A Bump in the Road

We reached the third day of our journey and, to be honest, things were not going well. For a start, the sun had devised a cunning plot to bake us alive. According to weather reports, we were in the midst of the hottest May on record. So imagine our delight when the air con in Jem's car conked out on the first day of our holiday. I tugged at the collar of my sweat-soaked shirt and undid another button. "Jem, can't we crack open another window or something? For christ's sake, I'm melting over here!"

"Fine, but not all the way. I'm not about the windswept thing!"

Sarah peeped over the back seat, clearly frustrated by the lack of oxygen in this tin can. "How long until we can stop again? My legs are cramped."

"Well, if somebody checked the booking details in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess now, would we?" Jem's side-ways glance in the rearview mirror spoke volumes.

" I already told you, I'm sorry about that."

Oh, yes! The cabin debacle. All Sarah had to do was book our week-long luxury escape in the heart of Yorkshire. How on earth she managed to buy two nights instead of seven, I'll never know. Anyway, after an hour and a half pleading with the eye-roller at the front desk, we secured another chalet, albeit at a different site, a mere three-hundred miles away. We should've packed up and gone home after our short stint in the North, but stupidly, we convinced ourselves the cross-country trip would be fun. Wrong! Sweating through thirty-degree heat, while the leather interior scorched our bums, was not what any of us had in mind.

"Hey, stop sniping at each other and listen!" I said as I cranked up the volume on the radio. The first throngs of the bass guitar flooded the air. The melody sunk deep beneath my skin as euphoria entwined my bones, like the first sip of red wine spilling through the hollow of a chest. Jem drummed on the dash while Sarah nodded to the beat, and ecstatic grins spread wide across each of our faces as we exploded into chorus.

"Don't waste your words I don't need anything from you, I don't care where you've been or what you plan to do. I am the resurrection, and I am the life..."

Jem whacked the sound up again. Maybe this adventure wouldn't be so bad after all. We relaxed a little as the DJ continued to spit out bangers. A few more sing-along sessions and we would forget all about Sarah's faux pas.

A flash of crimson whizzed past the car, followed by a deafening bang and reverberating growl as the wheels trembled over a bump. Jem slammed on the breaks, forcing us to a screeching halt at the side of the road. Burned rubber singed my nostrils and smoke drifted from the bonnet. A dumbfounded Jem gripped the steering wheel, arms rigid, knuckles white, unblinking at the view ahead. I scanned over my friends and patted myself down. I exhaled a tremendous sigh of relief before I gathered my thoughts again. “What the hell?"

"Oh god!" Jem sobbed. "What have I done?"

I forced my brain into gear. "It's too dark to see, but we need to go and find out. Come on, I'm not going on my own!"

"I can't Kate. I can't!" Jem said between fast raspy pants."Oh, I'm going to throw up!" Tiny beads of sweat glistened against her clammy grey skin.

"Sarah, quick! Pass me that bag, I think she's having a panic attack."

Jem breathed slow, deliberate breath's into Sarah's discarded sandwich wrapper. I waited for a moment as her breathing stabilized. "Better?"

Jem gave a wide-eyed nod as the brown paper inflated and deflated in front of her face.

"Right! We'll go outside and you can stay here, okay?"

I climbed out of the passenger seat and released Sarah from the back. We locked hands as we crept towards the object."What is it?" Jem whispered. I hadn't heard her coming. She repeated the question again but stopped mid-sentence as she followed my line of vision. Sarah let out a scream, almost piercing my eardrums. I put my hands to my mouth, frozen to the spot, and Jem fell to her knees in despair. The car had mangled his face, and the impact distorted his legs into an ungodly position. A trickle of blood ran down his temple and his vacant stare told me first aid would be pointless.

"Is he dead?" Sarah said as the two girls came up behind me. I nodded.

"What are we going to do, Kate?" Jem said lacing her fingers through mine. I didn't blame them for looking to me for the answers, I sorted all our problems, but I never expected a deceased homeless man in the middle of a country road to come up.

"We should phone for an ambulance or the police or something."

"Shh Sarah, I need to think for a minute." My mind was racing. Sarah had a point. Of course, the authorities should be involved, but what would happen to Jem if they were? There would be an inquest. She might do time. She would never survive.

"Kate, we have to call 999." Jem's chin trembled, obviously terrified.

I turned to her, clasping both of her hands. "Jem, wake up! If we phone them now, We'll start a shit storm that we won't be able to stop."

Fresh tears threatened to spill from her eyes. "No Kate, what are you saying?"

"You made a mistake, and we won't gain anything by calling the fuzz now. We should move the body and... pretend this never happened."

"I can't do that!" She wailed as she tried to release herself from my grip.

"You can and you should." Sarah must've come to the same conclusion as me.

"But what about his family?..."

"Jem, nobody will miss him, check out his clothes. I bet he's been on the streets for years."

"But..."

"But, nothing Jem." Sarah insisted. "We don't have a choice."

"Tell you what," I soothed. "You go wait in the car, Sarah and I will sort this out."

Stunned into silence, Jem walked back while we set about moving him. We grabbed an arm and a leg each and carried him into the woodland. Sarah used her sleeve to wipe her brow. "Now what?"

"Well," I said glancing around, "we need to bury him!"

"And do you walk around with a shovel in your back pocket?"

"Evidently not, but we have a bucket and spade in the boot!"

"You're kidding me!" Sarah's voice was shrill. "You want to dig a giant hole with a child's toy?"

Jesus, did she not understand? "We don't have a lot of options, do we?"

She shook her head and wandered in the car's direction. Meanwhile, there I was, in the woods, with a corpse. He peered at me through glassy eyes, judging me. "Don't look at me like that. If you knew what she'd been through, you'd understand." Silence. I twisted my body away from him as Sarah reappeared with Jem.

"Jem, what are you doing here? I told you to wait in the car!"

"Yeah, but this is my problem and I can't sit waiting while you risk everything for me. Plus, we found this to help." Jem said as she produced a trowel.

"Where did that come from?" I asked.

"My Mum borrowed my car to go to the garden centre last week, she must've left it behind. We all got to work, Jem with her hand tool, Me with the plastic digger and Sarah with the bucket.

I had no idea how long we'd been at it before Sarah stopped. "What?" I asked, exhausted, and irritable.

"Should we empty his pockets?"

"Fine." I huffed as I rummaged through the dead man's jeans. "Nothing in that one, nope, nothing there either..." I hesitated, before producing a faded charcoal wallet from his jacket. We gawped at each other for several minutes. Eventually, I unfolded the tattered cowhide, to reveal a Driver's Licence. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

"What is it, Kate?"

Shit! I held his ID between my fingertips and gawked at it for ages. How had I not recognized him? I paused for a moment, considering my options. Should I tell them? "Nothing, I'm okay. Let's just get him in the ditch."

Back in the car, the atmosphere lay heavy like a thick fog. Jem muted the music and Sarah stared out the window. The heat had surrendered to murky rain amid flashes of thunder and lightning. I turned my attention to the trees wrestling against the wind as I thought about him alone in the woods.

"Kate?"

"Mmm?"

"Thank's for what you did back there. You saved my life. I could have faced time if it wasn't for you and heaven knows, I'd rather be a bird than a fish."