by Wilson, Tia
Lana could imagine spending summers here with Einar away from the noise and rush of everyday life. Leaning against the boulder and looking at her surroundings she felt like she was removed from time, existing in a place that was apart and separate from the venal needs of society. She thought that she could be really happy living a simpler life, a more honest and authentic life with Einar, better than any in the constant churn of New York. I could be happy here, truly happy she thought to herself. The glacier cracked and groaned as it moved and settled like a great beast that sat all knowing and all seeing.
Lana returned to the cabin and they washed up the dishes together, both silent in their separate worlds of mounting pressure. Einar pulled his chair in front of the window and lay the rifle across his knees. He sat staring out the window like an unmovable statue as Lana got into bed. Lana fell into a restless sleep filled with creatures made of snow and rock with sharp bloody teeth chasing her and Einar lying dead at the bottom of the canyon. Her dreams circled back, folded over on themselves, and repeated, trapping her in a repeating hall of mirrors as her worst fears caught up to her.
Thursday
“How long do I have?” Brad asked Sara. They had slept for a few hours curled together in bed and Brad knew it was now time to finish his job.
“The battery should last a day or two more, three tops if it's not on the move constantly” she said sitting on the bed looking at him pace back and forth across the cabin.
Two days is all I have to find them before they are in the wind he thought to himself. As he had fled the clinic he had seen a battered pickup truck parked out front. It hadn't been there when he’d first parked across the street and hung back checking out the place. He had looked at his phone and the gps icon blinked in the corner of the screen. In the back of the bed of the truck were some scraps of wood and a heavy painters canvas covering them. He had jammed the phone under a stack of wood and fled.
“Can you track it,” he asked.
“If you know the number I should be able to find it through the phones gps app,” Sara said.
Brad walked back and forth across the small cabin rubbing his chin. He hadn't shaved in days and he was starting to look unkempt. “Fuck. I have no clue what the number is. I could barely use the thing. A contact got it for me new when I landed. Is there any,” he stopped suddenly and said, “hang on,” and left the cabin.
He returned a couple of minutes later holding the box for the phone. He had thrown it onto the back seat when he opened it. “Will this help?” he said taking out the information leaflets that came with it.
“Even better,” Sara said. She hesitated and said, “If I do this for you, you will put in a good word to Gus for me. Tell him I helped you.”
“If it works I’ll talk to Gus,” he said.
Sara opened the booklet and typed something into her phone. Brad sat on the bed beside her and watched as a spinning globe icon moved back and forth across the screen. “It’s searching,” she said. The duck shaped outline of Iceland filled the screen and then began to zoom in toward the south coast. “It’s working,” she said. The screen zoomed in and then stopped with a red dot blinking in the centre. Sara moved her fingers across the screen and the image zoomed out. “That’s us here,” she said pointing at the map, “heres the town of Vik and the red flashing dot is your phone. It looks likes it twenty or thirty kilometres outside of Vik.”
“Is it moving?” Brad asked.
Sara zoomed the image so that the flashing red dot was centred. It was flashing at the end of a winding road that lead off the main coast road. “Nope looks likes its stopped,” she said.
“Any way of showing how much battery the phone has left?” Brad asked knowing he was asking for the impossible.
“Sorry all it gives me is the phones position,” she said putting her hand on his leg and stroking upwards. “Can you make the call to Gus?”
Brad pulled away from her and stood up. “Once I finish this job I’ll make the call. Until then hang tight.” He went outside and checked the glovebox of his rental car. Inside was a wrinkled and folded map of Iceland. He took it out and smoothed it open on the hood of the car. The gps location of his phone looked to be around an hours drive from his current location. It’s time he thought to himself and he felt the old familiar throb in his skull. He knew that he had no other choice but to kill them both. Twelve hours after that he could be back home as if it never happened. He knew that no matter how far he got away from where their bodies were buried in some remote location he would still hear them whispering from beneath the soil as he tossed and turned in bed. Their voices would be joined by the deathly whispers from all the other unmarked graves he had dug and filled. He took out his notebook of debts and ran his finger over the crumpled pages, this time it gave him no reassurance.
Brad looked around before he popped the trunk open and took the rifle out from the bag. He raised it up and held it flush against his shoulder. He looked through the scope and followed the flight of a raven across the open field in front of him. He readjusted the scope and glassed the road off in the distance. An old man wearing a floppy straw hat was walking along the road. The distortion in the scope gave his head a slightly bulbous proportion. Cheap scope Brad thought to himself, I should have caught that. You’re getting sloppy the prodding doubts in the back of his mind declared. He followed the old man as he walked along the side of the road, Brad pivoted at the hips as he followed his target. He pulled the trigger, its action smooth and oiled. The man walked on enjoying the sunny morning. He took out some shells and loaded the rifle and placed it back in the bag, he threw a blanket over the bag and closed the trunk.
Sara looked at him when he entered the cabin. He suspected she had been watching his every move through the window. “We leave now,” he said, “grab your stuff.”
“I’m of no use to you out there,” she stammered,” what if Lana sees me?”
“That wont matter either way. I need you to man the gps. Lets go. No discussion,” he said standing in the doorway with his thumbs hooked into his belt.
Once in the car and back on the main road Brad said, “Can you calculate driving time to their location on the map?” Brad said.
“Give me a second,” Sara said as she typed a command into the phone. “Two hours away,” she said.
The roads were clear at this time of the morning but Brad kept well under the speed limit. He had seen some local law enforcement parked on the edge of town, watching the passage of tourist rental cars and camper vans stream by. Brad didn’t need a tangle with the local law if it could be helped.
They travelled in silence and around an hour away from the location of the gps signal Sara looked up from the phone and said, “Their on the move. They have hit the main road and they are heading,” she paused for a second and Brad hoped he would catch an easy break, “they are heading away from us. Along the main coast road.” Brad cursed and increased his speed.
“Whats up ahead?” Brad asked.
Sara looked at the map, scrolling it and zooming in and said, “They are an hour away from what looks like a small village and then after that its maybe a few hours to the next town.”
“Any turns off the main road before the next village?” he asked.
She squinted at the map and zoomed out to get a better view. “There’s several roads that lead off from where they are now and the village.” She counted them out loud and said, “There’s ten or so roads they could take off the main road. Some seem to lead to dead ends, probably to farmhouses. A few go up into the mountains and others connect up to a road leading through the centre of the country.”
“Fuck,” Brad said slamming his fist onto the steering wheel. The centre of the country was a vast wasteland of arid dessert and the only roads through it were dirt. To take those roads you needed a vehicle with four wheel drive as many rivers had to be crossed. The land was harsh and inhospitable and as the pamphlet that came with his rental car informed Brad, the car he currently h
ad was not suitable for a journey into the highlands. If they took those roads he’d have lost them, the time it would take Brad to travel around the country the long way would give them ample time to either flee the country or disappear completely.
Sara’s finger tapped on the screen several times and the colour washed out of her face. Brad glanced at her and said, “Whats wrong?”
She hesitated for a second and then said, “I’ve lost the gps signal. The battery must have died.” She shrunk back in her seat as if expecting a blow from his fist.
He slammed his hand on the steering wheel and punched the horn which frightened a flock of birds resting in a field by the side of the road. They flew up into the air in unison, squawking as they banked and flew towards the sea. “Fuck,” Brad said through gritted teeth. He could feel the gashes in his back begin to throb with a burning intensity. He took the road map out of the glove box and handed it to Sara. “Mark the spot where we lost the signal.” He hit the accelerator and sped up, all thoughts of abiding by the law gone. He needed to get them in his sights before they turned off the main road and he lost them for good.
Two hours of hard driving later and they got to the small village called Kirkjubæjarklaustur. It was smaller then Vik and nothing more than a collection of houses nestled around a wooden church, a gas station and a general store. He drove out of the town and looked at the road ahead snaking off into the distance. Cars glittered like beads of glass as they moved along the road. He stopped the car at the side of the road and grabbed the map. “You stay here,” he said and got out. He folded the map out and looked at his options. He could continue south and follow the coast road as it circled the country and hope to catch up with them. His only other choice was to back track and check the ten or so secondary roads that lead off the coast road. Three of those roads lead into the highlands and if they took any of them it meant Brad had lost them and possibly for good. If he got lucky they took one of the other roads and might be holed up in a farmhouse at the end of it. He didn't like his odds with either option, fuck it he thought, her companion is a local boy maybe they wont travel too far from home. He marked each of the roads with an X and got back in the car.
“We go back,” he said.
Sara nodded and stared out the window as she tensed and untensed her jaw. The first road was a few minutes outside of the village and a rusted yellow sign with a name Brad couldn’t pronounce pointed towards a gravel road. Brad got out and swung the metal gate open and then drove through it. The wheels of the car spat up a spray of loose gravel as it moved from asphalt to the new loose surface. He stopped the car once he was through the gate and checked the map. This road went on for sixty kilometres before ending at the base of the opposite side of a range of mountains.
Driving was slow on the packed dirt road and as every minute passed Brad could feel Lana slipping through his grasp. The car fishtailed as they crested a treacherous mountain road, the nose of the car pointing down at an impossibly steep angle as Brad tried to get control of the car again. The back wheels kicked and spun on the loose surface spraying up a wide arc of dirt as the car righted itself. Brads knuckles popped and cracked as he loosened his grip on the wheel. “Fuck these Icelandic roads,” he said, quickly glancing over at Sara. She had her eyes closed tight and was holding herself with her arms wrapped around her body. They drove on for another hour in worsening road conditions and Brad wondered several times if the rental was going to make it. They finally got to the end of the road and Brad cursed loudly as he stopped the car. The road continued on down a steep incline into a wide slash in the earth. A rusting tractor and a burnt out car sat at the bottom of the disused quarry.
“One down, nine to go,” he said feeling exhausted already. He checked his watch and it was midday, the constant sunlight messing with his brain, all known signifiers of the passage of time destroyed in the relentless blue sky above. “Wait here,” he said to Sara. He got out of the car not interested in any reply from her and went to take a leak.
After another hour of rough driving they were back on the main road and heading towards the next road to be checked. Brad dry swallowed two pills as he drove, he shook the bottle and three more pills clattered around in the bottom of the white container. As the pills worked their way into his system he could feel a loosening of the burning strips of flesh on his back and shoulder. The pain was pushed into the background and became a constant background buzz like a tv tuned to static. The next road on the map was only a couple of minutes away and Brad was glad to be back on an actual paved road, even if it was only going to be for a short time. The rental car was already scratched and dinged around the wheel rims and Brad expected it to be in a pretty shitty condition after they travelled over a few more of the back country roads. He gripped the wheel in his iron grasp as they sped towards their destination.
“You don’t say much,” Sara said after a few minutes of silence.
Brad glanced at her and then turned back to the road.
“Come on,” she prodded, “if we are going to be stuck in a car for the next few hours the least you could do is talk to me.”
“What do you want to know,” he said. There was something about Sara that he liked. She had a kind of brash confidence that he admired. He had met a lot of women doing tricks and most of them seemed like beat dogs, always looking to please and scared if you raised your voice. Maybe it was her age Brad thought, she hadn’t had the experience yet of life stripping away any of your allusions of the inherent good in man. People aren't creatures of light and noble intentions, shine a strong enough torch into someones life and all sorts of filth becomes apparent. Everyone was dirty and some of the dirtiest were powerful enough to have someone like Brad come and make the dirt go away. Brad knew what life was really like,he could see the contours and ridges in a persons existence. Sara seemed to him too positive for someone who was involved in prostitution. She’ll soon lose that he thought to himself.
“Anything. Tell me anything to keep me from falling asleep here,” Sara said.
Brad thought for a second and then said, “You want to talk? How about why the hell are you sleeping with dirty old men to make some money. A girl like you shouldn’t have to do.”
“Hang on Mr moral judgement,” Sara said cutting him off, “you’re going to give me grief about my life choices. You think because you sleep with me once you can tell me what to do, thats not how it works. What are you a hitman? A goon for hire? Don't talk to me about my life, tough guy,” she said with venom.
Brad glanced over at her and then back to the road. He felt old and tired and said, “You want to know what I am? Im nothing but scum. I clean up after people more powerful than either of us when they do things that would turn your stomach. I’m up to my knees in muck and sinking deeper and deeper as the days roll by. You don’t think I want out?,” a noise like an echo of a laugh, a creature trying to laugh who had only ever read a description of how laughter is meant to sound. “I wont be getting out. I hold too many secrets. Someone like me doesn't just retire and go fishing down the keys. I keep a stupid list on me at all times, a god damned totem that I scratch marks on as I move towards retirement. You know what will happen the day I tell my boss that I’ve had enough and I want out? I’ll be leaving the building in a body bag, some kid half my age will press a gun to the back of my head and end me. I’ve known it for a long time now. I’m a man running towards suicide, one payment at a time. Once my family is safe, I’m done. I’m too tired to go on.”
He could feel Sara looking at him as he drove. “Why don't you just walk away from the whole deal?” she asked.
“I owe money. A lot. I fucked up big time and I’m on the clock paying off my debts, if I don’t keep the money flowing they’ll hurt people I love, people that don’t even know I exist. I have to keep going until it’s paid off,” he said.