Chapter 10 (part 2)

Evan breathed heavily and fought off a sickening few moments when he was afraid that he might actually start crying in front of this trio. When that moment came and went without the shedding of a single tear, Evan looked Lott squarely in the eye and did his best to explain his situation.

“I’m in the middle of a very screwed up drug deal,” he said. “My life was threatened earlier tonight because the men I work for tried to outwit the men I’m buying from.”

“If you’re buying drugs from around here,” Lott said, “you must be mixed up with the cocaine pushers, yes?”

Evan realized at once that Lott was trying to trip him up, hoping to catch him in another lie. “No,” Evan said. “Peyote. From a tribe somewhere south of here.”

He was delighted to see a flash of recognition in Lott’s face as he heard this. Lott knew that there was not a big cocaine supply out here and, Evan guessed, he was equally aware of the peyote peddling tribe.

“Continue,” Lott said, paying closer attention now.

“They sent someone for me tonight, thinking that I was responsible for trying to pull one over on them. When they realized that I was blind to what was happening to them, they still kept a gun on me and sent me on a little errand.” When he said this, Evan couldn’t help but smile in spite of the situation. “My God, that asshole had no clue what he was talking about.”

There were slight tremors in his voice as a result of the pain in his hand, but as he spoke about Sam, he didn’t care. If he could just have three seconds alone with him…there’d be much more than broken pinkies for Sam to fret about.

The puzzled looks on the faces of his three listeners made him want to stall the story as long as he could. But the insistent pain in his left hand proclaimed that to do so would not be wise. So Evan went on.

“They told me about this bus that had been spotted driving through the desert at night. They said that it was a suspected disguise for running drugs without being picked up by police or competing sellers. These guys thought that the people on the bus were stealing their business.”

“That makes no sense,” Lott said skeptically, although even as he said it, he began to realize where Evan’s story was going.

“Tell me about it,” Evan said. “But drug runners aren’t really known for being clever, now are they?” He paused here and then continued. “So they told me to flag down the bus, to get on and see what sort of things were going on. Tthey dropped me off in the middle of the desert and I did what they asked. And here I am.”

The two men opposite of Lott braced themselves, awaiting any instruction that Lott may give them. But when the last word had left his lips, Evan could tell that Lott didn’t doubt the story.

“So, this tribe knows about our bus?” Lott asked.

“Apparently,” Evan said. “And according to them, I think the local cops know about it, too.”

“The police have known about it for quite some time,” Lott said without much interest. “Tell me, Evan…this tribe and their competitors…they know about the bus and even knew when we would be out, but they have no idea what we do?”

Evan shrugged. “I guess not.”

He was terrified as to what sort of condition he might be in within the hour, but he also knew that in situations like this, it was best to keep your panic at bay and carry on such conversations as if they were as simple as a casual interview. He could feel his heart racing in his chest and still felt as if he could piss his pants as a result of his painfully snapped finger. But the will to live overruled all of that and he did what he thought might help him to get out of there with only a broken finger as a souvenir.

“But you know,” Lott said. “You’ve seen first-hand what we do. Have you not?”

Evan nodded slowly. He didn’t beg ignorance and he didn’t promise that he would never tell anyone. He simply nodded slowly and said, “Yeah, I saw.”

Lott thought this over for a moment and stared at one of the black candles for a good thirty seconds without speaking. As Lott sat there thinking, Evan wondered where the bus and all of the other passengers had gone.

“What else is there?” Lott finally asked. “What else have you seen? You were in the bathroom for quite some time. Did you see anything in there?”

The mere memory of the thing in the toilet made Evan shudder and once again, he told Lott what he wanted to hear as best as he could. “I don’t know what I saw in there, but I saw…I don’t know…I saw something.”

Lott actually chuckled at this. He drummed his fingers on the table again and then stood up slowly. “Well, Evan,” he said. “This is the first time we have been put into a situation like this, so I have no idea what needs to be done. Considering your occupation, I assume that you are good at keeping secrets. So, I suppose we could let you go, so long as you vow to never tell a soul.”

Evan said nothing. He knew that if he did, he would come off as desperate and maybe end up pulling one of Lott’s triggers. But even though Lott showed no signs of having decided his fate, Evan knew that he would not be let off with something as simple as a broken finger. The fact that Lott had claimed that the police knew about their activities made Evan wonder if he’d be safe even if Lott did let him go. If the local PD was in on this somehow, maybe Lott would let him go only to have him arrested or killed.

Evan thought of Max Young from the bar and found it hard to believe that he and his fellow officers could have a hand in all of this.

“I see only one way of solving this,” Lott said, slowly approaching Evan. “Despite what you saw me do tonight, I am not an unjust man. I believe that you have told me the truth, and that truth means that you had no ill intentions towards our group when you stopped the bus. I do not doubt that you are truly a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Evan said.

“If it were up to me,” Lott said, “I’d let you go and request that you never show your face in this part of the state again. But you see Evan, we serve a higher power here and it would be sinful for me to decide your fate. We will leave such decisions in more divine hands.”

Evan slowly began to register things as Lott spoke. The black candles, the talk of a higher power, the ritualistic style murders…Lott and his minions were part of some cult. And if the ungodly thing he had seen in the back of the bus was any indication, it was a cult that dabbled in some truly bizarre shit. The beheadings and the murders were nothing when compared to that monster. There was crazy and homicidal and then there was just plain evil.

“What divine hands?” Evan said. He didn’t care if he came off as afraid anymore.

“We’ll put you before His children, Evan. Only then can your fate be decided.” After Lott said this, the two men beside him stood up from their seats and chanted, “Amen.”

At that single word, Evan felt incredibly cold.

Evan couldn’t help but resist. He pushed himself away from the table but before he had a chance to move, Lott’s two henchmen were on him. He was once again put into that same sleeper hold and was jerked to his feet. As he was raised, his head began to ache again but he did not care. He struggled against them and even when he realized that his efforts were in vain, he kept fighting. His vision grew hazy and his head pounded like a drum. Through all of that, he could hear the chants from the three men that carried him away from the table and into the hallway that Lott had appeared out of.

They chanted in some foreign language that Evan did not understand and he was actually glad that he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He did his best to keep control of himself, to take in his surroundings and make sure he knew where they were taking him. While he knew his chances of escape were incredibly slim, it wouldn’t hurt to have an escape route planned.

Halfway down the dank and featureless hallway, the two men stopped pushing him along but still held their grip on him. Lott came from behind them and stood in front of Evan with a look on his face that could have very well been sincere sadness. Behind Lott, there was a single wooden door with two bolted locks on it. There was a strange marking in the center of the door that looked like some form of ancient hieroglyphics that had been crudely carved with a knife.

Lott chanted a prayer and then cupped Evan’s face in his hands. “Forever we are and forever we will be,” Lott said, “the seeds of His rule, his legacy.”

And with that, he removed a set of keys from his pocket and set to unlocking the pair of locks on the door. Lott unlocked them as if he was taking some sort of sexual pleasure away from the action of inserting the key into each lock. When both of the locks were undone, Lott slowly opened the door to reveal the other side.

There was only a set of ancient wooden stairs to be seen. Other than that, there was total darkness. Evan tried to push away from it but the two men that held him were far too strong. There was a single moment of relaxation when the bearded man removed his arm from around Evan’s neck, but this was quickly replaced by a sheer horror as he was pushed hard from behind.

Evan went tumbling down the stairs and into the darkness. There was a moment when he felt his shoulder hit a stair very hard and then, after several hard thumps and cartwheels, Evan came to rest on a hard dirt surface, landing on his broken finger as he did so.

He screamed out in pain, not caring how desperate he seemed to Lott now. He slowly raised his head up to look up the stairs, but all he saw was a slowly thinning beam of light as Lott and his partners closed the door on him.

Evan was left alone in the darkness with only the brief clicking sound of the locks being reset to keep him company.

And then, after a few tormenting moments of silence, there came the sound of something slithering around with him in the darkness.

Chapter 10 (part 1)

Evan sensed that he was being moved. He also felt something very cold on his head and something wet touching his mouth. His lips recognized the wetness as water and he opened his mouth to receive it. He gulped at it greedily and when he swallowed, his head began to ache. He heard a door close somewhere behind him and he instantly thought of the bathroom door on the bus. That recollection brought to mind the horrible creature he had seen pulling itself out of the toilet and he began to panic.

Evan opened his eyes but his vision was incredibly hazy. He tried to scream but as soon as he opened his mouth to do so, his head seemed to explode. He could vaguely remember being hit in the head, but that seemed like a dream right now. As his vision swam in and out, he could imagine several of those horrible toilet-monsters scurrying around him and that made his panic intensify.

He felt himself being lifted and then felt solid ground beneath his feet. “Walk,” said a smooth yet demanding voice from beside him.

He then felt a hand grab each one of his arms. He was carried forward by what he thought was two men. They assisted him with the first few steps but then Evan’s disoriented mind seemed to remember what walking was and how to do it.

His vision finally settled down and he was able to see a small house in front of him. It was actually more like a shack than a house, its construction no more inspired than a ten year-old’s clubhouse. There were two windows on the side that he faced, both of which were boarded up. It’s roof sloped down in a sharp triangle, the shingles peeling and falling off.

Behind this shack, there were three other similar structures. The four buildings seemed to be connected by crudely built walkways that were barely boarded over. The construction was flimsy at best, but the almost symmetrical sloppiness of the buildings and the walkways as a whole seemed abstract in the open spaces of the desert.

The two men to his side remained quiet. They stopped for a brief moment as they approached the shack so that the man to his right could open the front door. Evan looked at both men and recognized the one to his left as the bearded man that had spoke to him on the bus.

“Stop looking at me,” the man said. He gave Evan a slight shove towards the open door. “Go inside.”

Evan did so without struggling. He was a fighter at heart and would normally have refused to follow the bearded man’s orders. But it seemed useless to fight in that moment. His head hurt too badly and the pictures from the night that were zooming through his head seemed like a nightmare. He saw the beheadings again, saw the little monster-type thing in the toilet, saw the fat meaty leg sticking out in the aisle of the bus.

Inside, Evan looked around and saw that the shack consisted of a single large room that was lit by several candles and two kerosene lanterns. All of these light sources sat on an enormous table located in the center of the room; the light was so abundant that it was almost as bright as natural overhead light. Scattered around the table there were a few empty chairs and stools. In the farthest corner of the room there was a thin entryway that most likely led out to one of the connecting walkways.

“Take a seat,” the man to Evan’s right said, pointing to the large table. As he pointed with his right hand, his left hand drew a large knife from the waist of his pants. “If you go along with what we say, I won’t have to do anything nasty with this,” he told Evan.

Giving this man an awkward glance, Evan did as he was instructed. He took a seat at the head of the table, noticing for the first time that all of the candles that sat upon it were black. Uneasy with this, Evan looked back to the two men that had carried him in. They were also taking their own seats at the table, sitting at the sides a good distance away from him.

The sight of the black candles made Evan incredibly uneasy. Just what in the hell had he stumbled onto here? Certainly, it was something more than Sam’s crazy drug-trafficking theory.

Before he could give this any thought, he heard footfalls coming from the entry-way across the room. The sound of the footsteps carried as if coming from the depths of some amplified cavern, a sound that added to the ache in Evan’s head. He looked to the entryway, awaiting the source of the footfalls with dread.

The man that finally came through the doorway was frail and looked slightly underfed. His white hair was all over the place and unmistakable. Evan stared at the man and his heart sank. It was the man that had sat in the back of the bus…the man with the electric white hair and the axes…the man that had beheaded those people. The only difference in his appearance as he approached the table was that he was now wearing a shirt and he was not holding his axes. That, at least, put Evan a bit more at ease.

“Good evening, Evan,” the white-haired man said.

He reached into his back pants pocket and withdrew a wallet. He hefted it in his hand and gingerly tossed it onto the table in front of Evan. He then followed the wallet’s progress and took the seat to Evan’s right. He hunkered down calmly, as if he were about to discuss something trivial. He seemed incredibly relaxed and this somehow bothered Evan more than anything else. There were no signs at all that he had just killed four people in the desert.

Evan eyed the wallet on the table and recognized it at once as his own. He then looked stupidly at the thin white-haired man as if to ask a question that he did not yet have the words for.

“I apologize,” the man said. “We never have guests on our bus, so I felt it necessary to find out who you were.”

“Did you come to that decision before or after you had me brained with a crowbar?” Evan asked, not caring if he angered the man or not. The black candles and the memories of the beheadings from earlier led Evan to believe that he was doomed no matter what he did or said.

“Before,” the man answered without a trace of sarcasm. “We wanted to make sure you were an innocent and that you were not sent to snoop around in our activities.”

Evan didn’t respond right away. He looked from this man to the other two that had led him into this room. His original two captors stared in the direction of the thin man with much admiration. The flames from the black candles pasted an eerie wavering light onto their faces.

The thin man habitually ran a hand through his wild white hair and then offered the same hand to Evan. “Well, it’s not fair of me to know your name and not introduce myself, now is it?” he asked. “The name is Lott.”

Evan blinked in surprise at the gesture. “I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t want to shake your hand,” Evan said, looking at the man with as much hatred as his fear would allow.

“I suppose so,” Lott said, withdrawing the offered hand and smirking. Evan was surprised to see that he actually looked a bit hurt at Evan’s response. “I hope you know that we had to bring you here. I know that you saw what we do. I’m not really worried about that, though.”

Lott drummed his fingers on the table and then eyed Evan with suspicion. “What interests me,” Lott said, “is how you knew about us.”

“I told your driver what happened to me when I got on the bus,” Evan said.

“Yes you did,” Lott said. “However, my driver is not stupid, nor am I. So I’m going to give you five seconds to tell me what I want to know. So, I ask again, how do you know about us?”

Evan didn’t know what to do or what to say. But he knew that if he were to change his story, the punishment for his lie might be rather painful. He didn’t have to look back to the man with the knife to be reminded of the blade that was waiting to do him harm.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Evan replied. “I got jumped and I needed a ride.” As the words came out of his mouth, he was achingly aware of how paper thin they sounded.

Lott leaned back in his chair a bit, considering Evan’s explanation. A good ten seconds passed before he made any sort of reply. When he did, it was to his partners. He gave them a simple nod and before Evan was completely aware of what was happening, all three of the men were in motion towards him.

Lott got to him first and did nothing more than grab his left arm. While Evan began to struggle against this, the other two came to assist Lott. The man with the beard wrapped an arm around Evan’s neck and held him in a sleeper-hold position while the other one helped Lott with his left arm. Evan squirmed against the seemingly mammoth arm that was firmly planted around his neck, but there was no resistance. In fact, the harder he fought, the tighter the hold seemed to grow.

Evan knew within moments that he was helpless. So, hoping that it might pay off in the end, he simply stopped fighting. He relaxed against the man’s grip and allowed Lott and the other man to have his arm.

The man that had pulled the knife out moments ago placed Evan’s left arm on the table, securing it by the wrist. It was a peculiar thing to do and Evan found himself tensing up in anticipation of whatever might come next. As he tensed, the vice-like grip at his neck flexed and Evan found that if it grew much tighter, it would be very difficult to breathe.

With his arm on the table, secured even tighter now by Lott’s henchman, Lott took a firm grip on the top half of Evan’s pinky.

“I tried to give you a chance,” Lott said almost sympathetically.

He then pulled Evan’s pinky hard and to the right. Before he was aware of what Lott was doing, Evan heard and felt his finger snap in two. He screamed in the chair even though his throat was mostly closed off by the bearded man’s grip. He tried to fight away from his three tormentors but to no avail. He shuddered in pain and finally relaxed his back against the chair in defeat, breathing hard and grimacing from the pain. The scorching ache in his hand was excruciating, but he knew that he would have to look past it if he hoped to get out of here alive. And besides that, he did not want to sob or whimper in front of these men.

Gasping for breath and in horrendous pain, Evan looked down to his left hand once Lott released his pinky. The finger was hanging onto his hand at a sick slanted angle and it made Evan sick to his stomach to see it. He whimpered against the pain as the other man released his wrist but Evan did not bother attempting to get out of the chair. What would be the point? One of them had a knife and Evan knew that there were axes around here somewhere. He also knew what these assholes were capable of when armed with those axes.

“I hate doing things like that,” Lott said. “But you forced my hand.”

Evan bit the remark before it left his mouth, but he thought, Yeah, breaking fingers is a huge step down from cutting off people’s heads, you crazy fuck!

“Now, Evan,” Lott went on. “I’m going to give you another chance. And here’s how we’re going to do it. I’ll keep asking you and you can keep telling lies if you want. But the next time you lie, I won’t break any more fingers. I’ll simply cut that broken pinky off. And I’ll do that to all ten fingers until you tell us the truth. So save us the time and trouble and save yourself the use of your hands by being truthful.”

The maniac was still speaking calmly and in a soothing tone, as if he were explaining the alphabet to a preschool class. Evan cut his eyes at him, trying to use his anger as a means to control the fear and the warm flashes of pain that were slamming through his left hand and head.

Somehow, Evan got a few words out beyond his trembling lips. What he said was true, but he didn’t think it meant much to Lott and his two helpers. “The truth,” Evan said, “sounds even dumber than what I just told you.”

“It often does,” Lott replied with a smile. “I can tell when I’m being lied to, so as long as you tell me the truth, you’re in good shape.”

Evan found himself feeling more exposed and vulnerable when he noticed the bearded man looking at his broken finger with interest. Evan withdrew his hand from the table slowly and cradled it carefully in his lap, trying not to wince at the pain that flared through his hand as he moved it. He found himself wanting to hide his pain from these three; it wasn’t because it seemed the macho thing to do, but because he knew that they would take him more seriously if he made it through this interrogation without crying like a baby.

“The truth, Evan,” Lott said. “Quickly, or we’ll cut that finger off.”

Chapter 9 (part 2)

Five minutes into his ride, Max almost wrecked.

He had kept a check on the terrain pretty frequently but had somehow missed a small washed out spot on the desert floor. The hole was no more than six inches deep and maybe a foot across, but when he hit it, he had no idea it was coming. The slight jolt of the bike took him by surprise and he nearly took a nasty spill. Not only that, but in fighting to regain control of the bike, his thumb had somehow hit the switch to cut on the headlight.

He snapped the light off immediately and then corrected the balance of the bike. With his heart hammering in his chest, he checked the terrain with the binoculars again and saw that he had smooth sailing for quite a way. And even though he could not see the bus, he could see the faint trail of dust that it was kicking up. The dirt of the desert was so hard packed that the dust cloud was nearly nonexistent, but it was there. He had to use this faint cloud as his tracking measure because, as on previous nights, the driver of the bus had killed the headlights.

He wondered if he had been seen in the brief moment when his headlight had come on. He was pretty sure no one on the bus had seen him, but Max knew that there were others out here that would get suspicious if they found him.

He knew that there were a few men cruising along the highway, looking for the bus. They were members of a drug cartel that Max knew only as The Tribe. It was the same group that he had discussed briefly with the young man at the bar earlier in the evening.

Thinking of that young man made him think of the two fighting elderly men, particularly the one that had killed himself several hours ago. And then, of course, there had been the unheard of shooting of a police officer by another officer. It had all been so unreal, like something out of a really bad movie. Max had barely known the old man, but he had known both of the officers very well. The shooting had made absolutely so sense at all.

It had certainly been a fucked up day.

But Max had almost been expecting it. The unexplainable violence in Shinoe, the bus and the beheadings…he’d been piecing it all together for a while now. They were both very odd pieces to a puzzle that he had been obsessed with for a few years now.

His thoughts returned to The Tribe and when he thought of them and the behind-the-back deals they had with the Shinoe police department, it both shamed and angered Max. He was in on it just like the rest of them and he was getting the same benefits as everyone else. He was just as guilty as all of the others. But on a day when an officer was shot for no apparent reason by another cop, one was forced to put things into perspective. Illegal dealings with drug runners seemed twice as bad and twice as unnecessary on a day like this.

Max forced himself to stop thinking about it. All he knew was that if one of those assholes from The Tribe found him out tonight, there would be a very intricate mess. How would he explain himself?

The Tribe thought that the bus was a clever tool being used by a competing cartel, but Max knew otherwise. Max knew what was really going on with that bus, but he could never tell anyone. He had his own demons to keep at bay and he could not do away with them until he knew everything about the bus, its occupants, and the reasons behind their actions.

But to Max’s knowledge, The Tribe and a few outside people were the only ones who knew about the bus and its peculiar and seemingly randomly timed routes. The idea that they were a competing drug circuit was a simple stupid assumption that had misled the Tribe. For all Max cared, they could go on thinking that one of their competitors was running drugs on the bus. It was an excellent cover story for what was really happening.

That false assumption had given him plenty of time to hunt them down and study them. It had given him this chance, this very night, to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

But what if The Tribe found out that he knew about the bus? Then he’d have to either go along with their fabricated drug-running story or tell them what was really going on. If this were to happen, he’d basically be putting the entire police department on the chopping block. And if he did that, he would be admitting that he had knowledge of kidnappings and murders over the last two and half years and had told no one. He’d also be getting the Shinoe police is one huge heap of trouble because they knew what really occurred on that bus, too. They knew what Max knew.

But they didn’t know that Max was tied to that bus and its passengers in a way that they would never understand.

Max checked the lay of the land once more with his binoculars and swerved slightly to the left to avoid a boulder the size of a medicine ball. Through the binoculars, he could see that he was getting a little too close to the bus, so he let off of the gas a bit and slowed the bike considerably.

He wondered what the deal was with the man that they had pulled off of the bus after the beheadings. He also wondered what they did with the bodies after every one of their barbaric beheading sessions. He was pretty sure that he knew; he had heard rumors, but he wasn’t gullible enough to believe them.

Perhaps more importantly, he wondered what it was inside of him that justified keeping his knowledge of the bus and the people on it a secret. True, the entire police department was in on it, too. But surely Max could take the matter in secret to the FBI. Still, the reasons he had for hiding what he knew would be justifiable to almost anyone. But being able to watch this demented group do what they did was unnerving. At times, it made Max wonder if there was truly something wrong with him.

But he had his reasons.

And that was more than enough for him to be out here tonight, chasing after a bus that no one knew about, following it to an unknown destination. His hope was that when he arrived there, he would find some answers and a way to close the door on a very dark chapter of his life.

Chapter 9 (part 1)

Max Young was lying on the desert floor with a pair of night-vision binoculars cupped in his hands. He held the binoculars to his face and lifted his upper body slightly by digging his elbows into the dirt. He gazed into the lenses and let his eyes become adjusted to the bright lime green images the night-vision showed him.

He watched for five minutes as the bizarre events unfolded. He saw the men in blindfolds crouch on the ground and then watched as they were beheaded without mercy. This was nothing new to Max; he had seen the entire act carried out four times before tonight.

He knew the routines of these people. After the beheadings, two vans would come from somewhere else out in the desert and take the bodies away. Then the others would pile back up onto the bus, drive further into the desert and eventually cut the headlights off.

It was at this point that Max had always lost them. But tonight was different. First of all, he had purchased the night-vision binoculars from a highly illegal internet site. It had been a risky venture mainly because he was a member of law enforcement. But if he was able to track these lunatics down, he wouldn’t care if he lost his job.

Hell, he wouldn’t even care if he did jail time for it. He had his own reasons for taking such a risk. These were the same reasons that had essentially placed him on the Shinoe police department in the first place.

Another change in the group’s activity tonight was the fact that after the beheadings, something new had taken place. Whatever it had been, Max could tell by their actions that it was being improvised and had not been expected. Max watched as several members of the group boarded the bus while the remainder of them stayed outside. Moments later they had come off of the bus, carrying a struggling man overhead. This man was then thrown to the ground and whacked across the head. The fact that this man was not beheaded was puzzling to Max because the maniacs on the bus were usually very ritualistic in their killings.

Why had things changed tonight? he wondered.

Max continued to watch as two vans with their headlights turned off drove up from the west. Two men got out of each van and then the beheaded bodies were loaded into the back of one of the vans. With the bodies loaded, this van headed back the way it had come while the other one stayed behind. There was a brief discussion between the leader and a few of the other members. They stood around the fallen man that had been pulled from the bus, as if discussing what the unfortunate fellow’s fate would be.

In the end, they had placed this man in the back of the second van. Max was a good two hundred yards away from the area, so he could not tell if the man was dead or not. He assumed that he was still alive because if the maniacs had have wanted him dead, they would have probably swiped his head off, too.

Max remained still and quiet on the desert floor, making sure not to move at all until the killers had boarded the bus again. As had been the case on the other nights Max had spied on them, the leader that carried the axes got into the remaining van rather than the bus. Max had no idea why things were carried out in such a manner, but it was exactly how they had always done it.

As the killers finished up things, Max found himself wrestling with guilt. He had watched this twice times—three times including tonight—and, as a result of his private investigation, at least fifteen people had been beheaded. But Max knew that if he sprung out at them before he knew their exact intensions, the last two years of his life would be wasted.

Maybe tonight, he’d finally be able to find them. Something in the air felt different tonight, something he couldn’t place. Maybe the cult’s ritualistic killings came to an end tonight.
Tonight, maybe Max would get his revenge.

He remained on the ground until he saw the bus’s lights came on. Once Max could tell that the bus was in motion, he got to his feet. He studied the bus for a while longer through the binoculars, making sure he knew which direction it was headed. When he had a general idea of its course, he removed the binoculars from his eyes and began to run in the opposite direction.

About twenty yards behind him, he had parked a dirt bike. It was a sleek black color that was just about impossible to see in the dead of the night. He had purchased it a week ago from a dealership that had customized the bike so that it was exceptionally quiet. The muffler subdued almost all sounds from the exhaust and the engine purred like a kitten. It had gotten him out here unseen and unheard so far, but the next stage of his pursuit would be the toughest.

He adjusted the gun holster that he wore on his hip so that it would be comfortable while he rode. Comfort would be key in the following pursuit; he wouldn’t be able to use his headlight because it increased his chances of being spotted by a ridiculous measure. Instead, he’d have to creep far behind the bus, using the night-vision binoculars very frequently. Not only did he have to keep up with the bus, but he also had to keep an eye out for any rocks, shallow ravines or other obstructions in his path.

Taking a deep breath, Max cranked the dirt bike to life. He took a final quick glance with the binoculars, then kicked the bike into gear and followed after the bus. He’d been after that bus for a damned long time now and by God, tonight he would find out where these lunatics were hiding out.

Chapter 8 (part 3)

The bathroom was terribly hot and the smell of piss was almost sickening. But Evan looked past those things right away, sure that within a matter of seconds, the five men on the outside would start hammering away on the door and eventually break it down. He could imagine the tire iron beating dents into the door but the scarier thought was the blade of the skinny man’s axe splitting through the door as if swung by Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

The small square that served as the restroom was no more than six feet wide and Evan suddenly felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He looked around the small space as he heard the footfalls of the passengers getting closer. A small mirror hanging over an even smaller sink and the silver-colored toilet were the only features in the room. The toilet lid was up and the hole in the center of its base looked impossibly black.

As disgusting as he knew it was, he could not take his eyes away from the toilet. The hole where countless passengers had sat to take care of business seemed like a desolate black hole that had floated down from the depths of space, landing here next to him, in this charter bus bathroom with its sticky floors and reeking of piss, with death marching towards him on the other side of the door.

The hammering on the door began and at first the attacks seemed much louder than they actually were. Each strike absorbed into the small confines of the restroom and seemed to resonate in Evan’s head. He flinched back against the wall and jostled the entire bathroom a bit. He once again looked to the toilet, not sure why his eyes kept returning to it.

This time when he looked at it, something was different. There was something inside of it, moving around.

As Evan watched in disgust, something splashed from within the murky water. Following the splash there was a smell that was mostly pure sewage. There was another putrid smell as well but Evan could not place it, nor did he want to.

His nostrils seemed to singe and he felt his stomach lurch. He gagged and did everything he could not to vomit. Inside the toilet, the unseen thing splashed again.

From outside, something hit the door hard and for a terrifying moment, Evan was sure that the force of it would cause the bus to fall over onto its side. The door was dented and it buckled in its frame with the force of the strike. There was a heavy creaking sound as one of the hinges gave way. Evan let out a weak scream, one that he was ashamed of, one that he didn’t want the maniacs outside to hear, but one that he could not contain.

To his left, the water in the toilet continued to splash. Evan glanced over and for a moment the lunatic part of his mind crept into play and instantly thought of Mr. Hanky, the talking turd from South Park.

But Evan clearly saw something come out of the water and slap the side of toilet’s rim. It was slick and light green in color, covered in sludge and muddy grime. Evan blinked against what he saw but there was no denying that it was an appendage of some sort, an appendage with horrid speed and fluid movements.

As he continued to watch, two more of these things came out of the toilet, one of them clinging tightly to the rim. There were no fingers, nothing to grip with, but it wrapped itself around the edge of the toilet with an eerie speed and strength. Evan was sure that all of these tentacle-like appendages were from the same source rather than individual creatures. He tried to imagine the torso and head of such a creature but could not wrap his mind around it.

Suddenly, he found himself wanting to tear the door off and let the passengers have him. He began to whimper and somewhere in his head, he could feel something like a cold drop of water sliding around. He wondered if this was the feeling of having his sanity slip away.

Another tremendous thud sounded out in the bus as something or someone else banged at the door. This time it was a rather metallic sound and Evan once again remembered the man with the tire iron loading up onto the bus as he had retreated into the bathroom.

The door gave a few inches and Evan could now see through the widening crack between the door and its frame. The five people that had originally come into the bus for him had been joined by others. Their eyes looked cold, and insane; the totally blank slates of their faces only added to this appearance.

A louder splashing sound from the toilet drew his attention away from this crowd. This time when he looked over, he saw the slight spherical top of a shiny dome breaking the water. It was dented and had small pucker marks on it, covered in the same slimy residue that clung to the tentacles. As the form broke the water, it made a hideous gurgling sound.

Another thud came from outside. This one freed the door from the frame and there was a moment where Evan felt relieved. He closed his eyes and sank against the bathroom wall, waiting for the coming violence. He waited to see what would take him first: the rough onslaught of human hands or the gruesome caress of that thing in the toilet. As he sank to the floor, he could still hear it splashing around and gurgling.

A pair of human hands fell on his shoulder and jerked him out of the bathroom. Ignoring his better judgment, Evan opened his eyes as he was thrown over a large man’s shoulder as if he weighed no more than a pillow. He didn’t bother fighting. At that moment, it didn’t even seem worth it.

He looked back into the restroom as he was carried away. The domed shape now peered over the toilet’s rim, having pulled itself up by several of the tentacle things. The dome shape was, of course, a head.

It stared out at the commotion as if eager to participate. It looked at the skirmish with five insect-like black eyes on a head that looked almost human and infantile. It cried out in a weak protest and then sank back down into the drain from which it had come.

Sorry, Evan thought mildly and from some far away place within his head. But you lose, my shit-smeared friend.

Evan wasn’t aware of too much after that. He was vaguely aware that he was being carried forward by a series of hands and arms, being carried in the air, over the heads of the passengers. He felt a slight jostling sensation as they carried him down the bus steps and then the next thing he knew, he had the wind knocked out of him as he was thrown to the hard desert ground.

Evan rolled onto his back, looking straight up into the night sky and gasping for breath. The crisp desert air was a blessing to his nose and head but the sight of the approaching group of people surrounding him sent him back into the void of unreality that he had been swimming in since witnessing that first appendage surface through the water in the toilet.

He was vaguely aware that the man with the crowbar was standing closest to him. Behind this man stood the white haired man in the army pants, still holding his axes. Far off behind them, Evan thought he could see twin sets of headlights floating out in the distance.

The man with the tire iron approached him and raised his arm. Evan watched as his arm came down, the tire iron quickly catching the glare of the bus’s headlights. The iron struck Evan squarely on the side of the head.

Evan heard the thunk of the iron against his skull and then felt the momentary rush of blood pouring from his head.Then he closed his eyes and felt nothing.

Chapter 8 (part 2)

Evan watched in horror, expecting much more gruesome results than what he saw. With the axes planted squarely in each side of his neck, the victim convulsed twice and then went limp. If there was time to scream, the axe blades apparently blocked the man’s windpipe because he died without making a sound.

Even when the skinny man with white hair pulled the axes away, there really wasn’t a lot of blood.

It was watching the man drop to the ground and seeing his head roll away that almost caused Evan to scream. Seeing the act of murder in such a brutal and odd fashion had not quite pushed him to terror, but seeing a human head rolling away from its body across a barren desert and illuminated by headlights had certainly done the trick.

Evan threw a hand to his mouth and it covered the little bit of scream that his voice mustered up before he forced his throat to close.

He watched as the same act was carried out on the other three men. The method was never the same, though. The second man caught the same motions—the blades crisscrossed in the air to fall down and eventually meet one another in the center of his neck—and then fell in almost perfect alignment with the first victim. The third and fourth men were treated to simple swinging motions, as if their heads were no more than the trunks of trees. With graceful but forceful swings, the skinny man lopped their heads off cleanly, as neatly as he might cut firewood.

The fourth man bled quite a bit, and it was the sight of all of the blood that finally made Evan step back from the windshield. He watched as the skinny man walked past the recently murdered as if they weren’t even there. He approached the man with the ZZ Top beard that had come back to speak to Evan before his nap. The bearded man nodded and then turned to speak to a few of the others.

Their circle now began to break up. Some of them went to the dead, pulling gloves onto their hands as they approached the bodies. The rest of them—at least a dozen—turned towards the bus.

Inside the bus, Evan froze. He knew it wasn’t possible, but he felt like all of their eyes were on him. From where they stood, they probably couldn’t even see him. But they knew that he was there.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Evan breathed to himself.

His occupation had sent him headfirst into several situations where his survival instincts were his only way out, but never anything like this. Still, it was those experiences that helped his knees to unlock, to start to let his mind see beyond the panic and fear and into his logical, fight-or-flight rationale.

He had to run. He had no idea where they were in the desert, but it was his only way out. He started for the door but saw that he had apparently frozen longer than he thought because the horde was already at the front of the bus. If he ran for the door, they’d easily cut him off.

He was trapped.

With no other options, Evan remembered the far back row of the bus, the row where the man with the axes had sat. Evan recalled the small enclosed cubicle of a restroom that had been back there and his legs instantly began to carry him in that direction. As far as ideas went, it sucked. But he’d be damned if he’d just stand there in the aisle and let them take him without a fight.
Evan heard the first footfall on the bus steps. As if that single footfall were the sounding shot to start a race, Evan quickened his pace and bolted for the back of the bus.

He never took his eyes off of the plastic-looking door of the restroom as he made his way to the back. Without bothering to look back even once, he grabbed the door handle and pulled. The door swung open so easily that Evan almost fell backwards into the row of seats that the skinny white haired man had occupied. But his senses were at full alert and he kept his balance with ease. As he entered the restroom, he finally glanced back before shutting the door.

There were five people marching slowly down the aisle towards him. One of them had a tire iron in his grip and while the rest were unarmed, they still looked sinister, all of their faces gaunt and zombie-like.

Evan practically fell into the restroom. He slammed the door behind him and set the lock. With his back resting against the wall, he finally allowed himself to scream.

Chapter 8 (part 1)

Evan was still sitting motionless in his seat when the man with the axes had made his way down the stairs and off of the bus. His hands were clenched tightly at his sides and his head felt like it would float off of his head. From outside, he could hear a hard clasping sound, followed by a few metallic clicks and clanks. This was followed by a slight scuffling noise, during which Evan could feel the bus move a bit.

He realized that what he was hearing and feeling was the luggage compartment on the side of the bus being opened and looked into. But as he pieced this together, another question came to mind: had he simply been overlooked during the unboarding process or had he been left behind on purpose?

The slight rocking of the bus continued, accompanied by a few more metallic clanging sounds and what sounded like muffled voices and grunts. Evan looked to the aisle once more and saw that it was still completely empty. He tried to slowly get to his feet but his legs were shaking and would not cooperate. He stood up anyway, bracing himself with the seat in front of him. He stepped into the aisle and walked a few steps forward.

The overhead lights were still at their brightest peak and when Evan tried to once again look out of the windows, he could see nothing more than the tint of the windows and the glare of the interior lights. As he walked, he noticed that the engine was still idling, something that he had not realized at first due to the rampaging thoughts in his head and the fact that his breath now seemed to be far too loud.

As he took another step, there was a loud metallic slamming sound from outside. The bus rocked a bit and Evan placed the noise to be the closing off the luggage compartment.

Evan froze where he was for a moment, ready to dive into the nearest row of seats when he heard the first footfalls on the entrance steps of the bus. He waited a few moments but the sound never came. Feeling somewhat sure that it was safe to do so, Evan headed forward again. He looked to the front of the bus and saw that the driver had also stepped off. Not only that, but he could tell by the dull glow in the front windshield that the bus’s headlights were still on.

Keeping his eyes on the shine of the headlights through the windshield, Evan walked further down the aisle. He listened closely for any kind of voices from outside but heard nothing.

When he reached the front of the bus, he was a bit tentative. The door stood open and when he peeked over the small enclosure that separated the steps from the bus, the opened door showed only a small area of hardpan dirt. He looked from this to the windshield. He was close enough so that he could now make out what lay in front of the bus and although he wanted to look outside, another part of him was afraid to do so. But, as it always was in Evan’s case, his curiosity was the stronger part of him and he found himself at the windshield, looking out.

The tint of the windshield was obviously not as dark as the passenger windows. This, accompanied by the spotlight that the headlights cast, gave Evan a clear view of his surroundings. He saw that one of his theories had been correct, but this did not ease his mind at all.

At some point during his sleep, the bus had turned off of the main road and had trekked back into the desert. To all sides, as far as the headlights cut through the night, there were no roads to be seen. All there was to see was the large group of people that stood about twenty feet in front of the bus.

The group consisted of all twenty-four heads Evan had counted earlier. In the midst of the group, Evan easily spotted the obese man. He was waddling around as if drunk, with no particular destination in mind, weaving in and out of the people that were around him. Actually, they were all weaving around one another, huddled together as if coming up with a fourth quarter play that would win the game. They stood in a tight group and as Evan spied on them from the bus, he also spotted the biker type with the long grey beard. He could also see the driver among them. He looked closely for the Christopher Lloyd zombie but saw him nowhere.

Seconds later, he discovered why he had been hard to locate.

Eventually, the crowd separated a bit and within the center of the group stood the frail man with the axes.

The crowd began to distance themselves from one another, walking backwards but looking forward the entire time. As they walked away from one another, Evan noticed that they were spreading out into a circle. He watched with a knowing fear in his guts, feeling as if he were about to watch some demented marching band or flag core do a grotesque march.

As they effortlessly walked backwards and made their circle, Evan’s eyes went back to the zombie-like man with white hair. From this distance and through the windshield, his axes looked like extensions of his arms. He still stood in the middle of the circle, looking towards the sky. As he looked upwards, he carried the axes in that direction, holding them up over his head and making a perfect X with them in the air.

Sitting on the ground around him were four human figures, wrapped in what looked to be torn burlap sacks. The sacks started at their necks and covered their bodies to the knees. Their heads were exposed but they had all been gagged and blindfolded. Their arms were tied behind their backs and their legs were bound with thick strands of rope.

They fought helplessly but were unable to move. Evan watched as one—a bald man with a large cut on his head—fought to the point of toppling over, his face landing hard in the dirt.

Evan was pretty sure that these people were what had been taken out of the luggage compartment while he had still cowered in the bus. As he watched all of this unfold, he was suddenly very sure of what was about to happen, yet he could not tear his eyes away from it. Set in the exact center of the headlights’ glare, the whole act seemed like a play acted out by drugged performers.

The shirtless man with the axes looked down from the sky. He said something that Evan could not quite hear clearly from the bus. Whatever it was that he said caused a man to step out of the crowd of twenty-three people. This man was dressed in coveralls and boots, and he carried a large knife in his right hand.

He slowly approached one of the bound figures, walking directly in front of them so that he was almost exactly face to face with the shirtless man with the axes. The man in the overalls used his knife to make a very quick and shallow cut along the victim’s forehead. He said something and then advanced to the next figure where he performed the same act.

He placed this incision on all four of the bound people’s heads. From what Evan could tell, all of the bound were males. By the time the cuts had been made to their heads, their weak fighting and protests had stopped, as if they knew that it was useless. The fourth cut to be made was on the head of the bald man that had toppled over and when he was set back up by the man in coveralls, his fighting spirit was apparently drained.

The man in the coveralls said something else which also went unheard by Evan. He could see their mouths move, but could not hear anything clearly. He watched as this man backed away from the bound victims, reclaiming his place in the circular form the group had made.

Three second passed and then the skinny man with the axes spoke again. Whatever he said drew a unanimous reply from those around him. The reply was so loud and in unison that Evan could actually hear it, although it was apparently a foreign language. To Evan, it sounded like “Bainada.”

With that reply, the skinny man turned slightly to his right. Without any warning and with a speed that Evan’s eyes almost couldn’t keep up with, he brought both axes down in arched, swooping motions. Both blades met one another and would have made a nice clanging noise if they had not been slowed by the thickness of the neck into which they were driven...