Chapter 25 #2
Colin waited and waited for Devl to drop into the seat beside him, but the Dogg never reappeared.
How could someone disappear inside a bus?
“Ticket?”
Colin blinked, straightened in his seat. The man was middle-aged and slim, with just a hint of a pot belly starting. A kind face that reminded Colin of the bus conductor in an old movie Mom liked to watch during the winter holidays.
“Ticket?” the bus conductor said again.
“Yes, sir.” Colin handed him the ticket.
The bus conductor raised his eyebrows. “We don’t see many people traveling to that neighborhood.” He punched the ticket, then handed it back to Colin. “Hang on to this. You bought a ten-ride ticket, so you have nine rides remaining.”
He hadn’t realized he’d bought that many. Ten rides for twenty dollars wasn’t a bad deal.
The bus conductor moved on, punching other people’s tickets. Colin wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he had the impression the other people were regulars. That seemed so…normal…and comforting.
Now if he could somehow avoid Devl until he reached this LLAM place.
Devl charged down the bus’s aisle. For a moment, he thought he’d seen that asshole Forrester, but the image was so faint, like a reflection on a window.
Nothing. Fuck!
He turned around and headed back toward the front of the bus when he felt it move, saw it leaving the little station.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Let me off!”
A cadaverous old fart wearing some kind of uniform looked at him. “Do you have a ticket to indicate your destination?”
“No, I don’t have a ticket,” Devl snarled. “Let me the fuck off this bus!”
“This bus doesn’t stop without a ticket or a turn of the wheel.”
Instead of the side-facing seats or luggage racks that were in some buses, the conductor opened a set of wooden doors, revealing three wheels—the kind used for raffles or games of chance. Wheel of fortune, but smaller.
“Let’s see what kind of journey you’re taking,” the conductor said.
“This wheel determines the time.” He spun the first wheel, then pulled a small notebook and pencil out of his jacket pocket.
“Thirty-five years. Not bad. At your age, you should still have some years ahead of you when you get back to wherever you came from. The second wheel determines whether you’re riding solo, or have occasional company, or a full load.
” He spun the second wheel. “Occasional. Better than solo for someone young.”
Devl couldn’t make sense of any of this. “Let me off this bus.” He tried to sound menacing and dangerous. He was a Dogg, after all. But he was very much afraid that he just sounded scared.
“I will,” the conductor said. “In thirty-five years.”
“What’s the third wheel for? You didn’t spin that one.”
The conductor smiled. “We don’t spin that one until you’re close to the end of the journey. That one determines where we let you off, geographically. We have found that passengers adjust better to the journey when the end of the trip remains a surprise.”
No door closed. No curtain was drawn. But a wall of dark gray fog now stood between Devl and the front of the bus. No sign of the conductor or those wheels of chance.
Devl pushed at the fog. It gave a little. When he’d pushed his arms through up to his elbows, a voice behind him said, “It won’t do any good. You’ll work to the point of exhaustion, and once you’re through that fog, you’ll just find yourself at the back of the bus. Just a crazy-ass loop.”
Devl pulled his arms out of the fog, turned, and looked at the man sitting a few rows back. He hadn’t noticed him when he rushed up the aisle to confront the conductor.
“If you’re like most of the passengers on this particular bus, you’ll push through every so often for the first couple of years just to have something to do,” the man said.
Devl took a seat on the other side of the aisle and one row up. He didn’t know what this guy’s angle was, but he didn’t want to get too friendly with a stranger. “They have to open that…whatever…to bring in food and water, right?” He waved at the fog.
The man laughed. “You don’t need food or water anymore. You don’t need to shit or piss either. You’re a ghost, boy, even if you’re still among the living. All kinds of buses travel through places like Wyrd. You got on the wrong bus, and now you can’t get off until your journey ends.”
“The conductor said I was occasional. What does that mean?”
“You’re like me. Sometimes you’re the only one on the bus—or the only one you can see. Other times, you’ll have the company of fellow passengers. An acquaintance of mine got the full bus, so for her, it’s party, party, party. I see her occasionally, and she tells me things.”
“Really?”
Another smile. “They got bored one night and tried to eat one of the other passengers. After a while, people get a little crazy. Makes me glad I ended up with occasional company.”
“Fuck me,” Devl whispered.
“You don’t want me to do that.”
Something about the words, about the way the man said them. Devl was sure this was someone who was more dangerous than any Dogg.
Acid reached the train moments before it started to pull out of the station. Just two cars? Not even a real train.
He grabbed a rail and leaped up the stairs of the first car.
A few people there gave him a cold eye, the fuckers.
Not seeing his prey, Acid hurried through that car and went into the other, passing through some gray, cobwebby barrier.
He took a few steps forward, scanning the gray-looking people for Forrester.
Gray-looking people. Skeletons with skin.
Some were dressed in old-fashioned clothes that looked worn out.
Others wore clothes his old man might have worn as a teenager—and they weren’t that far along in the process of becoming the mummy’s stand-in.
And one of the fresher ones…Hadn’t that guy been featured on a cold case show recently?
He’d gone on a killing spree, slaughtering three families in one night, and then disappeared.
This is where a killer disappeared to?
“Your ticket.”
Acid turned around. The conductor looked like that Vincent Price guy who used to star in horror movies. “I didn’t buy a ticket. I was just looking for a friend, but he’s not here.”
“We know.” The conductor held out a rectangle of white cardboard with the number ninety-nine written on it. “This is your ticket. You must have done—or were planning to do—very wicked things to earn a ride this long.”
“I have to get off the train.”
“And you will—in ninety-nine years.” The conductor looked at the other passengers. “It’s quiet during the day. They don’t reanimate until the sun goes down.”
Reanimate? What the…?
The conductor vanished. The piece of white cardboard lay on the floor at Acid’s feet. He picked it up and shoved it in his pocket.
Then he found an empty seat next to an old woman who looked ready to fall apart—and wondered what happened to the still-living when the sun went down.
Butch watched Devl, Acid, and that Forrester prick stumble through the gate and disappear. What the fuck?
“That’s…” one of the older guys said. Dare’s father said these two guys worked with him sometimes and were part of the plan because they knew how to handle themselves.
Seeing one of them backing away from the gate, Butch didn’t think they had balls enough to be more than a distraction at a food stand.
“We’re going after them because we’re Dare’s Doggs and no-fucking-body messes with the Doggs and walks away.”
“Yeah,” Stick said. “We’re the Doggs!” He howled.
Butch looked at the two older guys. They weren’t old, but they weren’t in school anymore. Still, it looked like he was the alpha here. “Are you going to be Doggs or pussies?”
Heat in their eyes. Hands moving toward pockets in a way that indicated they might be carrying weapons. Switchblades most likely because he’d heard shit happened to anyone who tried to cross the river with a weapon more dangerous than some kind of sticker.
Butch howled. “We are the Doggs!”
Stick howled.
They rushed through the moon gate, with the other two guys right on their heels.
Yeah, Butch thought. Prove you have balls.
He tripped, tumbled, his legs suddenly trapped by his jeans.
He kicked to free his feet from his sneakers, then got to his hands and knees.
Except he didn’t. He wobbled upright on four legs and stared at another scruffy beast that was staring back at him.
Two more beasts were rolling and scrabbling, using teeth and claws to free themselves from the clothing they had worn moments ago.
We are the Doggs!
Now they were.
One of the older guys, a hind leg still stuck in the leg of his jeans, stumbled back through the gate, then whimpered when nothing happened. He ran through again in the original direction. Nothing.
There had to be some way to change back to human.
Butch clawed and pulled until he’d freed himself from all his clothes, then helped Stick. The two of them ripped and tore the clothing from the third guy, who was just sitting there staring at his front paws.
Definitely not worthy of being a Dogg.
The guy who had gone through the gate a couple of times without changing a fucking thing finally got rid of his clothes and was pushing at the gate to close it. Pushing and pushing.
That was a thought. Maybe the magic didn’t work until the gate was closed again.
Nudging Stick, Butch went to the other half of the gate and put his shoulder against the bars to push and push and push.
Fucking gate wouldn’t move. Not one inch. They would have to find someone who lived in this fucking place and knew how to change them back.
Butch headed toward the path they’d taken to reach this clearing. Stick caught up to him, but they had to circle back and nip the other two before one stopped whimpering and the other stopped staring at his paws.