by Aaron Dries
Michael stood and watched the approach of the car. He felt lightheaded. His movement caught Diana’s attention. The bus shifted to the left and right, as though correcting itself. Julia grabbed her sister and together they found balance.
“Don’t! Please don’t!” Liz yelled.
The passengers looked at each other, confused. Diana fought the urge to bang at the windows and yell for help. If there was ever an opportune time, this was it.
“W-what is it? What is it?!” Julia asked, panicking.
“There’s a car coming! It’s just there!”
Jack wanted to scream out the windows. In fact he wanted to do more than just raise his voice. He wanted to run at the glass and drop his shoulder against it. He had power in him. Fear fueled that power like nothing had ever managed to do before. His life was on the line. I’m too young to die, he thought. I want to run at that window and smash it to fucking smithereens and I’m going to fall out of the bus and yes, I’m going to tear myself to almighty shit. And I am going to break my arms landing on the road, maybe a couple of ribs too. But by God, I am going to do it and I am going to live.
The car drew closer.
Don’t do it, Jack-o, said the other voice in his head. You won’t break the glass. You will be stuck in it. Stuck like a cow on the hook, squirming half in and half out, your guts spilling down the side of the bus. Jack-o, you do it and you’re dead.
“I can’t,” he said aloud. Thoughts of quickly writing a letter and tossing it out the window were extinguished by the fact that they had no paper. Even if they did manage to get the note written in time, who stopped their car to pick up discarded litter thrown from a public bus?
They might see the dented grill, he said to himself. Yeah, they might. They’ll see it and flash their headlights to signal to us that hope is not lost. What about the blood? The blood for Christ’s sakes. God, please.
Diana looked at the sliding planes of glass above the side windows. If only she could find some sort of Alice in Wonderland potion that would shrink her to a size small enough to wiggle through.
The bus accelerated, the engine howling.
Car.
Speeding.
“Now, now, now,” Sarah repeated. They’re going to see the blood, we’re saved.
Faster.
Water from the windshield wipers had filtered down and washed away much of the blood. There were long fingers of gore over the grill but much of it had dried and was covered in a thick blanket of dust. There was never a chance. Not at that speed.
The car drove past.
Gone.
Peter slumped in frustration but he was not defeated. He knew the truth that the others did not. He could hear his mother, took comfort in her words. Should the car pass by and nothing come of it, it means it was not preordained to stop. There is a plan, Peter, and it is your job to accept it.
The car was gone. Heads turned and saw nothing. No break lights, no car at all; nothing except the end of the bus. It looked back at them, dark and bleak.
Liz hit the brakes. Her new family, brought to her by fate, were thrown through the air, their screams cut short by collisions with the seats and with each other.
Seventy-Two
The bus fought for its gears and came to a stop.
Jack pulled himself up off the floor. This could be his chance. But why had they stopped? This is it, the voice in his head told him. He poised himself to run.
Sarah wanted to grab him, to hold him. She could see the hot-headed stupidity in the man and pitied him for it. They were not going to survive if one of them felt the need to make a martyr of himself. With every death the group would become more unhinged. This horrible event had welded the passengers together. Now a risk by one was a risk to all. Why can’t he see that? she thought. Oh, Bill, make him stop.
The bus started to move backward, unnerving Jack. “What the fuck?” he said.
Michael looked up at the ceiling.
The escape hatch. It was opened a crack to allow airflow into the bus.
He saw himself getting up and forcing it open, but he was frozen. Terrified. The driver was alert now. If he got up and attempted escape—bang! In a flash his history would be wiped away, all of the problems, hopes and dreams that stitched him together—ripped apart in a bloody spray. It was a fact.
Jack had underestimated the driver. Like Michael, he now realized they had not been driven, but taken. He had hated many women in his life, but he hated the driver more than them all.
The bus crashed into a post box, knocking it to the ground. The bus swung outwards so it extended the length of the road, blocking traffic in both directions. The passengers knew two things: first, they were on the outskirts of town and second, odds were if the bus remained in this position, then someone would notice. Or plow right into them.
Diana pulled her sister away from the window. There were two Julias. One slumped over the edge of her bed, talking to boys on the phone, tucking strands of hair behind her ears. The other was the shattered girl before her.
The bus jumped forward, throwing them again. Sarah snapped her hip against the edge of a seat. She tumbled into the aisle.
Light was swallowed by darkness as the road slid lengthways from view. Impenetrable clouds of dirt blocked the windows. They had driven off the road into a second, narrower hollow. A side street, perhaps, or a driveway.
Peter was no longer praying in silence. He now spoke out loud. New vibrations filled the hub as the bus drove over loose ground. His words soon grew to yells. “Our Father, who art in Heaven!” He saw his mother beside him, screaming the words with him. Every stab of pain she had inflicted was worth it to have her spirit here with him. To think that he had spent so much time pouring energy into poems and wordplay when this prayer was the only verse he’d ever need.
Julia dropped onto her side, her face against the seat padding. She put her fingers in her mouth, bit down and chewed. Her left hand cradled her stomach, its touch reminding her that there was a life within.
Sarah stood, blood from the aisle sticking to her shirt in gory patches. “Can you see up ahead?” she asked. Diana leant over her sister, squinting through the windshield.
“No…”
The hollow narrowed further.
The trees flanking the road scraped hard against the bus. The knotted limbs of dead gum trees scratched at the walls like the hands of a thousand psychopaths trying to get in.
“Stop this, you crazy bitch!” Jack yelled. He got no reply. “Stop and let us out!” He could no longer control himself. His yells were nothing more than noise in a world of noises. This was the way it had always been for Jack.
The dead man rolled in the aisle.
The trees clutching at the bus were fingernails on chalkboards. Needlepoints of sound drove into their ears. It seemed to have no end.
Then there was light.
Seventy-One
White.
Warm.
The trees fell away and the bus pulled into a wide-open space.
Hands fell away from ears, eyes opened. The passengers looked about them, taking in their surroundings.
They were in a large yard. In front and to the left stood a huge, decrepit shed. A pickup truck was parked next to it. The bus drew up closer to an old house flanked by faded Christmas cutouts. The property sat in its own clearing. Behind the house Sarah saw sentinel trees standing guard and the flash of a clothesline. The words fell out of her: “No neighbors.”
Julia stepped away from the window. Dread filled her. “This is it,” she said. “This is it this is it this is it.”
She’s about to kill us.
Diana went to her sister and pulled her into their original seat. She screamed at her to shut up. Out of control, she pulled at Julia’s hair. They fought like children, wailing and slapping.
“YOU ALL BE QUIET!”
Liz was looking at them. Her shoulders rose and fell, her breathing harsh and shallow.
Michael put his head in
his hand and wept. Even now, he felt self-conscious. They will think you’re girly, he thought. Oh don’t be fucking stupid. Do you really think they are thinking that? Do you really think you’re that important to them?
Seventy: Home
Sarah looked through the windshield and watched the peak of the house grow taller as they drew closer. Jack stepped next to her and whispered, “Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen fast.”
She didn’t reply, just continued staring. Never in her life had she known what it felt like to be paralyzed, rooted to the spot with fear. Did terror numb her body or was her body numbing itself to the terror?
The bus rolled over the earth.
Julia apologized to her sister, who now rubbed her back and held her close. “It’s okay. It’s a-a-all right. Once she s-stops the bus then s-she’ll let us off.” Diana shut her eyes.
Astoria, Oregon. Her mother’s funeral.
She opened them again. Things had not changed so she closed them again.
Santorini, the Greek Islands. A blue sky, white houses covered with splashes of colorful paint. She had walked these streets on a vacation before arriving in Australia. Lost herself in the streets in an attempt to shake off the bitterness that she felt towards her father for uprooting her life.
Diana heard Jack’s voice to her left. His grating tone brought her back to the bus. “When she stops, the bitch will want to get out and—”
“—that’s when we run at her,” Diana finished for him. She had no idea where the words had come, only that they were spoken without regret. Without hesitation.
The bus inched forward. Slow.
A wheel dropped into a deep pothole in the lawn. The sound was like an explosion. Nobody screamed but every heart froze.
“We take her quick,” Diana said.
Sarah knew the young woman was not the same person she was when she boarded that morning. None of them were. In her hands she held her keys, the teeth sticking out in sharp spikes. She gave Diana and Julia the two ballpoint pens from her handbag. The girls snatched them up but soon felt the weight of realization. It looks just like a pen, Julia thought. Like the ones I use in school and the ones I use to write letters to my friends with. Can I really do this?
The bus rolled to a stop.
“We push her out. Anything,” Sarah said. “We do whatever we have to do.”
Sixty-Nine
They were parked in the center of the front yard. Positioned at the intersection between house, shed and driveway. Nothing moved.
Inside the bus the passengers watched their driver stand and look through the windshield. Searching.
Sarah and Diana were poised. Jack had taken Julia’s pen and now gripped it tight in his hand, ready to stab.
The engine ticked.
Liz’s eyes moved from the shed she associated with her brother to her home. Stillness. She leant forward and took the gun from its place on her seat cover. The padding was saturated with perspiration.
The fan spun for the final time.
The pen felt tiny in Jack’s hand. He did not breathe. She will open the door, he predicted, taking pride in his calculation. When she does, we pounce. But we have to wait until she is down the first step. Catch her on uneven ground.
Liz bent forward and flicked the door release switch. The door clattered open. Heat rolled into the cabin, up over her exposed legs and drafted through her ill-fitting shorts. She took her first step towards the stairs leading outside.
Sarah grimaced, ready.
Liz took her second step. Then hovered. She took half a step backward.
Her foot lingered above the blood-splattered floor.
The front screen door of the house swung open, banging against the jamb. A young man in a blue wife-beater stepped out into the sunlight. He was tanned and had a buzz cut like Jack’s, Sarah noted.
The arrival of the man shattered thoughts of attack. The pacing was off, things had skewered. Suddenly there was the possibility of outside help. The tattooed twenty-something brought with him the anticipation of rescue.
Understanding clicked inside Julia. “She brought us home.”
Liz spun on her heel. The gun swung in their direction—she underestimated its weight and her aim went wide. It straightened. “You all stay here.”
They knew the driver was beyond reason. Whatever illness she had lived with had now taken over.
Liz ran down the steps, hair billowing in the wind.
Jed hurried to his sister but stopped short when he saw the gun in her hand. “What the fuck?”
Her arms reached out for him, shaking. The gun fell from an outstretched fingertip, landed in the dust with a thunk.
Jed looked at Liz, taking in her scrawny legs, her urine-stained pants, the sweaty shirt clinging to her breasts, her face. Her eyes stared back at him, desperate.
Jed felt the sun on his shoulders. He flexed the muscles in his back and the tattooed eagle appeared to fly. Jed took a few steps towards Liz and caught her as she collapsed. She felt so heavy.
“Sis.”
She howled into his collarbone, her voice tearing through his body. He looked at the bus.
Jed was aware that inside him was a switch. He wondered if everyone was born with one; it grew over the years, became harder to keep in the Off position. Holding his sister in his arms flicked that switch. Electricity flowed through him.
He was positive the hatred he felt for whoever had reduced her to this sodden mess had never been matched. The yelling from the bus made Liz flinch. From its open doorway, without stopping to look left or right, a teenager ran into the day.
Jed pushed Liz aside. Something inside told him to pick up the gun.
Sixty-Eight
Peter ran.
It was bright outside, just like it must have been in the beginning. Born again. He felt grateful. So scared he almost forgot what he was running for or towards. There was no direction. It was every direction. The important thing was just to run. He was born to do this, not to write. His pounding feet against the dust were the only poetic rhythms in his life now. He trusted the light around him.
Sixty-Seven
Michael jumped across the aisle to the opposite window. He passed Jack who had dropped his pen. It rolled across the floor.
The passengers scrambled from side to side, confused.
Should they run or should they stay?
Jack stumbled to the dead body between him and the door. A small blowfly landed on the nose of the corpse. He didn’t know why it scared him but it did. In his ear someone quiet grew loud.
Kill the fly, said the voice. It was the voice of a familiar man.
If you run to that door, Jack-o, you will die and you know it.
Jack shook his head from side to side.
Stay here and kill the fly.
The insect looked up at him, rubbed its dirty legs together. Jack brought the heel of his foot down on the nose of the corpse. There was an atrocious crack; it threw a wet splash across his face.
Good boy, Jack-o.
Sixty-Six
The kid ran towards the trees closest to the house near the Christmas cutouts. Jed followed every foolish movement with the gun. These people had destroyed his sister, and worse, had invaded his private property. His home. They must have forced her to drive them here. It was unforgivable; he had every right to pull the trigger.
Sixty-Five
There was a tin-can whistle near his ear. Around him a landmine of dirt blew into the sky. Peter breathed it in and coughed hard. He continued running.
To the right.
To the left.
Straight.
Trees.
Another sound. It was not near him, but in him. Wetness in his ear, sloshing around. Peter touched the place where his ear should have been. Blood ran down his neck, the fibers of his shirt soaking it up.
Sarah screamed at the boy. “Run and never stop!”
She squinted; saw the blood running down his head in spurting jets.
“Oh my God, he’s been shot.” Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”
“Do we run? Do we go for it?” Julia asked her sister. “Do we go now?”
Michael toppled back into his seat. “Shut up! Shut up!”
In the aisle Jack stepped over the body, his heel covered in brain matter. He watched the stupid kid running in circles dodging bullets. It was like a cartoon. Jack laughed, veins sticking out of his forehead. He had planned to use the kid as a distraction for his own escape but it was too late. It was all too late. Now he watched, unmoving.
Sixty-Four
I’m bleeding! Oh God. Oh God. Mom! It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m running. Just keep running. It’s all I need to do. Every step is bringing me closer to—
Impact. It was as though an asteroid had fallen from the sky and landed in his chest. Peter fell through the air. Time slowed to a crawl. His spinal cord was severed by the time he hit the ground. He rolled onto his back and had no feeling from the neck down. He couldn’t breathe. Blood drained out of him. It was like being burned alive—a small glimpse of what it was like to live in Hell. He felt wetness around him. A baptism. He began to drown.
It’s not meant to be like this. It shouldn’t hurt.
His eyes rolled up into his head; the white grew larger. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the upturned Christmas cutouts.
He saw blood-streaked angels. The last thing Peter did in his life was smile.