Half Lives (9 page)

She was right. Everyone was switching phones off and on and punching buttons. Panic gurgled in my gut again. I remember Mum mentioning once that the government could jam the phone lines so cell
phones couldn’t be used to detonate devices of mass destruction. It – whatever it was – was starting already.

Conversations twinkled around us. ‘Do you think all the airports are closed?’ ‘Are more taxis coming?’ ‘Can anyone get cell phone reception?’
‘What’s going on?’ ‘I wish they’d give us more information.’ Everyone was dancing around the real topic. No one wanted to be the first to say the words
‘terrorist’ or ‘attack’.

Everyone was standing too close to me. Breathing on me. I could feel heat rising from their bodies and fear emanating from their pores. Everyone was a breath away from freaking out. A few more
police and airport security patrolled the crowd. They eyed us, almost willing us to break the fragile calm.

When we reached the front of the taxi queue, some fridiot airport employee decided now was the moment to make an announcement. ‘Everyone,’ the voice rang out and static reverberated
through the speakers. ‘Everyone please remain calm.’
Wasn’t that the worst thing to say in a situation like this?
‘There’s no reason to panic.’
Nope,
that
was the worst thing to say.
Everyone began to fidget. ‘We don’t have details but all airports are closing due to an incident on the East Coast. This is a
national security measure. Please leave the airport in an orderly fashion.’ He might as well have said, ‘Run! Save yourselves!’

Someone screamed. The man with the golf bag slumped to the ground. Had he fainted? People started to cry.

Marissa tugged on my shirt as our taxi pulled to the kerb. She lunged for the car. ‘Come on, Icie!’

Then someone shouted something that included the word ‘bomb’ and all hell broke loose. People transformed from human to animal. What I can only describe as an electrical current shot
through me. The fight-or-flight survival instinct kicked in all around me. For me it was fight
and
flight.

Marissa hip-checked a man in a business suit when he tried to open the taxi door. To clear the space around her, she swung her D&G handbag, which was big enough to comfortably hold a family
of dachshunds.

I shouldered my backpack and pushed through the crowd as it surged forwards. It was
us
or
them
. ‘Out of my way!’ I shouted as I spun forwards, my backpack now a
deadly weapon.

An announcement rang out from the speakers and the security personnel were shouting. The gist was
calm the hell down
, but it was too late for that.

Marissa had managed to open the back door of the taxi. She tossed her suitcase and goodie bag inside and dived in the back seat. ‘Get off!’ she screamed, and bicycled her legs,
kicking people away. ‘Icie, hurry!’

I bent over like a line-backer and charged head-first towards the taxi. People were climbing on top of the car. I grabbed a handful of Hawaiian shirt and yanked some college kid out of my way. I
heard his shirt rip and the guy scream as his body clunked to the ground, but I didn’t stop. I kicked and punched and tore myself free until I was safely inside the taxi. Two people had
climbed in from the other side. Marissa drew herself into a ball and kicked what might have been a husband and wife away from the taxi. We both yanked the doors shut and locked them.

‘Drive! Damn it! Drive!’ she screamed at the taxi driver, and slapped the Plexiglass that separated us from the front seat.

The car lurched forwards. The driver laid on the horn. Faces were pressed against the glass. The roar of fists on the car was deafening. The driver eased forwards.

‘I don’t think I can go.’ He gripped the steering wheel at ten and two. ‘Maybe I should take a few more passengers.’ The car rocked back and forth. It was like
those shots from inside some famous bands’ limo, except these weren’t screaming fans; these were adults dressed like reasonable human beings, but with faces red and contorted from
shouting. Their eyes were wild and I didn’t know what they would do if they got their hands on me.

I fumbled in my money belt and grabbed a fistful of cash. ‘Here!’ I shoved bills through the money slot. ‘There’s more if you get us out of here.’

The driver surveyed the waterfall of crumpled fifties collecting on the seat next to him. ‘You got it!’ He honked the horn and hit the gas. I closed my eyes. Marissa and I bounced
like balls in the backseat as the taxi freed itself from the crowd.

I opened my eyes when the ride smoothed. I wasn’t proud that I had left all those people behind, but I had to, right?

‘Where do you want to go?’ the taxi driver asked, turning to face us and swerving slightly. Cars honked. He honked back and screamed obscenities at them. He had greasy black hair
that was combed in well-defined lines from his forehead and curled in soppy ringlets at his neck. He kept checking us out in the rear-view mirror and raising his eyebrows. I was thankful the
scratched and greying screen separated us.

‘Las Vegas?’ I said. Would he really take us that far?

The taxi pulled onto the shoulder and skidded to a stop. Marissa and I were slammed into the front seat. Water bottles and breath mints exploded from Marissa’s goodie bag and rolled on the
floor, knocking against my flip-flops. The air was once again filled with honking.

‘Are you crazy?’ He shook his head.

‘How much?’ Marissa asked, sitting cross-legged in the seat.

He tilted the satnav that was suctioned to his windshield and tapped the screen with an unusually long fingernail. ‘That’s nearly three hundred miles. It will take six hours and then
I have to drive back.’

‘How much?’ Marissa persisted.

He scribbled on a candy bar wrapper, scratching his head with the pencil point and staring out the window at the passing traffic.

‘Three thousand dollars,’ he said, turning to profile and glaring at us with one eye.

I nodded. I’d pay whatever it took. All that money strapped to my waist wouldn’t save me if I couldn’t make it to the mountain.

‘Wait.’ He reached for his pad of receipts and pretended to scribble something. I knew too late that he’d gauged my reaction and realized his fee was too low. ‘I mean
five thousand dollars.’

‘That’s almost seventeen dollars per mile. You’re crazy,’ Marissa said.

I had to make this work. The traffic was growing by the minute. Each passing vehicle was packed with people and stuff bulging over the window line. I couldn’t give this guy half of my
money. ‘All I’ve got is thirty-six hundred dollars.’ I don’t know why I picked that figure. I wanted to make it believable, I guess.

‘OK, but I want half up front. You buy all the gas.’ He shook his head. ‘And meals. You buy me food too. There and back.’

Marissa settled back in the seat. ‘I can swing the gas and food as long as we go places that accept plastic,’ she told me.

‘Deal,’ I said.

‘I’m not moving until I see more money.’ He crossed his arms.

Marissa turned away to give me the privacy she could sense I wanted. I noticed the taxi driver leering at me in the rear-view mirror. I lifted my backpack and held it with my knee against the
partition.

I lifted my shirt and counted out eighteen hundred dollars twice. I clutched one wad in my hand and tucked the other eighteen hundred in my bra, nine hundred dollars nestled under each breast.
How’s that for a boob job?

I let my backpack fall to the floor. ‘Here,’ I said as I shoved the wad of cash at him.

‘Where in Vegas? It’s a big place,’ he asked as he counted the money.

I struggled to come up with an answer. I didn’t want to tell him about my secret hideout, not that I knew exactly where it was. I told him to use the road Mum had pointed to on the
map.

‘I need an address and zip code,’ he said with a twang of annoyance in his voice.

‘I’ll tell you the exact location when we get closer.’ I snuggled back in my seat as if I made these types of transactions all the time, but it felt like this was happening to
someone else.

‘I owe you big-time, Icie,’ Marissa said, extending her arms to give me a hug. The gesture exposed ragged circles that were a darker shade of pink under each armpit.

‘I’d say we’re even,’ I said, and dodged her embrace.

‘What are we gonna do in Vegas?’ Marissa asked, bouncing nervously on the seat. ‘I was just going to get a hotel in Phoenix and wait it out, but Vegas is closer to
home.’

‘I’ll get you to Vegas and then we’ll go our separate ways.’ I hated that I was ditching her again, but I had to. Mum had said to tell no one.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Whatever,’ she said after an awkwardly long pause. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’ She turned towards the window. I liked Marissa. I liked her
a lot. She’d probably saved my life back there. But I’d watched enough horror movies to know that, no matter how big the cast, only one person survives to the credits and lives to fight
the sequel.

We were stranded in grid-locked traffic leaving Phoenix. I read every inch of copy in the taxi. I memorized his taxi driver ID number. I was told I couldn’t smoke in seven
languages – as well as by the universal circle-slash no smoking symbol. The car’s air-conditioning couldn’t keep up with the humid night air and three nervous bodies. I felt
trapped in an oven of body odour, cheap aftershave and the lingering hint of farts embedded in the cracked vinyl seat.

Marissa tapped on the Plexiglass. ‘How about some music?’

‘Everyone calls me Lobo,’ our driver responded, shifting on his wood-beaded seat cover.

‘OK, Lobo,’ Marissa said, ‘how about some tunes?’

‘No radio,’ Lobo said.

‘What?’ Marissa scooted up and pointed to the dashboard radio. ‘Come on, man, I mean, Lobo. Help a girl out. I’m going mental.’

‘No, I mean there’s only static.’ He switched on the radio and turned up the volume so we could hear the white noise. He flipped through the stations. Static. Static and more
static. Marissa and I exchanged panicked expressions. All I could think about was that scene from
Poltergeist
where the little blonde girl stares into the flashing TV screen and says
‘They’re here,’ in a singsong voice.

‘Uh, that’s not good,’ Marissa whispered to me.

We scanned the horizon, looking for fighter planes or flying saucers, but beyond the stream of traffic, the landscape was dark.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ Marissa asked him. I shot her a dirty look. If I was going to get through this, I couldn’t think about what was happening out there. I
couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t think about Mum or Dad or Lola or anyone on the East Coast. I told myself that it was going to be OK. I didn’t want Lobo to tell me
anything to the contrary.

‘Before the radio went funny, there was a national bulletin about solar or electrical storms or something, but I don’t believe any of it. Someone else said that an asteroid was
heading for Earth. Another station reported that the military was being deployed. Officials said satellite problems. Who knows? We are too close to Hollywood. Everyone has big imaginations.
Everyone panics.’ He glanced at us in the rear-view mirror. ‘Like you two. Why are you going to Vegas? Why not sit by the pool? If it is the end, I’d rather have a beer in one
hand and a lady in the other.’

I didn’t like the way he was sizing us up as if he were Dracula and we were O-negative. We didn’t look like the type of girls men wanted at the end of days – Marissa with her
bald head and piercings and me with my dreadlocks. I’d rather die a virgin than be this guy’s apocalyptic sweetheart. Marissa and I pushed ourselves as far back into the seat, and as
far away from Lobo, as we could.

‘You’re safe,’ Lobo said with a chuckle. ‘I don’t believe it’s the end of the world.’ He winked at us in the rear-view mirror and I noticed he was
missing one of his front teeth – one that would be pointy if he were a vampire.

We drove in silence. Marissa and I tried to sleep. The temperature rose with the sun. The white-hot sunlight felt like a laser on my skin. It wasn’t only the rays bouncing off the barren
landscape, it was also the anxiety that was triangulating among the three of us.

Lobo kept switching the radio on and off. ‘Just checking,’ he’d always say. Static would blare through the speakers and mimic my nerves.

We stopped at a gas station with huge queues at every pump. The guys working the pumps didn’t look official, but they demanded, and we paid, five hundred dollars to fill our tank. Inside
the shop there was a guy with a gun who was threatening anyone who tried to steal anything. Marissa and I took turns guarding our stuff and going to the bathroom. People were acting crazy. Maybe
hiding away from all this was the best option.

‘Did you hear what they’re saying?’ Marissa asked when we were back on the road. Her skin was pale, as if she’d applied a lighter shade of foundation. ‘A few people
said that terrorists have released a virus. That can’t be happening, right? I mean, that’s nuts.’ She dug around in her handbag and pulled out a mini-pump bottle of hand gel. She
squirted some in her own hands. I held up my hand and she squirted a huge glob in my palm. We both rubbed our hands together like comic henchmen. Did we really think some lethal virus was going to
be stopped with hand gel? I guessed it couldn’t hurt.