For the Fallen

by Mark Tufo

  She looked up to Trip to gauge if he had any sort of reaction. She couldn’t tell,

  he was singing Fire on the Mountain at the top of his lungs, his hands beating rhythmically against the steering wheel.

  The bikers pulled back slightly. Stephanie hoped that they were going to give up.

  What she didn’t realize was that they were just attempting to get better firing angles

  on the tires. The bus rocked slightly as a tire on the other side was blown out in

  a hail of bullets.

  “That’s going to be a pain in the ass to change,” Trip yelled. “Hold on!” Trip was

  laughing now. “Probably shouldn’t have taken that second dose!” Tears from laughter

  were streaming down his face.

  ‘Second dose of what?’ She wanted to ask, but she was finding herself pinned against

  the floor and the bottom of the seat as Trip lay heavily on the brakes. A couple of

  the bikers were halfway up the sides before they realized what was going on. One of

  the bikers was unfortunate to not have been paying attention. Steph could see his

  screaming face illuminated in the bright red of the brake lights. Caustic black smoke

  ripped up from his tires as he tried to brake in time, the front of his bike went

  under the bus, his face collided with the rear, his chin catching the metal right

  below the blown out window. Bloody stumps of teeth were launched into the bus almost

  hitting Stephanie’s stunned features. His bike had fallen away, but somehow the man

  was momentarily stuck on the edge. His jaw had been pushed back so far that his overbite

  was what was keeping him attached. His eyes were glazed over in shock, blood was pouring

  out of his nose and the top of his mouth. He lingered a few dreadful seconds longer

  before he fell away as well.

  Trip juked the bus back towards the right, narrowly missing one of the bikers who

  was scrambling to slow down and get out of the path of the behemoth. He swerved into

  the soft shoulder of the roadway, his arms rippling against the forces that wanted

  to upend him. When he got to a complete stop, he took a moment to compose himself

  before he rejoined the chase. He hoped that his pants would dry before this was all

  over. His friend ‘Lucky’ was not quite his namesake as Trip clipped him. The bus lurched

  into the air as Lucky’s bike went underneath. Stephanie smacked her head on the seat

  above her hard enough that she felt like a cartoon character replete with stars and

  everything.

  Trip had taken out another biker, but at the sacrifice of another tire. These were

  not numbers he could easily sustain; the city bus was equipped originally with six

  tires and he was down to four. The bikers stayed a good fifty yards back, wary that

  their adversary might do something else erratic. If they had known he was a burned

  out hippy, they may not have been quite as easily spooked.

  Stephanie stayed low on the floor and crawled back up to the front. Trip looked down

  at her.

  “Crawling counts as leaving your seat, ma’am.”

  Steph pulled herself up into the seat behind him. She looked over his shoulder. He

  was doing a slightly slower speed of eighty-five. She noticed the gas gauge was sitting

  at half. She knew they had not traveled far enough that it should be that low. In

  addition to losing two tires, the gas tank had been compromised. And right now there

  were more bikers than she had bullets.

  “I love you,” she told Trip.

  “I love you too, honey, but that’s not going to get you out of your fare,” he said,

  reaching behind and grasping her shoulder.

  Steph turned back to the bikers who had dropped off a little further and she knew

  why. The bus was leaving a steady stream of gas along the roadway like a cow pissing

  on a flat rock. It was only a waiting game now until the bus was drained dry, and

  like hyenas to a dying elephant, they would leap when the time was right.

  “Want to drive for a minute? I’ve really got to take a leak,” he told Stephanie.

  He started to stand before she could even comment. She reached through his legs to

  grab the wheel, he stepped over and she quickly slid in to his spot; the seat was

  roasting. Trip stumbled down the aisle as he fumbled with his pants. Stephanie watched

  his progress in the over-sized mirror.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in alarm as she watched him brace himself against

  the rear frame of the bus, his pants down by his ankles. She imagined his penis flapping

  in the wind as he sent sprays of urine towards the unsuspecting bikers. “Well shit,

  if that doesn’t make them think he’s nuts, then nothing will.”

  Trip was laughing like a loon.

  “Is that guy pissing at us?” Blaze, the leader of the biker gang, asked. None of his

  people could hear him over the roar of their engines, but they had to have been thinking

  the same thing as they looked back and forth at each other. How crazy is this guy? He shuddered. He wouldn’t stray from their raid, because now it would look like a

  sign of weakness, but he would make sure to hang back a bit and wait for mop up duty.

  “That was fantastic,” Trip said, coming up to his wife, his private parts at about

  eye level with her.

  “You know you should really pull your pants up now,” she said, glancing over at him.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, looking down. “I was wondering why it was so difficult to walk.

  When’d we get a bus?” He looked around.

  “You do know you’ve been driving for a couple of hundred miles right?”

  “Fantastic!” he said, not elaborating. “How’d I do?” he asked in all seriousness.

  “Not bad considering you don’t have a license.”

  “Any problems with the boys in blue?”

  “Haven’t seen one all day. Although for once, I wish they were out.” She glanced over

  to her mirror. “Trip, we’re running out of gas.”

  “When you get to the first major route going north and south, take it,” he told her.

  “Which way?”

  “Which way is Maine?” Trip asked.

  “North.”

  “Then we go north.”

  “Do you want to drive?”

  “That’s crazy, how would we ever switch while you were driving? Stephanie, sometimes

  I just don’t know what you’re thinking.” He sat down and was still shaking his head

  a few seconds later.

  By the time she saw the signs for 495 Northbound ahead two miles, her gauge was reading

  a quarter of a tank. Unless Mike’s house was in the next fifty miles, she didn’t know

  how they were ever going to get there. The bikers had kept their distance and maybe

  even a bit more so after Trip’s display, but they were close enough to strike at will.

  She apparently was doing enough worrying for the both of them. Trip was asleep on

  the small seat, his head completely bent back over the headrest so that his Adam’s

  apple was the highest point on his body. More than once she thought about driving

  the bus into a giant sign column or perhaps a bridge abutment.

  And she may have if she could have been convinced that the maneuver would kill them

  both instantly. Her biggest fear was that they might only be incapacitated with a

  broken leg or arm and then they would still have to suffer the wrath of the bikers.

  She had a feeling the men behind would not be swift in their dealings with them.
>
  “Why am I so willing to give up hope?” she asked quietly.

  “Because it’s a fucked up world,” Trip said. He was watching her closely. She had

  not realized he had awoken and certainly was not expecting that he would have heard

  her.

  She’d once made him take a hearing test because of some of his inane responses to

  the most basic of questions. He’d lost somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty percent

  of his hearing from concerts, but certainly not enough to explain all of his answers.

  She was certain she had asked her question soft enough that he should have not been

  able to hear it in a quiet living room if they were next to each other. The fact that

  wind was ripping through the bus, plus the flapping of destroyed tires striking the

  pavement, and add to that he was two seats away, should have made it impossible.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said to him.

  “We’re still alive and we’re still together. Plus, I have some killer weed. Want a

  hit? Want me to drive?” he asked as he nearly began to sit on her lap.

  “Let me get out of the way, will you. The highway is coming up in about a mile.” She

  pointed to a large sign with the familiar blue and white logo.

  “Want to see something cool?” Trip asked he strapped on his seatbelt.

  “Not really,” she told him in all honesty.

  The bus began to pick up speed just as they were approaching the off-ramp.

  “Trip, what are you doing?” she asked, dread rising up fast within her.

  She was convinced it would be impossible for him to take the turn at this speed. She

  checked back towards the bikers and saw that they had fallen back even a little more.

  How much time will we have to escape from an overturned bus before they’re on us?

  She felt her body get thrust against the bus wall, she was nearly pinned from the

  centrifugal force. Trip seemed to grow in his seat. She realized it wasn’t that he

  was getting bigger, but rather, he was rising up in the air as the tires on the left

  side of the bus lost their contact with the ground.

  “Are you kidding me?” she shrieked.

  The bus was halfway through the clover, and the wheels had not yet struck down. Trip

  was laughing and would occasionally look over at his wife, at the contortions to her

  body, and face.

  “This isn’t even the good part,” he told her.

  She didn’t even have time to respond before the magnet that was sticking her to the

  right was now pulling her to the seat back in front of her. The bus slammed back down

  to the ground as Trip lay down heavily on the brake. The smell of melting brake pads

  dominated the interior of the bus. Stephanie felt like a rag doll as she was pushed

  back into her seat. The bus was picking up speed as Trip drove it backwards.

  “Look, ma, no hands!” Trip yelled as he drove with his knees.

  “I’m going to kill you!” Stephanie screamed, holding on to anything that looked like

  it might save her life.

  Blaze sped up when he saw the bus take the exit. He wasn’t overly concerned about

  losing the much slower vehicle, but he liked it better when it was within view. The

  rest of his posse followed suit. He was looking forward to the catching and the subsequent

  beatings of the occupants of the bus for what they’d done to some of his men. That

  he’d started the whole affair was of no consequence to him.

  He hit the ramp at a modest seventy-five and was just starting to lean into the turn

  when he saw the massive white of the buses rear end looming up in front of him. He

  had at first mistakenly assumed that the driver had stopped and decided to make a

  last stand here or they were already making a run for the tree line. It was the bright

  white of the back-ups lights that made him realize his mistake, and not a moment too

  soon as he veered sharply off the road and into the long grass on his right. His handlebars

  were bucking wildly, and it took all of his balance and experience to keep the bike

  from spilling him.

  The closest two riders behind him were not quite fortunate enough to realize that

  the bus was coming full speed at them. He was swearing loudly, wrestling his bike

  when the collision of metal on metal hit. The impact broke, glass, metal, plastic,

  and the easiest of all…bones. Out of the corner of his eye, he was able to see as

  the bus rode up and over his brother-in-law. Blaze was infuriated; it was the first

  man his sister had ever hooked up with that he actually got along with. And now his

  brains were dripping off the guardrail.

  The second biker to collide with the back had not been as fortunate. His bike, with

  him attached, got caught underneath the bus. The rear wheel was slowly eroding his

  left leg away and his screams could be clearly heard over the destruction of his bike.

  When the rear wheel of the bus had finally caught a significant enough portion of

  his bike to pull it through, it ran over what remained of his leg and up and over

  his pelvic bones, crushing them into dust. The front wheel missed his head by scant

  inches; Blaze wished it had hit him if only to shut up his wailing. The rest of the

  bikers had enough time to see what was happening and avoid the bus.

  Trip stopped quickly and slammed the transmission into Drive. He waved at Blaze as

  he drove past, a huge grin plastered on his face.

  “He’s fucking crazy,” Blaze said, not for the first time. When he stopped shaking,

  he got his bike back up onto the roadway.

  “What a fucking mess,” Armand said. He was Blaze’s second-in-command. A big burly

  man with a long flowing goatee and bald head, he was nearly twice the size of Blaze,

  and most folks that came across the ‘Double D’ or ‘Dying Days’ bike gang, wrongly

  assumed him to be in command.

  “What do you want to do with TW?” Armand asked referring to the man whose shrieks

  were giving him a headache.

  “Bandage him up, get him on a bike, and we’ll find him some help,” Blaze said.

  Armand looked at his leader.

  “I’m just fucking with you, let’s get out of here,” Blaze told him.

  Armand waited until everyone mounted up and was ready to start the pursuit anew before

  he walked over to TW.

  “Help me, man,” TW said, his bloodied arms outstretched towards Armand.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you think I could do for you, man. How you missed a bus

  that big is beyond me, though.” Armand pulled his Colt 1911 from his holster.

  “Wa-wait, m-man! I can ride. I can ride!” TW stuttered through a face full of broken

  teeth.

  “I’d love to see that, I would. Gonna be a bitch changing the clutch with that leg

  though,” Armand said, referring to TW’s left leg that was only being held together

  by the stitching of his leather pants.

  “Y-you can’t leave me here, man.”

  “Why the fuck can’t I?”

  “You…you’re my brother.”

  “Not anymore.” Armand drilled a bullet in TW’s skull.

  ***

  “What was that?” Stephanie asked as Trip got the bus back up to speed on the highway.

  “Huh?” he asked her. “Oh look at that, there’s a rest stop ten miles ahead with a

  Burger King. You think, like, maybe a skeleton crew stayed on? I could really go for

  a smoothie.”

  Stepha
nie looked to the rear and saw the bikers were back. They were short a couple,

  but still had enough to do what they had set out to do. “Trip, they’re still coming.”

  “I just needed to buy us a little more time.”

  “What do you know that I don’t?”