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I wrote this for creative writing class a bit earlier in the semester. Haha, a moment in the life of the People's Bus.
Darren had never really intended for his transit ambitions to develop such an anarchistic cult following, but he’d also never really intended to hit that duck with a rock when he hurled it in the pond as a boy.
“Who wanted off at Pete’s Bowling Nebula?” Darren barked over his shoulder, a distant neon sign catching his focus that was otherwise fixated on a combination of the midnight road and the rolling collection of squad cars keeping pace to his left.
“Me! Us!” piped an effeminate young man, breaking his lips free of the androgynous girl beside him whose face he had been eating with reckless abandon.
“We’ve got some heat on us, folks,” shouted Darren as he maneuvered the wheeled behemoth nearer the sidewalk, “Can’t be doing any traditional stop-‘n’-goes after what happened tonight!” A particularly brazen squad car pulled closer to the driver’s side and was followed by its comrades, a cluster of cruisers attempting to box Darren in. Police sirens continued their banshee shrieking, a blur of noise made sonically complete by the deafening wind howling through the open windows along the bus’s length and underpinned by the dull roaring of the rear engine.
The neon sign was exploding in prominence from the horizon dot it had been moments before. Darren lost his foot from the gas, reaffirmed his grip of the wheel with one hand and pulled at a rusty lever on the floor beside his seat. A mechanical clunk later and the back exit’s folding doors gave in to the highway wind, opening with a violent crash. A turbulent gale invaded the cabin and threw the young couple’s conformist hairstyles into their eyes, the two then springing to their feet and frantically throwing their backpacks over matching bony shoulders as the bus rumbled and shook.
“This is as slow as it’s going to get!” cautioned Darren, turning to look the couple in the eyes as his left hand tightened into a death grip and the other gestured into the air. The young girl waved at him and said something he made out confusingly as “sweet peas” over the din, to which Darren shot an almost reflexive thumbs up in return. She clutched the waist of her companion and the two leapt onto the blur of grass screaming by below them. A pair of passengers hanging onto nearby handrails rushed to fill the open seat, lurching into place as the bus hit a pothole.
Darren snapped his attention back through the windshield while his right arm wrestled with the rusted lever. His foot found the gas and the doors began their closing struggle against the pummeling gusts when from the bowling alley parking lot were heard approaching shouts. He turned his head to see a pair dressed in black dashing between the parked cars, flailing their arms and sprinting towards the bus.
The bus. The People’s Bus. Darren had decided the rules years before becoming its driver. Firstly, there would be no schedule, no times to keep nor routine stops. By the fickle hand of chance, the bus would find you or you would find the bus. Secondly, everyone would ride for free, unconditionally. There would be no fooling with coins or passes upon boarding – if there was a seat free or space available to stand, you were on. Thirdly, and most fundamental to the philosophies of the People’s Bus, it would be the passengers who dictated the travel plan, completely and utterly. Each rider would request a destination in turn and the bus would endeavor towards it until either A) the rider fled the bus before the stop was reached, or B) the rider had a destination change in heart, where in both cases control would be forfeited to the next in line. “How delightfully communist,” his friends had mused, “and I suppose you’ll hold some tyrannical veto power?”
A never-before-seen pair of teenagers stood within the back exit, nearly doubled over and gasping for air. Darren put his weight into the lever and the doors folded closed with a squeal and a slam. “Welcome aboard!” he turned to say, delivering a sarcastic salute. “Standing room only, I’m afraid.”
The police escort was getting antsy, a few cars weaving in and out anxiously in some feeble attempt to intimidate the hulking transit stallion. Darren was aware of them enough to know they wouldn’t try anything quite yet.
With the bowling alley behind them, his mind fixed itself on the next destination and an intersection of note was now upon them. He pulled as hard a right as the bus was capable of.
“Fuck, we’re going the wrong way!” the taller of the winded youths shuffled forward through the standing crowd, kneeling at Darren’s side and wheezing. “I need to get to Al’s Pharmacy!”
“Rule three, young man!” spat Darren, nodding his head sharply at the most recent note skewered to the dash. “We’re going to the corner of 5th and Appleback, as per Mira’s request.”
The teen rose to his feet and scoffed, “I’ll give you five bucks if you forget that bitch and take me to Al’s!”
“You’re on the wrong bus, boy,” Darren laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t have time to discuss with you the psychological ramifications of being so tied down to a sch-”
His teeth snapped his tongue silent as metal shrieked and windows blew inward. The bus jolted, its weight shifting onto the right wheels and throwing passengers into disarray, but still rocketing onward. The ballsiest of the cruisers had rammed the driver’s side, and now carried the shredded blue paintjob to prove it.
“You motherfuckers! You reckless bastards!” Darren reached for the piece of self-defense rebar he’d stashed in a deep dashboard cubbyhole and hurriedly cleaned out the jagged remains of his driver’s side window with a few bouncing bashes. Acting on rage and instinct, he hurled the metal rod at the accordion’d cruiser through the window frame. It flipped off the windshield with a sharp crack, having laid a spider web ring into the passenger’s side. The car veered off to the outer edge of the police cluster.
Riders were reaching into their backpacks for objects of lobbing potential. A few fished out textbooks for sacrifice, others produced the stones hauled along in hopes for such an uprising, a girl of about twenty-five seemed to have found a grenade in her purse. A lad wearing a fast food uniform sitting nearby put his hand on hers and told her to hang on to it for a bit longer yet.
Darren spat blood out the broken window. The wind was pounding into him and making it difficult to see, but up ahead he caught the glimmer of red and blue lights he knew to be the promise of a roadblock.
“I didn’t think the buggers had the foresight,” he chuckled. A roadblock. Even more police cruisers to make life difficult complete with a tire-lacerating strip of danger stretched across the highway. The cars to his left churned and swapped positions with each other, a burbling mass of authority that grew like an amoeba.
There may be no going back now, he thought. I’ve let it become corrupted like everything else, haven’t I? To roll with it? Things had been getting progressively worse since the maiden voyage months ago. A line had been crossed and tonight the people’s bus was squarely the opponent of the law. “If only I hadn’t picked up that god damn meter maid,” Darren muttered to himself.
“Change of plans, folks. All stops are temporarily on hold.”
“You undemocratic son of a bitch! You can’t do that!” a man in suit and tie shouted from the back.
“Extenuating circumstances, how can you people argue that?” Darren shot in response, turning in his seat to regard his passengers, a crowd equally composed of misfits and seemingly respectable people you wouldn’t expect to see in a police revolt, most with blunt objects in hand regardless of social category. “I see you’ve got your shit ready, I’m taking us left!”
He spun the wheel and the bus slammed into the hive.
Struggling against the force of the turn, the girl with the purse stood up in her seat along with everyone else carrying their weapons of choice. She cracked the window just enough to squeeze her pin-pulled grenade through at the top and watched it bounce under a set of police wheels. A second later was a pop.
Darren had never really intended to hit that duck with a rock, but what a shot! Got him good.
The People’s Bus (1443 words)
Darren had never really intended for his transit ambitions to develop such an anarchistic cult following, but he’d also never really intended to hit that duck with a rock when he hurled it in the pond as a boy.
“Who wanted off at Pete’s Bowling Nebula?” Darren barked over his shoulder, a distant neon sign catching his focus that was otherwise fixated on a combination of the midnight road and the rolling collection of squad cars keeping pace to his left.
“Me! Us!” piped an effeminate young man, breaking his lips free of the androgynous girl beside him whose face he had been eating with reckless abandon.
“We’ve got some heat on us, folks,” shouted Darren as he maneuvered the wheeled behemoth nearer the sidewalk, “Can’t be doing any traditional stop-‘n’-goes after what happened tonight!” A particularly brazen squad car pulled closer to the driver’s side and was followed by its comrades, a cluster of cruisers attempting to box Darren in. Police sirens continued their banshee shrieking, a blur of noise made sonically complete by the deafening wind howling through the open windows along the bus’s length and underpinned by the dull roaring of the rear engine.
The neon sign was exploding in prominence from the horizon dot it had been moments before. Darren lost his foot from the gas, reaffirmed his grip of the wheel with one hand and pulled at a rusty lever on the floor beside his seat. A mechanical clunk later and the back exit’s folding doors gave in to the highway wind, opening with a violent crash. A turbulent gale invaded the cabin and threw the young couple’s conformist hairstyles into their eyes, the two then springing to their feet and frantically throwing their backpacks over matching bony shoulders as the bus rumbled and shook.
“This is as slow as it’s going to get!” cautioned Darren, turning to look the couple in the eyes as his left hand tightened into a death grip and the other gestured into the air. The young girl waved at him and said something he made out confusingly as “sweet peas” over the din, to which Darren shot an almost reflexive thumbs up in return. She clutched the waist of her companion and the two leapt onto the blur of grass screaming by below them. A pair of passengers hanging onto nearby handrails rushed to fill the open seat, lurching into place as the bus hit a pothole.
Darren snapped his attention back through the windshield while his right arm wrestled with the rusted lever. His foot found the gas and the doors began their closing struggle against the pummeling gusts when from the bowling alley parking lot were heard approaching shouts. He turned his head to see a pair dressed in black dashing between the parked cars, flailing their arms and sprinting towards the bus.
The bus. The People’s Bus. Darren had decided the rules years before becoming its driver. Firstly, there would be no schedule, no times to keep nor routine stops. By the fickle hand of chance, the bus would find you or you would find the bus. Secondly, everyone would ride for free, unconditionally. There would be no fooling with coins or passes upon boarding – if there was a seat free or space available to stand, you were on. Thirdly, and most fundamental to the philosophies of the People’s Bus, it would be the passengers who dictated the travel plan, completely and utterly. Each rider would request a destination in turn and the bus would endeavor towards it until either A) the rider fled the bus before the stop was reached, or B) the rider had a destination change in heart, where in both cases control would be forfeited to the next in line. “How delightfully communist,” his friends had mused, “and I suppose you’ll hold some tyrannical veto power?”
A never-before-seen pair of teenagers stood within the back exit, nearly doubled over and gasping for air. Darren put his weight into the lever and the doors folded closed with a squeal and a slam. “Welcome aboard!” he turned to say, delivering a sarcastic salute. “Standing room only, I’m afraid.”
The police escort was getting antsy, a few cars weaving in and out anxiously in some feeble attempt to intimidate the hulking transit stallion. Darren was aware of them enough to know they wouldn’t try anything quite yet.
With the bowling alley behind them, his mind fixed itself on the next destination and an intersection of note was now upon them. He pulled as hard a right as the bus was capable of.
“Fuck, we’re going the wrong way!” the taller of the winded youths shuffled forward through the standing crowd, kneeling at Darren’s side and wheezing. “I need to get to Al’s Pharmacy!”
“Rule three, young man!” spat Darren, nodding his head sharply at the most recent note skewered to the dash. “We’re going to the corner of 5th and Appleback, as per Mira’s request.”
The teen rose to his feet and scoffed, “I’ll give you five bucks if you forget that bitch and take me to Al’s!”
“You’re on the wrong bus, boy,” Darren laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t have time to discuss with you the psychological ramifications of being so tied down to a sch-”
His teeth snapped his tongue silent as metal shrieked and windows blew inward. The bus jolted, its weight shifting onto the right wheels and throwing passengers into disarray, but still rocketing onward. The ballsiest of the cruisers had rammed the driver’s side, and now carried the shredded blue paintjob to prove it.
“You motherfuckers! You reckless bastards!” Darren reached for the piece of self-defense rebar he’d stashed in a deep dashboard cubbyhole and hurriedly cleaned out the jagged remains of his driver’s side window with a few bouncing bashes. Acting on rage and instinct, he hurled the metal rod at the accordion’d cruiser through the window frame. It flipped off the windshield with a sharp crack, having laid a spider web ring into the passenger’s side. The car veered off to the outer edge of the police cluster.
Riders were reaching into their backpacks for objects of lobbing potential. A few fished out textbooks for sacrifice, others produced the stones hauled along in hopes for such an uprising, a girl of about twenty-five seemed to have found a grenade in her purse. A lad wearing a fast food uniform sitting nearby put his hand on hers and told her to hang on to it for a bit longer yet.
Darren spat blood out the broken window. The wind was pounding into him and making it difficult to see, but up ahead he caught the glimmer of red and blue lights he knew to be the promise of a roadblock.
“I didn’t think the buggers had the foresight,” he chuckled. A roadblock. Even more police cruisers to make life difficult complete with a tire-lacerating strip of danger stretched across the highway. The cars to his left churned and swapped positions with each other, a burbling mass of authority that grew like an amoeba.
There may be no going back now, he thought. I’ve let it become corrupted like everything else, haven’t I? To roll with it? Things had been getting progressively worse since the maiden voyage months ago. A line had been crossed and tonight the people’s bus was squarely the opponent of the law. “If only I hadn’t picked up that god damn meter maid,” Darren muttered to himself.
“Change of plans, folks. All stops are temporarily on hold.”
“You undemocratic son of a bitch! You can’t do that!” a man in suit and tie shouted from the back.
“Extenuating circumstances, how can you people argue that?” Darren shot in response, turning in his seat to regard his passengers, a crowd equally composed of misfits and seemingly respectable people you wouldn’t expect to see in a police revolt, most with blunt objects in hand regardless of social category. “I see you’ve got your shit ready, I’m taking us left!”
He spun the wheel and the bus slammed into the hive.
Struggling against the force of the turn, the girl with the purse stood up in her seat along with everyone else carrying their weapons of choice. She cracked the window just enough to squeeze her pin-pulled grenade through at the top and watched it bounce under a set of police wheels. A second later was a pop.
Darren had never really intended to hit that duck with a rock, but what a shot! Got him good.
