The Girl on the Bus

by N. M. Brown

  ‘Shit!’ He reached down fumbling to reach the weapon. ‘Hey, Vicki!’ he called, and clambered out of the car.

  At that moment, there was a loud whoop as a police cruiser appeared from nowhere and screeched to a stop in front of Leighton’s car, blocking it in. For a moment, Leighton felt relief, as he stupidly assumed that the officers had arrived to deal with the bus, but this notion was quickly dispelled when two officers tumbled from the car and pointed their guns towards him rather away from him.

  ‘Drop the weapon, Jones!’ the taller of the two officers shouted at him.

  ‘Wait, that’s the bus I called about…’

  ‘Drop the fucking weapon, or I will shoot.’

  Caught between confusion and panic, Leighton let the revolver fall to the ground, and held his hands up. One of the officers, a tall lean man called John Ross, hurried to him, grabbed Leighton by the wrist, and twisted it, turning him around, and slamming him against his car.

  ‘Listen,’ Leighton tried. ‘You’ve got to list-’

  Leighton felt his feet kicked apart. Someone grabbed his head, and his hands were roughly pushed together and cuffed. He twisted his face to look towards the bus, which was pulling away. When the silver bulk had passed, Leighton found, as he expected, the bus stop was empty.

  ‘Leighton Jones, I am arresting you on suspicion of trespass, theft, and the abduction of a vulnerable person. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney …’

  He didn’t hear the rest. All of his mental processes were consumed by the horror of Vicki’s situation, and the fact she was onboard the fleeing bus, unarmed.

  38

  Janey opened her eyes; the left one was painful and swollen. She tried to reach for it, and instantly felt a flash of pain rip across her shoulder. It was then, in those first moments awake, that she realised the absolute horror of her situation. She was naked and fastened, with steel handcuffs, to a rusting metal bedstead. Beneath her body, the stained mattress was wrapped in clear plastic. The room was old with a scarred wooden floor and peeling floral wall paper. To her left, was the only source of watery light - a grimy window. But, perhaps worse than all of these discoveries, was the fact a piece of duct tape had been wrapped around her head, covering her mouth. She barely had time to recall the horror of her abduction, before she heard footsteps outside the door.

  Janey genuinely flinched as the door opened, and the tall man, who had dragged her to the bus, walked in. His right hand was clamped around what she initially thought was a rifle, but as he approached, she saw it was some type of plastic tripod.

  ‘Well, hi there, miss.’ He grinned at her. ‘I hope you had a nice rest. Soon, you’re going to need your energy.’

  For a painfully long time, the man simply stood staring at Janey, drinking in her naked vulnerability. He loved this part of his ritual, almost more than the later, messier stuff. At this point, he was fully in control - he was the one with the power over the bitch that had attracted him.

  He then began to whistle to himself, as he assembled the black metal tripod, and placed it on the ground at the foot of the bed.

  ‘You might be saying nothing just now, but you’ll be so noisy later on. That’s why I have these.’ He began to rummage around in his trouser pockets, producing two grubby foam earplugs, which he held out triumphantly. Janey could not think beyond the horrifying fact that the sadistic man, who was arranging to rape and murder her, looked so ordinary. There was no scarred deformity, no villainous laugh - just a bland man, like millions of others.

  ‘Now,’ he said, no longer looking at her, ‘I’m just going to fetch the old video camera from the barn, so don’t you go rushing off anywhere.’

  He left the door open intentionally, as if to mock his chained-up victim with the illusion of escape.

  In response to this, Janey fought an insistent urge to whimper herself into despair. Part of her mind was almost defeated by the absolute horror of her predicament, and yet, something inside her refused to let this pathetic man have any dominion over her. Instead, she focussed on the one moment of good fortune in the entire nightmare.

  As a child, Janey had saved scavenged pennies in an old jam jar, which she secretly kept in the musty shadows beneath her bed. One rainy February afternoon, she had tipped them out on to her Snow White bedspread to count them. They had all clattered into a metallic puddle on the bed, except for one of the stubborn coins that remained stuck to the bottom of the glass jar, adhered by the remnants of the original jam.

  Janey had pushed one of her hands into the jar to release the coin, with the ragged nail of one small fingertip, only once her knuckles and thumb joint were in past the rim, her hand got stuck. Reluctant to break the jar, for fear of being cut, Jane had twisted her hand with the strange glass glove. Finally, in a moment of inspiration, she moved her thumb across the palm of her hand, and felt a weird inaudible click as it dislocated. Her hand had moved instantly free of the glass prison. In the ensuing years, she had practised this move many times. She would often help her mother around the home, by recovering items dropped into small places.

  Now, in the abyss of her situation, Jane knew she had one small chance of escape. However, this was dependent on her ability to stay entirely in the moment.

  Janey twisted her head around to look at the headboard and spat on her hands. Moving them slowly forward and backwards a couple of times, she performed the simple act of dislocation and pulled first one hand and then the other through the handcuffs. Her main concern was to stop the handcuffs from clattering noisily on to the floor. She managed to prevent this from happening by pressing the metal hoops firmly against the back of her head.

  Her eyes scanned the desolate room for any type of potential weapon. Finally, they fell hopelessly the bedside drawer. Reaching over cautiously, she opened the drawer, carefully trying to suppress the dull scrape of wood on wood. Inside was a blood-smeared roll of duct tape, a small Kodak camera, and a long boning knife.

  Jane felt a flicker of hope ignite inside her. She held her breath, removed the knife, and placed it behind her head on the pillow. Aware that keeping the handcuffs in place would simply be too difficult, Jane let them slip down beneath the knife. She then shifted her body painfully up the bed, and placed her hands above her head, in the position they had originally been fastened. She adjusted her sweating hands so they gripped the knife handle, and tried to avoid thinking about its dry, crusty texture.

  When the man returned with the camera, he clipped it onto the tripod and switched it on, and Janey heard the motor groaning to life. A small, red LED light blinked steadily beneath the eye of the lenses. The man looked at Janey, and ran his tongue over his bottom lip. What he did next was even more unsettling, he turned to the camera, held up two thumbs in a gesture of success and turned back to her.

  ‘Now, we are going to have some fun, bitch, and, if you’re a good girl, I’ve got a nice surprise in the drawer for you.’

  He pulled off his t shirt and pants to reveal his skinny, pasty body before he climbed up on to the bed. He grabbed Janey’s legs, forcing them apart and knelt between them. She noticed, in the vague horror of trauma, his small erection was stabbing at the material of his underwear.

  ‘It’s time to play.’ The man grinned.

  As her attacker hooked his two thumbs into the waistband of his underpants, Janey seized her moment. Springing forward, she drew the knife in both hands from behind her head, and thrust it directly into the man’s throat. He let out a strange meowing noise, and tried to clamber away. His blood felt unnaturally hot as it sprayed on her exposed feet. Janey rolled off the bed on to the floor, where she began to crawl clumsily towards the door. Behind her, Dyer was lying face down the bed, rasping and gurgling, as his lifeblood seeped steadily onto the slick plastic sheeting. To Janey, the journey to that doorway had the treacly slowness of nightmares. She fully expected to reach the doorway, only to be confronted by the large man with the Hawaiian shirt, who had promise
d to skin them both.

  She reached the door and used the frame to pull herself up to her feet. Things had faded to silence on the bed behind her, but she did not dare turn around, just in case she found herself face-to-face with something unspeakable. Instead, she began to make her way out of the room and onto a large dusty upper landing.

  Faced with two closed doors and a staircase, she chose the latter and hurried down the stairs to the ground floor.

  One of her first priorities was to find her clothes, but as she stepped off the stairs, Janey found herself in a grubby farmhouse kitchen, where a small fire was smouldering in the stone hearth. Glancing nervously around, she approached it. On the grey ashen corners of the fire, she could see the scorched fragments of her clothes. Beyond the fire was a door, which lead out into the open courtyard. If she was going to escape into the countryside, Janey knew she needed some type of clothing.

  Like a grim Goldilocks, she crept back upstairs.

  Glancing into the doorway, she saw the man who had attacked her was thankfully motionless on the bed. His discarded jeans remained on the floor. Janey held her breath, as she crept back into the room, like a child approaching a sleeping adult.

  She displaced her mind, as she pulled on the jeans. The legs were too long, and she had to roll them up to expose her feet – one of which was peppered with small cuts.

  Walking back out into the hallway, she opened the closest door to find a small room and a bed much like the one she had been on. The only difference was, this one had complicated system of ropes suspended from steel hooks in the ceiling. Retreating and closing the door, Janey functioned in a semi hypnotic state – it was the only way she could survive.

  She opened the next door, and was immediately confronted by a room without a bed, but instead, the floor was covered with large mason jars. Thankfully, it was too dark to what had been preserved in the glass containers, but the smell of pickled death in that stifling room was overwhelming. Jane felt a rising convulsion in her stomach, and she retched, splattering the floorboards with hot, bitter vomit.

  Wiping her mouth, she glanced to the first room. She knew she could not face going back in to recover the grimy t-shirt. She would rather face the vulnerability of her nakedness.

  Hurrying back down stairs, she opened the door to the yard, and had to shield her eyes against the fierce sunlight. From outside, she could see that the house stood alone in a dry basin of land, with no other house or feature for miles.

  Her only option was to follow the track and hide from any approaching vehicles.

  39

  At the same time as Janey Bernal was discovering her handcuffs, Leighton was cramped in the back seat of a cruiser, his hands also painfully cuffed behind him. Unfortunately, unlike Janey, he did not possess the ability to squeeze out of his restraints. The heat was stifling in the baking confinement, and Leighton found himself struggling to breathe.

  Paul Ross, the senior officer who was driving the car, was confident Gretsch would probably reward him with a week’s holiday for bringing this crazy old bastard in.

  ‘Please, guys,’ Leighton tried to lean forward to engage the two officers in the front of the car, ‘the girl on that bus is in real danger. Can you just radio in, just ask that a car pulls the damn thing over?’

  ‘Shut up!’ shouted Harold Dean - the passenger side cop, who was playing a game on his mobile phone - without turning around.

  ‘It’s true,’ Leighton continued, ‘I’ve been investigating the bus and-’

  ‘Investigating?’ Ross laughed almost too loudly.

  ‘She could die!’ Leighton shouted - his mind suddenly filled with the endless horrors that could fall upon Vicki, knowing it was his hubris which had led her into this dark world. He had few, if any options left.

  ‘Maybe she got on the bus to escape your stalking.’ Dean said, as he turned on the air-con.

  ‘Listen, Jones,’ Ross said, with a smile, ‘why don’t you just get yourself an inflatable girlfriend. They stick around a bit longer than the co-eds.’

  ‘Please help,’ Leighton repeated, his voice more strained this time.

  ‘Shut up,’ the cop in front said, and made a mock yawn. ‘You’re getting boring, old man. There’s no need to go on and on.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said his partner, turning around. ‘Maybe you should just sit back, and - Oh shit, shit! Pull over, Ross!’

  Ross glanced in the rear view mirror to see Leighton’s rapidly darkening face, and his head lolling on his chest. His eyes had rolled to white slits in his face, and saliva was pouring from his mouth to form a vertical puddle on his pale blue shirt.

  ‘Fuck,’ Ross shouted. ‘He’s having a goddam seizure or something; we can’t have him die while in custody. That would be all we need.’

  The cruiser came to a stop at the roadside, and both police officers climbed clumsily out of the vehicle. There was no noise from Leighton as he was dragged out of the rear seat by Ross.

  Almost as soon as he was out of the vehicle, Leighton’s legs gave way, crumpling beneath him, and he tumbled backwards on to the dusty roadside.

  ‘Dammit, Dean, help me out here!’ Ross called to the younger officer.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You hold him upright, and I’ll get his cuffs off - and keep a look out for cars. Anyone stops, we say he’s D&D. Okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ross said, and crouched over Leighton, pulling him to his feet. He was a dead weight, and the police officer struggled to hold him upright, while his colleague moved behind him to unlock the steel handcuffs.

  Leighton performed the action so swiftly the officers barely knew what had happened. While Ross was busy unlocking the cuffs, Leighton let out the breath he had been holding, and let his half-lidded eyes fall on Ross’s side arm, about four inches in front of him. As soon as one hand was free, he let if fall forward, and pulled the Beretta from the holster.

  Throwing his head backwards, Leighton smashed it into Dean’s nose. At the same time, he saw sudden horror spread across Ross’s face, and shot him in the foot. He then spun around and threw the dust he had gathered when he was on the floor into Dean’s face. Seizing the moment, Leighton stepped behind him and slammed his foot into the back of Dean’s knees, forcing him to fall forward on to the ground.

  He pushed the barrel of the pistol to the back of his head.

  ‘Okay, young buck, I want your gun and your car keys, and I want them now!’

  40

  The stocky man, who had pulled a kicking Vicki onto the bus, threw her into the first seat behind the driver, and sat alongside her, blocking her in with his body. The dull reek of sweat emanating from his body was almost overwhelming.

  Moments earlier, the bus had jolted to a stop, and Vicki had tried to wave it on again. Twisting one arm up her back and gripping her throat with the other, he had hauled her on to the bus, and thrown her into the first available seat.

  ‘What was that shit about back there?’

  Vicki said nothing.

  ‘I asked you a fucking question!’ he persisted.

  The man suddenly grabbed her head, tearing out some strands of hair, and twisting her face towards him.

  ‘I just changed my mind about the bus ride,’ Vicki said quickly. ‘I had just realised I’d left my purse at home.’

  ‘Sorry, our tickets are non-refundable, honey, everyone completes their journey.’

  He chuckled as he released her head, and began stroking her leg. Vicki moved instinctively away from him, and towards the window. In response to this rejection, the large man sighed impatiently, and slapped her hard on her face.

  ‘Now, you play nice, or you’ll get another tap, okay?’

  It was in that moment Vicki almost fainted. She had caught glimpse of a thick, gold chain, hanging like a glamorous noose around the neck of the man. Upon the chain, several rings of various sizes and shapes had been threaded. The third one from the end was a small gold band studded with garnets - it was the rin
g she had bought Laurie for her twenty-first birthday.

  ‘Did you fucking hear me?’

  Vicki nodded, her skin red and stinging.

  ‘Good, now, take off your jeans!’

  ‘Okay,’ Vicki said. ‘Just don’t hit me again.’

  As she undid the top button of her jeans, the large man began moaning and rubbing his crotch.

  ‘I’ll hit you often as I want, honey.’

  Vicki shuddered as she leaned forward to untie her shoes. Undoing one shoelace, she then slipped her mother’s pistol from her sock, and undid the safety catch. Sitting upright, she pointed it at the large man. His expression darkened, and he made a raging lunge for her.

  Vicki fired the gun directly into his stomach, sending a mist of blood on the face of the elderly man in the seat opposite. The force of the shot knocked her attacker off the seat and on to the aisle, where he sat like a sullen child. The bus, which had swerved momentarily causing angry horns to blare, resumed its course.

  ‘Somebody kill this bitch!’ he screamed, as blood oozed through his fingers.

  A clear polythene bag was immediately thrust over Vicki’s head from the seat behind, and some type of cable looped around her neck. Within seconds, it was pulled tight, choking her, while she sucked desperately at the plastic shroud. She was already beginning to see spots form in her field of vision, when she realised what she needed to do.

  Twisting her body to the side, Vicki pointed the gun at the back of her seat and fired three shots in succession. The powder from the blast scorched the skin of her back, etching it into her skin like a sweeping tattoo.