Last Bus 2

Chapter 2: No Way Home

I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to convince myself that it was fine, that maybe the bus was just rerouted because of construction, or maybe I'd just been too distracted to notice getting on the wrong one.

But when I finally worked up the courage to stand and walk toward the front, ready to ask the driver for an explanation, I saw that the driver’s seat was empty.

Completely, horribly empty.

Yet the steering wheel twitched on its own, the bus still steering itself along a path I could no longer see.

I backed away slowly, my hands brushing against the cracked leather of the seats as I moved. The passengers, the ones I'd seen when I first boarded, still hadn't moved. Their faces were frozen in profile, their skin pale and almost translucent under the flickering lights. As I passed one—a woman in a thin summer dress despite the freezing air—her head suddenly turned to follow me, her mouth stretching open in a slow, silent scream.

My heart slammed against my ribs hard enough to hurt.

I stumbled back toward the rear of the bus, grabbing at the handles, trying doors that wouldn’t open, windows that wouldn't budge. The fog outside thickened, pressing against the glass like something alive, obscuring everything until I could barely see the faint glow of the bus’s own taillights.

And then I heard it—the whispering.

At first, it sounded like the sighing of the brakes, the moan of the engine struggling against a steep hill. But as I pressed myself against the emergency door, trying uselessly to force it open, I heard distinct words threading through the noise.

"Ride forever," they said.

"No stops. No way back."

A soft, hollow laugh drifted from somewhere near the front.

I turned around and saw a new figure stepping onto the bus through a door that hadn’t opened a moment ago. He was tall, his coat soaked as if he'd walked through oceans of rain, his face obscured by shadow. He found a seat across from me without ever looking up.

The bus groaned forward, and through the mist, a new station loomed ahead, its platform cracked and crumbling, its lights flickering in slow, dying pulses.

I realized, with a deep, bone-deep certainty, that I would never reach home again.

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