Chapter 45 Crossroads
CROSSROADS
We sailed on three boats, Kevin steering the one that led our little convoy. The sea was calm, its surface almost flat save for the gentlest of ripples. I sat toward the back, watching Corsica gradually disappear from view until it became nothing but a vague shadow on the horizon.
If our short sea voyage was somewhat uneventful, the same could not be said for our arrival on the mainland. We landed ashore near where Genoa used to be.
“Oh my god,” I gasped as I took in the scene of destruction beyond the shore.
Nothing but grey rubble lay in the stead of colourful seaside houses that once stood there. It had been years since the bombardment, but I would have sworn that I could still detect traces of the explosives’ sulphur-like scent mingled in the smell of mortar dust.
A little further away, skeletons of erstwhile houses still loomed defiantly; their facades crumbled away, their windows shattered, their whole walls torn down.
Corroded metal rafters hung limply from their sides, reminiscent of the way the torn rags of their prior clothes hung on the thin, sooty frames of infecteds’ bodies.
In places, blackened isolation foam protruded from the mutilated walls, repulsive and vaguely indecent, like the fatal spilling of a person’s guts.
I barely registered Einar’s arm around my thickened waist as he helped me out of the boat.
“I don’t know why I expected to find it restored as if the bombings had never happened,” I said incredulously.
“Behold the graveyard of our civilisation.” The misty veneer of Einar’s eyes betrayed an emotion undistinguishable from his voice alone.
“Whatever I imagined pales in comparison ... I wonder if it was worth it. Some human lives saved, perhaps, and not that many, in exchange for centuries of culture. Wouldn’t it have been better to preserve monuments of our bygone era instead? ”
His face reddening, Dave opened his mouth to express his disagreement when we all froze as we heard distant gnarls, amplified by the strange acoustics of the desolate place.
The rubble moved in places, bodies emerging from it and jerkily stumbling towards us in a way characteristic of long-infected furies, gradually succumbing to their various infections and injuries.
I counted ten, then twenty, thirty. Not too bad, then, we were armed to the teeth after all.
“Remember, we don’t want to attract more of them. So don’t panic and don’t use firearms or explosives unless necessary,” Einar reminded us, readying his own bow.
As the cannibals twitched and scuttled closer, we all fired our arrows.
I was the only one who missed. Cursing with frustration, I nocked another arrow.
In an effort to improve my imperfect stance, I lost balance entirely, stumbling, and I dropped the arrow to the ground.
I nocked another one, aimed, and fired, only to miss again.
I felt myself turning violently crimson.
All the furies were dead by then, except the one I was aiming for, which shuffled steadily towards me.
“Allow me, love,” Einar said eventually, then marched towards the withered female form, grabbed it by the hair, and cut its throat unceremoniously.
He then washed his weapon and his hands in an antiseptic solution whilst everyone else gathered the arrows. I alone stood there uselessly, frozen in my displeasure.
“Oh, how the tables have turned ...”
Coming within a few steps of me, Dave mocked me until he noted my expression, and then he quickly adjusted his tone. “Oh Renny, don’t worry about it! It’s only to be expected at this stage. You’ll be back to your lethal self in no time ...”
Coming closer yet, I saw his face slacken in genuine concern. “Renny, are you crying? Are you hurt?”
With my immense belly in the way, even Dave’s bear hug was nowhere near as comforting as it used to be. The only thing that remained unchanged was the look of thinly veiled displeasure that Einar shot in our direction before walking a few steps away from us to give us privacy.
“I’m not hurt. I just ... hate it. This. Being pregnant.” My voice came in shaky gasps as sobs tore at my throat. “I-I wished for nothing else for so long ... b-but I f-feel u-useless and I’m s-scared all the time! And I f-feel guilty for being s-so un-ungrateful ...”
“Renny,” Dave told me with a heavy sigh, “that’s the last thing you are. You don’t have to like something to be grateful for it.”
A seagull flew nearby, flapping its wings and emitting a squall that resonated across the rubble-strewn plain of desolation.
“I-I k-keep waiting for i-it to g-go wrong! S-sometimes I-I almost w-wish it w-would already ...” I whispered into the turtleneck of Dave’s sweater, quietly enough to hope that he might not have heard me.
Despite the multitude of assurances from Dave and Einar’s arm wrapped comfortingly around my shoulders, my murky feeling of failure persisted even as we reached the Genoa colony about an hour later.
It was a walled-in structure that had emerged in the undestroyed suburbs of the erstwhile city.
Tall concrete slabs lined it all around, adorned with coils of barbed wire at their top.
The cement was stained brown with old blood that all the winter rain had not managed to wash off.
The only entrance was a gate of solid iron panels. Beyond it stood two spindly lifeguard chairs, a man with a semi-automatic gun perched on each. The gate opened as we approached it, and a third armed man stepped outside.
“Buongiorno,” he drawled in a bored voice, not meeting our eyes.
He was slender and dark, around twenty. He brandished an infrared thermometer from the pocket of his oversized trousers, and he pointed it at the forehead of each one of us in turn, dissecting us with his eyes to detect any signs of illness.
Satisfied that we all seemed in good health, he asked in English what our business was.
Einar told him simply that we wanted three portable radios.
We had learnt from Paoli’s expedition that these were available to anyone for free in most colonies.
The broadcast consisted exclusively of swarm warnings, informing colonists and travellers alike which areas to avoid and which areas to evacuate.
“Can’t you share?” the man asked rather unpleasantly. “We’re short.”
“Going separate ways soon,” Einar said as a matter of explanation. “We’ll also need three vehicles.”
The young man smirked and raised his arms to indicate the array of different cars in various states of abandonment, parked randomly throughout the streets.
“I doubt these will start after years of being stationary,” Einar protested reasonably, but with the distinctly threatening undertone of someone whose patience was starting to run thin. “At the very least, they’ll need new batteries. Possibly tyres. Not to mention oil and fuel.”
“Sure, would you like some leather seats and a new coat of paint whilst we’re at it?” the man scoffed. “Where do you think you are?”
A vein began pulsating in Einar’s temple. Yet those who didn’t know him could hardly read from the impassive, almost pleasant, expression in his face that he likely not only wanted to but was wholly capable of slamming the youngster hard against the wall before throttling him.
For once, I wouldn’t have protested had he chosen to do so. The young Italian stood between me and being finally able to sit down after the long walk. If he had to go, he had to go for all I would have cared.
“Well, I know for a fact that there is a man here who can fix us up with vehicles. For the right price,” Einar said in a voice that could have caused frostbite.
Taking the duffel bag down from his shoulder, he showed the young man its contents, and the latter’s face darkened, his former bravado evaporating from it at once.
“Now, would you be kind enough to point us to this man, this Ninotti, or would you prefer that we take our business elsewhere?”
Straightening up to his full height, Einar’s fingers rounded an ominous dark object, and my knees went weak at the sight. He tossed it up lightly and caught it repeatedly, toying with the grenade, just as one would with a tennis ball.
Upon entering the colony, I almost lost balance and fell face-first onto the nauseating pink tiles during obligatory full-body checks for bites and injuries, which did nothing to improve my mood, already filthier than said tiles.
Once we had passed the checks, we were directed obsequiously towards a line of garages.
We found Signor Ninotti at last after wandering through the once suburban streets under the scrutiny of onlookers who leaned eagerly from the windows of houses that were set in neat lines of overgrown gardens with abandoned, dirty pools.
Money had all but lost its value in most of the world, re-emerging from the pandemic.
Precious stones and metals were met with the same fate, designated as nothing but worthless trinkets, no matter the number of their carats.
The one commodity that grew scarce and therefore valuable, because everyone left alive needed it and there wasn’t nearly enough of it to inherit from the vanished world, was weapons.
Which, given the number of them he had brought alongside grenades and ammunition, made Einar the richest man the people of Genoa had ever seen.
We left the colony in three slick black Audis, all equipped with motors that rumbled smoothly and melodically and with blissfully comfortable seats that, as if to get back at the young guard for his earlier barb, were in fact leather.