Kjell is new to the transport business and already sick of boring shifts. Sundar Sridhar, his regular partner, is an Indian immigrant with 25 years of experience in Norway, an unshakeable calm, and a thermos full of spiced tea. Together, they’re the boss’s “dream team.” Or, as they suspect, simply the only two dumb enough to take the night shift.
But when the GPS directs them to a place called Helgrind, and their first delivery recipients include Her Eminence Hel herself and the hound Garm, their routine shift takes a dramatic turn. Between attacks from metal-gnawing rats and a deadly bridge with no railing, Kjell must navigate a world utterly foreign to him, while Sundar insists the rules of Health, Safety and Environment still apply.
Can two ordinary men survive an evening of transdimensional courier work?
Think Terry Pratchett meets Norse mythology (and modern logistics):
an absurd and wildly funny story about friendship, cultural collisions, bureaucracy, and why good customer service is the only way to handle a hungry mythological guard dog.
Chapter 1
Sundar reaches for a new cup of masala from the thermos while Twisted Sister screams “We’re Not Gonna Take It” through the van’s speakers.
Outside, the snow glitters in the darkness, and light snow is falling across the road. Kjell drums his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and rolls his eyes before turning the volume down.
“Perhaps we should ditch that ancient eighties music?”
Sundar raises his eyebrows slightly.
“I must strongly urge you to concentrate on your driving. You drive. I decide the music. That’s just the way it is.”
He turns the volume back up a notch or two.
“Some soothing tunes would be nice, honestly,” Kjell mutters under his breath. A few solitary snowflakes land on the windshield and slowly melt. Sundar turns up the heat in his seat. His white turban and well-groomed beard give him a dignified look, even as he wraps the blanket tighter around himself with a sigh of resignation. He takes a sip and squints over at Kjell, who is sitting there in jeans and a t-shirt as if it weren’t below freezing outside. Three-day stubble and messy hair. Norwejian, he thinks, exasperated.
“Twenty-five years in Norway, and I still freeze just as much. One would think the body would have gotten used to it,” Sundar says, shivering.
“Twenty-five years?” Kjell grins and turns onto a dark side road, his gaze darting between the road and the mirrors.
“I would have packed my bags and gone back to India ages ago. Kicked the snow off my flip-flops.”
Sundar looks offended. “India is large. I am Punjabi.”
“Punjab?” Kjell slaps his thigh and laughs. “Over there, I suppose the biggest problem is deciding which fan to turn on?”
“In fact,” Sundar says with a professorial tone, “Punjab experiences both very high and low temperatures. But this—” He gestures toward the winter cold outside, where the fir trees stand like black shadows against the snow. “This would be a natural disaster. You Norwegians pretend that cold doesn’t exist. T-shirt in fifteen degrees below zero? That’s not tough. That’s insanity.”
A trailer passes them in the opposite direction, the only vehicle they have seen for several minutes. The lights gradually fade behind them until it disappears completely.
Kjell shrugs. “It’s about being tough, man. Look at you! Like you’re heading for an expedition to the North Pole.”
“I prefer to call it being sensible.”
Sundar takes another sip of tea.
“Besides, there is an art to dressing with dignity, regardless of the weather.”
“Dignity?” Kjell pulls at his t-shirt. “This is my statement. Here comes a guy who doesn’t give a shit.“ He corrects himself. “Er, who doesn’t care.”
Sundar raises an eyebrow. “So I see. It works especially well when your teeth are chattering.”
A pothole causes Sundar to spill a little tea on his trousers.
“With all due respect, could you please be more careful with your driving?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Kjell says.
“But that’s why we got the night shift, right? Three small packages, that’s all, he said.” He irritably pokes the GPS.
Sundar carefully wipes his trousers with a napkin.
“And why didn’t you say no?”
“Me say no?” Kjell laughs nervously. “Because I’m new, obviously. Who wants to be that guy who says no? And you? You are too kind. ‘Dream team,’ my ass. Perfect mules more like.”
Absent-mindedly, he starts drumming on the steering wheel.
“This steering wheel is shit-slow.” he mutters.
“Damn cold too.”
“Piece of junk.”
Sundar looks over at him. “Did you say something?”
“Nothing.”
“In two hundred meters, turn right,” the GPS voice rattles monotonously.
Sundar squints at his phone. “Are you absolutely sure about this? I can’t even find this road on the map. That is not a good sign.”
Kjell shrugs, feeling his neck muscles crack after hours of driving. He grips the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turn white before catching himself and letting go. “The GPS doesn’t lie. Or, not very often. Mostly.”
“Mm-hmm, if we end up in a ditch, I won’t mention a word that I warned you. But I will remind you of it. Every. Single. Day.”
Kjell presses his lips together. The road ahead of them is dark and unsettlingly quiet. Even the snow seems to be falling slower now. The steering wheel feels increasingly cold. He drums more so as not to stiffen up. He turns off the main road and onto a narrower gravel path. He leans forward and squints at the road ahead. The fog lies thick between the fir trees, and the van’s lights only make it more opaque. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’“ streams out of the speakers, which, ironically, does not lighten the mood.
Sundar straightens up in his seat. “This really does not feel very reassuring.” He studies his phone again. “By my calculations, this shortcut was supposed to save us twenty minutes, but I’m starting to have my doubts.”
“Gravel roads. Always the end of the journey,” Kjell nods. “But we still have a ways to go before we arrive. But twenty minutes is twenty minutes, right? The sooner we get this lousy job done, the better.”
“Turn left at the next intersection,” the GPS interrupts him.
“Yes, exactly,” Sundar says stiffly. “The sooner we get done with... what exactly did the boss say these packages contained?”
Kjell shrugs his shoulders. “He didn’t say anything. Just ‘it’s urgent, you’re the only ones I trust.’ What are we, like? James Bond and Turban Q? He should’ve asked some other gullible idiots for this delivery.”
A branch scrapes against the side of the van with a high, screeching sound that makes both Kjell and Sundar jump.
“Jeez, I didn’t even see it coming in this goddamn fog,” Kjell says.
Sundar carefully places the cup down in the cup holder.
“It’s not that I suspect anything illegal, but...” He says and adjusts his turban with a mildly resigned expression. “I’m just saying that it would be bhut kathin samasya if we became involved in something inappropriate. Like smuggling. Or worse, explosives.”
“Samsaya?” Kjell laughs loudly. “Is that Indian for deep shit in the donkey berry, or what?”
Sundar gives him a look that could have melted ice off the windshield. “It means ‘a big problem.’ Just like your understanding of foreign languages.”
Kjell grins broadly, as if he had just won some invisible argument.
“Well, if it is explosives, then it’s your samasa–samsaya, or whatever you said, not mine.”
Sundar shakes his head and mutters quietly to himself: “Samsaya, indeed...”
“In one hundred meters, turn left,” the GPS insists.
“I’m just stating the facts,” Sundar interjects. “Night delivery. Unknown contents. Remote road. There are certain elements here that raise a measure of concern.”
Kjell frowns. The road grows narrower, and the gravel darker. The fog thickens. “Elements that raise concern, indeed,” he mutters. “I’m having one of those elements right now.” He leans forward over the steering wheel, blinking his eyes hard. “By the way, if we suddenly see a clown standing by the roadside with an axe, I quit on the spot.”
“Highway to Hell” starts playing. Kjell straightens up in his seat, his shoulders creeping up towards his ears as he leans forward over the steering wheel. He stops drumming his fingers. “Hey, I thought you were sticking to eighties, pop?”
“This isn’t my music,” Sundar says stiffly. “I absolutely do not have AC/DC on my playlist. In fact, I’m quite sure we just heard the opening of Frankie’s Relax.”
“The song’s fine, but there’s a huge difference between hearing it in the middle of the day and in the middle of the night, damn it,” Kjell says.
The radio changes song again, as if listening to Kjell’s objection. This time, it jumped to something that sounds like an old cow call played backwards. The fog presses against the windows now, denser and denser, until it almost seems alive.
“Well,” Sundar says with a dramatic pause, “if this is what the youth are listening to today, we all have bigger concerns than this shortcut.”
“Tell me something, is fog normal in the middle of winter?”
Before Sundar manages to answer, the GPS beeps.
“Damn it, what is it now? Don’t tell me that piece of junk has stopped working,” Kjell says, annoyed.
Sundar points out the window. “Kjell, look around you.”
Kjell looks out the window. It’s hard to see anything because of the fog, but that surely looks like some kind of gate over there? “Where exactly are we?”
The GPS came alive again with a crackle like electronic laughter. “Ha ha ha.“
Kjell looks at Sundar, “What in the hell...?”
“You have reached Helgrind,” it says in the same electronic voice.
Sundar straightens up in his seat. “I strongly suggest we turn around. Immediately.”
Kjell stares ahead, while the radio, on its own, starts playing something reminiscent of church bells and wolf howls. The headlights flicker. “Yes, I completely agree,” he says with a nervous smile. He bites his lower lip, a nervous habit he hasn’t had since he was a child. “But... er... what do we do if the car won’t let me?”
Sundar closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath, and says: “Then it’s bhut kathin samasya.”
The fog swallows the last remnants of light around them.
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