Vicki fired the gun directly into his stomach, sending a mist of blood on the face of the elderly man in the seat opposite. The force of the shot knocked her attacker off the seat and on to the aisle, where he sat like a sullen child. The bus, which had swerved momentarily causing angry horns to blare, resumed its course.
‘Somebody kill this bitch!’ he screamed, as blood oozed through his fingers.
A clear polythene bag was immediately thrust over Vicki’s head from the seat behind, and some type of cable looped around her neck. Within seconds, it was pulled tight, choking her, while she sucked desperately at the plastic shroud. She was already beginning to see spots form in her field of vision, when she realised what she needed to do.
Twisting her body to the side, Vicki pointed the gun at the back of her seat and fired three shots in succession. The powder from the blast scorched the skin of her back, etching it into her skin like a sweeping tattoo.
The cable around her neck tightened for a second, then grew loose. Vicki pulled it from her grazed throat and gasped for air, as she ripped the mask off. Glancing to the aisle, she saw the large man on the floor was holding his bleeding stomach with one hand, while struggling to open a butterfly knife with the other. Beyond him, the elderly man was trembling, as he fiddled with a rubber mouthpiece and large metal gas bottle.
Turning desperately around, she saw two dead men in the seat directly behind her. One had taken a shot to the face and a smear of blood, brain, and bone rose up on his headrest, like a grotesque thought bubble; the other had fallen to the side, and was now blocking the aisle. Beyond him were several grunting passengers, clambering over the corpse in a desperate attempt to reach her.
Vicki knew she had seven bullets left in the clip – not enough for all the attackers. Time seemed to slow to the syrupy pace of nightmares. For a moment, she considered turning the weapon on herself, but then she remembered what Leighton had told her: they will stop, if they are caught, if they burn themselves out, or if they are killed. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard her friend Laurie Taylor’s laughter, rich and sweet. These inhuman creatures could not be allowed to continue, or disappear back into the concealing folds of society.
From somewhere out in the real world, she heard the distant swelling wail of a police siren.
‘Fucking kill her!’ the large man screamed again in rage and pain. In the moment it had taken Vicki to consider her limited options, he had opened the knife and thrown it at her. It flew through the air and the blade sunk deep into Vicki’s right bicep. A bright flash of pain tore through her entire arm and she almost dropped the gun. Instead, with the knife still fixed in her flesh, she used her trembling left hand to cup the weapon, and took careful aim at him.
‘This is for my friend, Laurie!’ she said solemnly, and fired the weapon at the centre of the large man’s chest.
This time, the gunshot silenced him. Vicki stood up and turned, not to the rear of the bus, but to the front. Knowing she only one chance she held her arms steady and fired. Both shots hit the driver in the back. As he slumped over the steering wheel, the bus skidded and lurched sideways. The momentum of the fully loaded vehicle hitting the curb at the strange angle sent it rolling sideways, five of the passengers were almost instantly thrown out of the smashed windows, two were crushed by over three-thousand pounds of the metal death-trap they had created; the bus continued to roll before it stopped, nose down in a dried out creek, the only sound coming from the one wheel which was still spinning.
41
Leighton had raced back along Route 10, praying his intuition had been right, and the bus hadn’t left the road yet. He had checked the cop’s revolver to discover it only contained two rounds. His radio was crackling with intermittent bursts of activity, most of concerned with apprehending him. Leaning forward, he picked up the radio handset, and took a deep breath before he spoke.
‘Control, this is Leighton Jones - former detective with Oceanside. I have commandeered this vehicle in the pursuit of a major group of felons.’
For a moment, there was radio silence, then an angry crackle. A nervous voice spoke to him.
‘Mr. Jones, you are not in a position to commandeer anything. Please pull the vehicle over immediately.’
‘I am travelling along Route 10 in an Eastward direction in pursuit of a silver bus, licence plate number TB14EDG.’
‘Mr. Jones, we need to speak to you regarding a serious assault on two police officers. Please pull the vehicle over, and await the arrival of the police.’
Leighton’s eyes remained fixed on the road ahead. ‘I cannot do that. Please send assistance.’ He returned the radio to the dashboard, and dragged a hand over his face.
When he reached the Desert Centre junction, Leighton found the traffic was much denser. Up ahead spotted the dull metal of the bus. In panicky response to this, he switched on the sirens, and began to weave through the staggered vehicles. All around him, horns blasted and lights flashed, but Leighton Jones was oblivious. His mind remained locked on the fact he seemed to be destined to fail to protect everyone he cared about.
He caught up with the bus, just as it left the highway, and took a steep exit ramp for the Corn Springs Road. This was a road which Leighton knew from his many Sunday drives - nothing more than a deserted dusty track running deep into the mountains, ending in Corn Springs Farm.
As the cruiser left the highway, Leighton could see the bus only a few hundred yards ahead. His frantic hand reached out and grasped the radio again.
‘Control, this is, Jones. I’ve left Route 10, and am now heading due south on Corn Springs Road. I have a visual on the vehicle.’
Leighton pressed his foot down, and the car lurched towards the swerving bus, which sent up a cloud of dust in its wake, as it roared ahead of the police car.
Leighton’s eyes widened in horror, as the bus suddenly lurched across the road, and shuddered on the stony verge, before swerving back across the road. It seemed to hover for a moment on the edge, before slipping off the road entirely, and vanishing.
The cruiser skidded to a stop at the point where the bus had left the road. Leighton left the engine running, and the lights on.
He stumbled out of the car and made his way to the roadside, where he saw the bus lying sideways a few hundred yards down the creek. Without hesitation, he scrambled down the steep slope towards the upturned vehicle. He was more than halfway there when he realised the gun was still in the car, but it was too late to go back.
Struggling to stay on his feet, Leighton made his way down though the rough, dusty terrain. He stumbled and slipped. The bus had left a giant scar on the landscape as it slid nose-first into the valley, and Leighton used this channel as a path. The route was strewn with debris and several bodies. As he approached, he saw the doors of the luggage compartment had been ripped off in the crash, leaving a long rectangular cavity in the belly of the vehicle. Further corpses wrapped in plastic sheeting and duct tape had gathered at one end of the cavity.
It was then the acrid smell of burning rubber and diesel found Leighton like an insistent ghost, dragging him back to his past. He stood hypnotised by the smoking vehicle, as if it were some modern wicker-man. He wanted to rush to the nearest door and clamber inside, but history seemed to have doubled back on itself again. Once more he found himself faced with a burning vehicle, and the agony of losing someone else he loved. His feet might as well have been nailed to the ground.