The long road home.

Out.

It's on our third day in Mexico that we are forced to start talking again. We fuel up in the morning and Sam tries to apologies with ice-creams but I just tell him to turn the air-con up.

At noon Sam starts staring at the dash-board, a corner forces him to look back at the road but two minutes later he goes back to dash-board-staring, he eventually reaches across the car and turns the air con off, I'm sprawled across the back seat enjoying the cool but within five minutes the car starts to heat up again.

"Hey Sam," I say, "Can you turn the air-con back on?"

"NO," his voice is more forceful then I expect, I sit up.

"What's wrong?"

He looks at the dash again and wipes a hand across his fore-head; "We're out of fuel." For once Sam looks really stressed out.

I frown, "What do you mean? We didn't fill up that long ago."

"Yeah, but... I'm guessing it's because the air con's been on this whole time,"

The car begins to heat up even more.

"I think I saw a program on T.V where the same thing happened," I say, low-key beginning to drown in my own sweat.

"Yeah, well it would have been real help-ful if you'd remembered that sooner."

"Hey it's not my fault."

"You should have told me."

We sit in silence, and the empty needle act's like a ticking time-bomb. The heat begins to be get unbearable but Sam won't wind down any windows, even when his nose begins to bleed and he has to hold one of our last remaining toilet rolls against it.

Twenty minutes pass with the needle on empty, we round a steep corner and the car begins to slow, I can almost feel the power leaking out of it. Sam tries pumping his foot on the accelerator but the car doesn't give much more power than a hiccup.

"Try restarting it," I say, remembering a trick from the movie-I-should-have-remembered-earlier.

"Yeah because that'll work," the sarcasm in Sam's voice matches the sweat rolling down his face.

I just frown.

Our speed drops and even though we are riding with no gears it's crazy how fast we come to a stop, a hundred metres after the corner we are traveling slower than someone running, ten metres later and we are traveling as fast as me running. By the time we slow to a mild walk Sam gives in; he restarts the car- we get another hundred metres; much to his annoyance.

By now the car has reached furnace level and I have to wind down my window, drag or no drag I'm not dying of the heat, Sam doesn't even notice, instead tries restarting again; this time we only get fifty metres, coming to a standstill in the middle of a flat stretch of desert road. When Sam can't get the car going he glares at me, "Any other bright ideas?" He says, his voice higher than usual.

I shrug and open my door, "We stick out our thumbs and wait."

Mv