Chapter Forty-Four
Zahra
I do not work well under pressure.
I avoid situations I can’t control, and this situation—fuck, I didn’t know that bastard was going to pull a stunt like this.
I didn’t think he was capable of pulling this off or devising a plan like this.
I underestimated him, and that one mistake might cost us our lives today.
I was sweating; my clothes felt tight, and the cuffs around my wrists dug into my skin, leaving a red bruise that became visible whenever I moved my hand.
My heart had stopped functioning at its normal pace the moment I caught sight of those children.
To think, I was the one preaching about staying calm.
All the sounds around me were delivered in distant echoes; the sound of a helicopter above the bus, which heightened my anxiety when I first heard it, the little whimpers and cries from the children on the bus, the noise in my ear from the comm: Milk’s and Upper’s staticky voices trying to communicate with me, and the people around them.
“Zahra.”
The sounds … God, they were all mixed together in shadowy echoes, seeing as my breathing was the loudest thing I heard, the only thing I heard.
“Zahra.”
My chest was tight, it felt like I had a fever, and the ominous beeping of the bomb tickled my head.
“Zahra.”
I needed to breathe, to relax, to stay calm, be in control, but with this fucking noise around me, the honks from passing cars, shouts, helicopter blades, static, the hum of the bus, Dog’s cursing, children crying. I needed the world to shut up for one goddamn second so I could think.
“Zahra.”
If I could just think … then maybe …
“Zahra.”
My chest was heaving, my mind supplying the image of my body being blown to bits after the countdown reached complete zeroes … but not just my body; Dog’s body, Devil’s body, the children, and the drivers of nearby cars—
“Zahra!”
I could stop it. I could save us all if I just had enough space to breathe and thi—
“Zahra!”
“What!” I yelled back at Dog, nervously bouncing on his toes a few feet away, looking quite pale.
“I’ve been calling you for fucking ages; what are they saying? The blue fucking wire or the red one? Your comm is the only one connected, remember?” he said between hurried breaths; his panic was adding to mine.
“They don’t have any visual on the bomb. My explanation is the only thing they can work with. I was asked to cut off the red wire. They weren’t sure, but we have to be sure—”
“The red wire?” Dog’s eyes widened. “That’s a fucking no. Red is a no, okay? It’s in every fucking movie ever, never press the red button, never pull the red lever, never walk through the red fucking door—”
Devil groaned loudly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Dog, but this shit show isn’t a movie,” he said from the driver’s seat, doing his best to navigate the vehicle, not so skillfully.
“Just go talk to the kids, okay? I got this,” I said.
“You’ve been saying that shit since you bent to get a good look at that thing; we barely have fifteen fucking minutes left, Zahra—”
“I’m fucking working on it! Get off my damn ear and let me think, for fuck’s sake!”
“Guys, I know adren … ne is high right now, but there are children on that b … if you could tone down the c … ing a little?” Milk said, her voice hiked with nerves, static cutting her off like it had been doing for a while now.
“The last thing these kids need to worry about is bad language, Milk. Any word from the bomb squad?”
“Angelo’s people are com … ting with them via our line, but it wi … ke time because there are no visuals,” Upper said.
“Time is the one thing we don’t have, Upper. It’s running; it’s running fast.” I swallowed. “How’s coverage?”
“It’s all over the news; reporters are eating up the … bl … dy … litary … story, and cars are being cleared off … oad.”
I knew it was a matter of time before the media covered the story; that was why Angelo’s people covered the news and supplied concrete lies to them. It would have been messier if we were the unknown gunmen.
But that didn’t erase the fact that we had another problem.
Signal. We were losing the signal for the comm.
It started when we first set off; Devil and Dog had lost all communication, including me, at first, but then they turned off theirs, and mine picked up after a few seconds; now, mine was cutting out, and my nerves were crawling underneath my skin.
“How about Chika’s tracker? Still on?”
“Yes, he hasn’t caught wind y … He’s still in the city. But pre … ng to flee.”
“Good. That’s good.”
At least I have something under control.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my shoulder, the pounding in my chest making breathing a little difficult.
“Listen, Upper, Milk; we might lose communication—”
“We … saying … zah … ca … us?”
“Shit … Upper?”
“… oody fuck … can’t … it’s…”
The static was hurting my ears.
“What’s happening, Z?” Devil’s voice was etched with worry.
“We’re losing connection,” I said, but my voice was small. “Guys, can you hear me?”
Cutting voices and loud static was all I heard.
“Hello? Upper? Still there?”
Static.
“Guys…” I blew out a breath when nothing came.
My eyes burned from the stress of the situation as I swallowed. “I think we lost them.”
“Just fucking great,” Dog cursed, hitting his cuffed hand on a pole in the bus.
I removed the comm from my ear. “I can do it if I just … study it a bit more…”
Dog scoffed out an annoyed laugh. “We don’t have time for you to study the bomb, Zahra. We’re fucked!”
The cries from the children doubled in number.
“Dog, come on, there are kids here! Stop fucking around and talk to them. Don’t make shit worse!” Devil yelled at him.
“Shit is already worse! Shit is fucked; shit is all over the roof of this fucking bus, calling the angel of death to come for a fucking wine and bread feast with our skin and blood as fucking starters. I ain’t about to be delusional right now, and the fucking kids shouldn’t have to be either.”
“Z,” Devil called to me. “Listen to me, if you know there’s a way—a chance that we can come out of this alive, please just focus and get to work, okay? Ignore that fuckhead.”
“Oh, I’m the fuckhead now, huh?”
“Dog, you do your part, and let her do hers, don’t be the fucking prick, all right? Look at how scared those kids are. Do something about it.”
“The fuck am I supposed to do?” Dog exclaimed.
“Figure it out!”
“Don’t fucking yell at me! I’m already panicking, and my shit is not together right now; you feel me? Your yelling and commanding and the fucking beeping sound from that thing are doing a shit ton of bad to my fucking nerves,” Dog let out tightly.
I looked over at him to see that he was pacing up and down the small length of the bus, and had, at some point, made a small bandage with a torn piece of his shirt to tie off the bullet graze wound on his arm.
“Dog,” I called, and hysterical brown eyes looked down at me. “Just—breathe, please.”
“The fucking irony. In a few minutes, I won’t be breathing anymore!”
“Dog, fucking breathe!”
“Okay!” he snapped as he stopped pacing and took a deep breath before letting it out.
After doing it several times, he sighed.
“Fuck … okay … okay … I’m calm. Zahra, you’re calm; Devil, you’re calm; children, you’re all calm; everybody is calm.
We’re not on the road; we’re in some fucked-up escape room, and to escape it, we have to be calm. ”
“That’s right,” Devil said. “Engage the kids, and Zahra, please concentrate.”
I didn’t know if what I did was a nod or a shake of my head, but I knew my hand had gone back to the beeping device littered with wires, light red, dark red, blue, white, yellow, all wired into the control panel that displayed the beeping red light.
I closed my eyes, trying to level my breathing and manage the noise around me.
The first thing I saw was a gloved hand over mine. A warm chest pressed against my back, and hot breath fanned my ear as he spoke.
“The first thing you do is never to panic; if you panic, you’re fucked—”
I snapped my eyes open and shook my head.
“Okay,” I breathed out. “I was trained for this a couple of years back. All wires here have a purpose.”
“As they should,” Dog said.
“There’s one for stopping the time, another for speeding it up, another for turning off the device and stopping the bomb, another for slowing the clock, another for setting it off—”
“That’s the one we don’t want.”
“Dog.” Devil’s voice spelled warning.
“Fine, Jesus, I’ll talk to the children.”
I saw him walking to the front of the bus from the corner of my eye. I looked at the passenger seats, all eyes on Dog like they were waiting for him to try to talk them out of what he had already fucked up by saying they were all fucked.
“Okay, kids, I’m gonna be real with you. You’ve seen my worst side in the span of minutes, my panic? Yeah, I figure there’s no need to stand here and shit-talk you with rainbows and bumblebees of promises.”
“That’s starting off great,” Devil muttered.
Surprisingly, some cries died down; but they still looked scared.
Dog cleared his throat, looking around. “There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to face death.”
“Jesus fuck,” I cursed, looking back at the device as Dog continued, his footsteps going down the school bus aisle.
“We might all die today, but we must perceive it as normal. Death comes eventually…” He sighed dramatically.
“Who knows, you with the snotty red nose, you might be crossing the road to get ice cream from that weird old guy who never stops smiling at people, and, bam!
You get hit by a car and die. The old man, he was still smiling!
“And you, with the stupid hat, your mom could be slicing vegetables one day, and wham! The knife flies out of her hand and straight into your left eye; she says it’s a mistake, but plot twist, it’s not; she fucking hates your stupid hat, and she missed.”
“My mom’s dead,” a little boy’s tiny, scratchy voice said from the back.