Elements of the Apocalypse By D.L. Snell, Ryan C. Thomas, John Sunseri, & R. Thomas Riley.
Remains.
D.L. Snell.
One.
Five minutes before the bus driver burned up, crashing the bus down a steep hill, one hour before half the population of Grants Pass, Oregon, went up in smoke, and two hours before only a few people remained on Earth, Dylan Bradley escaped into his book, Robinson Crusoe, ignoring the passengers around him.
The bus traveled up Sexton Mountain on I-5, through the madrones and other evergreens, south toward Grants Pass. Dylan sat in the back near the stink of the toilet. A guy in a fedora and a camel-colored blazer sat next to him. He looked like a pencil stub. He didn't talk, just stared straight ahead, hands folded on a scuffed briefcase in his lap.
Dylan was glad. He hated talking on the bus. It disturbed the thrum of the engine and wheels, that little pocket of static where he liked to hide, that place where he read best. Other voices made him feel schizophrenic.
Unfortunately, the guy behind Dylan had a loud, whiny voice with a valley-girl inflection, projected, in need of an audience. He wore a black leather jacket with silver studs, a Ramones t-shirt, and black pants cut off at the shin. His hair was spiked and his face sported several piercings.
Dylan hated clothing statements. He wore a green flannel, a gray shirt, and baggy green cargos. He wore his brown hair short and had no piercings or tattoos.
With the occasional punch to the back of Dylan's seat, the punk talked to a girl across the aisle; he bragged about braining a skinhead with his boots. Dylan tried to concentrate on Robinson Crusoe, wishing he had headphones like some of his fellow passengers, so he could turn up the white noise and read.
The bus crested Sexton Mountain, and a green sign announced Hugo and Grants Pass. Almost home.
Dylan was on spring break. He couldn't wait to see Minnie. He had no friends at college, just a drunken roommate. He needed someone to talk to, someone besides his loud, self-centered classmates. He needed out of his nook, that cubicle in his dorm where he could muffle the laughter and the voices and just study literature-"Fire and Ice," Bleak House, "Desert Places"-a little place where he could envelop himself in fuzzy silence; he maintained a similar nook inside his head.
Sometimes the silence hardened into a dead weight and he needed out, needed to breathe. Or he needed someone like Minnie to bring in fresh air. He preferred the latter.
Someone tapped his shoulder from behind. Dylan wondered if he could ignore it.
"Hey," the punk said, breathing coffee and cigarettes and something like feces. "Hey man, what's your name?"
The girl had moved into the guy's seat. She had blue eyes, black lipstick, and long black hair; she looked small in her black hoodie, though she couldn't have been much shorter than Dylan. The girl hadn't said much during the conversation about the skinhead, and Dylan appreciated it. But she had encouraged the talk, nodding in all the right places. One demerit for her.
She smiled at Dylan politely, almost shyly, such soft lips. She might have been pretty if not for the pink scar down her pale cheek.
"So what's your name?" the punk asked. He had the shadow of a unibrow above feverish, bloodshot little eyes. Hoops, studs, and barbells gleamed along his lip and brow, sharp and threatening like fishhooks.
"I'm Dylan."
"Dylan, huh? Dylan. 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door,' huh Dylan? You got a last name?"
"Bradley."
"Hmm."
Dylan started to turn back to Robinson Crusoe, but the punk stopped him.
"Aren't you going to ask my name, Dylan?"
You didn't irritate a guy like this. Dylan had seen mosh pits. He'd seen the messes that come out, cheeks shredded, pieces still hanging from the spikes on some punk's leather jacket. He hated concerts, and he hated any kind of music with vocals (he preferred symphonies, or instrumentals like Satriani), but he'd attended enough to know the ropes.
"What's your name?" Dylan asked, feeling a self-destructive urge to say it in Spanish.
The girl looked up at the punk. Her smile flattened.
"My name's Shadow," he said.
Dylan almost laughed; he had to do something with all the nervous shudders in his chest.
"And this is Friday," Shadow added, cocking a thumb at the girl. "She doesn't talk much."
Her smile filled out again. "Hi." She had a nice voice, soft, almost like a stream. She sounded a lot like Minnie.
Dylan wondered if she had made up the name. She had been glancing at him the whole ride and had probably seen his book; Robinson Crusoe's native friend was also named Friday. It couldn't be coincidence. A fellow literature major, maybe?
"Nice to meet you," Dylan said, and tried to turn again.
"What's your reason for travel, Dylan Bradley?"
Dylan wanted to lie-it was none of Shadow's business-but he had always been too truthful with strangers. He felt bad for lying. He felt obligated. He couldn't explain why. "I'm on spring break," he said. "I'm going to see a friend."
Shadow raised an eyebrow. "A girl?"
Dylan glanced at Friday; her smile had dampened. "Yeah."
"You're staying with her then?"
"I'm staying at my mom's studio."
"In Grants Pass?"
Dylan nodded. "Yeah. But she's in France. She's an artist."
For the last time, he tried to turn around, flushed and gritting his teeth. The punk knew his last name and where he would be staying. The phone book would fill in the rest; although his parents had divorced when he was little, his mom had kept his father's surname so she could share it with Dylan.
"I like you," Shadow confessed. Then he flipped open a butterfly knife and pricked Friday in the side. Her smile faltered, tensed, but only for a moment.
Dylan's bowels tightened.
Shadow leered at him. Then he kissed Friday, moving the knife between her legs, slicing the crotch of her black corduroys. She kissed back, the slurp and suction of tongues. No one seemed to notice but Dylan.
As far as he knew, the two were strangers. Shadow had boarded at the Portland station with Dylan, and Friday had gotten on before them, probably in Seattle or someplace in Washington. Maybe she was kissing him because she had to. Dylan liked to think that.
Shadow pulled away and folded the knife into his pocket. His fingers crept into the slit he'd cut in Friday's crotch. She breathed through her mouth, chest rising and falling, eyes half-lidded and staring at Dylan.
Shadow grinned at him, a mouthful of hooks, just like an anglerfish. "Always room for three."
Up front, someone screamed. Shadow looked forward, leer frozen on his face, hand petrified against Friday's crotch. Dylan craned around in his seat, flattening his book against his lap with one hand.
The driver puffed into smoke and flame-a flash, a wisp, and he was gone. The wheel turned by itself, and the bus crashed through the guardrail.
It plowed down a steep bank, through pine boughs and saplings, veering, tipping, rolling-it halted on its side. Its roof had hit a stump at the edge of a cliff.
Made of decomposing granite, the cliff dropped twenty feet to a spike pit of fallen trees. A Douglas fir braced the rear of the bus, but the stump held everything up. Slowly, it began to uproot. Dylan felt the ground move beneath them.
Two.
The guy in the camel-colored blazer squished Dylan against the window. Dylan had lost Robinson Crusoe and Mr. Blazer had lost his fedora. The man's briefcase jabbed Dylan's ribs.
The windows on the right-hand side had become the floor, and the windows on the left had become skylights. Smoke from the driver curled into the sunbeams, emitting the stink of burnt hair, uniform, and meat.
Everybody lay half buried in carry-on baggage. Someone screamed about her leg, her leg, she broke her fucking leg, and the bus groaned. Other than that it was eerily quiet. As much as he craved solitude, Dylan didn't like this type of silence.
Then the stump budged, the bus slid, and people shouted for help. Some stood, grasping the seats for balance. Others writhed on the floor with broken arms and legs.
Mr. Blazer gazed at Dylan with glassy eyes. Blood ran across his forehead and dripped into Dylan's mouth. Dylan spit it out, almost puked.
"Get off me," he said, trying to lift Mr. Blazer. He wriggled free and crawled to the top of the windows, spitting out the coppery taste, shuddering at the thought of hepatitis.
Too many voices-he felt dizzy and sick.
He glanced around, looking for Robison Crusoe. He had to find it, had to read it by the end of spring break or he'd get a bad grade. Funny how he was thinking about his grades. Couldn't screw up his 4.0.
Forget about it.
He had to get out.
Bracing himself against the roof, Dylan blundered toward the escape hatch, stepping over bodies and avoiding the hands that groped for his pant legs, the eyes that stared up at him, the mouths that pleaded.
The bus shifted and he stumbled, almost trapped by the groping arms. He reached the hatch and opened it. Chunks and pebbles of granite tumbled into the dead trees below. The height nearly made him vomit.
"He found a way out!" someone cried. Two men and a woman staggered toward the hatch. The woman's nose bled down her neck and onto shirt.
Dylan tried to duck through. Someone grabbed his arm.
"Move it!" The man threw him aside and started through the hole.
The other group reached the hatch and lined up. The woman seized Dylan. Her cheeks blistered and smoke billowed from beneath her shirt.
"Oh God, it burns, it burns!"
Dylan tried to pull away. Her blisters popped, spattering his face. Flame erupted from the craters.
"Jesus!" He jumped back as the woman turned into a concentrated fireball, brief, bright, and gone-nothing but ashes and one white leg.
More people began to smoke.
It was spreading.
Dylan wiped the fluids off his face and pushed at the men crowding the hatch. "Go, go, go!" They went through and climbed along the bank, and Dylan started to duck through after them.
Friday called for help. Her voice was distinct from the other pleas. Dylan couldn't see her through the human fireballs and smoke. Probably wasn't her anyway.
A man prodded him in the back. "Hurry!"
Dylan put one foot on the edge of the hatch, ready to pull himself through, ready for the fresh air.
This time Friday called his name: "Dylan!"
He turned away from the hatch, wiping his forehead again; the woman's fluids itched on his skin.
The stump moved, the bus scooted, his whole body shook.
"Just go!" the man behind him yelled.
He wanted to, wanted out before the bus fell, before his own skin started to bubble. He wanted to escape all the voices and the smell of charred skin. But Friday sounded too much like Minnie.
"Go!"
Dylan lifted himself to the hatch. Then he pushed away and hurried into the smog.
Three.
Reeling toward the back of the bus, Dylan tried to fan the smoke. His side hurt when he coughed. Probably a bruised rib.
People shoved past him, heading for the exit. More than half sprouted fire as they ran; he cringed, hoping it wasn't infectious, still wiping his cheek and brow.
He could turn back-the hatch wasn't that far-just get out and run. Screw Friday. He didn't owe her anything.
"Dylan," she said, very close.