Haag-Vuilendam Highway
Free Republic of Knootoss
The wipers screeched once across the windscreen, smearing rather than clearing the fine drizzle. Beyond the glass, the skeletal trees of the Purendal Exclusion Zone clawed at the sky. Grey upon grey. He gripped the wheel harder, feeling the plastic flex faintly beneath his thick fingers, damp with sweat despite the cold.
"Stupid... stupid..." the man muttered, his breath shallow. His voice barely filled the stale air of the car, already saturated with the scent of fast-food wrappers and the sharper undertone of something sour. Sweat, perhaps, or fear. Crumpled paper bags littered the passenger seat, a half-eaten burger on the dash, congealed cheese stuck to its wrapper.
Gerrit van de Merwe. Once Second Secretary to the Economic Affairs Consulate in Aerion. Now? A mid-level analyst in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Desk jockey in a grey office on the third floor, where the lift groaned when he stepped in. The kind of man who blended into the corridors behind the security doors, all jowls and sloping shoulders in a crumpled suit, filing memos and licking salt from his fingers between paragraphs.
The Geiger counter rattled faintly on the seat beside him, a dry, mechanical chuckle. He flicked it off with a fat thumb. Better not to know. The Exclusion Zone didn’t care if you knew how radioactive it was.
"Should’ve taken the long road," he muttered, glancing at the peeling sign half-sunk in bramble: Vuilendam 12km. His foot pressed a little harder on the accelerator. The heater wheezed, blowing out air that reeked faintly of tobacco. Gerrit tugged at his collar, but it clung to his neck, the damp fabric darkened with sweat. He cracked the window, and a thin ribbon of cold air crept in, bringing the scent of aerosolised tar with a metallic tinge. It didn’t help. He rolled it back up. Better the devil he knew.
An address. No name, no instructions. Just an address scrawled in biro on a yellowing scrap of paper left at a drop off point. Gerrit turned the note over in his hand while driving, half-hoping the back would offer some clue. Nothing. He tried to imagine what would be waiting there. A bolted door. A figure in the shadows. A quiet room with curtains drawn. Maybe a gun on the table. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe just the walls closing in.
He wiped a sleeve across his forehead, smearing sweat.
Aerion. Of course it was Aerion. He could still smell the cheap cologne, the perfumed sheets. Could see the chandelier overhead, gaudy crystal pendants swinging like a slow metronome. They laughed, those women, those operatives. That was the polite word. Like he didn’t know. Like he hadn’t chosen to believe, if only for one blurred night, that it was all real.
"Stupid."
The word caught in his throat.
They had it on tape. Of course they did. Every sordid, glistening second. The ridiculous room, Pantocratorian neoclassical by way of a discount Persian bazaar. Gold-trimmed mirrors, velvet drapes. An absurd kind of luxury. He remembered a marble bust in the corner, wearing someone’s brassiere like a crown.
Gerrit gripped the wheel tighter, knuckles blanching under the thick rolls of his fingers.
And now, some faceless voice on the end of a scrambled line knew his name. Sent little notes. He hadn't told Marleen. Fuck, what could he say?
"I’ve got to check something at the office." That’s what he told her.
She looked up from her reading tablet, eyebrow raised.
"At ten o’clock at night?"
"It’s classified."
She’d scoffed. No doubt thought it was an affair. Maybe that would’ve been better. Marleen hadn’t even asked when he’d be back. Just turned back to her tablet, mouth tight for a second too long. Maybe she knew. Or maybe she didn’t care. He wasn’t sure which stung more.
The Geiger counter chirped again. Hadn't he turned it off?
"Shut up," he whispered.
Vuilendam was close now. The air had turned, thicker somehow. The old factories and chemical plants were darkened, some of them still abandoned. Rusted skeletal towers loomed, cables hanging like nooses.
Would they kill him? Maybe. For years Aerion had been nothing. A frozen Kingdom - pardon, Empire - of isolationists and ruthless but irrelevant politics. He'd made himself forget about it. Buried it under layers of classified reports and pastry crumbs.
But Aerion wasn’t nothing anymore.
He coughed, tasting something metallic at the back of his throat. Maybe that was the radiation. Or maybe it was just the fear.
"Keep driving," he told himself.
The address wasn’t far away now. A handful of turns, and he’d be there. Maybe there’d be someone waiting. Maybe he’d walk in and the door would lock behind him. Or maybe the house would be empty. Silent. Waiting.
Or maybe they wouldn’t kill him. Not yet. Maybe they'd want something. Something he could give. He imagined sitting at a bare table, pen in hand, the same voices guiding him. He wasn’t sure which scared him more.
But maybe, just maybe, there was still time to talk his way out. He was clever, wasn’t he? Clever enough to know when to run, clever enough to stay one step ahead. Or maybe he was just clever enough to dig his own grave.
The car rumbled on, wheels crunching over broken asphalt.
The Geiger counter laughed again.