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Illustrated by Lee Kuruganti © 2008

But That's Insane

© by Jonathan J. Schlosser

The bus kills a man just a block after I get on and doesn't even stop.
There is a slight bump, a hesitation, as the wheels roll over his
body, but that's all. A few women scream; a man grunts and cranes his
neck toward the windowpane. I close my eyes and rub my temple. The
darkness spins a bit--blood loss will do that to you--but everything
is still in place when I return my gaze to the ugly green seatback in
front of me, with the letters HHS stitched into it at eye level.

The girl next to me--she's more than a girl, really, probably nineteen
or twenty, but the fear in her eyes makes her look young--twists to
look out the rear window. "He's not moving."

I swallow. "No. He won't be."

"Is he…"

"Yes."

She turns back around, her pink and black hair swinging across light
blue eyes and a forehead sprinkled with freckles. "But how could they
do that? He just wanted a ride, the same as us."

I'm wearing a suit coat, and I take it off. The bus is hot, stuffy.
Too many people in too small an area, and none of them showered or
cleaned up except for me. "But he's too late. If we stop for him, we
all die."

"I know." She reaches out and runs a finger over the three letters
that stand for Harrison High School. "I know."

Harrison has grown over the last few years, bringing with it a sort of
awkward shift from mid-sized town to undersized city. Businesses have
sprung up around the outskirts in anticipation, but the heart of the
city has yet to spread out to meet them. The people, however, have
moved out to the suburbs--whether also in anticipation or from a
desire to simply look more like New York to the east, I'm not sure.
This has left the inner city a mess, full of deserted buildings and
deserted people.

The man we killed was one of those. The undeserving poor, as he's
considered by the new middle class. But the driver is one of the same,
and the killing is not done out of spite but out of necessity.

What I told the girl about our dying if we stop was not a lie.

She is in the aisle seat; I am next to the window--really, the bus
seat is a single bench, but we take to those side. She leans across me
now, pressing her face against the window. "Look at that. Wow."

Smoke billows up to drift across the setting sun, great torrents of
black that swirl on the rising air. A sick orange light plays off the
lower levels, both from the sunset and the fires below. Here and
there, as the buildings thin out and give way to the empty space
between the business district and the interior, gouts of flame rise up
to strike the sky. As I watch, something--a gas station,
perhaps--explodes. The brilliant ball of incandescent light rolls
outward for a moment before devouring itself. Pieces of concrete and
glass rain back down.

"Why did they do it?"

I shake my head again, and regret it again as well. "I don't know."

She leans back, brushes a strand of hair out of her face, and holds
out her hand. "I'm Nic."

I take her hand. "Nick?"

"Yeah, Nic." She spells it. "Well, Monica really. I just, you know,
took the middle of it."

I return the smile and release her hand. "I'm Eric."

"You from the suburbs?"

I raise an eyebrow. "That obvious?"

"You're wearing a suit, Eric. No one from the interior can afford a
suit. And if they could, they wouldn't buy one."

I glance at the slick black pants, now spotted with my own blood.
"Point taken." I keep my eyes down, studying the black metal flooring
with far more devote attention than it deserves.

Nic pats my shoulder with her hand and settles back in her seat.
"Don't worry; I won't hold it against you."

We ride in silence for a few minutes. To my surprise, the fires only
grow worse. Burned out hulks of cars and trucks litter the side of the
highway, making it look like something from a Second World War film.
Most of the cars have been abandoned, but people cluster around a few
of them, staying far enough away to be safe from the flames. I don't
know if their attachment is to the vehicles themselves or to people
lost inside, but I decide I'd rather not find out.

The riots started a week ago. A group of kids from Bell High--the new
high school in the suburbs--pilled into two pickups after a football
game and decided the game hadn't provided enough entertainment for the
night. They busted into a liquor store on Maple and stole almost their
own weight in alcohol. When the owner protested, one of the boys hit
him in the face with a baseball bat.

I'd watched the proceedings from my living room, courtesy of Channel
10 News. After a good hour of drinking and driving, the group had
stopped in front of a local shelter being run by another man from the
suburbs. They warned him to get out, no doubt using the baseball bat
as a means of motivation, and then lit the whole place on fire (they
later told police it had been a prank gone wrong). The group sobered
up and split when the flames roared out of control, leaving the
homeless to fight the fire on their own.

Nic leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "How far do you
think they'll get?"

I jerk out of my thoughts. "Who?"

She snorts. "The rioters. They said they'd burn the whole of the
suburbs before they'd stop. Do you think they'll do it?"

I'm not much older than Nic, three years at most, and have no
experience in this sort of thing. Still, I hold onto a sort of faith
in justice bred into me from Saturday morning cartoons every time
Spiderman saved humanity from disaster. "Not a chance."

"None at all?"

"The National Guard will be here soon. They'll stop this easily."

"The police claimed they could do the same thing."

"True." I shutter. The local police force had shown up as soon as
things got started. But instead of restoring order, they'd driven
things to the breaking point. The four officers who responded to the
shelter fire were from the suburbs, newly moved in from New York.
They'd sauntered around, not doing much to stop the blaze, confidant
in their implants. In reality, there wasn't a lot they could do until
the Fire Department arrived. The locals didn't see that, though; they
just saw their neighborhood being burned by people from the suburbs
while others of the same did nothing to stop it. They reacted, to say
the least, violently.

The implants may have upgraded the officers' strength and reaction
time, but even that wasn't enough. Not by a long shot.

Only one of the four officers made it back out alive, and then because
he shot down a number of people and managed to somehow get his cruiser
into gear. He came back to the station, and the rest of the force
descended on the interior like an occupying army.

They met far more resistance than they ever expected. True enough,
there had only been two dozen officers on call--the department had yet
to catch up to the city's rapid growth. Still, riot gear and rubber
bullets had done almost nothing to stop the wave of civilians wanting
revenge now not only for the shelter but also for the men and one
woman who had been shot by the fleeing officer. In the end, the police
had switched to live rounds instead of rubber, but by then it had been
too late.

I pull my suit coat out from behind me and jam it between the floor
and the seat. I unbutton the white shirt beneath it, and curse under
my breath. Just a sleeveless undershirt will be cold in early
November, but it's better than making myself a target. If anyone else
recognizes me besides Nic, I'll be just another body on the side of
the road. I stuff the dress shirt with the jacket and fold my arms
over my stomach.

"You all right?" Nic asks.

I grimace. "Sort of." The darkening red splotch running down my right
side is out of her line of sight, but well within mine. And it hurts
to like red hot coals being pressed against my ribs. "I just don't
need to look so…"

"Foreign?"

"I guess."

"The suburbs might as well be another country right now, Eric."

The bus slows. The sun has fallen to the point that everything is
shrouded in a murky black. Shapes move within the darkness, and the
glare of the fire throws a backdrop behind everything that silhouettes
buildings. I put one hand up against the window, trying to see, but I
can't make out much.

Nic leans over me, this time letting her body lie against mine. She is
soft and warm and all I can think of is Kate. Nic tries to see out the
window as well, to find out why in heaven's name we have slowed when
all we should be doing is running at full bore away from the interior,
away from Harrison, and she slips. Her hand falls to my side to catch
herself, hitting the gash there like a thousand pounds of red-hot
metal despite the fact that she weights about a tenth of that.

The pain is almost enough to knock me unconscious. I bite back a yell,
but not before the beginnings of it burst between my teeth. The world
really spins now, and I slump against the cold glass as sweat breaks
out on my forehead. Breathing becomes secondary, and I grit my teeth.
The implant kicks in, dulling the pain, but it lingers with me just
the same.

Nic pulls back like I've slapped her. "What? What is it?"

I take a deep breath, waiting. When I am fairly certain I'm not going
to pass out after all, I answer. "You weren't the first one to figure
out where I'm from."

She winces. "Did they hurt you?"

I almost laugh. Almost. Instead, I sit up and turn in my seat so that
she can see the blood-soaked bandages plastered to my side in an
effort to keep even more of the crimson fluid from making its way
outside of my body. "Some punk hit me with a knife when I wasn't
looking. By the time I got up, he was gone." I don't know if he ran or
if someone else got him, and I suspect I never will.

Nic's face draws tight, and she licks her lips. "I'm so sorry. Can I
help?" She reaches toward the wound, but her hand stops short.

"I got bandages on it, and antiseptic." I cringe, thinking of the burn
that gave me. "It should heal within a few hours. I doubt there's a
lot more we can do here, unless you happen to be carrying Vicodin in
your purse."

"No." Nic brushes a strand of pink hair out of her face again. "I
don't even have a purse."

I manage a smile. "Don't worry about it. When we get to the suburbs,
I'm sure I can get to Memorial." The hospital is all of two blocks
from my house, but who knows how close the bus will take us.

"If they haven't gotten there. To the suburbs, I mean."

"They won't."

We've come almost to a complete stop now, and I look out the window
again. Blinking red lights flash off the pavement, but other than that
I can't see anything. The police have been wiped out, so that leaves
only ambulances and fire trucks. Why we would stop for either I don't
know--they should be on their way farther in if they want to do any
good. Of course, maybe it's gotten so hot now that the crews would
only be attacked and unable to help regardless.

"Why were you inside?"

"The city?"

"Yeah." Nic looks down. "What made you want to come there, if you knew
what was going on? You could have just stayed in the suburbs and been
fine."

I lean my head back and close my eyes. The seat is firm and stiff, but
my mind drifts anyway. "The real truth of it, Nic, is that I was there
for someone who is already dead."

She hesitates for a moment. When she speaks, I can barely hear her. "Who?"

"My wife, Kate." I open my eyes and lace my fingers together in front
of me. "She had this idea a few years back that the people from
interior needed implants just as much as those of us from the outside,
whether they could afford them or not. Her father had some money, and
he fronted the cash to get the operation started. I work at
Davidson's, doing accounting, but Kate was down in the interior four
or five days a week, putting in the units themselves or helping people
adjust to them. She set up a shop on Maple--on the other side from the
liquor store those kids robbed."

I bite my lip hard, not even noticing I'm doing it until the pain
alerts me. "She died in a car accident, hit by a drunk driver on her
way home. It was too much for the implant to handle, and she didn't
even make it to the hospital." Nic opens her mouth, but I press on. "I
still go down there. The implants are easy to put in with the right
tools, so I've been doing what I can. I think she'd like it, you
know."

Nic reaches up and run her hand down my cheek. "I'm sure she would."

I nod back in the direction of the interior. "Looks like that is
permanently over, though. They burned the shop, just like they're
burning the rest of the city."

"Did they know you were trying to help?"

"They didn't care. That's the thing about mob mentality, Nic. They
started out just jumping people from the suburbs, outsiders, but there
weren't enough of us to sustain them. You saw it. By the time we got
out, they were killing each other just as quickly. Just to do it."

"It's insane."

"It is. When one person is insane, we lock them up. But when a whole
city loses its mind…" I raise my hands. "What can we do?"

The bus starts moving again, accelerating down the shoulder of the
road. I watch out the window as we pass the flashing lights. An
ambulance has flipped on its side in the center of the road, blocking
both lanes. The emergency lights are still going, though I can see no
one inside. From the look of the rear tires, someone took them out
with a shotgun. I hunch down a bit as we go by, waiting for that same
gun to be turned on us, but the person has moved on to bigger and
better things and no shots are fired in our direction.

For that, we have been lucky to say the least. I got on the bus by
chance, when it came around the corner and swerved up on the sidewalk
to avoid a pair of cars smashed together in the street. The driver saw
me, staggering out of an alley, and threw the door open. I'd given him
an implant a week ago--thus his choosing to drive the bus, with the
enhanced abilities. Where he got the bus I didn't ask, and he didn't
say. He just closed the door behind me and gunned the engine again
before I'd even found a seat.

"How much farther, do you think?" Nic spins a bracelet around her
wrist; I can hear it more than see it in the darkness.

"Six miles, no more."

"Will we make it?"

"I don't know."

Nic leans her head against my shoulder. Her arm presses against mine,
and I can feel her breathing. "Then lie to me."

"Would that help?"

She laughs. "I doubt it, but I'd give you credit for trying."

The hum of the tires drones on in the darkness. Every other
streetlight is broken, and I know we're still behind the front line of
the rioters. Those that have moved toward the suburbs like a pack of
wolves, anyway. Some are content without goals, content just to torch
their own homes, but the ones in front of us have an agenda. They have
revenge that needs to be taken. A warehouse sits off to the right, a
forerunner announcing the coming of the business district, and I can
see the shattered windows and broken doors even from the highway.
I wonder, for the first time, if leaving the interior was the right thing to do.

"It's just going to be worse, isn't it?" Nic's breath is warm on my face.

"Probably."

Her fingers slide between mine; her bracelet is cold against my own
wrist. "But the Guard will be there. The soldiers."

I squeeze her hand. "They will."

"Are you lying to me?"

I smile. "Maybe."

They say you never even hear the gun that kills you. Bullets travel
faster than sound, and you're dead before that wave reaches your ears.
Due to the shock value, the same is true of many things--like roadside
explosives--through I'd hoped never to find out in person.

The front end of the bus lifts off the ground, and for a moment it
feels like the bus is made of putty instead of metal. The back, where
I am sitting with Nic, stays level and continues onward with just a
slight jerk as the front heaves into the sky as if some giant hand has
come down and grabbed it. I hear nothing, yet, but am aware in an
instant of a bright glow somewhere below and in front of me, growing
rapidly. Then the back of the bus catches up to the rest, and the
world takes a final spin.

I don't have the presence of mind to scream, but Nic does. I can
hardly hear her over the roar tearing at my ears. It sounds like the
heart of a tornado. The mind works in strange ways in situations of
great danger, and I have time to think about a show I saw when I was a
kid, where a tornado tore up a house and sucked a little girl's father
into the clouds. I think about that man, slamming back into the
ground, and it dawns on me that the bus is about to do the same thing.

We hit hard. I fly forward and my head rebounds of the stitched
letters HHS. Nic crashes into my side as the bus rolls and propels us
both into the steel wall. Then she is gone, torn away from me, and the
window is too. Judging from the thunderstorm raging inside my head,
I'm the reason the glass broke. The implant reroutes the pain from my
nerves, dulling it just like the wound to my side. But it's being
taxed now, and the pain is still very present, very real.

The bus keeps rolling, over and over. I fall to the ceiling; ribs of
metal reach out to catch me. Then I'm back in my seat, only it's not
my seat, and the man who owned it before has disappeared. The air
smells like fire and brimstone, and I wonder if, at long last, I have
reached that end that priests taught me about as I grew up, that I
never really believed in.

When everything stops, I don't move. My mind fits the pieces
together--the homemade bomb that got us, the way the rioters from the
interior must even now be circling the bus like vultures over a fresh
corpse. Maybe, I tell myself, they will think I'm already dead. God
knows I should be.

Nic.

I sit up. The bus is on its side, and it's burning. I almost collapse,
but settle for keeling over and throwing up my lunch. The other
side--what is now the ceiling--is gone. People lay all around me,
covering each other and moaning. A women screams near the front and
won't stop. I crawl forward. Ahead of me, but close, I can hear
someone crying.

"Nic?" Each movement sends jolts of pain through my entire body. This
is the kind of thing that is supposed to happen far away, in another
country. Not anywhere near New York State; least of all in Harrison.
"Nic, where are you?"

"Right here." She heaves out another sob. "Eric, I can't feel my arms."

"Just stay still. You'll be fine."

"Okay."

I push on, accidentally stepping on someone who doesn't seem to
notice. I can hear footsteps outside now; the rioters moving in to
confirm their kill. I finally reach Nic after what feels like ages. I
pull her to me, even through it hurts.

"My arms. I can't feel them. Eric, I can't."

I run a hand down her arms, checking them. "You're all right. You're
just shaken up." The way she clings to me leaves no doubt that her
arms work.

She doesn't answer, but presses her face to my chest. Her nose is
running and each breath feels like spasm.

I hold her for a moment before speaking. "We have to get out of here."

"What?"

"We can't stay on the bus." Rioters or not, it is on fire and carrying
untold gallons of gasoline that could go off at any moment.

We make our way toward the emergency exit at the rear of the bus. It
hangs open on one hinge, mangled and warped with the glass broken out.
I climb out first and help Nic down after me. The grass is long and
unkempt, and we crawl away through it, glancing back over our
shoulders at the wreckage. I see shapes again, moving in the
night--moving toward us. I try to pull myself up as two of them draw
near, wondering if I can even get in one punch before I pass out.

The first figure trains a gun on my face and looks at the man next to
him. He is wearing a helmet, and I feel ice wrap itself around my gut.
"Looks like more of them, sir."

The second man nods sharply. "I'm surprised they lived through that."

"Yes, sir. What should we do with them?"

The man kneels, leaning close to me. "Who are you?"

I swallow. My throat burns from the smoke I've inhaled. "Eric Daniels.
I live on--" A fit of coughing overtakes me, and I can feel blood in
my throat.

The helmeted man laughs, harsh and humorless. "Maple? Highland? What
difference does it make? The way your people tore the city apart,
you're all crazy as far as I'm concerned."

Nic lifts her head, shivering. "No, it's not like that. You don't understand."

The man leans back. The fire from the bus lights up the American flag
on his shoulder, along with the stripes proclaiming his rank. "Oh, I
think I understand. As if we didn't beat down enough of you on foot,
now you're taking buses to the suburbs. Just so you can trash someone
else's property because you've got nothing else to do in your pathetic
lives." He stands and looks at the man with the gun. "Private?"

"Yes, sir."

"Lock them up, like the others. If they give you any trouble, feel
free to rough them up a bit. They need to learn that this kind of
behavior is unacceptable."

The man smiles behind his rifle. "Yes, sir."

The commander walks away, to where the rest of the National Guard
troops are pulling people from the bus. I try to stand. "Look, we're
not like them. We didn't do anything wrong."
The private flips his gun around. "Save it; my brother was one of
those police officers you killed. You're all the same." He draws the
gun back. "And I think you're giving me a bit more trouble than I care
for."

He drives the butt of the gun into my forehead, and the darkness
swells up to wrap itself around me. The last thing I see before I pass
out is Nic's hair, bright pink and stark black, falling into her eyes.