Other
Wilderstory 05
Abe punched the gas on his motorbike as he hurtled down the empty highway. He straightened the bends in the road by cutting across the centerline.
The shortest distance between two points, he rumbled to himself.
As the wind blazed hot against his face, he pondered for a moment the question of why.
What was it about this girl that drew him in?
Of all the possible things to speed toward, why this? And why now?
His mind turned in fits like an aimless wheel. Maybe it was the rush of having something real to accomplish. A task to finish. Something left for him in this world to actually do.
Or maybe he was just losing it.
He thought of the stitched-together cloth doll, tucked into a saddlebag on the back of his bike. It bounced along in the dark along with the rest. His tools. His books. His random and seldom used other things. Things that were his, because they’d been his — trinkets and salvage from the old biker himself.
Strapped to the rear along with the bags was the old biker’s most personal relic: a wooden cane. It was heavy and hand-carved, and burnt into with large capital letters.
ABE.
A short name. A simple name. An easy enough to remember name.
So along with the bike and everything else, Abe had long ago decided to keep it as his own.
It fits, He mused.
The wind gusted as the road ahead took a wide curve. Around the bend, he saw a group of girls walking toward him along the shoulder.
The girls from the bus, he guessed, with a creeping sense of alarm.
They looked haggard. Lost. Some were limping. One held a torn cloth to her elbow.
Abe slowed as he approached, looking them over for that one familiar face. The dark hair in ponytails. The striped sleeves. The big rubber boots.
They turned their heads awkwardly as he passed.
She wasn’t with them.
“Something’s wrong,” muttered Abe. He thundered onward, quickening his pace toward the horizon.
Cresting a small hill, he spotted the bus in the distance. It lay on its side in the ditch on the far side of the road.
Abe cut his engine and coasted the last several yards, surveying the scene before him. The bending black marks on the pavement told the story of what had happened. There were no signs of collision. No other cars. Just the bus by itself with its black belly laid bare.
He stepped off his bike and approached the wreck. The underside axles and transmission still smelled hot.
As he stepped closer, he heard a muffled voice from inside.
“Rooster Stix …” it bellowed, in a long garbled slur.
Abe thought it sounded like the bus driver. But the voice was thick. Guttural.
He grabbed the running board and pulled himself onto the side of the bus. His natural instincts took hold as he crept silently along its length to a broken window. Peering inside, he noticed movement from the front seat.
It was the bus driver.
She struggled against the fractured glass and busted interior. Crawling out of her crooked chair, her limbs bent and moved in unnatural ways, as if driven by a force outside herself.
“My Rooster Stix, Dot …” she rattled again.
Twitching and heaving, she climbed up and around another seat. “Where did you hide them, you got-damned little thief?”
Abe scanned the inside of the bus. He saw movement at the other end. It was the girl, shrinking slowly backward and stumbling over debris.
She glanced up and saw him. As their eyes met, Abe felt the haunting fear that gaped back at him.
He pushed his arm down through the window, beckoning for the girl to grab hold. Abe stretched, straining against the metal frame.
There was a lurching sound from the front of the bus.
And then Abe felt it.
Like a steel trap.
But stronger. Heavier.
Latching onto his open fingers.
It was the bus driver. Her jaws were locked around Abe’s hand. And her whole body convulsed, writhing wildly below him.
Abe let out a fierce groan as he ripped his hand free. He stammered up and away from the window, gripping his bloodied fingers.
In an instant she was there with him, clambering through the window frame and onto the top of the bus. Her movements were frenzied, but eerily precise — like those of an insect.
There was a brief moment of calm as they eyed each other. Abe on one knee, bleeding from his open hand. And the bus driver, collecting herself as she straightened before him.
The prim appearance that Abe remembered from the gas station was gone. Her flower print dress was smeared and tattered. She wheezed as she breathed, wiping Abe’s blood from her chin with the back of her wrist. And her classic updo was replaced by a mess of pewter hair that stuck in clumps to the her wet forehead.
Through it all, her thick-framed glasses remained untouched. Her pupils reflected through them like polished black stones. And the whites of her eyes were stained grey. Like the flesh of hard-boiled eggs dipped in dye.
“Your blood tastes thin,” she smirked, lowering her gaze toward Abe.
A hot smell hung the air. Thin, vapor-like wisps of something peeled off the bus driver’s flesh and into the air around her. She seemed to be burning from the inside, as folds of dark haze coiled up and away.
Abe could see tiny black dots buzzing amid the darkening halo. They swarmed, as if newly hatched from her body.
She lingered in the midst of it all; a striking vision of something more than herself. A host to something else.
“Other,” Abe grimaced.
And then she was upon him, flailing and striking and snapping her teeth. Abe met her advance as they traded blows. But with every deflection, she came at him anew — and ever more potent. The swarm of black bits fluttered before her, enveloping Abe in a darkened veil.
Abe retreated amid the flurry and stepped clumsily across the side of the bus. He stumbled off the edge and landed heavily on the gravel below.
The bus driver followed, leaping headlong toward him. She crashed on top of Abe and pinned his arms to the ground. The insects followed, gathering again into a swarm around his face.
She leaned forward and drew her mouth close to his ear.
“Give it up, mongrel,” she whispered. “The girl is ours.”
He could feel the weight of her breath against his cheek. It hung in the air like something burnt.
Abe gazed upward.
Past the bus driver’s face —and through the folds of flitting black specks — a single white cloud was moving slowly across the sky. Abe imagined how silly this all must look from up there.
“Cloud’s eye view,” he muttered, letting a thin smile curl across his lips, “I really am losing it.”
“Not today,” came a voice from beside him.
A loud crack erupted in front of Abe’s face as the bus driver’s head flew back. She tumbled away to the ground past his feet. Her broken glasses hung from one ear and bent sidelong across her face. Stained blood coursed from her crushed temple.
And before her stepped the girl.
She carried Abe’s cane in one hand; the curved end dripping with red and black. Dazed, the bus driver tried to sit up. Her arms shuddered beneath her own weight.
The girl stepped forward. Drawing the cane back with both hands, she swung in a wide arc. And the air exploded as the bus driver’s head cracked open.
Abe sat up, blinking at the sight before him. Blood and blackness was spilled across the gravel. The bus driver lay in a motionless heap. And the swarming bugs fell softly to the ground.
Standing in the middle of it all was the girl. Silent. Shaken.
She turned, shoulders slumped, and held her hand out to him.
Abe wiped his face from top to bottom, wincing at the pain from his fingers. He strained his eyes at the girl as he extended his own hand.
“That’s my cane,” he said.
