Carrie Vaughn - After the Golden Age

She made a point of walking around the sewer grate by a good margin. No one was going to pull that on her again. When she made it onto the bus, she heaved a sigh of relief.

The baby started crying as soon as the bus left the curb.

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.

She climbed on top of him, using him as a seat because there wasn’t time to pull him out of the way. She was small, she fit. Steering wheel in hand, she could only try to hold it still, hoping she had the strength to steady the vehicle. She put both her feet on the brake pedal and straightened her legs.

It wasn’t going to be enough. Tires screeched, burned—the smell of rubber reeked. They had too much momentum, the whole frame of the bus was shuddering. Ahead, through the windshield, Celia saw water. The road ended at the pier. If they hit the water, their chances of escaping would shrink to nothing.

Celia turned. She grabbed one spot on the wheel with both hands and pulled, not caring which way they ended up, not seeing where she steered to, only wanting to get away from the drop into the river. The bus turned, rocked, tipped—fell.

Celia screamed a denial, echoed by two dozen other screams. The asphalt rushed toward her, the bus was spinning, sparks flying.

And it stopped.

The bus had seemed to be flying at the speed of light, and now it sat still, with no apparent slowing in between. It just stopped. Celia clung to the steering wheel, but flipped over it, her back to the windshield which displayed a lacework of cracks. She stared at the driver, whose face was purple, his eyes bulging and dead.

Police sirens, ambulance sirens, dozens, hundreds of sirens broke the air. She smelled dust, blood, gasoline. That was all she needed now, for the damn thing to explode.

People were piled against the ceiling of the bus, flung over the backs of seats. Some were struggling upright, apparently unhurt. Most were groaning, an agonizing and horrific sound. Celia couldn’t think about it. They might have been better off sinking into the river.

Emergency windows popped off, sprung from the outside, and EMTs called into the bus. Celia didn’t feel hurt. Numb, but not hurt, so she stayed quiet and let emergency crews help the others. Slowly, she unkinked herself from the dashboard. The lever for the bus door still worked. Hauling on it with both hands, she opened the door. It seemed a long way away, straight up. But she didn’t want to sit around staring at the dead driver anymore.

In stages, she found footholds on the railings in front of the seats. She shouldn’t be able to do this. She wasn’t that strong. But she badly wanted out of that bus.

As soon as her head peered out of the open bus door, like some gopher blinking in the light, a pair of firemen balancing on ladders grabbed her and hauled her away.

Tall, handsome, wonderful firemen, in manly yellow coats and impressive helmets. They set her on the street, and she clung to their arms, even while she insisted, “I’m fine, really, I just need a drink.”