Chapter Text
***
2003
***
Comino was once a farmers’ island. And pirates’ favourite hideout. Then a hunting ground for the wealthy. And prison for the politically unmanageable and those too important to kill but too inconvenient to be part of polite society. Then it was a place to keep the sick until they either recovered or died.
Today, the island was a killing field.
They came in the night. By boats and helicopters, leaping ashore and propelling down with haste that, for a minute, gave Nicolò some hope that they would be saved. But it quickly became apparent that they, the continent’s so-called best soldiers, were not there for medical evacuation.
They were there to exterminate. And they did so indiscriminately.
Nicolò ran as fast as he could, his hands balled into fists to steel himself from yelping and trembling as bullets were fired around him. There were flamethrowers. God have mercy! Nicolò could smell gasoline and feel the heat licking his back as he ran to the medical bay in the deepest part of the hospital, where the children were.
They were huddling in one corner, trying to be brave. Their faces lit up when they saw Nicolò burst through the door, and it broke his heart because, at that moment, he was not a saviour. He was a harbinger of men’s cruelty against their own.
“Run! Quickly,” he shouted, herding them towards the back door. “Run to the shore and hide in the caves as deep as you can go!” So he told them, an order quite the opposite of what the monks had told them when they had arrived on the island – that the deep caves had been dangerous, had been populated with skeletons of the pirates breaking their necks on the slippery rocks. Tonight, those yawning caves were their best chance.
Then he ran deeper still into the hospital. To its subterranean rooms, the hospital’s dungeons when it had been a lord’s castle. A few children were placed there, those who had lost their speech and movement. Nicolò didn’t know exactly what he would do once he found them. Only that they didn’t deserve to be forgotten.
He still thought that as he opened the first cell closest to the stairs. He still hoped when he faced the little girl standing up and shuffling toward him in an unnatural way. He still put his arms around her when she reached for him. He didn’t scream when she bit him.
Ear-ringing gunshots rendered her bloody and still above him. Nicolò found himself screaming, then.
“He’s bitten!” he heard someone say. Italian. They were his countrymen.
“Don’t waste your bullets,” said another Italian. “We’d be long gone from this godforsaken island when he fully turned. We should clean up the rest.”
Clean up ? No. “No!” Nicolò struggled then, trying to get up, to fight.
Something hard slammed into the side of his head, making stars burst behind his eyelids. And Nicolò struggled no more.
***
2007
***
The sun was high in the sky. Nicolò had been awake for a while. But it’s getting harder and harder to get up. What was even the point?
Then as if God heard him, he heard the cows moo and the chickens cluck from the window he had forgotten to close the night before. Funny how He seemed to answer Nicolò more often now that he had chucked his collar off in anger two years before.
But the animals didn’t deserve to suffer because of his existential crisis. So he rolled over, got up, strapped his axe and a satchel containing an old but still functioning scanner, slung his crossbow, holstered a gun he didn’t quite know how to use, and got out of his cottage to make his rounds.
He had stopped finding the infected on the island for almost a year by now. Not that he ever found himself swarmed from the moment he had woken up on an island massacred of all its human population. Saved for himself. But he hadn’t stopped carrying all the weapons out of habit. Anyways, other than the gun, they were useful tools.
He fed the cows and the chickens, took some eggs, watered his rather sad vegetable patch, checked on the unripe olives, harvested some wild bambinella and fallen carob fruits, and ventured beyond what was left of the abbey and hospital’s compound to check on his traps near the forest and the shores.
There was a functioning radio back at his cottage, salvaged from the Abbot’s private room that had miraculously escaped the fire and looting. For the past four years, Nicolò had only heard human voices through it. But he had never tried to communicate with them. In the beginning, it had been because he’d found it so difficult to use his voice, too exhausted after burying the dead and surviving day to day on the deserted island. Then, after he had somehow regained the ability to shout and scream the day after he had renounced his collar, he just didn’t really want to talk at all. It was true what they said, that you lose your language if you don’t use it. He just thought that would not apply to your mother tongue. But evidently, it’s possible when you were the only human in an island.
It took his ears a while to recognise that he was hearing a human voice. And that it’s calling for help. So, not an infected, then; at least none with advanced infection – those usually couldn’t make coherent sounds anymore.
A castaway? There had been a boat marooned on the island the previous year, manned by several late-stage infected. He hadn’t been able to tell how many people had been there exactly, they had all grown into one massive, messy heap of barely breathing decaying fungus that Nicolò had promptly set the whole boat on fire.
This voice was clear and coherent, though. “Here,” it said. “I’m over here.” It’s one of the holes he had dug for the boars. It took Nicolò a while to recognise that it was speaking in English. God, he hated English. But he followed it anyway, nocking a bolt in his crossbow. He hoped the man wasn’t armed.
“I’m not infected,” the voice said. Male. Nicolò couldn’t place which part of the Anglosphere the man had come from.
He gingerly peered down and saw a bearded man in jeans and flannel. No weapons in sight.
“I’m not infected,” he repeated. When Nicolò stayed silent, he said it again, this time in Italian. Nicolò couldn’t help exhaling a little. He stepped back to rummage inside his bag, looking for his rope.
He still had his crossbow trained on the man as he watched him pull himself out of the hole using the rope he had tied to an old pine tree not far from it.
The scanner flashed green. Like the man had said, he was clean. Nicolò carefully turned the scanner off a distance away from his left arm and tucked it back in his satchel.
“I’m Joe,” the man said, holding both arms up like he was surrendering.
Joe was not looking at his eyes but at his left hand. Oh, right, Nicolò was still holding a crossbow against him. He lowered it. He should maybe give Joe his name, shouldn’t he? He swallowed. His voice didn’t come out. He grimaced.
“I mean no harm,” Joe explained. His Italian was fluent. “I came by boat. It needed supplies, and I–”
A loud rumbling interrupted him. Took Nicolò a few moments to realise it was Joe’s stomach.
“– I haven’t eaten for three days… As you can hear. I know it’s probably nothing compared to what happened in some quarantine zones, but –”
Nicolò had enough food. He could share. His voice still would not come out, though. So he gestured by inclining his head and trudged back to his cottage. He heard Joe’s footsteps moments later.
It probably wasn’t a wise thing, bringing strangers to his cottage. He had heard horror stories from the radio about the lawlessness of the mainland and beyond, where the strong and the prepared preyed upon the weak and the careless.
But if the man – Joe – meant him harm, meant to kill him and take his cottage, his chickens and two cows and sad vegetable patch, he was welcome to them. Maybe it would bring Nicolò peace from his nightmare, finally. Come what may. Call it destiny.
But Joe kept a respectful distance. And he stood awkwardly, too, as Nicolò realised he hadn’t prepared anything to feed himself that day, much less an uninvited guest.
Joe seemed overjoyed, though, when Nicolò pointed at the bathroom. The cottage had no hot shower. But the plumbing worked fine, and the water pressure was good. The groans Joe made as he showered sounded more like pleasure.
Nicolò left clean clothes outside of the bathroom, Joe looked like about his size. He should probably take a shower too. He had before he went to bed. But that had been two nights ago. Maltese summer might have made him ripe for one again. But that could wait. For now, he went to the kitchen and prepared a meal for two.
It was a simple fare. Creamy rabbit stew with potato, egg and fennel. Nicolò hesitated a little as he ladled the stew generously into two bowls. Then he went to the cellar to get a bottle of Marsovin. He only touched the Abbot’s wines two times during the four years he had been living alone on the island. Both times had been to indulge himself as he had wallowed in his misery. Both times had left a bitter aftertaste. Joe’s arrival seemed like a less trivial occasion to open a bottle.
His arms were full of bowls and wine glasses when he opened the door to the dining room. He first noticed the table setting. Somehow, his house guest had found the tableware and set them on the square table, plates, cutleries, serviettes and all. It was a little unnerving. But at least the man had manners. Then he noticed that his cotton shirt and pants fit Joe, even when the chest part looked a little snug.
Then Joe smiled. It was radiant. It lit up his face, eyes crinkling at the corner, and Nicolò could swear he saw dimples behind his now neatly trimmed beard. It made Nicolò self-conscious. God, when was the last time Nicolò had trimmed his beard? He couldn’t remember when the last time the had touched the shaving kit in the bathroom.
“Ah,” Joe said, delighted. “A man who knows to pair rabbit with a Beaujolais.”
Nicolò realised Joe had noticed the wine. He felt himself blushing for an inexplicable reason. He must not seem like the type to know his wine. Anyway, he couldn’t take the credit – the Abbot had taught him that, just in case they had important donors to host. He would have told Joe that if he could. But his voice still would not come out.
Joe didn’t look bothered. “Please,” he said, pulling up the chair next to him, not across.
Nicolò was a little apprehensive, sitting down. He wished he could make a conversation.
But judging from how Joe enjoyed the stew, no conversation was needed. Joe was content to fill the air with moans and sighs that told Nicolò that the stew was satisfactory. Perhaps it’s just because it was the first meal the man had had in three days — anything would have tasted better. Still, it brought a swell of pride inside of him. Then Nicolò realised he was grinning as he refilled Joe’s bowl. His cheeks ached. It felt foreign after years.
“I wished I could, but I can’t,” Joe said after his had polished his third bowl as Nicolo made a move to fill it again.
Nicolò was still smiling. It must be because of the bottle of wine they shared. It made him a little warm and buoyant in the way he had not when he had had no one to share the bottle with. He got up to clear the table. Joe helped him. Joe also helped him wash the dishes as he packed the leftovers and stored them in the fridge.
Then, they stood in awkward silence again.
“I wonder if –” Joe started. “– if I could barter you a few things for my boat?”
Nicolò raised his eyebrows. He needed to know what Joe needed and if he could provide them. He raised his hands, palms out. He didn’t need anything, really. And he hadn’t wanted anything in a long while.
Joe seemed to take that gesture as a prompt for negotiation. “I’m – was, an architect. I’m good with my hands, and, uh, carpentry. I can also draw and paint and –” he pointed out the antique piano in the living room that the Abbot had insisted on placing there to lend a cultured air to impress the donors instead of the communal hall where everyone could enjoy it. Ironically, that had been why the piano survived the extermination at all, while other things, living beings, had not. “– I’m good with piano, though my karaoke buddies insisted I’m a lousy singer, I’m afraid. But I could do that 1948 beauty justice.”
Nicolò stared at him, a little at a loss on how to react since his voice was still stuck in his throat.
Joe seemed flustered by his stare. “All I’m saying is, I need to find a way to repair my boat,” Joe cleared his throat. “So I’d like to stay for a few days and see what I can find here, if that’s alright with you?”
Nicolò nodded. Joe didn’t seem like the type to murder him in his sleep. But also, if he turned out to be one, then Nicolò would be free from all worries, wouldn’t he?
“What is your name?”
Nicolò. He wanted to say. But nothing came out of his mouth.
Joe’s dark eyes seemed to sparkle with understanding, though.
He held out his hand, palm up. “Write it on my palm.”
Like Helen Keller? Nicolò thought.
“Like Helen Keller,” Joe said as if he could read his mind.
Nicolò spelled it out with his fingers on Joe’s palm. N – I – C – and by some epiphany, he finished with K and Y, like how his nonna had used to call him, long, long time ago, before Comino, before Malta, before seminary, in a seaside cottage in Genoa not unlike this one they were standing in.
“Nicky,” Joe said. It sounded right on his tongue. “Nice to meet you, Nicky. Thank you for your hospitality.”
Nicolò smiled, returning the gratitude silently. Maybe in a few days, his voice would return now that there was someone who needed to hear it.
***