Coffin Dodgers (6 page)

Scott and I went to school together. We weren't friends -- I think I maybe said about ten words to him in the six or seven years I was there, and nine of those words were nasty -- but Scott is the kind of person who doesn't let that kind of detail get in the way of a good old chin-wag. On the few occasions I haven't seen him coming and hidden until the coast is clear, he's greeted me like his very best, oldest friend. And then he's started talking.
 

I'll spare you the full details of today's monologue, because I'm nice like that. Put it this way: Scott doesn't talk to you. He talks at you. I'm quite sure you could get up halfway through the conversation, build a raft, sail to foreign lands, survive shark attacks, hallucinations and eating your comrades, accidentally walk into the middle of a military coup, be captured, spend ten years in jail facing certain death for a crime you didn't commit, tunnel your way out using nothing but a chopstick, be abducted by aliens just as you escape the prison grounds, lead a bitter but ultimately victorious war against implacable intergalactic enemies, return to Earth and wander back into the garage and he'd still be there, talking, completely unaware that you'd even left.
 

Okay, he probably isn't quite that bad. But he's still pretty dull. You know when you post status updates online, and most people post pithy comments or links to cool stuff they've seen? Scott posts exactly what he's doing, often in real time. I hit the "block" button after this particularly exciting drama:

"Getting a bit hungry." - Posted by Scott at 7.59pm.

"Should probably make dinner." - Posted by Scott at 8.03pm.

"Fancy some pasta." - Posted by Scott at 8.05pm.

"Making pasta." - Posted by Scott at 8.11pm.

"Had pasta for dinner. It was very nice." - Posted by Scott at 8.33pm.

"I think I might have eaten too much pasta!" - Posted by Scott at 8.52pm.

"Men in balaclavas waving machine guns have kicked in my windows, thrown grenades at the cat and shot all the prostitutes! I shouldn't have stolen heroin from the Colombians!" - Posted by Scott at 9.01pm.

I made that last one up.

He's still talking when Otto, from whom Ottomatik gets its hilarious name, pops his head round the door.
 

"Car's ready," he says.

"Anything I need to worry about?"

"No. All fine. You pay now."

Otto isn't a big talker. He hands me the bill and of course, it's all the money in the world. I follow him to the till, where he swipes my card and hands me the keys.

"Thank you bye," Otto says.

If I hear My Generation one more time I may kill somebody.
 

All the radio stations are based on requests, so if enough people vote for a track the computer plays it. And the people who vote are just hilarious, so you never have to wait long to hear My Generation, Don't Fear The Reaper, Live Forever and worst of all, When I'm Sixty-Bloody-Four. I change channels but there's nothing but evangelists and crazy people on phone-ins, so I turn the stereo off and concentrate on driving.

Not that there's much to concentrate on. The car does all the work apart from steering, and it only lets humans do that because the manufacturer doesn't want to get sued if you smack into a tree for no good reason. Everything else -- the brakes, the speed, the not-smashing-into-other-cars -- is done for you. It's not exactly fun, but the upside is that you get plenty of time to think.

Inevitably, that means I'm thinking about Amy.
 

I've already told you how I feel about her. What I'm trying to work out is what I'm going to do about it. She's my best friend, the person who knows all my secrets, the one person I don’t feel weird around. I want to ask her out on a date -- a date date, not a friends date -- but I'm scared that if I do, it'll freak her out and I'll lose her altogether. But I don't think I can keep on like this either. Is it worth the risk? Should I let her know how I feel? Should I --

What the hell?

The car's accelerating, hard. That's not always a bad thing, but there's a sweeping right-hander up ahead and I'm already going a bit faster than is strictly sensible. I hit the brakes. Nothing happens. I press the accelerator in case it's stuck. It isn't. I stab at the control buttons on the dashboard. They don't do anything.

The engine is making scary noises. The display's rev counter is showing silly numbers. The speedo is climbing. The corner is getting very close.

I'm kicking at the pedals but it isn't making any difference.
 

I've read that when you think you're going to die, your brain goes into economy mode. You see in black and white, because your brain needs the processing power to look for a way out, not to show you things in Technicolor. Time slows down, because -- again -- your brain is trying to find a way for you to survive.

Turns out that's all true. I've never been so alert in my life.

The car reaches the corner, and I haul on the steering wheel with all my strength. The car turns, but then there's a loud pop. I think it's a tyre blowing. Suddenly everything's moving in the wrong direction. The car slews into the crash barrier and bounces backwards. The steering wheel is spinning like crazy and I know that if I try to stop it, I'll break my arm. So I fold my arms and let whatever's going to happen happen.
 

What happens is this. The car goes backwards, still spinning, and there's a crunch as it hits the barrier on the other side of the road. So now I go forward, still spinning, the steering wheel acting like it's got a mind of its own.
 

Another crunch, and another, and another.

And then, nothing.

Everything's in colour again. I sit for a moment and then climb out of the car. I'm in a field. My face is wet. I think I've cut my head somewhere. The car is a mess, like somebody took a hammer to every inch of the bodywork. I wonder if the car will go on fire. I hope it doesn't.

I take a few steps but something trips me up, and I'm face down in the wet grass. I'm tired, I think. So very tired.
 

I need to get up, I know.
 

I'll do it in a minute.

I close my eyes and everything goes black.

CHAPTER SIX

Being dead is brilliant. I'm warm and cosy and feeling all nice and floaty, and Amy's just kissed me on the cheek. If I'd known that being dead was this good, I'd have done it ages ago.

"You're such an arse," Amy says.

I'm pretty sure that you're not allowed to talk like that in Heaven, and since nobody appears to be stabbing me with red-hot pokers I guess I'm not in Hell either.

I blink until my vision clears and the room swims into focus. I'm in a small hospital ward. It's dark, and the other beds appear to be unoccupied. What little light there is comes from the reading lamp above my bed and through the gap between the doors and the floor.

Amy is sitting in a hard plastic chair next to the bed. Her eyeliner is smudged. I think she's been crying.

"How are you feeling?" she asks.

"I'm not sure," I say. "I think I'm okay."

"The doctor says they've pumped you full of drugs, so you'll probably be sore when they wear off. You haven't broken anything, but you've been bashed about quite a bit."

I give Amy my most earnest look. "Tell me the truth," I say.

"Okay."

"Will I ever dance again?"

"I bloody hope not. You're a menace on the dance floor."

"Ah. Good point."

Amy smiles, but I can tell her heart isn't really in it.

"Do you remember what happened?"

"More or less," I say. "I was driving home and then the car went nuts. I think one of the tyres blew."

Amy nods. "You're lucky to be alive, you know. That road's usually busy. A few minutes earlier or later and you'd have ended up underneath a truck."

"Somebody up there must like me."

"They've got a funny way of showing it."

Amy looks away. I don't say anything. When she looks back I think her eyeliner is even more smudged than before.

"Were you scared?"

"No," I say, and I mean it. Amy looks surprised. "Seriously. It was weird. When I realised there wasn't anything I could do, I just felt really calm. My life didn't flash before my eyes, or anything like that. Everything happened in slow motion. It felt like I was watching it all happening to somebody else."

The door opens. It's one of the nurses. Visiting time is up.

Amy gets up, leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. Again.

"I'm glad you're okay."

I want to say something, but the words don't come.

Amy gives me a small wave.

"See you tomorrow," she says.

"Heavily bearded transvestite man!"

It's Dave's turn to visit me. The serious chat didn’t last very long. Of course it didn't. We're blokes. So now we're trying to outdo one another by inventing superheroes with really bad superpowers.

"The Black Banjo!" Dave suggests.

"Eh?"

"He's this really tall black guy who appears from nowhere and torments the bad guys with his banjo playing."

"That's pretty bad."

"You're one to talk. You were the one who came up with Shortsighted Viagra Man."

"Oh, come on," I say. "That one's brilliant."

Dave laughs. "Lock up your daughters! And anything else nearby!"

We happily talk bollocks for another ten minutes or so before a new visitor arrives. This one has a badge.

"I need a few minutes with your friend," he tells Dave.

Dave looks at me. I nod.

"See you in a bit," Dave says, and leaves.

His name is Burke, and he's police. He's tall, fiftyish, with big shoulders and the air of somebody who's seen things you really don't want to ask him about. The plastic chair complains when he sits on it.

He sits and looks at me for a while. When he finally speaks, I wonder if he gargles gravel for breakfast.

"I've spoken to the Doc," he says. "I know you weren't drunk, and you weren't high. Want to tell me what happened?" He stabs at his notebook with his index finger and it beeps. Recording.

"There's not much to tell," I say. "I was driving home --"

"From where?"

"From Ottomatik. I'd just had the car serviced."

He nods as if to say carry on. I carry on.

"I'm about halfway home and then the car goes crazy."

"Crazy?"

"It was as if the accelerator stuck," I tell him. "The brakes didn't work, none of the buttons on the dash worked, the car just kept on accelerating."

"What did you do then?"

"I thought the pedal might be stuck, so I tried pressing on it. I tried the brakes. I pressed every single button I could reach."

"And?"

"And none of it made any difference. And then I crashed."

Burke stares at me for a very long time. If I'd had anything to confess, I'd have spilled the beans there and then.

"Was your car modified in any way?"

"No."

"You haven't had it chipped?"

"No."

Burke stabs at his notebook again. It beeps. He stands up, the chair making a noise that sounds awfully like a sigh of relief.

"Thanks for your time," he says, dropping a business card on the bedside table. "I'll be in touch."

I get out the following morning. Amy was right. When the painkillers wear off I feel like somebody has hit every bit of my body with a frying pan. I spend most of the day munching Ibuprofen before heading for work. Being off sick is a luxury I can't afford.
 

I've barely taken off my coat before Sleazy Bob summons me to his office.

"You need to go home, Matt," he says.

This isn't like him. Sleazy Bob is not the caring type.
 

"Thanks, Mr Hannah, but I'm fine. Honestly. It looks much worse than it is."

Sleazy Bob looks confused, then realises what I've just said. "Matt, you work in a customer facing role. You're an ambassador for Hannah's. And ambassadors don't look like they've been in a bar fight."

"I wasn't in a fight. It was a car accident."

"I don't think that really matters," he says. "Take the time off. Come back when the bruises have gone." He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. I go home.

Amy and Dave are both working and I've got nothing to do, so I wanderki past the supermarket and stock up on beer and painkillers. I go home, play video games until I get bored, make a half-hearted attempt at tidying up and flick through my messages, email and news feeds. I call up the local paper to see if anything interesting is going on. They've got a picture of my car on the front page.
 

I look again at the photo. Something isn't right. It looks like my car. It's more smashed up than I remember, but then I wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders the last time I saw it. But it's not just the damage to the car that's wrong. It's the photo itself. When I crashed, I ended up in a field. The photo shows a suburban street.

Either the local paper has been faking things again, or…

I scan the text. Two words jump out.
 

Scott Marsden.

According to the paper, Scott was a "boy racer" who lost control of his car at roughly the same time I was spinning into a field. I escaped with a few lumps and bumps. Scott didn't. The paper doesn't say it explicitly, but the tone of the article is clear enough: Scott was a young man with a fast car, a crazed thrill seeker whose driving ability wasn't as good as he thought it was.
 

Scott "Had some pasta for dinner. It was very nice" Marsden? A crazed thrill seeker?

Scott Marsden? Dead?

I really need to talk to Amy.
 

"You need to go to the police."

I've never seen Amy like this. She's pacing around my apartment like an angry tiger.

"What am I going to say?"

"Matt, there's something seriously screwed up going on here."

She's still pacing. Her arms are going too.

"Your car goes crazy and damn near kills you. If you hadn't been where you were, you'd have hit something even harder than your own head."