Fireball by Tyler Keevil Page B

around or rubbing each other down with suntan oil, but when it came to something like this their mechanical limbs short-circuited and their robot brains blew a fuse. The thing is, I wasn’t much better. I was so fried I might have stood and stared with the rest of them, hoping somebody else would know what to do.
    Somebody did.
    Chris said, ‘Fucking come on.’
    Then he sprinted down the boat ramp and dove in.
    I followed.

    She’d had a stroke. That’s what the doctors said, and I believed them. There was no other explanation for why an old lady would drive her car into the ocean like that. She’d felt it coming on and turned off Dollarton highway. Then she’d lost control – of her body, of the vehicle – and ended up in the drink.
    Everybody agreed on that.
    Of course, there’s no way to be sure. I mean, did she actually have the stroke while she was driving, or did she have it after she’d sucked back a few litres of seawater? Nobody asked that question. They just assumed it was an accident – like with Chris’s dad. I guess they didn’t want to think about the alternative. I thought about it, though. I thought about it before we ran into that guy at the funeral, and after what he said I thought about it even more.
    I still do.

    The cop was older than us, but only by a few years. His face was round and fleshy, like he’d never lost his baby fat. Also, his uniform looked one size too small. I don’t know if he’d just grown too chubby for it, or if they were cutting costs at the police department, but either way he didn’t fit that thing. He looked more like a kid who’d dressed up as a cop for Halloween.
    Basically, that was Bates. That’s what was waiting for us on shore. He waded into the water up to his knees, but he didn’t actually help carry her. He just ordered us around.
    â€˜Great job, guys – now bring her up here. That’s it.’
    I could barely walk. My legs felt like strips of liquorice and I was quivering all over. We managed to pulled her up the boat ramp. Soaking wet and limp as a doll, she must have weighed about five hundred pounds. Her dress dragged and slithered across the concrete, and left streaks of water where it touched. The beach mannequins gathered around us, pressing in and pushing against our backs. They wouldn’t shut up, either. They kept whispering and chattering like the whole thing was part of some reality TV show.
    â€˜Back the hell up!’ Chris yelled.
    â€˜Let’s remain calm, here,’ Bates said. ‘Everybody just remain calm.’
    We ignored him. Even then, we knew he was full of shit.
    â€˜Over there, man,’ Julian said. ‘Not on the cement.’
    We stretched the woman out on the grass beside the boat ramp. She looked awful. Actually, she looked worse than that. She looked dead. The skin on her face was grey and puckered. Both eyes showed white except for a sliver of iris just below the lids. Her lips had gone all blue and her mouth was parted as if she’d just seen something really, really, horrible.
    Bates said, ‘Oh, shit.’
    Then somebody screamed. It wasn’t a girl, either. One of those big, beefy guys let out a little shriek, like a baboon.
    â€˜She’s dead!’
    â€˜She’s not breathing!’
    â€˜What happened?’
    Chris shouted, ‘Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!’
    By that point, there must have been nearly fifty people surrounding us, all of them useless. Bates was useless, too. He stared at the lady with this frozen expression on his face, as if seeing her had turned him into stone. When I asked him if an ambulance was coming, he couldn’t even answer. He just stood there, like a total fucking pylon. In movies, cops are always the ones in charge. Not Bates. They printed it differently in the papers but the sight of Mrs Reever completely threw him. He didn’t know what the hell to do. We