The Bus Passengers

Part 2: The Waiting Room

I sat on that bus parked in front of the creepy brick building for a total of either 5 hours or 27 minutes depending on whose time you believe- mine or my phone’s. No one had answered my texts or Facebook post and I had to stop trying to make calls or reach out to anyone when I noticed my phone battery had dropped below 50 percent. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of creeps and no way to contact anyone so I shut all my apps down and turned my screen off. Instead I took to looking out the window, imagining scenarios where somehow this situation didn’t end in my murder, and counted the minutes as they went by. 

After about a half hour of sitting I think I was beginning to lose a little bit of sanity. I took a deep breath and pushed myself up off the seat, shuffling my way back to the old man in the flannel. He watched me approach with wide, fearful eyes. 

“So look,” I started, my voice loud and jarring after the silence. He shook his head from side to side, his lips pushed forward, silently shushing me. I ignored him. “Obviously something weird is going on. Do you have-” 

I interrupted myself as I noticed the passengers immediately around us had turned to stare, their faces once again contorted with rage. My heart raced but I remained calm and met their eyes. After a moment, the terrifying expressions dropped from their faces and they all turned back to face the front. All except the young man in the suit across the aisle from my seat, the one I had spoken to earlier. Slowly, he brought his index finger to his slack, expressionless mouth and held it against his lips for a moment before letting his hand drop and turning forward in his seat. I watched him for a moment longer before I squatted next to the old man. I kept my voice low this time. 

“Do you know what the hell is going on? Where are we?”

He shook his head and glanced at the people closest to us before he leaned in close and whispered. 

“Not now. Go back to your seat and stay quiet. They’ll let us off soon.”

I had a million questions and started to ask how he could possibly know that but as I was about to open my mouth a middle aged woman in the very back row stood up and began screaming. 

The sound itself was unnerving but her slack face and the vacant, unaffected look in her eyes were worse. The second she began every passenger whipped their head around and glared at her furiously. The young man in the suit across the aisle stood up and addressed her in the same low monotone. 

“Quiet now, Marjorie.”

There was no way she could have heard him over her own wailing. As she continued on the expressions of rage deepened on the faces around me until they all stood up as one and began to slowly shuffling out of their seats towards the screaming woman. 

They circled her as best as they could in the tight quarters of the bus and spilled into the surrounding seats. The ones too far away to reach her formed a single file line down the aisle which stretched past my seat and halfway to the front of the bus. I slid down, trying to make myself as small as possible but they didn’t seem to notice me. I was low enough that I could only see the person immediately next to me, the teenager whose shoulder I had grabbed earlier on my way to speak to the driver. I watched as she slowly raised her right fist into the air above the head of the man in front of her. She held it suspended in the air for a moment before she brought it down on the man’s skull with a sickening THWAP. At the same moment a fist appeared behind her and cracked her over the head. She didn’t react. What the hell?

Tentatively I pushed myself up on the seat just enough to see over the back and watched in horror as again and again every single passenger but myself and the old man raised their fist and brought it down on another passenger’s head, perfectly in unison. Those who could reach the screaming woman were hitting her. Nearly a dozen fists bounced off her head in unison over and over. Those who couldn’t reach her just punched the next closest person.