by Betty Webb
Then me.
The air itself roared louder than the cries of a hundred dying men, but over the roar I could hear shouts and laughter from falling berserkers.
“Earthquake!” someone shouted.
A native Californian, I knew an earthquake when I felt it, so I didn’t try to get up, just lay there as the ground rocked and rolled beneath me. After the first startling seconds, I’d relaxed. There was nothing to fear. Earthquakes could be scary, but experiencing one on a level beach felt much less frightening than enduring one in a crowded city. At Vik there were no skyscrapers or freeways to collapse, just a harmless series of bumps to ride out. Heck, I felt right at home.
“Thor strikes the ground with his mighty hammer!” Bryndis called, grinning.
There was no fear in her voice. As she’d once told me, Iceland averaged several earthquakes per week, and its inhabitants accepted them as a fixture of life. The quakes seldom caused any damage. Most were mere tremors, so minor they were hardly noticed. But this one felt like a California-sized whopper.
The roar in the air grew louder, then more specific. Curious, I shifted around to face the direction of the increased noise and saw something that made my sense of invulnerability vanish. Beyond the green hills of Vik, a thick column of smoke rose from glacier-capped Katla.
The volcano was erupting.
Chapter Twenty-three
At that moment, the loudest siren I’d ever heard shrieked an alarm.
“It’s Katla!” Bryndis yelled.
Her words were echoed throughout the film set. “Katla! Katla is erupting!”
Almost as one, berserkers, Visigoths, Huns, and ninjas leapt to their feet. Most headed inland, away from the ocean, toward the towering hills and toward Katla itself. A smaller group ran past us, splashing through the marsh.
I scrambled to my feet, but as I stood there, trying to make sense of what was happening, Bryndis grabbed me by the arm. “To the car!”
Her urgency spurred me into a run. We followed the berserkers, emerging with them from the marsh to the beach, then sprinted along the black sand, around the basalt cliff face—which still stood firm despite the earthquake—and through the now-deserted set of Death on Orion 12. The astronauts had already vanished, and probably not into their space ship.
By the time we reached the Volvo, I was panting so hard I could barely talk. As she turned the key in the ignition, I asked, “Why…” pant, “…are the others…” pant, “…running toward Katla?” Pant. “Are they…” pant, “…nuts?”
She appeared as out of breath as me, so she didn’t answer right away, just sped out of the parking lot behind several that were driving like crazy toward the Ring Road.
When we caught our breaths, Bryndis finally answered, “Most of them are taking shelter at the hotel. Like the church, it is a designated safe house.”
“They’re not worried about lava?”
“The bigger problem is the glacial flow. The eruption will melt the ice cap, so we want to get out of the lowlands before the runoff reaches the village. Or the Ring Road.”
I looked behind, at the hotel high on the hill, at the beckoning church just below it “But what if we don’t make it?”
Despite our sprint down the beach, Bryndis sounded calm. “Then we had all that fine exercise for nothing. If the glacial flow has already cut us off—and I hope we ran fast enough—we will turn around and drive back up to the hotel. Do not worry, Teddy, we will be fine. No one got hurt when Eyjafjallajökull blew its top, and no one will get hurt now. The bar at the hotel will do good business and so will the minister at the church, who will be attempting to save the souls of terrified tourists as I speak. We are only hurrying like this because I do not want to get stuck in Vik and miss work. Magnus would be so sad.”
She swerved to avoid clipping a brown van with lettering on the side that said, TUMI’S FILM CATERING. She and the van’s driver, a bearded man, traded waves. He shouted something to her in Icelandic. Whatever it was, it made her laugh.
Me, I didn’t feel so jolly. As we sped along the Ring Road, Katla’s plume of smoke grew taller and wider. The smoke was white as the heat from the caldera melted the ice cap, but I foresaw a big problem once it turned dark. Ash. Rocks. The detritus of a billion years. Try as I might, I couldn’t help envisioning the thousands of people smothered by ash or flash-burned to death at Pompeii, their bodies entombed by the ferocity of Vesuvius. And as dismissive as Bryndis had been about the threat of lava, you couldn’t go anywhere in Iceland without seeing vast stretches of moss-covered lava. Underneath all that solidified magma, I knew, lay the remains of numerous farms and the people and animals that once populated them.
Depressing thoughts, almost as depressing as the one I’d had after leaving the hotel. It was a mistake to wait until we got back to Reykjavik to give my information to Inspector Haraldsson. It would be wiser to call him right now, I decided, reaching into my jacket pocket for my cell phone.
It wasn’t there. Mystified, I thought back to the last couple of hours. I had used the camera at the puffin rookery, and at the hotel, where I’d shown my pictures to the Geronimos. And I remembered putting it back into my jacket pocket before we left. Then I remembered falling to the ground when the earthquake struck, my run along the beach…
“Bryndis, can I borrow…?”
“Oh, rats!” Bryndis’ voice cut me off. “We are too late!”
I’d been so busy worrying about my phone that I hadn’t noticed the Volvo slowing down. Now, as I looked ahead past the cars and vans in front of us, I saw a line of brake lights, and ahead of them, a glistening river where none previously existed. Not your ordinary river, either. This one, as it swept across the highway, carried great chunks of ice, some larger than Tumi’s catering van. The river was widening by the second.
Chasing after the glacial river was a thick blanket of white-gray mist. If we got caught up in that, we’d have no visibility at all, and might even drive off in the wrong direction.
Right into the path of that floe-filled river.
Icelanders may be courageous, but they’re not fools. To keep their countrymen from being swept away by the runoff, two Visigoths stood in the middle of the road, waving their battle axes to direct traffic away from the river. One by one the column of cars made their U-turns and headed back toward Vik. A Ford Bronco filled with berserkers drove past us, then a Chevy filled with ninjas and Huns. Hard on the Chevy’s heels, a Fiat stuffed with astronauts.
Finally, us.
As we sped by the cars still awaiting their own turnaround, Bryndis said, “Looks like it’s the Hótel Brattholt for us, Teddy. Katla, that witch, must be feeling pretty pleased with herself.”
***
When we made it back to the hotel, we found a bacchanal in progress.
In the crowded dining hall, the American director of Berserker! stood atop a banquet table, leading a pack of berserkers, Visigoths, Huns, ninjas, and tourists in a rousing rendition of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” The more timid evacuees huddled together at a table near the picture window, where they added to the noise level by screaming every time Katla upchucked a piece of ice.
The place smelled like a distillery. Ulfur, in a berserker costume—I hadn’t recognized him earlier on the set—displayed his canniness as a hotelier by inventing a drink he called Katla’s Kiss, a vodka-Brennivín-crème de menthe concoction every bit as evil as the old witch herself. Served in a heavy pewter tankard, it tasted terrible (I know because Ragnar shared his with Bryndis and me) but it packed an alcoholic wallop. Most of the tourists took one sip, then passed along their drink to a friendly berserker. The Icelanders guzzled the foul concoction so rapidly that Ulfur ran out of tankards midway through the second round and switched to water goblets brandished with the slogan, “Welcome to Iceland, land of fire and ice.”
Calling Inspector Haraldsso
n amidst such clamor was pointless, but there was no way I would walk down that long, dark hall to the relative quiet of the ladies’ room. Too dangerous, what with a double murderer hanging around. It was safer to stay here in the brightly lit dining area and hope for a lull in the racket.
“Here, Teddy,” Ragnar chortled, thrusting the pewter tankard at me again. “Katlas’ Kiss will grow hair on your chest!”
I gave him a pained smile. “That’s the last place I want hair.”
Tougher than I, Bryndis not only took another sip but ordered a Katla’s Kiss of her own. When it arrived, she matched Ragnar drink for drink.
You’d think Ulfur would have been thrilled to have his hotel so crowded with paying customers, but he wasn’t. He was still despondent over the theft of his rifle, a.k.a. the supposed murder weapon. From what I was able to overhear from the table next to where we were standing, the loss of the firearm had left his henhouse open to raids by neighborhood foxes, and Ulfur was now chickenless. Which meant eggless.
“No omelets,” he grumbled to the American couple sitting next to us, who ordered the sveppir eggjakaka, an omelet. “The foxes have killed all my chickens. May I suggest some nice cod, fresh from the sea this morning, served with beurre blanc and duchess potatoes? Or if you’re feeling daring, how about some hákarl, guaranteed to make you strong as a Viking.”
The couple passed on the hákarl—smart of them, since it was rotted shark—and opted for the cod.
When we had first arrived, I’d noticed the Geronimos still sitting at the same long table as before. Their lunch finished, they’d moved on to drinks. Most appeared to have tried at least one Katla’s Kiss, but Lucinda had three pewter mugs in front of her. Her mouth was rough enough when she was sober, and I hated to think what it would be like now. Yet her hair, released from its tight bun, fell to her shoulders in a silky wave. The change lent a surprising softness to her thin face, reminding me that she was younger than she sometimes acted, possibly still in her forties. Maybe the reason she had let her hair down was the presence of Oddi. She did seem to be sitting rather close to the burly tour guide.
Lucinda’s daughter Judy sat across from her, with Tab Cooper’s arm around her shoulders. He was on his second Katla’s Kiss, but Judy was still sipping at her first. Same with Elizabeth, Adele Cobb and the Walshes, slow drinkers all.
Considering what I now knew, I didn’t like the idea of joining the Geronimos, so I tried to hide behind Ragnar, but it was too late. Elizabeth had seen me.
She waved. “Teddy! Come join us!”
Thus caught, I wandered over and tried to act casual. “What a surprise, seeing you folks again. I thought you’d be back in Reykjavik by now.”
“Stupid volcano screwed that,” grumped Lucinda. Despite her softer look, her tongue remained sharp, if slurred.
As I stood there, the thick mist that had chased Bryndis and me along the Ring Road crept up from the valley below to encircle the hotel. There was a moment of silence from the beer-on-the-wall singers as we watched the curtain of grayish-white mist float by the picture window, but a few seconds later, the chorus struck back up.
“Mind if I sit down?” I asked the Geronimos.
Lucinda scowled. “As a matter of fact, I do, and if you…”
Elizabeth waved her into silence. “What Lucinda means to say is that we’d be delighted.” The pewter tankard in front of her had hardly been touched, but the strain of the past week had given her complexion an unhealthy pallor. Her raven locks had dulled, and the crow’s feet threading the corner of her eyes cut deeper. But considering the fact that her husband and a friend had died within two days of each other, I guess you could say she was doing as well as could be expected.
Ignoring Lucinda’s baleful stare, I sat down. “Long time no see, Oddi,” I cracked, shrugging off my jacket. “Sure is hot in here.”
“I do not consider an hour to be a ‘long time.’”
“Here in Iceland it seems to be. The sun hardly sets before it rises again.”
He grinned. “You are correct, of course. We view time differently here. But I see you do not enjoy the Katla’s Kiss drink.” As befitting someone shuttling around a van full of tourists, he had hardly touched his own. Not that he would be driving anywhere until Katla calmed down and ice floes no longer slid across the Ring Road.
“I’m leaving Katla’s Kisses to my betters,” I answered. “I’ll order a Coke when Ulfur gets to us, which judging by how busy he and the waitress are, may be a long time. By the way, why aren’t you acting in one of those movies?” I teased. “Half of Iceland seems to be in one or the other.”
“Until they are given permission to catch a flight back home, I will be driving for them. But my father, who normally runs the gift shop down in the village, picks up work on films whenever he can. He and my mother are at the center table, singing with the other actors. Does not my mother have a pretty voice?”
The revelers had reached seventy-eight bottles of beer on the wall, and the purest voice among them emanated from a tiny gray-haired woman dressed as some sort of pagan priestess. She had her arm around a man who, despite his age, looked just like Oddi, except that he wore the bearskin cloak of a Visigoth.
“My father tried to kill my mother this morning,” Oddi bragged. “But she killed him with a curse instead.”
“He looks no worse for wear.”
“Like Ragnar, he knows how to die safely.”
“You know Ragnar?”
“He is my cousin.”
I blinked. “I guess that’s no surprise since I was given to understand that everyone in Iceland is pretty much related to everyone else.”
“True, but Ragnar’s mother is my mother’s sister. We are quite close.”
I looked back at Ragnar, who had his arm around Bryndis. Both had joined in singing the “Ninety-Nine Bottles” anthem, which was now down to seventy-six bottles. From behind, Ragnar looked just like Oddi. Come to think of it, the hotelier at Stykkishólmur had strongly resembled Bryndis.
What must it be like to live in a country where you knew you were related to the stranger you just met? Perhaps familial connections accounted for Iceland’s almost nonexistent murder rate. For instance, if you were robbing a bank, you wouldn’t want to shoot the security guard because he might be your cousin. Then again, being related to everyone did pose problems of the dating variety. I remembered Bryndis’ demonstration of the Accidental Incest App. It…
“Good heavens, Teddy, what are you thinking about?” Elizabeth’s voice had a smile in it.
“That Iceland is very, very different than the U.S.”
“It certainly is. We don’t have volcanoes. Not active ones, anyway.”
“You’re forgetting Mount St. Helens. And there’s a super volcano under Yellowstone.”
She pulled a face. “Silly me. I even mentioned Mount St. Helens four books back in Italian Passion, where Jade L’Amour worked on a dig near Pompeii. She compared life below an Italian volcano to life below an American one, and deduced that the Italians were much more relaxed about it than we are. Just like these Icelanders. Katla blows its top, and what do they do? They have a party! Simon would so have enjoyed this. Still, I’m sorry he ever dreamed up this trip, but he was like that, generous to a fault.”
Lucinda couldn’t let that go without making another snarky remark. “He was certainly generous enough with his sexual favors.”
Elizabeth, her face almost as red as my I BREAK FOR REDHEADS tee-shirt, shot Lucinda an angry look. “You should know.” Then she stood up. “Ulfur will never make it over here, and I need another Coke. How about you, Teddy? Or maybe wine? The chardonnay isn’t bad. My treat.”
“Nothing for me, thanks.”
“You sure?”
At my nod, Elizabeth looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged and wove her way through the singing crowd to the bar.
<
br /> Oddi spoke up, but his voice was gentle. “As much as I admire fire in a woman, Lucinda, your words are unkind.”
She sniffed. “Elizabeth can handle it. Everyone seems to forget that Arizona is a community-property state, so she got her fifty percent cut as soon as the state released the money. More than three hundred million dollars! But did Ms. Famous Author offer to treat us? No, Simon did that, out of his share. Say what you will about the man, he didn’t have a miserly bone in his body.”
Maybe not, but unless I was wrong, Elizabeth’s comment to Lucinda—You should know—inferred that Simon had slept with Lucinda at least once. After Simon’s affair with Adele, then Dawn, and now Lucinda, and God knows who else, that wasn’t generous, it was promiscuous.
A few minutes later Elizabeth returned with her Coke. “Skál,” she said, before chugging down half the glass in one gulp. “Skál and ‘takk’ are the limits of my Icelandic.”
“Maybe you’ll learn more next time you visit.”
“The country’s magnificent and the people are wonderful, but there are just too many bad memories here.”
Purely to change the subject, I said, “You must be on the road a lot to write the kind of books you do. Where are you sending Jade next time? The Gobi Desert seems like a perfect place for one of her adventures.”
Her face stiffened. “I’m not taking that girl anywhere ever again. In fact, I have a new series in mind, a historical set in…Come to think of it, I’d better not tell you or you might beat me to the punch.”
“Fat chance of that. I can hardly bring myself to write a letter these days, let alone an entire book.” Then what she said sunk in. “Wait a minute. Did you just tell me you’re dropping the Jade L’Amour series?”
She nodded.
“But why? They’re always best-sellers! And won’t Jade’s fans be crushed if you leave them in the lurch like that?”
“Nineteen books about her are more than enough.” Her tone, almost as harsh as Lucinda’s usual grate, ended the discussion.
