by Eric Shapiro
“Same here,” she breathes.
I have no tolerance for violence. She has no patience for pussies.
“Start acting like an asshole,” she tells me.
I already feel like one.
13
“You terrible fucking cunt!”
I’ve got a soggy handful of Paula’s red hair. She’s an excellent actress; if I’m not mistaken, actual tears are dripping down her face. Her back is facing the passenger side window. She kicks her bare dirty feet at me. The gun is under my ass, jabbing it full of holes.
“Fuck you, scumbag!” she cries. “Let me go! I hate you!”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”
This is reasonably cathartic. I feel closer to De Niro.
The speedometer reads 110. The Horse doesn’t go any faster. There’s a strong possibility that we’ll stall for the lack of gas, but I should have enough in the reserve tank for five more minutes. Hopefully the ants will catch on by then.
I see two silhouettes through the driver’s side window, and two more in the back. The front two have short hair and the back two have long hair. Paula spoke the truth. I wait for the head that’s driving to turn our way. Come on, dipshit, you probably haven’t seen another car for hours, if not days.
I shift gears in our fake fight: “What if they don’t look our way?!” I scream, shaking a tight fist toward Paula.
Paula blinks before she catches on. Kicking at me, she yells, “They will!”
“I don’t know about that!”
My face is mean, ugly.
“Be an optimist!” she commands me.
“There’s no such thing anymore!”
“Yeah?! I thought you believed in Heaven!”
“The vote’s still out on that!” I shriek, ramming The Horse’s dashboard.
Voila. The driver looks at us. His jaw moves. He’s talking to his friend/partner/brother. Said f/p/b rises from his passenger seat. More chatter. Hurry the hell up, guys.
“They’re looking!” I scream.
“Good! Keep it up! You deserve a fucking Oscar!”
“You too, you goddamn slave!”
“Fuck you, you thankless fucking captor!”
The two male silhouettes are taking us in. I can’t see their eyes, but I’m sure they’re open wide. When you toss someone from a moving car, you don’t expect her to turn up again, let alone this way.
I move into phase two: rolling down Paula’s window. My hand rattles as I click the button to the left of the steering wheel. The wind slices Paula’s bloody hair. “Are they rolling their window down?!” she screams.
“Keep your fucking mouth shut! They might!”
Paula’s eyes are thoughtful as she takes this in. It occurs to both of us that my words were half in and half out of character.
A yellow warning light appears beside my fuel gauge.
The driver-silhouette’s shoulder is rotating. A line of darkness appears at the top of his window. I whisper, “He’s rolling it down.”
These guys look pretty gentle for a pair of scumbags. They both sport pale baby faces. Despite their status as lowlifes, they have not a beard or mustache between them. And from my vantage point, it looks like they should lay off the cheeseburgers. (Within the next six and a half hours, of course.) Their baby mouths hang open in shock. If I’m not mistaken, they look slightly offended. Maybe I’ve deviated from their rulebook. I hope there’s not a point penalty.
I lock eyes with the driver, then swallow for the first time since I found Paula. Paula ups the screaming and struggling. My eardrums retract. I yell out, “Hey! I think you gentleman left some trash out on the freeway!”
The fatsos start whistling and heehawing. How it must pleasure psychos to find others just like them. I wonder how these two hooked up. The driver calls out, “Yep, looks like she’s been recycled!”
The passenger howls with laughter. They engage in some kind of secret hand-slap.
Paula interjects, “You guys are all going to fucking hell for this!”
The driver corrects her: “This is hell, baby. This is hell!”
I let loose the first and final “Heehaw!” of my life. Then I go, “Hey, our little girlfriend here told me what you guys cooked up. You mind letting me have a toss? I don’t have enough height over here!”
The psychos lock eyes. Paula and I freeze—she with mock horror, me with mock curiosity. The warning light blinks.
Then, for the second time in my life, I hear a human being invite me to come harm another human being: “Sure, pal! Pull over to the shoulder!”
Paula’s black hatred seems suddenly reasonable.
“You like beer?” the passenger calls to me. His voice is squeaky.
I say, “Hell yeah, man! But I’m pretty fucked up to begin with!”
14
The shoulder. We sit thirty feet behind the bus.
My Adam’s apple is the size of a peach. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stand and walk. I think my adrenal glands are tapped out.
Paula goes, “Give me the gun.”
I obey. My ass sighs with relief.
She’s all business, this Paula: “I’m gonna hold the gun behind my back. You make like you’re holding my hands together. Then when we get close to them, I’ll let loose in their ugly faces.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m sorry they hurt you.”
“They went beyond hurting me.”
“I’m weak. I’ve never done anything. I’ll screw up.”
The bus’s front right-hand door swings open. Out comes the driver. I was wrong about the cheeseburger thing. The guy looks like he eats ponies.
I put on my angry, villainous face. As if I’m reprimanding her, I say, “Only one of them is coming. The other’s probably watching the women.”
“Fuck him. He can’t hide in there.”
“But he can kill your friends.”
“They’re not my friends,” Paula says, efficiently departing from the point.
The driver is very close to us. I can see his chest hair above the collar of his tank top. His expression is equal parts vicious and bemused.
At the top of my lungs, I scream, “Let’s go, you bitch!”
Paula’s holding the gun with both hands behind her back. I grab onto it like it’s a handle, open my door, and drag her outside. We’re both careful to keep Paula’s front facing the driver.
The air out here is too hot for words.
He’s ten feet away. Eight feet. Six.
“She’s some feisty bitch, this one!” I note.
“Tell me about—”
The driver has a third eye. It’s red and smoking. Birds fly from trees. My hands are empty. Paula is running toward the bus door. Two females and one male scream. The driver falls backwards. His blood crawls beneath my feet.
Something in me wants to hide, but my nervous system is not game for motion. I let the man’s blood stain the soles of my shoes. My neck creaks as I tilt my head up. Paula’s aboard the bus. The dusty windows make the scene black-and-white. She’s aiming the gun. I tense up for another shot. The clouds pause in the sky.
Nothing happens. Nothing but screams:
“I’ll cut this fucking bitch’s throat!”
“Let her go!”
“I’ll do it right now!”
“You don’t have the balls!”
My equilibrium is fucked. Despite the blood on the ground, I could lie down right here. Then my Horse addresses me from behind: “Help her, Sean.”
“I can’t.”
“Help her.”
“I’m too young.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
My eyes take a break during the few seconds in which I board the bus. I see nothing but my own churning thoughts. Then I’m onboard. Inventory: Paula standing at the foot of the aisle, aiming gun; dark-skinned woman ducking and crying in backseat; bland-looking fat man standing mid-aisle, facing Paula; Caucasian female, short brown hair,
in bland man’s arms; carving knife at Caucasian woman’s throat; every mouth open, noisy.
The bland man’s eyes are on me. “You’re a pretty good actor, aren’t you?”
Paula doesn’t know I’m behind her. She and I both say, “No shit.”
Paula turns toward me briefly, too briefly to communicate anything. The bland man takes a step forward, bringing the Caucasian with him. When Paula spins back toward him, he freezes again.
Then I realize something that Paula doesn’t. I don’t want to be a killer, or even an accomplice, but I’d be dumb to keep this thought to myself.
“Um, Paula …” I say.
“What?”
“There was only one bullet in that gun.”
The bus goes quiet. I feel Paula’s body temperature drop. The bland man lets go of the Caucasian and charges Paula.
“Shoot him now!” I yell.
Paula drives a bullet through the bland man’s neck. Red dots streak the walls and windows, and the man slams onto the floor.
I say to his body, “I’m a pretty great actor, actually.”
15
The tip of my dad’s gun is smoking. I have to tell Paula to lower her aim as she faces me. She obliges and apologizes. “That was some chance you took,” she exhales.
The two other women breathe and shake.
“Not really,” I shrug, hiding my panic beneath a thin veneer of nonchalance. “His only reason for holding the knife was to keep you from shooting him. Once I made him think you weren’t a threat, he was bound to let go of her.” I point to the brown-haired Caucasian.
“What if I hadn’t caught on when you said ‘shoot’?” Paula wants to know.
“I knew you were quick enough.”
Paula digs my compliment. “You’re a good judge of character.”
“Yeah, that and fifty cents will get me a cup of coffee.”
Paula goes, “Coffee is free nowadays.”
16
I spend three precious minutes of my life telling Paula not to leave her captors’ bodies in the middle of the freeway. “Another car could come,” I tell her. “You don’t fuck with the dead,” I tell her.
I say to her, “Their bodies weren’t guilty, only their souls.”
Paula nods at that last one, even though she claimed not to believe in God. Maybe she believes in souls but not God. No time to worry about that. The four of us roll the two bodies into the woods. The bland one lands on top of the fat one. Two peas in a pod. Whether the apocalypse killed them or we killed them, they were bound to spend eternity together.
The famous question returns: What now? It’s hard to prioritize. Do we find some water to drink? Clean off Paula’s wound? Clean off Paula’s wound with the water we find? As I interrogate myself by the side of the freeway, the Caucasian holds her hand out. “Lisa,” she says.
“Sean,” I reply.
I can’t tell whose hands are wetter when we shake.
“Thank you for that,” she says.
“It was nothing,” I tell her. And I truly believe that. Our little showdown was of no consequence.
Paula continues to believe otherwise. The act of killing didn’t rewire her moral compass. She stands near the trees and squints into the woods, toward the red and beige pile of flesh and bone, and mumbles, “Bastards.” I can see where she’s coming from, but I still can’t catch my breath.
“I gotta get home,” Lisa tells me.
“Where’s home?” I ask, afraid to find out.
“North Carolina.”
I can’t help but smile. Their captors’ route becomes semi-clear in my head: They began in Louisiana, headed east to Florida and got Paula, headed north through the Carolinas and picked up Lisa, and had since veered west to our current position in Pennsylvania. The dark-skinned girl’s story is missing. I turn to her and ask what her name is.
“Gina.”
“Where you from?”
“Gina.”
“She doesn’t speak English,” Lisa informs me.
Thank God for that. I had thought she was extra traumatized.
“Do you know where they got her?” I ask.
“No. She was on the bus before me and Paula.”
Upon hearing her name, Paula joins the rest of us near the shoulder. I say to Lisa, “It’s almost six hours to the end. You’ll never get down to North Carolina.”
Lisa’s eyes are trembling. They squeeze out moisture with each little shake. I feel like saying I’m sorry, but I know it’ll sound hollow.
Lisa says, “I can try,” and starts moving toward the bus.
“Wait wait wait,” I say, following her toward the door, “the bus is mine.”
“Fuck you,” Lisa says, “the bus was theirs.” She points to the woods. “What’s wrong with your car?”
“It’s out of gas.”
Lisa ignores me. The back of her head seems to stick out a tongue.
“With all due respect,” I say, “I just saved you.”
She stops near the door and turns to face me. “Yeah, so? What good is my freedom if I can’t use it?”
“I’m not the one who’s stopping you from using it. It’s physically impossible to drive to North Carolina before sundown.”
“Not the way I drive.”
“Yes, even the way you drive.”
I hear Paula’s voice right behind me. The other two have joined us near the door. “Lisa, he’s got a point.”
“What’s his point? That he’s a selfish prick?”
My chest sinks. “Who’s being selfish?” I ask Lisa.
Paula plays the role of diplomat: “Look, we all have places we would like to go. I should be in Florida with my kids right now …”
A shiver nearly breaks me. Paula’s a mom.
“… but I know that’s impossible, so I think my best bet is to get to a phone and call them. Same with you.” She’s referring to both Lisa and Gina. Paula looks at me: “Where were you headed?”
It’s tempting to lie and say I’m going to see my wife (which would up the ante), but it’s too late and hot out for bullshit. “I’m going to see the girl I love.”
I expect this news to make an impact, but nobody seems to care.
Lisa says to Paula, “I won’t allow him to do that. If I have to do a phone call, then he does, too.”
“I’m right here. You can talk to me,” I say.
The woods and grass and sky disappear. Lisa is right in my face. She hasn’t brushed her teeth in quite some time. “The bus goes no further than a payphone.”
I’m screaming once again. Just like at Uncle Joey’s. “Why? So you can punish me? So it’s fair? My fucking stop is less than three hours away! I’m the only one with a chance!”
Four long fingernails hook into my forehead and grind down my face. Blood tickles my tongue. My fist connects with soft flesh: Lisa’s belly. Lisa grunts and snaps her knee up into my balls. Hot grass touches my back. Everything twirls.
I look up to see Paula training my dad’s gun on Lisa. “Don’t go this way, Lisa.”
“Try and stop me.”
Lisa steps aboard the bus. Her ass crunches as she walks, somehow mocking us. Paula looks down at me. She seems to want moral guidance. She cocks the pistol, aims it through the door.
“Don’t!” I say, jumping to my feet.
The bus’s engine grinds to life. I fly up the steps and inside. My hands wrap around Lisa’s neck. Her long nails hook into my balls. Clear liquid squirts from my throat. Half spit, half puke. Taste of blueberries. She pulls my balls down, stretches them as far as they’ll go. Black electricity snaps through me. Lisa yanks the gear into drive, kicks me in the chest with her bare heel. As the bus starts moving, I tumble down the steps and out the door.
I am the very first male to be thrown off the white bus.
17
Paula shoots a bullet into the white bus as it sails down the freeway. I grab the gun from her and tell her not to waste the bullets. The weapon is so hot that I drop it.
I then throw my first certified fit since grade school. I flail my arms and legs around like they’re made of rubber. Every curse ever conceived sprays from my lips. It’s a rich, epic medley. Paula and Gina are sure to stand several feet away from me. Before long, my monologue rolls around to a Blame Paula speech:
“It was so nice of me to stop and pick you up! How many other people would have done that in this day and age? I fucking orchestrate your entire rescue: my car, my gun, my gas, my brains—” I jam my index fingers against my skull. “—and this is the thanks I get: being stranded out here to die on the fucking freeway!”
I desperately want Paula to defend herself. Come on, tell me how selfish I am. Get me even angrier. Make me up my hostility. Push m—
Paula’s warm palms are on my shoulders. Her dried-bloody face is strangely centering. She says to me, “You did the right thing, helping us.”
My face crunches up. I’m a crying little boy.
She goes on, “I know you don’t believe in what you did, but it was the right thing. You gave us our last few hours back.”
I point down the road and yell, “That fucking bitch took more hours than she deserved!”
Paula’s hand is on my cheek. “I know,” she whispers, “and I’m gonna get them back for you.”
My jaw stops quivering for the first time in several minutes. Paula sounds pretty convincing for someone who’s making an impossible promise. It sounds like a mom trick to me. I gotta stay on guard. “How are you gonna do that? We can’t get gas anywhere.”
“It’s easier than you think,” she whispers. “Now get your things and say goodbye to your car.”
18
This is why I avoided saying goodbye to my brother and sister. I’m standing here bidding farewell to an inanimate object (it once was animate, but not anymore), and my body is aching all over.
I tell The Horse many, many things. Private things. Things that not even I understand in their entirety. A lot of gibbering goes on. I tell him to not be scared. I’m not doing this because I don’t love him, I say. I just have to move on. I’m sorry he has to be left all alone out here. I didn’t plan things this way. I’m sorry he’s thirsty, that I pushed him so hard. But I know that he’s strong. I know that he’ll still be standing here when the planet is cold and everything else has gone away.