Omega Plague: Collapse by P.R. Principe

was out
of my mind, didn’t you? But I was right! The day has finally come. They have
found a way to kill us all so that they can—”
    Bruno could tell by the audio quality that it was probably a
low power station, so it couldn’t be that far away. Maybe it was even
transmitting from Capri itself, like the provincial command had suspected. But
its exact location would be impossible to find without specialized equipment.
Bruno turned the radio off and put it in his bag. Though he would have gladly
listened for hours to any voice, just to distract himself, he couldn’t stand to
hear what was said. He needed to get back to his home; there was no point in
lingering here any longer. Twilight had long past, and mosquitoes, if there
were still any this late in the year, were gone for now. It was about an hour’s
walk from the station to his apartment. He resolved to make it back in less
than forty minutes. As he rose from the floor, the sickly florescent light
flickered and went dark. Panic leapt from his gut to his throat, but he shoved
it down. Blackness blanketed the storage room, and he could barely see his hand
in front of his face. “It’s just the dark—it’s just the dark,” he mumbled.
Bruno felt around inside the bag until his hands found the short metal tube of
the flashlight. With a click of the button on the back end of the tube, the flashlight
sprang to life, casting a bright beam of light into the darkness. He gathered
up his duffle bag, slung it over his shoulder, and made his way back to the
hallway and the central office.
    From where he stood in the short hallway, Bruno could make
out the outlines of the back entrance to his right, with its square glass
portal to the outside, as well as the large reinforced glass separating the
office from the waiting area. He didn’t want to waste time moving all the
barriers he and Cristian had placed in front of the main entrances, so he
turned towards the back entrance, shining the light down the hall.
    From the front of the station, the sound of breaking glass
stopped Bruno short. Turning off the flashlight as he crouched down, Bruno
moved carefully into the central office and took shelter behind the desk.
Beyond the thick glass window separating the office from the waiting area, he
saw no movement. He couldn’t quite tell in the dark, but he guessed that
someone had smashed the window on the door leading to the outside. Before Bruno
could say for sure, something flew into the waiting room, smashed against the
inner glass window, and exploded into flames. In seconds, fire engulfed the
waiting area. He heard someone shout “That’s what you get, pigs!” Bruno
snatched up what was now his duffle bag, hoping that whoever they were hadn’t
discovered the back exit. He ran to the back door, checking out the window as
best he could to make sure the alley was empty. Then, as flames flowed into the
central office, he burst into the cold air. The damp autumn night bit into him
as he looked around, trying to orient himself in the dark. The half-moon,
though, provided a silvery glow, giving him some light to watch where he
stepped.
    The alley behind connected the station to clusters of
buildings to his right and his left off the main square. To his right the alley
terminated in a postage stamp parking lot; to his left, the alley wound back
towards the main square. Directly in front of him, a grove of scrubby pine
trees blocked his vision, as the terrain stepped down in terraced levels to
houses toward the sea far below. Body armor or not, Bruno didn’t dare wind
around back to the square, not knowing how many attackers still lingered. He
would have bet his right arm that the assailants on the station and the looters
he had spared were one and the same. He should have killed them when he had the
chance. The sudden anger of the thought startled Bruno, but he recognized that
if he wanted to live, matter-of-fact violence would have to become second
nature. But violence alone