Scattered (Zommunist Invasion Book 3) Page 18

  At least, not to a girl.

  This train of thought sent a ripple of unease through him. He dealt with it by trying to cram an entire piece of bread into his mouth. The result was messy and sticky. He did his best to clean himself up with the shirt sleeve. Thank God he wasn’t wearing the pretty tank top. It would have been a shame to stain it with sour cherry jam.

  “Nonna?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you know I’d like the shoes?” He blurted out the words and braced himself for the answer.

  Nonna was silent for a while. She walked for so long that he thought maybe she hadn’t heard him. Just as he opened his mouth to ask a second time, she answered.

  “My brother was like you.”

  Like you. The words echoed in Stephenson’s head. My brother was like you.

  Hearing her say the words aloud was like a gong reverberating through his body.

  Nonna knew. She knew he was . . . different. Somehow, after knowing him for barely a week, she had ferreted out his deepest, darkest secret. This knowledge made Stephenson want to both weep in relief and bury his head in a hole.

  Of course she’d known. He was an idiot. Why else would she have given him the clothes and suggest he wear them?

  “What happened to your brother?”

  “He died in the war.”

  “World War II?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Luca Trione.” Her voice was thick with emotion as she uttered the name. Only an idiot would miss it. Nonna might be old, but the wound over her brother’s death was still fresh.

  Stephenson knew he should shut up, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d never had anyone to talk to about this before. “Was he killed by Mussolini’s supporters?”

  “That’s the story, yes.”

  “That’s the story?” Stephenson frowned. What did that mean?

  “Yes. The family story.”

  There was a weight to Nonna’s words. Stephenson felt them settle heavily around his shoulders, but he couldn’t decipher their meaning. He attempted to prod the ambiguity.

  “Did . . . how did you know he was like me?”

  “He told me.” Nonna stopped in the middle of the trail and turned around to face him. She blinked wet eyes, but she spilled no tears.

  Patting Stephenson on the cheek, she said, “No more questions, Stephenson. You don’t have to hide who you are around me.”

  35

  Footprints

  Valentina sat hunched in the corner of the kitchen, her knees pulled up to her chest.

  Her mother’s wail filled the small, cold room. In a kitchen chair, her grandmother rocked back and forth, hugging herself in sorrow. Her father stared at the wall with red-rimmed eyes, drinking straight from a bottle of grappa. Marcello had gone to spread word of what had happened to the other villagers.

  Valentina was lost in a haze of grief. She couldn’t stop crying. She could hardly bear to look at her brother’s body.

  Luca’s form was stretched out on the kitchen table. He was covered in snow, dirt, and blood.

  Only his face was clean. Valentina and Marcello had made certain of that.

  It had been Marcello’s idea. “Valé, do you have a handkerchief?”

  “Yes.” Her voice had quavered.

  “Give it to me.”

  As Valentina handed over the handkerchief she always kept with her, Marcello pulled a flask out of his coat. She watched him pour the clear contents onto the handkerchief. Using it, he tried to clean the rouge off Luca’s face. His attempt was clumsy.

  Valentina wordlessly took the handkerchief from Marcello. She barely registered what she did; the only thing she knew for certain was that her mother could never see Luca this way. She could never know the truth. It would break her even more than the sight of his dead body.

  After that, they had carried Luca’s dead body back to the house.

  He’d been on the kitchen table ever since.

  Water dripped off his body as the snow melted. The wound in his side still seeped red. Valentina saw it drip off the side of the family table and onto the floor.

  “How?” Mama wailed. “How did this happen? There are no Mussolini fascists in this village.” She hunched over the kitchen table, more sobs wracking her body. “Valé, you say you saw nothing?”

  Valentina recalled the scene with gut-wrenching clarity. The bloody footprints—Luca’s footprints. There had been only one other set of prints there—and one set of bloody knuckles. Her mind had memorized the scene more perfectly than a photograph ever could.

  “Luca—Luca—” She choked on her words. “Luca was already—already gone when I got there. Marcello found him first.”

  “Even if we could find the killer, the authorities would hail him a hero,” her father said dully. Technically, partisans were outlaws, even if support of them was strong among the villages. “There will be no justice for our boy.”

  Her mother dissolved into a fresh round of weeping, wailing Luca’s name over and over.

  Valentina remained huddled on the floor, eyes squeezed shut. She wished she could unsee the two sets of footprints: Luca’s bloody prints, and Marcello’s clean ones.

  “Excellent!” Nonna clapped from where she sat perched on a log. It was nearly midday. Stephenson had successfully hit no less than five large rocks that Nonna had put out for him.

  “It’s the shoes.” Stephenson grinned at her.

  There was a lightness in his eyes that was new. He was pleased with his performance with the machine gun—rightly so—but that wasn’t the source of his lightheartedness.

  She understood where that light came from, even if he did not. She had seen that same light in Luca’s eyes all those many years ago.

  It was the light of freedom, of authenticity. It made Nonna want to weep with joy.

  But Nonna Cecchino did not shed tears of joys. She was made of tougher stuff than that.

  “You think the shoes make you a better shot?” Nonna smiled at him.

  “They’re my magic shoes. Like Dorothy’s ruby slippers.”

  That they were. She understood. There was power in not hiding from oneself. Maybe things would have gone differently for Luca if he had not been so desperate to hide from himself.

  Maybe fighting Il Duce and his Nazi bastards will make a man out of me.

  Even after all these years, those words still haunted her.

  “Are we going to take a lunch break?” Stephenson asked.

  “I want to see you hit those rocks two more times. Then you can take a lunch break.”

  “Okay.” He practically waltzed across the clearing to pick up the rocks he’d shot off the fallen log. His pink shoes were bright spots of cheer as he moved across the forest floor.

  They were the exact same color as the rogue Luca had used to color his cheeks.

  36

  Exposed

  “You should keep the shoes on when the others come back.”

  Nonna’s words were like an electrical shock to Stephenson’s core. “What? No.”

  It was late in the day. The two of them hiked back to the Cecchino cabin.

  Stephenson already regretted wearing the shoes. Surely Amanda, Dal, and Lena would be home by now. What if they saw him in the shoes? The very idea made him want to throw up.

  “You should keep the shoes on,” Nonna repeated.

  “But . . .” He struggled to find the right words.

  She had to know what the others would say. He would be ridiculed. They would hate him. They’d probably kick him out of the cabin and tell him never to come back. If they didn’t kick the shit out of him on sight, just on principal of his wrongness.

  Stephenson defied logic and reason. He knew that. This feeling of wrongness he’d carried his entire life—the feeling of being born into the wrong body—wasn’t normal.

  People didn’t like people who weren’t no
rmal. Hell, his awkward, geeky nature alone had made him the target of bullies for his entire life. Dressing like a girl was unfathomable.

  Nonna turned to face him in the trail. “The shoes make you powerful.”

  So she wasn’t the only one who had seen the transformation. To him, they felt like She-Ra’s Sword of Protection—like the key to his safe transformation.

  But he wasn’t a magical princess in a land of flying horses. He was a nerdy high school boy in a zombie war. He was positive the fantasy world of his little sister’s cartoon didn’t remotely correlate to the living hell they found themselves in.

  “The choice is up to you. I’ll beat those boys with my wooden spoon if they even think of pestering you.”

  With that, she turned and resumed their hike through the woods. Stephenson had a sick mental vision of little old Nonna rescuing him from Leo and the others. Now that would be embarrassing.

  He couldn’t actually imagine Leo and the guys hurting him, but he could imagine them hating him. Despising him. He was already on the outside looking in. The idea of being even further outside the circle was inconceivable.

  No, the shoes would go back under the bed. Actually, he would take them off before they got to the cabin. He’d walk barefoot the rest of the way home so Amanda and the others wouldn’t see him. They could never know. His secret would die with Nonna.

  This resolution effected him in different ways. There was the customary relief that came with feeling safe. But lurking just beneath that was a deep sense of loss.

  Stephenson buried that second sensation, firmly shoving it down with an expertise developed over a lifetime. The loss hurt less than the penetrating fear that came with the thought of exposing his true nature.

  Maybe things would be different one day when he graduated from college and moved out on his own. Maybe it would easier when he was an adult. He’d move to a big city like LA or San Francisco where he could blend in. Maybe then he could wear pink shoes without being laughed at or hated. Maybe—

  Nonna froze ahead of him, holding up a hand to signal a stop. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Stephenson strained his ears. All he heard were birds and the bugs. He realized the sound of the bugs didn’t bother him today nearly as much as they had bothered him yesterday.

  “Voices.”

  “Do you think they’re back?” Stephenson cupped his ears, eagerly craning his neck in the direction of the cabin. The thought of seeing Amanda filled him with relief. “I hear it. You’re right, it’s voices.”

  “It’s not our people,” Nonna said. “It’s not coming from the cabin.”

  She was right. The cabin was somewhere east of them. The voices came from the south.

  “Follow me.”

  Nonna hustled down the trail, moving at a good clip for an old lady. Stephenson scrambled to keep up with her. She ducked between a thick clump of manzanita trees. He followed her, snapping off twigs in his wake.

  On the other side of the thicket was a game trail. Stephenson realized he shouldn’t be surprised that Nonna knew it was here. This land was her home, after all.

  The game trail led south, snaking downhill through trees and shrubs. They stopped at an outcropping that overlooked the valley below. Between the trees, it was possible to see stretches of the two-lane highway. It was far below them, the steep hillside dizzying from the height.

  There were people down there. Survivors. A group of them. Stephenson counted thirteen. They were on bikes, pedaling as fast as they could.

  Behind them was a pack of mutants. Only four of them, but from what Stephenson had heard from the others, four mutants was more than enough to take out a group of thirteen unprepared people. The mutants loped down the road in hard pursuit of the cyclists.

  For the first time in his life, he had an instinctual reaction to help rather than hide. This feeling shocked him. It must be the shoes.

  But the mutants were too far away and they moved too fast. He knew Leo and Anton and even Lena were good shots, but he didn’t think any of them could shoot the mutants from this far away while they were moving. They had to be, what, half a mile away?

  “Think they can out-pedal the mutants?” Stephenson asked.

  “Maybe. Depends on their endurance.”

  The cyclists took a hard turn around a ninety-degree bend in the road. To Stephenson’s horror, one of the riders lost control. The bike slid sideways across the asphalt and knocked into two other bikers. The riders behind them never even had a chance to brake. They ran straight into the pile-up.

  In the blink of an eye, there was a pile of downed bikers in the middle of the road. Only six of them had escaped the disaster. One of them turned back to help his friends, but the rest kept riding.

  The mutants closed in fast.

  Nonna grabbed the Soviet machine gun hanging around her neck. Before Stephenson could register her plan, she fired into the air.

  It took him a few seconds to catch up with her plan. But then he saw two of the mutants below them slow, turning to scan the tree-covered hillside. Then Stephenson understood.

  Heart pounding, he grabbed his machine gun. Joining Nonna, he fired into the air.

  He let loose a long, deep scream. The cry echoed across the valley with the staccato of his weapon.

  It was a very old scream, one that had been gathering in his belly for years. The scream was comprised of fear—a fear of others, and a fear of self. So much fear, it was hard to comprehend. He threw back his head, letting it rage out of his body into the charged air.

  They were pretty much painting a big target over themselves with this stunt, but he didn’t care. He didn’t let up on the trigger. He didn’t stop screaming. God, it felt good to scream. So. Damn. Good.

  Is this how She-Ra felt when she transformed into a warrior and beat back Hordak’s evil Horde?

  This thought brought a bark of laughter. Fictional cartoon characters didn’t have feelings. Everyone knew that. Cassie and Amanda would laugh their asses off.

  For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel like a wussy scaredy cat. He wanted to save those poor people down there. Cassie and Amanda would never believe this when he told them the story. It felt good to be doing something for the first time in his life.

  Two of the mutants broke away from the road, disappearing into the trees that bordered the road.

  The last two mutants hit the pack of down bikers. In the blink of an eye, three of the cyclists were dead on the ground, the mutants feeding on their brains. One of the riders fled into the trees. The others managed to get back onto their bikes and ride away, leaving their dead behind.

  Nonna lowered her gun. Stephenson kept firing, kept screaming. Only when Nonna rested a hand on his shoulder did he stop.

  He panted with emotion. Chest heaving, he reluctantly lowered the gun. He let loose two more long screams, just for good measure. He felt like a lion. A fucking badass lion. He’d just risked his own life to save strangers. He’d just exposed himself to danger of the worst kind.

  And he was still alive. Still breathing.

  At least for the moment.

  Eyes wide behind his glasses, he turned to Nonna. Her mouth was set into a hard line.

  “They will be hunting for us,” she said. “We have to get back to the cabin.”

  37

  Memory

  It had to be a mistake. Valentina was convinced. She’d made a mistake. In her grief, she’d misunderstood what she’d seen.

  It was nearing sunrise when she crept out of the house with her coat bottomed up to her chin. Papa was slumped on the kitchen table, head resting next to Luca’s hand. Grandmother had fallen asleep in the kitchen chair, spent from grief. Mother had retreated into the bedroom and locked herself in there.

  Marcello had not yet returned.

  The snow had stopped falling. The pre-dawn air frosted before her with each exhalation. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the family home. More glistened from the bare branches of the
trees.

  Valentina picked her way over the fresh, unmarred whiteness. Her boots made soft crunching sounds as she made her way back to the family shed. Just to the left of the herb bed were the fading footprints left by her and Marcello when they had carried Luca’s dead body to the house.

  It was hard to believe that only a short while ago, she’d come out here to fetch Luca for supper.

  She knew he snuck out to the shed to smoke cigarettes he stole from their father. She’d caught him at it more than once.

  Apparently, smoking wasn’t the only thing he had done out behind the family shed.

  Tears pressed against the back of her eyes. Valentina blinked and sniffled, shoving down the wail that built in her throat. Breaking down would serve no purpose right now.

  The shed loomed before her. It was an ancient structure built by her grandfather Trione. It had withstood many winters. Her mother complained about it being an eyesore, but her grandmother wouldn’t hear of rebuilding it.

  Carved into the front door was a faded, lopsided heart. Inside were the initials GT and JPT. Gretta Trione and Jean-Paul Trione. Her grandparents.

  Grandma Trione loved to tell the story of how her husband had proposed to her. He’d carved the heart into the shed door right after he finished building it, then invited his future wife over to admire his handy work. When she saw the carving in the wood, he’d dropped to one knee and proposed to her.

  The heart carving was barely visible through the snow, but Valentina easily picked out the familiar shape. She used to dream about a boy carving her initials into a heart with his. But this very place where her grandparent’s love blossomed had somehow transformed into the killing ground of her brother. How could deep love exist next to deep tragedy? It defied logic.

  Steeling her nerves, Valentina stepped around the shed.

  There was Luca’s blood. It had turned into a frozen puddle obscured by snow. If a person didn’t know what he was looking at, it would be easy to mistake it for a patch of frozen dirt.