Katja from the Punk Band

by Simon Logan

  “It’s him?” Kohl asks her.

  No answer.

  “Hello, Katja,” the man says.

  “Katja?” Kohl asks, his eyes now thudding balls burrowing into his head, blurring his senses.

  And Katja, she breathes once, hard, and she’s still as stiff as a board when she says, finally:

  “Januscz.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The guy’s name is Ludomir and he’s been due Januscz a favour ever since getting jumped by a psycho dealer’s crew a few months back after one of Katja’s gigs. Januscz had beaten them off with the business end of a mike stand, popping the eyeball of one of them before they had managed to escape.

  So Ludomir, he gives Januscz the nod to be let on board the boat despite the fact he’s got a gunshot wound to his shoulder that’s bled out across his shirt as if it were trying to manifest the face of a god, a large curved blade clasped to his body. Januscz pulls himself into a storage cupboard filled with cleaning rags and spare uniforms, and slumps against it just as he feels the boat drifting out into the bay. His head is full of bright, sparkling air and his entire body shivers from the loss of blood and shock, but he’s come all this way, he won’t fail now.

  He knows the bitch will be on board and this is confirmed a short time later when he has regained some of his composure and ventures out of the cupboard. He goes into what looks like one of the engine rooms and finds on the floor the battered remnants of a bass guitar. The strings are snapped, the body cracked, but he knows it’s hers.

  Anger flares in him.

  She’s here.

  He picks up the guitar and turns it over in his hands, notices the blood smears, dried now — so he’s obviously not the only one who’s been caught up in her betrayal tonight. He still isn’t sure what exactly she is up to, whether it was a spur of the moment act brought on by their argument after he’d been forced to arrange for her to accompany him, or whether there was something bigger going on. But what he did know was that she wasn’t going to take his fucking vial, steal his opportunity to escape to the mainland. Dracyev had chosen him to be the mule because, he’d said, Januscz had shown himself to be a valuable asset to his organization.

  He was valuable — not Katja.

  And Dracyev had promised him more work, better work, once he was on the mainland — to be a part of the real operations, not just the slave base on the island. Fuck her if she thought she could take that away from him.

  So he drops the guitar and quickly checks the rest of the area for any signs of her, then climbs the steps back out onto the deck again. The final signal of the boat’s journey sounds and he knows this will be his opportunity. She’ll have to leave the boat now and she’ll be looking for the man in red to drop the deal. How she thinks she’ll explain Januscz’s absence he doesn’t know, but then if he can find her in time he won’t have to wait and find out.

  He lurks behind a ventilation funnel until the boat docks, watches as the loading crews board, and just as he planned, catches sight of Katja. She’s with another man, the two of them almost entwined in one another, and a new, darker anger flares within Januscz.

  His grip tightens around the blade; he holds it close to his leg as he walks toward them, and they’re looking for the man in red now. Januscz comes up behind them.

  They have no fucking clue . . .

  Katja turns and sees him but she doesn’t seem to realize just yet who he is.

  “I believe you have something for me,” he says, loudly enough that they’ll hear him over the clatter of the loading crews at work.

  The man with her, his face is bloodied down one side and there are tears streaming from his eyes as he squints through them. His hand is locked onto one of Katja’s arms and she’s in an even worse state than he is. Her left cheek is badly swollen, split at its thickest point like a little red mouth, and a line of glistening, fresh blood trails down to her chin and trach tube. Her eye is almost lost amongst the puffy tissue, and bruises are already developing.

  “It’s him?” the other man asks her, shielding his eyes.

  But Katja doesn’t answer. Her face is stony; she swallows and the trach tube moves in that rhythmical way it does.

  “Hello, Katja,” Januscz says.

  That look on her face almost makes all the pain he has been in since she shot him worthwhile.

  “Katja?” the other man says confusedly.

  And Katja, she breathes once, hard, and she’s still as stiff as a board when she says, finally:

  “Januscz.”

  “You look surprised to see me,” he says, letting the blade catch the light and flash across them both momentarily.

  “I . . . I thought you were . . .”

  “Dead. Yes, I could tell you were obviously concerned about me by the way you stole the vial and took off. You might at least have stayed long enough to check my pulse.”

  “You don’t understand,” she says, and her eyes motion toward her arm, where the man is holding her.

  His fingers are sunk into Katja’s stringy, tattooed arm. In his other hand is what looks like the vial.

  “Fuck,” the man with the runny eyes says. “What’s going on?”

  “I was about to ask the same thing,” Januscz says, raises an eyebrow toward Katja.

  Now both of them are waiting for her explanation.

  “Listen, his name is Kohl. He works for Szerynski,” she says.

  “Vladimir Szerynski?”

  She nods. “Or he did until he killed him this evening.”

  Kohl. “What the fuck? How did you . . . ? I didn’t kill him!”

  “He killed Szerynski, Januscz,” she continues, ignoring Kohl even as he tightens his grip on her. “I saw it with my own eyes. He shot him just as he shot you.”

  Kohl: “What?”

  Januscz: “You shot me, Katja.”

  “What? Don’t be fucking stupid, I tried to stop him! Don’t you remember? He broke in as we were getting ready to leave. He shot you and stole the vial, but he needed me to make the drop because the man in red was expecting both of us. He was going to force me to . . . to say that he was you, to drop the deal.”

  Kohl: “Shut your mouth!”

  He pulls her toward him, wraps his other arm around her, one going to her neck and instinctively Januscz moves forward.

  “You stay where the fuck you are,” Kohl warns him. “I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. She’s making all this shit up.”

  “Does it look like I’m making all this up?” Katja snaps back. “Look what he did to my fucking face when I tried to get away! I was trying to get back to you . . .”

  “I did that because you stole my vial!” Kohl protests, looking at Januscz, not Katja.

  “My vial,” Januscz says. “And I recognize you now. You run The Digital Drive-by. You work for Szerynski.”

  “So . . . so fucking what?”

  “So are you telling me she’s lying?”

  “Of course she’s lying!”

  Katja: “For fuck’s sake, Januscz! Look at us! Does it look like I had any choice but to come here?!”

  Januscz’s anger wavers, he adjusts his stance. His head is pounding, his arm ice cold and it feels like he’s going to faint again. He is certain it was Katja who shot him but when he tries to retrieve the memory, there’s nothing there. He remembers her catching him trying to do the deal without telling her; he remembers her forcing him to phone the man in red and let him know that she would be coming; he remembers . . . what else does he remember?

  Think.

  Think!

  And he must have zoned out for a second because the next thing he knows Kohl is on him, the man’s fingers poking into the gunshot wound and causing new blossoms of pain to explode within him. Januscz cries out and they fall to the ground, slam into the metal wall of the deck. Kohl punches him once, twice, reaches back for a third attempt, and that’s when Januscz lashes out with the blade, and for a moment it’s as if a pause button has been pres
sed because they both just linger there.

  Then the blood appears on Kohl’s throat; his eyes widen and so does a gap in his neck.

  Januscz gives him a shove and the man topples backward, a wet gurgling noise coming from him, and suddenly there is blood everywhere. Januscz drags himself away from the body and looks up at Katja, and she looks back down at him, sprayed with Kohl’s fresh blood. She turns to run at the exact same moment Januscz sees it in her eyes.

  He grabs her ankle and pulls her to the ground, pulls her toward him through the growing puddle of Kohl’s blood. Shocked workers jump away from the mess but they don’t say anything and they keep their heads down. A few of them have heard that Dracyev was on board, which meant something big would be going down and that in turn meant they should stay well clear.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he demands of her, showing her the knife.

  “I . . . I thought you were going to kill me.”

  Januscz smiles, wipes blood from his face. “For a minute I was,” he tells her. “But the man in red is expecting both of us, remember?”

  He leans across and takes the vial from Kohl’s hand and it too is now covered in blood, swaps it for the knife. He wipes the vial on his T-shirt, then rubs it until it gleams.

  “Up,” he tells her.

  Katja stands slowly, watching him all the way. “He forced me here, Januscz,” she says. “I swear.”

  Januscz rolls his tongue around his mouth, regards her as a rapist might his victim. “Later. We figure all that out later. Once we’ve made the drop and we’re on the mainland and home free. Got it?”

  She nods.

  “Right now I don’t know what the fuck has been going on, but I also don’t much care.”

  She nods again.

  “We just go through with as we would have done before anything happened and the rest . . . the rest comes later. Let’s just get this done.”

  “Okay,” she says, wiping sprayed blood from her chin. “Okay.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Smoke curls from his mouth like the whisper of a recently fired gun, like the roll of a rattlesnake’s tongue as it tastes the air. He wraps a hand around the boat’s rails and squeezes until his knuckles turn white.

  Under the glare of the floodlights, his suit is the red of infected gums.

  Januscz tilts the knife so the very tip presses into Katja’s shoulder blade, his other hand wrapped around her waist, easing her on toward the man in red. They walk briskly across the deck and the man in red notices them, blows out another pillow of smoke and turns away from them, leaning on the rail and looking out to the island.

  The two slow as they approach him. He doesn’t look at them and for several awkward moments nothing happens, then finally the man turns around. He looks them both up and down.

  Katja with blood splattered across her neck and T-shirt, congealing around her trach tube. Her liberty spikes droop and hang loosely around her shoulders, and one has dissolved completely. Her face is swollen and split, one eye now consumed by her own puffy flesh.

  Januscz, his arm coated with new blood, his chest with old.

  “Rough sea tonight?” the man in red enquires.

  Januscz shifts back and forth, the knife blade moving against Katja’s chilled skin and she tries not to react because she doesn’t want to blow the deal.

  “We . . . uhh . . . have the, uh . . . object,” Januscz says.

  The man in red’s eyebrow arches. He draws on the cigar but does not exhale.

  “Object?”

  “The, uh, the . . .”

  Januscz licks his lips, looks around nervously. Whispers, “The vial . . .”

  He removes his hand from behind Katja and holds out the little glass cylinder in the palm of his hand.

  The man takes it before Januscz can do anything.

  “So you must be Januscz, is that correct?”

  After everything, after all the deception and deals and thefts and switches and fakes and murders. After it all, here they are, as it should be, the deal about to go down and Januscz has the vial that was always intended for him.

  Januscz glances at Katja, smiles, then looks back to the man in red.

  “Yes,” he says, beaming. “I am Januscz.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  So it has come to this.

  Four years. Fourteen hundred and sixty days. Two point one million minutes.

  Time that he has devoted to her, that he has entwined her within — and now this.

  He has been aware of what she is doing for several weeks but is certain it began months earlier, probably when the man was still just a guinea pig whoring himself for insignificant amounts of money. Dracyev knew she would wander through the corridors and often speak with the lab rats as they waited for their prescribed experiments to begin, and he has tolerated, though never approved, of it.

  He promised her more, promised her whatever she desired, and yet she would always return to the festering vagrants lined up outside the labs at the start of each week. Why she had found particular interest in that one creature Dracyev didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.

  What mattered was that the creature found an interest in Ylena.

  For a man such as this, a simple death was too good for him.

  So he has summoned Konstantin, telling him to come to his private lab immediately and, while awaiting the man’s arrival, Dracyev retrieves a fresh vial from one of the storage boxes on his workbench.

  He unzips himself and pees into the vial, then seals the lid. He wipes the glass down then places it into the inscription machine, waits for it to randomly generate a code number and etch it into the vial, then records the number in his log book.

  Konstantin arrives moments later, and at first it looks to Dracyev as if the other man has turned himself inside out — his suit’s dark red hue is a refraction of his soft innards, the creases and rumples are his veins and arteries. His shirt is black, the thin tie that lies atop it like a perfectly described trachea.

  “Mr. Dracyev?”

  “I have something I need you to do for me, Konstantin. Tomorrow night, there will be a man, he will bring this vial to you to be taken onto the mainland. I need you to get off the island tonight and wait for him there.”

  Kostantin has taken out a cigarillo and lit it. Dracyev watches the smoke unravel from the man’s mouth and travel toward the ceiling of the lab where it merges with the muddy stains already there.

  “If I’m going to leave the island, why don’t I just take the vial?”

  “Because he’s fucking her,” Dracyev said firmly. “I don’t . . . ?”

  “I know it’s him. I’ve seen them together. Watched them. I won’t tolerate it any longer.”

  “So what’s in the vial? Poison?”

  “The vial is nothing. The vial will lead him to you. I want you to kill him for me, Konstantin.” Dracyev is talking a language the man in red understands.

  “Easily done. Even more easily done if you just give me his address and I go over there now.”

  “No,” Dracyev snaps. “They’ll know they can’t get away with this indefinitely, that I’ll find out. I think Ylena already suspects I know something. She’s been talking about the mainland more recently, about moving the operation across there entirely, and I’m certain it’s him who has been putting the ideas in her head.”

  Dracyev turns to Konstantin, fixes him with a cold and bloody stare.

  “I want him to die within sight of his fucking prize. I want him to die with the mainland at his feet and I want him to know, in that last moment, that he will never see her again.”

  Konstantin rolls the cigarillo from one corner of his mouth to the other. “To clarify — you’re going to tell this man to deliver this vial to the mainland and that, what, I’m the contact?”

  Dracyev nods.

  “And you want this guy taken out.”

  Another nod.

  Konstantin breathes smoke out through his nostrils, to
ngues it as it moves through the air.

  “So what’s his name?” he asks.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Konstantin says, “So you must be Januscz, is that correct?”

  Janusz glances at Katja, smiles, then looks back at Konstantin.

  “Yes,” he says proudly. “I am Januscz.”

  An expression flickers across Konstantin’s face but it’s too quick for either Katja or Januscz to decipher. The man in red holds up the vial, then opens his hand, letting it drop to the ground. It cracks upon impact and, just to make sure, he stamps on it, shattering it into dozens of tiny fragments.

  Januscz stares down at the mess in disbelief, then at the man who has made it.

  “What the fu — ?”

  His words are first cut off by the sight of a large, badly scuffed gun pointed at his head, and then by the impact of a bullet blasting through his forehead just above his eyes. There’s a moment’s delay, as if his body or perhaps even gravity hasn’t quite realized what has happened, and then he crumples to the deck.

  Katja jumps in shock, stumbling backward and away from the killer, and suddenly the moment from earlier that night when she found out what Januscz was going to do to her replays in her head. But this time, this time the shot was good — no doubt about it.

  Her momentum carries her and without a thought she is running, just running, knowing that at any moment a bullet will rip through her and end this whole sorry mess, but it doesn’t. She thinks she hears a shot, but it could just have been one of the workers slamming a door.

  And that’s when she sees him.

  Nikolai.

  For a brief moment her instinct is to halt, to get away from him because who knows what part he is playing in all this, but that quickly subsides when she sees the expression on his face, something that tells her she is wrong.

  “Katja, where have you . . . ?”

  She grabs him as she passes, pulls him past a pair of workers standing in a doorway that leads into the storage area, pushes him down the stairs ahead of her and slams the door shut. She works the locks to secure them and hears the workers mumbling something but ignores them.