“No! This way!”
There was a growl and screams within the bus, it rocked as if full of drunken college kids on their way to root for the away team. Passengers cowered in seats, some tossed luggage, but more climbed toward the back, all screamed or shouted. The time dogs saw feasting a treat for later.
The meal came in steps. They had to kill first. After that, they’d get to eating, in time.
“No wait, there’s kids!” the Truro mother shouted again.
The squeaky woman was small but mighty, she grabbed onto the woman’s hair through the hole, sinking forward and almost falling into the bus when the woman tried to pull away.
“I’m not looking after your kids!”
Roddy reached down and helped pull the Truro mother up. Her kids all screamed for her. The shouts and wails continued. Another set of arms popped through the roof as the mother crawled to her children. It was another mother, but her baby wasn’t in her arms.
“Stomped him!” she shrieked and cried, slapping her arms and kicking her legs rather than working her way topside. “Stomped him!”
“Lady, lady,” Roddy tried to grab her, but she fell back through.
“Out of the way!” the young man from Dornoch shouted at the hysterical woman. He wore a coat of blood.
Roddy didn’t grab for him, the man didn’t need help and he pulled himself to his knees.
“She’s nuts, goddamn bitch!” the young man stopped to shout back down the hole.
A slobbery pink mouth with long teeth leapt up to the hole, snapping and grasping a foot. The young man dropped to his stomach and screeched for help. The bus driver and the squeaky woman both grabbed on, but the arms slick with blood slipped through their hands and the man dropped into the bus.
Not enough time had passed to register what had happened and the mouth snapped back through the hole. Front paws scratched on the lip of the emergency hatch and the time dog snarled and snapped. Scared and helpless, the Truro mother dragged her children toward the front of the bus, the squeaky woman and the bus driver both backwards crab-walked, following her lead. The thing snapped and screamed. Footfalls thumped on the roof of the bus and Popcorn ran past them all and toward the hatch.
A humming whine came from his throat as he sprinted and the beast chomped with loud snaps at his feet as he cleared the hatch with a graceless leap. The beast lost its grip and fell into the hole and Popcorn slid to a stop on the far side of the hatch. He shot back, kicked the door, a big smile on his face, doing a good job just like his Dream Mama told him he would.
Varney – Closer Yet
None of the six watched Popcorn, the kid on the slow side of dim, the kid who’d come out of his medicated fog to race around crazily, the kid who understood the situation and acted with eerie foresight, close the hatch and wedge a small robot figurine from his pocket into the steel looped latch. Sealing it against the occasional thump and hungry jaws. Yet, none had to ask, all questions relating to their situation, as apparent and solid as it was, were beyond explanation.
A little better than two minutes had passed in the hours they’d spent stuck in or on the bus. The sun hadn’t changed and the heat threatened to bake them alive before whatever was going to happen could happen.
“How many dogs were there,” the squeaky woman asked.
Roddy Barsten rolled onto his side and looked up to the small woman. She lay facing the sky.
“I thought I saw six the first time, but I only saw five when the doors opened,” he said.
“I have an idea,” she said and then spat, “I need something, water, at very least out of the sun… Hold my feet, ok?”
“What are you…?” Roddy started, but she’d already crawled to the edge of the bus and tried to see in.
“Got me?” she asked.
Again, the driver took hold of the little woman’s legs.
“Pull me up,” she whispered after a moment. He did. “They’re there, five of them, they’re standing outside the toilet door, staring at it.”
“Ok?”
“I’m going to drop down to the door and jump inside. Then I’ll swing the door shut and climb out your window, but leave it far enough closed that the dogs can’t get out without breaking the glass.”
“They won’t break it unless there’s a wild change in atmosphere. Still, this doesn’t sound like a good idea,” said Roddy. “Why do you think they’re staring at the toilet door?”
Popcorn stopped his rounds at hearing the question, “There’s a granna in there, that’s ‘cause.”
He started zooming again, running circles around the roof.
The children much younger than him were too frightened to act their age. Popcorn seemed to take it as his duty to act out for all of them.
“Whose grandmother?” the squeaky woman asked.
“Can we get to the toilet from up’ere?” the Truro woman asked. There was a vacancy in her tone and her paler.
Roddy considered both of the recent topics, the latter sound significantly safer, “There’s a vent and a fan,” he said and walked back to the spot on the roof above the john.
The vent rode level with the roof, but fins permitted air drawn from the fan. It was screwed in place, but it was plastic. Ten inches squared, Roddy kicked at the vent. From within the bus, the time dogs growled and whined, scratched at the door.
The exterior of the vent system broke away and the driver dropped his knees to test the holds of screws keeping the fan system together.
“Oh my god,” the Truro mother moaned from midway up the steel Greyhound tube.
Roddy and the squeaky woman looked back to her and followed the suggested view. She nodded her chin to the north. Soundlessly, the giant chain had begun to melt at a noticeable speed, falling into a puddle. The white paint on the fat wooden slates had drained and rain as it evaporated into nothingness. The chair shrank two feet in a blink.
Better move, better figure out what’s going on in the shitter, if it matters
Of course it matters!
Roddy yanked on steel fan blades until the flimsy carriage separated. He tossed the remainder of the unit over his shoulder. There was a mesh cover that hugged the ceiling, slightly wider than the access to the vent system.
With every swing, the dogs drew further into frenzy. The fan finally gave and dropped. The dropping plastic mesh struck a scared face that hardly registered the strike. She mouthed up at the bus driver from the shade, please stop, please stop, goddamn you.
The door thumped and the woman dropped her face into a hand. She had just one left. A bloody stump remained where her left arm below the elbow used to exist before it became dog food. There was a lot of blood on the floor.
Roddy’s mind flashed on an American war movie scene, Vietnam, a POW at the bottom of a dirty hole. He shivered. The woman resigned to her fate, earlier, but earlier she didn’t know about time doggies. Death isn’t always a slow waste just because cancer dug in its fangs, there’s still the ferocious world to kill you around every corner.
You can’t let her die down there, a voice spoke, perhaps his own and perhaps not.
Roddy leaned back and dropped to his seat to consider the options, if there truly were any at all. As he watched the remainder of the chair disappear, he felt very much at the whim of a cosmic mistake righting itself. That asshole with the brass watch was right, man or woman. Time has teeth and time holds fate.
Fate is a heavyweight champ.
The driver looked back at the other two adults on the roof of the Greyhound. The Truro mother seemed lost, her fear crept toward the ravishing stage, her children fed off this and buried their faces in the folds of her clothing, the bulges of her love handles and belly. The squeaky woman took the bus driver’s gaze and held it, as if trying to meld minds.
“There’s a woman down there,” he said.
Somehow, she knew that, whether from Popcorn or that Roddy had seen it firsthand, she saw it too. He saw a plan unfold on his mind, it was horribly dangerou
s, but the risk was there no matter what.
Plus, you have to get off this bus, just like the helicopter that killed Popcorn’s mother. Get off the bus and get away from the dogs, away from the melting world and you’ll survive the trip back. It’s fate and fate rules the universe. Even gods have to lose sometime.
The plan was simple. The Truro mother would help the squeaky woman in through the door. She’d swing the door closed and climb out the window, drawing attention away from the toilet and to the nearest window so that Roddy could pull the old woman up to the roof.
But isn’t there a sixth time pooch, one more slobbery beast? A big one, a wise one?
He thought so, but he wasn’t exactly taking consensus when he saw the tubby Williamsford non-believer eaten up. He hoped stress and fear added a number.
“I’ll tell her and then I’ll give you the signal, get that woman to help you,” Roddy said.
The squeaky woman looked at the Truro mother and then rolled her eyes. She then started ripping her skirt at the knees attempting to create a sport model.
The Roddy, the driver and seasonal Santa, put his head into the hole and whispered, “We’re getting you out, but you have to be ready, get up.”
The old woman shook her head.
“Get up!” he shouted and the dogs outside the door began slamming into the flimsy door. The old woman rose. Roddy whispered again, “Ok, when I tell you, you get out of the washroom and run straight across the aisle and I’ll pull you through the ceiling.”
The woman shook her head and she’d do it or she wouldn’t do it.
“Popcorn, come here a minute.”
“Hey, we got to do stuff,” Popcorn said as he stomped across the roof of the bus. “She gots the smoke and we gots to go soon.”
Smoke? There was time for a conversation. Second time he talked about smoke.
Roddy looked around. Varney was the focal point of the moment away from time and fate approached from every angle, needing to cover less and less space by the minute. The home next to the chair and the chair itself, completely gone. The next home south had begun to melt away as well. To the south of the bus still seemed fine.
Could be that south is the future, fate right on time.
“We’ll be gone soon enough, Popcorn. I need you to hold my legs a minute.”
“Better not fart at me!” Popcorn said and then cackled.
His expression suggested that he found himself an exemplary comedian.
As Roddy got down onto his belly, a sting of futility struck and he saw the future. Once the beasts got them, the world went back to normal. Their bodies are destroyed beyond recognition, chalked to some horrendous bus accident like Popcorn’s helicopter ride.
He glanced to the squeaky woman and the Truro mother. They were not together, the Truro mother remained huddled with her children. The squeaky woman was ready to jump down in through the door of the bus.
You’re either a hero or a gymnast, he thought and nodded to her.
She nodded back and then she was gone. The passenger door closed with an airy woompf. There was a string of growls and fat prattling along the bus floor.
“Now lady!” Roddy shouted as he swung open the hatch.
The washroom door remained closed and the further he leaned, the closer he saw the proximity of the beasts to the squeaky woman.
“Hold me Popcorn, don’t let go! Come on, lady! Now!”
The washroom door opened as the squeaky woman pulled her body through the driver’s window after closing the stiff accordion door, but did not climb back onto the roof. Her fingers clung to the seam of where the walls and roof meet, where a small trough let water drain away from the windows. She remained where the beasts saw her, lunchmeat just beyond the glass sneeze-guard of windshield.
Roddy watched the squeaky woman until a hand grasped his own and stole his attention. He grabbed at the older woman’s arm with both hands and pulled.
She screamed in pain. The time dogs recognized the difference between a missed meal and a meal pending. They rushed to the back of the bus. The bus driver pulled and the woman continued to scream and grasp him.
He felt hands grab his back and thought the Truro mother must’ve awoken to the world again.
The hands were small and Roddy recognized the squeaky voice accompanying them, “Come on Popcorn! Pull, you stupid shit!”
The new help let Roddy focus on the hold and the old woman followed him backwards onto the roof of the bus. Up to the top of her hip, purse resting topside, the woman appeared about to make up. She gasped and her expression of hope melted away. Roddy held tight as the snarls and wet lapping bites snapped below. He pulled until there was no more fight.
It wasn’t a victory in the tug of war. The beasts below played a different game. Roddy yanked, hard.
The woman’s eyes told the tale of defeat, of no feet, of a body halved, torn free by unthinkable fury. Beasts belonging to time, tools of destiny with insatiable hunger and tearing power that would embarrass the Jaws of Life had taken what they sought.
Minute movements, a slow shake, the older woman’s chin moved forward and back like a slow motion chicken. She let out a final wheeze and passed.
“Fuckers!” the squeaky woman said. She’d sat back. It was all for not.
The situation soaked Roddy red. There was half a woman, a hysterical woman and her children, a heroic gymnast and Popcorn. He felt inconsequential next to her and the boy oracle.
“What now?” he asked, thinking the next step was to climb down with the time dogs locked in the steel tube.
Popcorn crawled to the woman and pulled at the giant purse she had slung crossway over her shoulder. They watched him silently. There was a reason behind almost everything he did. Popcorn was a saner Captain Ahab. Popcorn was a sober Sherlock Holmes. Popcorn was a satiated Hannibal Lector. Popcorn was a friendly god’s hand.
He found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He opened the pack and dropped one deck of the cigarettes onto the roof. He put one in his mouth, but didn’t light it. The other deck remained in the pack and Popcorn reached into the body purse and found three travel packs of Scott brand tissues. He peeled the plastic and rammed the tissues into the empty half of the cigarette pack. It bulged, thirteen cigarettes and five thick tissues.
Popcorn lit the tissues, holding the package sideways to let the flame grow and seek out the hidden pockets of oxygen within the tissue. He rose and before anyone had a chance to contest, he dropped the flaming parcel down through the washroom vent. The cigarette bobbed in his mouth as he smiled.
“What in the hell did you do that for?” Roddy asked.
“They ain’t gonna eat Dream Mama again,” said Popcorn. “Got to be smoky. Dream Mama says the smoke’s the kicker ‘cause fate double dipped.”
“But we’re…” Roddy trailed off, if the dogs were locked away in a flaming bus, then why not climb down to safety, let time catch up and plant them safely next to a tragic accident?
Six, because you counted six!
“How dogs many did you see in the bus?”
The squeaky woman didn’t hesitate, “Five. That might be all of them, though. Right?”
Roddy thought that sounded good, but not right and did not answer the question.
Smoke wisped through the hole, but there was a chance it wasn’t going to catch. A chance before Popcorn returned to the purse, grabbed the remaining tissue as well as a quarter-litre jug of hand sanitizer.
“Whoa, Jesus!” said the squeaky woman.
“Popcorn, just a second!” Roddy said.
Popcorn dropped the soggy tissues and then squeezed the sanitizer empty down the hole. The cigarette continued to bob along in his mouth. A flame jumped down the hole and the boy jumped with glee.
The squeaky woman jogged to the rear of the bus and looked around, “There’s one more, don’t you think?”
Absolutely! “Could be.”
“Fuck it, we have to get down. Maybe you’re wrong and there are onl
y five.”
Varney – Seconds to Schedule
They’d moved to the front of the bus, knowing they had to get down sooner than later. Unwilling to do so until the final available moment. According to Roddy Barsten’s watch, they were no longer early. The landscape spoke a similar statement. Where buildings, objects and vehicles once stood was white vacancy. The hill to the north had smooth and the whitewashed space riding over the softening greens of the world’s floor.
Hopeful, their minds built walls on the foundation of unreasonable faith. The old woman’s upper half flopped off the side of the bus with a small kick and the survivors waited for another beast to appear. It was either smarter than the others, or it did not exist. The body lay there, none watched it long.
Sweat dripped and only the Truro mother remained seated, even he children rose away from the heat building within the bus.
“I think we have to go south,” said Roddy after a long silence (the Truro children whined still and Popcorn never completely shut up, but those sounds had become part of the scenery, right alongside the crackle from within the bus).
“Popcorn, last time, you said the dogs attacked and then you were just on a beach. Were you hurt?” the squeaky woman asked.
Popcorn still had the cigarette in his mouth and the lighter in his hand. He nodded emphatically.
“Dream Mama says it was good that she was sick though. Two times good. Good for me, two times”
“What?” Roddy asked.
Whatever link Roddy shared it missed that train, in fact, the feeling of closeness and awareness dwindled more and more as the day moved toward schedule.
Time is short.
“Dream Mama said if Mama wasn’t sick she maybe couldn’t protect me so good. She says that being sick did her good to protect me. She had smoke sick and Dream Mama says there wasn’t no fear ‘cause of it. And it makes it two times, ‘cause the double dip.”
“She wasn’t afraid to die,” said the Truro mother. “But how could she leave her baby? Baby needs its mother.”
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