0104 HOURS
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That night, a devilish wind was blowing. The storm battered a remote field, shuddering acres and acres of wheat, and subduing the trees that lowered their crowns, begging for mercy. The elements had conspired in a macabre orchestra, and from the sky, the lightning bolts growled, intending to whip anyone who dared to walk across the prairie.
Responding to the challenge, a lone car went down the only paved road for miles around. It was an off-road vehicle, and its driver, a young woman who hoped that the all-wheel-drive and powerful engine she’d bought a little less than a year ago, could withstand the storm better than she was.
Even though she had thrown herself into driving under such conditions, she was not willing to become a victim of her irresponsibility. Of course, doing it with one hand behind the wheel and the other pairing a map, more than a complicated task, was an impossible odyssey.
She had the cockpit lights on, and her light blue eyes lowered from time to time toward the map to locate which route she was on. Out there, everything looked almost as black as her T-shirt. The vehicle’s headlights barely cut through the storm, and the blinding flashes of lightning were far from helping. The windshield wipers weren’t a good contender against the water, and the crackle of thunder sounded like the crash of a glassware set playing through saturated speakers.
One particular clap startled her so much that she dropped her head and frowned for a while, as if she expected lightning to crack the roof of the car at any moment.
“Malin? Are you still there?” a muffled voice asked coming from the car radio. Her phone was on the dashboard, swinging from one side to the other.
Little by little, naturalness returned to her countenance. She tossed the map in the back seat and turned off the cockpit light.
“Yes, yes. I’m here.” She brushed her bangs off her forehead. “As I was telling you, the tollbooth soldiers said that Route 12 is closed. I had to take a detour, and now I’m miles from I don’t know where. I’m using frequency seven, so I don’t get tracked, and I don’t need to remind you what that means: ‘See you soon, GPS. Hello, prehistoric technology.’ And the worst? I stopped at a public station where they tricked me with a map that must be of the North Pole because I can’t find anything it says here that I should find—Yes, a map made of paper! Can you believe it? Speaking of prehistoric stuff! What year are we in? In 98?”
“Malin!” the voice interrupted her.
“What?”
“I was waiting for you at 2400 hours. It’s 0105.”
She looked at the time on the board. 0105. Not a minute more, not a minute less. Rolled her eyes.
“Mr. Mysterious Meeting,” she called him, “have you heard anything I said? Route 12 is closed. I took a detour and now I’m lost. I don’t see crap, and lightings are target-practicing with my car. If you are not doing it, it’s a good time to start paying attention to me.”
“It will be difficult if you don’t speak clearly.”
Malin made a surrender gesture. Why didn’t that answer surprise her in the least? “I think you need to reframe the situation, dear,” she said. “It’s Friday night, and instead of getting ready to go out with the gals from the hair salon, I’m out here fighting the forces of nature. Meanwhile, you will surely be in bed, watching a movie and with the only worry of not being left without service.”
“This room doesn’t have a TV.”
And again, another unsurprising answer.
“Don’t complain,” she smiled; “you’re always after the cheapest motels.”
“And you never go out with the girls from the hair salon,” he shot back.
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“Well, tonight might have been an excellent opportunity to start doing it, but here I am.”
Another clap of thunder made her jump from her seat; flashes filled the cockpit. And there, she found herself flanked by towering trees that swayed in the wind, like dark fingers trying to imprison her. At what point had she left the wheat fields behind? There was so little to see in the rain that she had the impression that the trees had appeared out of nowhere. Was it possible that she had already passed the motel without noticing it?
The route drew an abrupt curve. Malin caught sight of it just before she went past and skewered herself against that wall of trees. She turned the steering wheel, and the tires skidded a little, but they remained attached to the asphalt. A big shout out to the engineers who came up with this beauty! she relieved, patting the dashboard.
There, she glimpsed a red-light sign flickering in the storm, like an electric firefly on the side of the road. Pearl Motel, it announced.
“I was quick to judge the paper map,” she said.
Now that she felt safe, or nearly so, she wondered what the meeting would bring. Her friend had contacted her that noon on frequency channel number seven, which they used to make sure the line was secure—the first sign of trouble, she thought—and his instructions had been quite specific: ‘Pearl Motel, room five. Route 21, before access 9. Go alone, at midnight. Do not use any other frequency than this.’ After that, the times she’d tried to reach him, she’d gotten nothing but static. Of course, the storm could have been interfering with the line, although it was more likely that his friend himself had turned off the transmitter to avoid being tracked. The next contact was the one that had just ended.
Why the rush? Malin didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but everything pointed at something big.
The night before, he had asked her to investigate certain things. And doing intelligence work was her job, so…
Don’t bite your nails trying to figure out the mystery, dear. You know his nature, if he doesn’t want to respond, he won’t. Just have some patience.
Malin turned off the road and onto the path that led to the motel.
The pavement was eroded, which meant little to her off-road car, and she pulled into what would be the lodging’s private parking lot: a shed with no walls, set back from the small building. It didn’t take her long to decide where to park the vehicle; there was only one spot available. The rest was taken up by an old rusty car with no tires, the frame of a motorcycle, and a pile of dust-covered junk that went from broken beds to forgotten closets. As far as she could see, her car was the only vehicle around in condition to work.
She stopped the engine and got out of the car.
A low-voltage bulb swung in the wind like a pendulum of yellowish light, attached to a wire dangling from a beam. The downpour rattled off the tin roof and sounded like a shower of needles.
Malin stretched out her legs and adjusted her jeans. The cold soaked her to the skin, so she put on her jacket. She looked around. The wrecked old car, the dismantled bike, and the pile of dusty trash that smelled musty. Behind the shed was a wall of trees that reached the road and kept going until the darkness and the veils of rain gobbled it down. A chill licked her nape; she didn’t know if it was because of the icy touch of the wind, the scenario she was in, or the anxiety because of the date she was attending to.
Then, her eyes laid on a shaking little poster that was about to come off of a column of the shed, and she pinned it back so it would not fly. Such a piece of artwork shouldn’t get lost.
‘Lick boots or work the land. You decide!’ said the worn poster, and below the phrase appeared a caricature of a horse, curiously similar to the winged horse with laurel wreaths representing the Empire, leaning on a shovel stuck in a field, exhausted and sweating big time.
She had not seen posters like that in years. What her father would say if he saw it?
Enough. Her father and the hegemony he’d imposed on her were part of the past. She put the hood on and turned away.
There was the motel, a place of an almost daunting simplicity for the traveler looking for something more than a seedy place to stay. It was one story high; its facade was a porch with unpainted doors and some broken windows, and its dim lighting came from the red neon sign and a couple of light bulbs.
She wondered how many people—besides her friend—had taken the risk of having rented a room there in the past few weeks, and the answer that came to mind was zero.
“You cheap bastard,” she whispered, and a smile grew on her face.
Facing the rain, she left the shed and went toward that depressing shoebox with doors.
She ran slowly so as not to trip over; the ground was treacherous, and some puddles hid potholes in the broken pavement and muddy areas. Taking cover under the porch, she avoided passing near the main door, in case the clerk stuck his head out and asked her what she was doing there—with the storm, she doubted that would happen, though—and she looked for room five.
She knocked on the door, and it surprised her that the wood had not collapsed with the blow of her knuckles; it looked somewhat rotten. “It’s me,” she announced.
The door opened, and she went in.