Destiny and Destroying Rome

The Great Escape (From Italy)

[Before we begin, I should note that, before you start this one, if you have not bought Hell Spawn, Death Cult, Infernal Affairs or City of Shadows, you might want to buy them now, since they’re $0.99 from now until May 31. Just a thought.]

My upcoming book, Destiny, (out this Tuesday) was written in April 2020. And there’s a reason behind this property destruction…

Okay, I usually don’t need a reason for property destruction aside from “It makes for fun reading.”

In March of 2020, I had a slight… incident. I made the mistake of thinking that Italy was well-managed. I forgot that it was run by Italians. My mother, for the record, is Sicilian.

You see, I come from a medical household. My father taught medical personnel. My mother is a microbiologist, who has worked in multiple departments, including serology. Trust me, if I weren’t Catholic, everything I learned about STDs over the dinner table would have kept me chaste to start with. Heck, the amount of microbiology that has slipped into my brain over the years, it even ended up in my vampire fiction, but that’s a story for another day.

So, when I heard Corona had hit Italy, and northern Italy was in lockdown and quarantine, I had a very definite idea of what quarantine looked like. It looked like roads shut down, barricades erected, no flights, cars, buses or trains in or out, as well as full Hazmat suits on parade.

You know, a quarantine.

Apparently, it lost something in translation.

I even had a chat with someone who was up close and personal with Corona, my friend Ben Cheah, alias Kai Wai Cheah, over in Singapore. I figure if I knew anyone with a good view of Corona on the ground, it would be him. He’d been there, done that, and shrugged it off. He was the first one to tell me that it was a glorified flu.

Besides, Destiny was always going to be in Italy. It was in the plan. It just so happened that I had family who wanted to send my wife and I on a “real honeymoon.” Because, apparently, going on a road trip to DragonCon isn’t “real” to normal people.

Who knew?

Once I got to Italy, I was even more reassured that Italy would be able to enact a quarantine. In 2015, Pope Francis declared a Jubilee year; the Italian government “increased security” by putting armed soldiers in the streets with automatic weapons. The guys in fatigues with the automatic rifles are still there. They're not on every street corner (yet) but they're parked at nearly every public place.

So I figured that Italy, which deploys soldiers for day to day use, would be able to lock down a region using some simple tactics and strategy that could have been learned from the novel The Hot Zone of thirty years ago.

Nope. Totally fucking incompetent. No lockdown of the roads. There were STILL airplanes flying out of Milan and Venice on Friday the 13th, even though the country was locking down on the evening of Sunday the 8th.

What exactly did the initial lockdown of Lombardi consist of? Stern language?

But noooo, that would have gone against their open borders policies. EU. Peace and love and acceptance

Apparently, plague pestilence and death.

My wife and I knew shit was hitting the fan on Monday March 9th. The country promptly shut down all of the museums and public gathering places. The Pope shut down all masses until April 3rd. In fact, my wife and I attended one of the last masses in Rome.

But this announcement shutting down the museums was made in the middle of Sunday night. Sometime after 10PM, because we woke up to it on Monday morning. Our scheduled tour of the Vatican museums were canceled. Everything was canceled. We got to Castel Sant'Angelo, but we only saw the outside.

We knew it was time to leave on March 9th at 5PM that evening (Rome time). It was game over.

We called the AAA travel agent and said, "Okay, we're out of here."

But the AAA rep was working through Avanti destinations. And apparently, they could only change the time, the place, or the date of the plane out of town — pick one and only one. Because “It wasn't an emergency.”

Uh huh. Sure. Italy shutting down its … entire tourist industry … wasn't an emergency? Or the sign that it was about to get worse? Heh heh. Right. Whatever you say Avanti.

Just get us. The fuck. OUT OF HERE.

We picked the date, because we weren't going to come back a week from Tuesday. 

The AAA agent would get back to us.

Later on, I heard back from the AAA rep. Avanti had come through, under the constraints they were held under. That we could leave ... on Thursday.

... From Florence.

Why Florence? Because we were originally scheduled to leave from there. The itinerary was to go to Rome, take a train to Florence, then a plane from Florence to home … via Rome. So, train from Rome to Florence, only to fly back to Rome, to fly to JFK airport, NY.

Okay, fine. We still had a train to Florence on the itinerary for Wednesday night. Far as I was concerned, we could go directly to the airplane terminal and stay there overnight. That was all well and good. But since we had the day free, my wife and I would pay a visit to the US embassy to Italy on Tuesday the 10th.

However, for reasons I can only guess at, the embassy wouldn't open until two in the afternoon, local time. We had two Americans ahead of us who wanted to tour the embassy. They were denied, but they had a question about a "hard lockdown." They ended up on the phone with a consulate official. 

When they were done with the phone, it was handed to me. While I was on the phone, my wife talked to the other Americans, in case they asked the right questions. Meanwhile, I asked about any evacuation plans for Americans still stuck in Italy, since our window opportunity was closing and our options were narrowing.

The official said that there was nothing she could talk to me about, since there were still ways out of the country. For the moment.

At around 10:30PM that night, Italy went into “full lock down.”

This resulted in with a whole bunch of flights being canceled.

That shifted OUR plane from leaving at 11:30AM from Florence.... to a 6:30AM flight out of Florence.

At that point, I really wanted to just stay in the airport waiting room and stay there overnight.

So, just to track this:

• Monday was the phone call for the evacuation.

• Tuesday was the embassy.

• Wednesday was the train to Florence.

We stayed in the hotel we had booked, and raced to find an open restaurant, because Italy's “lockdown” meant that restaurants closed at 6PM. We made it with minutes to spare

Then there's Thursday. Ah, Thursday. It started at two in the morning. I may have gotten four hours of sleep, total.

We got to the airport at 4:30 am. It was a local flight from Florence to Rome, so we only needed to be there two hours in advance.

The check-in took until 5:15 am… largely because the counter didn’t open until then.

But they decided that I was overweight on every single piece of luggage and I had to pay a hundred euros… at a different counter, with a different, longer line.

Paying off the luggage took until 5:55 am.

The ticket said that the flight started boarding at ... wait for it ... 5:55 am.

So we had a gate number, and we bolted for it.  I still had my laces untied from the security check point. So that sucked.

We got to the gate at 6:15. The gate was EMPTY. Completely empty. We saw the plane on the tarmac, and it had a staircase going up to the plane.

Okay, I figure we're screwed. We're going to be stuck there a while, either in the airport or in country.

Then my wife pushed off through the doors onto the tarmac. I followed. Maybe we'd be able to get on the plane after all. Maybe we're not screwed.

The guys on the tarmac turned us back, saying that the gate was changed.

I thought: Really? I only got the ticket twenty minutes before. They changed the gate already? Sigh. Fine. Let's get on the damn plane.

My wife had to go to the bathroom. I waited in the lobby.

I was then approached by an airport official who asked if I spoke English. And where was "the other one"?

Enter, the cops.

From 6:15 am to 6:45, we ended up with a gathering of three cops. They took our passports and radioed them in to their superiors. They took our luggage tags so they could take our checked-in luggage off the plane.

And they waited for people above to reply. 

And waited.

And then, boarding really started. The ticket had lied to us about both the time and the place? AYFKM?

My wife and I watched as the last plane we had any hope for disappeared. The cops stared at each other with vacant expressions, waiting for someone from on high to tell them what to do and what to think.

At 6:45am, they took us to the security office, a little concrete box that I might put a felon in if I were pissed at him. And they explained that, no, we didn't actually commit a crime. We were not under arrest. We had merely committed an “administrative infraction.” We would only have to pay a fine.

That fine? That would be two thousand euros. 

You can do the conversion rates.

But then, we waited.

And we waited.

At quarter to nine, after we had been held in the little concrete room for two hours, I called the American embassy, because despite everything that had been said, it really started to feel like we were under arrest. Especially since they held onto our passports.

The embassy emergency people had a chat with them. A guy with terrible English came out and reiterated everything we were already told.

It wasn't until the paperwork came that we realized they meant two thousand euros... EACH.

By the time we were released, it was 10:45am. The plane we were supposed to be on was long, long gone. Time to get a new one. A security guard walked us to the ticket counter and they explained what happened to the ticket guy. The guard walked away, leaving him to get us home.

When I asked about getting tickets to Rome, then to New York, the idiot behind the ticket counter just shrugged and said, “I can't help you.” That's it. He didn't even look it up on his computer. Just So Sorry, nothing to be done. Didn't even ask what we would be willing to pay. He was about as useful to us as the floor tiles. 

Sorry, that's wrong. I could at least stand on the floor tiles.

.... Okay, fine. We can play that way.

Since I was only in fucking Florence in order to fly back to Rome, because the stupid rules said I had to be, I worried that I would be screwed somehow if I made a move on my own. I had to wait until 2:30PM, local time, for AAA and Avanti designations to open up.

So I waited. Patiently.

My wife and I sat in the waiting room at the airport, and we read.

By the time I was done, I had managed to finish off Mel Todd's wonderful novel No Choice.

So, it's 2:30 PM. I've been up over twelve hours already. I was sleep deprived and fatigued. I also wanted to burn down the airport and everyone in it so they could die screaming.

Do not be surprised if similar circumstances show up in Destiny.

I called AAA. My travel agent wasn't in that day. The women I did get was willing and eager to help me, but she needed to look up my file.

Fine. I can play this like bingo cards. I called AAA to get them in on it. I called Allianz travel insurance, put them on it. I called Avanti destinations, got them in on it.

The cheapest plane was $2,000. Per ticket. Through Delta. Please hold.

As I waited for people to get back to me, I watch the plane boards cancel planes one by one. Every plane to everywhere got canceled. And—wait for it—planes OUT OF LOMBARDI were still flying. You remember, that place was was supposed to be under lockdown? Yeah, that was still wide open for business.

By the time I hung up with Aventi the first time, all but two planes out of Toscano Airport were canceled.

But by 4:30 PM, we had a plan.

I would get on a train back to fucking Rome, Avanti would put us up in a Rome airport hotel, and book us on a Norwegian airline flight. In first class. And both tickets for Norwegian were cheaper than one ticket for Delta for economy class.

Excellent! Awesome! Wonderful! We went back to Rome. We paid for the train directly.

We made it to the Fiuminco airport Hilton by nine at night. We would be leaving from Rome airport at the Norwegian 6:30 PM flight. Cool. We had a plan and a nice hotel

Friday, morning, we went straight from the hotel to the airport. We'd be there hours early, but we were going to be on this freaking plane.

We got there ... and the airport was all but shut down. Norwegian airlines had one person at their check-in counter. The flight was canceled only hours after we had booked it. There were no notifications to us from anybody.

So, back to square one.

We put Avanti and AAA back on task while I went around to the ticket counters... you know, the four that were open.

One ticket counter lied to me directly, telling me there were no flights to New York City. Anywhere. Ever again. And it wasn't their fault, it’s all Trump’s fault, because “Trump is canceling all flights from Europe.”

Uh huh…. Funny, the EU travel ban had over eight hours before it went into effect. Trump wasn’t canceling these fucking flights. Perhaps spiteful government Italians were?

After striking out there, I called the American embassy. Surprise, they couldn't help.

Bingo card number three, Allianz travel insurance, informed of us a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, which would take us to Heathrow, which would take us home.
Great. Awesome.

Run down two terminals to find Lufthansa's ticket seller.

“It’s sold out already. Can't help you.”

Funny, I didn't even ask for any further help yet, how could you know what I wanted from you, you malingering son of a bitch?

I talked to AAA, who told me that we would have to be more aggressive and “proactive” in talking to people at the ticket booths.

I explained that people were either directly lying to us, or that they were so stupid that they couldn't figure out how to operate their own fucking systems.

After waiting two more hours, Avanti had finagled an Al Italia flight out ... for Saturday. At 2:30 pm. 

Back to yet a different hotel.

At this point, we had a few dozen friends on Facebook and Twitter pulling for us— they were praying, and more importantly, they were coming up with back up plans. I think they had come up with plan M after a while.

• One person looked into trains out of Italy to the UK (because planes were still flying out of the UK).

• Another looked into a ferry to a train to the Chunnel.

• Another suggested we climb over the Alps singing “Climb every mountain.”

• Someone suggested we go to military bases and hitchhike.

• Elephants over the alps?

• Flaps your wings and try to fly?

Saturday came. We showed up at the airport at 11:30am. 

The flight wasn't canceled... Yet.

We went to the Al Italia counter and the moderately long line. It was processed quickly. We came to the counter.

“Americans?” she asked.

I didn’t even answer, I showed her the passports, because someone needed to.

“No,” she said.

No? What do you mean NO? Are you going to cancel our flight again? Am I going to have to leap across your sad, pathetic Corona rope line and throttle you into giving us a boarding pass out of this Hell hole? How much more ransom do we have to pay to get us out of here!

She took an abnormally long breath, thought about what she had to say next, and continued, “Other check in, around the corner.”

Whew. No manslaughter charges for me today. Yay.

We went to the other check-in counter. We were the first ones up, since everyone else had probably checked in while we were on the other line— all fifty people for this one flight.

They processed us with a little extra paperwork explaining where we'd been in relation to quarantine zones— Rome and the Vatican, full stop.

We were given the boarding passes ... but no gate.

We made our way through the airport ghost town. And it was empty.

We didn’t have a gate yet. But there was “direct flights to the US” security. There was “all boarding passes” security. There were at least three checkpoints we had to traverse before we could break free to actually look for our suite of gates.

By the time we made it to the "E-gates," it was one in the afternoon.

We had to wait ten more lousy minutes until the boards told us where to go.

At 1:09, I was parked in front of a departures board, waiting for the gate to be announced. I left my wife to have a seat in the comfy chairs about a hundred feet away from the board.

Some people talk about the longest minutes of one’s life. This was it for me.

Then 1:10 hit.

The gate number hadn't changed.

I double checked my phone's time against the time on the board. The board said 1:09.

That's fine. Nothing odd about being a few seconds off.

Now I just waited for the board to acknowledge the time.

Finally, one minute passed…

The gate didn't change.

I thought, hey, it's Italian time. Italians are never on time. Italian time means siesta, right?

It took at least thirty seconds to shift over. It's the only wait to explain why it felt like thirty minutes.

The flight gate number went blank. Blank?

"Please God, not canceled again."

And it remained blank.

Then it turned to E24.

We had a gate.

WE HAD A GATE! YES! FUCKING ITALIAN POLITICO HACKS CAN'T KEEP US HERE!

...Right? They couldn't just cancel the flight with checked in passengers and a boarding gate, right?

Less than an hour later, we were boarding. All fifty passengers of AZ 610 to JFK airport. We were all allow to have entire rows to ourselves, our plane was so empty.

My wife insists she heard the tower yelling at the pilots to not take off. It would make a nice plot point in a film, but I doubt it.

We got home. We landed at around 7:20-something Saturday night.

We were safe!

.... And then we taxied.

We continued to taxi.

Huh.

After the first twenty minutes of taxi-ing, I became worried. Were they going to send us back? Naw. That would be stupid. And costly. And I’d have to kill someone.

At 8:10, we stopped. And they were finally going to let us off the plane.

But NOT JUST YET.

The CDC had paperwork for us to fill out. And temperatures to take. That’s not hard, is it? Forehead scanners aren’t hard to use.

They scanned my forehead.

Three times.

They got no reading.

They finally took my temperature by scanning my wrist. I finally had a body temperature.

At 8:45 PM, we had our bags, we had our taxi, and we were on our way home.

What did I think of Italy? I liked the people. The government, though? Well, I at least know where the Red Brigade went -- into management.

As I said above, despite having an Irish a moniker as I could invent without going full potato, my maternal side of the family is Sicilian. We take our grudges seriously.

I spent the next month, April of 2020, writing Destiny.

Mysteriously, I trashed a lot of Rome.

A lot.