After the Golden Age

It wasn’t just a fussy baby. This was a baby who was generally unhappy with the state of the universe and was expressing this with its entire lung capacity. Celia sympathized. The bus’s overactive heater had brought the temperature up to about eighty—with everyone on board bundled in winter clothes. It was noisy and smelly, filled with strangers, all of them trapped. The poor mother was doing her best to hush the thing, but her soothing did no good.

Celia was about to give the woman cab fare so she could get off and take her screaming infant home in peace, when the man in the seat in front of her hollered at the driver, “Hey! I wanted that stop! Didn’t you see the freakin’ light?”

They had zoomed right past the last stop.

The bus was speeding up. Riders started murmuring, shifting restlessly.

Leaning on the seat back in front of her, Celia stood to look.

“Hey, didn’t you hear me?” the guy complained again.

The woman sitting behind the driver tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me—”

The driver fired a gun into the ceiling of the bus. People screamed, then a sudden hush fell. Except for the baby.

The bus swerved and ran a red light, leaving behind squealing tires and the smashing metal of a collision as cars scattered in its wake.

Celia fell back into her seat and braced, white-knuckled. Runaway bus—the driver was taking the whole bus hostage. He wasn’t shooting anyone with the handgun, which was a small blessing. He held it flat to the steering wheel while he glared ahead, oblivious to the chaos he caused.

Then a guy in the second row decided to be a hero. He lunged forward, grabbed the driver’s shirt, and pulled, clawing for some kind of purchase on his head or neck, probably hoping to pull him out of the seat. The driver was belted in, lodged firmly in place. He brought the gun to bear without even looking and pulled the trigger. Drops of blood spattered on the windshield, and the guy fell.

Everyone in the front half of the bus pressed back, surging away from the driver as a mass. The bus went faster.

Behind Celia, a screaming woman popped out the emergency window by her seat. The shield of plastic fell away and the woman leaned out. Wind whipped into the bus.

“No!” Celia threw herself over the back of her own seat and grabbed the woman’s coat, hauling her away from the opening. The woman, in her thirties and ghostly pale, struggled, slapping at Celia, muttering hysterically, “Got to get out, got to get out.” Celia held her wrists, crossed her arms, and pinned her to the seat. “Not that way. You’ll smear yourself on the pavement.”

The woman snapped back to lucidity and stared wide-eyed at Celia. “We’re going to die!”

All the driver had to do was ram the bus into a brick wall and she’d be right. At this speed, a split second was all it would take to shatter everyone on board. Who knew what the hell the driver was thinking, but whatever it was, he’d decided to take a bus full of people with him.

Celia had been face-to-face with the Destructor, not a nose-length apart, and until now she’d never believed that she was going to die. Mom and Dad wouldn’t get here in time— Oh, the police alert had probably gone out, they were probably on their way, and she could picture how Captain Olympus might stand in the street and build a cushion of force that would slow the bus to a stop without harming any of them. But there wasn’t time. They were four blocks away from the docks and the river. They’d be there in a minute, and the driver wasn’t slowing down or turning.

Her hands fell away from the woman, who stayed in her place, trembling. Celia’s heart was pounding in her ears, and the world had turned to molasses, thick and slow-moving. Around her, people held each other, gripped the seats with clawed hands, and wept. The baby was still screeching.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t her time.

“Give me your scarf,” she said to the woman. Under her coat, over her black sweater, she wore a floral silk scarf. She blinked, like she hadn’t understood, so Celia yanked it away from her. Balling it in one hand, she dived to the aisle floor and crawled, shoving random legs out of the way, pinching when she had to. On hands and knees, out of view of the bus’s rearview mirror, she raced.

The first few rows had cleared. Still on the floor, Celia squeezed into the seat behind the driver. Wrapping one end of the scarf in each hand, she twisted it until it became a thin cord. She focused on the driver’s head. She only had one chance.

She stood and brought her garrote over the driver’s head, across his neck. Dropping, she pulled back.

The man gurgled, choked. He dropped the gun to claw at the cord that was strangling him. The bus swerved wildly, leaning sickeningly, dangerously overbalanced, but Celia held on. Time, this was all about time. Seconds, how many more seconds … Then, finally, he stopped struggling.