Parham thought the words oozed with insincerity. He quickly pulled his pistol from his holster and pointed it at Teddy’s forehead.
The other passengers gasped and cowered lower in their seats.
Roger’s face paled. “Hey…” he interceded. “My friend here has a nasty habit of speaking off the cuff. Why don’t we all just—”
“Shut up!” Parham cut in. “Say another word and I’ll put a bullet in you too.”
Roger went quiet and looked at Teddy.
Teddy looked down the barrel of the pistol without even flinching. He knew it was all bluster on the diminutive sergeant’s end. “You won’t pull the trigger,” he said flatly. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Parham’s brow twitched and a humorless grin formed across his lips.
As Teddy stared into the man’s haunted eyes, he started to wonder if he had misjudged the man. There was a hardness present, a hatred, and it made him think that perhaps the sergeant was crazy enough to do it after-all.
Teddy went cold inside as he tried to read the man’s face.
Parham noticed a change in Teddy’s eyes and it emboldened him—he saw the first glint of fear.
The sergeant wanted more than a mere glint though.
“Maybe I won’t kill you,” Parham thoughtfully mused. “But you’d be surprised what the human body can endure.”
Instead of baiting the unstable man, Teddy stayed silent.
“I can make your hard day of work especially taxing,” the sergeant continued. He lowered the gun and pointed it at Teddy’s right foot. “Have you ever stepped on a nail? I imagine that this will feel a lot like that, only a hell of a lot worse.”
Teddy’s heart raced as his wide eyes stared fearfully at the pistol. He felt his body tense as he braced for the piercing hot lead.
The sergeant finally saw what he wanted to see; he saw raw, unbridled fear in his eyes.
“Sad,” Parham said with a humorless smile. He holstered the pistol. “You’re not even worth a bullet, but if you test me again, I’ll teach you the meaning of real pain.”
As the sergeant turned and walked back down the aisle towards the front of the bus, Teddy felt his body relax and sensed the adrenaline that still coursed through him. His heart was beating like a jackhammer and his hands trembled.
Roger glanced over at him and frowned when he saw his pallid face. He reached a hand out and gave him a quick reassuring pat on the knee.
Teddy couldn’t even look at the man—he was ashamed for trembling like a coward. He balled his fists to make his hands stop shaking and turned his head towards the window.
Suddenly, something struck the side of the bus with tremendous force.
All of the windows shattered along the left side and everyone seated along those rows were flung aside like ragdolls.
Teddy’s body was pressed against the window and in the next instant, Roger lay squashed up against him.
Whatever struck against the bus continued pushing forward and scraped the crumpled vehicle across the asphalt.
RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT reverberated from behind the bus as the Humvee’s gunner started firing the .50 CAL, but whatever was shoving the bus continued unabated.
Salguero, blood streaming down his lacerated face, clutched onto the dashboard radio mic with both hands. His entire left leg was crushed and pinned between the mangled driver’s side panel and the dashboard. He keyed the mic and started screaming: “Transport to six-zero-nine to Jayhawk Control! We’re under attack! Officers down! Need immediate—” His words were cut short by a deafening cacophony of breaking glass, twisting metal, and horrified screams as the bus flipped and rolled off of the country road.
Teddy flew out of his seat and was tossed violently in the air as the bus rolled over and over. Flailing limbs and pieces of metal knocked against him mid-air. In a dizzying fit of pain, he struck the roof and his world faded to black.
CHAPTER 11
Teddy floated back to consciousness and heard sporadic pops of small caliber gunfire in the distance, but the noise of the .50 CAL was gone. His ears rang and excruciating pain ran up and down his back. The coppery taste of blood still lingered in his mouth.
Diesel fumes and exhaust hung heavy in the air along with the tangy stench of gunpowder.
He heard a few others around him groaning in agony and calling for help.
When he opened his eyes, he realized that he was lying sprawled on his back with his arms spread overhead. Each labored breath hurt and his head swam.
Directly above him, he could see the warped remains of the bus seats.
Garbled, distant voices came out of the dashboard CB radio: Break, Jayhawk Control to—
Teddy forced himself to sit up and a fresh wave of pain crashed through his body.
At the front of the bus, past what remained of the grille, the radio mic dangled from side-to-side like a pendulum from the dash suspended overhead. The radio warbled with static. The windshield had been shattered and crushed to a narrow slit. The doors had bowed inward. Hydraulic fluid spritzed out of the door mechanism and onto Salguero’s leg which was still pinned against the frame and the dash, sans his body.
The rest of Salguero had been torn away from his leg and was pinned against one side of the security grille by one of the axels that had punched through the floorboard.
Vue lay upside down against the side of the bus with his head snapped behind his shoulders and both arms bent opposite ways—an image of a destructive toddler going to town on his playthings rose in Teddy’s mind.
The business casual man wasn’t thrown too far away from Vue and lay dead with a sliver of glass sticking out of his throat.
Parham wasn’t anywhere in sight.
The jarring scene of horror made Teddy freeze for a moment as he sat on the floor, mouth agape.
A few other passengers around him were forcing the dead off of them and starting to rise to their feet, shrieking and crying out in pain.
Automatic gunfire rang out from the field nearby and bullets peppered the side of the vehicle. The gunner let out a merciless straight line across the length of the bus.
Bullets ricocheted madly and what little glass was left exploded into tiny shards.
The passengers who were caught standing were quickly cut down as the lead tore through their bodies.
Teddy ducked and covered his head, squeezing his eyes shut as bullets whistled overhead.
After a few moments, the gunfire stopped and the bullet-riddled corpses stumbled drunkenly a few places before they each collapsed to the floor.
Roger, Teddy thought with sudden urgency. He crawled over the dead on his hands and knees searching for the only friend he had managed to make in the camp. He stayed low, making sure to stay below the windows and out of sight. “Roger!” he called out, voice harsh and raw.
A gnarled, gory hand reached out from underneath one of the bodies and grabbed his ankle. “Help me…” a woman’s raspy voice begged.
Teddy tore his ankle free from her weak grasp and continued crawling, searching. Liquid dribbled from the ceiling and the vehicle’s engine gave a few final clunks. His body was freezing. His clothes were getting soaked with diesel.
Everything was saturated with it.
He had to get out—the whole bus was a powder keg waiting to blow.
“Roger!” he frantically called out again.
Finally, not too far away from the grille, he spotted him.
Roger lay impaled by one of the frame’s steel support beams.
He crawled towards Roger and tried to pull him off of the piece of gore-slathered steel, but the body wouldn’t give.
Roger’s skin was already cool to the touch and Teddy knew it was too late.
The man was dead.
Teddy reached up to pass a hand over the man’s eyelids to close them, but he couldn’t even manage that correctly.
Roger’s eyeballs looked grotesque—one lid remained open and the other only closed halfway. It left him wit
h an unsavory postmortem wink instead of the look of eternal rest.
Teddy stared at him for a few seconds, struggling to maintain his own composure.
A second burst of automatic gunfire ricocheted off of the back of the bus and struck down another passenger who had managed to get on her feet.
Teddy’s attention snapped back to his current perilous predicament like a whip.
He looked around for some way out.
The frontend of the bus was crumpled in and impassible.
Teddy turned towards the rear and noticed that the welded seals that once held the emergency exit permanently shut had broken off during the accident.
The exit door stood ajar and flapped lazily in the chilly wind.
Teddy turned and started crawling towards the emergency exit door as panic tightened its grip. He knew that whoever had attacked the bus was watching that damn door and would take a shot as soon as anybody stepped out.
Yet, if he stayed behind, he knew that he’d either burn up or get popped off when the attacker came by to pick through the remains.
All he could do was hope that the person watching the door was a bad shot.
Teddy swung the door open and dropped out onto the grass embankment.
The machinegun’s response was immediate, but sloppy—whoever was manning it probably didn’t think anyone was still alive inside the bus and wasn’t prepared.
Bullets thwacked against the swinging door and pitched dirt up into the air as errant rounds struck the ground.
Teddy scrambled up the embankment as bullets whizzed past him. Shards of glass were embedded deep in his palms and the diesel burned as it seeped over his wounds. Despite the pain that seemed to overwhelm his senses, he forced himself to scurry onwards like a madman.
Once on the asphalt, he rolled over to take cover on the opposite side of the overturned bus and pressed his back against it.
The gunfire struck aimlessly against the bus a few more times and then ceased.
As he caught his breath, he looked with wary eyes expecting to see some masked gunman ready to unload on him, but he saw no one.
He was safe—if only temporarily.
To Teddy’s right, he saw what had pushed the bus off of the road.
A bulldozer with a maligned bucket loader sat idling in the middle of the road amongst a sea of shattered glass and pieces of steel paneling. It had comically sharp teeth spray-painted across the front loader and left muddy tracks across the road from an overturned grain silo where it had been hiding and waiting for its next victim. The corpse of a grizzly-looking white man wearing military fatigues sat slouched in the cab—he had been shot in the head. His uniform bore some homemade insignias and had KFFM in place of where the U.S. Army patch would’ve normally been.
Teddy tried to stand, but his right leg was numb.
Confused, he looked down and noticed a crimson blossom forming in the middle of his thigh. His diesel-soaked denim gave the blood an oily sheen.
I’ve been shot, he realized.
Whatever numbing effects the adrenaline had had was starting to wear off, and now intense pain radiated up his leg all the way to his core.
“Great,” Teddy grumbled between his teeth. He scowled and forced himself up.
Spent brass shell casings lay everywhere at his feet.
Teddy glanced around the rear of the bulldozer and rested an arm against it to catch his breath, and take some weight off of his injured leg.
Across the street, parked about one-hundred yards away in a frozen field of corn, three pick-up trucks with oversized tires sat parked in a line. The truck in the center of the convoy had a machinegun mounted on its bed which was manned by a bald white man with flabby arms. The fat gunner kept his weapon pointed towards the bus, his face contorted in a fanatic wide mouthed grin.
Six others, all men, sat crouched in the dead stalks between the pick-ups and were armed with hunting rifles and a few shotguns. The men were dressed in an odd hodgepodge of army uniforms and woolen winter gear.
Proud members of the farmer’s militia, Teddy thought.
A few yards in front of the bus, Teddy spotted the back of the Humvee that had been escorting them as it sat disabled in the middle of the road. Most of the vehicle’s armored paneling was so badly riddled with bullet holes that the plates barely remained attached to the frame. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from the engine and the remnants of the passenger-side door lay on the asphalt along with numerous glass shards.
The officer manning the gun turret on the vehicle’s roof had been practically eviscerated by the machinegun’s barrage. His gory remains lay slouched over the .50 CAL and the weapon’s smoking barrel pointed up towards the sky.
Parham, face bloodied and his left eye swollen shut, sat in cover on the opposite side of the vehicle holding a pistol in his hands.
One of the surviving officers from the Humvee, a young man who looked fresh out of high school and well past the verge of panic, sat next to him holding a rifle. His whole body trembled -his blue eyes stared ahead unblinking and unseeing.
Two other officers lay sprawled out in pools of blood on the asphalt pavement with their spent weapons nearby.
Parham’s gaze met Teddy’s.
The sergeant pointed his weapon at him.
“Stay back!” Parham growled.
Stunned, Teddy realized that the goddamn fool was more concerned about a wounded civilian than he was about the demented rednecks who were shooting at them. “Relax!” he shouted back. “I’m not after you and I’m not trying to escape! I’m shot!” He held up his blood-stained hand from his thigh. “See?”
Parham hesitated a moment before lowering the pistol against his chest once more. “Back-up is on the way,” he announced with uncertainty. “Just got to hold them off a little longer!”
The young officer next to the sergeant anxiously fidgeted and started to hyperventilate. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the rifle harder.
“Stay calm, corporal!” Parham ordered as he looked over at the man. “Stay low! Blow their goddamn head off if they break our cover!”
The corporal nodded with a blanched face.
One of the militiamen keyed a megaphone and feedback squawked from across the field: Attention tyrants! Y’all trespassing on sovereign land! Quit yer hidin and come on out! We done caught ya!”
The frightened corporal’s pupils danced around as if he were considering it.
“They’ll kill you the second you do,” Parham said coldly as he looked over at the young man and read his face.
After a few tense seconds, the militia’s gunner let loose another volley of gunfire.
Bullets peppered the side of the overturned bus and punched holes through it as if it were made out of cheesecloth.
Sparks flew wildly as lead scraped against iron.
The diesel fumes finally caught.
With a loud WOOOOSH, flames engulfed the bus and leapt high into the sky. The fiery fulmination sent a forceful wave of heat outwards in all directions.
The gunner stopped firing and the militiamen cackled and cheered at the sight of the fireball.
Teddy was shoved out of cover as the blast struck him in the back. He landed on his hands and knees on the asphalt between the bulldozer and the disabled Humvee.
It took less than a second before a terrifying thought struck him: I’m exposed.
The militiamen stopped their hooting and hollering and fired in his direction.
Bullets whistled past Teddy as he dragged himself towards the cover of the Humvee. His maimed right leg dragged across the ground and left a bloody streak, but he didn’t slow—fear blocked out the persistent pain of his wound.
A burst of scattered buckshot ricocheted off of the ground a few feet away and some of the pellets struck the side of his body and cut through his skin.
Teddy howled out in pain, but kept pushing onward.
Before the fat gunner could join in on the impromptu target shooting, Teddy rolled over a
nd took cover between Sgt. Parham and the young corporal.
Teddy pressed his back against the vehicle and squeezed his injured thigh with both hands, wheezing in pain.
The gunfire stopped and the megaphone was keyed once more: I’ll make y’all a deal… Whoever throws down their weapon and comes on out can live to see ’morrow!
“Fuck you!” Parham shouted from behind cover. “If you want our weapons—come and try to take them!”
Teddy heard the group of militiamen laugh.
The man holding the megaphone continued: Offer still stands for the others! You has five seconds to think!
The corporal looked over at Teddy and then at the sergeant. His mouth hung open and his bottom lip quivered.
“Don’t,” Parham said sternly as he stared back.
“I’m—I’m—I’m not a soldier,” the corporal explained in a shaky voice. “When the flu came, I, uh, was just a cadet in the police academy before the feds picked me up… I never wanted any of this.” He slowly got to his feet. “I’m sorry.”
The corporal picked up his rifle and limped out of cover into the open. He waved a hand in the air, staggering as he walked.
“You goddamn coward! Get back here!” Parham shouted at the man’s back, but the corporal ignored him.
“Don’t shoot!” the corporal plead as he tossed his rifle on the ground at his feet. “I surrender!”
The corporal’s body danced a sordid jig as a barrage of bullets ripped through him.
After a few seconds, the gunfire ceased and the corporal collapsed in a bloody heap.
Uproarious laughter erupted from the band of militiamen.
Parham and Teddy exchanged an uneasy glance—they both knew what was coming.
Teddy could hear the dead corn stalks rustling as the militiaman made their slow advance.
“Back-up is on the way,” Parham assured.
“Yeah? Well so are those rednecks,” Teddy said. “We need to go.”
Parham gave a heavy sigh and glanced down at his ankle.
Teddy followed his gaze and noticed for the first time that the sergeant’s right foot was twisted and bone protruded out of his pants.
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