• • •
He drives north out of Indy on I-69, keeps anticipating that first question about their route change, why they’re no longer heading toward Chicago, but two hours into the trip, it still hasn’t surfaced. Only as they cross the border does he register the first curious rumblings from the passengers, sees faces glancing out the big, tinted windows at the bleak Michigan farmland scrolling past, draped in the deep blues and grays of a cold, spring evening.
But he drives on, and still no one questions their course.
• • •
Four hours have elapsed since they left the oasis, and night has fallen, and no dinner or hotel rooms have been procured, and finally, on the east side of Lancing, Luther watches a man rise from the back and work his way down the aisle toward the front of the bus.
He stops behind Luther.
“Um, excuse me, sir.”
Luther briefly cuts his attention from the giant steering wheel and glances up and over his shoulder at the old man looming above him—bald, thick glasses, fanny-packed. Then he turns his focus back to the pavement streaming under the bus in a long, endless trail of reflective paint.
“Some of us were just curious about where we are exactly.”
“Michigan.”
“Yeah, see, um…we thought that we’d be in Chicago by now. It’s late and we’re hungry, and our itinerary tomorrow involves a number of famous Chicago landmarks.”
“I’ll make an announcement explaining the course change,” Luther says.
“That’d be great. People are just anxious to know what’s going on.”
As the man waddles back to his seat, Luther grabs the microphone off the dash and addresses his passengers.
“Folks, I got word back in Indy that there had been a terrible accident on I-65 outside of Gary, Indiana, so we’re on to plan B. I know it’s been a long day, but we’ll be pulling into the hotel shortly.”
“What about Chicago?” some old bag whines from the back of the bus.
“That’ll be day after tomorrow, ma’am.”
“What’s there to see in Michigan?”
Fair question, but it still annoys the hell out of him.
“We’re going to tour an old auto factory,” he says.
“I don’t want to tour an auto factory,” says another woman. “I want to see the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building. That’s what I paid for.”
“Me, too.”
Worse than driving a bunch of kids to school. Luther doesn’t even bother to correct them that Sears no longer owns the skyscraper.
He exited the interstate five miles back, and they’re closing in now, moving through the outskirts of the city, the buildings taking a turn toward abject dilapidation, and with a greater frequency of abandonment.
Luther speaks into the mike again.
“Please trust me, gang. We’re staying someplace special. It’s going to be very memorable.”
He brings the bus to a full stop and digs the remote control out of the duffle bag in the floorboard, watching his passengers closely now, most staring through their windows, trying to glean some level of detail beyond the glass.
Good luck with that. This urban ghost town hasn’t seen a spark of electricity in years, except for Luther’s personal generators, which are currently off.
“Where are we?” someone asks.
He lets the question hang unanswered as he pulls past the gate into a vast, empty parking lot, riddled with broken concrete and toppled light poles.
“Is this even a road?” a man sitting directly behind him asks.
The first warehouse appears in the distance, the lights of the motor coach striking the door as it slowly lifts.
Luther pulls the bus inside, brings it to a halt, and finally kills the engine.
Reaching down once more into the duffle, he grabs his Glock, two extra, non-factory clips, a plastic bag, and a canvas bag. He tucks the gun into the back of his waistband, stuffs the clips and plastic bag into his pockets, and climbs out of the driver’s seat.
He stands, faces his bleary-eyed passengers, half of whom are now openly glaring at him. The other half stare through the glass into the low-lit gloom of the warehouse, bewildered.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your patience,” he says.
A man six rows back is struggling to his feet—short, red-faced, with tufts of platinum hair between his ears and the bald, pink dome of a scalp riddled with irregular, black patches of skin cancer. He says, “Well, mine’s at an end.”
“Take your seat, sir,” Luther says.
“You go to hell. I want off this bus right now. And I want a refund from Charter Bus USA.”
“Where have you brought us?” someone asks.
“Sit down, sir,” Luther warns again.
Other passengers have begun to stir, a few toward the back also rising to their feet.
The man’s insolence is catching fire, and as he marches up the aisle, Luther estimates that he’ll have a full-blown mutiny on his hands within the minute. He has a gasmask and aerosol canister of QNB—an incapacitating agent—but that’s only for use as a last resort.
Making an example is definitely the smarter, and easier, play.
When the man is three feet away, Luther draws the Glock and shoots him in the face.
As he topples back into the aisle, dousing the first three rows in blood, the noise of the gunshot is instantly surpassed by the screams inside the bus.
Luther steps back, takes the microphone, and speaks in a purposely calm voice he thinks sounds quite similar to the crazed computer, HAL, from that Kubrick film.
“Please stop screaming, everyone, and return to your seats.”
The screaming doesn’t stop.
“Please stop screaming, everyone, and return to your seats.”
A cluster of people toward the back of the bus are forcing their way down the aisle, and a man several rows back is in the throes of a heart attack.
Luther asks nicely for a third time for everyone to return to their seats, and then he shoots a man fumbling for the side window exit lever, and three others for good measure.
Then he calmly repeats his orders.
Through the wisp of gun smoke, he watches everyone scramble back to their seats, frantic to comply as if engaged in a horrific game of musical chairs.
“Very good,” he says. “Very good.”
Luther aims his Glock at a large, mustached man sitting two rows back. He and the obese woman across the aisle from him, at forty-five or fifty, appear to be the youngest of the group.
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Steve.”
Luther tugs the plastic bag out of his pocket and hands it to Steve.
“Collect everyone’s cell phone right now, starting with yours. Ladies and gentlemen, our friend Steve will be coming by to get your cellular devices. In the meantime, I want to see both hands on the seat in front of you. This means everyone. You fail to do it, I shoot you.”
Luther reaches into the driver’s seat and grabs the heavy canvas bag brimming with handcuffs.
He gives it to the nearest passenger, a stern-looking man, completely bald, wearing a Cubs T-shirt.
“Start passing these out. Quickly.” Into the mike, Luther says, “Anyone not wearing handcuffs gets shot.”
“Why are you doing this to us?” a woman cries.
He levels the Glock on her, says, “Come here. Yes, you, right now.” She steps out into the aisle. “Closer.” When she’s six feet away, he orders her to stop. “What’s your name?”
“Lillian. Lillian Slusar.”
“Do you know what a double-tap is, Miss Slusar?”
She shakes her head.
He shows her, the two rapid-fire shots puncturing her heart in less than a second.
No one screams this time, the expressions of horror voiced only as gasps and muffled cries.
“Does anyone else have any more questions for me?” Luther gazes out at the silent, horri
fied stares. “Excellent.” He still has three rounds in the clip, but he goes ahead and swaps it out for a freshie. “How we coming, Steve-o?”
The burly man has reached the back of the bus.
“I’ve got them all.”
The woman with the bag of handcuffs is halfway to the back.
“Handcuff queen, how we doing?”
“Fine,” she weeps.
“Anyone gives you an ounce of trouble, you just let me know.”
“Yes, sir.”
An eerie silence falls upon the tour bus, no sound but the clink of steel bracelets clamping over wrists.
Steve returns and drops the grocery bag filled with phones of every make and model at Luther’s feet. Then he locks a pair of handcuffs around his own wrists and returns to his seat.
Luther brings the mike to his mouth.
“We have to unload now. We’re going to go two at a time starting at the front of the bus. I’ve prepared some rooms for you. Some even have cots. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, but I hope you understand that I won’t hesitate. There will be no warnings. I won’t ask nicely a second time for you to do what I tell you. If you deviate, in the slightest degree, from my commands, I’ll simply kill you where you stand. Now I know this isn’t exactly the bus tour of America you all signed up for, but I can promise you this…” He smiles wide. “This one is going to be a helluva lot more exciting.”
“All hope abandon, ye who enter in!”
DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy
The fat man’s suit is stained and torn.
He sits on the floor, peering up at Luther, trying to look defiant, but Luther senses the fear coming off him like radiation, and imagines that his chubby fingers—hands bound behind him with zip line—are trembling.
“How are you, Herb?”
The fat man just glares.
“You’re angry with me, that’s fair.”
“Where’s Jack?”
“Jack’s resting. She has a big, big day ahead of her. So do you. And your friends, Harry and Phin.”
“What have you done with her, you son of a bitch?”
“You’ll get a chance to find out firsthand, Herb. Within the next several hours, in fact. You’re an important part of everything that’s about to happen.”
Luther reaches down and lifts a black velvet cloth out of a crumpled paper bag at his feet.
Sets it on the table between them.
“Before we begin, I just want to be clear that I don’t have any desire to get into a conversation with you about why I need to blind you. Only the method.”
He waits for it.
There.
What had been predominately anger and rage in the fat man’s eyes gives way to full-blown terror.
Nice. That was fun.
“Blind me?” Herb asks, his voice dripping with disbelief.
“And you have a choice here, which is the good news.”
Luther opens the velvet cloth, upon which lay an ice pick and a curved needle and thread.
“I’m going to either jam the ice pick into your eyeballs, or stitch your eyelids closed. It’s entirely your call, but if you don’t think you can sit still while I do the suturing, you might need to man up and just go the faster, more permanent route.”
The fat man has begun to sweat, beads dripping off his double chin.
“Is a blindfold an option?”
“Herbert.” Luther says his name like he’s scolding a bad dog. “Just tell me the way you’d like for me to go.”
“Oh…God.” He can see the fat man is fighting to keep it together.
“Choose or I’ll choose for you.”
Herb’s voice is barely a croak. “The needle.”
“Okay,” Luther says, standing. “Now you have to remain very calm. I can’t have you flailing around while I’ve got a needle near your eye. That could be dangerous. I could poke my finger.”
“We’re…doing this…now?”
“Right now.”
Luther kneels down, picking up the surgeon’s suture.
“Now, I want you to start practicing,” Luther says.
“Practicing what?”
Luther sits down on the table and raises the needle, a twelve-inch length of black thread dangling from the eye.
“Holding very, very still.”
My baby woke me, kicking.
I opened my eyes, found myself staring down into broken pavement, my head as unwieldy as a hot air balloon. Swallowing, I felt a dry tightness in my throat. I had a slightly metallic taste in my mouth and was hot all over.
And yet, I shivered.
The pattering on my windbreaker sounded like rain, and the dirty street smelled of it.
I lay for some time on the wet pavement trying to cobble together my last cogent memory, but I couldn’t find it. I remembered the Marquette Building, checking into the Congress Hotel, but everything after lay beyond my mind’s reach, lost in a painful, throbbing fog. Something about Phin and maybe Harry. Flashing red and blue lights on tombstones. But nothing concrete.
It took a substantial effort to finally heave myself up into a sitting position.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and squinted until the world came into focus.
I was sitting in the middle of an empty street lined with small factory houses.
Rain fell out of a low, ominous cloud deck.
I had to turn over onto all fours and get my legs underneath me to even have a chance at standing. Once on my feet, I could feel my heart pounding and that disturbing pins-and-needles tingling in my extremities.
The clothes I wore weren’t mine—this much I knew. Dark blue rain pants and a matching jacket. Sports bra underneath. White sneakers that squeezed my swollen feet. I patted myself down, looking for my cell phone, any sort of weapon. Found nothing.
I pulled the nylon hood over my head and started across the street toward the nearest house, not realizing until I reached the porch its state of disrepair.
Paint had chipped off everywhere.
The floorboards sagged.
I climbed the steps and banged on the front door and waited.
No one came.
I moved over to the window beside the door, cupped my hands over my eyes, and peered through. Almost all of the glass had been broken out, save for a few sharp jags remaining around the perimeter. The house was dark inside, and by what little light slipped through, I saw that the interior lay in ruin—furniture destroyed and rotted down to the splintered frames. The floor littered with syringes, empty beer cans, broken bottles. I caught a strong waft of mildew from what could only be severe water damage.
No one had lived here in years.
I waddled down the creaky steps, my brain reeling.
Halfway up the stairs to the house next door, I stopped. This one was abandoned too, standing in an even greater state of ruin, with the roof over the front-left quadrant caved in.
I scanned the other houses in the vicinity and saw more of the same—this entire neighborhood of homogenous factory houses was a ghost town.
A crow streaked past overhead, buzzing the treetops, its cawing filling the air with a solitary, haunting echo.
Where the hell was I? How did I get here?
Aside from the bird, there were no other sounds. Most notably absent was the hum of car engines and city noise. It was so quiet here, I could’ve been standing in a secluded forest.
Stumbling back into the road, I trudged along the middle of the street and cupped my hands around my mouth.
“Hey! Anyone there!”
No one answered me.
An ancient water tower loomed in the distance, and I was trying to make out the faded writing on the tank when I heard someone scream up ahead.
While my memory didn’t return, I instinctively knew who was behind this.
Luther.
Please, please, please, don’t let the person screaming be someone I love…
He opened his eyes and found himself strapped to an
odd sort of chair, his arms and legs stretched taut, secured with leather restraints. Some sort of pulley-and-gear system had been integrated into the seat. It looked like a high-tech dentist’s chair, with more bells and whistles, none of them appearing to be pleasant.
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