Omega Plague: Collapse (24 page)

“Turn around and put your hands on your neck.”

Bruno complied without a word. Then the man spoke again.

“Kneel!”

Bruno shifted first down to one knee, then the other. His
breathing slowed as he knelt. He hoped that the end would be quick, a bullet to
the back of the head. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts swam. Soon, so soon,
all would end, it would be over. Bruno’s last thoughts raced. Strange thoughts
surfaced—the last woman he’d slept with, the last dinner he’d had with Carla,
the last gelato he’d eaten—was it blackberry or raspberry? Would the end be
quick? Then another man spoke.

“Il Serbo wants to talk to you.”

The man’s accent . . . he’s not from Naples. Bruno opened
his eyes. The voice—something about it was familiar. He started to rise, to
turn for a better look at his murderers, but a strike to the side of his head
knocked him on his chest and his face scraped across cement. The man’s voice
echoed in Bruno’s mind as he slipped down into darkness.

Chapter 23

October 11

Bruno rolled off the plastic gym mat onto the grey concrete
floor, shivering in the dampness. Streaks of rain ran down the small window
near the ceiling. A feeble light cast down, giving some illumination to the
stark scene. As he lay on his back, Bruno looked up at the bars on the other
side of that window, just out of reach. Three days of staring at the bare walls
of what looked like an old storage room had numbed his brain. He figured he
must be in some kind of basement. Unfortunately, while Bruno could tell the
window stood at street level, about knee-height off the pavement, he had
nothing to climb on to get a view. Fighting to sit up, his head throbbed and
his limbs felt tied down. Three days of quarantine with only crackers and water
had left him tired and weak. His room stank, his only toilet a plastic bucket
that started off filled with only sawdust and dirt that now reeked of feces,
urine, and vomit. For the first day and a half, Bruno’s eyes had felt like they
were going to pop out of his head as he threw up and dry heaved into that
bucket, the symptoms of a concussion, he knew.

Now he simply felt empty, void inside. He’d nibbled on the
crackers and drank the water they’d left for him. Of course, it was not enough,
and he could feel his strength ebbing every day. His quarantine would soon end.
Only a matter of time now until they came for him, now that he had spent three
days in his cell. His hand strayed behind his back, and Bruno fingered the
emptiness where his knife’s handle had once been. He pondered what to do.
Bruno’s thoughts wandered to the man’s voice from the garage. Something about
his voice continued to gnaw at Bruno, troubling his mind, but Bruno was at a
loss to figure out why.

The sounds of the lock being thrown and the door handle
turning shocked Bruno out of his own head. He scrambled to his feet as the door
swung open with a piercing creak. A man walked in, his head covered with a ski
mask. The man stood there looking at Bruno, his dark eyes reflecting the soft
light in the room. Then, without taking his eyes off Bruno, he reached behind
him and pulled the door closed.

They stared at each other; neither man spoke. Then the man
peeled the mask off his head with one hand.

His face was gaunt, angular, and a scar ran down in a
vertical slash from the forehead, cleaved his left eyebrow in two and restarted
on his cheek, only to disappear in his scruffy beard.

With a snap, everything fell into place—the voice from the
garage, the accent, the face. Bruno launched himself at the man, slamming him
up against the door. He breathed up into the man’s face, his fingernails
digging into the soft tissue of the other’s neck.

“Cristian!” Bruno hissed. “Tell me why I shouldn’t rip out
your throat!”

Cristian croaked in a whisper. “Because you need me.”

“I need
you
?” Bruno said, squeezing Cristian’s throat
with greater force. “I don’t fucking need you! You abandoned your post, you
abandoned me, Carla, and everything else!” Bruno spoke through clenched teeth.
“You left me with nothing! But I made it without you, without anyone!” Bruno
squeezed Cristian’s throat for another second, then dropped his hands and stepped
back.

Cristian smiled weakly as he rubbed the thin red gouges from
Bruno’s fingernails on his throat. “Still a self-righteous bastard, right,
Bruno? Not to mention a hypocrite as well. You didn’t take the ship they sent
either.”

“Yeah, I stayed. No thanks to you. I survived with my pistol
and the clothes on my back.” Bruno wanted to spit in Cristian’s face. The
betrayal bit deep. “You had the weapons, so, why didn’t you go back to Tivoli,
back to your daughter? Why are you with this scum?”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Cristian’s face darkened. “I
never made it back. The weapons are gone. I was stupid, I . . .” Cristian
didn’t finish the thought. He moved back towards the door, glanced out the
small portal, and turned back towards Bruno. “We don’t have much time. Why are
you here, Bruno? Why didn’t you stay on Capri?”

Bruno ignored his questions. “Did you know that animal and
his crew came back to the island? That they captured Carla? Do you know what
they did to my sister?”

Cristian stood mute, stony. His silence infuriated Bruno
even more. “She’d been beaten so bad . . . her face . . . she . . .” Bruno’s
voice caught.

Bruno grabbed Cristian’s shirt and pulled him down to his
level. “Do you understand? What
else
do you think they did to her? Take
a fucking guess!” Bruno’s eyes welled up, but his voice stayed filled with
rage, not sorrow.

Cristian’s gaze finally met Bruno’s. “So, is that why you’re
here, Bruno? Revenge? On Il Serbo? Or on me?”

Bruno unclenched his grip and stepped back. “No. I’d be
happy to gut him and you along with him. But that is not why I’m here.”

“Then tell me why you’re here.”

Bruno turned his back to Cristian and stepped away. “I’m
done talking to you. Tell your master whatever you want.”

“You have to trust me if you want to live.” Cristian let out
a long breath before continuing. “I told him I’d spent a few years in the army,
that’s why I know weapons. Which was true, you know that. But let me tell you
something he doesn’t know: he doesn’t know I was a Carabiniere. If he did, he’d
cut my liver out for all of them to watch. So now you have something you could
use against me.”

“Bugger off!”

“Look, I’m your only hope to get out of here. You’re not
here for revenge. You wouldn’t come here unless you had a very good reason. And
if you want to live, you’d better talk.”

This time Bruno stood mute. Cristian spoke again, gazing
directly at him, his voice tense. “We don’t have much time—they’ll be back
soon. Seeing you again—it—it makes me think that maybe there is hope—hope that
I can get out of here. Help me, Bruno. Help us.”

Bruno turned around. “So, just leave then! You don’t need my
help! Why do you stay?”

Cristian shrugged, his eyes downcast. He stepped back, away
from Bruno before he spoke. “Fear, I guess. I’m afraid there’s nothing
left—nothing but . . . this.” Cristian looked at Bruno. “But you’ve come here
for a reason. I want to have a reason, something to fight for.”

Bruno turned away from his former friend, cursing in his
mind his decision to come back to Naples. But the die had been cast, Bruno
thought ruefully, and his decision set him down a track that he could not
change. Once again, Bruno’s choices were no choices at all. Cristian’s mention
of hope reminded Bruno of his own seduction by the prospect of hope. Yet even
after hope’s betrayal, Bruno felt its siren call. By all rights, Bruno should
not trust a single word Cristian said. But what were his alternatives? What
choice did he have?

Bruno turned back toward Cristian and their eyes met.

“Help me,” Cristian repeated. “Help both of us.”

Making his choice, Bruno told him everything without
hesitation, pouring everything out as fast as he could.

When he’d finished, Cristian didn’t react, except to nod.
Then he looked out the small window of the door into the hallway. “I’ve got to
get out before they come back. I’ll come up with something. But I won’t lie to
you, it’s going to get bad. Really bad. You’ve got to hang on. And no matter
what it looks like, you’ve got to trust me.”

Bruno nodded and was about to speak, but Cristian was
already through the door, locking it behind him. Bruno stared at the space that
Cristian had just occupied, his mind racing at the thought of what may come.
Then Bruno sighed, turning back toward his mat.

Just as he took a step, the door burst open. Three hooded
figures rushed in, grabbed him, and bound his wrists in front of him. Bruno
offered no resistance as they yanked him by the arms, hustling him out the
door, through a narrow passage, and up a flight of stone stairs.

He blinked as they burst out into a large, open room. His
eyes watered in the brighter light. He realized that he was standing where the
priest would have emerged and was looking out into a church. Looking up and
around, Bruno drank in the scene before him. Built in a time long before the
electrical grid or even the discovery of electricity itself, the neatly spaced
windows above the marble columns that ran the length of the nave let in
abundant late-morning sun. The alabaster and the soft pink and grey tones of
the stonework reflected and enhanced the glow. Bruno’s eyes fell on a marble
altar, its white tones gleaming under a vaulted dome. The clean lines and
understated decorative work on the ceiling gave the place a simple beauty.
Bruno had visited a few churches in Naples, but never this one. It looked big
enough to be a basilica. In better days, its effortless magnificence would have
touched even Bruno’s skeptical heart.

But now, the ugliness of a group gathered around the altar
in a semi-circle captivated Bruno even more than the church’s beauty. They
stood on the far side of the altar, all faced towards him. Arrayed in shabby,
dark clothing, with their faces covered, they seemed to suck all the light from
the building like wraiths. Bruno could not see one pair of eyes, but he could
feel their gaze fixed on him. He counted fifteen dark figures, not including
the three who held him.

The men holding Bruno moved him closer to the altar. One of
the figures on the other side stirred, stepping around the altar towards Bruno.
As the figure moved, the others removed their head coverings. Bruno saw a
scruffy grey council, all men. Then Bruno’s eyes fell on Cristian, but he
stared forward, refusing eye contact, as expressionless as the stone columns that
surrounded them.

The still-hooded figure approached Bruno, stopping directly
in front of him. The knot in Bruno’s stomach tightened as Bruno looked up into
the other’s dark eyes, the only part of his face exposed. The man stared down
at Bruno, then reached up and pulled at his hood.

Bruno watched with a strange detachment as it slithered down
across the man’s face. Il Serbo stared at Bruno expressionless, with an almost
blank look. Unlike Cristian, Il Serbo looked the same as Bruno remembered him
on the night they had met, in a jail cell, in a world so different it felt like
another dimension.

Bruno said nothing, but Il Serbo spoke, still holding
Bruno’s gaze.

“Did you find his friend yet?”

One of the group spoke. “Not yet.”

“Keep looking. You eight will patrol in pairs. You’ll find
him.”

Bruno counted in his head. If eight go, still ten left. Too
many. Bruno knew he didn’t have a prayer of escape.

One of the group spoke up. “Boss, it’s a fucking waste of
time, don’t you think? Bet the other one’s long gone by now.”

Il Serbo shook his head. “Oh, I don’t think he’d leave poor
Signor Bruno to the likes of me, now would he? No, he’s close. We’ll find him.”

Bruno knew Cristian would be on patrol with the others on Il
Serbo’s errand to find DeLuca, but he didn’t know if this should give him hope
or tear at his heart.

Il Serbo turned back to Bruno. “But before you boys go off
searching for Signor Bruno’s friend, I want you to watch this.”

He walked around Bruno one pace at a time, footfalls so soft
they barely caused an echo, even on the stone.

“You’ve been a pain in my ass a long time.”

Bruno stayed silent.

Il Serbo stopped in front of Bruno and laughed. “What’s the
matter? Nothing to say?”

Before another thought registered in Bruno’s mind, fury
twisted Il Serbo’s face and he punched Bruno in the gut.

Bruno fell to his knees, coughing and gasping.

“Still, we could use someone with your skills here. If you
prove yourself, who knows? Maybe we’ll let him stay, right, lads?” Il Serbo
turned to the group. They grunted and nodded in acknowledgement.

Il Serbo crouched down closer to Bruno as if to have words
only with him, but he spoke loudly enough for all of them to hear.

“Well, Signor Bruno, what do you say?”

Bruno felt the cold stone of the altar’s steps sucking the
warmth from his blood, and his knees ached. He looked up at Il Serbo. The soft
light of the church did nothing to hide the queer gleam in the man’s eyes.
Bruno knew as soon as he met his gaze that nothing he could say could spare him
whatever agonies Il Serbo had dreamt up for him. He knew Il Serbo would never
let him stay, except as a rotting carcass. That thought should have left him
paralyzed. But instead, the certainty of agony and death freed him to speak the
truth. And though he rested on his knees, Bruno’s voice was strong, and it
reverberated against the walls of the basilica as he replied, laughing.

“You are a liar!” Bruno looked past Il Serbo. “Is this what
all of you want? Is this how you want to live? Under the thumb of this piece of
garbage? Cowards!”

Before the echo of Bruno’s voice died away, Il Serbo
backhanded Bruno, knocking him off his knees and onto the steps of the altar.
Bruno fell on his side, his face pressed against the steps. He felt the salty
taste of blood in his mouth and rolled on his back with a groan.

“Listen to that! He calls us cowards? Calls me a liar! Now
you see, that’s what I hate about you pigs—you think you’re better than
everyone else.” Il Serbo's voice echoed in the church.

“While you were holed up on your island, the rest of us had
to survive. When everything crumbled to shit, none of you cops did a damn
thing. Deserters and thieves, just like everyone else, that’s what you lot
really are. You’re no better than anyone! But you know that already, don’t you,
Bruno?”

He leaned forward and spat on Bruno as he lay on his back.
The drool splattered on Bruno’s face and ran down his cheek, mixing with his
blood. “You call
me
a liar? Did you forget about murdering my brother?
You’re the lying piece of trash! And a cold-blooded murderer!”