by Simon Logan
She’s flexing her toes inside her boots. She glances at the clock on the dashboard.
Soon the boat will be preparing the leave the bay with its special passenger aboard, Januscz’s perfect escape all ready and waiting for her. And here she is, trapped in the back of a psycho parole officer’s creaking, rusted car, unable to do anything about it.
She peers through the mesh at the analog clock, the arms of which are quickly working their way around the dial.
Leans forward and scans the foot wells for something, anything.
The floor is littered with a spray of sugar like cut glass, like fallen stars.
She rolls onto her side and sees something in the shadows of the passenger’s seat. It’s an effort to contort herself into a position where she can reach out to it with her hands still cuffed behind her back, but she manages it. She stretches out blindly behind her toward where the object had been, and a burning begins in her shoulder but she ignores it, reaches farther, fingertips scraping across the dirty carpet, and the she feels something, grips it between forefinger and second finger.
She twists back out again, checks that Aleksakhina is still on the phone. She drops the object onto the seat beside her and turns to see that it is a cigarette butt, almost snapped clean in half but not quite.
There’s a moment of disappointment but her mind is still working and the moment is gone. A match. She needs a match — or a lighter.
She manages to reach into her back pocket and take out her lighter. More contortions, then the cigarette butt is lit and she turns, twists, drops it through onto the driver’s seat. It just sits there for a moment and she panics that it’s going to die out, then there’s a little burst of light and the seat’s fabric has caught fire.
The flames flicker then rise quickly toward her, small vents of heat brushing over her face. She smells the ugly chemical scent of the manmade materials burning and pulls herself away from the front of the car.
Glances at Aleksakhina and he’s finishing his conversation, puts the phone back down. He’s walking toward her but he’s calm.
And he’s calm because there is no fire. She has no lighter. There is no escape.
The cigarette butt is beside her. It’s like a little insect grub and she flicks it away in disgust.
Aleksakhina looks at her suspiciously as he climbs in, and for a moment she wonders if perhaps it isn’t fantasy and there really is a fire.
Then he sits down, straightens his coat. “Everything okay back there?”
“Just peachy. What’s going on?” she asks.
“Nothing, I just needed to make a few calls.”
“Calls to who?”
“Nothing you need concern yourself with.”
“So you’re taking me in now?”
“Soon,” he tells her. “I have to meet with someone first. You don’t have any other plans do you?”
Katja sneers.
“Let’s just get this over with,” she says and he pulls out in front of a muscle car that has a glowing rim on its underside to give it the appearance of floating on a plate of blue light as it speeds around them. Bass-thumping music and testosterone aggression.
And she reminds herself — the longer she’s in the car, the longer she’s not in a cell, and the longer she still has a chance of making the boat.
For now — patience.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
And it’s not long before he stops the car again, pulling it over when the glow of splintered neon comes into view ahead.
Katja’s ready this time, concentrating, watching for the vial, and there it is, he plucks it from his pocket and grips it gently in his palm.
He turns to her, says, “Wait here. I won’t be long.”
“I need to go the bathroom,” she tells him.
He ignores her, gets out of the car.
“If you leave me, I’m going to fucking piss myself here!” she shouts, but the door is slammed shut and it blasts through her words.
“Hey, come on! These cuffs are fucking . . . just give me a break!”
He doesn’t hear or he isn’t listening and he’s got the vial and he’s walking away with her ticket off the island. Again.
She suddenly lashes out in anger, slamming her booted feet into the mesh in front of her again and again but she’s been in the back of these types of vehicles enough to know they’re easily strong enough to withstand such an attack. When she’s done, she sees Aleksakhina disappear under a set of shutters that have been lifted open halfway by some sort of hydraulic system.
The place is an arcade but the garish lights that would normally scream out at anyone nearby are all dead so she can’t read the signage. They could be anywhere. She looks around and the streets are deserted save for a handful of lurking figures, street ghosts and memories.
Claustrophobia presses in on her and she becomes increasingly aware of the bulk of the guitar still behind her. Moonlight gleams on the coils of excess strings that curl around the head of the instrument, a gentle strobe that calls her attention.
She shoves the thing with her thigh and then lets it topple over behind her so that it lies flat across the seat, then she shuffles toward the stray wires. She takes one between thumb and forefinger, holding it tight because it threatens to pull into a tight coil once more, and works it toward the keyhole of the cuffs. It’s like trying to thread a needle blind.
Her fingers feel numb and she stabs herself, drops the wire.
Grits her teeth, takes another one, this one finer than the last.
She manages to slot it into the gap, conscious of the garage-style door Aleksakhina went through moments before. She rummages around in the metal chamber, waiting, just waiting for the solid click that will signal her release but it’s not coming, it’s not coming. Tongues her lip ring with concentration.
The wire slips again and she hears a noise somewhere outside, metal hitting metal.
Looks around.
Nothing.
“Come on.”
And the string connects with something, she twists, twists again, and clunk. For a moment she is unable to move, afraid that whatever progress she might have made will be undone. Then slowly, slowly, she withdraws the wire and lifts her hands behind her back.
The cuff she has been working on falls away from her like an opened shell.
She holds it up in front of her as if to verify that she’s actually managed it and there it is, dangling from her left wrist, her triumph. She uses the same string to unlock the sister cuff.
Now what?
Now wait for Aleksakhina to come back, arms behind her back as if nothing is wrong. Fake throat pains, maybe even work her vocal cords a little until blood comes, anything to get him to open the door for her.
The guitar neck in her hand.
And a swing like she often did while performing, circling the thing around like a cruel hunter with a dead rabbit, crashing into the back of his head, just enough to floor him.
Then she will be gone.
But what about the vial?
The vial. The fucking vial.
Aleksakhina had taken it inside with him, but had it only been to keep it away from her? What had that phone call been about?
Fuck it, he was up to something.
And as this thought occurs to her, as before, she hears a noise from somewhere close by. She sees something moving in the rearview mirror and a darkness filters over her.
A feeling she has felt previously, just before something bad was about to happen.
When Januscz first turned on her.
When one of her mother’s boyfriends had made sure she’d be breathing through a straw for the rest of her life.
When she dropped a bad pill and realized the tingling at the back of her head wasn’t as it should be.
Perhaps Aleksakhina hasn’t brought her out to a quiet district in the middle of the night just because she happened to be in the back of his car when he had an errand to run.
She slips her hands beh
ind her back once more, holding the opened cuffs. She touches her fingers to the solid, waxy neck of the guitar.
The figure is now only just visible at the very edge of the mirror but there is a reflection now against the side window, and it seems as if there might be two of them out there, though it could be a trick of the light.
Her breathing rasps through the trach. Snakes moving in dry grass.
She’s listening to the sounds of the footsteps, slow and careful amongst the gentle raindrops, and so when the gunshot sounds, it almost deafens her — like the bullet has smashed through her skull and out the other side.
She jumps with fright, realizes that the bullet has blasted into the door beside her instead of her head, turns in time to see the figure raising the gun once more and she doesn’t hesitate again.
She kicks out at the damaged door and it swings open, the lock shattered by one or other of the impacts, pushes her way out with no illusion of still being cuffed, pulls the guitar out behind her, but it’s heavy and drags across the fabric of the rear seats. She’s still pulling on it when she turns and sees the gun raised before her, ready to shoot, jerks hard on the instrument and screams as she would at the crescendo of one of her songs, swings the guitar around.
It connects at the exact same moment a second shot is fired and there is a cry of pain. The guitar’s momentum carries her off balance and she staggers to one side, and the figure, the figure has slumped to its knees, holds its face. She raises the guitar a second time, ready to cleave it into the skull of her attacker.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
So apparently it’s not easy trying to find a person in the middle of the night amidst an island full of people — who’d have thought it?
Nikolai, he’s been rushing from one place to the next with no real idea of where to look. He’s been to the club where he saw Katja’s punk band perform just a few nights earlier, asked about her and her band mates but nobody knew anything, of course.
So where to look?
Was the man that had taken her another lover? No, he seemed too official for that.
A friend or partner of some sort to Januscz? Someone that had found the man’s body and had come back for the vial? That had to be it.
A heavy from one of the drug lords.
When the realization hit him, he’d come close to turning his car around and going back to his apartment, fearful of what it might mean if he involved himself any further in this mess, but then he was already involved.
He’s already up to his neck in it.
He’s fucked over Vladimir Kohl and if the man hasn’t already discovered what he has done then it’s just a matter of time. He reminds himself — he needs to get off the island, and to get off the island he needs Katja.
It’s as simple as that.
At least it’s as simple as that until he finally spots the car — purely by chance and just as he’s about to start hyperventilating with panic.
It’s parked outside Czechmate, an arcade Nikolai has been to on occasion but not for a while.
An arcade that belongs to, and is personally run by, Wvladyslaw Szerynski.
The man that tells Kohl what to do and when.
“Oh, shit.”
And there’s that feeling again, the panic swelling up inside him and he just wants to run, to get away from all this. All he’d asked for was one more chance.
Now this.
But he can see her in the back of the car and her head moves — she’s still alive.
He has to grab one of the paper bags he keeps in the glove compartment and shove it to his face until his spitfire breathing comes under control.
Opens the car door slowly, quietly. Picks up the gun that lies on the passenger seat next to him, the gun Kohl gave him.
He moves carefully along the side of a nearby building, sticking to the shadows. He watches for signs of the man who has taken her but can’t see anyone. It might be a trap.
If she’s told them about him helping her, they might be deliberately luring him into something. Or maybe Kohl has found out about the fake vial.
His hands are shaking so much he can barely keep a hold of the gun.
Across the street, a pair of rent boys are talking to one another, crouched by a dumpster, picking through something on the pavement before them. They don’t notice Nikolai as he makes his way toward the car, finally edging out onto the road since some of the bulbs in the streetlights are out. Gun in his quivering hand.
His eyes dart around like a hyperactive child’s, just waiting for the moment when the ambush is revealed, but then he’s within a few feet of the car and still nothing.
They must be inside, hiding beside her.
Waiting for him to open the door and reach in and then wham.
One dead Nikolai.
He tries to swallow but the saliva catches in his throat and he chokes momentarily.
He raises the gun a bit more, aims at the side of the car, toward the driver’s side but below the window.
One shot. He’ll fire one shot and either he’ll hit them if they’re hiding out there or it will stun them enough to give him time to grab Katja and/or split.
This is what it comes down to.
He just wants to go home.
Breathes once.
In.
Out.
Aiming, squinting past the blur of the tears in his eyes.
Fires.
The gun jumps more than he expects, but he hears the bullet impacting in one brief, high-pitched explosion. The recoil sends him stumbling to one side but he recovers quickly, snaps the gun up to eye level once more, ready for whatever might come.
One of the car doors opens but he’s still too dazed to properly tell which, and his finger is squeezing on the trigger, but then something happens and everything goes insanely bright as if the arcade’s lights have suddenly come to life. The side of his head is stirring with a strange heat and he’s on his knees without any idea of how he got there.
There’s a sound, a siren, but it’s just in one ear, a screaming pain.
He turns and sees someone: it’s Katja, Katja looming over him, swinging something in her hands.
He holds out a hand and shouts, “Wait!” but the word is faint and gurgling and so he tries to say it again.
His head swims, his movements slow and dragging as if he is underwater.
“I . . . uhhh . . .”
His tongue is fat and thick in his mouth.
His vision pulses, throbs, and he’s aware of a small trail of saliva spilling out of the corner of his mouth.
“Nikolai?”
He’s still holding his hand out to her, waving it at her blindly.
“Stop,” he manages.
And then she’s beside him and it’s her guitar she had been wielding, now placed on the ground beside her.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing? Fucking shooting at me?”
“I . . . uuhhh . . .” Another pulse, another. “I thought it was a trap. . . . I thought they were waiting for me.”
“Shit, are you okay? Your head . . .”
“It’s okay,” he tells her. “My throbs are just templing a little. I mean . . . am I bleeding?”
“Uhhhhh . . . yeah.”
There is a gash across the side of his head from his brow line to his ear and it’s glistening in the low light amidst the dark swathes of his hair. When he looks at Katja he isn’t focusing properly on her.
“The man who took you . . . where . . . ?”
He tries to get to his feet, has to lean on Katja but he’s scrawny enough that she can take his weight.
“He went inside the arcade.”
“Arcade . . . ?”
The word doesn’t make sense to him at first and he has to fight to understand it, but before he can manage it, there is a shout from somewhere nearby.
“It’s him,” Katja hisses and her grip on Nikolai softens. He collapses again onto one knee.
“Get up!” she shouts, pullin
g him to his feet with one arm and grabbing her guitar with the other. It’s a reflex action, one she’s learned from dozens of hastily abandoned gigs, and she looks across at the entrance to the arcade as Aleksakhina comes out.
“Hey!” the man shouts, and he reaches into his jacket. Pulls out a weapon.
“Run!” Katja cries and she’s pulling Nikolai along behind her, slings the guitar around her neck as she drags him toward the alleys that line the streets.
A shot is fired and it ricochets off a trash can, sending it spinning across the sidewalk in front of the two fugitives, almost taking Nikolai out. He stumbles across it and they vanish into the tiny gap between two stained, crumbling buildings.
Another shot rings out and they keep going, squeezing through the gap awkwardly, Nikolai unable to remain in a straight line for any length of time. Katja ducks into a doorway, pulls him in after her. Twists her guitar neck around and uses the same string she used to undo her cuffs to poke into the keyhole, and there’s another clunk and she opens the door, steps to one side, pushes Nikolai through and he falls to the ground inside. She takes one last glance along the alley, thinks she sees a figure at the far end, follows Nikolai in, closes the door and leans against it.
Her throat is tight and burning from the exertion and she has to fight the urge to cough and clear out the trach tube. Nikolai is sprawled out beside her on the bare floor like a chemical party leftover.
Through the heavy metal of the door, Katja listens for the sounds of Aleksakhina coming for them, but hears nothing. She coughs, unable to hold it back any longer, and for a few moments afterward is ready for the door to be kicked in behind her, but everything stays calm.
Calm.
“You okay?” she asks Nikolai finally because he’s hardly moved.
“I can’t,” he says blearily. “Not right now.”
“What? Are you okay?”
“Whuh?”
“Nikolai?”
She leaves the guitar leaning up against the door, moves across to him.
The flow of blood seems to have stopped and is clotting in his hair now. She checks the wound but there isn’t much light in the place. A bruise is quickly forming next to his eye socket.