Page 2 of Catch a Kiwi
“It’s possessed,” Delilah said. “Oh, my god. You bought the Devil’s campervan.”
A bubble of hilarity rose in my throat, but this was no time to laugh. Why did my emotions never do the right thing? “We’re going to have to stop.”
“On theroad?”Delilah asked over the incessant honking, as the car shuddered, lurched, and shuddered some more. “There is zero shoulder. There’s almost zeroroad.We’re going to die. Somebody’s going to hit us, and we’re going to?—”
I was already pulling on my raincoat. That was because the van had died. Stone-cold dead, stopped on the road with no lights and no flashers. “We’ll be beautiful corpses,” I said. “Except we won’t, because you’re going to climb over the console and steer while I push. It’s downhill. I think. Sort of downhill. All we have to do is get to a driveway. A wide spot in the road. Anything.”
If I couldn’t push it, somebody would stop and help. Right? Somebody would drive by, or drive up behind me, and help me push, or?—
Or crush me into the back of the van, of course, since we had no lights, the van was gray, and it was pouring. Probably send the van down the hill with Delilah inside, too. A twofer. This was why they told you to carry flares. Well, too late now. “Put on your seatbelt,” I told her.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t think I’m in danger of a high-speed collision here.”
“Put it on anyway,” I said. The left side of the road, which we were driving on, was the downhill side. The other side was a steep cut bank, so no hope of a turnout there. There’d been driveways along the road, though. Mailboxes. This was probably desirable real estate. Or the stomping grounds of backwoods hillbillies, Kiwi style. Deliverance, anyone?
Stop it. New Zealand doesn’t have backwoods hillbillies, and nobody plays the banjo. We are ninety minutes’ drive from a city with over a hundred thousand people. Holiday houses, is what these will be.I got out of the car.
I’d put my hood up, but the wind instantly whipped it off. Didn’t matter, because I’d have been soaked anyway. The rain was really pounding down out here, and gravel or not, the road was swimming in mud. I opened the door again, and Delilah said, “Shut the door! Shit, that’s wet.”
“I’m going to start pushing,” I said. “Letting you know. And don’t swear. It’s too easy to do it by accident, and then we’re out of a job.”
Delilah sighed. “That happenedonce.”Shehadput on her seatbelt, though. Good.
“Release the emergency brake,” I said, “because I pulled it when we stopped, but get ready to brake again. They won’t work as well without the engine. No power brakes or power steering, so you’ll really have to haul on the wheel and stomp the brakes. If you get rolling too fast, use the emergency brake.” Didthatstill work if you had no power? I wished I knew more about cars.
Delilah said, “You realize you probably won’t even be able to move it, right? We should call 911 or whatever the number is here and wait for the cops.”
And get squashed like bugs,I didn’t say. I said, “Release the brake,” ran around to the back of the van, and pushed.
It wasn’t allthatdownhill. I put my legs into it, leaned forward, and shoved with all my might, my feet slipping in the muddy gravel.
Nothing. I let off for a moment, then tried again, harder this time, putting my legs and back into it.
The van moved. I said, “Yay,” to nobody but myself, and kept pushing. I was starting to sweat, or maybe that was the rain leaking through. Finally, the van started rolling a little faster. Yay again. I decided to stop listening for an engine behind me, because (A) I probably wouldn’t hear it over the rain and wind, and (B) what would I do if I did hear it?Note to self: next time, buy a yellow raincoat. Visibility.I forgot it and kept pushing.
We were on a curve again, hence the worry. This road went on forever, and nobody had bothered to pursue any fancy notions like “reasonable grade” or “gentle curves” when they’d built it.The Long and Winding Road.That was a Beatles song. Melancholy. I’d enjoyed being melancholy, back when I could afford it. Like I’d told Delilah, though, enjoying melancholy was for teenagers. She was steering into the turn. Good.
The downhill got steeper. I wasn’t pushing anymore. I was running. “Brake!” I shouted, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. “Brake!”
I didn’t see the brake lights go on, because we had no brake lights, but the van slowed a little. We were around the curve now, and I ran harder to catch up. The rain was pounding over my hair, down my face. I had water in my eyes and water in my ears and water running into mymouth, and my feet were splashing through muddy puddles, soaking any part of my bare legs that the rain was missing. It wasn’t really cold, because it was summer, but it waswet.
You have dry clothes in the van. Catch up. Bound to be a driveway up here.
The downhill got steeper, and the van was picking upspeed again. I saw a break in the trees ahead on the left. That had to be a turnoff. Almost there! Delilah just had to brake and then turn into it. She just had to …
She was braking. I could tell, because I was finally catching up. She wasn’t braking enough, though. Not nearly …
“Emergency brake!” I shouted with what was left of my breath. “Emergency brake!” I tried to run faster, to … what? Pound on the window and mime pulling the brake? It didn’t matter, because I couldn’t reach it.
I was thinking it, and then I tripped on something and was flying. No chance to catch myself.
That sickening, endless, hanging moment in the air, when you know you’re falling and can’t do anything about it, then I landed, palms and bare knees on the sharp gravel. The jolt went all the way through my body, followed by a shock of pain.
I was up again, running. No time for pain.
Delilah must be turning the wheel, because the van was veering toward the driveway, but she was going too fast. “Brake!” I shouted again from too far behind her.“Brake!”
The van skidded. Wobbled. Tipped, then smashed down onto its left side and slid onto the right side of the driveway with a screech of metal. It took out the mailbox with a crunchof splintering wood, but the post must have slowed it, because the back end swung around. The whole thing slid slowly, slowly, with another horrible screech, toward the drop-off from the side of the road into the trees.
