Fine Tooth with a Concrete Skiver
The Sovereign Series
A short by Justin Treece
She churned the steering wheel with such ferocity as if to squeeze out the decades of sweat that had been passed into the wheel cover. Grinding teeth, she stared ahead at the open road from a silent bus. One might assume the driver was letting off her passengers at a stop. But there was no stop; only an empty parking lot behind a few forgotten warehouses. More strangely, there was not a single passenger occupying the long, yellow bus.
The sweating driver wore a filthy, ragged business suit that had once been dark blue. Her black stockings were ripped stylishly. Her greasy black hair, tied in a ponytail, reached to the middle of her spine. Her blue eyes were wide and poisoned with disgust. Instead of using the door crank, she kicked it open with a heel and exited the vehicle.
Marching down an alley, she passed by the rear of the bus and stepped over a series of chains that poured out of the back door and had been dragging behind. There must have been over a dozen strands of silver chain, most of which had been blackened by the friction against the concrete.
More yellow buses cycled in and out of a station. It being mid-afternoon, the school buses were most likely being dispatched to pick up and deliver students who were soon to be released from their studies. With poise, she stared onto the busy station, searching for an opportunity.
Getting through a lackluster security system was a breeze. By scanning a stolen badge at an unmanned security window, the dark haired woman pretended to be a school bus driver and made her way behind a wheel. Alone again on a bus, she drove out of the station and to a nearby city school. Shortly after the last bell rang, her bus left the school roaring with the sounds of unsupervised adolescence. Kids bounced in their chairs, tossed loose items at one another, calling each other every foul name in the book, smacking each other with their backpacks. Girls sat with girls. Boys sat with boys. And like every other day, no one paid much attention to the driver.
Most of the kids were excited about going somewhere new. Tiny faces pressed up against the sliding windows. One of the boys sat alone and wore an arm brace with the name, Peirce, written on it. He opened up his window and stuck his entire head out, amazed by the view once the cityscape was replaced by fertile frontier which rapidly became more and more desolate.
The bus eventually took an unexpected turn off the paved road and onto a bumpy side strip between the trees. The kids were forced to hold on to their seats to keep from flying up and smacking into the roof. The bus came to an abrupt halt in an open acre of lush green grass. From the windows, the kids noticed a bunch of junk spread out randomly. Old cars, discarded steel, rusty pipes, and a gathering of different colored buckets.
“Everyone out! Pick a color as you leave!” the driver demanded.
The children hesitantly grabbed their packs and exited the bus. The driver held out small cuts of colored paper for each child to choose from as they exited. Each color held a unique hue. Outside, the children lined up in a single files line without being told to do so. Their eyes popped out of their heads as if they were filled with excitement and suffering from shock simultaneously.
“Time for a little fun, shall we? Find the bucket that matches your color!” the driver spoke with an enticing, perky tone.
The kids looked around at the assortment of buckets that were spread out in no particular organization.
“What are you waiting for?”
The kids raced one another to their buckets. Each one found the same thing inside: a length of brand new, shiny chain. At the end of the chain at the bottom of the buckets were two prisoner handcuffs.
With a rusty bang, the kids jerked their necks to see the back door of the school bus ripping off of its hinges and landing on the ground below. In the back doorway, the driver stood with her hands on her hips.
“I want to go home!” one of the terrified children said as tears built up in her innocent eyes.
“Not long now, sweetie,” the driver comforted her with a smile. “Let us prepare for our little game, shall we?”
Not one of the perturbed students reacted. Each one remained frozen.
“Let’s start with you.”
The driver pointed to Peirce, with the injured arm. The alarmed young boy, no more than ten years of age, took at step back.
“Yeah, let the cripple go first,” a freckled redhead teased and laughed.
Peirce stared hard at the redhead who taunted him, showing him, with his eyes, his frustration.
“Are you ready?” the driver asked him.
Piece nodded, yes.
“Good,” the teacher spoke, hissing through her teeth.
An hour later, the children had dried out the vocal chords nested down in their throats. Tears had poured and mixed in with the panic induced sweat. No bedtime monster, nightmare, or scary tale could conjure the fear infused into their tiny little hearts. They cried for their mothers, their fathers, anyone they loved. All the coherent, intelligible language their young minds had developed was discarded and replaced by fearful, mumbling rants. All joined in the plea for help, except for Pierce who kept mute.
Each boy and girl was bound with chain and cuffs at the wrists. In assorted lengths, the children were chained to the school bus through the open back exit way. The commanding lady inspected each and every child, giving a close eye to the cuffs to ensure they were locked around the children’s limbs. Once her inspection was done, she stood tall before all the kids and smiled.
“Take a minute and look at each other,” she demanded with pride in her tone.
But no one looked. They stared down, awaiting the unexpected.
“Look!”
Scared for their lives, they lifted their heads and glanced at one another.
“How much do you care for one another?”
No one knew how to answer.
“For your sake, I hope love is the furthest thing on your minds. Only one of you can make it out of this alive. If you want to be that one, you need to ask yourself one question,” the driver paced around as she preached.
The children raised their chins, ready to accept whatever insight the driver was willing to offer.
“Is your life more important than the rest?”
Once the exhaust blew black smoke and the engine ignited, the cries became shouts, and the shouts became pleas.
“Here we go,” the driver whispered to herself as she jammed the bus into gear.
Gently, the school bus inched forward. Each chain pulled taut, yanking the children along with the path of the bus, forcing them to step over mounds, tree branches, and other obstacles the bus rolled over. For a quick two minutes, every child kept up with the bus with ease. There were signs of hope in their faces. Some even began to enjoy themselves. The redhead yelped to the sky as if he was front seat of a roller coaster.
When the bus switched to a higher gear, the smiles disappeared just as quickly as they came.
A heavy set kid was yanked hard enough to lose his footing. He hit the ground and was dragged, flopping over and over on his side. Dirt and dead grass scooped into his mouth, muffling his painful cries. He was able to turn himself onto his knees, then to back on his feet. But the spill scraped his legs and arms up substantially, killing his will to press on.
At random, others tripped on rocks or other obstructions. Some would help the fallen to their feet. The bus churned up dust, making it hard for the kids to even breath, much less keep up with a moving vehicle that slowly yet steadily increased its speed.
A tiny little girl just could not keep up. As the bus maneuvered around a tree stump, the little girl could not avoid it. Both feet were kicked out from underneath her. Her school girl dress was torn to pieces underneath her. She kicked and tumbled from side to side, trying to get to her feet, but the bus had gained too much speed. The others could not reach her, for her chain was the longest of them all. There was nothing to be done but watch her being dragged behind the progressing bus. Once her dress was shredded, her skin met the ground as it passed underneath her.
Peirce had no problem running. Keeping up with the bus was not an issue. In fact, his chain had slack that rubbed against the dirt road. The driver had tightened the cuff around his brace, leaving him with an awkward and painful circumstance in his right arm. With his other hand, Peirce tried to somehow loosen the brace, which would give him enough room to possibly slip his hand out of the cuff. But trying to free his arm and keep up with the bus and avoid all the obstacles was far too trying. Then they reached the paved road where their path became more straight forward.
The driver didn’t have to slow down to turn onto the empty highway, but she did. Possibly out of deranged courtesy, or maybe to prolong the excitement. Regardless, the road gave the children a straight and narrow path. Speed was the only thing left to look forward to.
Back in first gear, the kids were able to slightly relax and get a head start. Some tried to pull themselves into the backdoor of the bus. But as the bus gained speed, their running and jumping approach proved to be unwise. Peirce continued to try and pull off the cuff around his brace, but had no luck. From behind, Peirce heard something scraping against the concrete road. He looked back to see the little girl unconscious and slowly being ripped apart by the rocky surface of the road.
A couple of other children fell. Once the bus has reached a certain speed, there was no chance to make it back to their feet. It was simply the beginning to a slow and painful end for them. A large boy and an even heftier girl also hit the ground hard. The redhead saw this and leaped on the back of the fat boy, using him like a water sport tube, bouncing off the ground. The heavy kid/sled let out a high pitched squeal as he was towed by his hands down the pebbly road.
Peirce swallowed his shame and copied the redhead by jumping on the obese girl’s back. His weight didn’t seem to matter for the skin on her chest seemed to bleed and peel off at the same rate. Luckily, her globs of fat would give Pierce enough time to figure out his next move for survival. The redhead and his ride slid into a tall, volleyball girl, knocking her stems out from underneath. She was one of the few that could actually keep up, but instead she landed on her chin, shattering her jaw and breaking each of her upper front teeth. It was a blessing for her to be knocked unconscious so quickly. Another athlete, a short, brown skinned boy, didn’t give up his sprint. Determination shined through his sweat glazed face. He could have easily been a running back, track star, even won the Iron Man. But instead, his bright future came to a standstill when bus passed over a freshly dead hound carcass. The boy didn’t have a chance of seeing the deceased animal before his shin collided with it, breaking his stride. He instantly broke his right arm and destroyed half of his ribs when he hit the concrete sliding. The others watched as his slender figure was tossed around like a baby’s doll. Limbs were sliced through by the road and slung out to the roadside along with the rest of the trash. His two little arms stayed along, following the bus.
Leaning off the dead fat girl, Peirce beat his arm brace against the ground, grunting. After several strokes, Peirce’s brace burst into pieces against the old, forgotten highway. He hadn’t seen the skin on his own arm in weeks. Pulling his hand through the cuff wasn’t as easy as predicted. It would take lubrication to squeeze off the cuff.
Riding along side of him was the body of a little Hispanic girl. Peirce could tell she was Hispanic from what pieces were left of her: a scalp of long black hair and fragments of brown skin. Her little body had just puttered out and took a dive into the road. The gritty teeth of the road had chewed up her soul and spit out her carcass on the road. Lying on the fat girl, the boy shoved his cuffed hand into an open wound in the Hispanic girl’s torso. When he pulled his hand out, it was covered in blood. Still lying on his flesh sled, Peirce used his feet to push off the bloody cuff. One hand free meant he was half way to safety.
Looking down, Peirce could see that his ride was deteriorating quickly. Even those layers of lard were bound to skin off sooner or later. He had to act fast. Peirce needed his other hand free to perhaps climb the lengths of chain and into the bus. It was worth a shot. A lock kept the cuff secured on his arm by a simple screw that could be turned with a flathead screwdriver. Finding a screw driver wasn’t likely, so finding a substitute was his only alternative.
The little track star’s arms were chewed away to mostly bone, but both still hung on the chains, repeatedly bouncing off the pavement. Running on a whim, Peirce grabbed one of the arms. With ease, the hand pulled through the cuff, free of the chain. He jammed one of the blood coated fingers into the cuff lock. But it was no use. He needed something thinner and narrower.
The person underneath him looked more like a slab of meat and crushed bone than a school girl. He wouldn’t have but a few seconds before his ride was spent. After looking at the severed limb, the kid jammed the bone into the pavement, shaping the end of the bone. Gently, he turned the arm to grind the bone to a point. Once he found a shape he liked, he shoved the bone in to his cuff lock and turned.
Peirce felt warm freedom and grinned at the possibility that he might make it out of this alive. And then his mode of transport failed. Both arm sockets that belong to the girl he kneeled on top of ripped apart, letting her dead carcass lie in peace.
Tumbling through the air, Peirce let both arms fly outward as he awaited the touch of the pavement before it would crush the life out of him. He did a complete back flip and felt chain between his hand, which he gripped with all his might, slinging himself away from certain death.
Peirce landed on another soon-to-be-road-kill school kid, who still had enough organs left to express his pain verbally. The chain that Peirce clinched, with all his might, dragged along the schoolboy. And thankfully for Peirce, this screaming kid saved his life, at least for a few more seconds.
Wasting no more time, Peirce leapt from kid to kid, heading for the back door of the school bus. From his perspective, he could see a path to the bus. Unfortunately it was at the expense of children who were either dead or close to it. Regardless, he jumped on four different classmates to get within 5 feet of the bus.
At the back of the bus, some of the chain was loose and dragging against the ground. However, there were a couple of lengths that were pulled taut by the speed of the bus and the weight that still dragged behind. Peirce took his only shot at reaching the door and jumped on a length of the taut chain, wrapping all arms and legs around the steel links. His weight swung the chain and his shoes kicked against the passing road. He pulled up with an injured arm just enough to clear the road. He could almost reach the ledge of the doorway.
Tugging at the hair of peers and classmates was common in elementary. But never had Peirce had every strain of hair nearly ripped out of his scalp until a hand yanked him down the chain, practically pulling him to the road, saved only by his injured arm that clutched the bumper of the school bus. Peirce kept his knees bent to avoid losing a foot as he hung from the bumper. When he had an opportunity to look behind him at whatever it was gripping his head, the panic was immediately outweighed by his anger. The redhead that had teased him to no end was trying to take away Peirce’s life just to save his own.
“You heard her jerk. It can only be one of us!” the redhead screamed as his pulled himself up a length of chain.
Pierce shook lose the redhead’s grip on this head and got two hands on the bumper. The bully kicked his free leg at Peirce. Several sneakers, powered by a porky leg, hit Peirce from behind. The redhead inched to the back door by climbing up the chain. He shifted his weight to swing toward Peirce to ram him off to his death. But Peirce held on, looking away, fiddling with something with one hand as he held on with the other.
A kick to his ribs nearly sent Peirce to heaven, but the redhead did not get his foot back. Instead, his foot was tied to another length of chain that Peirce looped around this leg at almost inhuman speed. The redhead screamed liked one of the dead school girls as he hung on to the chain while his right leg was stuck, leaving him with no way to free himself. He looked up to see Peirce’s smiling face standing over him at the back door of the school bus, twirling around a loose length of chain, taunting the redhead.
“Get me free you idiot!” the redhead demanded.
Peirce’s smile came to life even more so, as if to say ‘my pleasure’. With one swing of the chain, Peirce broke all four of the redhead’s fingers that clinched for his dear life. His upper body swung and hit the turf with a thud. He bounced off his head twice before the setting his upside down bat-like hang. Concrete ate all the flesh, bone, and brain from the top of his scalp to his lower jaw in not much more than a couple seconds. Peirce watched every second of his death and peered out at the rest of the dead carcasses being dragged behind.
The brakes of the bus squealed, sending Peirce to his knees, yet safely inside the bus. The driver brought the bus to a halt. She left her seat and made a dash to Peirce and gently assisted him to his feet. Looking deeply into his eyes, she began to cry. Dumbfounded, Peirce cried with her.
“My son, is it really you?”
The End…
For my oldest cousin and his bold humor.
