by Morgana Wray
I responded with a reciprocal nod of my head and an awkward grin. My grin soon morphed into deep concern when my eyes strayed towards her clutched hands.
“You are going to have to hand that over!” I coughed, pushing my empty hand forward.
“Sorry about that! How silly of me! Don’t want to spook Diane, do I?” Miss Maple’s eyes popped in bedazzlement, as she handed me the spider wrench that she had been hugging so tightly against her chest.
She let herself out of the bus and headed slowly towards Diane who was sat on the grass by the roadside. Miss Maple waved to her and she waved back to Miss Maple. Before long they were engaged in some deep banter.
Once I was satisfied that Diane was completely engaged, I proceeded to reverse the bus, pushing the rear end of the bus into the bushes, away from prying eyes. I slammed my fist on a button, opening the back window of the bus. Undoing the belts around the shoulder of one of the corpses, I bulked in disgust at what I was having to do. I could barely breathe. I was nervous. I had never had to dispose of bodies before.
“Here goes nothing. I have got to do this.” I muttered to myself, picking up the unresponsive body before me.
I crammed the dead kid’s body through the gap in the opened window, lobbing it outside into the bushes behind the bus. I did the same to the other bodies in the bus. Emily’s body was the most difficult. She was the only one I had taken some real notice of. If only she hadn’t been the type to really get in your face.
The lifelike look on her face made it even more difficult. I pulled the umbrella out of her throat. She did not deserve to be discarded with that in her mouth. It would have been sacrilegious to the corpse and her memory to have left her that way. I tossed her out of the back window with great emotional and physical difficulty. I was exhausted after throwing eleven bodies out of the window.
I put the alcohol and soap in the backpack to good use. I scrubbed the blood off the walls of the bus and the wiped the seats clean. My fingers dug into something that felt like sludge.
“That’s really yucky! I shouldn’t have to do shit like this!” I wiped more sweat off my brows.
I fished out a small pocket knife from one of the pockets of the backpack. I dug the sharp end of the knife into caked clumps of blood, peeling the blood away from the floor of the bus. By the time I was done, everything was looking pristine.
“Almost as good as new. I am well chuffed with that.” I brimmed with some sense of pride at my cleaning prowess. “Looks blooming fit enough for the queen to ride in.”
I hopped into the drivers seat and strapped my seatbelt on. At last, we could get this bus on the road. I wasn’t entirely sure what would be said to the school or the parents of the slaughtered children. Would they even entertain an explanation that involved their kids turning into uncontrollably violent flesh hungry thugs? They would most likely try to tear us apart before they listened to that drivel, even though it was our true account of events.
“Go on! Get your lazy arses up here!” I shouted out to the chatting twosome.
Diane and Miss Maple trooped into the bus. Diane took hesitant steps. Her eyes probed the inside of the bus suspiciously. She did not seem very keen on sitting in the bus. It was as if she knew something wasn’t quite right.
“Where are the others? Where did they go?” Diane’s eyes looked from empty seat to empty seat for signs of human occupants. “Did you get them to school, Miss Maple?”
Miss Maple seemed stunned and reasonably uncomfortable with the question. Her head was bowed and she rolled her eyes from left to right.
“Yes, Diane. Miss Maple called a private minibus to pick the other kids up. Let’s just get you to school, shall we. I am sure your parents will be waiting there for you.” I peered at the mirror in front of me.
Diane looked unsure. Some part of her could see through my con. But she was non the wiser. She had to swallow whatever machinations the grownups had concocted. Her steps were laboured and unwilling, but she found her way to a seat at the furthest end of the bus. Was this because of her mistrust of us? Or did she usually seat in that secluded position all the time?
I had never taken notice of her. Yet she rode on this bus five times a week; thirty nine weeks a year. What could I say? I was rubbish at noticing faces. I usually had my head buried so deep in my own shit that I did not have time to properly notice if anyone was having a worse day than I was. I wasn’t about to start comparing notes with school kids. That would have been very depressing indeed.
There were some rumblings in the skies. The sound of thunder drummed loudly in our ears. Miss Maple seemed a bit alarmed by the thundery noises. She squeezed her eyes half shut as the lightening flashed brightly in the dull, blue skies.
“Are you okay back there?” I barked from the driver’s seat.
“Don’t worry about me I am okay.” Miss Maple kicked her feet against the footrest nervously. “It is the flashing the gets me worked up. I’ll be fine as long as I don’t look at it.”
CHAPTER 7
Torrents of rain soon came pouring from the darkened skies, streaking across the windscreen in front of me. I watched the wipers swat away the gathering droplets of water on the windscreen. We soon came to the centre of town. Things seemed unusually quiet for that time of the afternoon. The traffic lights moved to the green slot. There wasn’t any competing cars trying to shove into my lane. That was quite peculiar and suspiciously odd.
I stepped on the gas and shot past the zebra crossing in front of me. I wasn’t looking ahead of me. I nearly ploughed into some old lady that was lazily strolling on the broken lines of the zebra crossing. She looked ancient but wasn’t supported by a cane or a Zimmer frame. I would have most certainly killed her on impact if I hadn’t swerved in time to avoid crushing her under the weight of the behemoth of a bus that I was driving.
The bus veered off into another road. I nearly crashed into the cars that were ahead of me. My eyes twitched incessantly. I immediately felt stress build up in my chest. I took my foot off the brakes and pushed the door of the bus open.
“Where are you buggering off to now? Shouldn’t you be getting us to the school?” Miss Maple squawked at me from her sedentary position.
“I need some fucking air!” I gasped profusely, as I pushed my way through the door.
I crawled out of the bus on all fours. I tried hard to stabilize my nerves. All that action that I had been through was starting to mess with my head. I didn’t need all that excitement. Too much excitement often triggered panic. I groped around for something to support my frame. I eventually found the boot of a parked car.
“I can do this! I can keep my shit together!” I ranted hysterically, as I scrambled to my feet.
“Those cars? They seem abandoned!” Miss Maple croaked, beaming a confused look at me.
“Don’t look at me. I am as clueless as you. But I will say that people don’t just abandon their cars with the doors ajar for no reason,” I commented. “They seem to have left in a hurry.”
Miss Maple moved closer to me. She seemed to be less bothered about the lightening now. I had noticed she was squeezing Diane’s hand in the clutches of her stubby fingers. She must have been using the kid as some sort of stress toy to keep her from falling apart. I had heard of people being frightened of rainstorms but this was really beginning to look rather ridiculous.
“But where could they have possibly gone? You don’t think something serious has happened, do you?” Miss Maple asked inquisitively.
“That would be the million dollar question. We need to listen to the news.” I shot a desperate look at Diane and Miss Maple. “Does any of you have internet service on your phone?”
“Mine is flat. There must have been tons of incoming calls while I was indisposed.” Miss Maple brandished a pink iPhone with a black screen in front of my face.
We both shifted our gaze to Diane. There was a clear feeling of discomfort etched on her face. She seemed to have felt singled out by me and Miss Maple
.
“Don’t look at me! I lost my phone when that animal dragged me into the bushes!” Diane’s flustered face blushed red with embarrassment.
I did not want them to know I had kept something that I should not have had on me. It wasn’t the time to be coy. I climbed back up the bus and fetched a phone and Pokémon headset. There was still some sprinkling of dried up blood on the phone and headset.
“Where did you get that? Isn’t that Emily’s?” Diane frowned, glaring suspiciously at me.
“This isn’t the time for a debate! I need to know what the hell is going on in this town, okay!” I snapped grumpily at Diane.
I needed some shred of empathy given the dicey situation we were in. The kid needed to take a chill pill. She was definitely not ready for what the truth was and I was not ready to feed her that unpalatable bitter pill. She would not take it very well. I needed her mentally sound and not falling apart.
“Emily would never leave her headphones behind. She was very attached to those ugly things. I think you have got some explaining to do.” Diane stared me in the face.
There was a burning indignation in those blue eyes of hers. I could see she was fierce in her anger. Clearly, it seemed that Emily meant something to her. I wasn’t aware of that when I snatched her gear off Emily’s cold, dead body. I simply anticipated our need for the tech which seemed to be useless to a dead girl.
I could tell I was going to get flack for it. I knew I would get some serious flack for it from her highness with the blue probing eyes. The kid stuck to my side like glue. She wouldn’t give me a moment of respite. Her constant bickering about the dead girl was driving me bonkers. Where was a freaking fly swatter when you needed one?
“You need to take a step back and let me try to work this thing?” I got in Diane’s face, staring her down threateningly.
“Can you even work that thing, old man?” Diane laughed off my ill-thought out bravado. “Do you even know the password?”
My lack of response was a glaringly obvious sign of my inadequacy with modern gadgets. I sighed a bit and bit my lips. My foot stumped desperately on the ground beneath my feet. She knew she was right. She let me know that too. Diane’s face beamed with smugness. I hated that I could not wipe the smug of her face with a flippant rebuke. I had to cave in.
“Here!” I grunted, grudgingly placing Emily’s smartphone in Diane’s outstretched palm. “Hope you know what you are doing?”
“Sure, old man. This shouldn’t take long.” Diane tinkered with the digital keypad on the grey screen.
I tapped my feet impatiently, pacing up and down beside the parked school bus. She had been fumbling with the bloody device for about twenty minutes without much luck. I was getting really fed up at that point in time. I could easily have lost my rag with the kid.
“I thought you knew what you were doing? Why is it taking so long to pop that thing open?” I slapped my temple in utter frustration.
“I thought I could guess the password. But she hasn’t used any of the things she likes as her password. I can’t guess the right password to access this phone.” Diane rolled her eyes sideways at me.
“Great! Fucking great!” I swore unreservedly at Diane.
“This is not her fault, okay! She is doing the best she can!” Miss Maple interjected, throwing her weight stoutly behind Diane.
She had supported her and stood up to the big bad bully. I wasn’t being exactly fair to Diane and I knew that. That was my mistake and I was big enough to own it. I knelt down and looked the kid in the face, “I am sorry for snapping at you. But I really need for that phone to work. I need to know what is going on. Its very important, okay kid.”
“Sure! But I will have to reset the phone to factory settings to bypass the password!” Diane nodded.
“Will that work?” I coughed.
“I’ll have to try first. We will know if works in five minutes after the phone reboots,” Diane spoke snappily to me.
I let Diane get back to work on the phone. Her fingers tapped furiously at the digital keypad. I suspected that she was typing in some sort of code. I would never have worked out how to do something as technical as that. Guess it did pay to have someone that was young and enthusiastic about modern tech around.
Before long, the phone rebooted and the screen came on. The prompt for the password did not show up. A single swipe allowed Diane access to the home screen. She almost gloated at her success, barely raising her head to address me, “I have gotten rid of the password now. I have just got to log into my email account. Then I’ll be able to log into YouTube to see if there has been any posts.”
“Okay! You do that!” I urged her on.
“I can’t sign in. There is something wrong here.”
“OMG! This can’t be right! This can’t be fucking happening!” A fearful, dejected look sprang up on Diane’s face.
I wasn’t sure what was going on with the kid. Her face was definitely that of someone that had been rattled by something concerning. I tried not to send myself into a panicked frenzy. I wore a calm, unruffled expression on my face.
“What is it? What’s wrong with the phone?” I tucked my hands in my pockets, hovering over Diane’s shoulder.
“See for yourself!” Diane flashed the phone in my face.
I took the phone from her hand to have a closer look. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for at first, until my eyes veered to the top of the screen. My eyes widened in complete shock, “There are no bars! There are no freaking bars on the phone!”
“Wait a minute! Give me that!” Diane snatched the smartphone out of my hand.
“What are you going to do now?” I asked naively.
She hissed and looked up at me with pitiful eyes. “There might be something downloaded that survived in the memory card. I have got to look in there. With any luck it won’t be encrypted.”
Diane’s fingers went busy with the tapping thing again. Some folders were thrown up and then the one marked “downloads” caught her interest. She promptly opened it. There was a large history of files crammed into the digital folder.
“I can see a video on the top. You should open the most recent.” My face gleamed with excitement.
“You are catching up old man. You’re not so dum after all.” Diane shook her head.
The file dated 3rd of May 2014 was pulled up. It was a video file. The filming was amateurish. Someone had grabbed it somehow from YouTube and sent it to her. It seemed to be a classroom. There was chairs flying about. People were in a state of unrest. People were taking bites out of each other. Someone had their face chewed off. I could see the teeth marks. It was horrible. I watched a class teacher get both his hands torn off by a gang of psychotic, rampaging kids. It was brutal.
“That’s enough, kid! You shouldn’t see this!” I attempted to dispossess Diane of the smartphone.
“No! No! That was my school! I knew half those kids!” Diane screamed reproachfully at me. “Mr. Rosenberg, he was nice. That should not have happened to him.”
“I know. Bad things, they just happen sometimes.” I drew the distressed teen into an embrace.
“What is wrong with people? Why are they doing this.” Diane sniffled.
“Wish I knew! Wish I knew!” I patted her back with my hands. “So do you think the signal will come back once this dreadful weather clears?”
She sniffled a bit and flicked her hair backwards. She took her time to pull herself together. I could see there was some real hurting behind her wet eyes. Calmly, but not enthusiastically, Diane cleared her throat and looked up at me. “Well, I am guessing the signals are getting dislodged. They are sort of being bounced around everywhere. We should be able to hook up to the network after all the cloud and thunder dies down.”
“I have heard of that phenomenon where electromagnetic waves get thrown off course by dense clouds. Guess you must have been listening in your physics classes.” Miss Maple chirped from the corner of the wall where she was stood with her hands c
upping her ridged elbows.
Diane turned very sharply to face Miss Maple. Her face did not look at all pleased. A frown was forming on Diane’s face. The way that she squeezed her brows showed that she had taken offence at something Miss Maple had said.
“I did not learn that in physics class. I googled it, okay. Besides Mrs. Pollard was a dinosaur. When it came to talking about modern stuff, she would use gadgets you wouldn’t find in my grans home.” Diane’s scrutinizing eyes poked daggers at the errant Miss Maple.
“That’s you being told off. Guess the kid doesn’t take crap from anyone.” I grinned jovially. “Look at you being a little badass.”
Diane almost took my words as a complement. Her eyes brightened. I could see a little smile push up on her previously glum face. We were all starting to get a bit more cheery. At least, I and Diane were. I couldn’t tell if Miss Maple was genuinely cheery or if she was forcing some laboured grins unto her face and flashing her teeth for effect.
I couldn’t fault her if that was what she was doing. She needed to keep on a brave face, at least while Diane was about. The kid needed to see the adults holding on to some shred of hope. I wasn’t very hopeful. Everything I had seen wasn’t beaconing the arrival of any good fortunes.
People were gone from their cars. There wasn’t any signs of collisions, or an accident. They were lucid enough to walk away or be taken. I was suspicious but I kept my theories to myself. I wasn’t keen on spooking the other two people I was travelling with. They were shaken up enough as it was already.
As for me, it took all the willpower I could muster not to be taken over by another episode of panic attacks. I was running low on pills for the anxiety. I hadn’t seen my doctor in a while. I had scheduled an appointment for the weekend. I got the feeling that that appointment might have to be put on hold for a while.
My head doctor was a dull, emotionally stunted, shrewd pencil neck with little empathy for his patients. He wiped everything I touched before I left. The nerve of the guy.
