Disintegration

happened? He tried to move but a sudden sharp, jabbing pain in his gut made him stop. With cold, swollen hands he reached out and disentangled himself from his baseball bat. One of the nails was sticking into him. Fortunately several thick layers of clothing had prevented the point from piercing his skin. The pain immediately stopped and he let the bat fall from his hands. It landed with a thump on the upturned roof of the car, right between Amir and himself.
    “Amir,” he said, managing to tilt his head slightly so that he could see the other man’s face, “are you okay?”
    Amir didn’t respond. Webb looked around again, confused, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the gloom. Amir was also upside down, still anchored in his seat by his safety belt. What kind of an idiot wears a safety belt these days? Webb wondered. And why am I lying on my back on the roof? The car, he slowly deduced, his head still cloudy, had turned over in the middle of a stream. He began to remember a few fleeting flashes of how they’d ended up here—plowing into the bodies on the golf course, Amir panicking and steering the wrong way, the sudden stomach-churning drop and the flashing of light over dark again and again as they rolled down the bank—but little else. Still not yet daring to move, he worked his way back through events to try and make more sense of his predicament. He remembered the reason why they’d been away from the hotel. The others would all probably have made it back by now and they’d have given him and Amir up for dead. But wait … maybe it wasn’t as late as he’d first thought. He angled his head around again so that he could look out the window at his side. The glass was almost completely obscured by mud and a corpse which had its legs trapped under the car and was trying unsuccessfully to get away. When the corpse moved its leaden arms he could see definite flashes of daylight.
    Got to get out of here.
    “Amir,” he said again. He managed to reach across and shake Amir’s shoulder. He felt cold to the touch. Was he dead? He shook him again but still there was no reaction. What did he do now?
    Webb slowly moved his legs and found that he was able to work them around the edge of the back of the seat he’d been sitting in when they’d lost control of the car. Now able to move with a little more freedom, he stretched out and shuffled along the roof up toward the engine. The car had come to rest at a slight angle. The front of it was out of the water, propped up on the bank, while the back end was submerged. If he could smash his way through the windscreen, he’d be able to crawl out under the upturned bonnet and get out. What he’d do after that was anyone’s guess. The most prevalent of the snatched memories he had of the moments just before the crash was the incredible size of the crowd they’d managed to drive into. It was fucking huge.
    “Amir,” he whispered for a third time, “come on.” When there was still no response he reached out to touch his neck and try to find a pulse. Amir’s skin felt warm but clammy. He noticed that there was a puddle of blood on the roof below his upside-down head and he carefully turned his suspended head to face him. There was a deep gash across Amir’s forehead and, when Webb looked back, a corresponding bloody smudge in the middle of the cracked windscreen. Ironic that Amir was the one who had been strapped in, he thought. Poor bastard.
    Webb moved again and his outstretched foot kicked the fuel can which had also dropped onto the roof. Burn the car and distract the corpses, he remembered, that had been the plan. It might still work. He had no idea where he was in relation to the hotel, but anywhere on the golf course would be far enough away from the others not to matter, not that he cared about them and their plans anyway. Never mind getting that helicopter Jas had been constantly banging on about to see them, setting fire to the car would cause enough of a distraction to give him a chance to get away.
    “Oi, Amir,” he said, this time a little louder. He shook his shoulder again but still there was no response other than a sudden sickening dribble of blood where before there had been only drips. Time to move. There was nothing he could do for him. Even if he got him out of the car, he was going to have enough trouble getting himself off the golf course.
    Struggling in the confined space, Webb spun around on his back through a slow 180 degrees