Graham Joyce: The Silent Land

‘I don’t know. I’m scared.’

‘Scared? There’s nowt to be scared about, you big girl’s blouse. Nowt at all. Actually I’m scared, too. Never mind all that. Look, we’ve got to find a car with keys still in the ignition.’

‘Right. Couldn’t we—’

‘Couldn’t we what? Hot-wire a car like they do in the movies?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know how to do it?’

‘You’re the technical one. You’re the man.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you something for nothing, fuckwit of a wife. I don’t know how to hot-wire a car. As you correctly pointed out I’m a vet, I work with dogs and white mice and budgerigars and in all my training and experience as a vet, for some reason I’ve never been called upon to hot-wire a car. To save our bacon. Until now.’

‘Don’t get exercised with me.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing for nothing. See how they do it in the movies? They just rip out some wires from under the dashboard and stick ’em together and the car coughs into life? A car mechanic told me that’s all bollocks. It doesn’t work like that any more. He said if you do that the most likely thing that’ll happen is you’ll give yourself an electric shock.’

‘So we won’t do that.’

‘And he was a car mechanic. A proper car mechanic.’

‘So, as you said, we go and look for a car that still has the keys in it. And then we drive out. With the engine sort of muffled.’

‘You’re a sarcastic bitch, you know that?’

‘It’s why you married me. You love it.’

But before leaving the police station they tried, once more, the telephone number of Elfinda the smiling holiday rep. Just as with their earlier attempt, the phone rang off before anyone answered.

Outside, and with the snow falling more heavily around them now, they went from car to car, trying the drivers’ doors, looking for one that would open. They tried perhaps fifty or sixty vehicles and did find doors open on four of them; but none had the keys inside.

The snow came down heavier still, and with it an oyster-coloured mist. They were starting to feel both cold and tired.

‘I’ve just thought of something,’ Jake said.

‘What?’

‘Back at the police station—there was a police car. Maybe the keys are in the office.’

‘What, steal a police car? Don’t even think about it.’

‘But the situation is somewhat exceptional, surely?’

Zoe knitted her eyebrows but followed him back down the hill to the police station. There they found the keys to the police car, hanging on a hook by the door.

‘Are you sure it’s okay to just… take it?’

‘No.’

The police car fired into life first time, kicking out a lot of diesel smoke. They had to scrape snow from the windshield and de-ice the glass. Jake steered the car out of the police yard and onto the street. He honked the horn a few times; he was expecting a hand on his collar at any moment, and if the police did return to see their car being stolen he wanted to be able to say that he had hardly been stealthy about the operation.

He drove slowly past the supermarket, unused to the weight of the 4WD vehicle. In order to leave the village the way they had come in from the airport, they would have to drive past their hotel. Zoe wanted to stop and gather their things; Jake didn’t because the snow was coming down even heavier now, and the blanket of mist was getting thicker by the moment. Visibility was already less than twenty metres.

‘We need our passports, hon, and there are things I don’t want to leave. Come on, Jake. Two minutes.’

‘If we end up dead because of these two minutes, I’ll kill you.’

‘Fair enough.’

They pulled up outside the deserted hotel. Jake left the engine running, exhaust smoke billowing in the freezing air, as they got out. They rode the lift up to the third floor in silence, where their arrival was heralded by a tiny ping. Once in the room they opened their suitcases on the bed, flung everything in without care and clicked them shut. Then they took the suitcases down and out to the car, stowing them on the rear seat.

Jake growled. The mist had thickened. It was still oyster-grey and he fancied that it had an iridescent sheen where the electric light was caught and refracted: at another time, beautiful. The snow hadn’t abated either. It fell like thick, soft goose-feathers: the kind of snow that would have delighted any skier, but right now it was the last thing they wanted.

Visibility had dropped to about ten metres. He could only vaguely discern the shape of the buildings across the road from the hotel. What’s more, it was already late afternoon. Even without the snow the daylight was beginning to fade. Prospects for driving were not good. He would need to get a move on if they were to reach anywhere useful before the daylight winked out; and yet Jake felt the crushing potential of triggering the big avalanche if he drove faster than a crawl.

They set off at a cautious pace. Giant flakes of snow landed on the windscreen as the car made it’s laborious way along the mountain road. Then he bumped something in the road.

‘What was that?’

‘Don’t know. I think I hit the kerbstone.’

‘Keep away from the kerbstone. Drive in the middle of the road.’

‘Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that! Thanks for that well-considered advice. Driving in the middle of the road is exactly what I’m trying to do.’

But pretty soon he bumped a kerbstone again. It was impossible. He complained that he couldn’t see a thing now in the fading light. They talked about turning around but decided they had to press on. Half a kilometre or so further along the road, the car bumped, jolted and shuddered. They had driven clean off the road.

Jake jammed on the brakes. The car skidded and juddered to a halt. Leaving the engine still running, he got out of the car, but with the ground invisible under his feet he dropped a few centimetres and turned his ankle.

‘Careful as you get out!’ he shouted to Zoe.

She stepped out of the car and came round to join him. The front wheel on the driver’s side was hanging in free space. The other three wheels were fixed on rocky, snowy terrain. Jake looked down. He had no way of knowing if the drop under the driver’s-side wheel was one metre or a hundred. The misty whiteness of not knowing flashed through him like a blade.

‘Can we reverse out?’ Zoe asked.

‘Maybe we could, but I don’t want to drive any further in this fog.’

‘What? We have to go, Jake!’

He pointed to the car’s dangling wheel. ‘Got any idea what’s under there? I don’t. We can’t drive. I remember when we came here on the bus: most of the mountain road drops clean away on one side. There’s no barrier to keep you on the road, Zoe! It’s straight over the edge.’

‘Then we have to walk.’

‘Okay. We can walk.’

Zoe knew Jake well enough to hear an unspoken but in his sentences. ‘But…’ she filled in for him.

‘But here’s what I think. We’ll be walking into the night and into sub-zero temperatures. We could probably stay on the road, if we’re careful. But it’s twenty kilometres to the next village. We haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m already fucking freezing. In addition to the risk of dying of exposure on the mountain, we have the serious threat of an avalanche sweeping us off the road. Now, I know the hotel isn’t safe. But it’s a massive concrete building, and being inside there has got be safer than being out here.’

‘Jesus!’

‘You know I’m right.’

‘Are we going to drive back?’

He looked at the overhanging wheel. ‘No. I reckon we check this out in the morning, when the snow has stopped and we can see what we’re looking at. We didn’t get far. We could be back at the hotel in twenty minutes. Half an hour tops. ’