Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Irregular Route Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

IRREGULAR ROUTE

OWEN SOUND – EARLY

There was a spiked ball lodged somewhere deep in Roddy Barsten’s gut. Before bed, he’d thought it was a little gas, but by 1:00 AM, that gas had become something more. He kicked out from beneath his sheets, farted twice, hoping for a change in the pressure. It didn’t come. Roddy lived alone, so there was zero risk of offending or awakening anyone. He inhaled deeply then and let out the kind of belch that would impress an ‘eighties sitcom uncle. When that didn’t work either, he got up and walked the nine paces to the basement and flipped the switch. It was small, but had everything he’d need: sink, toilet, bathtub, cupboard, and a closet. From the cupboard beneath the sink, he retrieved the plastic basket that held all his medicines. He rattled free two pink off-brand Tums.

Long day ahead, he needed more rest. He hit the light and returned to his bedroom. Once down, he belted three more good farts, but that damned spiked ball remained in there.

He rolled from bed again, this time only two hours earlier than normal. The spiked ball reached tendrils from the physical to the mental. There was a message, something he should be getting. It was impossible to stave off the feeling swimming up his bloodstream and into the pulses of his brain.

“Fine. You win,” he said to the dimness right before dawn. His bedroom was all shadows and shapes, but nothing ominous, unlike what was going on inside his stomach and inside his head.

Roddy forced himself to speed up, telling himself he was imagining it. The pain. It was so damned early and yet it was as if something wanted him right on time. Something he dared not accommodate.

“Easy, don’t go crazy,” he said to his reflection as he combed the wavy lines of his long beard.

The beard was a mainstay, it’s how most knew him. In Decembers, he took three weeks of vacation time and went south to play Old Saint Nick to lines of screaming babies and snotty-nosed youngsters.

Months away from Christmas yet.

It was a summer Wednesday and he had the usual run from Owen Sound south to Guelph and then back that afternoon, arriving in Owen Sound between 9:00 and 10:00 PM.

The route had twelve stops between Owen Sound and Guelph. Little to see and nothing he had not seen before. South on Highway 6, rumbling through towns, dead or nearly dead, a few busy, all were boring. None had much to pique interest. Not after so many years of driving.

But something about today felt different. So damned different.

That spike called out: Move! You’re late. That clock’s a liar.

At 3:40 AM, he left home, an hour earlier than scheduled, stopping for a cup of Tim Hortons’ tea, and rolled into the back lot at the bus station.

“Maybe it’s life,” he said to his cup, thinking that driving a bus wasn’t exactly brain surgery or global expedition. Hell, it wasn’t even as exciting as long-haul trucking. A mid-life crisis deal perhaps. “Beats the piss out of office work or labor,” he said, studying his reflection again, wondering if he shouldn’t go home and sit on the can for a bit, see if things got any better down below.

But no.

Roddy pushed through the weight seemingly holding him back and crossed the gravel lot, thinking, You can’t take a bus early, the passengers won’t be ready. You go on time and not a second sooner.

He stepped through the backdoor of the station after tapping his code into the lock’s keypad. The place was mostly vacant. Linda sat at her desk yawning. Roddy waved and she waved back. He noticed that she had stopped wearing a wedding band. He thought that perhaps she might make for a good next girlfriend to leave him behind someday.

Could be your last chance.

He stepped down a hall into an office, picked up a clipboard, and the key to his bus. He started back the way he came.

“You’re only missing one. I saw them outside and counted. Crazy, eh?” Linda said.

“What?”

“All but one passenger is ready to go, and you just got here and,” she peeked at the clock, “you’re early anyway. Crazy, eh?”

He nodded. But it was not crazy, not at all. He suspected he wasn’t the only one feeling that strange something, those spikey rumblings.

It was the same reason people skipped flights en masse only to find out later the flights had crashed. Though it wasn’t quite the same, because skipping this one would do no good, it couldn’t be sidestepped. Roddy felt this at his very core.

Outside, Roddy circled the bus for a cursory glance, noticing nothing unusual, but on his second time around saw four softened tires. Almost as if they’d changed, fighting him. The spiked ball swirled like a happy puppy chasing its tail.

“Shit sakes,” he said.

There was an air compressor shed just off the main garage. Kneeling at the driver’s wheel with the gauge nozzle plugged against the valve stem, Roddy checked his watch. If we get out of here in twenty minutes, we’ll get out of here twenty minutes early. The idea made him smile and the ball growled as if challenged.

After inflating the suddenly soft tires, he continued the pre-roll routine. The bus had its safety checks and the mechanics had declared it sound only a month earlier, so it was the driver’s job to notice the obvious. And to keep it clean. At the back of the bus was a toilet, and from the door, he smelled it…though he hadn’t before.

“Shit sakes.”

At the end of every day, an after-school kid, recently a boy named Fish, had the chore of scrubbing the can and evacuating the sewage contents. Sun-baked piss and shit trapped in a steel chamber had an unmistakable reek.

The can was dirty. Fish must’ve been shirking.

Maybe don’t blame the kid.

Roddy plodded back up front and got behind the wheel. He started the bus and rolled it across the yard to the pump station. Hose connected, the contents evacuated as he stepped inside to check on the room itself.

Smears of shit greased the seat. The floor was sticky with piss. His hand went to his stomach, though not queasy, it was more like an intense case of butterflies. Getting pretty close to on time, any closer and it will catch you. This voice didn’t sound like himself, not today’s self anyway, more like a wise future version.

Roddy hurried out of the bus to the hose, killed the vacuum, and closed the connections. The gravel crunched under his feet, taking on a voice and taunting, Roddy, on schedule’s just fine, and you know it!

He had never been so nervous or eccentric in his fifty-nine years on the planet. It was just a whim and he was…move it! He punched his code into the keypad and ran inside to the janitorial office.

“Roddy!” Linda called out. She’d jogged back to catch him before he rushed away again. He had cleaning supplies and blue latex gloves on his hands. “Fish forget to do your bus?”

He stopped, did not turn to face her, afraid his face would give away some level of craziness, even just a tenth of what he felt would send her off. There was always a conversation on her lips, someone else’s trouble. Gossip. Everyone would be calling him crazy by the end of the week…if he was around long enough to hear it. He glanced at his watch again. At best, five minutes early. Something told him that might be enough.

“Guess so.”

“Hmm, anyway, I had a call. One passenger’s taking the bus on Friday instead,” Linda said. “I’ll get you the list for the pickups.”

Roddy mused that if that passenger thought it possible to run from destiny, to run from that spiked fucking ball, they were in for a world of surprise. The only chance was outrunning the horns of fate.

“Bring out the clipboard while I’m working, would ya?” he asked.

“Sure, you in a hurry?”

He snorted humorlessly.

Back at it and bent over the bus toilet, Roddy dropped the paper towel and the gloves down into the bowl and pulled the lever. They swished away and as he stood, he heard Linda step onto the bus. It was dark and a halo of light rode her back like an aura. A voice, all-new for the strange morning, piped up, now or never.

“Here you go.” Linda held out a sheet of blue paper with white lines and grey columns, names, times, and towns listed.

“Thanks.” Roddy took the paper and she turned to step away. “I hope I’m not out of place here, but, uh, I noticed the ring and everything, and well, I wondered if you want to go for a bite sometime?”

Linda stopped and spun. Her jaw dropped and her cheeks flushed. “Oh god, oh, I’m sorry. I lost my ring, not my hubby. Oh geez.” Linda was not a saint and to Roddy’s count had enjoyed nine different affairs in the fourteen years she’d been at the station—drivers, salesmen, once just a guy waiting for his ride north. “Plus, you’re not really my type.”

The spiked ball danced and Roddy glanced at his watch. “Oh shit, okay. I’ve got to go. Now.” He pushed forward and tried to usher her away.

“Don’t get like that, Roddy. Don’t get weird.”

“It was weird before I said anything. I need to move, see ya on Friday.”

Once Linda’s foot hit gravel, the key turned and the shifter found a gear. At the front of the building, just below an overhanging shelter, sixteen fare-paying passengers eagerly awaited the bus and its driver. Roddy jerked to a halt next to them and swung open the door. He leapt out, loaded the luggage in the under-carrier, and leapt back in. There were virtually no greetings passed between the passengers. Most looked tired. A few cast smiles and Roddy had an idea of why.

Short trips.

One boy wore a mindless, medicated grin, his eyes told of limited intelligence. His travelling partner was not so cheery.

“Let’s get moving then,” he said. Not a soul argued, a couple of the happy faces remarked on the early departure like it was a bonus round on a scratch ticket.

Roddy Barsten’s Owen Sound to Guelph route got on the road four-minutes earlier than the scheduled boarding time, and it sure felt good to be away.

 

CHATSWORTH – STILL EARLY

Roddy didn’t check his clipboard for first-stop departures. Nobody ever rode the ten minutes from the station to Chatsworth that early in the morning.

Two people stood in the 10 Past 6 convenience store parking lot. Both looked a bit sick, but also something else: fear mixed with urgency perhaps. If Fate demanded they ride, that was what they’d do.

The bus parked under the store’s sign—a haywire clock face with a minute hand that jump beyond the borders of time. Roddy looked at that screwy minute hand and, though he’d seen it countless times before, it appeared malevolent, sneering, mocking his day.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

The awaiting passengers were both women and neither had luggage beyond their massive faux-leather purses. The door swung open and the lead of the two stepped forward.

“Did you check your horoscope?” she asked, her eyes were red and her deep brown complexion had paled at her cheeks.

“What?” Roddy asked.

As a driver, he answered all manner of questions through that door, but never that one.

“No, I bet you wish you did! I bet you do!”

The woman’s excitement stirred a rumble from within the paused steel tube. People on edge but compelled to continue the trip.

“Fuck,” Roddy said again, a little louder this time.

The first woman led the next to the last open seat. Content faces sat in the first half of the bus. Ones who maybe understood they were missing something, if only barely.

Roddy glanced at his watch. If he rolled out that second, he was now better than fifteen minutes early—since there was no wait in Chatsworth—and that was almost too early. At every stop, he might need to wait.

No, you won’t, they’re already at the stops. Move it.

He cast a glance down at his clipboard and saw the tickets from Chatsworth were but two, meaning they’d boarded and things were a go. “Hey, I need to see your tickets!” he called back.

“You think we’d get on if we didn’t have to?” the lead woman called up. The other woman waved her ticket over her head.

“Right,” he mumbled and pulled the swing handle.

The bus slid smoothly into first gear and rolled to the lip of the empty parking lot. The asphalt pad was skinny and short, just barely long and wide enough to pull through and back onto the highway. Highway 6 continued south to the right and Highway 10 branched east at a kitty-corner. There was a stop sign and a merge lane for those going from 10 West to 6 North. There was also a crosswalk for the local foot traffic of the 6,500 residents of Chatsworth.

A woman in a blue business suit stood at the crosswalk. She shot a sidelong glance at the bus and then pulled a brass stopwatch from her pocket to check the time. She pocketed the watch while straightening out and craning her neck to look at the bus head on. She winked at Roddy and began a slow, confident stroll across the busy highway.

“What the fuck?” Roddy said.

Someone from a few rows back shouted, “Is she blind!”

Southbound, a Chapman’s Ice Cream truck puttered along at just below the speed limit. That still didn’t give him enough time. The driver saw the woman at the last possible second and wrenched his steering wheel. The truck screeched with a metallic brake on rotor cry, followed immediately by the airbrake yowl. The truck thumped and the woman was tossed sideways.

She rolled and skidded, but then simply rose and looked back at Roddy once again.

The truck had jack-knifed, blocking all traffic.

People surrounded the woman in a short-lived bout of chaos, but when they dispersed to gawk at the truck, the woman was gone.

The minutes sped by in what seemed double time. Fifteen minutes before boarding meant twenty-to-twenty-five minutes ahead of schedule down the highway but waiting for an ice cream truck to unhitch and then hitch on from a better angle, maybe even wait for an out-of-town tow to straighten him, was likely to eat every moment of early they’d accumulated.

Roddy groaned, gaze holding the numerous eyes watching him via the big mirror straight above him. Even the grinning faces had soured. The forecast suddenly seemed flexible. Fate was never perfectly predictable. Sometimes storm debris flew across counties to land right on your head while you watched funnel clouds through binoculars. 

The bus was eerily quiet.

“Hey, where’d that chick in the suit go?” The figure who’d asked was a biggish sort, dressed like a handyman. He sat in the third row of seats.

“Chick, chick!”

Roddy scanned the reflection in the mirror and stopped on the bouncing head of the cloudy-eyed boy and the old woman next to him who whispered into his ear. He stopped bouncing, stopped making a racket.

Nine minutes passed while they watched, then ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen. There were cement barriers around the lot. But they were short.

Short being a relative term.

Roddy knew the clearance beneath the bus would be close, or null, and he thought if he had a truck, he could tour right over the barriers and back onto the highway. Bounce right along southbound.

“Driver, you got to do something!” a young sounding woman cried out, her voice squeaky and high.

Roddy clicked his tongue as he attempted to match the voice with a face in his mirror and couldn’t.

You know she’s right.

“Fuck it.”

Roddy started the engine. The bus rolled straight back until the rear bumper crammed against a camper trailer with a faded for sale sign in the window. He then popped the shifter into first and floored the pedal. The bus hit 11 KPH/7 MPH on the speedometer by the time it jumped ten inches, screeching the belly pan of the bus over the cement barrier.

A cheer rang out from the back half. The strange little boy was clapping and shouting, “Chick! Chick!”

People outside turned to watch: cops, pedestrians, travelers stuck behind the jack-knifed truck. But they were moving again and making up time.

 

WILLIAMSFORD – RUNNING CLOSE

Barely more than a sunbaked splotch stretching across both sides of the highway, Williamsford was four minutes from Chatsworth, but still demanded a stop. Again, nobody departed.

Roddy sighed and glanced at his paperwork. Six stood in wait beneath the little blue sign, all older women. All wore the village equivalent of dolled-up: checkered shirts, grey or khaki slacks, leather sandals, and wide-brimmed hats with leather flower accents fashioned into cosmetic belts.

The first who got on looked strained, her plentiful wrinkles accented deeper by her expression. The next three didn’t look happy. The last two of the group were complacent by comparison. 

“What a shame,” the second to last said.

“I sure hope it’s not for all of them,” the last said.

Roddy looked at her ticket an extra second: Guelph. All the old women headed to the end.

“What do you mean by that?” asked a man seated mid-way.

“You know, you all know. Look at you. It reminds me of what my mother said it was like when all the men hustled off for basic training for World War Two.”

“So why the hell are you so chipper?” a young woman cried out from the back, it was the squeaker again.

Roddy missed placing the face with a voice.

“I had breast cancer, oh twenty-, uh, I guess, twenty-five years ago now. Had it licked, but those nodes are like coals waiting for a blow. It’s in my lungs these days. Somehow, that makes it different from lung cancer. Don’t understand it, don’t care much either. I haven’t even told anyone, not until now. I woke up feeling sick until I looked in the mirror and said goodbye to tomorrow.”

“You’re crazy!” a man shouted from near the middle.

“Am not.”

The old women had clustered in the first available bunching of empty seats.

Roddy checked his clipboard again and there were to be seven boarding in Williamsford. He looked at the post office that pulled double duty as a general store and a bakery. He’d heard the pie was fantastic.

Go give it a try, you’re ahead, go. That ball was talking too much. Roddy rubbed his forehead. Eyes wandering up the highway, he glanced over to the former brewery, former pot grow-op, current hippy restaurant and bookstore. He saw a small boy in a shimmery blue Nike tracksuit. The boy pulled a brass pocket watch from his jacket and shook his head.

“Oh you bastard,” Roddy whispered and put the bus into gear before swinging the door closed as he hit the asphalt of the highway.

“Wait! Wait!”

In his mirror, a husky man ran with a hockey bag slung over his shoulder.

“Leave him, go!” someone shouted from the back of the bus.

“Then what happens to him?” Roddy whispered, and put the shifter into neutral and pulled his break. “To all of us?” Out like a shot, he shuffled down the stairs and opened the undercarriage to stow the luggage.

“You’re early, Jesus!” the man was angry.

Don’t you feel it? You must feel it! “Yeah, and I need to keep it that way. Where have you been?”

“You’re early!”

Roddy shoved the heavy bag into the designated compartment and took the man’s ticket. There was something in his face, hidden recognition maybe. Could be one of those true Atheists—no God, no bigfoot, no luck, no destiny, no Fate. A genie could pour from a rubbed lamp and offer him a lifetime of wishes and he’d ignore it until it floated away.

“Get in,” Roddy said.

“You can’t talk to me like that. I’ll call Greyhound!”

“Do it from the bus or do it from a dust cloud.”

“I don’t have to—”

The man started to argue, but a window opened and the squeaky voice rang out. “Let’s go! Leave him if he’s too damn stupid!”

Roddy threw his arms up.

Sweat droplets rained down the man’s face and darkened the rim of his t-shirt. He wasn’t the normal kind of rider, that much was obvious. He had more entitlement than the general transit norm.

Still, he climbed in, head held high, and found a seat near the back. Roddy was behind the wheel and despite the annoyance, they were rolling once again and ahead of their estimated Guelph arrival time by seven minutes.

 

DORNOCH – AHEAD, BUT LOSING STEADILY

A teen boy shifted his weight from foot-to-foot as the bus pulled into the open lot across from the Dornoch General Store—the kind of place where the ice cream scoops were huge and the farsighted owner rarely checked ID for cigarettes because it was too much of a pain in the ass to admit he needed to visit the optometrist.

Roddy Barsten swung open the door and the teen burst up the stairs with two old leather bags in tow. They were rough and both had denim patches sewn over threadbare spots.

Unlike some of the others, this kid felt it and was more afraid of what he felt than of looking crazy.

“Go buddy, I got a ticket! Just go!”

He had a few arrant blood drips on his cheeks, neck, and forehead from nervously picked acne.

Roddy shrugged. Dornoch was a scheduled drink and bathroom break stop. There was a toilet for customers of the general store and a Pepsi machine that charged two-fifty per bottle—real life highway robbery. Roddy checked his watch and grinned. They’d made up twenty-one minutes now and it felt good, so good.

Too good to be true.

Just as the bus passed the burned-out former inn cum meth lab, the highway rounded a bend and reached a wall of trees that had obstructed the view heading south. The spiked ball actually laughed in his head and Roddy felt its spinning blender blades nicking away the layers of his sanity.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he said.

Behind him, several people groaned and the weird kid shouted, “Backhoe!”

Slowing and then stopping for the pretty blonde with perky breasts under a skimpy tank-top and vinyl vest, short denim cut-offs and brown work boots. In her left hand she held a seven-foot stop sign.

Roddy put his head down and waited. The passengers quieted.

Cars passed them on the single open lane, seemingly endlessly. Five kilometers at a time, the traffic moved. Roddy kept the bus in gear and would be doing a hell of a lot faster than what he’d seen so far…suddenly, an impatient asshole in an old Kia tried to pass a camper going about 3 KPH on the freshly pressed asphalt. The car skidded in the loose, hot mess of the gouged lane and halted everything as he spun sideways and tore into the soft blacktop. Rutting and peeling, rubber barked and bunched. The Kia bumped past the screaming blonde swinging her sign.

There were groans and a few passengers started to sob quietly as all traffic remained halted while the road crew tried to re-open a lane. Roddy checked his watched every thirty seconds. They were on time, perhaps even a minute early, when the girl with the sign flipped it to read SLOW and the bus finally rolled through the construction zone.

Once free of obstructions, Roddy pushed the pedal down and the speed governor lulled him at 112 KPH.

 

DURHAM – SECONDS AHEAD

The bus came to a stop in a vacant gravel lot at the top of the hill in the small town of Durham. Eight people from the front third of the bus rushed to the door. They poured away, visibly elated. A few jumped and tossed stones in the air, an older woman kissed the ground. It was almost obscene given the proximity to the bus and those still riding.

Two Williamsford riders rushed off the bus, shouting that they couldn’t do it. Roddy simply shook his head, wishing he had the gull and ignorance to pretend running away would help.

Can’t sneak away from this one. You face it and hope you know something it doesn’t, but you can’t hide. Roddy looked into the mirror. “We all know that,” he said under his breath.

Never had there been a sadder bunch of riders looking back at him. The husky man from Williamsford demanded to know, since they’d changed schedule according to the itinerary, when they got a break. “It’s important that these things are defined.”

 “How about you shut up or get off?” the squeaky voice said and again Roddy scanned the faces for the speaker but never found her.

“I’m a paying customer!” the man said.

One of the elderly women turned in her seat. “You can’t pretend your way into controlling this situation.”

Everything went quiet. Roddy lifted the clipboard and read that one adult and three children were due. As if called to attendance, her shadow darkened the doorway. She was a young woman with dust in her short black hair. She had chocolate eyes and pale cheeks.

“Do you think I should? I know I’m s’posed to, but I got kids,” she said and one of the children started crying. The woman didn’t turn to check on the child, instead peered for something inside Roddy that simply did not exist. “Is it safe?”

“You have to do what you feel, but please hurry.” He checked his watch and his guts danced. “We need to move.”

The woman bit her lip and then turned back for a look over her shoulder. Roddy slammed a fist against his steering wheel. The woman winced and closed her eyes. She stepped back to allow a small boy to start up the steps, a little girl followed, and then came the woman, pulling a boy of about four.

“I have luggage, but we won’t need it, will we?”

Roddy stood, luggage was part of it, they were intimate with something beyond them, something people felt, but did not understand. Luggage was the norm and the universe liked appearances. He guessed he might not be able to put the bus in gear if he left the woman’s things in the dusty parking lot.

“We need it. It’s just out there?”

The woman nodded and placed a ticket with the pertinent information about her and her children on the dash next to the driver’s seat. Roddy swung open the front carrier and did his best to remain calm.

Bags away, he climbed the steps and swung the arm that closed the door. The door stopped mid-slide. A long dark arm flung inside and pushed the accordion door wide. A dark man. He was tall and he wore a scowl, in his left hand, he held a brass pocket watch.

“You don’t want to play with time. Time has teeth.” The man spoke without moving his lips.

Roddy’s chin quivered as he inhaled deeply.

“Time is rabid and hungry. Time gets what’s owed. Time is the tool of Fate.”

“Fuck that!” a voice screamed from the back and Roddy knew that, without question, all heard the voice of the man at the door.

Roddy lowered the parking brake lever.

“Have it your way.” The man backed up and the door swung shut.

They rode down the town’s big hill and to the only stoplight. All had gone silent again. In front of a Royal Bank, a dirty man and a dirty woman sat on a bench, teenaged girls spat in their direction. The dirty woman yelled, and the teens ran, giggling. Across the street, a mother pushed a carriage. In front of the ReMax and the used furniture store, two young men stumbled, wearing all the telltales of being junkies riding a fix.

A horn honked behind the bus and Roddy glanced at the light. Green. Rolling, maybe two minutes ahead of schedule, there was hope to make up more time before Arthur or Fergus, but it felt closer, it felt sooner.

It’s coming and you’ll meet it, why rush? This was the voice of that nasty ball.

“If everything was set in stone, none of us would feel you and you wouldn’t be trying to slow me down,” Roddy whispered in rebuttal.

 

VARNEY – UNSCEDULED STOP

Varney, two minutes south of Durham, a village turned hamlet, had signs of former businesses and former blood, somewhat abundant—never quite thriving, but there nonetheless. A former convenience store and former gas station. A former auto shop. The manmade pond remained, but it was empty of swimmers. The motel was under construction. The flea market and attached burger joint had both closed doors.

Roddy Barsten slowed to 90 KPH as the bus passed the world’s largest Adirondack chair. 90 KPH was still twenty over the posted limit. He coasted to the decaying metal heaps occupying the lot around the former gas station and the former auto shop. A rusted chain-link fence surrounded a rotting Pontiac Fiero and a patch of five-foot weeds. The pond came into view on the right and then the motel.

Upon reaching the pond and a small cottage trail—former train track—the bus engine died abruptly and the bus rocked against the transmission. Several gasps rang out as if choreographed.

It’s now! It’s now!

Roddy shifted to neutral and twisted the key off and on, off and on. “No,” he said simply, as if talking to a cat scratching at the couch.

The engine lit on the fifth try and the squeaky-voiced woman shouted, “Yeah!”

The bus moved six yards and began coughing, Roddy popped it to neutral and pumped the gas. It coasted slowly, gently. There was a slight incline in front of the motel and the former flea market and burger joint. The engine died and the bus stopped before rolling backward to settle in a dip.

“Is there a problem?” the husky man said, demanded.

Roddy looked into the mirror and the man was forcing a smile. All he could do not go back and smack that bewildering ignorance off the man’s face was to keep on trying the key. Not a cough. Not a buzz. No clicks.

“It’s dead,” he said.

Varney, blink and you’ll miss it. Varney, but it wasn’t.

According to his watch, he had made it to Varney, early. Approximately three and one-half minutes early—give or take.

“No bars!” the husky man shouted and stormed up the aisle with his cellphone in hand. He’d sat closer to the back than the front, just as the others had. “Open that door!”

“Where you going?” asked the squeaky voice from the back.

“Payphone, right there.” The man pointed toward the motel.

Roddy did not argue and swung the door open by the handle that reached to a foot from the driver’s seat. Part of him wanted to see what would happen, as it was clear this was it and things were not right. Everything seemed softer out there, too, as if a fine and transparent moss coated the world.

The man stomped down the steps and out the door.

“Shut it, please,” a smallish voice said.

Roddy glanced and recognized the speaker as one of the first fares, one of the few men left on the bus. It was more often women on the early trips, women and children. The evening trips usually weighed in favor of the opposite.

“No traffic coming,” Roddy whispered, somehow knowing there would be none and that they were alone.

The door closed and all watched the heavy waddling man cross the two shades of asphalt to reach the red bricks of the motel. The man punched numbers into the Bell payphone, put the receiver to his ear, and then banged the receiver on the base with three angry slams. He stopped, frozen, and looked around, he then started his return to the bus. Walking backwards, quickly.

“Something’s out there,” said one of the Williamsford women.

The man turned, outright running, looked back over his shoulder and began sprinting. “Don’t you close that door!” he screamed.

Roddy still had his hand on the lever. He hadn’t considered locking the man out, but…

The quick, darting motion of hunched over beasts ran a shiver up his body. They were the size of Saint Bernard dogs, but gaunt and hungry looking. They had long muzzles and slime dripped from around their black noses. Silvery grey fur, thick and matted. Fat paws, long canine teeth like vampires, and sunken reddish eyes.

“Ooog,” the husky man whined.

“Come on, hurry!” Roddy shouted.

Heat flowed into the bus. So hot that Roddy struggled to breathe. It made him think the word BRIMSTONE.

The man stumbled only feet from the door but rebounded quickly. He got to within inches of reaching an arm inside when the door swung shut and a small woman blocked Roddy’s view of the chow line.

“What the—Ahh!”

Snarling and barking, the beasts tore into the husky man. The crowd screamed and Roddy turned wide eyes onto the smallish woman who’d closed the door.

“He’s gone, but we’re not,” her squeaky voice said.

At least Roddy finally put a face to the voice. It was a grim, but nice face. She had a short abdomen and wore a long summery skirt that went nearly to the floor.

Outside, the man continued to scream, the passengers were crying, shouting, but most had turned away, rushing to the opposite side of the bus as if it was a sinking ship. The strange foggy boy jumped out of the reach of his grandmother and to the opposite window.

“Doggies!” he screamed. “Time doggies! Dream Mama got time doggies, too!”

“Popcorn, get over here, now!” the old woman shouted.

Dream Mama got time doggies, too? Roddy squinted at the woman standing before him. It was as if they linked minds, collectively sharing a route. He knew something, but also, that fucking boy’s touched in the head.

Outside the screams ceased. Feasting, the beasts smacked their fanged jaws with exaggerated wet bites, chewing and ripping, snapping bones.

“What about the time doggies?” the Durham mother begged, her children clung to her and she clung to them.

“Dream Mama got time doggies. Mama got ate by time doggies, just like him. Time doggies ate her up and made her Dream Mama!” the boy, Popcorn, cheered.

“Popcorn, shush.”

“Popcorn, your name is Popcorn?” the squeaky voiced woman asked, stepping back from the driver and up the aisle.

“Don’t, he’s crackers, just like his mother was,” the grandmother said. She then put her head in her palms. “Goddamned time doggies, he was on that nonsense at her funeral. Only six then. Nine now and damned if he ain’t just as stupid and nutty. I don’t know what to do with him. He can’t go to school, not normal school. He scares the other kids, talking about his dead mother. She died on a helicopter tour, wasn’t no goddamn time doggies. I took him to church. Sunday school couldn’t even fix him!”

The squeaky woman knelt before Popcorn but spoke to his grandmother. “Was he there when she died?”

“The thing barely made it off the ground and dropped like a stone into a lake. Popcorn survived, but everyone else died. He was weird before though, he takes Ritalin, lots of it. I got to double the dose sometimes, he’s so crazy.” The grandmother eased as she spoke.

A few of the passengers crept to the windows to peek at the beasts still lapping at the red puddle.

“Popcorn, that’s a fun name.” The squeaky woman smiled.

“His mother was a hippy and finding his father would fill Maury’s schedule for a month.” The grandmother folded her arms over her chest.

“Popcorn, what happened when your mother died?” The squeaky woman touched Popcorn’s hand as most of the passengers watched, enrapt. He stopped bouncing.

“Just a crash, that’s what I’m ‘sposeda say.”

“Just a crash?”

“He used to talk about something, but his therapist fixed it. The government only covers so much, and I didn’t ask for the burden. I shouldn’t have to pay more than I do to keep him.”

Roddy stared down the beasts through the glass. The husky man was just a stain on the road. The beasts ate his clothing, shoulders to toes. “You should hurry up and get to the point. That man wasn’t enough for those things.”

“But not just a crash, not like how I’m ‘sposeda say. Dream Mama says the therapy man is a dick-weed, he gots it wrong. Dream Mama wants me to ‘member the time doggies.”

“Right, tell me what your dream mother says,” the squeaky woman said.

“Oh don’t get him—”

“Shut up lady or I’ll toss you outside and you can meet the fuckin’ doggies if they ain’t real enough for you,” said the young man from Dornoch.

Popcorn looked from his grandmother to the squeaky woman and back. He stuck his tongue out at his grandmother and then said, “It was icky and we was hurrying. Dream Mama says it was time in our bellies trying to keep us back.” The grandmother tutted at this, but the boy continued. “Mama said she didn’t trust the others and we waited a real long time. But Mama wanted us out, that was before. The time doggies bit her a whole bunch when we got out and then they dragged her on the lake. They didn’t sink or nothin’, but then it all went away.”

Outside the bus, the beasts had returned to the shade under the motel’s overhang. Roddy sighed in relief, but imagined their slow plod was a show of dominance, something engrained.

“What do you mean it went away?” the Durham mother asked.

“I was right by the lake and Mama was in the water where the time doggies dragged her, but she wasn’t on top no more, she was floating and then the chopter swung like a crazy birdie and went carploosh! It got me with a big splash. I was real sad, but the Dream Mama came and told me I wouldn’t need to live in grandma’s closet too long.”

“You fucking keep him in a closet?” the Durham mother barked, aghast.

“Don’t be so high and mighty. It ain’t my fault the kid’s nuts and his whore mother died!”

“You raised her, didn’t you?” the squeaky woman asked.

The grandmother huffed and tightened her arms around her middle.

“Does Dream Mama say anything else?” Roddy got up and headed back to the conversation.

“Dream Mama says I can’t be inside when time catches up, got to be outside, but don’t let the time doggies get me. Gotta do the big smoke and go!” Popcorn again bounced on his seat. “Gots to go away when it gets all smoky.”

It sounded right and wrong at the same time. Time had a destiny for the passengers of the bus from Owen Sound to Guelph, but time and destiny had nothing on the inherent need to survive. Humanity evolved into what it had by surviving. Fate and destiny be damned.

“Is it timing, is that what he’s saying?” the squeaky woman said. “That’s what it was, right? You needed to be early. I thought I’d die if we were late. The thought made me sick.”

“Right, yeah.” Roddy nodded, fingers in his beard as he spoke. “But it’s not exact like the railroad. I have leeway. We were a couple minutes and change earlier than the earliest scheduled time, three minutes better than my usual time. It could be any time, now. Seems my watch stopped.” Roddy looked again at the white face surrounded by golden stainless-steel. “No wait, it works! It’s slow as hell but moving! Can’t be the battery? I just…”

It had moved three seconds into the future since they’d stopped in Varney.

“Does it matter if we don’t know exactly when we should be off the bus?” asked an Owen Sound woman, yawning.

“No, but I can guess. I wouldn’t be earlier than the earliest possible boarding time. I mean, sometimes I’m a minute or two late by Durham, catch up some at the longer stop in Arthur after Kenilworth. Early trip Kenilworth riders are always late, always the same three or four passengers.” Roddy wore a vacant expression as he spoke truths he hadn’t been fully aware that he’d collected over the years.

Conversations, arguments, and big questions filled the bus. All guessing at that point, the only source—possibly—of knowledge was a weird kid called Popcorn.

God help us, Roddy put his face in hands and slunk down in a seat, a middle seat—an emergency evacuation seat.

 

VARNEY - CLOSER

A woman slapped her face three times in quick succession. “Wake up!” she shouted. She was middle-aged. Her cheeks were sunburned and tear streaked.

The spiked ball had departed Roddy entirely, leaving behind a sticky trail of anticipation. Out the window, the shimmery heat bounced from the greyed asphalt onto the softened infrastructures. They’d been in this place for only thirty-nine seconds according to Roddy’s watch, but hours according to understood senses. Everything seemed muffled and soft, aside from the looming beasts when they took short strolls closer to the bus, as if to remind the passengers.

Those who had food with them ate and fed children. Everyone had gone to the tiny can to sip from the tepid and highly chlorinated water coming from the tap. Every window was open a crack, but it hardly changed the temperature.

Different passengers had asked Popcorn to repeat his tale twice, picking and questioning additional tidbits. Mostly, the trouble with the boy was slowness. He spoke excitedly and skipped subjects and topics without cease. One man suggested that maybe the dog only wanted him and that they should consider, maybe, tossing Popcorn out.

The only one who didn’t argue this idea was Popcorn’s grandmother.

Roddy found an after-dinner mint in the driver’s cubby and rolled it about his mouth. “What if Dream Mama’s just a dream and not his mother?”

“Dream Mama’s just pretending to be a dream.” Popcorn spoke with the kind of conviction that, at least temporarily, nullified argument.

Roddy leaned back and closed his eyes. The next time he checked his watch, he said, “That’s a minute.”

“Hey, driver,” the squeaky woman said. She’d gone back to the seat opposite the toilet.

Roddy got up, stepping on shaky legs, his head light. The back of the bus was warmer than the front. He dropped into the seat next to the little woman. Her thin blonde hair clung to sweat on her forehead.

“You drive this route a lot?”

“Sure, for yours now.”

The squeaky woman had a finger pressed to the back window. “That chair, doesn’t it look smaller?”

Varney was a strange place. The giant Adirondack chair on a lawn littered with other, regularly sized woodworks was the largest in the world. Varney also boasted the fastest quarter-mile in Southern Ontario, according to the speedway sign. There was also a busy nursery, the swimming hole, and at any given peak, four businesses. The total population of Varney was about fifty, give or take.

The chair was a good distance and Roddy squinted. It was possibly smaller, but it was not the object of his attention. Something beyond had his attention. “There’s a house gone.”

It was a change, a big change. It offered something, not hope and not terror, but a reality in this unreality. Notions and plans and eventual life-saving ideas could sprout from a little piece of understanding.

“Huh?”

Everyone noticed the big chair, massive as it was—something like fifteen-feet high—but unless you drove the route often, you might never notice the two-story redbrick home, the long grey shed, or the small privacy row of cedars between the highway and the ever-stretching fields.

“There’s a house gone!” Roddy jumped up and squeezed between the toilet partition and the window on the opposite side. Varney sat in an aggressive dip, an asphalt valley. A big hill ran to the north and a gentle incline fell to the south, out toward the speedway. Halfway up the hill, there had been another home, but it was gone, too. “There’s two gone. There were three cars for sale in the field and buddy’s transport truck, but they’re all gone too.”

“It’s all catching up, do you think? I mean we’re like in this place, but it’s not like a place people live, it’s not like Varney anymore,” the Durham mother said. “I saw something like this on a TV movie once!”

“What movie?” asked one of the Owen Sound riders.

“I don’t know, it was terrible, had the worst CGI and directing, like, ever.” The woman pet the sandy hair of her youngest absently while he sucked his thumb.

“I wish I could see over to the south,” Roddy said.

“Why don’t you go do that, just take a walk and do that,” said a man from Owen Sound.

Roddy frowned. The bus had lost its anger focal point when the husky man from Williamsford became puppy chow. It appeared the bus driver was next in line.

“What, you think I meant to put us here?” Roddy stood tall.

“Don’t matter, you did it.” The man rose from his seat.

“You looking to get your teeth pulled?” Roddy said.

The man snarled and clenched his fists. “How about I put my foot down your throat.”

The man leapt and Roddy swung at him, grazing his forehead before falling back. They tumbled, swinging wildly but with little harm done one way or the other.

“Break it up!” one of the Williamsford women shouted as she attempted to peel back the man from Owen Sound.

He’d taken a momentary upper hand, but he’d also pulled something in his side and reeled away to shorten the strain on the muscle. He let himself be separated, only feigning an interest in continuing the fight. Roddy had a bloody nose and nothing else to show for his battle. The general fervor fizzled, and passengers again began conversing on all sorts of topics pertaining to the situation and what it might all mean.

“This is God’s plan. We were not put on Earth to fight it. We need to embrace it. God blesses the faithful,” said a teenager in a cheap polo shirt and pale blue jeans to Popcorn’s grandmother.

“That’s right. God’s plan ain’t about why or how, it’s about faith.” The old woman nodded as she spoke.

The squeaky woman stepped forward and collected the driver as if she were his trainer and corner man. Rather than taking him back, she pulled him forward to an emergency window at the center of the bus.

“Come on, we’re taking a look over that hill.” 

Roddy scrunched up his expression.

“We can climb out a window and look over the hill.”

Roddy brushed blood from his nose against his shoulder. “No need,” he said and pointed back two paces. “Emergency hatch.”

Suddenly two factions had formed. Those conversing God’s plan silently spied the action of the driver and the squeaky woman as they pushed the roof hatch open. Roddy climbed onto the seats and then pulled himself up.

“Whatever you’re doing, it won’t work,” said the teen in the polo and blue jeans.

Once Roddy had gained his bearings, he turned to tug the woman up, but she was already there and was sliding forward on her dress to put her feet beneath her.

“It’s fresher out here,” he said.

She took a deep breath and then stepped to glance over the edge. “Where do you think they went?”

“I saw them run over—” Roddy’s words stopped as he spotted dogs leap from a shady alleyway. “Never mind them for now.”

“Okay, I can do that. Can you see anything?” The woman stepped right up to the ledge.

The sun overhead came down hot, but indirectly. There was a cover of cloudy haze between. Roddy scanned the familiar, but forgettable world as he stepped to the front. The squeaky-voiced woman followed him. Two of the dogs prattled lazy circles only feet below. Roddy was at a loss to tell if the hydro transformers that loomed down the highway had gone or were just too far to see under those conditions.

“Put me up on your shoulders and then I’ll see.”

Roddy’s brows rose.

“I’ll see further, but you can’t look at me when I’m getting up or after, okay?” Roddy shrugged agreement. “Down on your knees and look over there.” The woman pointed south.

Roddy did as told and then waited.

“All right, hold still. Scrunch lower.”

He did and a bare leg touched his cheek. It was warm and damp with sweat. Fine stubble brushed his jaw when the second thigh squeezed around his face. The tremendous heat on the back of his neck was impossible to ignore. It was like the door to a furnace.

“You got me?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Hang on,” she said.

He held the little legs just below the knees, they squeezed, not as tightly as they had, but still there and still with nervous rigidness.

“I see some trees to the left and there’s that old restaurant on the right, but I don’t know. I’m not from here, I just moved to this stupid province last year. I wish I’d kept going west. Turn me.” She shifted her hips and he veered like a pack donkey.

Sweat streamed, his shirt dampening around the collar and everywhere else her legs pressed. For a moment, he felt faint and imagined teetering over the side and somehow falling dozens of yards away, into the pond.

“Just trees.” She reared him again and Roddy turned at her non-verbal behest. “I just see trees, okay you can—”

“I want a ride!” Popcorn screamed as he attempted to climb onto the roof.

“Hold a second, Popcorn.” Roddy knelt down, making certain he didn’t glimpse anything, and let the woman off his shoulders.

Popcorn had climbed topside and got to his knees. Roddy watched him like he was the only thing to see. Would they make it out of this? Was Popcorn really the only real hope? A hand touched his neck and he turned away. The squeaky woman offered an awkward grin.

“I want a ride!” Popcorn got to his feet and ran toward the driver.

“Sorry, buddy. I’m too tired, maybe later.” Roddy lay down for a moment, sweat had stained in the shape of the woman’s legs around his neck, and down his chest, stopping right about where her calves ended. “I need a drink.”

The squeaky woman nodded and helped him to his feet. They took two steps each toward the hatch, letting Popcorn sneak by to check the front of the bus.

“Come on, Popcorn,” the squeaky woman called.

Roddy frowned. “Hey, what’s your name?”

She didn’t get a chance to answer as voices rang high and fast from within the bus.

“What the fuck!”

“You psycho bitch!”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Are you crazy?”

From beneath, “Quick! Quick! Take him!” the Durham mother shouted.

Roddy knelt down into the escape hatch and took a small boy, not yet understanding the situation.

“Fuck you, Granna!” Popcorn flipped his grandmother the bird.

She had opened the bus door and stepped out, her arms wide to receive the Lord. A couple others had followed her. The change had happened so quickly. They’d gone from singular beings to pieces to a scheme. But it didn’t last and one of them gave up on the plan immediately as Dogs rushed and the first two stopped over the woman while three others continued toward the bus. The teen girl who’d changed her mind scrambled back toward the bus. She stepped up the stairs and crashed into the man who picked a fight with the bus driver. This time he ended up on the bottom of a pile.

“Quick!” the Durham mother shouted again.

Two of her children sat atop the bus, sobbing. Roddy grabbed onto a boy—the final of her kids—and pulled him up. The Durham mother turned away from the hole and shouted at someone, “No! This way!”

There was a growl and screams within the bus, it rocked like it was packed with university kids and on its way to a Daytona spring break. Passengers cowered in seats, some tossed luggage, but more climbed toward the back, all screamed or shouted. The dogs were in the aisles and on the seats, working methodically through their victims, focusing on the kill rather than the spoils.

“No, wait, there’s kids!” the Durham mother shouted again.

The squeaky woman was small but mighty, she grabbed onto the woman’s hair through the hole, sinking forward and almost falling into the bus when the woman tried to pull away.

“I’m not looking after your kids!” she shouted.

Roddy reached down and helped pull the Durham mother up. Her kids all bawled for her. The shouts and wails continued in the bus as it rocked and bounced on its shocks. They got her up and not a second later, another set of arms popped through the roof. This woman had boarded with an infant, but the infant wasn’t there.

“Stomped him!” she shrieked and cried, slapping her arms and kicking her legs rather than working her way topside. “Stomped him!”

“Lady give me your—” Roddy tried to grab her, but she fell back through.

“Out of the way!” shouted the young man from Dornoch. He wore a coat of blood.

Roddy didn’t grab for him, the man didn’t need help and he pulled himself to his knees.

“She’s nuts, goddamn bitch!” the young man turned to shout back down the hole.

A slobbery pink mouth with long teeth leapt up, snapping and grasping an overhanging foot. The young man dropped to his stomach and screeched for help. Roddy and the squeaky woman grabbed on, but the arms were slick with blood. His body squeaked against the steel as the dog reeled him in.

Not enough time had passed to register what had happened and a nasty mouth snapped back through the hole. Front paws scratched on the lip of the emergency hatch. Roddy and the squeaky woman jerked back, wide-eyed, crab-walking in reverse toward the front of the bus.

Scared and helpless, the Durham mother dragged her children past and to as far to the front as they could go. The things below snapped and screamed. Footfalls thumped up top. Popcorn ran past them all and toward the hatch. A humming whine came from his throat. He jumped. The beast chomped with loud snaps at his feet as he cleared the hatch gracelessly. The dog had missed him and Popcorn slid to a stop on the far side of the hatch. He shot back, kicked the door, a big smile on his face for doing a good job just like his Dream Mama told him he would.

 

VARNEY – CLOSER YET

None on the roof of the bus watched Popcorn after he closed the hatch and wedged a small robot figurine from his pocket into the steel looped latch, sealing it against the occasional thump of hungry jaws. A little better than two minutes had passed in the hours they’d spent stuck outside their reality. The sun hadn’t changed and the heat threatened to bake them alive before whatever was going to happen could happen.

“How many dogs were there,” the squeaky woman asked.

Roddy rolled onto his side and looked up to the small woman. She lay facing the sky. “I thought I saw six the first time, but I only saw five when the doors opened.”

“I have an idea,” she said and then spat. “But I need something, water, at very least out of the sun…hold my feet, okay?”

“What are you…?” Roddy started, but she’d already crawled to the edge of the bus and tried to see in.

“Got me?” she asked.

Again, the driver took hold of the little woman’s legs.

“Pull me up,” she whispered after a moment. He did. “They’re there, five of them, they’re standing outside the toilet door.”

“Okay?”

“I’m going to drop down to the door and jump inside. Then I’ll swing the door shut and climb out your window, but leave it far enough closed that the dogs can’t get out without breaking the glass.”

“They won’t break it unless there’s a wild change in atmosphere. That’s smart safety glass. It’ll take a hell of a beating unless there’s a drastic change in heat or cold,” Roddy said. “Why do you think they’re staring at the toilet door?”

Popcorn stopped his rounds at hearing the question. “There’s a granna in there, that’s ‘cause why.” He started zooming again, running circles around the roof.

The other children were terrified into somber inaction.

“Whose grandmother?” the squeaky woman asked.

“Can we get to the toilet from up here?” the Durham woman asked. There was a vacancy in her tone and her paler.

Roddy considered the options. “There’s a vent and a fan,” he said, and walked back to the spot on the roof above the john.

The vent rode level with the roof, but fins permitted air drawn from the fan. It was screwed in place, but it was plastic. Ten inches squared. Roddy kicked at it. From within the bus, the dogs growled and whined, scratched at the door. The exterior of the vent smashed and then came away easily. Roddy dropped his knees to test the holds of screws keeping the fan system together.

“Oh my god,” the Durham mother moaned, from near the middle of the bus.

Roddy and the squeaky woman looked back to her and followed her sightline. She nodded up, once. Soundlessly, the giant chain reaction had begun to melt at a noticeable speed, drawing the world into a puddle. The white paint on the fat wooden slates of the chair had drained seconds before the chair shrank two feet.

Roddy got busy and yanked on steel fan blades until the flimsy carriage separated. He tossed the remainder of the unit over his shoulder. There was a mesh cover that hugged the ceiling, slightly wider than the access to the vent system. With every swing, the dogs drew further into frenzy. The fan finally gave and caved. The dropping plastic mesh struck the little old woman huddled at the bottom. She mouthed up, please stop, please stop, goddamn you.

The door thumped and the woman dropped her face into a hand. She had just one left. A bloody stump an inch below her elbow remained where her left existed before it became puppy chow. There was a lot of blood on the floor.

You can’t let her die down there, a voice spoke inside, perhaps Roddy’s own and perhaps not. He leaned back and dropped to his seat to consider the options—if there truly were any at all. As he watched the remainder of the chair disappear, he felt very much at the whim of a cosmic mistake righting itself. That asshole with the brass watch was right, man or woman. Time had teeth.

The driver looked back at the other two adults on the roof of the Greyhound. The Durham mother seemed lost, her fear continually inched higher, her children fed off this and buried their faces in the folds of her clothing, the bulges of her love handles and belly. The squeaky woman took Roddy’s gaze and held it, as if trying to meld minds.

“There’s a woman down there,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

A plan revealed itself to him and he blinked. His lips pouted into an expression that suggested that ain’t half bad.

“What?” the squeaky woman said.

The plan was simple and worked off what the squeaky woman was already going to attempt. The Durham mother would help the squeaky woman in through the door. She’d swing the door closed and climb out the window, drawing attention away from the toilet and to the nearest window so that Roddy could pull the old woman up to the roof through the emergency hatch.

But isn’t there a sixth dog? A big one, maybe a wise one?

Roddy thought so, but he wasn’t exactly taking census when he saw the non-believer get eaten up. He explained the plan and then pointed. “I’ll tell her and then I’ll give you the signal. Get that woman to help you, if you can.”

The squeaky woman looked at the Durham mother and then rolled her eyes. She then started ripping her skirt at the knees.

Roddy knelt over the bathroom vent, put his head into the hole, and whispered, “We’re getting you out, but you have to be ready, get up.”

The old woman shook her head.

“Get up!” he shouted and the dogs began slamming into the flimsy door. The old woman rose. Roddy whispered, “Okay, when I tell you, you get out of the washroom and run straight across the aisle and I’ll pull you through the ceiling.”

The woman shook her head.

When the time came, she’d do it or she wouldn’t do it.

“Popcorn, come here a minute.”

“We got to do stuff,” Popcorn said as he stomped across the roof of the bus. “She gots the smoke and we gots to go soon.”

Smoke? Second time he talked about smoke.

Roddy looked around. Varney was time’s confluence and fate approached from every angle; the home next to the chair and the chair itself were completely gone, the next home south of the chair—only its roof visible above trees—had begun to melt away as well.

Could it be that south is the future?

“Popcorn! Come here! I need you to hold my legs a minute.” Roddy positioned himself.

“Better not fart at me!” Popcorn said, then cackled and blew a fantastic ripper of his own.

As Roddy stretched out his arms, a sting of futility struck and he saw the future. Once the beasts got them, the world went back to normal. Their bodies destroyed beyond recognition, chalked up to some horrendous accident, not dissimilar to Popcorn’s helicopter ride. He glanced to the squeaky woman and then the Durham mother. The Durham mother remained huddled with her children. The squeaky woman was ready to jump down in through the door of the bus.

You’re either a hero or a gymnast, he thought and nodded.

She nodded back and then she was gone. The entry door closed with an airy whoomph. There was a string of growls and feet prattling along the bus floor.

“Now, lady!” Roddy swung open the hatch.

The washroom door remained closed and the further he leaned, the closer he saw the proximity of the beasts to the squeaky woman.

“Hold me, Popcorn, don’t let go! Come on, lady! Now!”

The washroom door opened as the squeaky woman pulled her body out through the driver’s window but did not climb back onto the roof. Her fingers clung to the seam of where the walls and roof met and a trough let water drain away as her feet pressed into the steel body of the bus. She remained where the beasts could see her: lunchmeat just beyond the glass sneeze-guard of windshield.

Roddy watched until a hand grasped his and stole his attention. He grabbed at the older woman’s good arm with both hands and pulled. She screamed. The dogs were back in a flash. Roddy reefed upward and the woman continued to scream, her mouth and eyes open as far as they’d go, agony riding her expression and her voice.

Hands grabbed at Roddy’s back then. “Come on, Popcorn! Help me pull, you stupid shit!” the squeaky woman shrieked. She had to have moved like lightning.

The new help let Roddy focus on the hold and the old woman followed him onto the roof. Mostly. Up to her hips, purse resting topside, the woman gasped, and any sense of hope melted away. Roddy held tight as the snarls and wet lapping bites snapped below. He pulled until there was no more fight.

Blood poured from the woman’s mouth and her eyes rolled to the pink-hued whites. Minute movements, a slow shake, the older woman’s chin moved forward and back like a slow-motion chicken. She let out a final wheeze and vomited a deluge of too dark, too hot blood.

Roddy pulled her up. Her torso anyway. The dogs had taken the rest.

“Fuckers!” the squeaky woman said. She sat back and cradled her knees.

The situation soaked Roddy red. There was half a woman, a hysterical woman and her children, a heroic gymnast, and goddamned Popcorn. Roddy felt inconsequential, felt like he was probably next.

“What now?”

“How do I know?” the squeaky woman said.

“Smoke,” Popcorn said and crawled to the dead woman. He pulled at the giant purse she had slung crossways over her shoulder.

They watched him silently. There was a reason behind almost everything he did. Popcorn was Captain Ahab. Popcorn was Sherlock Holmes. Popcorn was Captain Kirk.

Popcorn retrieved a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the bag. He opened the pack and dropped one deck of the cigarettes onto the roof. He put one in his mouth but didn’t light it. The other deck remained in the pack and Popcorn reached into the bloody purse and found three travel packs of Scott brand tissues. He peeled the plastic and rammed the tissues into the space left empty when he dumped the cigarettes. He then waggled his eyebrows at the others and lit the tissues, holding the package sideways to let the flame grow. He stood and before anyone had a chance to contest, he dropped the flaming parcel down through the washroom vent. The cigarette bobbed in his mouth as he smiled.

“What in the hell did you do that for?” Roddy asked.

“They ain’t gonna eat Dream Mama again,” Popcorn said. “Got to be smoky. Dream Mama says the smoke’s the kicker ‘cause Fate double dipped.”

“But we’re…” Roddy trailed off, if the dogs were locked away in a flaming bus, then why not climb down to safety, let time catch up and plant them securely next to a tragic accident?

Six, because you counted six dogs!

“How many dogs did you see in the bus?” Roddy turned to the squeaky woman.

“Five. That might be all of them, though. Right?”

Roddy thought that sounded good, but not right. He said nothing.

Smoke wisped through the hole, but there was a chance it wasn’t going to catch, but Popcorn returned to the purse—the dogs were audibly lapping up meals below—and grabbed the remaining tissues as well as a quarter-liter jug of hand sanitizer.

“Whoa, Jesus!” the squeaky woman said.

“Popcorn, just a second!” Roddy said.

Popcorn dropped the soggy tissues and then squeezed the sanitizer down the hole until it was emptied. The cigarette continued to bob along in his mouth. Smoke jumped high and Popcorn began to dance like a cartoon Native American.

“We have to get down. Maybe there were only five?” the squeaky woman said.

Roddy saw in her expression that she didn’t believe that a lick.

 

VARNEY – ON SCHEDULE

They’d moved to the front of the bus and stood looking over, waiting for the last dog to poke out—if there truly was a sixth. According to Roddy’s watch, they were no longer early. The landscape spoke a similar statement. Where buildings, objects, and vehicles once stood to the north had become white vacancy. The hill was smooth and endless.

They had an idea. Roddy kicked the bloody woman’s torso off the end of the bus and watched. Inside, the dogs barked and rocked the shocks, but outside, no sixth dog came for them.

Sweat dripped faces and backs, the heat beneath was now greater than the heat from above, and only the Durham mother remained seated, even her children had risen.

“I think we have to go south,” Roddy said after a long silence.

“Popcorn, last time, you said the dogs attacked and then you were just on a beach. Were you hurt?” the squeaky woman asked.

Popcorn still had the cigarette in his mouth and the lighter in his hand. He nodded emphatically. “Dream Mama says it was good that she was sick though. Two times good. Good for me, two times.”

“What?” Roddy asked.

“Dream Mama said if Mama wasn’t sick she maybe couldn’t protect me so good. She says that being sick did her good to protect me. She had smoke sick and Dream Mama says there wasn’t no fear ‘cause of it. And it makes it two times, ‘cause the double dip.”

“She wasn’t afraid to die?” the Durham mother said. “But how could she leave her baby? A baby needs its mother.”

Popcorn shrugged. “Dream Mama said Fate’s a double dipper. It wanted her twice, but she only let it once. Fate double dips, so can anybody else! That’s ‘cause time’s a tool like a hammer.”

“Okay?” the squeaky woman said. “Popcorn, forget the dipping, how were you hurt?”

“I had a cast and they shaved my head and I got headaches. Dream Mama says everyday I’m stickin’ it to the man.” Popcorn smiled. “It’s ‘bout time to go, we got to go before the time doggies go on fire. Fuckers.” Popcorn smiled wider. He spat back toward the washroom. The spit landed and sizzled. “Fuckers!”

Roddy looked to the squeaky woman. They stepped toward the Durham mother and tried to get her to her feet.

“No!” she screeched and grabbed her youngest, pulled the boy tight to her chest.

“Lady, we need to go,” Roddy said.

Popcorn rushed forward. “They’ll come, they will.” His smile had spread massive while the cigarette bobbed between his lips.

“Do you see what’s going to happen?” the squeaky woman asked.

“Dream Mama does and she says they’ll come along.”

“Can you hear her now?”

“Dream Mama lives in dreams.” Popcorn rolled his eyes as if it was all so obvious. “She told me today’s the day and ‘member to get smoky and then she double dips on the sick stuff.”

The squeaky woman lifted her hands to the sky. “What does that mean?”

“Time to go.” Roddy pulled on the mother.

“No!” she screamed and reached for her daughter. Her other son clung to her shoulders from the back.

“I thought you said—” Roddy started and then the glass broke at the back of the bus.

The heat. The windshield wouldn’t last under the immense heat. Roddy ran to the back to check that none of the dogs had braved the small, flaming exit. They hadn’t. He sighed and charged to the front.

The dogs were livid inside.

Roddy took a deep breath and shook his head at the Durham mother. “I’ll go first.”

Roddy climbed down the windshield and felt for the bumper with the toes of his boots, found it and dropped the last two feet. Through the glass, he saw the snarling silvery beasts with their slobbery, bloody maws. They’d stopped barking and had huddled close at the open space between the driver’s seat and the door. He wondered how long the safety glass would hold up.

“Come on!” Roddy didn’t want to look around, if there was another dog, he was in trouble. They all were.

Popcorn’s legs dangled and dropped before Roddy took hold. The boy bounced to his feet instantly, the cigarette rolled from his lips, and he squealed, chasing after it.

“Nono!” he shouted and reached under the bus.

“Okay, come on!” Roddy shouted up.

“The stupid woman won’t come.”

“Just…come on.”

Popcorn crawled under the bus to his waist and screeched gleefully. He backed out quickly. The cigarette was again between his lips. The squeaky woman dropped into Roddy’s arms and he accidentally glimpsed her underwear and felt self-conscious because she’d felt self-conscious earlier.

Popcorn got to his feet and whispered over the fire crackle. “There’s a time doggy under there. It’s sleeping.”

  Sleeping, oh hell.

“Better run,” Roddy whispered as he backstepped staring up to the roof of the bus.

Popcorn shook his head. “Doggies chase when you run, and it isn’t time for the doggy chase yet. Dream Mama says she will make me okay.”

“Where does that leave us?” the squeaky woman whispered as they all stepped backward along the Queen’s Highway 6, southbound.

The fire flashed and broke more glass, and the trapped dogs again turned frantic, barking and wailing. From below the bus, the sleeping beast awoke and slunk forward, crouching impossibly low, like a rat climbing through a keyhole, dragging its silver belly on the bleached asphalt. Once freed, the beast straightened, making eye contact with the trio. It snarled and barked once. Popcorn snarled and barked back, cigarette bent and dirty, but there between his lips.

The beast then took three slow steps but stopped. It turned its head and scurried back under the bus. The dogs inside panicked, loudly.

“Okay, we’re coming, just wait!” the Durham mother shouted as she dangled her eldest son over the front of the bus. He dropped. “Catch your sister!” Next came the girl, the child landed with a skull-jarring thump.

The trio remained frozen, screaming. The Durham mother climbed to the side and called for her youngest to latch onto her shoulders. “Do a piggyback!” The boy was indignant, wailing, refusing to touch the hot steel.

The former sleeping beast ran out of patience and crawled from beneath the bus again. It leapt onto the Durham mother’s dangling legs. Jaws wide and slobbery. Wet and horrific, making quick work as it jerked away flesh in hunks. It dropped the woman, unconscious before she landed, and then secured the other two items on the dinner menu, chewing out their throats, one after the other. Drinking from the crimson fountain rushes. The boy on the roof looked over the edge and ran in the opposite direction, toward the rising flames. His scream pierced through what remained of Varney like an air raid siren.

“Oh my shit,” the squeaky woman mumbled and pulled on Roddy’s arm.

The burning beasts continued to bark and whine. The dog that had killed the Durham mother and two of her children stayed near the bus to take a few mouthfuls of soft, childish flesh.

Like veal.

Roddy and the woman stepped backward, away. Popcorn trailed them, watching, knowing something, repeating, “Smoky double dip. Smoky double dip.”

The barks became howls and the windshield burst outward as the beasts leapt free, their coats crisped brown and stubbed, patches of ugly black and blue skin showing through. Steam rising from their backs and mouths. The other dog joined its brethren and together they charged, southbound.

“Shit! Shit, run!” the squeaky woman shouted.

Popcorn stopped and busied himself with the lighter. He had never lit a cigarette and it wasn’t going well. He clicked and clicked and clicked.

“Come on, kid!” Roddy yelled.

They ran, turning their backs to Popcorn for only a moment. The world before them shimmered, glimpses of reality played before them, of now in real-time. There were low droning sounds and the tall hydro towers appeared where they should. Fate was the world beyond Varney.

The six dogs snarled, their claws tapped and clicked as they ran. They were only feet from Popcorn.

“Fucker, fucker,” Popcorn said and dropped the lighter. He glanced at the rushing beasts and fell to his knees. They were so close. Two-handed, the lighter functioned with the spin of the wheel as he pressed the red handle. The flame touched the cigarette’s tip. Popcorn inhaled deeply, sucking until he could suck no more, just like Dream Mama showed him.

Roddy glanced back. The squeaky woman was already running in reverse. The lead pair of beasts snapped, slobber and blood flying, wavy heat ejected from their mouths like blow dryers on high. Popcorn coughed and gagged. The smoke poured from his mouth in an incredible grey swatch.

“Jesus, look at that!” Roddy stopped running.

The thick cloud billowed, transforming into a woman’s head and chest. Long gorilla arms, fingers and claws like an eagle reached from the cloud. The dogs howled and Popcorn laughed and rolled to the side of the road. The time dogs tried to run from the familiar figure, but Fate left them cold against Cloud Mama. The claws dug into the frightened backs. Popcorn pointed and vibrated excitedly, screaming nonsensical hoots and cheers.

Bone snaps and barking and howls became helpless whines. The beasts fell apart like the scenery, puddling in demise. Roddy and the squeaky woman, paused in suspension, side-by-side, knew better than to feel safe.  A warm breeze blew toward them from the north. 

Time collecting itself, Fate taking its swing.

“Popcorn was hurt, he said. He survived, but he was hurt.”

Roddy thought about her words and tried to add something, some thought, but the world cut him off. The flames died and the far north drew itself back into reality. A new bus rolled forward. A hollow version of Roddy Barsten sat behind the wheel.

“Holy,” he whispered.

Time sped, and in a flash, the bus was feet from them. Bounding fast, too fast. The squeaky woman dived to the shoulder, her fingers latched onto Roddy’s bicep. He followed her drag, feeling the bus barrel through his hips. They landed in the ditch. Roddy felt nothing for two seconds beyond the horrid pain racking his entire body.

The crashing vehicle screamed at the landscape, echoing over the empty fields on either side of the highway. The bus pounded and rolled.

Fingers lost grip from Roddy’s bicep and his body flew high into the air. It molested them like a sadistic rollercoaster ride, his stomach churned and twisted. The motion tossed him in front of an accident he had no good reason to survive. The pain left him and for a second, he was certain he hadn’t survived at all and that, really, wasn’t so bad.

There were other thumps and thuds and then blackness as he lay in the long grass, soaking up the standing water that had pooled in a clogged culvert. Alive.

 

MOUNT FOREST – SCHEDULE BE DAMNED

Mostly dark and the scent was off; familiar but scary. Roddy Barsten wasn’t certain, but he thought he had survived an accident, did not recall the moment of certainty in demise. But he recalled Varney. He tried to rise. A tremor of pain surfaced. His mouth was impossibly dry. He looked around the dim room. Light seeped beyond the edges of a window drape.

A sound approached. A squeak.

He recalled the squeaky woman and then the rest. His heart banged and he knew Fate was on him, going to drag him back to hell, devour him, make him a feast for dogs.

The squeak came closer.

The dogs.

They wouldn’t give up so easily. They were probably chewing on the woman.

The squeak came from right outside the door.

You didn’t think they’d let you win, did you?

The door opened…Roddy snapped his eyes closed and turned his head, slightly.

“Good, you’re awake. Oops. Come now, calm down.”

Roddy opened his eyes. No dogs, not even an ominous stranger with a pocket watch, just a doctor with a clipboard.

The doctor explained the accident and how fortunate he was that he landed in a small pool of water, and that he could’ve broken something less forgiving than arms, legs, and his hip. The bus and the tanker had both exploded.

“Tanker? Just me?”

The doctor closed her clipboard. “Actually, if you’re willing to see her, there’s a young woman outside. She fared a smidge better than you did. Up to seeing her?” The doctor held out a water cup with a straw and Roddy took a good, long pull.

The doctor set the cup down and Roddy said, “Sure,” his voice sounding crispy, how overcooked bacon crunch.

“Mr. Thomas, could you bring Miss Pike in?”

The wheels of a wheelchair squeaked, and Roddy saw the squeaky woman.

“Roddy Barsten. Nice to meet you, officially.” She had a cast on her left leg and her right arm in a sling.

“You too, Miss Pike.”

“Susan Pike.”

“We’ll leave you two a moment. Come on, Trevor, you wait outside until Miss Pike wants to go back to her room.”

Once alone, Susan Pike, the squeaky woman, leaned down and whispered, “Popcorn said the time doggies never let go once they get on the scent.”

“Popcorn said that?” Roddy Barsten gasped. “Did he say when?”

Susan Pike held her serious face for exactly three seconds before breaking out into laughter. “I talked to Popcorn. He broke his tailbone and bit his cheek when the shift tossed him. He told me you thought of me as the squeaky woman and he said you tried very hard not to see up my dress. That’s all. So, I’m Susan Pike. Thank you for not looking up my dress.”

“Wow? That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.”

“Indeed,” she said before calling over her shoulder to the man waiting outside the door.

XX