Katja from the Punk Band

by Simon Logan

  “We need to hide, Nikolai!” she shouts at him as they enter the belly of the boat. At the far end they see the light spilling in from the deck and the loading crews beginning their work.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a fucking set-up!” she cries. “The man in red, he’s just shot Januscz and destroyed the vial!”

  “Januscz? I thought he was . . .”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not the only one.”

  She’s pushing her way through all the crates, looking for somewhere, somewhere safe, and she finds her guitar, picks it up.

  A door overhead opens and they both spin around, ready for the impact of the man in red’s shots but it’s not red they see, it’s orange, the orange of loading crews overalls, just a couple of workers coming, that’s all.

  “This way,” Nikolai says, and leads her to the opposite side of the storage bay to a crate, the side of which he pulls open. It looks like it has come off with surprising ease until Katja notices the bent screws and dents in the sides that indicate the crate has already been opened.

  She steps inside the container, cringing at the pungent smell that emerges from it, then freezes.

  “Holy shit.”

  Nikolai chews his lip as he says, “I should probably have mentioned that before I opened the door.”

  Katja kneels down next to the body of Dracyev, his blood having soaked into the sacks and polystyrene blocks around him.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “I shot him,” Nikolai says. “Well . . . I didn’t mean to. I mean . . . I didn’t know it was him — you know, Dracyev.”

  “He found you?”

  “Not exactly. He was talking to someone. He had a gun. I just . . . reacted.”

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “I don’t know, some guy and a woman. They ran off after I shot Dracyev.”

  Katja shakes her head. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

  The sounds of the loaders is getting closer; they’re reeling off code numbers to each other one by one as the cranes haul crates out of the storage area and into the night air, ready to be lowered onto the docks. Great chains rattle and scrape against one another, the whine of a winch rising in pitch then falling again. The thud of wood on metal echoes around them.

  “Get in,” she says, and they both duck inside the crate, in with Dracyev’s body and his sticky blood.

  She pulls the side of the crate shut after them, jerking it hard enough to impale the soft wood on the bent nails. She lets go gently and is relieved to see that it holds, though there is a small crack of light at the bottom left-hand corner.

  They both retreat to the back of the crate, trying to avoid Dracyev’s body where possible.

  “What’s going on?” Nikolai whispers.

  “I don’t know. Either it’s a set-up or Januscz has been up to something bigger than I first realized. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to have the vial after all, I don’t know.”

  “He stole it?”

  “I don’t know, Nikolai.”

  “Where’s the vial?”

  “The vial’s gone, destroyed.”

  “But . . .”

  “Look,” Katja snaps, and has to force herself to be quiet again. “The one thing I do know right now is that there is a killer up there and he’s just shot Januscz and he’s probably coming after me next, and if you don’t shut the fuck up he’s going to fucking well find us!”

  Nikolai swallows the chunk of nail he’s just bitten off and it catches in his throat.

  “What happened to your face?” he asks.

  “Nikolai, shut the fuck — !”

  And she stops speaking abruptly, stiffens.

  Shuffling outside.

  A shape flashes across the gap, then returns.

  Katja hears the man’s hands running across the wood, exploring it. She feels something touch her and turns and it’s Nikolai, he’s holding a gun out to her. The end of the weapon is crusted with blood but she’s lost track of whose it might be. She takes it, aims it at the crack and Nikolai mirrors her with another weapon.

  The crate creaks as someone leans against it, and a hand becomes visible.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  He pulls on his heavy-duty gloves and follows the others up the loading ramp, just one of many workers about to start their shift.

  But he doesn’t line up with the others, to wait until the cranes are ready to begin as he normally would. This time he strides right past them, his attention briefly grabbed by a man in a red suit tipping a body over the edge of the boat, and he knows who the man works for so keeps going, keeps walking until he reaches the doors that lead into the storage bay below.

  Another worker is already there and holds open the door for him. Smiles are exchanged.

  He goes down the steps, then pulls back his glove to reveal the number etched there. This is the number he had been given earlier that night by his colleague on the island, the number that lead to the promise of more cash than he could expect in a month with his regular wages.

  He walks amongst the crates, scanning the numbers stamped onto them as he finally finds the one he is looking for. One of the sides has been crow-barred open and then closed awkwardly again, leaving a slight gap down one side. He mutters a criticism about his fellow conspirator’s sloppy work, gives the wood a shove and impales it further on the nails until the gap is closed.

  He checks that no one is looking, then reaches up and runs his hand along the top until he touches something small and plastic. He pulls it down and looks inside, breaks a smile when he sees the thick blocks of notes.

  “You need a hand there?”

  One of the other workers, hands on his hips.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ve got this one.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Shit, we’re moving,” Katja says, gun still pointed ahead of her into the darkness, waiting for the assassin that so far hasn’t come.

  The crate creaks from the strain, the sound vibrating around them and they are thrown to one side suddenly, then back again. Dracyev’s body slides along beneath them, greased by his own blood, nestles up against the far edge.

  Katja and Nikolai both crouch down, lowering their centre of gravity and steadying their balance. Machine sounds fill the hot, carbon-heavy air around them, and all they can do is hold on.

  “It’s him,” Nikolai murmurs, squeezing himself into a corner. “It’s the man in red, he knows we’re in here.”

  “Nikolai, shut up.”

  “He’s going to dump us in the fucking water!” he shouts.

  “Shut up!” Katja barks back, then feels her stomach suddenly sink as she considers that he might be right.

  The rattling continues, the sudden shifts from side to side, the mechanical grinding and the call of gulls, the sounds of the ocean and the thoughts of it can’t end like this, the irony that death will deliver them pre-packaged for burial even if it is just at the bottom of the sea.

  They hear the barked instructions of the loaders, the whine of pulleys and then it all fades and there is an almighty thump that throws them forward and through Dracyev’s sticky blood. Nikolai becomes entangled in the body, scrabbling to get out from under a wet, rapidly cooling limb, and Katja snaps at him.

  “Shhhhh!”

  The noises have stopped, fallen away to an even more worrying silence.

  They hear footsteps, draw their guns again, but then realize the footsteps are fading away. Someone is walking away.

  And they wait there, interminably, guns aimed at where they think the man in red might appear, until their arms are too heavy and they have to let them drop.

  Nikolai looks at Katja.

  Katja looks at Nikolai.

  Waiting for the other to move, to react.

  “Fuck this, I’m not sitting here waiting to die,” she says, and just strides across to the side that had been opened before and boots it hard at the join, and Nikolai shouts for her to stop, and the crat
e bursts open and they both brace themselves.

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  Dusty darkness, like the inside of a garage.

  Or the inside of a warehouse.

  Katja checks the immediate area but it’s clear. There’s nobody there.

  There are a handful of other crates that look like they’ve been there for years, old rusted chains scattered across the ground, graffiti on the walls. And windows above a steel-fronted doorway.

  “Well . . . ?” Nikolai asks from within the crate.

  Katja turns to him, shakes her head. Shrugs.

  He follows her out cautiously and the gun, he’s forgotten about it, it’s hanging loosely by his side like a numbed limb.

  Katja walks over to the warehouse’s main door, guitar once again slung across her back, the neck now broken and only held together by a single fret. She hauls herself up onto a pipe that runs parallel to the ground and balances so she can see out of the greasy windows above. She cups a hand over her eyes to get a better view.

  “Do you see them?” Nikolai asks.

  “I see the loading crews,” she tells him. “We must be on the mainland.”

  A pause, she wipes the muck from the window, then, “Fuck, Nikolai.”

  “What?”

  She looks down at him, her swollen face — somehow still pretty — gleaming in the light that bathes her.

  “The boat. It’s gone.”

  She drops down and walks toward the opposite side of the small warehouse, finds another, smaller doorway. She raises her gun and reaches for the handle, turns it.

  The door opens and she peers out.

  She sees the carcasses of other warehouses scattered around before her, the veins of alleyways formed by the tight spaces between them.

  And nobody around.

  She steps outside in the way you would in a dream, not quite sure of the laws that now govern you, if they reflect the real world or repel it. And with each step she takes, those laws return, solidify, and she realizes that everything is the way it should be.

  They are on the mainland.

  The man in red is gone.

  Dracyev is dead.

  Januscz is dead.

  Kohl is dead.

  “We’re here,” she says, as much to herself as to Nikolai. “We’re fucking here.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  So they’re on the mainland and they are suddenly aware that everything’s cool. That they just might have made it and are free.

  From the island.

  From Januscz.

  From Aleksakhina, from the arcades, and perhaps even from the drugs.

  Perhaps.

  They’ve made their way through the network of alleyways, away from the docks and out toward the city beyond. They stop at the edge of a highway that spirals up along the coasts and into the distance. They’re high enough now to see over the storage buildings and across the water and the island which glitters there in the distance.

  “It looks a lot more peaceful from over here, doesn’t it?” Katja says. The right side of her face has gone numb and she’s grateful for it. Nikolai’s sense of balance and orientation has just about fully returned.

  They both stand at the edge of the road, dust blasting into their faces as a truck shoots past, trailing a visual ribbon of red brake light behind it. They watch it until it disappears over a hill in the distance, then everything is quiet and it’s just them.

  So far everything has been about getting off the island, getting to the mainland; there has been nothing else to think about beyond that.

  But what now?

  In the near distance they see the lights of a diner, broken neon signage flickering in the darkness.

  “You hungry?” Katja asks.

  “I guess so.”

  “You want to grab something to eat?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’ll make a change to be served instead of having to do the serving. You got any money?”

  “Erm . . .”

  “Me neither.” She shrugs, continues toward the diner. “I guess we’ll figure something out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about your guitar?”

  Katja swings the instrument around from her back. The neck is hanging on by the merest thread of splintered wood now, the fret holding it in place bent out of shape and looking as if it’s going to snap.

  “Shit, man. I’ve had this thing for years.”

  “Maybe we can get it repaired.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You know anybody on the mainland?”

  “No — you?”

  Nikolai shakes his head.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll soon find somewhere to hook up. I’ll check out the punk scene, see what’s going on. There’s always something there.”

  Nikolai nods, and something about the way he does it makes Katja think of the kid who’s left over once the teams have been picked for a neighbourhood game of basketball.

  “You might as well stick with me,” she says as they reach the gravel entrance to the diner.

  Nikolai doesn’t say anything, just chews on a nail.

  And as she pushes open the door to the diner, she asks him, “So you play any instruments, Nikolai?”

  He shakes his head, mumbles something about his fingers being too screwed up from the arcade machines, and they sit together in a booth near the back.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she tells him, nodding for one of the waitresses. “If you’re not musical, you could always just be a drummer.”

  “I don’t really know . . .”

  “Two coffees, please,” she says to the tall brunette now looming over them. “And you’d better bring more sugar.”

  “. . . how to play,” Nikolai finishes.

  To the waitress, “Thanks,” and to Nikolai, “Play? Shit, man, you don’t have to know how to play — it’s drumming, any idiot can do it.”

  And Nikolai sort of smiles as he tries to figure out if there is a compliment in there somewhere.

  “If nobody’s looking, then we’ll just start our own band. That’ll get us some money, short-term. After that . . .”

  The coffee arrives and Nikolai is looking at her expectantly, steam rising from the mug beneath him.

  Katja shrugs. “After that, we’ll figure it out. We can do whatever the fuck we want over here, go wherever the fuck we want, do you realize that?”

  “I gue — ”

  “No dickhead boyfriends, no parole officers trailing my ass around day and night, no fucking idiot bosses telling me what to do. It’s a new start — for you as well.”

  Nikolai heaps sugar into his coffee, sips until he feels the familiar sting on his teeth. “Yeah.”

  “Things are going to work out for us now, Nikolai, you know? For too fucking long we’ve both been getting fucked over by everyone around us. It’s time for things to change.”

  And Nikolai, he’s looking at the two games machines in the very corner of the diner next to the toilets, focusing on their flickering lights and the pixel-music, trying to suppress the growing fire in his gut. He’s thinking that not everything has been left behind on the island, that some things you just can’t change. You just can’t get rid of.

  But Katja has got him this far.

  She’s done what everyone on the island thought impossible — escape — and maybe she’s right, maybe things can start anew. Maybe he really can leave it all behind.

  He looks at her slumped in the booth across from him, her liberty spikes broken and flopping across her shoulders, her lip ring and trach tubing glittering in the overhead lighting, this woman — his supposed saviour.

  He swallows the rest of the coffee in one gulp, the dregs of sugar at the bottom pouring into his mouth like sand from an hourglass, and he has to squeeze them down his throat.

  “So you want to split now or what?” she asks him.

  “Sure, I . . . what about the . . . ?”

  And she puts a finger to h
er lips to silence him, glances over her shoulder at the waitress.

  “Wait until she’s serving those guys over there. I heard them order two chilis so her hands will be full. As soon as you see her come out from the kitchen, make a run for the door.”

  “I . . . but . . .”

  “Okay, go . . .”

  And Katja gets up swiftly from the booth, sliding her way out, grabbing her guitar, and she’s striding toward the door, head low, and just then the waitress is coming out from the kitchen, a bowl of chili in each hand and she sees the punk leaving, shouts, “Hey!” but Katja is gone, the door slamming shut behind her.

  The waitress’s attention switches to Nikolai and panic hits him and he jerks upright, clattering his knees off the booth and stumbling out into another table, struggling to regain his balance, and he’s chasing after Katja yet again and he was right, he realizes — he was right.

  Some things you just can’t change.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SIMON LOGAN

  Simon Logan is the author of the industrial fiction novel Pretty Little Things To Fill Up The Void, the industrial short story collections I-O and Nothing Is Inflammable, and the fetishcore collection Rohypnol Brides. He can reached through his website: www.coldandalone.com