Omega Plague: Collapse Read Free

short and square wharf compared to some of
the others that stretched hundreds of meters into the bay.
    Bruno took some deep breaths, forcing himself to calm down,
but as he did he saw a pair of figures walking the lungomare , the street
that hugged the shore behind the piers. They had just emerged from around the
building on the Beverello Pier. Beyond them, he thought he could see movement,
maybe two or three more figures. They must have realized that they would never
find him in the remnants of the city; there were simply too many places to
hide. So, they made the gamble that he had come in by sea, and tried to cut off
the most logical escape route. He prayed that they hadn’t noticed his
motorboat, pulled up on some rocks just below an overhang.
    He was able to get a better look at the pair closest to him.
Two men. Their clothes were loose, everything greens, blacks, and greys. Each
wore netting around their head that obscured their features, and each carried
weapons. The rifles they carried stood out above all: they weren’t automatic
weapons, but looked like scavenged long guns, made for game hunting.
    The two figures were moving down the street towards his
position. He crouched low, leaning his left shoulder against the tree. The sun
was in descent behind him, and with luck, he’d be lost in the glare and
vegetation. Slowly he retrieved his pistol from its holster with his right
hand.
    The first time he had ever fired a pistol, the instructor
had told him the exact moment of the shot should surprise, so you don’t
anticipate the recoil and pull the shot off the target.
    They were getting closer . . . one hundred meters . . .
fifty meters . . .
    He tried to slow his breathing.
     . . . Thirty meters . . .
    He brought the pistol to bear, holding it with both hands,
trained on the slightly farther of the approaching figures.
     . . . Twenty meters . . .
    If he made a mistake he would be dead, or worse than dead.
    He squeezed the trigger in a slow, even motion, and was
amazed at the amount of blood and brains. The man died before he hit the
ground. The second man froze, and Bruno fired twice; the man dropped, clutching
his gut, and began to scream.
    Bruno snatched his backpack and ran towards the screaming
man, who was writhing now on the ground. He fired one more shot, and suddenly
everything was silent. There was no time to linger. Bruno grabbed a rifle and
ran towards the square pier, rounding the squat buildings and reaching the far
corner. Before taking the stairs down to the water, he peered over the side of
the cement railing, onto the rocks below where he had left the motorboat.
    But the boat was no longer there.

 
    Chapter 1
    September 19
    Bruno leaned against the doorway, captivated by the scene on
the flat screen above the bar. He wore a light-blue shirt with epaulettes and
dark slacks with a brash scarlet stripe down the side of each leg. A white
leather bandolier lay across his chest, and his gun belt was weighted with the
usual law-enforcement gear: pistol, handcuffs, and baton. His uniform marked
him as a member of the Carabinieri , an arm of Italian national law
enforcement with both military and police duties. Many of its members had been
deployed abroad for missions that straddled peacekeeping and the fighting of
wars. There were fewer of them than local cops. They were better paid, and they
unquestionably held more prestige than many of the other overlapping national
law enforcement agencies. None of that, however, kept the telling of irreverent
Carabinieri jokes from being a national pastime.
    A taller, lanky man wearing the same uniform appeared in the
doorway. “Why the hell are you watching this crap?” said Cristian Di Cassio.
Cristian swallowed off the end of his words, typical for someone born and
raised in Rome. He was angular, with a hawk-like nose and a sparse beard
running along his jawline.
    On the television, throngs of people followed a procession
of priests and bishops into a