A gamble.
They crossed the Piazza Navona again, pushing through the crowds choking the streets. The flood of clean-faced, scared-looking tourists clutching their children became interspersed with the staggering, ragged and bloodied. A woman, naked, her body burnt and flayed, ran past them screaming. By the time they reached the other side of the piazza, everyone was covered in soot, their clothing ripped to shreds over fresh scarlet wounds.
Black smoke billowed up Angela’s street when they turned into the alley, dust and debris scattering into the piazza. Jess stopped to pull her tank top around her mouth. She squinted into the dust. She couldn’t see past the sea of people flowing toward her, the alleyway fading into grayness. Gritting her teeth, she squinted and swung forward on her crutches, doing her best to ignore the wailing people passing her. A woman screamed, appeared out of the grayness holding a bloody mess in her arms. A tiny baby. She disappeared into the brown-gray mist.
Jess’s eyes teared.
There.
On the corner.
A car pulled up and its driver jumped out and looked around, then waved at her.
“Mom!” Jess screamed, turning to find Celeste stumbling behind her. “He’s here, the man Dad sent!”
Jess hopped forward, swung as fast as she could on the crutches. The outline of the car grew clearer. But that was no Humvee. She swung another few steps closer.
And that was no military attaché.
It wasn’t even a man.
“Jessica!” yelled Massarra, the young woman who’d helped them the night before. “Come on, get in.” She ran around the other side of his car, a small Hyundai, and opened the door.
Swinging the last two paces to the car, Jessica grabbed onto the door and stared at Massarra. “What are you doing here? Did my father send you?” This didn’t make any sense. Jess glanced inside the car. One of Massarra’s uncles nodded at her, urged her to get inside the car.
“I knew you were here,” Massarra replied. “As I said, we were driving north. We need to hurry.”
The billowing smoke thinned, and dark droplets inked the cobblestones. Jess looked up, the smoke clearing enough to see the clouds again, churning in the sky. Her hair blew back in a sudden wind, and a squall of raindrops fell across the car. Black streaks ran down the windshield. If that was an atomic blast, this rain could be toxic.
“Please, help me,” a woman pleaded in front of Jess, half of her face gone, replaced by an angry red mass of blood and blackened flesh hanging under one eye.
Huge black drops fell from the sky, spattering off the cobblestones. Tactical decision making dictated following the plan, but it also meant being flexible when needed. The black rain pelted against the windshield, ran in dark rivulets down Jess’s arms.
“Mom!” Jess yelled. “Get in!” She opened the back door for Celeste and waited for her mother to get in beside the uncle.
Jess jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
20
ROME, ITALY
“SORRY, BUT I cannot drive to Germany.” Massarra’s smile turned to a grimace. She shifted gears and accelerated onto the on-ramp of Autostrade 90, Rome’s ring road. “We are driving home to Turkey. It’s a twenty-hour drive, but it’s the only way. I can drive you near to Florence, but I must go east from there.” Her two other uncles had managed to get a flight, she explained. After getting the car, she decided to look for Jess and Celeste. She knew they needed help. Once you became involved in someone’s life, she explained, there was an obligation to stay involved. At least, that was he way her world worked.
Whomp-whimp…whomp-whimp…the windshield wipers swished back and forth, slicking the rain away. Jess glanced to her right. Through the mist, a gray smudge over the center of Rome stretched into the clouds. Stopped cars lined the Autostrade, the passengers outside them hanging over the guardrails, everyone staring at what was left of the Eternal City.
Massarra’s uncle sat stoically in the back seat beside Celeste. This one didn’t speak English, Massarra explained, switching into Arabic from time to time to update him.
In their flight from the center of Rome, the crush of people—ragged and bloody walking corpses—had thinned after a few blocks. There was nothing they could do but get out, get away from the noxious black rain. At the first roundabout, they passed a knot of overwhelmed ambulances, and after a few more blocks, only the noise of sirens and police cars screaming past into the city gave any indication of the destruction behind them. They’d been caught in a heavy downpour, but the rain was almost finished. Just a spattering onto the windshield. The sun broke through the clouds.