.” She looked at the cup. “Did you get some money?”