Chapter 11
The wheels touched down with a particularly heavy bump and jolted Josh out of what had been the first decent sleep he'd had in a long time. He wasn't sure when he'd finally fallen asleep but he felt like he'd managed to get at least a few hours of unbroken slumber which was something he hadn't had in a while!
He could see that Kyle and Candy were awake and chatting on the other side of the aisle. He turned to smile at Andy. They'd made it! They'd actually made it! Now all they had to do was get through passport control and they'd be 'home' and dry.
Andy was still sleeping in that strange hunched position against the wall of the plane. He figured that he'd let him sleep a little while longer and wake him once all the other passengers had gotten off. They'd have to wait to be taken off anyway because it would take a while to organise assistance and specialised transport for their wheelchairs.
"Andy?" he whispered, when he saw the special assistance crew finally get on-board. "Andy?" he called again, giving him a little nudge to wake him.
He didn't want to startle him too much if he'd actually managed to get some proper sleep for once.
"Andy! Wake up!" he said, giving his shoulder a little shake this time.
There was no response. His heart began to race and a terrible sick feeling began to form in his stomach as he shook him a little bit harder. He wasn't waking up! Andy just wasn't waking up!
"Andy!" he shouted, putting his hand on his brother's face and recoiling in horror when he realised that his skin was cold and waxy to the touch. "No! Andy!" he shouted, as he began to panic and shook him really hard, "Nooo! Please Andy, please wake up?! Please?!"
One of the air stewards appeared at his side with a shocked and ashen expression on her face. She could see from Andy's colour, and the waxen appearance that his skin had taken on, that he was dead. It wasn't the first time that it had happened on a flight and it probably wouldn't be the last.
"Is he?" she asked, tentatively putting her hand on Josh's shoulder.
He glared at her for a moment and pulled his shoulder away. Kyle and Candy were staring across in horror at the scene as it unfolded. Kyle couldn't hide his shock, and kept opening his mouth to speak, but the words were failing him. How could Andy just be dead?! How could that have just happened?!
"Andy! Open your eyes!" Josh shouted at him, beginning to sob and frantically trying to force his eyelids open. "Andy! Please wake up! Please?!"
He gently touched the side of his face again and wondered how long ago it had happened. Had he been blissfully sleeping when his brother had breathed his last?! How could he just be gone?! He was still slumped over in that uncomfortable looking position with his head inside the rectangular window of the plane and his arms hugged around his chest.
He'd told him to shut up and he'd done exactly that. He hadn't talked or moved again!
'Shut up' had been the final words that he'd spoken to his brother. His poor sick and scared brother that he loved with all his heart! What was he going to do without him?!
"Please wake up!" wailed Josh, as he put his arms around him and laid his head on his motionless chest, "I can't do this without you!"
ii.
"Are you okay?" asked Kyle, gently touching Josh's shoulder and looking at him in concern.
Josh was sitting hunched over the interview table with his head resting on his hand. They'd barely spoken over the last few hours. Not since the immigration official had left the room and taken Candy with him.
"I'm… I'm… Can you just stop asking me that?" mumbled Josh, as he stared down at the scratched surface of the table in front of him. "Just…" he started to say but he never continued the sentence.
There were initials carved into the wood and he was lightly running his fingertips around the grooves, over and over and over again. He wondered who "CB" was and where they were now. They must have spent a lot of time waiting in this room if they'd had the time and the inclination to carve their initials. He wondered what they'd used to do it.
He also wondered how long he and Kyle were going to be kept waiting. They'd already been in there now for about eight hours. No-one seemed to want to tell them what was going on.
"Mate, I'm… I'm so sorry" said Kyle, giving Josh's shoulder a little squeeze, "At least… at least he just drifted off to sleep… I mean… It must have been kind of peaceful."
Josh nodded slowly and continued to stare down at the shape of the letters carved in the wood. "CB" he mouthed to himself as he traced the letters again slowly and carefully.
"Casey Braxton" he said below his breath. Maybe Andy was with Casey now?
He thought about how much he'd lost in such a short space of time. How had things gone so badly wrong? He was only 19 years old and yet here he was, a fugitive criminal, running from the law, in a country that he knew nothing about. At least with Andy by his side he'd had some sense of family and identity remaining, but now he might as well have been this alter ego. This idiot with a dickie-bow and suspenders. 'Michael Flood' was a name that would take a little while to get used to. He'd never thought of himself as a Michael, but maybe this idiot of a hipster cameraman was the new him? Maybe he'd have to grow one of these stupid beards for real?
Kyle sat back in his chair and gave a heavy sigh. This whole thing had so quickly become worse than a nightmare!
Poor Andy had been through such a terrible ordeal in the last few weeks but none of them had really realised quite how ill he was. He'd been pretty stoic about it all. He'd just sat there in pain, rarely complaining very much, and they'd allowed him to rot from the inside out, and quietly drift away.
They'd chosen to ignore the fact that the vet had clearly botched the job and allowed him to get weaker and weaker in front of their eyes. It was something that they hadn't even really spoken about. Like some kind of silent understanding, that no matter what, they weren't taking him to the hospital. Even Josh had gone along with that. Now the poor guy was dead and he couldn't help feeling guilty about it.
Andy had risked his life to break him out of prison after all, and this was how he'd been repaid. He knew that the guy had made mistakes, a lot of mistakes, but in the end, he hadn't really been a bad guy. Not really. He thought about his attempts to apologise last night, and how much he'd wanted to unburden himself. He must have known that he was dying.
"Mate" said Kyle in a soothing voice, as he leaned forward and gently rubbed Josh's shoulder, "You've still got me… We've still got each other… I mean… I'm here if you need to talk."
"How long are they gonna keep us in here?" asked Josh, in a low and distant voice.
He just seemed so dazed. The interview with the immigration official had gone by in a blur with Josh answering all the questions about who they were and the purpose of their visit in a way that almost sounded like he was reading off a script. He basically was reading off a script.
'Michael Flood' and 'Stephen Harris' were deeply traumatised and shocked at the loss of their friend 'Aaron Clayton'.
Both he and Kyle had played their parts to the best of their ability, but for Josh it had felt like an out of body experience. His mind had shut down and everything seemed like he was watching it from a distance. It was someone else sitting in this chair answering the questions, not him! None of it seemed real anymore. He couldn't really feel anything. He just felt numb.
Suddenly the door opened again and a man walked in in a grey suit. He set a briefcase down on the desk and opened it.
"So guys…" he said in an English accent, taking some paperwork out of the case and shaking his head at them in pity, "Not Michael and Stephen as it turns out…" He pointed at Josh and tilted his head, "Josh Barrett, I believe… and you're Kyle Braxton?"
Kyle let out a gasp of shock and all the colour drained from his face.
"How…?" he began to say, staring at Josh who didn't seem to have reacted in the slightest. He looked back at the man and said, "How did you find out?!"
The man smirked at him and shook his head.
"Those documents are pretty rubbish…" he said, "...and your 'friend' Candy sold you out as soon as she left the room… Said you basically kidnapped her and forced her to travel against her will."
"What?!" exclaimed Kyle, looking wide-eyed with shock, "How could we force her?! Two of us are in wheelchairs! She pushed mine most of the way… How is that forcing someone?!"
The man laughed and said, "I don't believe it for a second but it's a pretty plausible story, and since she didn't have any drugs in her personal belongings, she'll be free to go."
Josh looked up at the man for the first time since he'd come in.
"Drugs?" he asked, leaning back in his chair and glancing at Kyle in a confused way, "What do you mean drugs? We have medications with us for Kyle and Andy… They're both in a lot of pain… but they're medications, not illegal drugs."
He didn't know why he was still referring to Andy in the present tense. He just couldn't bring himself to say 'was'.
"Guys, I'm gonna cut straight to the chase… I've been assigned as your legal representation and translator until the Australian authorities can send someone official in… There was a large quantity of ketamine found in your bags… and well… I'm not sure how to say this…"
Josh looked up at the man in front of him with a look of complete and total defeat. Everything was becoming crystal clear. They'd been set up. 'Uncle Theo' had screwed them over in the worst way possible. The vet's obvious amusement when he'd been talking about the ketamine made a lot more sense now. 'Enough to knock out a team of horses'! Candy had been in on it too and had landed them in it with the authorities the moment that she'd got her chance.
How had they all been so stupid?! Where had Brax even got the guy from, or had he been in on it from the start?!
Whatever the case, they were here now in Thailand with a load of drugs in their bags that they couldn't account for, and now they were going to be 'banged up abroad', the only thing worse than being banged up in Australia…
Was there even any point in arguing?!
The man glanced back and forth at the two boys in front of him and wondered if they'd really had any part in what he was about to say. Even he'd been shocked when he'd been handed the report… and he'd seen some weird and twisted things in his time. These two just didn't seem like the type of hardened criminals that would do something quite this gruesome. But people could sometimes surprise you… He cleared his throat and looked at Josh in a sympathetic sort of way.
"Your brother…" he said, "He'd had recent surgery, hadn't he?"
Josh nodded and glanced at Kyle with growing concern. A terrible thought had begun to cross his mind. Maybe the vet hadn't simply botched the surgery through sheer incompetence? Maybe he'd actually intended to kill Andy and had done it deliberately?!
"Well, it seems that someone actually… um… implanted a package…" said the man in the suit, narrowing his eyes at them and clearly trying to gauge their reactions.
He still wasn't sure what to make of all of this. He knew that they were both fugitives, but looking at their backgrounds, neither of them seemed like criminal masterminds, or like they'd been involved in drugs in the past. The two pathetic looking specimens in front of him now just didn't strike him as the types to have thought this up on their own. The whole thing just felt like a setup and he'd seen a few.
"Josh?" he asked, "Did you know that your brother had a 2kg package of heroin sewn inside his abdomen?"
Josh's mouth fell open and his eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.
"Wuh… What… How…?" he stammered, shaking his head as a cold chill ran down his spine.
He had watched the vet operate but he remembered him asking him to go and get some more sterile clothes from the box of supplies. That's when it must have happened.
He felt a wave of nausea roll over him so he dashed to the waste paper basket by the wall and began to vomit. The vet's mad giggling and all the sly looks that he'd given him suddenly made a lot more sense. No wonder Andy had been in so much pain!
Kyle watched with a look of pure horror on his face as Josh retched over the bin, and then turned to look at the man in the suit.
"We didn't do that to him!" he exclaimed, shaking his head and looking disgusted, "He was Josh's brother… and he was my friend!"
"It looks like the package may have been leaking a little bit… maybe for some time…" continued the man, watching Josh lean exhausted against the wall and wipe his mouth.
He felt unusually sympathetic towards these two. It was just a pity that the whole thing was so cut and dry and that the evidence against them was so damning. He was fairly sure that they were drugs mules. People were rarely this stupid when they acted of their own accord.
"That added to the level of infection…" he added, giving a sad little sigh, "The coroner thinks he went into cardiac arrest sometime early on in the flight."
He looked over at Kyle and glanced at the cast on his leg.
"They want to take a sample of that plaster too." he said, nodding at it and giving him a pitying look, "Candy said that it's lined with cocaine!"