John Marsden - Incurable

I started the engine. Looking back, I could only see Jeremy and Lee. This was good news, as it suggested that Homer and Jess were already inside. Normally I wouldn’t have been too keen on the idea of Jess being in a confined, darkish space with either Homer or Lee, but I was guessing that whatever was in the dump bin, if it wasn’t concrete blocks, was likely to be rotting fruit and vegetables, or the contents of the mall’s rubbish bins, or the out-of-date sausages from the butcher in the supermarket.

Anyway, they would have other things on their minds. As did I. I saw Jeremy sliding over the top into the dump bin. It looked like he went in headfirst. Then Homer’s head and shoulders popped up. He must have found something to stand on, possibly Jess, and he dragged Lee, as Lee’s feet scrabbled at the sides, trying to find a foothold.

Well, now to test C in the equation. Would the Landcruiser tow the dump bin?

Elements A and B were also about to be tested, and tested to their absolute limits. Algebra doesn’t allow any room for doubt or ambiguities. Either X represents 1.7852801, or it doesn’t. It was the same here in the car park. Either the dump bin resisted bullets, or the people inside it were dead. Either the driver of the Landcruiser would escape getting shot, or else everyone was dead. Either the Landcruiser would tow the dump bin, or else we were all dead.

Not much doubt or ambiguity there.

I shoved it into four-wheel drive, low range, low gear, low everything. If there’d been an ‘activate bullock train’ button, I would have pressed that. It was an automatic, so there wasn’t much more I could do except to go easy on the take-off. I started easing down the accelerator with my right foot.

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.