The Veil

by Torstein Beck

  He spent the next few hours in silence, sitting on the wide veranda, obscured from the road but exposed enough to look out over the same vista that he’d admired from the road below.

  He heard a car approach and stood at the rail to see. The rockface acted as a boundary wall, but he could see the top of a car stopped outside the garage door.

  His phone began to ring and he answered it. ‘Max’

  ‘We’re here,’ he said with relief in his voice.

  ‘Good, get to the keypad and I’ll give you the code.’

  Gertlinger smiled to himself and headed down to the garage to meet them.

  The car was an estate — high end — and the bright headlights filled the darkness with a shadowless glare. Gertlinger shielded his eyes as they pulled up and killed the engine. The door opened and a young man stepped out.

  Max was tall, lean, with his mother’s dark hair and tanned skin. He smiled at Gertlinger through his week-thick beard. ‘Dad,’ he said with a grin and approached.

  Gertlinger extended his hand but Max hugged him instead. A wave of emotion rolled over him as he did and Gertlinger buried his face in Max’s shoulder. ‘Son,’ he said, barely above a whisper. ‘It’s been too long.’

  ‘It’s great to see you.’

  Gertlinger looked up to see a woman and girl next to the open doors of the vehicle. The woman was in her mid-thirties and was slender, with long dark hair — she had to be his wife. The girl, who had to be his daughter, was no more than three or four, and was clutching at a teddy bear. This was all that was left of Gertlinger’s family. Another wave filled him and a tear formed at the corner of his eye. ‘Your family is beautiful. I’m so glad you’re here.’

  ‘Me too.’ Max squeezed a little harder.

  Gertlinger sobbed and a grin formed on his quivering lips. He closed his eyes, sinking into the moment.

  Another dull thud of a car door closing pulled him away from Max.

  There in the darkness behind his daughter-in-law stood a shape — the thin shape of an old woman, hunched with age.

  ‘No…’ Gertlinger murmured.

  ‘I’m sorry Dad, I had no choice…’ Max held onto him as he tried to pull away.

  ‘Hello, Florian,’ Angela said in her usual, cold manner.

  ‘Angela… You’re supposed to be dead…’ he mouthed slowly.

  ‘Fortunately, I’m not. This isn’t ideal for me either, but let’s make the best of this, shall we?’ she said, flashing him a smile with the teeth of a much younger woman.

  Gertlinger shrugged Max off and looked at him. ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘Dad…’

  ‘How could you…?’ Gertlinger mumbled, shaking his head.

  ‘I had to. I knew you’d say no if I told you the truth,’ he mumbled.

  ‘How would you know? You haven’t spoken to me in twenty goddamn years!’ Gertlinger spat, the anger bubbling inside him.

  ‘Mom said—’ he started.

  ‘Mom said? She’s a controlling manipulative bitch. Of course she said!’ Gertlinger yelled before he could stop himself.

  ‘I told you this would happen,’ Angela sighed, looking at Max.

  ‘Oh, did you? You told him I would be a little bit pissed off that my son contacted me after twenty years and lied to me, just to smuggle you to safety. Big surprise!’ Gertlinger laughed, tears still in his eyes.

  Max’s daughter clung to her mother’s leg in fear.

  Gertlinger seethed, saw, and then dragged in a fast breath and turned away, ashamed that it was the first thing his grand-daughter saw of him. ‘I’m going upstairs,’ he said quietly. ‘You do whatever you want — but you’re right, this is far from my idea of ideal.’ He took one last look at Max, and then resigned himself to staring at the ground. ‘I just can’t believe you lied to me.’

  He took a step towards the stairwell, leaving them standing in silence.

  He half expected Max to call out for him, come after him. He hoped.

  But Max didn’t.

  FORTY-TWO

  THE VEIL

  2122 AD

  Aaro wallowed in pain as the truck trundled south.

  Robin was driving, and Alva was sleeping next to him. The feed on the screen showed the backs of their heads.

  The wind raged outside, thrashing against the broadside of the truck. The display showed snowflakes lashing past the windscreen in the glow of the headlights.

  ‘We’re heading into some bad weather,’ Robin said through the comm.

  They’d been back in touch with Stockholm, and told them they were heading back. Robin had said that there’d been some complications but he hadn’t gone into detail and told Katarina they’d be in touch soon. Aaro had wanted to finalise the story with everyone before they broke it to Katarina.

  Robin’s voice strained as he fought the wheel on the frozen, overgrown road. ‘There’s a storm rolling in from the east, out of Siberia. Sounds rough by what Kat was saying, but we should be alright.’

  There wasn’t a lot of reassurance in his voice.

  Aaro was sitting up now, propped against the wall on his cot. Sorina was attending to Sabina who was still laid up and now awake, groaning in pain.

  ‘Sorina,’ he called quietly.

  ‘What?’ she replied, not looking up.

  ‘What are we going to tell Katarina?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She scowled.

  ‘About the mission.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s a failure. We didn’t get the core and—’

  ‘What do you mean we didn’t get the core?’ she asked, arching an eyebrow, a mess of bloody bandages in her hands.

  ‘Well, we didn’t…’ he said, wincing as the truck jostled.

  ‘But we did. It’s in the back right now.’ She dipped her head cooly to the rear of the trailer.

  ‘What?’ Aaro coughed, trying to get up and failing. He collapsed backwards, weak.

  ‘Robin, Alva, and me wheeled it over and put it in the back.’

  ‘You’re kidding? Why didn’t you say?’

  She shrugged.

  He sighed in relief and couldn’t help but laugh a little. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘Don’t thank God. Thank us,’ she grunted.

  ‘Why did you go back for it?’ he asked.

  ‘We wouldn’t have gotten paid without it. I need the money.’

  He grinned. ‘I could kiss you.’

  ‘Don’t even come near me.’ She looked up now. Her eyes were fire. ‘The second we land in Stockholm, I’m getting my cut and I’m leaving,’ she said scornfully.

  He smiled as warmly as he could at her. ‘Any ideas where you’d like to live?’ He hoped that this would blow over, that somewhere, deep down, she still wanted the same thing he did. The house, the dog. But even as he asked, he knew she didn’t.

  ‘Somewhere far away from you.’ She put the bandages down onto Sabina’s cot, her fists clenched into them, and leaned in so he couldn’t mistake her words. ‘I’m going to tell them what you did. I’ll be amazed if they even let you go. They’ll probably put you to the firing squad for what you did. And you’d deserve it.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ Aaro replied quietly. He was more perturbed by the fact that he felt nothing when she said it than the fact she’d said it at all.

  ‘I do. I sincerely do,’ she said, not breaking eye contact.

  He thought for a moment. ‘You can’t. They’ll actually kill me for this.’

  ‘You should have thought of that before you did what you did.’ She crushed the bandages into a rough ball and shoved them into a trash bag.

  ‘I won’t let you throw me under the bus — especially not for saving your life,’ Aaro said, suppressing the anger rising in his guts.

  ‘What’re you going do, kill me too?’ She smiled at him, the anger in her eyes now turned to something that looked like sadness.

  Aaro was about to answer back to tell her that he never would when the trailer leapt into
the air, landed heavily and then slid sideways. He swore loudly, rolling from his cot and hitting the floor.

  ‘What the fuck was that!?’ he yelled, getting to his knees and pulling his injured hand to his chest.

  ‘Sorry!’ Robin yelled back through the comm. ‘The air temperature outside has dropped to minus twenty. The roads are cracked and frozen. They’re slicker than oil.’ He wrestled the truck straight and barrelled onwards. ‘Don’t suppose we have any volunteers to go outside and chain the tyres?’ He paused for a moment. ‘Didn’t think so. I’ll keep you posted on the weather as it heads in. On the bright side, the windchill is near enough forty below, so with any luck, it should keep those bastards off our backs a little longer.’

  ‘Every cloud,’ Aaro grumbled, retaking the bunk.

  Sorina looked tired, and hopeless next to him.

  The feeling was starting to spread, the sense of unease setting in.

  They’d barely made it there at all, and now, heading back, they were under the knuckles of an Arctic hurricane and were down the four men who were employed to keep them safe.

  Sorina was the only one who was physically able in any sort of way, but in the hatch above them, sitting in that metal box, with the slats letting the wind and the snow in, it’d be a quick death. No one could stay warm exposed like that, which meant no one could go up there, able-bodied or not.

  They were defenceless to the Varas with only the front facing gun at their disposal, and it only saw what was ahead. From the sides and rear, they were blind and vulnerable. The term sitting ducks crossed Aaro’s mind once or twice, though he refrained from saying it out loud.

  He could tell they all felt the same, even if no one said it.

  The image of Robin’s face, stoic and sad on the screen above was enough to dissuade anyone of the notion that this trip was going to have a happy ending.

  FORTY-THREE

  THE BEGINNING

  2108 AD

  Things only got harder in Oslo as the days and weeks passed.

  Everyone was always crying. Women in the street, men in the gutter, children in pens, herded like animals — orphans rounded up from the city streets, plucked from slavery and subjugation, or worse, and caged like animals.

  They were without parents now, the children of the apocalypse. Left behind, abandoned, or just lost, they were rounded up and put together, to suffer together.

  Aaro hadn’t smiled since he’d been here, and he wasn’t sure he ever would again.

  He was walking, as he always was, trying to find solace — a quiet place away from the horror, but weren’t any. Anywhere. Every corner and doorway was filthy and crowded.

  Aaro griped to himself, exiting a back alley and found himself on one of the main streets, surrounded by beggars and peasants. He could be one of them, all he had to do was sit down and ask passing strangers for money. That’s all that the line separating them was, sitting and standing.

  Then, he spotted something. A poster, plastered on a wall. He looked left and right — they were pasted everywhere there was a space. They read:

  All individuals possessing any trades or qualifications in construction, engineering, carpentry, electronics, or plumbing — report to City Hall.

  Any assigned work will be rewarded.

  We must all work together to secure our future. Help us build a better Oslo.

  And that was it. Aaro narrowed his eyes and drew breath. He looked towards City Hall and saw a small number of the individuals in the streets gravitating towards it.

  Help us build a better Oslo.

  He scoffed.

  Well, it can’t get any worse.

  We must all work together to secure our future.

  Future.

  There was a terrifying prospect.

  But little did Aaro know exactly what the future held.

  Little did anyone know.

  FORTY-FOUR

  PLAYING GOD

  2108 AD

  ‘Jesus, Florian! Will you stop going outside every five minutes for a fucking cigarette?’ Angela snapped, curled up on the sofa under a blanket. ‘How they haven’t killed you yet I’ll never know.’

  Gertlinger shot her a toothy smile, enjoying her misery. ‘Well, I guess there’s no justice in the world, is there.’

  It had been five months since their arrival. Tensions were wearing thin. Every news station in Switzerland had gone into standby mode and were no longer transmitting anything but blank screens. All the radios were broadcasting the emergency messages and no one had driven past on the road below in almost a month and a half. Darkness had quickly descended. Switzerland had been one of the most concerned countries and had ordered a state of emergency be declared. Lots of other countries were carrying on like everything was fine, assuring their populations it was, trying to keep the panic from spreading. It would reach them too, eventually.

  For night after night following Gertlinger’s homecoming, screams and cries had echoed from the valleys below, joined sporadically by the haunting howl of the alpha Vara as it signalled the start of a hunt. Or the end of one. They ran like clockwork, so it was hard to tell which was which.

  Now, there was only silence. The streetlights had petered out as well. Gertlinger supposed that the power station running them had been abandoned and as such, the houses that it fed had been left to the wolves — literally. Their power was coming from a generator. There was enough bottled gas for another winter — maybe more if they rationed it. But with a young child and a cunning old bitch under the roof, they were burning it constantly. The heating was holding on for now, but they had to be sparing with it. It wouldn’t last forever. Though Gertlinger seemed to be the only one concerned about it.

  He had hoped he might have whiled away his last few months ploughing through the stockpile of aged spirits in the cabinet, until Max had called. Then he’d planned to spend his last days getting to know his granddaughter — but Angela was always coiled around her like the snake she was, warding him off like he was one of the monsters beyond the walls.

  Now, there wasn’t enough liquor in the world to numb the pain of his own situation. Sometimes he thought a quick death at the jaws of his creations would be a better end than this. Or more fitting at least. More just.

  McPherson had wished him dead, and he was beginning to think that maybe he deserved it. Any longer in this house and he would seriously start to contemplate it.

  Death no longer seemed evil now, but more like an old friend, beckoning him to his grave — to the warmth and comfort that lay there, and beyond.

  FORTY-FIVE

  THE VEIL

  2122 AD

  The hours passed.

  Nobody spoke.

  The storm worsened.

  Sabina had slipped into a restless sleep. Her brow was slick with sweat and she was breaking into a fever. Her wound was infected.

  They were in Finland now and the windchill had dropped to forty below.

  They were making good time but the storm had chased them every mile from Russia and was right on top of them.

  At least for now, the Varas seemed to be hiding from the blizzard and not attacking them. The truck slithered back and forth relentlessly on the frozen road. Aaro watched the screen, half of it showing Robin, the other half facing forward, looking out from the camera mounted on the gun. The night vision cut through the storm to about twenty metres. Everything beyond that was a total whiteout. The display swayed left and right as the truck slalomed over the ice-rink tarmac.

  ‘The snow is thickening by the second,’ Robin said, the exhaustion apparent in his tone. He’d been wrestling the steering wheel for almost eight hours without rest. ‘We might have to stop for the night.’

  ‘No,’ Aaro said sharply. ‘We keep going. The storm will dissipate as it heads south.’ If they stopped and waited until morning before carrying on, there was a good chance Sabina would die.

  Robin stared into the camera, his eyes scared and sad. ‘I don’t know how long I can keep he
r straight, Aaro.’

  ‘Well, keep us posted,’ Aaro said sternly, wincing.

  Another hour passed before anyone spoke again, despite the line being kept open. The constant rocking was nauseating.

  ‘Aaro?’ Robin called.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’ve got Katarina on the line but it’s shaky. I’m putting her on.’

  ‘Hello?’ came a crackly voice. ‘Emmerson?’

  ‘Kat,’ Aaro pulled himself up.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.

  ‘We’re heading south. We’re not too far outside of Rovaniemi—’

  ‘I can’t raise the Fido,’ she cut in. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There were some complications.’

  '’What complications?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘Uhh,’ he said, looking at Sorina. She wasn’t looking back. ‘Murmansk wasn’t exactly deserted,’ he said. ‘The Varas were further north than we anticipated. They got the drop on the Fido. They reached the harbour first,’ he lied. ‘We lost Berg and Strom. The Varas overran the truck. Robin and Alva survived. They’re in control now. The rover was attacked too. We took up a defence but we lost Sam. Sab was tagged in the crossfire trying to help Robin and Alva. She’s ok, but for how long I don’t know.’ He pulled the story out of thin air. He’d been in so much pain he’d not even thought of anything to say, and no one else had been interested in offering a story. He was hoping he’d have until they arrived in Stockholm before he had to start lying. He didn’t want to explain now. He didn’t have the energy too and it would come out wrong. He knew there was a way to tell Kat, but he wanted to do it face to face when she could see the state of his — the proof of what had happened.

  ‘My God,’ Kat replied.

  ‘We played it safe after that, rolled the truck right up to the sub, got the job done. Ek and Bjork went to help Berg and Strom, but they never came back — we got out as quickly as we could.’

  She paused for a few seconds, taking in the information. She swallowed, almost ashamed to ask. ‘And the mission?’