Dave

“What the… come on… not again!”

Dave slid his right index finger through a hole he could see pinhole light and carefully pulled back a zip. Once he was out, he saw he’d been packed into a familiar looking suitcase.

“Huh,” he said. “This is new.”

As you can tell, climbing out of some kind of contraption was not a foreign concept for Dave. His “friends”, and yes, Dave uses air quotes when he talks about “them”, had taken a comment he had made in his twenties seriously.

“Anything! Put me in any situation,” he proclaimed, “and I’ll survive it. I’m that lucky.”

Granted, when he made the daring declaration, he’d been on a weekend pub crawl. Unbeknown to “them,” Dave had survived a car crash on the way to the pub. His Uber driver had had one too many before work. He got the bums rush when it was his shout; while jostling at the bar, his bum brushed some Shelah's.

One fight led to another and an hour later, his “friends”, ignorant to the earlier crash, locked him in the boot of a car. They drove him out to the pines, did burnouts for an hour, then left the car, and Dave, in the middle of nowhere broiling in a noon time sun.

If not for a small lumberjack village close to the activity, the cops might not have found Dave because the locals weren’t that interested in the nights activities.

Dave was laid up in hospital for a week after that, but he couldn’t lose face with his “friends”, so doubled downed on his proclamation. He thought, Give it a week, and they’ll forget.

How wrong he was. From that moment on, every year around the same time, no matter what he did, Dave’s “friends” always found him and tested his endurance. They would sign him up for something dangerous or outrageous to see if that would be the year he backed down.

He couldn’t... wouldn't.

Dave's stubbornness had always led to his downfall. He’d be wussing out, and he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of his defeat. Dave though, he was getting older and his “friends” had yet to mature beyond twenty-two.

“Feels like the decade from hell,” he muttered, but the, “bus? Train?” Train, he settled on, suddenly jerked, and he was thrown around an ancient looking cabin like a rag doll.

“Where the hell am I?”

Looking around for some clue as the lurching eased, he came over woozy, but the train lurched again. Dave threw his hands in the air blindingly searched for something to grab hold of, but found nothing. He ended up falling into the corner of an ornate carved wooden wall, where he slid down to a squat and rested until he found his feet again.

“Whoa,” he said, bile rising in his throat, the pounding of his heart wringing in his ears. “Gotta sit, Dave, gotta sit.”

He’d tried everything to be anywhere other than near those “friends” as the years went by, but they always seemed to find him. Every time though, Dave would wake up to some new, dangerous, situation. He always wondered, Is today the day I die?

His young body had begun a drastic decline a few years prior to his drunken proclamation and apart from his parents, no-one knew. Dave didn't want "them" to know he had a weakness. His “friends” remained relentless in their cruelty, and those acts only exacerbated his problems leading to him developing an anxiety disorder.

He tried unfriending, even ghosting, “them”, but they never seemed to get the message. He even considered making an official complaint with the local police, but one of those so called “friends” was now a sergeant on the force, and his reach was wide. He would occasionally use his buddies to assist in Dave's dares. So that was off the table.

Over the past year, Dave finally made the move to a different state. He stopped talking to the people of his past and shut down his social media accounts. No-one knew about the move except his mum. They were very close. His father had died the year previous and Dave's type one two diabetes had worsened. The two were each other’s world, and without his insulin, juice, crackers, glucose and regular feedings, I'll slip into a coma and die, Dave thought.

The realisation horrified him.

“Oh gods,” he said, recalling all his requirements to live, “I’ll die… for real... this time I'll die.”

The motion of the train churned and gave his insides a good shake. His anxiety piqued and Dave tried to calm himself, but for the first time, he took in his surroundings and only felt worse.

“A train? I’m on a train? I’m on a train. And, if I’m not mistaken… it’s out of control.”

His anxiety rose and before he knew what was happening, Dave heard himself screaming. He expected all and sundry to come running out of the woodwork, but there was no one.

“What the hell,” he said against the only window in the cabin to see the world speeding past.

The landscape was nothing more than a streak, a blur... a blip on the radar.

Dave suddenly remembered his insulin, and was on the verge of a major anxiety attack when he reached under his shirt in searched of his pump. When he found it, he inadvertently pulled the cannula out of his stomach. Cold sweat exploded from his pores and he took deep breaths in an effort not to panic as he tried to get the cannula back in.

"Okay," Dave said when a small stinging sensation told him it was back in place. "Small victories."

But it was a short lived. When he looked down, Dave saw a large pool of blood covered the front of his shirt.

"That can't be good," he said feeling the fabric. "That's a lot of blood... and its still wet. What the... bloody hell?”

Dave screamed again and tore the shirt from his body. Once it was off, he performed a check; abdomen, chest, but the blood wasn’t his.

“Whose is it?” he asked the empty cabin, unable to look away from the bloody shirt in his hand. The he focused on the insulin pump in the other.

Looking at the digital readout, Dave came over queasy and fell on to a green leather bench seat. He hadn’t noticed it before. It ran the short length of one wall.

“Under sixty,” he muttered as a wave of numbness rode through him, “I’m gonna die. I’m really gonna die this time!”

That cold hard truth waved in front of his eyes like a white towel at a boxing match. He took a few minutes to digest that reality. His mind had reached full blown panic. Just before he went over the edge, Dave recalled he had some loose crackers in his shirt pocket.

“Oh, glucose,” he said, his panic easing off with a new found hope. “Pocket.”

Dave reached into his pants pocket but found only one glucose tablet.

“Where’s the other?” he cried, the light at the end of his tunnel taking a very dark turn. “Calm. Calm down, Dave. Calm down. Probably in the suitcase...They put me in a suitcase. Bastards put me in a suitcase!”

He tore into the case. Ripped the lining from its insides but found nothing. He took a seat to clear his mind.

“Crackers… crackers,” he said excitedly, and lifted the shirt he'd been holding, as though his life depended on it. It probably did.

He found the crackers but they were soaked in blood and crumbled at his touch.

Blood, blood… who’s blood? Does it matter? he wondered while fingering the glucose tablet between his fingers.

Dave shifted closer to the window. The old-time train cabin didn’t appears to have any facilities in it, and he desperately needed a tap, a toilet, anything liquid, but there was nothing.

Bloods still wet, he thought, might be able to suck some out… come on, Dave don't get squeamish. It's live or die time.

“All right,” he said, and prepared himself by putting his head between his legs. He practice some meditation his diabetes educator had taught him, but his head wouldn’t stop spinning.

The train went over another large bump and his body floated in the air for a moment then fell back to the seat.

Dave was fast running out of time and he knew it. He opened his mouth and threw the tablet down his throat. It was a hard pill to swallow, but his life depended on it.

As for the crackers, he closed his eyes, reached into his pocket, and grabbed a handful. As he pulled them out, the train jerked from side to side, then flew over something large on the tracks.

Camel?

Dave knew he must’ve been sick because the thought of a splattered camel cooking on the engine made his mouth water… and he was a vegetarian. He was about to toss the crackers into his mouth, blood and all, but the train jumped again and he missed. The crackers fell to the floor and scattered.

“No!” Dave bellowed like a B-grade hero in a C-grade movie.

You were gonna suck someone else’s blood from ya shirt, Dave, your shirt! You can suck up a few crackers from an old balding carpet, his other self said.

Looking despairingly at the bloody cracker crumbs covering the red carpet, he found his thoughts had begun to float, and he had become light-headed. Dave knew his diabetes was worsening and he was in a serious decline. Stringing words together into a coherent sentence was getting harder.

“Not good, Dave,” he whispered, “not good.”

Could be an emu, he thought of what was going on with the train, but more than that, he needed to keep his wits about him and not let the diabetes win. More like a caravan of camels... but that’d mean I’m on the Indian Pacific? Going to… WA? Who’d do this? Don’t tell no one where was goin’ I. Not seen bastards these long… for, long time. How do they know when… when… when I am? Are “they” doing this me… to me? Are they stalking—”

The train lurched and Dave knew he’d have to scrape together as much cracker as he could to give himself more time to figure a way out, Get to a hospital.

He ran his nails through the carpet pile and scraped together enough cracker to fill the palm his hand. He was past caring about the blood or whatever was on that old carpet. He had, at most, an hour to turn it all around, but his insulin was being absorbed faster than a beer at a frat party.

He rushed to the wood framed glass door and slid it open when he thought he heard someone else on the train.

“Tickets, ticket’s please,” came a familiar male voice, but there was something wrong with it. It was close, but hollow and there was no one in sight. “Tickets, please.”

"Here," Dave called.

He was confused but was checking his pockets for a ticket and not finding one. Panicked at the thought of getting kicked off the train, he put the mental breaks on.

Getting kicked off could be the best thing for me, he thought, not realising he was already hallucinating.

When he stepped through the door, Dave turned to the right and his eyes followed a long corridor seeking a conductor, wait staff, or even a rowdy child running up and down the corridor. That at least be something, but there was no-one and he finally realised he had probably begun to hallucinate, But am I hallucinating this? Cause how bad am I if I know I'm hallucinating?

Windows lined the corridor, and he could see that terrifying truth wizz by. He began the long walk to possibly nowhere, checking the other rooms as he made his way to the corridor's end, but there was no-one in them.

Must be someone somewhere? he thought and staggered against the windows.

The train, if it was possible, was going faster. The vibrations were wilder than ruts in a road after a good rain. It felt, for Dave, as though it would fall apart. His fear and panic had reached the levels of knowing. Dave was numb, at peace, with the knowledge he was going to die. The train heaved upwards like it was riding a wave, and Dave fell to the floor. He lay there until it eased.

Gotta be camels, he thought as the tilt of the train became upright again.

The corridor was like walking on jelly, but Dave kept going. he crawled along the corridor because he was close to unconsciousness. All coherent thought had left him. Dave needed immediate help. He was sitting on the edge of reality, but pushed on through sheer bloody determination if nothing else.

“Finally,” he said reaching a bend in the corridor, but as he slid around it, a bright white light flashed before his eyes and for a moment Dave thought, This is it, and heard his mums voice.

"I'm here, Dave and I love you," his mum was saying.

Dave looked for her, but she was nowhere to be seen, so he shook it off as a dream... or desire.

“Please let there be water.”

The glare from that strange light had disappeared, and around the corner was a large space with a toilet cubical. Dave could’ve cried.

“I’ll drink it straight from the bowl if I have to,” he said scrambling to his feet with the last ounce of his energy.

His desperate need to believe there was water was all that kept him going, but to his frustration there was none. The toilet was chemical, and there was no wash basin.

“Fuck!” he said, and collapsed to the floor.

He hugged the bowl for several terrifying minutes. The train was bouncing around like bumper cars at a circus, but instead of clowns, the train was bouncing off wildlife. As the train became more unstable, so did Dave, and he could only muster a whisper.

Gonna die one way or another... Gotta be camels, he thought.

To the right of the toilet was another door to another carriage. It was different from the eighteenth-century carriage he’d woken up in. It had seats on either side of the aisle, and it looked all the hell like it was the carriage where the driver lived. Hope leapt into his chest and Dave's heart smacked against it as he staggered to his feet.

“I'm saved,” he whispered.

In desperation, he fell through the door and all but crawled the length of the black rubber flooring. At first, he felt each of the non-slip rubber nodules protruding from it, but the closer he neared the drivers door, the less pain he felt.

By the time he reached the door, the driver's cabin looked like it was swimming. Dave's short brown hair was wet with sweat. His heart was racing, and his anxiety was beyond the level any human heart could tolerate. He was so hungry, thirsty, that for a moment, Dave seriously thought about going back to the cabin he’d woken up in to hoover up the last of the cracker crumbs from the floor.

“Driver,” he panted, and smacked the door with his knuckles as he fell against i. "Water, food. Need... help.”

He reached for the door one last time, but fell face first to the floor instead. He lay there whispering, “Help me… Someone, help… me,” then to his shock and horror, he started to cough up blood.

“What—ah, my chest,” he cried, gripping the place where his heart was pounding. Something was very wrong. When he ran his hands over his chest, he noticed it was covered in warm, fresh, sticky blood. “What’s happening to me?”

He ran his hands over it, looked at his hands, then wiped the blood on his pants. He was becoming more delirious with each passing moment.

“Mum? Mummy, help me,” he cried out.

Lying on that floor outside that door, Dave looked up one last time to watch the world pass him by. Each window had a memory, one of his memories on it playing like old VCR footage. Then he saw his mum again but she went by so fast she couldn’t have seen him even though he waved.

“Mum,” he cried again. “Mummy. I’m so sorry. I never thought it'd go this far. If only I told... I love you, mum. I love you.”

Dave knew he was dying and was all right with that.

Maybe it'll be the train. Maybe the diabetes. Whatever, he thought. Just hope mum's okay.

The train suddenly lurched upwards and, in that moment, with that thought, it finally left the tracks, and he found himself viewing his body as if he was outside of it.

The train was racing across the Red Centre with nothing but wildlife standing in its way. The last thing he heard was the intermittent alarm from his pump as the last of his insulin depleted. It's death knell reached Dave’s ears, and with the last of his strength, he threw an left arm up over his head, smacked his knuckles against the driver's door once more, then sunk into oblivion.

***

“We’re sorry, Mrs. Andrews,” the doctor was saying, “we might’ve been able to stop the internal bleeding, but your son's gone into a coma. His injuries were just to severe and his body rejected the insulin… it just couldn’t take it.”

“What are my options?” Dave’s mum, Katherine, asked, tears falling from as she gripped tight to her boys hand.

“I’m sorry, Katherine, but all you can do now is say your goodbye’s,” the doctor, Endo said.

“What?” she asked, her shock playing out in real time and drained the colour from her face.

“Would you like me to stay?” Endo asked, and gently squeezed her shoulder.

“No. No,” she said. “I’d like to be alone with my boy.”

“Of course,” he said, “I’ll be just outside if you need me.”

“Thank you," she whispered, and Endo turned to leave.

“The driver?” Katherine, asked.

“The Uber driver? He passed a while ago,” Endo said. “Again, I’m sorry, Katherine.”

The curtain closed behind him leaving Dave and his mum alone.

Dave was a fighter, but the puncture to his abdomen, from the steel rods hanging out the back of the utility the Uber smashed into, the damage was just too great. The rods shot through the windscreen, and speared him.

A slight giggle escaped her lips, "You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you my boy? How did Dave die, he was speared."

Katherine's giggle quickly turned into silent hysterics. She was still grieving the loss of her husband, now her beautiful boy was gone too.

The steel rods had punctured his lung, and catapulted so fast, shattered Dave’s spine. He didn’t stand a chance.

Endo, was being kind when he said, “If not for the coma.” Dave was all but dead on arrival. They kept him on life support for his mums sake.

You’re better off, mate, Endo, thought. Poor mother… hold it together, Endo. You can do this. Stay strong for her.

It was Endo’s first week in triage. He came straight from med school because of COVID. People were panicked. The ER was overflowing. Many were seeking emergency assistance for minor ailments and stress about whether or not they might have the virus. The Uber driver and Dave were his first fatalities.

The Uber driver died on arrival. He was on the last run of a fifty-hour work week and drunk at the wheel. Young Dave was only twenty-two. He’d grown up with diabetes, Dave and Katherine both. They always knew the day would come when one of them would succumb. Katherine thought it’d be her. No one's ever prepared for their worst fears to come true.

“Davey, my sweet boy,” his mum cried, his hand in hers, “We’re all here, sweetheart. Your friends, me. I’ll never leave your side. I made you a promise when you were eight, and I’m going to keep it. I don’t know if you can hear me, my sweet boy, but some how I know you can. I was the first to welcome you into this world and I’m here with you until your father comes to take you home.”

Katherine pressed her lips to his cheek, her tears trailed down his face and for a moment, she thought he gripped her hand, but she was wrong.

***

“Mum?” Dave groaned from the floor of the train. “Is that you?”

He looked up at the window, the speeding landscape shooting past at an abnormal speed. There was another bump, but it wasn't so bad and Dave couldn't feel any pain, any sickness, any more. He saw his mum. She was sitting in a hospital crying. He wanted to take her in his arms. Tell her it’ll be all right. Make her feel better, but for some reason he couldn’t reach her.

“Mum? I’m here,” he cried. “I’m right here, Mummy. Please look up. I’m right here… Dad? Is that you?”

“Hello, Son,” Dave’s dad, Eric, said.

“But… you’re—?”

“Dead?”

“Yeah, dead,” Dave said. "Am I dead?"

“Not really. There’s no such thing, son. It’s just waiting.”

“I need to tell mum I need my insulin, dad,” Dave said, recalling his human life. Panic tinged his words, “but she can’t hear me… am I, we, on a train?”

“Yes, she can hear you, and no, about the train, Dave. You no longer need insulin,” his dad said. “Time to come with me and we’ll wait for your mum.”

Dave’s dad took his hand and led him away.

“But, what about mum?” Dave asked.

His dad cupped Dave’s hand in his. A sudden overwhelming sensation of peace moved through him and the train suddenly moved back onto the tracks. The ride became soothing, enjoyable, and a warm glow grew about him and Dave knew everything was as it should be.

***

Katherine knew the moment her baby boy let go, the moment he moved on. He took a piece of her heart with him. She knew he’d be with his dad, and was no longer suffering, and it gave her as much peace as it could so near to his passing.

Katherine sat alone, surrounded by cheery yellow floral curtains, and cried. At her feet was a suitcase with a zip that never closed.

"You were going to get me a new one," she said to Dave.

Before the accident, she was about to board the Indian Pacific. Dave had given her tickets for a holiday to visit her sister. His friends got hold of her just before she boarded.

***

After a suitable amount of time had passed, Endo helped Katherine out to a private waiting room where Dave’s friends had been pacing back and forth. When Katherine entered the room a “breaking news” report was playing on a television and for some reason it became very important to her.

“Again,” a female reporter was saying, “the Indian Pacific has derailed somewhere in the Red Centre after hitting, what is being reported as, a caravan of camels. They were sleeping on the line. Many are injured, and the death toll is set to rise. More than sixty people are still reported as missing in the wreckage. Again, the death toll is currently nine, but authorities have informed us that it will take a week before the true number can be known.”

Katherine collapsed.

When she woke, she was lying on a gurney in a quiet room. The young doctor, Endo, was sitting next to her, holding her hand.

“Hello Katherine,” he said. “You gave everyone a scare. Don’t panic, you’re all right. We’ve given you something to help you relax.”

“But I don’t want…” her words faded away, as the meds started to do their thing.

Just before she closed her eyes, she thought she saw a blinding white light form for a fraction of a second above her head. Katherine could’ve sworn she'd seen her husband and son in that light. They were holding hands and smiling down at her, but it disappeared so fast, and the sedative was so strong, she couldn't be sure.

Photograph: Steve Strike/Great Southern Rail