Treadly, unbelievably, was exactly where I’d left it. I jumped on and started cycling. After ten or so minutes, when I figured I was far enough away from the zoo, I stopped on the side of the road and considered what I needed to do next.
Usually people in my situation – i.e., covered in excrement – are pretty keen to have a hot shower, apply some soap to their body. But I had a bigger imperative: time was running out – I needed to contact the Zolton-Banders, decipher those letters.
I took out the iPhone, looked at the letters.
mtytdrmwrldtwrftrrrsx
Zoe, did it always have to be so complicated? Why not just a simple text message: Meet you at Cozzi’s at nine? Or the town hall steps? No, with her it had to be all mtytdrmwrldtwrftrrrsx.
Okay, Dom, concentrate. You’ve been here before with Zoe and Otto’s code on Facebook, with Nitmick and Guzman’s cryptic messages to each other. You cracked them, you can crack this.
What was special about mtytdrmwrldtwrftrrrsx?
It actually didn’t take me long to work this out: there were no vowels.
So I began by adding a few of the obvious ones. mtytdreammworldtwroftrrrrsx
And then I added another less obvious one. mtytdreamworldtowerofterrorsx
Every kid who has ever been to the Gold Coast knows what the Tower of Terror is: it’s officially rated as one of the top ten scary rides in the known universe.
And after that the rest pretty much just fell into place: meetyouatdreamworldtowerofterrorsix
You know how I say I love speed? Well, I do, as long as it’s linear speed, speed that pretty much obeys the known laws of Newtonian physics. Tower of Terror speed, now that’s a different thing.
Actually I’d only been on it once, and if they weren’t the worst five minutes of my life that was only because The Debt had come along later.
I’d spent the whole time white-knuckled, eyes closed, mouth clamped shut so my innards wouldn’t tumble out.
So if Zoe Zolton-Bander wanted to meet at the Tower of Terror, I would. But I couldn’t help thinking that a simple text message have achieved the same result.
Yes, I know, how did she know my phone wasn’t bugged, but you know what I mean?
Just a simple text message.
THURSDAY
TOWER OF TERROR
There’s a regular shuttle bus that leaves from Broadbeach, so I got on Treadly, my new best friend, and hammered it. I rode down footpaths, bombed a mall, ran a few red lights, and got there just as the shuttle was about to leave.
‘Don’t go!’ I screamed at the driver. ‘I’ve got to get on that bus.’
I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d stepped on the accelerator, but he smiled at me and said, in a voice loud enough for the other passengers to hear, ‘Hear that, folks? That’s the passion people have for Dreamworld.’ Most of the people on the bus looked Chinese, or Korean, and most of them were asleep, their heads lolling on their shoulders.
I locked Treadly to a post, and got on board, and watched as the driver’s smile fell off his face and fluttered to the floor like a dead moth. Unfortunately for the other passengers there was only one empty seat, so me and my filthy fug of zoo poo took it. People started waking up, talking excitedly. My Chinese is pretty average, my Korean even worse, but I’m pretty sure I knew what they were saying: what is that rotten smell?
We drove through Surfers, across the bridge to Southport and then onto the Pacific Highway. By the time the bus pulled up at Dreamworld, the other passengers were almost fighting each other to get out and find some fresh air.
I joined the queue to get in, and again I could see the distress my smell was causing. I think some of the problem was that it was a bad smell, but it was also an unusual smell. You drop your guts and people pretty much know what the deal is; a baby fills its nappy – same thing; but the aroma I was carrying was much more exotic – it was African, Indian, maybe even Galápogasian.
At last it was my turn to pay and as I gave the man my card it occurred to me how much it had cost my dad for me to pay back these instalments: if you added up all the taxi fares, the train fares, the bus fares, the plane fares, it would probably be as much as somebody – but not Dr Miller – earned in a year.
Once inside I made straight for the souvenir store and bought myself a really hideous Dreamworld T-shirt and a matching pair of really hideous Dreamworld shorts and took them into the toilet and got changed. I checked myself out in the mirror – hideous on hideous and the result, actually, wasn’t as bad as you’d think.
I checked my watch: 5.54 pm. Tower of Terror time!
Just as I was about to join the end of the queue I had a brainwave: if we were going to meet on the Tower of Terror, they must be in the queue too. Thus, we could lose the whole extremely unpleasant Tower of Terror experience. Twice I walked along the queue. Either they weren’t there or Zoe had got a whole lot more professional with her disguises.
Actually, the Tower of Terror queue moved much quicker than I’d thought; there were a lot of people dropping out. Some of them saw the faces of the people who had just experienced the Tower of Terror and asked themselves: Do I want to look like that for the rest of my life? Like that famous painting The Scream by Edvard Munch. Others texted their friends, Just about to do Tower of Terror, and got the reply, Can I have your skateboard when you DIE?
And then it was my turn. Desperately, I looked around: where in the hell were they?
They said to meet at the Tower of Terror. I was at the Tower of Terror.
They said at six. It was six.
Or had I got it totally, totally wrong? Was the turtle just a result of the happy gas? Were those supposed spots marking the letters just fly poop or something?
‘You up for it or not?’ said the attendant, one of those in-your-face types who always work in places like this.
‘Of course,’ I said, and the next thing I knew I was strapped tight in the seat and the thing I was on was hurtling along at a speed that didn’t seem possible and people were screaming and my internal organs were trying to find a way up through my throat.
Stop screaming so loud! I thought, until I realised it was me who was doing the screaming so loud.
It went up high again, and then came screaming down at an even more terrifying speed.
Please no more.
But there was more.
And when it was finished, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, on my spaghetti legs, away from the Tower of Terror.
‘Dom?’
‘Not now,’ I said to whoever wanted to stop my flight from this evil place.
‘Dom!’ they repeated, more insistently, so I snuck a look behind me.
It was Zoe. Okay, it wasn’t Zoe, it was some punk/ nerd/emo, but I knew it was Zoe.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said.
‘The Tower of …’ I said, my voice trailing off.
‘You actually went on that thing?’
‘THAT’S WHERE YOU SAID TO MEET!’
‘Keep your voice down,’ she said, hand gripping my forearm, fingers digging to emphasise her words. She steered me away from all the rides to a plasticky little café. I sat at a table and she bought a couple of drinks.
I’d regained some of my composure by then and realised that it was okay, we were on track again, and I could take my recent ride on the Tower of Terror, scrunch it up and throw it into the rubbish bin of history. But with the Zolton-Banders you needed to have your wits about you, and I was afraid a fair few of mine were now littering the ground below the Tower of Terror, along with the loose change those scabby attendants would pick up at the end of the night.
‘Did you contact Roxas?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And he put me onto a woman by the name of Cory Morales – she works in the Philippines Embassy in Brisbane.’
‘Perfect!’ said Zoe.
Google had told me there was a Cory Morales who worked in the Philippines Embassy in Brisbane.
Of course I had
n’t contacted Roxas, because he was dead. And I hadn’t contacted Cory Morales, either. But these lies, the first of many I would have to tell if this thing was to fly, had seemed to work okay.
‘And?’ said Zoe.
‘She says it can be done.’
‘They will take the … um … goods?’
‘They will.’
‘And they will use the … um … goods for a worthwhile cause?’
‘For schools, hospitals, for stuff like that,’ I said, and I hoped I wasn’t laying it on too thick. ‘She said that it would make a huge difference to a poor country like the Philippines.’ Now I was definitely laying it on too thick, but why not?
Zoe said nothing for a while. ‘Dom, we can trust you, can’t we?’
No, probably not, but who were they to talk about trust?
‘Of course you can,’ I said. ‘So, here’s what she said: because the embassy is technically part of the Philippines, once it’s in their grounds, that’s it, Australian authorities can’t do a thing. It’s as good as if it was in the country. All you need to do is make sure it gets there.’
Zoe thought about this for a while, and then she took out her phone, opened the back and took out the sim card. She took a small plastic bag from her pocket – it must’ve had at least a hundred sim cards inside.
‘Which one do you think?’ she said.
‘FunTel have got some attractive deals going at the moment.’
She took my advice, found a gold FunTel sim and put it in her phone. She rang a number, which I assumed was her brother’s, and wandered off to have a private conversation.
After five or so minutes she returned. ‘We’re on.’
‘So what time?’ I said.
‘Time?’ she said, and I could see the suspicion in her face.
‘My person has to make sure she’s there when the … um … goods arrive, otherwise they could fall into the wrong hands.’
Zoe rang her brother again, wandered off again.
‘Tomorrow, at midday,’ she said.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘And what sort of vehicle will it come in?’
Again the call to her brother, the need for a private conversation.
‘I’ll text you just beforehand,’ she said, and added with a smile, ‘It depends on what Otto can borrow.’
That made absolute sense, and as we parted company I could feel a tingle of excitement: the sting was on!
Now, I had to tell The Debt.
Athletics training was tonight. Perfect!
It was pretty weird: in order to converse with The Debt, I had to run fast around a circular track and get quite sweaty, but Seb seemed the most convenient conduit to them. Actually, he was my only conduit to The Debt.
By the time the shuttle bus dropped me back at my bike, it was already six-thirty; training had started. So I just unlocked Treadly, got on board and pedalled towards the Gold Coast Sharks grounds.
I was late arriving; the other runners were already out on the track, including – thank goodness – Seb. As I made my way to the change rooms, Coach Sheeds came out to meet me.
‘Wow, you wouldn’t have been to Dreamworld, would you?’ she said, which was actually quite an amusing thing for somebody with no sense of humour to say.
‘No, what gives you that idea?’ I said.
‘Well, it’s all over your clothes,’ she said. See what I mean?
Further conversation was curtailed by the arrival of Coach Colin himself, with whistles, stopwatch, the usual hardware around his neck.
‘Hey, Dom,’ he said. ‘What say you get into your kit and get out onto the track?’
‘Actually, this is my kit,’ I said.
‘That’s a funny one,’ he said, laughing.
I hadn’t noticed before how big his teeth were, like horse teeth. ‘I’m not joking,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a bit of a funny day and –’
He cut me off. ‘What the hell, Dreamworld, just get out there.’
I made straight for Seb, but when he saw me headed his way, he took off down the track like a startled rabbit.
Maybe he was still spooked from what had happened in the last training session; maybe it was the Dreamworld clothes; maybe there was even the lingering aroma of zoo poo. Whatever the reason, it was pretty annoying, because the sting was on only if The Debt agreed it was on.
Coach Colin called us in; he wanted some interval training, ten 400 metres at a fast pace, with a jog in between. And he wanted us to do it in pairs.
‘Seb and Dreamworld,’ he said, which got him a generous laugh.
I realised, with some annoyance, that he was probably going to keep calling me this, that he was one of those people who had an inflated sense of their nickname-giving ability.
The first pair took off, the second pair, the third pair, which included Coach Sheeds, and then it was the two of us on the line.
Coach Colin looked down at his watch. ‘Go!’ he said, and we took off.
One of the reasons I’m a 1500-metre runner is that I hate the 400 metres. Actually, pretty much all runners hate the 400 metres. Even 400-metre runners hate the 400 metres; they’re just masochists.
It’s not like a sprint, the 100 or 200, where you pretty much go flat out. And it’s not like the 800 and 1500 where you can get into some sort of rhythm, plot some sort of strategy. It’s in between, and it’s horrible, and I hate it, and usually I just go through the motions.
Seb, however, had the accelerator on, and in order to talk to him, I had to do the same.
‘It’s on,’ I said as we flew around the bend.
He said nothing.
‘Did you hear me? It’s on.’
Again, nothing from Seb; he seemed more interested in the ground and how quickly he could get across it. Actually, really quickly, and when we came to the end of the first 400 metre, I was sucking some in. Not exactly big ones, but not small ones either. Sucking in the medium-sized ones.
We jogged back to the starting line.
‘Seb and Dreamworld,’ said Coach.
I was so right about the nickname thing.
‘Go!’
Again, Seb turned up the pace, and I didn’t want to waste too much precious breath on words, but I had to get an answer from him.
‘Yamashita’s Gold will be yours tomorrow if you play this right,’ I said.
No response.
‘And you know how much us wogs love gold,’ I said, hoping to get some sort of reaction from him.
He didn’t respond, not verbally anyway, but we were now sprinting towards the 400-metre line. I didn’t have to keep up with him; it was a training gig, and I knew Coach Colin would wait until I was back on the line before he said ‘Go’ for the next 400 metres.
But I wasn’t going to ever let Seb beat me. Not ever. Not in anything.
We hit the line together, and Seb turned on his heels and jogged quickly back to the starting line.
I was really suffering, and the idea that there could be eight more like this didn’t seem humanly possible. But there we were, on the line again, with Coach barking, ‘Go.’
I knew I had to mix it up a bit.
Do what I did the other day and jolt Seb out of his obstinacy.
So this time I went hard, leaving Seb behind.
He quickly caught up, though, and surged ahead of me. How in the hell had he got so damn fit? And this time, he had me beat, crossing the line at least a metre ahead of me.
Again the rapid jog back.
Leave him, I told myself as I followed behind. This is stupid.
But as I took my position on the white line again, I knew that it wasn’t stupid. This was The Debt, this was a pound of flesh, my flesh.
‘Love the effort you lads are showing today,’ said Colin. ‘Go!’
We went again, and Seb hammered it once more.
I was ready for him, though.
It hurt, it was hell, but I wasn’t going to let him get away again.
‘The,’ I said, and then took a gulp of ai
r. ‘Gold.’ Gulp. ‘Will.’ Gulp. ‘Be.’ Gulp. ‘Delivered.’ Gulp. ‘To.’ Gulp. ‘The.’ Gulp. ‘Philippines.’ Gulp. ‘Embassy.’ Gulp. ‘In.’ Gulp. ‘Brisbane.’ Gulp. ‘Tomorrow.’ Gulp. ‘At.’ Gulp. ‘Midday.’ Gulp.
We reached the line together, but I let him jog back in front of me.
One more sprint.
On the line again, and Coach said ‘Go’ and Seb took off, even faster this time, a cross between Ben Johnson and a Formula One racing car. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if he, like both of them, was on something with a higher-than-normal octane rating.
Just let the idiot go, I told myself.
But I couldn’t, because there was one more thing the idiot needed to know.
I found something, I’m not sure from where, but I found it, and I made up the ground between us.
‘I.’ Gulp. ‘Will.’ Gulp. ‘Text.’ Gulp. ‘Vehicle.’ Gulp. ‘Details.’ Gulp.
Now that I’d said it, or gulped it, I could let him go.
Yeah, right.
I noticed that the beautiful fluid form he usually exhibited was looking a bit ragged around the edges.
‘I’ve got you,’ I said, managing three words in a row, as I drew up level with him.
It was probably those three words that did me, because he beat me over the line.
There wasn’t much in it, maybe a centimetre, but he definitely got me.
We both stayed there, bent double, hands on knees. And maybe, just maybe, I vomited a bit in my mouth.
‘Bring it in,’ said Coach, but neither of us was bringing it in anywhere, neither of us had anything left in the tank.
The rest of the training was pretty much recovery for both of us. Afterwards Coach Colin called me over.
‘I’d like you and Seb to go in the nationals this year.’
‘But it’s an adult’s race.’
‘I’ve had a good look at the rules and I can’t see anything that stops you running. What do you say?’
‘Sure, why not?’ I said, and for a wonderful soaring second I totally forgot about all the other stuff in my life, and it became what it used to be, all about running.
But it was only for a second.
He slapped me on the back. ‘I knew you’d be up for it, Dreamworld.’
Take a Life Page 18