Chapter 224 - Karpathos (II)

"No one spoke at first," Apollonius said, gazing out across the Carpathian Sea. The moon was low in the sky. Its trail across the dark expanse gave it the look of a shimmering comet, one that had just sprang from the depths and was ascending slowly into the heavens. "They all thought he was mad. And then another large stone, one of the heavy ones, struck the roof of the terrace with a loud report, and they all promised. For a moment, with all of them babbling at once, it sounded like we were at the market." He laughed.

Fatima sat beside her husband, listening quietly. She had heard him mention Julia over the years. He and his maker talked of her when Gon flew in to visit. Always in low voices. Always mindful of her, as if she would be slighted by their remembrance, but their talk had never offended her. Julia was long dead. It was silly to be jealous of a ghost.

Fatima hoped they would speak of her in such reverential tones when she was dead and gone. She knew Apollonius would outlive her. He was already nearly two thousand years old, but he had been made well. Although there was some debate about whether he was a true immortal or not, what his maker called an Eternal, it was so close that it probably didn't matter one way or the other. Apollonius would be tired of living long before the question was put to the test.

And she…? Well, she had been made during the Turkish occupation of Karpathos, by a low and unkind creature named Baracka. She was only four hundred years old, but she had already felt her powers peak and begin their slow decline. Another two hundred years and she would go to dust, but that was all right. She had seen enough of life that death held little fear for her. Only let her beloved speak of her like he spoke of his tragic Julia! Let his brilliant sapphire eyes glint in like manner as he recalled her face to his thoughts!

"My maker—my father—is many things," Apollonius continued. "Impulsive, nostalgic, a bit of a curmudgeon. He can be judgmental and vicious when someone has given him offense. He can even be a terrible egotist at times, but if he is one thing above all those others, it is noble. He was determined to save every single one of us-- and Mount Vesuvius erupting just five miles away!"

Apollonius turned to smile at Fatima.

"Gon is a fool," he said, grinning proudly, affectionately, "but, oh, what a glorious fool!"

He returned his eyes to the moon.

"We had to decide where we were going to take them. The wind was blowing from west to east, so we thought Herculaneum, which lay to the west of the city, but Herculaneum was even closer to Vesuvius than Pompeii, and if the wind chanced to turn...! Julia was the one who suggested Stabiae, or perhaps Surrentum. It was a lucky call, as Herculaneum was destined to share the same fate as Pompeii, buried in ash and stone.

"We took the children first. There were five of them employed by our two households. Cirio, Aetius, whom we had saved from Junius in the public latrines, a stable boy named Rezzo, and two girls from Julia's staff, a cook's assistant named Mara and a handmaid named Antianella. Julia wanted to save her father first, but Cornelius threw a fit. The thought of being evacuated before women and children was an affront to his dignity. I think he would have struck his daughter if she had tried to force the issue, but she relented, and took up Cirio in her arms instead.

"I don't think any of them truly believed what Gon had said to them until we leapt to the rooftop with the children. And then I heard them cry out behind us, and a torrent of excited conversation. 'It's true! It's true! He is a god!' they babbled.

"It gave me a strange sensation to know that we were revealed to our mortal servants. I was both proud and sad. Sad because I knew that things would never be the same for us. We would have to leave them when it was over. We would have to find a new home, and take up new identities in some foreign land. I was sad because I loved them. They had become my family.

"Stabiae was but twenty miles away, not a very far distance for creatures than can move faster than the human eye can see, but we found to our dismay that the raining stones prevented us from moving at our full speed. Though the pumice could not hurt us, and we had wrapped the children in heavy blankets to protect them, there was a limit to the speed at which we could move without harming the children. The faster we traveled, the faster the falling stones collided into their bodies. And we could barely see the way ahead of us, even with our vampire senses. The ash was so thick we can scarce see a few steps ahead of us. Each great bound we took through the air was almost a leap of faith.

"We also found, as we carried to children to Stabiae, that the ash cloud pursued us. Though we came out of its shadow close to Stabiae, Vesuvius's fiery breath was right upon our tail. We decided at the gates of Stabiae to continue on to Surrentum. Already, ash and pumice were beginning to pelt us again. 'Surely,' Gon said, 'Vesuvius's wrath will fall short of Surrentum!'

"I don't know what we would have done if he had been wrong. If Vesuvius's vengeful hand stretched all the way to Surrentum. But it didn't.

"We left the children near the beach outside of Surrentum, telling them to seek shelter if the stones began to rain, but otherwise to stay there, near the copse, so we could find them all again. And then we took off, headed back to Pompeii, our bodies leaving little trails of gray ash floating in the air behind us, like the contrails of modern jet planes. We must have looked like dolls made of dried mud, we were so caked in soot.

"The journey back went quicker without our mortal freight to slow us down. I could not believe how deep the tephra had become in just the two hours we'd been gone. It was already an inch or two above my ankles!

'Vesuvius, in the distance, was nearly invisible now, concealed within the veil of her own hellish breath. Every now and then the darkness lit up with bright lances of static electricity. And there was a low orange glow in the murk in the direction of the volcano-- molten rock, I suppose, or flames. It was not a constant light. It throbbed in the dark, brightening for a moment, then fading away, like a terrible beating heart.

"We were able to take five our first trip to Surrentum, but those had been children, the smallest of our two staffs. We could only carry three the second trip. And three each trip after that.

"By midnight, we had only evacuated half of our household, but our determination did not flag. By then the city was half buried, and roofs were collapsing under the weight of all the fallen stone. We were frightened the roof of our villa would collapse as well, but we were doing everything we could to save our friends… our family. We couldn't travel any faster, or carry more than one full grown adult at a time.

"Julia's father was not faring well, and neither was loyal old Fulvius. They were both having difficulty breathing. Yet both waved us off when we attempted to evacuate them, insisting that we rescue the younger ones first.

"'Next time, my beautiful girl,' her father wheezed. 'I will let you rescue me… next time.'

"So we took Enuk and an Egyptian slave named Sheba and fat, nosy Herminia. When we returned, we found that Fulvius had died while we were gone, choked to death on the ash that swirled so thickly in the air. Julia snatched up her father, ignoring his breathless protests, and we flew to Surrentum again.

"There were only six left to rescue after that. Gon tried to convince us to stay in Surrentum, but we refused. It was dawn by then, a weak red light spreading across the eastern horizon. We were exhausted, caked in volcanic ash, but we refused. It was nearly over now, we told him. We had evacuated all but six. Too late to give up now.

"So we went back, and then we went back again. Each time we returned, the tephra was piled even high than before, with no sign of slowing. In places, only the roofs of the buildings were visible. The city was nearly buried.

"I think of what it must have been like for those mortal astronauts who tread upon the moon, to step forth from their fragile spaceship onto that alien world, so desolate and empty. That is what Pompeii looked like at the last, a lifeless alien world. There were no living men in sight. The city was buried in ash and stone. The air was so thick with smoke that there was no sky, no sun, just a soupy gray haze with the dark smudge of the volcano in the distance, lighting up now and then with a dim orange glow as it vomited molten rock upon itself like a dying man puking blood.

"We discovered, on our final trip to Pompeii, that the roof of the Villa Eyya had given in. The weight of all the accumulated pumice, light though it was in individual pieces, had finally buckled the rafters. My home for the last two years had become a pit, partially filled with gravel and jutting timbers.

"We started digging through the rock, looking for survivors. The swirling ash confounded our senses so we couldn't locate them by scent. We shouted for the three that remained—Appius, Cato and Decimus—and that was when it happened.

"There came a deep-pitched rumbling sound, and a strange throbbing sensation in the air, as if something vast and invisible had suddenly stirred nearby.

"Julia shouted, pointing toward Vesuvius.

"In the distance, the column of churning ash still rising from the volcano had fattened, grown bulbous, like an overfilled waterbladder. It fell earthward and began to swell, turning over and over upon itself. The ground began to thrum and we realized the cloud was rushing straight toward us.

"We stood paralyzed, watching the cloud come at us, watching it grow, watching its belly strobe with lighting and flame, a hungry titan, come to swallow the city of Pompeii. The city, and the three foolhardy vampires who had dared the wrath of Vesuvius.

"A pyroclastic flow. That is the scientific term for it. It is a fast-moving current of hot gas and rock. The weight of the tephra churning from the volcano had reached some critical tipping point so that it was no longer buoyant, and it had fallen from the sky in a single great mass.

"I have read, in scientific literature, that these rivers of burning ash can reach speeds of up to seven hundred kilometers an hour. Much quicker than even the fastest strigoi can move. There was nothing we could do but stand and watch as our fate bore down upon us.

"It hugged the ground, racing downhill toward Pompeii, spreading laterally as it enveloped the city. For one moment the city wall stood in silhouette against its dimly glowing belly, and then it was gone.

"My maker finally shook off his shocked paralysis. He seized my arm, nearly tore it from its socket. He had Julia's arm in his other hand, and he was racing toward the sea, trying to save us.

"I tore my eyes from the burning cloud of ash. I looked at Julia, and she reached out to me, her lips forming my name, and then the monster overtook us."