Tim was breathing hard, shaking. The fear had come back, a fear he’d thought he wasdone with. The bus ground to a stop fifty feet behind him, rocked on its suspension. For asecond everything stopped moving.Then the doors at the front burst open and screaming people spilled out on the asphalt,grabbing at each other, shrieking, the men and the women with wide eyes, the kidslooking terrified. They flowed out like blood from a wound, moving cautiously awayfrom the bus as if they didn’t want to get too far away but just far enough. The driver came out last, a fat man in a blue shirt, and he waved at Tim with both arms, summoninghim. Tim loped over, unsure what had happened, unsure what was going to be asked of him. He tried to talk but his voice was rusty after so many weeks alone, his throat too dryfrom the road. “Everybody okay?” he managed to creak out.“Inside. In the back—one of them—” the driver stuttered.“He just had a cold, it was the sniffles,” a woman in a rumpled business suit insisted.“Just a cold!”Tim sensed what he was being asked to do, even if no one could seem to articulate it. Hescratched at his stubble-coated chin and then climbed the steps into the bus. At first hewas just happy to be inside, in the shade. The bus was air conditioned against the summer heat and it was some kind of mercy to be cool again. His eyes, long adjusted to the glareof sunlight on a pale road, could make out very little of the bus’s interior.From far ahead of him, down the serried aisle, he heard a thump. Tim squinted until hecould make out the rows of seats upholstered in green and red and orange. He could see piles of hand luggage tumbled out of overhead compartments, a tidal spill of foodwrappers and newspapers lining the floor. At the far end of the bus stood a narrow plasticdoor that was rattling, someone pounding on it from behind.“Crap,” Tim choked out. He dug his arm out of one strap of his pack. Started pulling atzippers. He’d never done this before. If the driver had given him specific instructions hewould have refused, turned away and kept walking. Let the passengers deal with it as bestthey could. No, he thought. He wouldn’t have done that. Even this late in the game he was stillincapable of turning his back on people in need. But why him? What made them think hewas the man for this job?The narrow door crumpled on one side, pushed hard by someone who didn’t have the brainpower to work the simple lock. With one last heave it broke free and swung outhard, then bounced back. A pale hand grabbed its edge, forced it open again.The man who staggered out of the bus lavatory wore an oxford cloth shirt with half its buttons undone. The cuffs of the sleeves hung loose as if he’d been trying to escape fromhis clothes when the change finally came. His head was almost bereft of hair, just a few
Leave a Comment
I finished this book last night and I just have to say that this is very well written that kept you in its grips until the very last word. I recomend this to everyone