At that instant, he understood why there were so many kids crying for help. Forty feet ahead was a full-sized, modern school bus laying on its left side. The front half of the transport was hanging over the edge of a drop-off that marked the entrance to a valley ahead.
The bus’ back end was in the air, leaving only its midpoint in contact with the ground—like a cantilever on a fulcrum. The bus looked like a yellow teeter-totter with the number 37 stenciled on the back.
His mind studied the scene and digested the facts in an instant. The path of the tire tracks told him the bus was traveling into the forest on its wheels until it reached this clearing, where it ran into one of the granite boulders in the area.
The vehicle’s right front tire tore up the leading edge of the sloping, angled rock, creating the necessary angular momentum to send the bus off balance and careening onto its left side. Its forward inertia continued, plowing through the dirt and scrub brush like a derailed locomotive, until it stopped just short of the abyss.
As dire as the situation was for the teetering bus, the kids were lucky. Had the heavy transport hit one of the other taller, more prominent rocks, it would have stopped instantly, causing a powerful front-end accident.
From his position, he couldn’t determine the depth of the crevasse beyond the bus, but given that he couldn’t see the tops of any trees ahead, it must have been a steep cliff. However, it didn’t change the fact that these kids were in trouble. Serious trouble.
“Mister! Mister! Please help us! Please!” a young boy’s muffled voice said as a chorus of thumps rang out the back of the school bus.
Bunker brought his focus to the rear door and made eye contact with a round face wearing thick spectacles. The kid was staring back at him through the glass. Three more faces appeared alongside the boy, all of them crying for help while beating on the door frame and its glass.
“Hang on, I’m coming!” Bunker yelled, running forward.
“Help us! Please, you have to help us! Please, Mister! Please!” said one of the girls with a tearful, petrified face.
Bunker approached the back of the bus and jumped to grab the elevated door latch. His hand found its mark, allowing him to use his weight and strength to pull the rear of the vehicle down without much trouble.
Once the sideways transport was level and on the ground, he kept his weight pressing on the door handle to keep the bus from tipping back up.
He tried to turn the handle and open the door to free the kids, but it wouldn’t spin. He wasn’t sure if it was locked or if the door had suffered damage during the accident.
Bunker was about to start yanking on the door to force it open, but his brain stopped him. A sudden and terrible thought flashed in his mind about the vehicle’s precarious position and its weight distribution.
If he freed any of the children, it would cause a decrease in weight at the rear and might send the front of the bus over the edge.
“Come on! Hurry up!” the round-faced boy said, resuming his pounding on the inside of the door.
Bunker shook his head, making close eye contact with the kids pleading with him. “Hang on. Let me think about this.”
“Please! Help us!” the pig-tailed girl next to the boy cried. “You can’t leave us in here!”
“I won’t, but I need all of you to hold very still.”
“Get us out, please!” the girl screamed as more and more kids squeezed in next to her.
Bunker was about to tell her to remain calm but stopped when he heard the smash of glass breaking above him. He looked up just in time to see a backpack tumble into his vision and land at his feet.
A pair of hands appeared along the top edge of the bus before a head came into view. It belonged to a long-haired boy with dark, deep-set eyes and a pointed nose. He spun his legs around and was about to shimmy down.
“Wait! Don’t!” Bunker yelled.
“Why?” the boy asked from above, craning his neck to look down.
Bunker didn’t want to scare the kids by relaying too much information about their dangerous predicament, but he didn’t have time to mince words. “I need you to go back inside the bus and stay with the others so it doesn’t—”
“No way I’m going back in there,” the tall, lanky kid interrupted, jumping to the ground on his feet. “Later, dude,” he said after a confident flip of his hair, grabbing his backpack and running off through the forest.
Now that some of the counterweight had been removed, he couldn’t let go of the door handle. Otherwise, the rear end of the bus surely would rise up again, this time sending the vehicle tumbling to the bottom of the ravine. It was precisely balanced before his arrival, but now that the boy had taken off, Bunker was the only thing keeping the vehicle from falling over the cliff.
“What about us?” the little girl asked. “Can’t we get out, too?”
“No! All of you need to stay where you are. I’ll get you out, but none of you can move until I say so. Do you understand? Nobody moves from the back of the bus until I tell you it’s okay.”
Bunker waited for an answer, but none came. All he heard were the sobs of the children as they froze in place with their faces glued to the inside of the glass.
“Oh my God!” Stephanie said from behind Bunker. “The children! Don’t let go, Bunker!”
“I’m trying not to, but I need some help here.”
“What can I do?” she said, coming to a stop next to him.
“Well, for starters, you can climb up. We need to add more weight in the back to keep this thing stable. But whatever you do, stay to the rear. Maybe we can get a few of the kids out in exchange for your weight.”
“Are you serious? You want me to get on top?”
“Yes, but stay to the rear.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I don’t think I can do that. I’m terrified of heights. And death, too.”
“You have to. These kids’ lives depend on it.”
Stephanie’s head wasn’t shaking anymore, but the look of fright on her face was still in full bloom. “How many kids are there?”
Bunker moved his head from side to side, peering inside the glass to get a count. The throng of kids was thick and he couldn’t see past the first few layers of pre-adolescents.
“I count at least twenty, but there’s probably a lot more that I can’t see from here. Especially if the bus was full.”
Bunker adjusted his grip on the door latch to relieve some of the finger pressure on his right hand. He stuck out his backside and bent forward. “Here, Steph, get on my back and climb up. Maybe your weight and mine is enough to get the kids out. Most of them, anyway.”
She shook her head again. “Not if there are like sixty kids in there with backpacks and stuff. That’s too much weight for the two of us to counterbalance when they get off. Look at me. Do I look fat to you?”
Jeffrey was next to his mother when he spoke up. “What about rocks, Mom? We could pile a bunch of them in the back. Wouldn’t that work?”
Bunker liked that idea. The kid was sharp. Sharper than he was, obviously. “Good idea, sport. You and your mother start bringing me rocks.”
Jeffrey pointed to the left. “Mom, there’s a bunch over there. I saw them on the way in.”
Stephanie grabbed her son by the hand and the two of them took off in the direction Jeffrey had pointed.
The kids in the bus were still crying but at least they were staying together like Bunker told them to do. He assumed hysteria hadn’t started because he was close by and the kids could see him on the other side of the glass.
“The glass,” he mumbled, feeling a new idea burrow into his mind—an idea he should’ve thought of before now. Break the glass to get them out. His brain was obviously not functioning at full speed under all the stress.
He figured once they had enough rocks on the bus, he could let go and then use one of the stones to shatter the glass and free the kids. Most of them should be able to fit through the broken window without issue. He
didn’t need to force open the door like he first thought.
However, should his plan with the rocks fail, he’d need to calm his heart and keep his focus sharp. He’d only have seconds to save as many of the children as he could. That meant he’d probably have to choose who lived and who died, and do so in an instant.
Save the girls first, he told himself quietly to prepare for what might come next.
He turned his eyes away from the kids, not wanting to remember their faces in case he couldn’t save them all. It was a heartless thing to do, but he couldn’t let his emotions enter the equation. Not now. Not until this was over. Emotion might make him hesitate and that would cost lives. He needed to keep his heart cold until the rescue mission was complete.
Stephanie appeared from the forest first, carrying a rock about the size of a small toaster. “Is this one big enough?”
“Yeah, but we’re going to need a lot more of those. You need to try to bring two at a time or this is gonna take forever.”
“Is this one okay?” Jeffrey asked after he appeared from the woods. The stone in his tiny hands wasn’t much bigger than the size of his own shoe.
“Just keep them coming as fast as you can,” Bunker said, stopping himself from rolling his eyes. He didn’t want to curb the boy’s enthusiasm.
In reality, he knew the size of the rocks didn’t matter. It was the quantity. Every bit of weight would help as long as the children didn’t move or panic.
When Stephanie arrived, she was out of breath, and that surprised him. He thought she was in better shape based on her skinny frame and curvy figure. That meant her thin profile was not from endless hours of cardio. Probably a rigorous diet, or she was just blessed with good family genes.
“Here you go,” she said, trying to hand it to him.
“Just put it on the ground and keep getting more. Once we have enough, you and I will change places so I can carry them up on top of the bus.”
She stared at him with eyes wide and her mouth agape.
“It’ll be okay, Steph. I need you to trust me on this.”
She nodded, though she didn’t seem convinced.
“Now keep the rocks coming,” he told her.
CHAPTER TEN
Deputy Daisy Clark leaned to the right on the Sheriff’s mountain bike as she centered her path across the wooden planks of the Old Henley Bridge. The back tire fishtailed a bit when she glanced down at the Arkansas River, sending a charge of adrenaline into her muscles. Once across the expanse, she made a hard right to turn east, passing a hand-carved wooden signpost that read OLD MILL ROAD.
Her destination was Frank Tuttle’s place at the far end of the dirt road in front of her. His home sat on the north side of the street, across the road from the Rainey homestead, which Daisy would first pass on the right.
She glanced behind her to check for approaching cars. The road was empty, allowing her to safely cross to the left and continue her mad peddling, pumping her thighs with force.
Before she could take another breath, it hit her—there wouldn’t be any cars or trucks—not modern ones anyway. Not with the widespread electronic failures after the grid went down.
She scoffed at her own stupidity, realizing it was going to be difficult to break free of habits associated with normal life. A life inundated with modern conveniences, all powered by integrated electronics and abundant electricity.
It meant her regular Saturday night Netflix movie marathons were going to be a thing of the past, at least until this event was over—whatever this event turned out to be.
She had her suspicions as to the cause and figured the Sheriff and Mayor did, too, based on their generalized statements. Only a herd of mindless sheep, whose collective heads were buried in denial, would think everything was okay or going to be okay.
But in the end, it wasn’t up to her to speculate. Or raise concerns. Nor could she take the chance of speaking out of turn and causing a town-wide panic over what might turn out to be nothing.
God knows, she wanted it to be nothing, but her gut was telling her that this was more than nothing.
The thickening tensions in town seemed to support her uneasiness. Everywhere she looked, she could see it on the townspeople’s faces. A blanket of fear had quickly taken over, creeping from person to person like some kind of airborne pathogen hell-bent on destroying the masses. She couldn’t believe how quickly the mood in town had changed—all of it happening in a matter of hours.
Think positive. Everything’s going to be okay. Just do your job, she thought to herself as dirt and pebbles continued to fly up from the back tire and land on her back.
The trail of dust behind her was growing with each push of her thigh muscles, hanging in the air like wayward smoke from a raging forest fire. It hadn’t rained in almost two weeks, stressing the health of the forest and making the road dustier and harder than it would normally be this time of the year.
The ruts, dips, and bumps were many, jarring her body with every jolt in terrain. Her biggest concern was the sharp rocks that seemed to be growing up through the dirt like an infestation of weeds.
If one of them hit her front tire straight on, it might pop the tube and send her flying. She needed to be extra careful since her standard issue two-way radio was useless. There weren’t many people around to help on this road to nowhere.
Mrs. Rainey owned one of the two homesteads on this side of the river, but the woman was back in town and probably still pestering the Sheriff about her overdue grandkid.
That left only Frank Tuttle, and he was most certainly home. He always was, never seeming to leave his property. For anything. At least not since his wife passed.
Daisy stopped pedaling to catch her breath, while the bike coasted the remaining twenty feet or so to Tuttle’s front gate. When she arrived, she used the foot brake to send the back wheel into a full skid, then put her other foot down to keep from falling over when the bike’s momentum came to an abrupt stop.
The dust cloud she’d made floated on past, almost as if it had just staged a mutiny and decided to set out on its own mission in the high country of Colorado.
She kept her butt on the seat and waited for Frank Tuttle, who was somewhere beyond the gate with a pair of binoculars, studying her from afar. He was a bit jumpy, and the last thing she wanted to do was alarm the gray-haired man. Doing so would be a sure-fire recipe for getting shot.
“Wait for a sign,” she mumbled, holding up her hands to show him she’d come in peace.
His rectangular, thousand-square-foot home was set back about two hundred feet and running parallel with the road. The singlewide mobile home had been permanently mounted to the mountain terrain through the use of a brick foundation a few decades before.
Yet, it still looked out of place for the area, especially since it was sitting across the street from a modern site-built home—Martha Rainey’s place, an all-brick, two-story ranch style home with a green and white color scheme that gave it a true country feel. So did her upscale wooden shutters, impressive redwood deck and covered patio across the entire front, and the three towering chimneys rising up from the roofline.
Tuttle’s shack was just the opposite—a run-down aluminum firetrap, featuring cheap horizontal blinds across the windows and only space heaters to keep its sole occupant warm in the winter.
Frank Tuttle was cheap. She knew it and the rest of the people in town knew it, yet he’d spent some serious money on the four-story pole barn in the back. It was easily the biggest structure on the property and built to span the ages. It rose up like a redneck skyscraper on the left of the house, just beyond the end of the dirt driveway that stretched out before her. The barn’s tall double doors were looking straight at her, begging her to come inside for an inspection.
A pump house and ground-mounted solar panel array, both of which were inside their own giant wire cages, stood to the right of the main residence. She knew from her years of visiting as a teen that countless acres of grazing pasture and
miles of cattle fencing were beyond the water and power facilities.
The four mini-blinds across the front of the home were shut, and there were no vehicles in the driveway. Even though no signs of life were present, she knew Tuttle was there—watching her.
The seven piles of river rock in the driveway were new since the last time she’d paid him a visit. It was a couple of years ago when she’d stopped by to check on Tuttle after the poorly-attended funeral for his late wife, Helen.
The ten-foot-tall rock mounds seemed to be spaced randomly, like an obstacle course. She figured Tuttle had left them untouched after the dump truck driver backed up and dropped them wherever he pleased.
All but one of the piles had a smattering of loose stones around their bases. But the fallen rocks weren’t the only items needing Tuttle’s attention. She counted at least a dozen unruly bushes whose branches were sticking up and out in random directions.
There were also clumps of weeds growing everywhere; some of them were green, while others had turned a light brown. The two-week drought had obviously started to take a toll on his front yard, if you could call it that.
To her right were three old Ford pickups. The paint across their rounded hoods had peeled away long ago, and the rusting side panels looked like they were barely holding together. She wasn’t sure what year they were made, but it was long before she was born.
Daisy didn’t understand the need for the hillbilly yard art, but Tuttle was obviously fond of it. Just past the trucks were dozens of rusting gas station and roadway signs sticking up at odd angles, plus a couple of ancient safes sitting in the weeds with their doors open.
The oddest item in his yard was the red Honda lawnmower. It looked relatively new and didn’t seem to match the rest of the man’s antique clutter.
She knew from her younger days that Tuttle cut the massive pastures out back with his tractor, so why have a Honda mower? There wasn’t any grass to cut out front, so why purchase something he didn’t need? The man hated to crack open his dust-filled wallet, so if he spent money on purchasing the unit, he must have had a good reason. That was assuming the man hadn’t gone completely nuts, which was a distinct possibility.
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