Giovanni welcomed the darkness.
2
He opened his eyes and immediately closed them. His vision was a blur of indistinct shapes — darkness broken only by flickering blobs of light. A church? He smelled candles. He tried to move his head and stopped when it seemed his jaw would break.
Somebody had hit him. There had been an air raid. There were guns and a shooting.
Santa Maria, he thought, I was doing the shooting.
Bit by bit the memory came nosing back and he started to put the pieces together. He realized he was shivering.
Where was he?
His moan brought one of the blobs suddenly closer. A cool touch on his forehead triggered memories and thoughts, but blinking brought forth only tears and pain.
“Sono io, Giovanni,” a calm but shaky voice spoke in his ear. “Sono io. Stai tranquillo.”
Maria! Thank God!
His hand gripped hers and brought it to his chest. He still couldn’t see very well, but the simple gesture slowed his heart from its onrushing pace and brought the tranquility she’d wished upon him. He started to rise but she pushed him back firmly.
“No, you might be hurt. And we have to stay silent.”
“What?”
“Shhhhhh.” Her hand caressed his face. “Trust me.”
He noticed movement behind her, more blurs making jagged little gestures. He smelled sweat and bodies. “What— Where are we? Where is—?”
Suddenly he was seized by the thought of what he hadn’t heard or yet felt. His son.
“Where is Franco?” he groaned, his voice rough.
“I don’t know,” she said, crying. “He was—”
Somebody stepped closer and whispered in a clipped voice, “Be silent or you’ll get us all killed!”
Giovanni felt Maria’s hand caress his face and softly cover his lips. He kissed her cool skin, but his mind reeled. His son wasn’t here, wherever here was. Maria was here, and these others, but not Franco.
His memory slotted into place and he remembered the firefight in the street. How he had ended up with a machine gun, and turned it on the hated German.
The bombing raid. The partisans.
Corrado Garzanti was the rogue’s name.
Corrado had hit him.
The bastard.
Giovanni’s legs trembled as he tried to stand. He reached for Maria.
Sounds — crashing, smashing sounds — from above and nearby reached them and his heart started to race again.
Corrado materialized beside him — a blob with glasses pinching his nose. “Listen to me,” he hissed into Giovanni’s ear, “they’re close to finding one of our secret entrances, and if they do we are all fucked in the ass. You understand? We have to slip out and fight them, kill them all before they can report. Are you up to it?”
“Up to it?”
Killing people?
Who was this idiot, asking him to kill…
Corrado’s band of partisans was gathering just behind, preparing by checking guns and knives, facing a wall that until now Giovanni had thought solid. But there was a vertical slit, a sort of narrow sloping passage, and the men were slipping through one by one.
“We’ll need you. Here.” Corrado handed Giovanni an old revolver, which he took but loosely. Corrado plucked it from his hand and tucked into Giovanni’s belt for him, where it felt alien. Then someone else handed him a Beretta submachine gun on a sling. He took it, reluctantly. It also felt strange in his hands, heavy and awkward, but not very different from the German gun he’d used to good effect earlier. This one was heavier, the stock wood and the barrel shrouded with extra metal. He looked back at Maria — but a tall man behind him was crowding him toward the passage.
It appeared he would have to pay his way.
The tall man and another fell in behind him, and all he could do was nod and try to smile at Maria before she disappeared behind them, but he had lost sight of her. And then he was stumbling into the passage. It was a ruined staircase, brick and mortar debris underfoot. Boots and shoes scraped in front of him, climbing, so he followed instinctively even though he could barely see.
They climbed single-file, seemingly endlessly until they reached a collapsed corridor. Then Giovanni smelled the evening air. They were outside, emerging from a hidden fissure between leaning stone walls. The short column of men snaked around the corner and he realized they were attempting to flank the German patrol before the shelter was sniffed out.
He gripped the Beretta’s stock tightly, his mind a jumble of fears.
They were nearly around the ruined building’s front corner when someone’s shoe kicked over a pile of debris, which groaned and came tumbling to the ground in a clatter of stone and wood, raising a cloud of dust.
An angry shout in German, and then another, and then there was a submachine gun burst and Giovanni realized the partisans, not yet in position, had been forced to open fire without cover. They were outlined against the wall.
“All’attacco, ragazzi!” Corrado shouted, urging his men on the attack, their intended surprise flanking shattered by the shouting and the gunfire. “Per la patria!” For the homeland!
The enemy was a series of indistinct shapes, like ghosts shimmering in the dark.
A man went down on Giovanni’s left, his chest split open by a fusillade of slugs.
Giovanni screamed in fear and anger and squeezed the Beretta’s trigger, letting loose a burst. Recoil tugged the barrel upward and to the left and he saw his rounds shatter a window too high up to catch any of the enemy. Another man went down on his right, a bullet in the head silencing him forever. Giovanni held the Beretta barrel down and sprayed lead until his breech locked open, the magazine empty. Someone shoved another magazine at him and he reloaded, somehow catching on instinctively. He shot at the ghosts again, and this time one of the shapes threw up his arms and collapsed, broken, against the bricks.
Gunfire raged around him and for a moment he thought the partisans were holding the enemy back, their bursts exacting a terrible toll.
A series of loud snarls broke through the gunfire, followed immediately by an unearthly howling. Giovanni stopped short, a shiver shooting down his spine. Despite the gun battle, this sound was viscerally more terrifying.
“Lupi!” someone shouted. Then the man’s voice turned to a gurgle as a dark, muscular shape lunged from the shadows and ripped out his throat.
Whatever it was, it snarled and shook its long snout and Giovanni heard a slaughterhouse ripping of bone and flesh and the dead man’s head came rolling to a stop at his feet.
Dio mio!
Giovanni couldn’t help staring for a split-second down into the dead man’s terrified eyes, already glazing, and then he stumbled aside until he couldn’t see the head and the jagged piece of spine protruding from its torn neck.
All around him he heard men screaming as more four-footed shapes materialized. For the first time he saw that they were giant dogs—
No, they were wolves.
And they were large… very large…
They lunged at men who shot at them over and over without any effect, their jaws snapping and tearing necks and limbs. Here was a partisan going down under a slashing, biting jaw full of fangs. There was a man with a wolf’s snarling snout buried in his belly, tearing out loops of bloody intestines as he screamed his last.