Plague Ship

A set of spiral stairs at the rear of the bus led Eddie down to the first level. He was relieved that there weren’t many tourists taking this part of the trip. There had been only fifteen people upstairs and just a handful were downstairs. No one paid him any attention as he strode down the aisle. Eddie kept in a crouch as he approached the driver. There was a translator sitting in the front seat, working on her nails with an emery board between her ca

He ignored her entirely. The driver wore a white shirt, black tie, and a cap more befitting an airline pilot.

Eddie was just thankful he had a slender build. In one motion, Eddie grabbed the driver’s right arm and heaved him out of his seat. Seng ducked, as the man rolled across his shoulder, and then straightened quickly, hurling the driver down the couple of steps near the bus’s main door. He hit the door upside down and collapsed in an untidy heap.

The big diesel barely slowed before Eddie was in the driver’s seat, his foot on the gas pedal. The tour guide was screaming, and passengers farther back began to look frightened. Watching the big wing mirrors, Eddie hit the brakes.

Horns immediately erupted all around, and the Ducati shot from around the back of the bus, narrowly avoiding the car that rear-ended the double-decker. The guide wailed at the impact. The bike was hugging the center line, riding the gap between traffic, and Eddie let him travel halfway down the bus’s length before hitting the gas again and swerving left. The bike had nowhere to go. The other lane was bumper-to-bumper. Had he hung back near the rear of the bus, he might have been able to tuck back behind it again, but he had committed himself to the gap. He dropped a gear and wrenched the throttle.

The front wheel leapt off the tarmac, as the 1000cc engine shrieked, the rider bending low over the handlebars to reduce air friction and give him a fraction more speed.

He never stood a chance. The bus clipped him ten feet shy of where Eddie was sitting. The Ducati careened into a car in the left lane. The rider was launched over the front of his bike. Limbs flailing, he smashed headfirst into the rear window of the next car in the line of traffic. The safety glass turned into a glittering explosion of diamond chips. Eddie could only hope the helmet saved his life. The collision started a chain reaction of minor accidents behind him that quickly engulfed all four lanes.

Eddie stopped the bus and hit the controls that opened the door. It swung only partially inward, blocked by the unconscious form of the driver. As the adrenaline surge that had sustained Eddie over the past frightening minutes began to ebb, he thought of the Chairman and how he always made some sort of joke at a time like this. It wasn’t Seng’s style.

“Sorry,” he said to the tour guide, and pushed his way out the door.

He looked back at the accident. The road was blocked from curb to curb with damaged cars. Drivers were out of their vehicles now, shouting and gesturing as only Italians can. He was about to turn on to a side street when a sedan smashed through the wreckage like a charging battle tank. Two men dove out of the way as their cars were crushed up against other vehicles. The sedan barely slowed, its front end mangled and its driver and passenger invisible for a moment behind their inflated air bags.

Eddie knew they were coming for him.

He ran back onto the bus, clipping the slowly rising driver behind the ear to keep him down. The pretty tour guide screamed when she saw him jump into the driver’s seat again, jabbering at him in Italian so fast that the words blended into one long, continuous sound.

He slammed the automatic transmission into gear. The bus took off with a lurch that sent the few passengers who’d gotten out of their seats sprawling.

Cranking the wheel one-handed, to keep the bus on the road ringing the Colosseum, Eddie grabbed the PA system microphone dangling over his right shoulder. He shouted, “Everybody! Upstairs! Now!” The handful of terrified tourists rushed to the rear of the bus, jamming the stairs in their effort to follow his order. Eddie kept his eye on the rearview mirror as the red sedan, a Fiat Bravo, he thought, bulled its way through the congestion in pursuit. It roared up alongside the bus. Eddie could see three men inside.

The front passenger’s hands were below the doorsill, but he spotted a weapon cradled in the arms of the man in the rear seat.

The man in back thrust the barrel of an assault rifle through the window and sprayed the side of the bus.

Glass exploded as the rounds found their mark, and seat stuffing was blown into the air like confetti.

Eddie swerved into the car, forcing it back once again, while the shrieks of the passengers upstairs grew to a fevered pitch.

Turning even tighter to avoid a stalled lane of traffic, Eddie felt the bus go light on its inside wheels as centrifugal force made the vehicle want to roll over. He edged the steering wheel slightly, and the heavy bus mashed back down on its suspension, rocking precariously. The road straightened out as they completed their sweep around the Colosseum and headed northeast. On either side of the road, the new blended with the ancient, as they raced past office blocks, churches, and ruined temples. The Fiat tried to pass the bus again, and Eddie swerved, feeling the satisfying crunch of metal.

Accelerating past fifty miles per hour, Eddie thought that he had damaged the sedan more than he’d thought, because they didn’t try to pass him again. That’s when he heard the hammering crack of an automatic rifle. Despite the bus’s size, he could feel the weight of shots through the chassis. They were firing at the engine in the rear, hoping to disable the vehicle and gun Eddie down at their leisure.

Ahead, Eddie could see what he could only describe as a giant wedding cake. The building was massive, constructed entirely of marble, and seemed to loom over the area. He dimly recalled from somewhere that this was the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the ruler who united all the Italian states into the modern nation it was today. The pomposity of the architecture was made worse by the sheer size of the building, its columns and steps making it look more like an enormous set of dentures than a memorial to a great leader.

The road swept around to the left, revealing a huge bronze statue of Victor on horseback. With the sun begi

Another barrage pummeled the back of the bus, and the tourists outside started to scatter like startled birds.

Eddie knew it was only a matter of time before they hit something critical or that he’d run into a police roadblock. The distant sound of sirens blaring was drawing closer by the second. A sign said he was on the VIA DEI FORI IMPERIALI, not that it meant anything to him. The road was broad, by Roman standards, and too open for Eddie’s tastes. It divided ahead, next to an open parking area filled with buses much like the one he’d commandeered.

He veered left down a street hemmed in by four- and five-story brick buildings. The storefronts offered everything from leather goods to electronics to exotic pets. But it was still too wide for what Eddie had in mind. Brake lights suddenly flared in front of the bus as traffic came to a crawl. Eddie pounded on the horn, and he steered the bus onto the curb. The sidewalk wasn’t nearly wide enough for the large vehicle.

As he made his way down the cobbled walkway, the bus mowed down parking meters like wheat before a combine and shouldered aside automobiles amid a cacophony of car alarms and shouts.