What do you do when the world is ending? Come to the beach.
The futility of it annoyed Jess. Go and do something useful, she wanted to shout at the people in line. But then life was futile. What was the point? Why do anything? Sitting by the ocean under a blue sky, her sense of detachment had shifted into a deep melancholy of hopeless dread. She stroked her finger along the trigger of the handgun in her purse. Just lift it up, put it in her mouth and pull the trigger—it would be over.
The waiting. The tension. The futility. All of it over. And the guilt, that would be over too.
She glanced inside at the young boy, not more than five. He got his ice cream.
The image of a black hole ringed in white danced through Jess’s mind, and she looked down and away from the boy. She dragged the black duffel bag at her feet, filled with assault rifles, grenades and ammunition, back under the table.
Many of the people lining up to get into the pizzeria had backpacks. How many had guns or knives in them, how many of these innocent-looking people had dark thoughts like Jess did, even as she smiled back at them?
Looking out at the sprawl of houses that stretched up into the hill, she knew people had to be barricading themselves in, protecting themselves and their families. Soon they would be crawling over each other to survive, even this peaceful place literally a hell on Earth.
Jess checked her watch again. Seventeen minutes past eleven. One minute past the last time she checked her watch. Giovanni glanced at his wrist as well. Checking the time had become obsessive, impulsive.
Forty-three hours to Nomad.
Or, forty-three hours until when her father said Nomad would be here. Conflicting stories and scientific reports flooded the Internet and news channels. It was impossible to decipher one from the other, to trust one source more than another. In the past twelve hours, amateur astronomers cataloged a dramatic shift in the outer gas giants’ orbits, but some said it meant Nomad was headed away. Earth’s orbit had already shifted, but there wasn’t one straight story.
NASA’s official stance: Still weeks away.
But it wasn’t weeks, but hours. Jess felt it in her bones. She leaned back, squinted up at the midday sun. Nomad was still behind it, but soon it would be exposed. Be upon them. The hand of God.
“Zio,” crackled the walkie-talkie.
Zio—the code word they had chosen for Giovanni. He picked it up. “Si?”
A stream of Italian flowed from the walkie-talkie. “What’s going on?” Jess asked.
Giovanni exchanged a few more words. “They’re coming.”
“The security guards?”
“Yes.”
They had sent them out to look at the address Nico had given them. Better them than Jess and Giovanni. Enzo didn’t know the security guards, wouldn’t recognize them even if he ran into them. And they were surveillance professionals.
“Did they find him?”
Giovanni shook his head. “I don’t know.” He put the walkie-talkie down. “They’re on their way here.”
An elderly couple walked past them toward the beach. They held hands, and the man looked at the woman and kissed her. She kissed him back, long and hard. Public displays of affection turned Jess off, but she stared, fascinated. The way the man looked at his wife, the love. The tenderness. She glanced back at the people in line. Most of them were elderly.
Two weeks ago, if you asked Jess about getting old, she would have laughed. I doubt I’ll ever get old, she liked to joke. Except it wasn’t just a joke. Her recklessness, a death wish her mother called it, was one of the reasons her mother had difficulty spending time with her. Celeste often said that part of her was waiting for the call. About an accident.
And part of Jess was waiting for it as well. The same drive that pushed her to quit school, quit her degree in astronomy, and join the Marines.
But now, faced with the real prospect of imminent death, perhaps days away, she didn’t want to die. She watched the elderly couple walk onto the beach, hand in hand, the old man stealing glances at his wife. Jess didn’t want to die. She wanted someone to look at her like that.
Leaning forward, Jess took Giovanni’s hand in hers. “We’ll find Hector, I promise.”
Taking a deep breath, Giovanni nodded, his jaw muscles flexing. “Thank you. And thank you for coming.”
“Of course.” Jess squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry. All this is my fault.”
“I thought you said you never apologized?” Giovanni managed a wry smile.
Jess smiled back. “You’ve been very good to us, very nice to me.” She leaned closer. “You don’t deserve this, not at the…”
“At the end?” Giovanni squeezed her hand back. “We don’t know what the future holds, Jess. And this isn’t your fault. It’s Enzo; he is the one causing this.”