"OK?"
"Sure. OK."
"Why wouldn't I be OK?"
"Well, I mean. I saw you–" He waved his hand. "–back then."
"Yeah?" Karl frowned at him and then looked at the box again. "You know," he went on, "we're all in super deep shit if what you said was right."
"What did I say?"
"That I was the brains of the outfit."
Ronnie couldn't help but smile.
He patted the map-reader on the shoulder. "You up to driving?"
"Is that a brains of the outfit's job?"
Ronnie nodded. "One of many."
When they went to the front of the bus, Virgil tossed his cigarette butt out into the street. Angel had fallen asleep. Everything seemed calm, even serene.
We're like a family, Ronnie thought. A real honest to God family.
Nobody had seen the slow thickening of the tiny pencil-line crack on the side of the box on the back seat. And when Karl slid into the driver's seat and the three men concentrated on getting the bus airborne, the noise drowned out the gentle creaking coming from the rear of the bus.
(38)
Darkness had snuck up on them while they were driving. It had slithered in on them hands-in-pockets, casually whistling an offkey tune and insinuating itself when their attention was elsewhere. That elsewhere was on Sally Davis's story.
The woman sounded more like Lara Croft than a mid-fifties woman in a plain skirt, blouse and sweater. What a story it was! Walking around a high ledge seconds before the sunglasses zombies broke into her hotel room and then battling across theater seats pursued by a whole horde of them seemingly out to touch her and weave their special magic on her. Sitting behind the wheel, listening, Rick's mind drifted back to seeing Jerry Borgesson – or whatever it was that Jerry had turned into – reaching out both hands and taking a hold of Rick's brother's head, one hand on each side, holding it almost tenderly, like it was an overripe pumpkin that he didn't want to squeeze too hard. And as Sally Davis's voice droned on and they drove past endless crashed cars – some of them still smoking, though the fires had long since burned out – Rick recalled watching his brother's eyes roll upwards, showing white, and his body shaking like he'd taken a hold of a live wire.
Rick had managed to dislodge Borgesson's hold but the damage had already been done.
Geoff's right eye had slid back into view and Rick had seen it catch his own.
In that brief instant, Rick had felt as though he was looking into his brother's soul. The expression told him to get away, to get away as fast as he could, and to look after Geoff's wife and keep her safe – he turned to the side and looked at Melanie, watching out of the windscreen as she listened to their new passenger, oblivious to her brother-in-law's thoughts. Rick turned away before Melanie could turn to him and smile, maybe frown that what's up? look of hers.
There had been a world of pain in that final glance from Geoff. Rick had been almost able to feel it in his own head, feel it shriveling his insides, turning them to mush. Then the expression had faded and, as though on autopilot, Rick's brother had shuffled around on the ground, trying to get up.
Rick didn't think there was any real understanding in Geoff's mind at that point, just a simple reflex mechanism.
He had seen a bird doing the very same thing one time, back in the house in Providence when he was just a kid. A cat had got the bird, a big white cat that he had used to like stroking and listening to it purr. The cat had torn off one of the bird's wings and gouged a big chunk out of the side of its face, just next to the tiny beak. For what seemed like an age, the bird had shuffled around on the spot – watched quietly by the cat lying right next to it on the lawn – lifting its one good wing and trying to flap the exposed muscle of the other, just going through the motions as it tried to get back to normal, slumping as its legs kept giving way first to one side and then the other. Meanwhile, all of the bird's systems were mercifully closing down.
Rick figured that his brother's systems had been closing down in exactly the same way, the little men inside Geoff's body turning off all the power, all the screens, watching them flatline and go blank, one by one.
He remembered Geoff's eye plopping out onto his cheek like the crazy glasses you could buy in joke stores, and a thick dark substance oozing out after it. Geoff had lifted a hand to his face and patted the gunk gently. Then, with a tiny shudder that seemed to pass through his entire body like a wave, he had moved his hand away and rested it on the ground, seemingly trying to get his breath.
In his final brief seconds, Geoff had projectile vomited over his own legs, a long string of something solid-looking hanging from his mouth. He had paused for a second, ignoring what was dangling from his mouth – and which was still bubbling in waves down his chin – while he patted his face again, sticking a finger patterned with leaf and grass shards into the empty eye socket. Then he had shuddered uncontrollably and his other eye dropped onto his lap. More ooze followed and Geoff–
"Rick?"
"Oh, sorry… miles away."
In a low voice, Melanie asked what he was thinking about.
"Oh," Rick responded, without so much as a second's hesitation, "I was thinking about how great it is to be driving again. Particularly on these ro–" He stopped, and leaned forward so that his face was almost on the windshield, slamming his foot hard down on the brake pedal. "What the fuck…?"
Johnny leaned forward as well. He gave a little whistle and then let out a throaty laugh. "Now there's something you don't see every day," he said.
"What is it?" said Sally Davis.
"Unless I'm very much mistaken," said Rick, "that is the guy out of American Splendor… and he's driving a flying bus."
The Seville screeched and swung around on the road to a stop, narrowly missing the tail end of a UPS delivery truck that was lying on its side across the center line. They all leaned over to watch the bus as it swung over them.
"Hey, anyone see if the guy was wearing any sunglasses?"
"He wasn't," Melanie said. "Least, I don't think he was. It's pretty dark, and those headlights are everywhere."
"He wasn't," Johnny said, turning to Sally Davis, who seemed to be muttering to herself.
"And how about gloves?"
Johnny shrugged. "No idea. Too dark."
Rick breathed in nervously. "Well, we're gonna find out soon enough. Because I think he's trying to lan–"
Just as he was about to finish, the bus rocked side to side midair about sixty or seventy yards down the road.
"Scratch that," said Rick. "He's about to crash."
(39)
As they flew along, Ronnie and Virgil Banders looked out onto the deserted city while Angel Wurst played with Samantha the doll. She had moved closer to the front of the bus – around the mid-way point – because she felt kind of lonely back there, but it was too noisy right up at the front. She'd leave the three men to get on with things and she would sit with Samantha.
The twilight was pronounced now, and still only about 6.00am. But store windows were still lit up, and traffic signals continued to change colors while little metallic voices instructed the empty street to "walk" and "do not walk."
"It's like a ghost town," Ronnie said, shaking his head, sending the words out to nobody in particular. "All that's missing is sagebrush."
Karl coughed a rattling cough and wiped his mouth again with his handkerchief, making sure he kept one hand on the steering wheel. He switched on the lights so that the dials on the dashboard lit up and the twin beams from the headlamps illuminated the ground but working independently of each other.
"How the hell do the lights work?" Virgil asked.
"You got me," said Karl. "They seem to be on some kind of system, roaming around the ground in a loop." He coughed again, his hand lifting the handkerchief to his mouth, and swallowed with apparent difficulty.
"Wouldn't we be better on the ground?"
Returning the handkerchief to his pants pocket and clearing h
is throat with a loud harrumph!, Karl agreed. "But I'm guessing we could need this mode of transportation sometime in the future," he explained, "and I'd sooner get the hang of it now, when the pressure isn't as bad."
He looked around at Ronnie, wheezed a little, and said hoarsely, "You know, could be a good idea for you to get the hang of this."
Ronnie held his hands up and forced himself to look away from the tiny flecks of blood on the map-reader's lips. "No way."
"You did OK in the plane."
"Yeah, well, that was an emergency. It's surprising the things you find out you can do when the chips are down."
"Hey," Karl said, reaching over to pull Ronnie across to the driver's seat. "You do need to do this. You know you do."
Ronnie allowed himself to be pulled.
"It's actually pretty easy," Karl said, now standing behind Ronnie but keeping his hands on the wheel. "God knows how they've done it but it just responds to the way you push or pull the steering–" He suddenly bent forward.
Virgil Banders moved across from the long seat next to the steps, where he had been lounging, feet on the seat. He grabbed a hold of Karl's shoulders.
"You OK, man?"
Karl removed his hands from the wheel leaving Ronnie to take over full control. The bus juddered and lurched a little but pretty soon Ronnie had it going smoothly. The only trouble was that he'd ended up going across to the right, over buildings. He didn't think that was too good an idea – the buildings were all different heights and he felt that it would be easier keeping midheight along the regular street grid.
Angel wasn't sure what it was that made her turn around when she did. It could have been some tiny noise coming from behind her, or it could have been that she wanted to look through the rear windows as they moved along – she had never flown in a bus before! – or it could have been one of her little pre-manishons. It could even have been that she saw a strange cold fear creep over the face of Samantha the doll and she was simply turning around to assure her that they were going to be OK. And what do you know – there was a man walking down the aisle between the seats.
"Are you the con-doctor?" Angel asked.
The man didn't look like a con-doctor. He looked old, for a start, and he was wearing a pair of fancy-looking sunglasses that didn't look right on him. Didn't look right on him at all. Angel did a double take at the windows and, sure enough, as she thought, it was getting dark outside.
The man looked unsteady on his feet, holding his hands out in front of–
And hey, wait a minute there, where did this guy come from? Angel leaned over and looked down the shadowy aisle all the way to the back seat. And there, sure enough, was the box – her box. Only now, the lid was open.
Angel pushed herself back against the side of the bus, frowning. The man had almost reached her seat – too close for her to slide out into the aisle and head for the front.
When she looked down at the front she saw that the mapreader was being hoisted out of the driver's seat and the other man – the nice one who took her to the mall: Ronnie – was sliding behind the controls. All of them had their backs to her and the noise of the engine – much louder than the bus that took her to Fremont Elementary School back home – was far too loud for her to be able to make herself heard. And that was if she could speak, because right now she couldn't.
Angel opened her mouth and made to shout to someone but nothing came out. She looked back, made to stand up and then sat down again. The man was shuffling along like a snail, hands outstretched in front of him. And now he was taking off his gloves. What the heck was he wearing gloves for? It wasn't cold, not in the slightest. Maybe he had some kind of a skin thing. Angel didn't like the idea of touching those hands – or, more particularly, being touched by them.
She wished the nasty man – Virgil Banders – she wished even he would turn around. As Angel got to her feet she saw that the man was now at the seat behind her. She started to clamber up the back of the seat in front, looking back to see where he was, then looking forward again, trying to pull herself on the metal pole attached to the end of the seat in front. It was no good. She stopped and turned. Of course! The seat, her own seat. She could stand on that and fall forward onto the seat in front and then kind of somersault over. But the man was at her seat now, still standing in the aisle. He was turning towards her, reaching out those ungloved hands.
Angel looked back at the front and saw that Ronnie was busy driving the bus. Virgil Banders was crouched beside Karl the map-man in the seat across the aisle and next to the steps that led down to the door. She opened her mouth again and screamed but it was a silent scream, just air. In desperation, she looked down at Samantha the doll and, without another second's hesitation, she threw it at Virgil Banders and Karl the map-man.
The old man stopped dead, one leg already into the leg area of Angel's seat, and his head turned and followed the path of the strange projectile, watched it fly across the seats and over the aisle to bounce once on Virgil's head and shoulder and then drop down across Karl's face and onto his lap.
When Virgil looked up, there was something flaring in his eyes but it immediately went out when he saw the old man. "Ronnie," Virgil snapped. "We got company."
"Not now," Ronnie hissed as he negotiated overhead wires hanging across the street. The bus lurched and Virgil staggered backwards at exactly the same time as the old man lost some of his footing – and boy, he was very steady for such an old man – and he must be around a hundred and fifty years old if he was a day.
Karl spun around, saw the man, watched him starting to get up, saw his arms reaching out for the girl.
"Get away from him," Karl shouted over the engines' roar, and the bus lurched again, only this time, it lurched the little old man back onto his feet and clear across the aisle.
"Which is the switch for the interior lights?" Ronnie shouted.
Nobody answered.
Angel screamed, and this time it was a doozy. What her mommy used to call her earshplittenloudenboomer cry. Karl turned into the aisle and pulled himself upright. He started down the aisle, clapping his hands loudly.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Here!" The bus lurched to the side and Karl took a dive onto the seat, catching his forehead on the handrail. His chest felt as though someone had just dropped a grand piano onto it from a second floor window.
The old man had not faltered at all in the sudden lurch but he had stopped, his hands now barely a couple of feet from Angel Wurst, and he turned to face the origin of the sound, his head on one side, moving slowly until the man obviously locked onto Karl's legs sticking out into the aisle.
Karl struggled to a sitting position, holding onto his chest. He waved for the old man to come forward.
Virgil stepped into the aisle behind Karl. "You OK?" Virgil kept his voice low.
"We have to get him away from the girl."
"Hey, what can he do to her? I mean, an old fart like that?"
"I don't think he's an old fart at all," Karl whispered.
Angel was sobbing over on the other side of the aisle, apparently unable – or unwilling – to move.
Virgil suddenly realized that, here they were, two reasonably fit people – even with Karl clearly not on top form, he was undoubtedly more than a match for this old dodderer – and yet neither of them was making any kind of attempt to walk down the twenty feet or so of aisle to smack the guy into his seat. And why was that? he wondered.
It's those hands, he thought. I don't like those hands. He, better than anyone, knew what some folks were capable of doing with their hands. And old fart or not, the guy in the aisle seemed fairly confident about his hands.
"Shit!" Ronnie was having problems at the front. "Can't keep the damn thing in a straight line." The bus lurched again and this time scraped right alongside the upper floors of a savings and loan building, pieces of masonry and concrete showering down onto the sidewalk and several parked or just abandoned cars, some of them overturned, some half inside stores and o
thers jammed up against each other as though in drunken tryst.
"Mister, back up," Virgil shouted.
"Where did he come from?" Karl asked, unsure as to whether he was aiming the question at Virgil, in front of him, or at Ronnie, busily maneuvering the bus.
Virgil spoke over his shoulder, keeping his voice to a whisper. "Out of that box," he said.
"I know, out of the box," Karl said. "I mean, before that."
The man had kept his head twisted to one side, his hands held out in front of him so that, if Karl or Virgil were to charge him then they would encounter the hands first. He gave another jiggle of his head and then turned away from the two men, swinging his hands around like an airplane gunner until they faced the young girl.
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