The Hours

by Robert Barnard

  “I appreciate it,” Nolan said as he chomped down and took a bite out of the bagel.

  Chloe and Nolan were halfway finished with their breakfast when gagging noises started to resonate from the front of the bus.

  “That’s enough to make you lose your appetite, huh?” Chloe said, chewing slower.

  Nolan didn’t seem bothered. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t really tell,” Chloe said. She wiggled in her seat to get a better look. “Some girl up front is sick, I think.”

  Another retching sound came from the front of the bus.

  “Oh, gross. You bitch!” a girl cried out as she stood up in her seat.

  “What the hell’s going on back there?” Ned grated, his eyes flicking back and forth between his rearview mirror and the road ahead of him.

  “What’s happening?” Nolan said, his interest piqued by the sudden burst of profanities.

  “I think someone just threw up on Britney Miller,” Chloe said. She looked grossed out by what she saw—Britney standing up at the front of the bus, a wet, orange splotch in the middle of her black t-shirt.

  Britney’s friend, Alicia, was writhing in the bus seat that two were sharing just moments before. Her forehead was pale and beaded with cold sweat. As she tried to form sensical words, Alicia’s lips quivered. All that came out was gibberish.

  “I think we need to pull over,” Britney plead.

  Ned gulped, maybe taking too much of his attention off of the road ahead, and examined Alicia in his rearview mirror.

  The bus lurched as it started its ascent up Pigeon Hill.

  “We’re almost to the school. You kids just sit down and relax,” Ned said nervously, pulling a radio handset from his dashboard. “Route thirty-three to Henderson High,” Ned said, his thumb on the handset. “Be advised, I’m gonna’ need Nurse Lowell on standby, one of my kids is awfully sick—”

  Ned dropped his radio. He was startled by Britney, who had started screaming just behind him.

  “She’s bleeding,” Britney exclaimed, leaning halfway back into her seat. “She’s bleeding, do something, please!”

  Alicia’s head drooped against her left shoulder, her face expressionless. Her mouth hung open with a funny gape and her lips had turned entirely dry and chapped. Silent and motionless, a gleaming stream of crimson started to trickle from her left nostril.

  Ned tugged some tissues from a box on his dashboard before extending his hand to the seat behind him. “Here.”

  Britney grabbed the tissues and pressed them against Alicia’s face. Alicia looked on with half open eyes and made no indication that she could feel Britney’s touch. Britney dropped the tissues into Alicia’s lap and let out a quiet sob. “She’s not breathing.”

  Alicia stared onward. A smear of dried blood stained her face. Small clumps of vomit were stuck to the corner of her lips, her hair, and her plaid green dress. Her once perfect white stockings were stained with red blotches.

  “Shouldn’t we do something?” Chloe asked, looking at Nolan.

  “Some freshman is puking and bleeding,” Nolan said, dropping his remaining piece of bagel to the floor out of disgust. The pungent odor of throw up had made its way to the back of the bus. “Let Nurse Lowell take care of it.”

  Chloe glared at Nolan.

  At the front of the bus, Britney tearfully shook her friend’s shoulder. “Come on. Wake up. Come on.” Britney shrieked and jumped backwards out of her seat as Alicia slumped to the floor.

  Ned thought of how he should pull the bus over immediately, and that he should try to resuscitate the girl himself. But the bus was already making the final uphill climb to Henderson High; they couldn’t be more than two or three minutes away. He justified his cowardice—his complete aversion to bodily fluids and illnesses—by reminding himself that Nurse Lowell would be better equipped to help the sick girl. Almost there, Ned thought.

  Alicia began twitching and shaking violently where she lay, face down in the center aisle. She looked like a fish out of water, struggling to breathe, flopping up and down. She groaned and coughed with a choking, phlegmy sound before reaching a hand up to a seat and pulling herself upright.

  “Oh my God, you’re okay,” Britney cried, wrapping her arms around her friend and squeezing her tightly.

  Their bodies intertwined, Alicia pressed her face firmly against the nape of Britney’s neck. A guttural growl purred deep within Alicia’s chest. She grabbed Britney tightly at the waist, dug her fingers deep into Britney’s hips, and opened her mouth.

  Shocked and confused by Alicia’s behavior, Britney tried to pull out of the embrace; but, Alicia clung too tight. Her friend unable to escape, Alicia gnashed her teeth into the soft skin of Britney’s neck and took a deep bite before yanking her head back. A wet, mangled piece of skin hung from Alicia’s lips.

  Britney let out a bloodcurdling scream. Ned reached behind the seat to try and grab one of the girls and pull them apart. His hand floated and waved above the teenagers, unable to grab either of them. Distracted by what was going on behind him, the bus swerved to the right and back again, nearly veering off the road and into a ditch.

  Alicia turned her attention from the oozing wound in Britney’s neck to the dark hand now aimlessly dangling above her. She released her grasp on Britney and grabbed Ned’s hand tightly, pulled it close, and bit deep and hard into his fingers. Ned howled and the bus again took a violent swerve.

  Ned pulled his hand forward as Alicia yanked in an opposite direction. It wasn’t until he returned his hand to the steering wheel that he realized he was missing his ring and index fingers.

  Britney drooped in her seat and clasped her hands over her throat. With Ned’s hand no longer in the seat, Alicia again focused her attention on Britney, who with each passing second was struggling less and less to get away.

  “Stop…please,” Britney burbled, clenching her throat with one hand and using the other to push away at Alicia’s face. Alicia grabbed at the arm Britney used to defend herself and started to chew on it.

  Screaming, shouting, and panic filled the front of the bus. Students that sat in the seats closest to Alicia and Britney fled towards the back of the vehicle and crammed themselves into seats.

  Jared Moore plopped into Chloe and Nolan’s seat, squashing them against the window.

  “What the hell?” Nolan grunted. “What’s going on?”

  Jared’s face was white. “Some girl’s going fucking crazy,” Jared stuttered. “She’s—she’s eating people, man.”

  Once Alicia had finished with Britney, she stood up in her seat and stared towards the back of the bus, studying those that had fled. Her face was plastered with blood, drops of it hanging from her nose and cheeks. Jared, who was practically sitting in Chloe’s lap, was the first that Alicia made eye contact with.

  “She’s just staring at me, man,” Jared said, his voice shaky. An eerie silence fell over the students as they watched every movement that Alicia made. The bus groaned and bounced as it sped up Pigeon Hill. “She won’t stop staring at me. What do I do?”

  Chloe was unsure of how to answer.

  “This is messed up,” Nolan said, before parroting Jared. “What do we do?”

  Chloe felt claustrophobic, trapped in her seat between Jared and Nolan. She was becoming more and more aggravated by them. “How should I know what to do?” she asked.

  Alicia slowly crept down the center aisle of the bus, approaching the terrified students. Her movements were slow and shambled. With each step, she didn’t break eye contact with Jared.

  Jared babbled, “What does she want with me, man? What does she want with me?”

  Fed up, Chloe pushed Jared out of the seat and across the aisle, and then stood up.

  “What are you doing?” Chloe demanded. Alicia’s gaze snapped from Jared, her fixation now on Chloe. Alicia stumbled closer, step by step, until finally she was close enough that Chloe could see something dangling from her mouth—a small, pale finger, the nail at
the end of it painted with glittery black polish.

  Chloe gulped, and for the first time understood the savagery of what had happened.

  “Come here,” Chloe said.

  Alicia hissed. Her eyes were yellowed and bloodshot. She skulked closer.

  “Come on, come on,” Chloe said, waving at Alicia. The students nearby weren’t sure who they should look at—Chloe or Alicia. Their eyes switched between the two as if they were watching a tennis match.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Nolan asked.

  “Just be quiet, Nole,” Chloe ordered. “You asked me what we should do, and this is it—”

  “But what—”

  “Just be quiet.”

  Alicia was nearly nose to nose with Chloe, and Chloe’s heart began to beat from her chest.

  “Why, Alicia?” Chloe said, softly.

  Alicia didn’t appear to understand Chloe’s question.

  “Just tell me why,” Chloe implored. “Don’t make me do this, please. Please don’t make me have to do this.”

  Alicia hissed and leaned back, preparing to lunge towards Chloe.

  Without hesitation, Chloe grabbed a red lever on the rear emergency exit door behind her. She yanked the lever upward as a sharp alarm started to ring throughout the bus. Alicia snapped her head upwards, trying to find the source of the blaring tone.

  The emergency exit door swung open and wind rushed into the back of the speeding bus. Loose paper and trash blew around in circles before zipping out of the open door. Chloe took a step back into her and Nolan’s seat, then grabbed Alicia by the shoulder and yanked her backwards.

  With a look of utter shock and horror on her face, Alicia flew from the back ledge of the bus and into the front of a black, Ford Explorer that was trailing close behind the vehicle. The top half of her body went clean through the driver’s side of the windshield; the bottom half folded over and collapsed on itself before shearing away from the front of the SUV, splitting her in two. Her legs hit the road and bounced away in the opposite direction of the SUV, which swerved to the right before crashing into a ditch on the side of the road.

  Chloe looked at Nolan, her chest heaving in and out, her mind still not yet processing everything that just happened.

  The bus was travelling faster than ever now, nearly reaching its destination at the top of the hill. Eighty miles an hour, maybe ninety; regardless, it was faster than Nolan ever thought a school bus could move.

  “I can’t, I just can’t, I’m sorry,” Ned mumbled quietly, as the bus whipped around the front of Henderson High and headed straight for the loading zone in front of the school. “I’m sorry kids, I can’t,” he repeated, no one able to hear him over the sounds of screaming and emergency alarms.

  Ned passed out, his head falling forward, his bus aimed directly at a row of parked busses in front of the school.

  Nolan reached across the aisle, grabbed Chloe, and pulled her tightly back into their seat.

  “Don’t look. Just hold on,” Nolan said softly, and he held Chloe tight.

  Ned’s foot slipped off of the accelerator, slowing the bus considerably, but not enough to stop a devastating impact. The bus collided hard into the parked busses ahead of it, the sound of grinding metal and screaming filling the air.

  THREE

  Dana Naccarato lounged on her living room sofa, her feet kicked up on an ottoman. She took light sips off a steamy mug of cinnamon black tea. Across from her, her television quietly played the morning news.

  It was these kind of mornings that Dana enjoyed the most—even days. Henderson High, the high school that she taught English at, used a peculiar numbering system for class schedules. On days one, three, five, and seven, Dana had to be at work bright and early for homeroom and first period. On days two, four, and six—today was a six—her first English class didn’t begin until second period. That meant extra time to sleep in, play with her Pug, Elliot, and wander her East Violet apartment in nothing more than a bathrobe.

  Dana clicked through channels on her TV set, alternating from station to station. Each channel had some kind of breaking news alert flash across the screen. As she watched, she stroked Elliott’s belly with one hand and sipped her tea with the other.

  “Disturbing reports out of Brooklyn this morning. Eyewitness Five’s own Victor Melendez is at the scene of a brutal home invasion in Kensington. It’s one of many in a string of robberies and assaults that have spread across the city this morning, stretching as far west as Queens and as far east as our very own East Violet—Victor, can you tell us what you’re seeing out there?”

  The sound of sirens flying down the street outside of her apartment startled Dana. Suddenly, she snapped out of the hypnotic trance that the television had put her under. Dana thumbed a button on her TV remote, causing the volume to turn down, then stood up so she could investigate the sirens from her dining room window.

  It was the third siren Dana heard that morning. The first was just before daybreak; it was particularly annoying since it woke her a few minutes before her alarm was set to ring. The second went by thirty minutes later, as she was stepping out of the shower. The flurries of sirens were so boisterous that she could clearly hear them over the white noise of her bathroom exhaust fan. Now, with the most recent siren, Dana was beginning to worry. The morning news had not been clear about what was going on, just that something was going on. Car accidents, burglaries, assaults; all over the city, and now even in East Violet. Incidents that should have had no bearing on one another, but that somehow felt interwoven.

  Dana pulled back the heavy lavender drapes of her dining room window and peered out. From high-up in her fifth floor apartment, she could just barely make out a string of ambulances, fire trucks, and cop cars parked over on Elm. For the first time all morning, she worried that all the excitement may make her late for work.

  “My students would love that, huh boy?” Dana asked Elliot with a grin.

  A high-pitched tone interrupted the newscasters chatting in the background. Dana turned from her window towards the television set.

  “This is a test of the Emergency Action Notification System. This is only a test.” The television display cut from an image of the morning news anchors to a plain black screen with the words “Emergency Action Notification System” emblazoned across it. “This test message has been initiated by the FCC in cooperation with your local radio and television broadcast systems. Had this been an actual emergency, the tone you just heard would have been followed by emergency information, news, or instructions. This is only a test. We now return you to your regular programming.”

  Dana felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Elliot,” Dana said. She turned back to her window and readjusted her curtains. She tried reasoning with herself that the emergency test and the recent passing sirens were merely a coincidence. Yet, she could not shake the unsettling feeling that something insidious was at play. Dana lived in a quiet apartment complex on a rather boring street, and the sound of ambulances and police cruisers weren’t common. She wondered why so many had used her street that morning. The East Violet fire and police departments sat on Maple Avenue in the heart of town. Most parts of town could be accessed by Maple, so why had there been so many disturbances on her street?

  Dana scurried away from the window and towards her bedroom; Elliot’s feet clacked on the linoleum floor as he followed close behind. She threw on a quick ensemble—a knit cardigan and a pair of leggings—then made her way to her front door. There she put on her favorite autumn coat, a black and red flannel with a velvety lining, and slipped on a pair of flats.

  “Come on, Elliot, let’s make pee-pee,” Dana said, holding out a leash. Sure, Elliot needed his morning walk before Dana left for school—but Dana wanted to investigate, too.

  Elliot ran across the apartment towards Dana, and she clicked his leash around his pudgy neck. The two walked out her front door and down the several flights of stai
rs to the apartment parking lot. It was a pain walking so many steps each time Elliot needed a walk, but Dana refused to ever have to deal with upstairs neighbors again. In her last apartment she lived beneath an extremely loud and annoying family. If the mother and father weren’t screaming at one another, the three children were stomping and dragging toys around. The noise seemed to go on around the clock, only letting up around one in the morning before starting all over again at six. It made it exceptionally difficult to grade papers, relax, or get a decent night’s sleep.

  When Dana and Elliot reached the bottom of the stairs, they turned out of the apartment parking lot and onto Oak. After a brisk walk down Oak, the two were at the intersection of Oak and Elm. The swarm of emergency vehicles covering the street made it hard to tell whose house they were responding to.

  “Terrible, ain’t it?” Dana heard from beside her. She looked over to see her neighbor, Shelby. Shelby was walking her yappy Pomeranian, Elvis.

  “What’s terrible?” Dana asked.

  Shelby said, “You haven’t heard? The Coopers are dead.”

  “What?” Dana asked, completely shocked.

  “Yeah, awful stuff. Murdered from the sounds of it.”

  “What…how?” Dana said.

  Shelby just shrugged. “No one really knows for sure yet. But there’s rumors circulating.”

  “What rumors?”

  “You’ve been watching the news, right?”

  Dana sniffled, her nose turning rosy in the chilly air. “Kind of.”

  “It’s these gangs—they’ve been wandering around, borough to borough, stealing and murdering…”

  “There aren’t any gangs in East Violet, Shelby.”

  “Let me finish, will ya’?” Shelby said with a sneer. “They’ve been chased all over the city and now they’re coming out our way. It’s part of some initiation. After they murder their victims, they…” Shelby’s voice went low and soft as she fanned her hand beside her mouth, as if to whisper a secret. “They eat their faces.”