Chapter 8 (part 2)

Evan watched in horror, expecting much more gruesome results than what he saw. With the axes planted squarely in each side of his neck, the victim convulsed twice and then went limp. If there was time to scream, the axe blades apparently blocked the man’s windpipe because he died without making a sound.

Even when the skinny man with white hair pulled the axes away, there really wasn’t a lot of blood.

It was watching the man drop to the ground and seeing his head roll away that almost caused Evan to scream. Seeing the act of murder in such a brutal and odd fashion had not quite pushed him to terror, but seeing a human head rolling away from its body across a barren desert and illuminated by headlights had certainly done the trick.

Evan threw a hand to his mouth and it covered the little bit of scream that his voice mustered up before he forced his throat to close.

He watched as the same act was carried out on the other three men. The method was never the same, though. The second man caught the same motions—the blades crisscrossed in the air to fall down and eventually meet one another in the center of his neck—and then fell in almost perfect alignment with the first victim. The third and fourth men were treated to simple swinging motions, as if their heads were no more than the trunks of trees. With graceful but forceful swings, the skinny man lopped their heads off cleanly, as neatly as he might cut firewood.

The fourth man bled quite a bit, and it was the sight of all of the blood that finally made Evan step back from the windshield. He watched as the skinny man walked past the recently murdered as if they weren’t even there. He approached the man with the ZZ Top beard that had come back to speak to Evan before his nap. The bearded man nodded and then turned to speak to a few of the others.

Their circle now began to break up. Some of them went to the dead, pulling gloves onto their hands as they approached the bodies. The rest of them—at least a dozen—turned towards the bus.

Inside the bus, Evan froze. He knew it wasn’t possible, but he felt like all of their eyes were on him. From where they stood, they probably couldn’t even see him. But they knew that he was there.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Evan breathed to himself.

His occupation had sent him headfirst into several situations where his survival instincts were his only way out, but never anything like this. Still, it was those experiences that helped his knees to unlock, to start to let his mind see beyond the panic and fear and into his logical, fight-or-flight rationale.

He had to run. He had no idea where they were in the desert, but it was his only way out. He started for the door but saw that he had apparently frozen longer than he thought because the horde was already at the front of the bus. If he ran for the door, they’d easily cut him off.

He was trapped.

With no other options, Evan remembered the far back row of the bus, the row where the man with the axes had sat. Evan recalled the small enclosed cubicle of a restroom that had been back there and his legs instantly began to carry him in that direction. As far as ideas went, it sucked. But he’d be damned if he’d just stand there in the aisle and let them take him without a fight.
Evan heard the first footfall on the bus steps. As if that single footfall were the sounding shot to start a race, Evan quickened his pace and bolted for the back of the bus.

He never took his eyes off of the plastic-looking door of the restroom as he made his way to the back. Without bothering to look back even once, he grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door swung open so easily that Evan almost fell backwards into the row of seats that the skinny white haired man had occupied. But his senses were at full alert and he kept his balance with ease. As he entered the restroom, he finally glanced back before shutting the door.

There were five people marching slowly down the aisle towards him. One of them had a tire iron in his grip and while the rest were unarmed, they still looked sinister, all of their faces gaunt and zombie-like.

Evan practically fell into the restroom. He slammed the door behind him and set the lock. With his back resting against the wall, he finally allowed himself to scream.