Zommunist Invasion by Picott, Camille (ebook reader ink TXT) 📗

way out the door, she scooped up a handful of cartridges and dropped them into her other apron pocket.

He was hanging out with one badass grandma. Stephenson admired her almost as much as he was intimidated by her.

29

Practice

“Valé, help me.”

Snow.

So much snow. It gathered on the tops of her ears. It burned the tip of her nose. Tiny flakes melted on her cheeks, dripping across her skin like tears. Snow swirled around her boots, swiftly camouflaging the dark brown leather against the chilly white.

Fourteen-year-old Valentina was as frozen on the inside as she was on the outside.

More flakes swept down, melting in the pool of blood that marred the perfect snow in front of her. It was so fresh, it still steamed in the cold.

As far as puddles went, it wasn’t very large. Maybe fifteen centimeters across, at most.

It was lopsided. The right side was thin and tapered to a point. The left side was large and wide.

That’s where the blood first landed, Valentina thought.

Not too far from the pool was a footprint. A bloody footprint that was already partially concealed with white flakes. The back part of the print was a crisp imprint in the snow. The front part was smeared, bits of red dragged across it.

Valentina stood in the freezing cold, her eyes moving to a second bloody footprint, and then to the third. Then to a fourth, a fifth, and so on, until the prints disappeared around the back side of the shed.

Even though it was full dark and snow made the air white all around her, the blood stood out like a beacon. Her mind was frozen, but her eyes worked. Her gaze kept moving from the lopsided pool, across the footprints, and back again.

“Valé, help me.”

Nonna led Stephenson through the early morning, hiking west along one of the many hunting footpaths that dotted the Cecchino property. The fog already dissipated, promising a hot summer day.

Stephenson flailed along in her wake. Even though they were on a path, it sounded like he blundered into every bush and tree that bordered the trail. His awkwardness made her heart ache. She was determined to do her best to make sure he lived the through storm that was coming.

Because there was a storm coming. Nonna didn’t know what it looked like, or what shape it would take. But she knew as surely as she knew her own name that something bad was on its way.

It was like that the day her brother had died. It was the day he’d come home with his partisan patch sewn to his sweater, so full of pride that he’d joined the resistance army to protect their country from fascists. His smile had been big enough to crack the sun in half. His radiance had nearly blinded her.

As he stood in their family living room, so full of life and optimism, all she had felt was dread. It was a weight on her shoulders, so heavy it threatened to push her into the earth. It was a stomach that wanted to empty itself of the fear that had taken up residence there.

Nonna strode through the woods with Stephenson on her heels, feeling that same sense of foreboding settle on her. Even after forty years, she had not forgotten what tragedy felt like. Tragedy always sent heralds ahead of its arrival if you knew how to look for them.

It was the same on the day her son had died.

Even before Dal and Lena had returned home and delivered the news, she had known.

At the thought of her dead son, Nonna felt her throat constrict. She missed her boy more than she could ever say.

But he’d died a hero. He’d saved his children, both Lena and Dal. It was as it should have been. Nonna would have expected no less from her boy.

She tried not to overthink the heavy feeling of oncoming tragedy, or to overanalyze it. Knowing something was coming wasn’t the same as knowing what was coming. In some ways, the foreboding was the worst of it.

Whatever it was, she was going to make sure Stephenson had the skills to survive. She would help him as much as she could.

For Luca.

For Luca, she would lay down her own life to keep Stephenson alive.

30

Princess of Power

Stephenson trudged along behind Nonna. Every step he took convinced him that, when all this madness was over, he was moving to a place with lots of concrete. Lots and lots of concrete. If he never walked through another forest in his life, it would be too soon.

There were bugs and spiders and cobwebs out here. And other stuff. Raccons and skunks and stuff. God. And squirrels. As far as Stephenson was concerned, squirrels were the spawn of demons.

For one thing, they were basically really big mice with fluffy tails. Everyone else thought they were cute, but Stephenson wasn’t fooled by their supposed cuteness.

Three of them lived in the two big mulberry trees in his backyard. The little bastards tormented the family dogs and quarreled with one another at all hours of the night. Once, he’d even seen a squirrel throw an acorn at their cat.

He was so busy watching the trees for demonic squirrels that he kept running into trees and bushes. He even blundered into a few cobwebs on the side of the trial. If he thought a gun would be a decent defense against a cobweb, he would have asked to learn how to shoot a long time ago.

It felt like Nonna dragged him through the woods for hours. In reality, it probably was no more than forty-five minutes.

She finally led him off the trail into a shallow valley of land. It was perhaps fifty yards across and surrounded by towering oak trees that most people would have called majestic.

Stephenson called them home to ticks. Thank God the branches didn’t extend over the whole clearing. If he stood near the center, he was pretty sure it would be near impossible for