Whakahapa, 11

They sat and ate quietly until Amos had to make a quick dash to the bathroom down the hall. He felt like puking all the way, but managed to control himself. As there was no water and the toilets wouldn't flush, it was pretty disgusting in there when he'd finished – he'd use a different bathroom next time!

He came back into the room dragging the mattress that he'd been sleeping on. Esther looked up and frowned. “What ARE you doing?”

“Putting this back where we found it. We are going to clean up before we go, aren't we?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“It seems like the right thing to do. We're not paying for staying here.”

“We're not. Amos, it doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter. We're leaving and there's no-one else here. Quite possibly, no-one may ever come into this room, this hotel or this whole town, ever again. Leave it, it doesn't matter.”

“Well . . . Yeah, you're probably right. I'll leave a note anyway, just in case someone does come in here one day.”

“A note? What are you going to say? 'Sorry about the mess, have a nice day.'?”

“No,” he grinned. “Not that. I'll say that we stayed here and now we're going to Hebron.”

“Okay, can't do any harm I guess. Take care of that, we'll take what we're taking and load it in the vehicles, and then we'll hit the road.”

“Not literally, I hope.”

“Not literally, Silly!”

They took the gear down and loaded it in Esther's vehicle, because that was the emptier one. They started the engines, reversed, turned and started off out of town. He thought that she'd forgotten the painkillers, (which he really, really needed!), but she hadn't. She stopped and went into a chemist's shop on the way.

He stood outside, avoiding the direct sunshine and with his eyes resting closed, moving gently and breathing carefully. He was starting to feel better. Maybe. A bit. At this rate, by next week, he should feel fine.

Esther came out, carrying a bag full of stuff. She took a packet of pills from the top of the bag and tossed them to him. “Take a couple of those and you'll feel a lot better.”

“Thanks. I will.”

He recovered the packet from where it had fallen on the path behind him and, only shaking a little bit, ripped it open. The pills, encased in plastic bubbles, were brown, cylindrical and quite large.

“I, umm, I'll need a drink so I can swallow them.”

“You would. Well then,” Esther swung her wrecking bar and loudly shattered the glass door of the shop next door, “the Dairy is open. Help yourself to a drink.”

“Yeah. I will,” he tried to smile, carefully. He stepped through, yet another, broken door and crunched over the bits of glass.

If there was a day of reckoning coming up, there was an awful lot of stuff going to have to be paid for. But, he couldn't afford to worry about that and he did need a drink.

It was dark inside the shop after the glaring sunshine outside. His eyes soon adjusted and he found the drinks cabinet and selected the one he wanted. He took it back out to where Esther waited and put it on the outdoor picnic table while he extracted two pills from their bubbles.

“What sort of drink do you call that?” Esther picked up the bottle for a closer look. “This is blue!”

“Yes, sure it is. It is mineral water, fortified and flavoured. Blueberry, I think.”

“You think?”

“I do. I like it anyway.”

“Enjoy it then. I think it looks, and sounds, disgusting.”

“No it's not! It's just different, that's all.”

“Very different. Come on then, take a couple of your pills and we'll get going.”

“A couple? Way I feel, I might need to take the whole box!”

“You do not. The packet says the dosage is 2 pills, followed by another one in 4 hours and don't exceed the recommended dosage. Too much wouldn't help. It might even make you sicker.”

“Sicker? Yuck!”

“Don't do it then. Hurry up.”

He swallowed a couple of the log-like pills, washed them down with the mineral water, and then offered the bottle to Esther. “Do you want to try it?”

“I do not! Don't know about you, but where I come from we didn't share drink bottles. Keep your germs to yourself. And, it still looks disgusting.”

“It does not,” Amos grinned. “Are we ready to go?”

“Yes, it's about time. We'll have to move it if we're going to get there and find somewhere to hole-up before dark. I'll go first and you follow, but not too close. I might have to brake suddenly for a tree or something.”

“Okay, but how come you lead the way?”

“For a hundred reasons Let's just say that I can see better than you can right now.”

“Okay. Lay on MacDuff.”

They drove through the day, their twin vehicles ripping noise through the quiet countryside. At each small town they passed through, they stopped, sounded the vehicles' horns and looked around, but they saw no signs of life anywhere.

They stopped and ate lunch in a small riverside park in the centre of TAIHAPE (?). Bees buzzed in the flower gardens there. That was a welcome sight. Even more welcome were a couple of pigeons flying noisily overhead.

Well, Amos was delighted to see them. Esther smacked her lips in an exaggerated and comic fashion and said, “Yummy! Pigeon pie and honey. We won't go hungry.”

“Esther!” he protested. “Can't you just be glad to see something that is alive? There's plenty to eat without killing the last pigeons in the world.”

“I know that. Relax, I was just joking. We've already agreed that we're not going to starve and, yes, it's good to see them. Really good.”

“It is,” he smiled and nodded. “It's like – hope.”

“Yeah, if you like, it's hopeful. Signs of life.

They looked, but saw nothing else there apart from a couple of trout drifting lazily down the river. But that was nothing new, they already knew that the fish had survived. Amos was feeling much better by then. He swallowed another pill to feel better still.

There were more and more, bigger and bigger towns as they neared the capital city. They stopped stopping and just tooted and looked as they drove slowly through them all.

Finally, late afternoon, they were coming around the bay and could see Hebron in the distance ahead of them. Multiple railway lines, with electric overhead gantries, ran parallel to the left of the motorway with the sea beyond them. Green hills reared up on their right – bush-clad hills with thousands of, mostly white, little houses strung along them, all quiet in the afternoon sunshine.

Directly ahead, white/grey motorway ramps licked up into the center of the city, like frozen rivers, curving out of sight in the concrete jungle, shaded below the towering blocks of offices, banks and businesses. Ranks of windows reflected empty sky or other, blind windows. The Capital, Hebron. Their destination.

They stopped on the motorway, among some still and abandoned vehicles, (all with the seat-belts fastened!), stood and looked. The silence was huge.

“There it is,” Esher swept an all-encompassing gesture. “The pride of New Salem, Hebron, the Capital and the only real city we've got. Or, had, I suppose. Welcome to my hometown. Feeling better now, are you?”

“Much better, thanks. I'm still a bit tired, but the headache has gone and that's good.”

“That's always good. So you'll be ready for more bottles of wine tonight?”

“I don't think so! Not tonight and not any other nights either.”

“Yeah, right! I've heard that story before.”

“But it's true! Anyway, all I want to do is to lie down and sleep for a week.”

“Which you can, once we've found somewhere to sleep. I think an upmarket downtown hotel will do the trick.”

“Another hotel? Aren't we going to your home?”

“Not likely. It's not there anymore. The apartment block where I lived has burnt to the ground. Don't ask! We'll go the the Academy, that's about the newest and flashest pub that I know of. We'll live it up.”

“Up in a high-rise! But, not tonight. I just want to sleep and sleep.”

“Sure, but a bit of luxury will be nice. Follow me, it's getting late already. At least there's no rush-hour traffic to slow us down.”

Speeding into the city, sweeping too fast, along the empty motorway, Esther suddenly braked ahead of him, there was a heavy 'thud' and her ute skidded to a screeching stop in a wide curve and slammed into the safety rail, facing back where she'd been.

Amos stopped quickly, though not as fast as she had, and reversed back. Shaken, he leapt out to accuse her. “What in Salem are you doing?”

She stood and pointed. He turned and looked and a rag-doll figure lay sprawled in a twist on the far side of the road. One leg was splayed out awkwardly, the head facing up, eyes open and blood starting from various cuts and grazes.

It was a boy, a long-limbed youth lying there, tendrils of blond hair flicking around in the breeze off the sea. He was dressed in blue – light-blue, long-sleeved shirt, now twisted and torn, dark-blue trousers and tie with black shoes.

It was the uniform that Amos knew well, the same clothes that he wore, all day, every day, when he lived at home.

Esther bent over, retching, muttering and cursing to herself. “Oh God, No! Nothing I could do. He was just there, ran out – I couldn't. God, no! What've I done?”

“I, umm.” Amos looked backwards and forwards, feeling so useless. What could he do? “You, ah, you know what we've done.”

He turned from her and staggered across the road to where the figure lay. He approached and stared, shocked, at the blue eyes. It couldn't be, could it? It couldn't possibly be – but it was – Him!

“Jer . . . Jeroboam? Jeroboam!!!”

He dropped to his knees on the hard concrete roadway, which was just as well because the next thing that happened was that his eyes rolled up and he fainted.

He woke again when someone slapped his face – Esther, of course. She was red-faced and crying too as she bent over him. “Come on, Boy! Wake up! I need you here – wake up.”

“Esther?” He shook his head, then whipped around. “It is. Jeroboam!”

“You know this boy?”

“I love this boy.”

“This is the one that you got yourself into trouble over?”

“Yes! What's he doing here? Did we kill him?”

“I don't know what he's doing here and, no, we didn't kill him. Didn't do him any good, but he's not dead. I hit him, you had nothing to do with it. I hit him.”

“We were driving in convoy. If I wasn't there, you might've been going slower.”

“Or, I might've been going faster, who knows? Regardless, now we've got a mess to fix. Get some blankets, coats, sleeping bags, whatever you can find. Cover him up and keep him warm but don't move him yet. Smash your way into some of these cars if you have to, see what you can find.

I'll be back as soon as I can. I'll go to the Public Hospital and I'll get an ambulance.”

“An ambulance? What for?”

“What do you think for? Use your head, Boy! We can't leave him here and we can't move him in the utes, he might have broken bones. An ambulance will have all the gear we need, stretchers and straps, sedatives, pain-killers and stuff.'

“But he's already unconscious!”

“And that's good, I think.”

“Where are we going to take him to?”

“Don't know. Somewhere where we can clean him up and where he'll be comfortable. The hospital, maybe? I'll think about it while I'm gone. We'll sort something out.”

“Okay, thank you, Esther. I can't do it by myself, but we have to fix him, we just have to!”

“We'll try. Don't worry, we'll do what we can. Look after him and keep him warm, I'll be back soon.”