Death In The Wind

CHAPTER FOUR - A Road Trip Through Hell

‘Oh god,’ I moaned, looking out the window, seeing everything I saw before. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

Seth cleared his throat. ‘Tell me about it,’ he muttered.

‘How can you just drive?’ I challenged, shaking my head. I pointed out onto the street. ‘How can you leave these people to die?’
Seth didn’t say anything and I waited. I looked across at Hayley who sat, shaking with cold, in her summery swim clothes and her bright beach towel.
‘He swiped you off the beach?’ I asked incredulously. Hayley looked at me and didn’t say anything.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘explains everything. What the hell is going on here?’

Seth, again, didn’t say anything. I wanted very much for him to stop the car and help someone. It had gotten so much lately, since we’d been driving for a few hours, that I’d stopped looking out the tinted window whenever we passed through a town. I had been crying non stop for those few hours, and then more yelling, more fighting, more musing and more crying. I hadn’t known how to feel right now. A fresh new emotion hit me then, however. A fresh new panic. Something new to worry about.

‘It’s getting a little stuffy in here,’ Hayley had mentioned. And that’s all it took.

‘Oh my god!’ I panicked. ‘I hadn’t even thought of that! What if we run out of oxygen? We’re going to die, Seth! We’re going to die!’

‘Shut up would you!’ he whispered angrily, looking in the rearview mirror at me with a nasty expression on his light face. He nodded subtly towards Hayley. I looked over and she was looking outside, biting her thumb nail with a anxious look on her little face.

‘You’re gonna scare her,’ he whispered again. I swallowed and listened to him anyway.

‘What happens…’ I said, hesitating, ‘if we do, you know, run out of air?’ my voice was quiet and still.

Seth paused and cleared his throat again. ‘I, ah, I don’t know, April.’ He pursed his lips together in tight, squashed line and shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. If that ever happens, I guess… we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.’

I looked at Hayley. She was looking at him, still biting her thumb. Her calm expression didn’t fool even me. I could see the worry and the fear in those deep blue eyes of hers. She cuddled her towel.

‘Where are we headed, then?’ I asked, for a new conversation. This was still FREAKING ME OUT. My voice had not steadied since we’d left my town. It was still as shaky and rickety as it had been for the past few hours.

‘Sydney,’ Seth told me, scratching his shoulder. He sighed. ‘What we heard on the radio before… that was someone in Sydney. They said they got a lockdown basement underground there. Underneath one of the buildings. He said it’s safe, and there’s oxygen and food and water. This thing… its crippling everything. Everything’s dying. Even the fricken car.’ He thumped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand and looked at the bonnet of the car; the metal had already begun to rust. ‘It’s just destroying everything.’

‘Maybe it’s global warming,’ Hayley suggested, not looking at Seth. I wondered how she knew that, I mean, she’s only seven years old.

‘You’re seven, right?’ I asked.

‘Nine,’ she corrected, and sniffed. Wow. She was so small and… weak-looking. A nine year old!

Seth clucked his tongue and frowned as he looked out at the road, his brow deepening as he thought.

I hated the silence that filled the car like an eerie sort of air. I struggled to find something to say, trying desperately not to think about my family back home. Believing they were still alive was proving harder and harder as the miles passed.

‘Are we still meeting Mummy in Sydney?’ Hayley questioned, boring holes in the back of Seth’s head as she waited for him to answer.

‘Yes, yes, of course we will,’ he replied, and cleared his throat. A sign that he was lying. I knew Seth’s little expressions and noises now so well, I struggled to not let out an exasperated cry of anguish now while he lied, even as bad as it was, to this little innocent girl who would find out soon enough. Her parents weren’t going to be there in Sydney. They were dead, on the beach, back home. I knew telling a young child that their parents were dead amongst a national disaster was wrong, but, on the other hand, it was wrong also to give her false hope. He should have said: “Listen, Hayley, I know this will be hard for you to understand, but, certain things have happened, and… you’re not going to see Mummy again, ok? But we’re going somewhere safe, you’ll be happy there.’

I couldn’t believe Seth was doing this, policeman or not. It wasn’t right to have her believe her Mum was going to be there, waiting for her. I punched the back of his seat and he started. I saw a few cars ahead, stalled, of course, on the side of the road, and a small building. I made a face.

‘Snack stop,’ Seth said, pretending to be cheerful and pulling into a dirty abandoned petrol station. The front door had been teared down, the roof already rusting and the windows smashed into shatters. A few bashed in old cars were sitting still around the place, rotting, too.

‘Come on, we don’t have much time,’ Seth hurried, and gestured for Hayley and I to put on our masks. We did so without arguing, which was a change. The thought of food and drink deluded us from any witty remark we would usually throw at him.

Leaving the car unattended was always our major worry. If someone happened to be like us, surviving, and came along to steal it, we wouldn’t find a car for many miles, if at all. The cars that were lying in piles of scrap metal on the side of the road, and on the road, were beyond repair. Seth was a policeman, not a mechanic. The police car was all we had.

The petrol station was in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Milton and Kiama. The grass around was usually green this time of year, however, in just a few short hours, it was already losing it’s colour and turning a bland, drained brown. From my place next to the policecar with Hayley solidly at my side, I gazed around me. Blue skies that had a strange, orange tinge to them, trees that were turning an ugly colour, like the grass, and hills beyond hills that went as far as the eye could see. Not a house in sight, or a town, for that matter. Just a grimy, rusted, deserted gas station that looked like it had been broken into… or broken out of, if you know what I mean.

Seth quickly ran to the nearest car and peered in through the shattered windscreen. He did a double take, resting his hand on the bonnet and frowning into the front seats. He made a face and tapped twice on the rusted cap with his knuckles and walked back over, a change in his face. I could see that even through the oxygen mask.

‘Alright, ah… I’m going to go inside,’ –he pointed towards the isolated station and made another face- ‘you two wait out here, okay? If you see anyone … and I mean anyone, you call me, okay? Call out really loud. I’ll just be a few secs. You guys aren’t allergic to anything, are you?’
‘Just this air,’ I quipped, and the muted sound of my voice accented it nicely.

Seth coughed up a sarcastic laugh and raised his eyebrows, pointing to me. ‘You look after her.’ He nodded towards the girl wrapped in the same wet beach towel, picking rust off a pole.

‘Don’t touch that, Hayley,’ I told her, taking her hand and pulling it away slowly. I heard Seth walk away then, the familiar sound of shoes against gravel. I just hoped he’d get some coke.

She pulled out of my grip. ‘Why?’ she snapped, and glared at me through her mask.

‘Because!’ I scowled, ‘it might… hurt you.’

She narrowed her eyes at me, pouted, and stormed off.

‘Yeah, you run away,’ I muttered to myself, kicking a small stone with the tips of my battered, worn in sneakers, my arms crossed tightly over my chest.
I looked up and watched Hayley for a moment, who was inspecting the car that Seth had just looked into a few moments ago. My eyes flickered away, bored. I tapped my foot against the gravel, leaning against the policecar with a whack expression on my face. I grinded my teeth together, enjoying for a moment the sound it made, and the way it was all muffled, because of the mask.

Suddenly Hayley gasped noisily. My head snapped back in that direction, and I stopped grinding my teeth. She was taking steps back from the car, and would probably have her hand over her mouth except instead she had them clasped behind her back. Silly little girls, I thought, shaking my head, can’t stay in one place at a time.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Seth came right up behind me, four or five plastic bags full of food and drinks, and pushed past me.

‘Take these!’ he groused, voice stifled, and piled the bags into my arms. I didn’t even hear him come out of the shop.

‘Why on Earth would you need plastic bags for, sheriff?’ I asked him incredulously.

He didn’t answer, just power walked towards the car and where Hayley was standing, her body frozen.

He got down on two knees and took her shoulders, looking into her eyes through the masks.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but eventually she nodded and ran back over to the police car, as enthusiastic as a little girl going to a princess party. Seth stood up from the gravel and followed, a little less enthusiastic.

I rolled my eyes when Seth got close enough to see, then handed back all the plastic bags full of supplies into his arms.

I kept that incredulous expression until he’d finished heaping them into the boot.

‘You kids get in the car-’ he started, and then saw my face. His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened, his expression skeptical. ‘What?’ he cried, disbelieving. He had his palms facing towards the sky, as if he didn’t know what he’d done wrong.

‘Nothing,’ I said, my voice barely audible.

‘As I was saying,’ he continued, clapping his hands together once and looking at me sternly. ‘You kids get in the car. I’m gonna fill the gas tank.’

He raised his eyebrows at me and I narrowed my eyes as I climbed into the car, remembering to be quick so that not much air entered the inside of the car.
Once I was safe I ripped the mask off my face and looked straight at Hayley.

‘What the hell did you see in that car?’ I asked her, my face hard. ‘Was it just another human?’

If it wasn’t I was curious enough to get up and go see it for myself, right now.
She nodded, though, and there was a crease between her eyebrows. She put the mask carefully down under the seat.

I clicked my tongue nodded slowly. ‘Right. Knew it.’

I started grinding my teeth together again. If I didn’t stop it was going to become a very bad habit. I thought of Seth, and wondered what he’d said to her so that she was no longer scared of the corpse, or corpses, in the car.

‘What did Seth say to you?’ I questioned, watching her intently. ‘You know, when he came over.’

She frowned and looked down. ‘Nothing,’ she mumbled, and bit her lower lip.

I let out a strangled breath. ‘Yeah. Okay,’ I muttered sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

Getting information from Hayley was like squeezing the juice out of a banana. Almost impossible.