Hard Border

There are poems written about snow. Brzezinski knew this was true because he had heard them from books in his youth. They had belonged to his father, an educated foreigner who entered a government van one day and was never seen again.

His mother had brought the dusty books out sometimes from their secret place, after the lights were turned off, and translated them.

And more than a few of those stories were about snow – how beautiful it was, it’s delicacy and purity. How it made the world feel clean and new.

Maybe snow was different in other places.

Here there was no beauty to it. It fell to the earth laden with coal and other chemicals that ate at the sky. No children made angels in it. Rather than bestow a fey beauty on the world, snow only served to accentuate its ugliness to the point of insult, like a collapsed slur from the Heaven.

A whistle screamed outside, accompanied by tires crunching gravel. He spat on the ground, adjusted his pistol, and pulled his military coat tighter around him. He walked out into the cold morning.

Brzezinski was not a good man, but one suited to his time and place. His moral architecture was built on the cold truth of what was, rather than abstracts of what should be. This framework had allowed him to survive and prosper in his world. A world where fathers disappeared and mothers were taken at dawn because they had read books to their children.

 Material and moral clarity served him well. He cared for the State because he was not its victim. He maintained his uniform because it kept him warm. And he had volunteered for the Border because he could earn more.

He had done well for himself. A few bills folded within paperwork or crumpled in nervous handshakes would buy travelers admittance into the country with otherwise prohibited contraband. Most of it was harmless. Fruits, electrical equipment, sometimes cigarettes or pornography obtained abroad.

He never pushed his luck. He once found a woman stowed in the boot of a rusting and pathetic coach that coughed diesel in miasmic rasps. After pocketing the bribe, he politely asked the driver to wait a moment, and promptly informed the black-clad security officers of attempted human trafficking. They pulled the man and the woman away screaming to a nearby bunker.

Brzezinski continued working, and barely registered the pistol shots when they occurred.

He received a commendation.

This day he walked out to find a truck with a large cargo box attachment stopped at his station. The engine hummed while his partner Gorski stood waiting at the hood, whistle hanging from his neck and inspection mirror in hand. His eyes swept the landscape.

Across the huge checkpoint other such inspection blocks stood in similar gravel cutouts, with similar pairs of olive drabbed officers inspecting vehicles and talking with their drivers.

His eyes rested momentarily on Gorski. He held the large man in both contempt and appreciation. Gorski was a fool, one who believed in the flags and the uniforms and the chants. It disgusted him. However, this patriotism instilled an obedience to protocol that made him easy to manipulate. He raised a hand to the man and approached the driver’s window. His partner began a walkaround of the vehicle.

The window rolled down to show an older man with lined face and frayed gray hair. His eyes were filled with neither the poorly concealed hatred nor dull supplication common to the average driver, but fear.

Fear of something to hide.

Brzezinski held out a gloved hand. “Papers.”

The old man extended his passport with a perceptible tremor. Brzezinski took the booklet and immediately felt its heft. Glancing to make sure Gorski was busy with his undercarriage check, he looked down and officiously snapped open the small folio. There was a large folding of bills within the biometrics section.

He looked back to the cargo box.

“Step out and open the back.” A granite moment passed. The man complied, stepping gingery out of the truck and shuffling to the back. He unlocked the cargo doors. Gorski joined them, positioning himself behind the man and rested a hand on his shoulder.

The cargo area was empty save for a singular box of exceedingly large proportions in the back corner. A padlock hung from its side.

He looked questioningly at the man, who said nothing. “Keys.” The man’s eyes shifted to the side. Gorski’s hand tightened. Keys were produced. Brzezinski climbed into the dark container. He unsheathed his flashlight and swept the area.

Under the cold light, he could see the box was about as tall and wide as a man. He approached the box. The unoiled lock clicked like a broken wishbone as the key's teeth sawed into place. The shackle popped.

It was empty.

The light swept the compartment with predatory efficiency, but there was nothing to find. He walked around the box, inspecting the rest of the hold found nothing more save congregations of dust.

He lowered his light and looked back at the old man standing in the falling snow. He was about to speak when something caught his eye.

There was a black solidity within his peripherals that rested inside the darkness of the container. He whipped his torch across the space. The light slashed its way into emptiness, and nothing but dehydrated planking answered his gaze.

“Brzezinski?” Gorski questioned.

Brzezinski stared a moment longer then clicked off his light. Whether the man was mad, stupid, or, far worse – a government plant sent to root out entrepreneurs like himself – he would not take the chance.

He jumped out of the truck bed.

“There’s nothing,” he said. He took out the passport and opened it to the biometrics page, letting the bills flap in the light breeze while he showed it to Gorski. “This man has tried to bribe a government official to sneak an empty box into our country.”

The old man’s eyes went wide.

“Let’s speak with him inside before contacting security, so we have an idea who we are dealing with.” The trio walked into the concrete bunker.

The structure bare, save for one steel chair bolted to the floor. The frail man was thrown into it. “Talk, old man.” The two men loomed over him. “Why are you trying to smuggle an empty box over the border?”

The man began to speak. Brzezinski sighed. It was the speech of foreigners, and to him it sounded like so many pots thrown down the stairs. He cursed. “Call the blackcoats, maybe they can –”

“He says he’s defecting,” said Gorski flatly.

Brzezinski blinked. “You understand him?”

A dark expression spread on Gorski’s face. “I grew up in the Metropolitan Zone, in the Foreign Quarter. Before the expulsions.” A small silence followed.

“You’re sure of what he is saying?”

“I’m pretty sure.” He spoke to the man in the same tin-crash syllables. The replies were fervent. “Yes. He says he wants to seek asylum on our side. Defect.”

“And why is he driving a truck with an empty box?” Another exchange ensued of broken consonants like cracked ceramic.

“It’s not empty. He claims he's scientist. He worked on a weapon… stole it. That’s what’s in the box.”

“There was nothing, I saw it myself.”

Another momentary exchange. Gorski looked puzzled before continuing, “You can’t see it under the light.”

Words continued to fall from the driver’s mouth. “He… I don’t know these words. They are specific, like science terms.”

The old man continued gibbering, but Gorski had had enough. “This is a waste of time. If what he said is true, its beyond our responsibilities. That or he’s a coot. Let’s get the security. They can deal with it.”

The momentary image in the truck came back to Brzezinski, and he wasn’t altogether sure the man was lying. This could be an opportunity. Delivering a defector and their stolen technology would certainly be worth a promotion, if not admission to Party membership – and with that, riches.

Still, something inside him curdled with unease. He looked Gorski over. “All we have is a man with an empty truck. If he is lying, we look incompetent, and if he is telling the truth we have not performed our duty properly.” At that Gorski’s ears perked.

Brzezinski smiled inside. “We need evidence or its definitive absence. I’ll go look –”

“I’ll go look.” Gorski looked him in the eye, his back straight. “A fresh pair of eyes might find something you missed.” Good. Let the canary go into the mine first.

“Alright, I’ll stay here with him.” Gorski nodded and curtly walked out the door.

Brzezinski watched him go. He took out a cigarette from his breast pocket and shook one out. Somewhere outside a man yelled for another to stop. After several seconds a gunshot punctured the morning air.

Brzezinski sighed to himself, and looked out the embrasure to the snow. A verse came to his mind – the snows that are older than history/the woods where silence has lease. The Robert Service line strode across his mind without purpose, and he thought of his mother’s voice.

What feelings it conjured disappeared as abruptly as she. He thought for a moment and looked hard at the man.

Outside a crash came from the truck. After a moment’s hesitation, Brzezinski stood the man up and led out to the truckbed.

Gorski was standing before the box staring into its depths. His pistol lay on the ground next to him. It was evident the sound had come from him dropping it.

Brzezinski called out to him, but Gorski did not move, only continued staring into the darkness. Before anything else could be said, the man walked forward and disappeared into the container.

Brzezinski started for the container, dragging the old man up onto the storage bed with him. He unclipped his flashlight and turned it on as they entered the recesses of the storage box. He picked up the sidearm and proceeded around the corner of the wooden aperture with his flashlight raised.

Again, his light cut into the darkness of the box and found nothing. Gorski was gone.

The old man said something. He looked at him and one knotted finger was pointing at the light. Brzezinski flicked off his light and squinted into the depths. As his eyes adjusted, he began to see a tangible object taking shape. It formed in an ink-jet solidity that punctured the darkness by its weight of presence.

It was sharp and formed geometric angles whose expressions held no cognate. It moved, turning and eating into itself. The thing filled him with dread, yet…a strange feeling began to hook in his mind.

A feeling of extreme want, an unassailable need to go to it. His foot was taking a tentative step forward, when a demon burst forward from the black.

It was a pallid creature that crashed against his body and toppled him over, mouth gnashing teeth that were yellow and overlong like a rodent’s. He threw the thing off him and scrambled to his feet, pistol and flashlight casting thin light on the creature.

He let a breath out for he realized he was looking at Gorski.

In the few moments since he had seen the man, some calamity had befallen him. His previously formidable frame had shrunken to a skeletal impoverishment, his uniform hanging off him like a great windless sail. The skin on his face was pulled close to his skull and hey eyes were mere globes that floated in cratered sockets.

“…Gorski?”

At hearing his name, the man’s head jerked as in recognition. 

Brzezinski lowered the light slightly and the man’s eyes focused on him. “…You. Brzezinski.” It was the voice of one who had not spoken for too long. He looked around and a small whimper escaped his throat. “No… not again. Not here. Where is Chό?”

“Who?”

The tall wiry man came at him, grabbing his coat lapels in emaciated hands and speaking with his rat teeth mere inches away. The driver was standing back, watching with intention.

“Chό, Chό! We grew up together. I loved her. And they took her away. In that fucking van with the others. Before they sent me to that school with the whips! THE WHIPS AND THE FLAGS AND THE PLEDGES!”

The man was screaming, his voice shredded and frantic like a cloth torn in the wind. He dropped his head, tears streaming down his face, “I have to go back.” In their struggle, Brzezinski had been turned around and now his back faced the container. The malnourished man tried to walk past him back into the darkness, but the other stopped him. “Gorski, wait. What happened, what is in there?”

The death-mask sneered, “Heaven. The way things are supposed to be. This is Hell, you know. You’re part of it. I remember you. I always knew. Bribery. Extortion. Stealing from these…poor people.” He smiled. “The woman in the trunk? I saw you take the money. I reported you. Kept notes on everything. They know,” he began laughing maniacally, “THEY KNOW!”

Brzezinski always considered himself thoughtful and measured in his actions. But in that moment, a lifetime of Darwinian conditioning commandeered his faculties and guided him with the clarity of purpose he’d always been blessed with.

With the fluidity of muscle memory, Brzezinski’s hand raised the pistol he had gathered from the truck bed, leveled it at Gorski’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

The shot pierced the air and the thin figure crumpled to the ground in a smattering pile. It took only a moment for Brzezinski’s mind to catch up with his preceding action. A cold piece of iron lodged in his stomach. What had he done? What will he do? He looked at the ancient driver, whose demeanor had changed. His meekness had shed from him, and he stood with his arms crossed and a contented smile on his face. He met the officer’s gaze.

Never mind. There was a solution here. He dropped Gorski’s pistol to the ground and drew his own. He would have to think quickly, for someone certainly would investigate the shot. The old driver had wrestled Gorski’s sidearm when they’d found the box. Got him by surprise, the sneaky foreigner. Brzezinski had killed the man with his own weapon. Gallantry. He would then deliver the weapon up the echelon. He would receive another commendation. All would be forgiven. He turned to the driver and aimed his firearm. The old man’s eye widened and he took a step back.

In the corner of Brzezinski’s eye, the abysmal engine began to rotate. A thorned proboscis of desire slithered into his mind, and he could not help but turn his head.

*

The old man watched as the guard slowly dropped his weapon and turned towards the opening of the crate. Within a second, the man strode surefootedly forward into the oblivion of the container’s depths.

The driver was alone.

He then very calmly and deliberately walked over to the container, and keeping his eyes away, shut the wooden box and closed its latch. He the climbed back down into the cold. He looked around at the hum of activity.

In the casual brutality that was the border, no one had even considered the gunshot. He closed the doors to the storage compartment and got back into the driver’s cab. The engine was still humming. He shifted gears and drove through the border.

He had not lied to the brutes. He had indeed been a scientist for a rival government, one of the damned souls which had stumbled upon this weapon – this trap. Through the blind groping of theoretical physics this torture box had fallen into their laps.

No one really knew what it did. What was for certain was that it drew people in. Used them up and digested some part of them. It gave them a glimpse of another world. Paradise, with all the razors of human ego, greed, and brutality, removed. What should have been.

The hateful thing – the evil thing – about this mechanism was that it let them go. Rejected them back into this world, with all the memories of the other side. All of the love, all of the euphoria and perfection stripped away in the raw nerve endings of reality. This reality. Criminals had returned from its gate begging for the gas chamber having known nothingness was better than being stuck here. In a way it was perfect in its cruelty.

And perfect for the State. Yes, he had been honest with those evil men, but only to a point. He had stolen it. He alone knew amongst the science team where this thing belonged. Where it might do the most damage.

It belonged in a place where love had been strangled and murdered in the street. Where dreams huddled in trucks sent to work camps. In the place where he been thrown at the border so many years ago and told to walk back to where he came from, because he was an outsider.

Where, he learned, so many years later, his wife had been murdered and his son made an orphan.

Yes, he had stolen it, and intended to deliver it on a platter. Not as a gift, but as revenge. The two at the border had proven its efficacy. Once one had seen inside, the horror of this world would be clear to them. And they would tear each other apart.

As he slowly dove away, he looked at the falling snow. He always thought there was something uncanny about it this side of the border. A weight to it like it was burdened with sadness of the people below. It held beauty, in a tragic way. He thought of his wife’s voice, and for no reason he could understand, the words of a Robert Service poem strode across his mind.