Part two

I stare in half horror, half amazement at the great, shambling mechanical behemoth; far out and dark against the orange of the horizon. As the dry, gray-scorched plains are largely flat, and the only units of reference are broken structural remains and occasional lumps of rock, it is difficult to gauge exactly how big the thing is, and how far away it might be.

Ahead, the road carries on: dead straight through these grim and dusty wastes. I squint, but there are no turns that I can see. It just goes on and on, then disappears into a fixed point far out across the desolation.

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Endless.

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I slump back down into my seat.

If I was a confident person, with more belief in my sense of humor, I might say: '*I don't think we're in Kansas anymore'*.

*…Would that be funny? …It might be.*

I decide to keep it to myself.

"What the hell are we going to do?" I murmur instead, glancing to Leah. The girl is looking over my shoulder, at the sleeping young woman still at the back of the bus.

"Do you think we should wake her up?" she asks me.

I follow her gaze. A curious and, what would under normal circumstances be an *irrational* fear takes hold of me.

"…What if we're in her dream?" I ask.

"What?"

"I mean, what if this is all in that girl's head? And, like, if we wake her up, then we cease to exist?"

Leah doesn't respond and I turn to her. She's looking at me with a raised eyebrow, and I flush.

"Well, I don't know!" I say defensively. "This whole thing is insane! It's a theory!"

"No, yeah… sure, okay I get it, I get it", Leah says. She's trying to be nice, but already I feel stupid for even suggesting it.

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The engine of the bus rumbles on. The vehicle hits a low pothole, a crack in the road perhaps, and a juddering thud rolls from the front to the back.

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The young woman remains asleep.

"…Do you think we even *could* wake her up?" I ask Leah, and the girl shrugs.

"We'll need to defend her if she won't. Do you have any magnets?"

"No", I reply automatically, and then… I pause.

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*Wait… What?*

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"I- What did you say, Leah? We'll need to… defend her..?"

Leah looks anxious, all of a sudden. I become aware of a slight tension between us that I had not noticed before.

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The wastes roll by beyond the windows.

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"I mean, yeah, like you defended me, I mean. In case anything happens", she says.

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I'm suddenly not so convinced anymore. I'm not so sure of this girl. "Magnets. You just asked me if I had any magnets? Why would I have a magnet?"

Leah bites her lip, but says nothing. Looking at me with an expression of guilt.

"Leah!" I say, frustration and fear rising, "do you *know* something about all this that I don't? Do you know what's going on here?"

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There is another long pause, but eventually the girl nods. "…Yeah", she says reluctantly. "Kinda. I do know just a little, I think. Please, don't hate me. I've just heard things".

"Heard things!? What's HAPPENING?" I ask, with a little more force than I meant to. "How did we get here? How did *I* get here!?"

"You have to be signed up", Leah replies quietly. "I think someone has to actually sign you up for the bus".

"Sign me up…" I repeat, taking this information in. "Who would do something like that? Who would do something so twisted?"

…But to be honest, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the potential list of people is actually quite long. Kids don't really like me at school, and again, I'm not sure why. I had no fixed friend group because I moved from across the country, so, that's a part of it, I guess.

I've spent so long staring at myself in the mirror. Trying to work out what's different... what it is specifically that sets me apart… But I just can't figure it out.

*…Whatever.*

There's one girl in particular. Her name's Courtney. I swear she enjoys bullying me. I don't understand. I just don't understand how you could feel good about making somebody else feel bad. Just thinking about her makes my blood boil. Would she do this? Would Courtney sign me up for something like this? How would she even know it existed? She wouldn't… Surely…?

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…Questions within questions.

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"Where are we, Leah?" I ask simply, already fighting back tears.

*I'm scared, okay? I hate this. I hate all of this.*

"I don't know", the girl replies. "Please, don't hate me. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you".

"It's not you", I reply. "I just-"

I am interrupted by a sudden noise. A loud, sharp buzz from the front of the bus. We jump in our seats and look up over the headrests.

Above the front window, at the very top by the ceiling, an orange light has flickered into life, and it casts an eerie glow over an already orange-tinted interior.

My heart starts to pound as a voice is played through the bus speakers. Leah meets my eye and she furrows her brow, cocking her head, but I can no better make out the words than she. It's just distorted, broken crackling. Like the voice they play on the subway, in New York, but ten times more indecipherable. The speech *might* have been clearer, once, but now it's just noise. Faded, disturbing noise.

…I think I can just about make out the word 'test', and I mention this to Leah, but that's all I can make out.

Then the voice cuts out entirely and we are left with just the quiet roar of the engine.

The light blinks off.

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…And we sit there in silence, for a minute or two.

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I'm about to suggest my first theory, but something out there in the wrecks of the plains catches my eye. I rise a little out of my seat in alarm and turn to the left, staring out into the unknown.

I see it again.

A quivering shadow. Darting from rock to ruin.

"Did you see that?" I ask Leah, and she replies anxiously that there are more on the other side of the road. I can hear the uncertainty in her voice.

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There are more of them on *this* side too. I see them. The shifting shadows.

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Too quick for me to focus on, they jump from place to place and race across the gristly flatlands; the dark plains that seem to extend as far as one can see in every direction.

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"Leah…" I begin, my voice rising. "You mentioned magnets, earlier. Magnets, you said".

"That's right", she replies, and I can hear the panic beneath her words too. She's looking from window to window, and moving herself away from the glass.

"…Why would I need a magnet?" I ask her, dreading the answer.

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"…Because apparently", she whispers, "they disrupt the machines".

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And with a sudden, metallic scream, one of the creeping shadows throws itself up from the edge of the wastes and slams hard with a crack into the nearest window.

Leah and I shout out in terror and jump chaotically away, eyes wide and staring, until a second of the things throws itself against another window, a little further to the right. My view of this one is still brief, but slightly better than the first. It was a picture of springs and gears, of rusted metal shards and ancient, stained and cracked pistons…

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" I shout.

"Oh my God", Leah murmurs, eyes darting from window to window. "I think this is it. I think this is them".

A shadow leaps from the side of the road and affixes itself to the front of the bus with the sound of crunching metal, and I get my best look so far through the grimy, dusty front window.

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Honestly, a part of me wishes I hadn't.

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I can feel the blood drain from my body. I let out a low gasp of dismay and I stagger as the bus bumps over another deep crack in the road.

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From head to torso the creature resembles a man made of rusted iron. It looks as if it were hastily constructed from the wreckage of a terrible accident; a being of mismatched parts and chains and metals. Its face is featureless, but for a sharp, black, gaping hole in the centre, revealing the ever-spinning and grinding gears inside.

From the torso down the creature splits into six, like a great crab, or spider, perhaps.

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It whirrs and shrieks, and starts to pound away at the glass with a rusty fist, adjusting the positions of its many legs as it does so.

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"LEAH!" *Oh my God*. "LEAH WHAT DO WE DO!?"

The girl is freaking out. She jumps into the aisle, then swivels to stare over my shoulder. I hear something smash against the back window, and the bus judders.

"LEAH!"

"Okay, fuck… There's a fire extinguisher in that glass box near the back. Go grab it. We can do this. We're going to be okay".

"Fire extinguisher?"

"Or ANYTHING! JUST GET THEM AWAY!" Leah shouts as she rushes to slam shut one of the bus's narrow windows, a quick attempt to stop a creeping mechanical hand with its terrible grasping fingers from pushing through.

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I run to the back of the bus, trying not to look at the machines as they hurl themselves at the vehicle, subtly rocking it from side to side as they do so. Most of them bounce right off, some of them crack the glass, and some of them stick. When they stick they scream through the windows and hammer away at the bus's walls with their fists.

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This is insane. As bizarre and as terrifying as my surroundings are, I still experience a little rush of thrill as I smash the safety glass with my elbow, in order to access the fire extinguisher. It's not something you normally expect yourself to ever do, really.

It's not too big, but it's heavier than it looks, and I haul it from its place on the wall with a grunt and into my arms.

…Just in time too.

One of the machines smashes through the side-back window with a shower of raining glass and reaches into the bus.

"STAY BACK!" I scream, and I slam the extinguisher forwards.

The creature's hand and forearm crumple and spark under my repeated assault.

Adrenaline pumping yet again, I keep going. With my teeth grit and sweat rolling down my back I slam the extinguisher into the creature's head, and it buckles under the stress, falling to the seats, and with a final hard slam I knock it back and out of the bus entirely. It throws out its still-working hand as it falls, but its fingers clasp on nothing, and it disappears from the window to crash down hard on the road as the bus races on through the scorched and sinister wasteland.

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I turn to look back down to the front of the bus. Leah has herself steadied by the headrests of two seats, kicking out at one of the machines as it tries to claw its way up through a smallish hole that has been torn in the floor.

I sprint past her to the front of the bus.

"DRIVER!" I shout, all anxiety towards this particular interaction now well and truly passed, "THE BUS- the bus… What are we… What are you..?" …but I don't even know what to say. What *should* I say? …He's still just driving.

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Driving and driving.

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As I'm deliberating, the metal arm of the one of the freaks smashes through the driver's side window. It makes to grab the wheel, but with this, the driver actually reacts.

He fights it off. Entirely dispassionately, and with that same surprising strength as before, he tears the arm of the machine right from its socket with a shower of sparks and rust, and the creature falls back out of sight, to be crunched up under the front wheel, and the driver unceremoniously drops the twitching limb to the floor, by my feet.

He didn't even look away from the road.

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…I glance down to his hands.

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Some of the driver's skin was torn away in his retaliation.

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…There's no blood, though.

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…And why would there be?

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…Because beneath his 'skin' is nothing but wires and cold, shining steel. A single spark flies from his exposed, mechanical knuckle. Then a second, and then a third.

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"Okay", I mutter out loud as my world collapses around me. As I am forced to rapidly adjust my senses of belief and rationality. "Okay. Fuck".

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"YAZ!" Leah shouts, and I turn. There's a trickle of blood down the aisle… Oh hell, is that mine? Am I bleeding?

"THE GIRL! PROTECT THE GIRL!"

And a rush of cold panic shivers from my stomach and all the way to my extremities. Leah's right, of course. The girl is entirely undefended. Alone and asleep at the back of the bus… The orange glow of the sky in her hair is lost behind the shadows of an encroaching machine. One that has jumped up and onto the rear of the vehicle.

…This one has eyes. Two dulled and many-cracked bulbs, shoved deep into its head. Like little lamps, the fixtures buzz and flicker. They scan the bus, and land on the young woman.

"Yaz!" Leah shouts, "grab her! QUICK!"

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And I try. Really, I do. Extinguisher still in my arms I sprint the length of the aisle, shielding my face from a shower of shattering glass, and I throw out a hand as I approach; "WAIT!" I shout, "STOP!" but my pleas go unanswered. I stumble to the girl's seat… but I am too late.

I can only watch in horror as she is scooped up and away in the arms of the machine. The mechanical terror disconnects itself from the vehicle and lands with a crunch and a cloud of dust on the cracked and unending road.

The machine lifts its head to look at me through those lamp-like eyes, and as the bus continues dutifully on along its ever-drive, the duo are left behind; as little more than fading figures, in the day's dusk.