Roadman Page 19

  Just as he rounded the bend, halfway up the hill, he saw a kid just ahead of him, no more than ten, running across the road to the other side. Max slammed on the brakes. The kid was just a flash of yellow and green in the dimming light and Max reckoned he was lucky he was going uphill, not downhill, otherwise he might’ve hit the stupid brat. The kid leaped over the safety barriers and disappeared down the side of the hill.

  “Watch out stupid!” Max yelled out of the driver’s window, then drove on a further hundred metres or so.

  As he pulled into the parking bay at the side of the hill, he immediately saw the reason the kid had bolted. An old Holden Kingswood was on fire. Thick black smoke plumed out of the windows cracked by the heat of the flames. The hood was up, telling Max that the hill had taken yet another victim. The engine had probably seized in a puff of steam and its owner, seeing that nothing could be done about it here, probably hitched a ride back down to Aldinga to the service station and organise a mechanic or tow truck to come and get the old girl.

  “Too late for that now,” Max said aloud, glancing over his shoulder to where he’d seen the kid disappear over the safety barrier.

  He grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels from the passenger seat and took a swig, then got out the car to investigate. The smell of burning rubber and vinyl was putrid and overwhelming. Hundreds of tiny night moths were fluttering several feet around the flames, unable to penetrate the invisible wall of heat and get to what they wanted, the light. In the distance below, he thought he heard the low acceleration of a car begin the ascent up the hill.

  Like the moths, Max was fascinated by the flames. He went around the other side of the vehicle, if only to make sure nobody was inside. The intensity of the heat was surprising. Even though he could bare the heat better than the insects fluttering above his head, he could only get within two or three metres of the chassis. This close, the smell was choking and almost made him puke. Paint, once brown, was now blackened and blistered on the doors and the roof. From what he could make through the thick smoke and heat haze, the entire interior was ablaze. There didn’t seem to be any passengers stuck inside, although he had no idea what he would’ve done had there been.

  At that moment, he caught movement on the other side of the vehicle. The boy he had seen earlier disappear over the safety barriers had returned, now just staring at him. He was wearing only a pair of khaki shorts and a faded yellow T-shirt. He had longish brown hair fringed just above his eyebrows. His vacant brown eyes stared at Max, lifeless, triggering a memory.

  “Hey kid!” Max said. “I know you, don’t I?” Then, before the kid could disappear across the road again, “Don’t be scared. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to tell anyone about this either.”

  He moved around the front of the vehicle to again try and convince the kid not to run away when the explosion happened. A blinding flash erupted from somewhere towards the rear of the old Holden. Then an almighty WHOOSH! emanated from its bowels. The pressure wave struck immediately next, slamming into him like an invisible right hook, as if Jonesy had been waiting in ambush to get his revenge, flinging him backward to the ground. He struck the asphalt first with his arse, his jeans tearing as if stripped by giant claws, then with his left shoulder. He felt the joint rip apart and dislocate, even hearing a POP! a second before the back of his head smashed into ground. Strangely, not long after, he thought he heard the rumble of car tyres coming to a stop, then the opening and closing of doors.

  He tried to open his eyelids, but the left eye was the only one that obeyed. The right eyelid was stuck, as though both top and lower lids had fused together from the heat of the explosion. In his half-dazed state, he figured it was his right side that had taken most of the impact from the fireball, although his left shoulder hurt like fuck and was screaming in agony when he tried to lift himself onto his elbows. Then his world went black as he slipped into a groggy concussion.

  Moments later, Max roused when he felt somebody’s fingers feeling for a pulse in his neck. He figured he couldn’t have been out for too long because he heard a male German accent say, “I t’ink he’s still alive.”

  “Frank?” he mumbled, opening his good left eye, but even that was blurred and the face leaning over him was indistinct. “You bastard! Did you do this to me?”

  “He’s delirious,” the male voice said to an unseen companion behind him. Then to Max, “It’s okay, son. Vee can help you. Vee vill call ze ambulance.”

  Max tried to rise onto his elbows again but collapsed back down in agony when his left shoulder squealed in protest. “No,” he said, feeling himself fade into unconsciousness again, “no ambulance. No doctors. I’ll be fine.”

  Max then heard a female voice speak, also with a thick German accent. It came to him far, far away, like the other side of a valley. “Andreas, dis man looks very bad. Vee need to do something.”

  “I know, Isabelle, I know,” the male replied. “Do you know ze emergency number in dis country?”

  “Are you Germans?” Max asked. His throat was dry and it burned like fuck when he spoke.

  “Ja,” the two strangers replied in unison.

  Max knew he was about to slip back into unconsciousness, but for how long this time he didn’t know. Perhaps forever. “Well that’s just fuck’n great,” he said, and his world went black again.

  Saturday, 25th October 2008

  Dear Diary,

  I’m really worried about Max. We were supposed to catch up last night after I got back from work, but he didn’t show. We haven’t seen much of each other this week, as mostly I’ve been rostered on the late shift, and I know he was as keen as I was to get together last night, especially being a Friday. His car wasn’t in the driveway when I got home. I knocked on his door anyway but there was no answer. I looked in his lounge room window, but the whole place was pitch black. No lights, no movement, nothing. To double check I also went around the side of his house to his backyard and checked to see if he was in the kitchen. I even checked inside his shed through the little window but it was as dark inside as his house, although, oddly, I thought I saw something that looked like a didgeridoo lying on the floor.

  Anyhow, he wasn’t home, that was for sure, so I figured he must have gone out with the boys after work. Which, actually, isn’t something he’d likely do, knowing Max, but it’s what I figured anyhow. Perhaps it was somebody’s birthday drinks?

  So I went home, slipped into my nightie, poured myself a glass of wine and sat down in front of the telly and watched a re-run of Terminator (yes, I know, but believe me there was nothing else worth watching) while I waited to hear Max’s car turn into his driveway. I must have drifted off to sleep because when I woke up the movie had ended and the late night shopping channel was on trying to sell me the newest, most amazing, never-before-seen-at-this-price, onion chopper. Yeah right. How about a cure for lung cancer? Then I might be interested.

  I checked to see if Max’s car was in the driveway before I went to bed, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t there the next morning either when I got up to make dad his breakfast. Dad told me not to worry, that Max could’ve decided to go down to his campsite near Serena for the weekend. Which was true, I guess, and probably the most likely thing Max would’ve done. I told dad he was probably right. What I didn’t say was that Max would’ve told me or left me a note telling me that’s what he was doing. Which just adds to the worry. Plus, I’d be a bit miffed he went down there without me.

  Worse, Max doesn’t even have a mobile phone. I can’t even ring him, assuming of course he’s got coverage where he is. I guess I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow evening when he gets home.

  Sunday, 26th October 2008

  Dear Diary,

  It’s now 10 o’clock in the evening and Max still isn’t home.

  I’m now super worried.

  Monday, 27th October 2008

  Dear Diary,

  I’m now starting to freak out a little. I’ve just got back from day shift and Ma
x’s car still isn’t in the driveway. I’ll wait two more hours to see if he’s back from work. If not, I’ll start ringing the hospitals and the police. I really, really am so scared now.

  Something bad has happened. I just know it.

  CHAPTER 12

  Max started to wake up but kept his eyes shut for fear of aggravating the mother of all headaches he now had. His skull felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to the back of his head, someone like that fucker Jonesy. Is that what happened? Is that why his head felt like it would split in two every time he tried to turn it? Did he get in another fight with Jonesy at work? Nah, Jonesy couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag. The prick might’ve ambushed him though. Hid behind a wall and waited until he walked past, then stepped out and smashed him in the back of the head with a shovel or baseball bat.

  But that didn’t seem right. He couldn’t remember anything about a recent fight. Jonesy had been given his marching orders by Bill O’Driscoll, that he remembered, and the prick had taken off with his tail between his legs, swearing and cursing and telling the whole world to fuck off, but it was all bluff and fuck’n bravado. Nah, he hadn’t got into a fight with him, so what the fuck happened?

  He tried to force his eyes open, but only the left one actually obeyed. The right stayed shut, as if his eyelids were stitched together. From what he could make out through one good eye, greying white curtains had been pulled most of the way around him, preventing him from actually seeing beyond a radius of ten feet, his own private isolation cell. In the background beyond the curtains he could hear a jumbled din of somebody coughing, the impatient shrill of a telephone and muted hurried shuffles. On top of that, slicing through the jumble of noise, a distant machine was beeping in constant rhythm, Bip!… Bip!… Bip!… Bip! He could also smell disinfectant, which made his nostrils tingle and sniff. He dared not sneeze for fear of igniting the tinderbox in his skull into one hell of an explosion.

  Beneath him he could feel that he was lying on hard pillows and a hard mattress, so he tried to prop himself up to figure out just where the hell he was, even though he already had a pretty damn good idea. The instant he moved pain shot through his left shoulder like somebody was jamming a crowbar right through it into the mattress. That, along with a jackhammer chiselling the inside of his brains apart. He squealed, “Aaargh!” and flopped back down on the bed.

  “Max, don’t move darling,” he heard a voice next to him. It was Lorraine, no mistaking it, and she sounded worried. “You’re all banged up from the explosion.”

  Max felt her hand caressing his forehead. He opened his good eye again and turned to face the direction of her voice. He winced as pain again shot through his skull at the sudden movement, but it settled after a moment, allowing him to focus on her face. Lorraine was sitting in a chair next to his bed and, although she was smiling, her eyes were bloodshot and large tears were running down both her cheeks. Behind her, the sun shone through a large window, framing her in a halo of golden light. The thought flashed through his mind that he had died and he was looking at an angel. But a quick reality check put paid to that idea. Firstly, he was pretty fuck’n sure nothing existed after you died, but if something did happen, where he was going it sure wasn’t the place you found fuck’n angels. Secondly, the pain eating away at the back of his head and the needle of agony piercing his left shoulder told him plain enough that he wasn’t dead. Not yet anyway.

  So I am in a fuck’n hospital?

  “Explosion?” he asked. The back of his throat hurt like hell when he spoke, and his voice sounded, to him anyway, raspy and croaking, like Lorraine’s dad after he’d been racked with a bad coughing fit. God he was thirsty.

  Lorraine kept caressing his forehead as she had. “Yes, darling. A car exploded and you were badly injured.”

  Suddenly, he remembered. It hadn’t been a fight with Jonesy; it had been a fight with the God of Bad Fuck’n Luck on the road up Sellick’s Hill to Serena. An invisible hammer had come crashing down on him with a mighty WHAM! and messed him up right fuck’n proper. He also remembered he hadn’t been alone.

  “What about the boy?” he managed, his throat still burning.

  Lorraine glanced to somebody on the other side of the bed near the curtains, shook her head and shrugged her shoulders, then turned back to Max. He tried to turn his head to see who she had silently communicated with, but the pain in his head and shoulder prevented him.

  “There was nobody else at the scene, my darling,” she said, and once again glanced over the bed to whoever was there, “except the two people who found you unconscious.”

  As if she had cued their introduction, the two strangers moved within his field of vision closer to the bed. Now he could finally get a closer look at them without inducing stabs of agony through the back of his head or shoulder. They too were smiling, obviously glad he was going to pull through this accident without any major injury, but they weren’t wearing happy smiles. What struck him most was the palpable sadness they both carried.

  The excess baggage we all lug through life, he mused.

  The couple were in their mid-fifties, he guessed, and their faces seemed vaguely familiar. Both were tall, almost of the same height, and slender. In fact, although he instinctively knew them to be male and female, they reminded him of identical twins.

  Shit, it’s Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

  Both were greying. Both had similar, short cropped hair. Both had crystal blue eyes and a larger than usual nose hooking toward thin lips and a cleft chin. More disconcerting though was the way they dressed—identically—green sleeveless hiking jackets worn over creaseless white polo neck shirts that were tucked neatly and efficiently into crisp blue jeans.

  Germans!

  He knew this even before either of them managed to say a word and give away their accent. If he dared to look over the edge of the bed down at their feet, he reckoned he would most likely see two pairs of glaring white socks and sandals.

  From the side of the bed Lorraine said, “Max, these two lovely people found you and called the ambulance, which brought you here to Noarlunga Hospital. They’ve been checking on you every day since you were admitted on Friday. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for nearly three days.”

  Lorraine then introduced the couple as Andreas and Isabelle, tourists from Germany, confirming his initial thoughts. Max recalled the sound of approaching wheels and voices whilst he’d been dazed and prostrate on the ground just after the explosion.

  “Ja, and how are you feelink now?” Andreas said, smiling his sad smile. Isabelle was standing beside him, smiling likewise, clasping a white paper bag.

  For people on holiday, they don’t seem to be having a fuck’n good time, Max thought.

  “Been better,” he said, his voice still raspy, “but I’ve also been worse. I’ll pull though. Thanks for calling the ambulance.”

  “Ve only did vat anyone else vould do,” Andreas said, fishing out a card from his wallet.

  The machine beyond the closed curtains continued to beep in rhythm to an anonymous heartbeat: Bip!… Bip!… Bip!… Bip! Somebody else in the ward coughed and farted loudly at the same time, then belched, and for a horrid moment Max thought he was stuck in here with his fuck’n next door neighbour.

  “I drove your vehicle to park at ze garage in Aldinga,” Andreas continued. “I didn’t t’ink it should be left on ze side of ze road, considering vat happened to ze ozzer vehicle. Here’s ze garage card. Zey also haff your car keys.”

  Max recalled the flames and smoke billowing out of the broken windows of the old Kingswood and suddenly he had visions of the Cherokee ending up the same way. He thanked Andreas for his thoughtfulness and reached out to take the garage card, but his right arm felt leaden and sluggish and his hand was so swollen it was like trying to pick up a pin with a boxing glove on. The tightening of the skin and the reddish burns on the back of his hand validated his impressions. Sensing his frustration, Lorraine took the card from Andreas
instead, placing it in the top drawer of the bedside cabinet for safekeeping.

  Isabella also handed Lorraine the white paper bag she was holding, a pharmacy bag as it turned out. “Ve also bought you some ointment for your burns,” she said to Max.

  Lorraine removed the bottle of aloe vera cream from the bag and placed it on top of the bedside cabinet. The mention of his burns brought Max’s attention to his swollen right hand and face, which now started to sting a little worse.

  “Ze doctors said it vill be okay to use now.”

  Max was humbled by the care and kind-heartedness of the two strangers. They owed him nothing. They were well within their rights to just drive on by without so much as a glance to the poor fucker who’d been unlucky enough to catch the full force of the petrol explosion. Yet they’d done more than what anyone else in the same situation would’ve done, as Andreas had humbly suggested. They’d made sure is car was safe. They’d visited him every day in hospital to make sure he was improving. They’d bought him some burn ointment. In fact, they’d done more in the past three days to care for his wellbeing than his fucker of a father had done in thirty fuck’n years.

  And I thought all Germans were the fuck’n same.

  He decided he owed them to at least be a little friendlier. Not one for small talk, he found it difficult to actually think of something to say to them. “So, is this the first time you’ve been to Australia?” he said after a moment.

  Tears suddenly welled in Isabella’s eyes and, as if he’d done it a million times before, Andreas removed a sparkling clean, precisely folded white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to his wife to dab her eyes. For a second Max thought their holiday had become a holiday from hell because of his accident, and he immediately regretted asking them. The truth, however, he soon heard, was so much fuck’n worse.