Chapter 6 (part 2)

He stretched his back out, flexed his legs a bit and then started walking again. He walked and he thought of the role that irony played in the life of every human being on the planet. He thought of how he had decided less than a month ago that he was going to wash his hands of his ill-chosen career path. He wanted to get away from all of it, wanted to maybe go to school for a few years and seek something out in communications. But he had also decided that he’d wait until he earned another twenty grand or so, just to have a nice little cushion when he decided to leave it all behind.

Shinoe would have been the first of two jobs that would have eventually gotten him the money but from the looks of it, this might be the last job he ever took…if he got out of it alive. The twenty grand be damned; after a day like this one, who needed any more signs? A day like this one made him wonder if his mother had been right all along. According to her, by making a living off of drugs and the assholes that dealt and shipped them, he was going down a very dangerous and uncertain path.

Well, maybe not a path. Maybe a lonely desert road in the middle of the night.
Evan’s watch read 12:32 when he saw the next set of headlights. He didn’t bother getting excited because the more he thought about Sam’s story, the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed. He was out here walking and being spied on just so they could fuck with him. It was that simple. And when he got back to Shinoe, they’d probably kill him.

Only, he didn’t think that would happen either. Thinking back on it, he thought of how Sam and his buddy had abducted him. They’d done it in the middle of a parking lot where any snooping passerby had the chance of seeing them. Also, now that Evan had a clear head to think with and didn’t have a gun to the back of his head (and the effect the five drinks had on him had split the instant he had felt that gun at his head), he also realized that they had not patted him down for a weapon or a cell phone. They were apparently careless criminals, leading Evan to believe that they really had no idea what they were doing.

But his only weapon was in his car back in Shinoe and his cell phone was lying in tiny shattered bits back at the motel room. As he watched the approaching headlights get closer, he cursed himself silently at the memory of losing his temper and throwing the phone.

Evan strained his eyes, staring ahead at the headlights. They were approaching at an odd angle, as if from the right rather than straight ahead. If Evan’s memory served correct, there was only one turn between the place he currently stood and Shinoe. And that road was at least ten miles away. There was no way that he was seeing headlights from such a distance, no matter how clean, clear and unobstructed his view was.

Whatever this vehicle was, it was relatively close to him and it appeared to be coming through the desert.

Evan slowed his walk a bit. He was tempted to stop but then he recalled the warning shot that had been fired when he had sat down earlier. So he walked at a moderately slow pace and watched the lights get closer at an angle.

A few moments later, he could make out the sounds of an engine. By studying the lights, Evan started to second-guess his dismissal of Sam’s story. From what he could tell, those lights could very well belong to a bus. They were sitting up too high to be a car or a normal sized truck. And the engine sounded a bit too hushed to be any kind of off-road vehicle. If it was one of those jacked up trucks that some people liked to cruise around deserts and ravines in, the engine would have been louder than the one currently approaching him.

Evan watched as the lights turned slightly towards him and straightened. They were now headed directly for him, apparently out of the desert and now on the main road. If this was Sam’s bus, Evan wondered what would have happened if it had have kept on through the desert and not come out onto the road until it was at some point miles behind Evan’s back. If there truly was a drug-trafficking bus and Evan missed it, what would Sam and his friend do to him when he returned to Shinoe?

He didn’t let that thought bother him for long. The headlights were now no more than one hundred yards away and as each second passed, Evan became more certain that it was a bus.
This realization brought on a whole new batch of thoughts. Firstly, who was to say that the driver would let him on? Secondly, if he did manage to get on, Evan felt confident that the drug dealers would not allow him to ride with them all the way to the drop point. The third and perhaps worst scenario Evan imagined was that when the driver saw someone trying to flag the bus down, they’d panic and haul ass without so much as stopping, thinking that someone was on to them and wanting to get away as quickly as possible.

The lights were closing in and Evan could now see that it was indeed a bus. It was a charter bus and looked like a Greyhound or one of the Greyhound rip offs. Without thinking about what he was doing, Evan ran into the middle of the road. He jumped up and down, waving his arms and shouting.

“Hey!” Evan screamed. “Hey! Help me! I need some help!”

As he screamed this, another scenario played itself out in his mind. What if he were to get on and clue the traffickers in on Sam and the people he worked for? If Evan let them know that another chain of drug runners was on to their scam, they’d surely protect him from Sam and his higher-ups, wouldn’t they?

Sam continued to jump and flail his arms about. He was nervous and slightly amused that the story was looking to be true. But more than anything, he was uneasy about the uncertainty of what was going to happen next. He could imagine the driver slamming on the gas and running him down without a second thought.

But as soon as that thought came, the bus began to slow down. The lights were terribly bright and Evan narrowed his eyes against their glare. He watched through the glare as the bus crept to a stop, the squeaking of its brakes a welcome sound against the dead silence of the desert night.

There was a slight clicking sound followed by a faint whoosh as the driver opened the door.
“Everything okay down there?” the driver yelled from inside the bus.

“I uh, I need some help,” Evan said, cautiously walking around the front of the bus and closer to the opened door.

“Well climb aboard,” the driver said rather cheerfully as Evan stepped into sight.

Confused, Evan slowly walked towards the door. He looked up at the smiling driver with an uncertain expression. Then, knowing that he really didn’t have much of a choice, he stepped onto the bus.