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Shaking his head, the younger man swigged from the bottle and nearly choked at the soapy, medicinal taste-he had been expecting lemonade. But the alcohol in it helped his shakes and he forced down another gulp.
Reaching a decision of some kind, the driver sighed and got up. “Me he hartado de esto,” he said gravely.
Alarmed, the American caught his arm. “No, what are you doing? Sit down, man, they’ll see us.”
The driver patted his shoulder, saying gently, “Hombre de muchos oficios, pobre seguro.” He walked forward and climbed behind the wheel, belting himself in. Then he smoothed his hair back and started the engine.
“Dude, what do you think you’re doing? We can’t go anywhere-we’re blocked in, bumper to bumper! We should just wait here for help to come!”
“No siempre es fácil salir de un apuro.”
“I don’t speak Spanish!”
“Seet down and shut up.”
At the sound of the diesel, things started happening again. The naked, blurred creatures outside suddenly froze into sharp focus, gaping mouths and black eyes all trained on the bus. There were hundreds of them now: men, women, and children. They came fast. Bodies slammed against the sides, leaping for handholds, while others swarmed the door and front windshield. Hard objects starred the glass, quickly knocking out holes through which blue arms lunged like snakes. The young man couldn’t stand to look, but worse than the sight was the sound of them: “¡No hay cuidaaado!” they screamed. “¡No hay cuidaaado!”
The bus lurched forward, smashing a dozen creatures against the rear of a trailer truck and shaking off the rest like fleas. The impact destroyed what was left of the windshield, but succeeded at ramming the truck a few feet ahead so that it rear-ended another vehicle. Then the driver shifted gears, jumping the bus into reverse and slamming into the traffic immediately behind, plowing a wide space in which to maneuver. At once the American realized what he was trying to do: a U-turn! It made a certain amount of sense because the northbound lane of traffic was clear, but the narrow highway didn’t look nearly wide enough to swing this huge bus around-certainly not before those maniacs out there got inside. With the windshield gone the bus was open to all comers. But surely the driver himself must know better than anyone what was or wasn’t possible; he was a professional. Flinching at each crash, the American hung on tight and surrendered to hope.
A loud drumming of feet could be heard on the roof. Hideous blue faces were gibbering upside-down through crazed windows. It was now or never: the bus driver cranked the wheel to its limit and backed over the near edge of the roadway, his rear tires settling deep into the soft bank. Then he rolled the steering wheel hard to the left and gu
Too late. As soon as the bus stopped again, those blue horrors were inside. They came like locusts, heedless of injury as they leaped and scrambled over the sill. The driver produced an old machete from under his seat, hacking furiously, but it didn’t slow them down one bit: multitudes of hands pi
Watching the others come, the American suddenly realized that they were familiar to him as well, if only of brief acquaintance-they were his fellow bus passengers! Women, for the most part, though such a word hardly seemed to describe them now. Hags. Furies. Banshees. Blue-ski
Backing down the aisle he felt like an object; a piece of meat. It was a new sensation, being wanted, and not as pleasant as he might formerly have imagined. Leading the pack was the Canadian girl, her pale, perfect beauty now transformed into something washed up on the beach: all jaws and cartilage and kelp-like red hair. That hair obscured her eyes, but it seemed to him that they were messed up-empty holes crying black tears.
She came fast and there was no place left to go but the restroom. Ugh. No time to think about it-he fell inside and turned the latch. As violent blows started falling on the flimsy door, he pressed his back against it, bracing his legs against the opposite wall.
They didn’t give up. They weren’t going to give up. Ever. Looking at himself in the mirror, he thought, This is it, man: now you’re stuck like this. Trapped for eternity in a Mexican toilet, with women clamoring for his body-it had to be a joke. The thought wrung a ragged, involuntary laugh out of him, or was it a scream? He clamped his hands over his mouth to silence it. Please God let it be a joke.
The pounding became more frenzied, jarring his spine. The whole bus shook with it. As the door deformed in its frame, blue fingers wormed in at the weak spots, clamping tight and pulling with inhuman strength-any second they were going to rip the thing right off its hinges. The man closed his eyes, whimpering through gritted teeth…when all at once the hammering stopped.
As if by magic, the monsters disappeared.
Then he realized why. The bus was moving.
The cause was simple: the driver hadn’t set the brake, they were on an incline, so the bus was rolling backwards. It glanced off another vehicle, then tipped sickeningly over the edge of the roadway and down the high bank. Veering sharply right from the angle of its tires, it toppled over onto its side, hitting the desert floor like a great carcass.
The young man emerged. He climbed out of the vehicle and dropped to the sand, vomiting his guts out. He was dyed blue from head to foot, soaked with raw sewage and the disinfectant liquid from the exploded toilet. Defenseless, half-blind, he expected to be attacked any second. When no maniacs came for him, he realized their fevered attention was being drawn elsewhere-to a caravan of new arrivals. He could hear the screams. It was a hellish fly trap up there, with more flies arriving by the minute. Down here, in the dark, he was already forgotten.
Hugging his aching ribs, he dragged himself as far from the road as he could, a mile or more, huddling under a bush amid stands of tall cacti. At one time he would have been worried about snakes or scorpions, but now he didn’t care about much of anything. He would wait here until morning-wait for help to come. Then, as if a switch was thrown, he was out.
White. He came to in a world of muffled whiteness, with surreal ranks of cacti looming above him like sentinels. It was fog-dense morning fog. His body hurt all over, and he was cold, curled up in a ball with his jacket collar around his ears. It took him a second to remember where he was and why-much longer to believe it. How long had it been? Five or six hours at least. Everything was dead quiet. Maybe it was over.
Stiffly climbing to his feet, he hobbled back in the general direction of the highway. Just to see. He was a little disoriented, but it didn’t matter if he went back the exact same way he had come, as long as he found the road. And a drink. Definitely a drink.