Incurable

CHAPTER 7

I still couldn’t hear too much, but I felt the pressure as the chain tightened. I could picture it, stretching and straining, starting to quiver, either unravelling at the tow bar, or at the dump bin, or tearing off the side of the dump bin. Or snapping. My mind started to race ahead, trying to work out other possibilities if the chain didn’t hold. I couldn’t think of a single thing.

There was a sort of shift, almost a grunt, from the dump bin. I heard that all right. I had a feeling that I was going to move it a few centimetres at least. If I could only get some momentum up! Tugs can tow ocean liners, can’t they? Those little tractors at the airport that pull the jumbo jets around, they had to be good role models for the Landcruiser, didn’t they? Oh God, why did you invent wheels and not put them on every dump bin?

We were inching forwards. Lucky we were, because a bullet hit the right rear window of the Landcruiser. I decided I never again wanted to be in a car where a window is shattered by a bullet. It’s terrifying. You feel like there’s been an explosion in the car, as though someone’s tossed in a bomb. There was enough space between the boxes and the window for the noise to expand. Whatever was in the boxes must have slowed it down though, because it didn’t hit the other window. I found that mildly comforting. But really, my focus was on the dump bin, and whether I could shift it. Gradually it started to move, and there was that magic moment when you’re towing anything successfully and you realise you have momentum, you have lift-off.

However, it wasn’t that easy. I soon realised there was going to be no such thing as momentum. I could hear the car engine really grunting, and wondered again what else was in the bin. Say the car was packed with books and the dump bin with concrete blocks. We’d run out of fuel before we got to the end of the car park. But I started to realise that it wasn’t just the weight of the thing, it was the bitumen as well. If this was the middle of a hot day I’d have had no chance. We’d have been in bitumen soup. I had the horrible feeling that the dump bin was actually lifting and pushing the bitumen, like when you’re chiselling a long curly shaving from a block of wood. I could picture the bitumen piling up, getting bigger and gluggier, until it brought us to a halt.

All of these thoughts were going through my head in the space of seconds, and at the same time the bullets were storming against the car. It was thang thang thang, like hail on a galvanised-iron roof, but about twenty times louder. Like popcorn popping against the lid of a saucepan, but a thousand times louder. We were getting up a little bit of speed, but I wondered how long the clutch would last. Grunt, strain, squeeze, thang thang thang, push, groan, thang thang, lurch. Every fibre in my body seemed to be strained like piano wire. If someone had strummed me I would have given off quite a note.

Yet one thing was changing. There weren’t so many bullets hitting the car. I had time to wonder why. Maybe Homer and the others were taking pot shots at them, sticking their heads up in the dump bin. I hoped not, but I also knew they might have to do that for us to survive. The trouble was that I couldn’t see in the rear-vision mirror, because of the boxes in the vehicle, and I couldn’t see the dump bin in the wing mirrors. For all I knew the dump bin was now riddled with bullets and my friends were all dead.

Perhaps we should have surrendered. Funny, that thought had never entered my head.

But perhaps the soldiers were just running out of ammunition. They must have used thousands of rounds. God knows, we couldn’t have many left either. Up till now I’d been gazing at the steering wheel, the gear stick, the accelerator and brake. I guess I thought it might work a kind of magic and make the vehicle do what I wanted. Now I looked out and around, as much as I could. Amazingly, we were going faster than a man could run, although the creaking and banging and rattling of the chain and the dump bin suggested we wouldn’t get much further. I could see soldiers in the distance, but only to the left, and I think we had put a little space between the others and us.

There was only one place I could aim for and that was the dirt track I had seen before, the one that led up to the building site. I had no idea where the boys’ motorbikes were, but the dirt road looked like it might lead to wildness of some kind. The official roads offered nothing but a suburban death, a journey that sooner or later would be halted by a roadblock or an army vehicle or a sniper. I had to go dirt.

By now I’d actually got up to a speed of between forty and fifty. We were humming along.

Wisps of white smoke drifting out of the engine put a stop to my optimism. I’ve always been one of those people who prefer not to look at something bad in case it turns out to be bad. My father always preferred to look because, he said, ‘It’s better to know! If you look and it’s good, you can stop worrying. If you look and it’s bad, you can figure out what to do about it.’

Well, I wasn’t about to stop, get out and look under the bonnet. The way I see it, smoke is always bad. But I did force myself to look at the gauges, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I’ve never seen a temperature gauge in the red before. I’d certainly never seen one at the max, with the needle practically bowed, like it was about to release an arrow. For all the terrible things I’d done to our vehicles at home over the years, I’d never cooked an engine. My mother did once, but I never had.

The wisps of smoke were strong now, getting more like a solid column. I hoped the owner of the car had insurance. The engine started coughing and heaving, like it was going to vomit. That’s how I felt too. I was pressing down harder on the accelerator but we were losing speed. It was exactly like that movie with the guy being chased by the truck and he’s trying to get up the hill but his engine’s giving him nothing any more. The only difference was that in the movie it took about ten minutes. In the car park it took about forty-five seconds. Suddenly the car was panting and dying.

Still, we were nearly at the edge of the car park. But at that point I gave up. It was a question of whether we would get a few more metres with the Toyota or whether we would be better off on foot again. Assuming there was anyone else left alive to be on foot. I think that was one of the reasons I stopped where I did. I couldn’t stand the not knowing any longer. I had to see whether they were still alive. I had to see whether my idea and my decision had killed them or saved them or somewhere in between. This was one situation where it was better to look.

Here’s a bit of historical trivia. When the United States Army invaded and won the Japanese island of Okinawa in World War II, they suffered nearly forty thousand casualties. But they also had more than twenty-six thousand men evacuated because of mental breakdowns. When General Finley told me that, in New Zealand during the war, it really shocked me. But as the war went on, it didn’t shock me much any more.

When Homer and Lee and Jeremy and Jess came crawling out of the dump bin I thought, ‘My God, what have I done to them?’

Their hair was frazzled like they’d had electric shocks, their faces were tight, but it was their eyes I noticed. I wondered how much longer they’d be members of Liberation. Would they be any good to the Scarlet Pimple after this? Their eyes reminded me of the cow I’d pulled from the dam. She was stuck so fast and was so worn out by her struggles that I’d given her a handful of illegal pills to get her moving. By the time she got onto the bank, her pupils were as big as frisbees.

Even more disturbing was that I couldn’t work out whether these four looked like the traumatised cow before I gave her the ecstasy, or the crazed cow tripping after I shoved the pills down her throat.

I shouldn’t try to be funny about it because there was nothing amusing in it for them, and I’m sure I would have looked worse if I’d shared the ride with them. But I saw at a glance that the sides of the dump bin were intact. Dented and marked, almost every flake of paint gone, but no holes. I felt a little surge of jubilation in my chest.

At least they hit the ground running. Homer looked around briefly to orientate himself. ‘Quick, go!’ he gasped. He started stumbling towards the dirt track.

‘Where are we going?’ I screamed at him as we took off

He looked around at me with a surprised expression. ‘I thought Jeremy must have told you.’

‘So I was heading the right way?’ I asked, pleased again.

He didn’t bother to answer.

At least I was reunited with my rifle. For a few moments the position of the Toyota and the dump bin had protected us from the firing. But as we got free from that cover, it started again. I’d already been pulling out any last rounds I could find in my pockets and cramming them into the magazine. The trouble is that when you do it too quickly you get in a mess and the rounds jam up with each other. ‘Patience in small things,’ my father used to say. I hardly had any bullets left anyway. It’s a feeling of lightness and relief when you take the last of them out of your pockets, because they weigh so much. It’s also a horrible feeling of panic, because once they’re used, you’re truly on your own.