Chapter 123: [40] Close Encounters of the Bus Kind 40 [From Beyond Arc]

Close Encounters of the Bus Kind

[40]

With the main lights in the hallway T-junction still shorted out, the group decided to take the long way round the lot with patches of pristine desert and cacti to be carefully avoided in the low, evening light. Since there were no lights right on them, Leslie actually hovered about fifteen feet in the air with rolls and loops. Her balletic display was traced in the shadow and the faint spill of phone flashlights as they trekked to the other end of the complex. Eva had recovered the flashlight and the nylon rope.

Compared to yesterday with her tears, Nadia was happy to hear Leslie letting out a few happy giggles. She made some motions like she was swimming and then a couple with her arms playfully outstretched. After swinging back around, she dipped down and asked, “Anyone want to try flying with me?”

She explained, “I was lifting some weights earlier for regular strength training and I was trying to figure out if they affected my ability to fly at all. The heaviest thing I’ve carried with me has just been what I’m wearing. That doesn’t affect anything… But it did make me wonder… what if Superman was a nudist. Not that I’m Superman or super strong or anything, like Thessaly, that was just where my head went. Sorry... digressing.”

She took a moment to squeeze her hands behind her and reposition herself in the air. It was hard to see her face, but she seemed slightly embarrassed as she continued, “In the air, I can easily take my purse. No trouble. I experimented and it seems like flying and lifting are separate things. It’s kind of the same as if I were just standing on the ground and picked something up. So, I was thinking, back in junior high I actually spent a lot of time cheerleading, and I could hold people up easily. So, I think I could fly with someone… I kind of said a lot that I didn’t need to. But anyone want to try?“

Gina was easily the most adventurous and bounded over uncertain gravel and dirt to try out this new ride. Eva warned them immediately about the conditions and invoked how a tiny drop could result in grievous injury. Gina agreed on this point but still wanted to be lifted up in the air. Everyone focused their phone lights not directly on them but around them to help them see.

To everyone’s surprise, holding onto Gina did not require lifting. As soon as the two girls had their arms entwined and gripped, it was like they shared the same properties, as though Gina had flight powers same as Leslie. An even more interesting discovery was that when Leslie let go of Gina, she didn’t immediately lose this state. She no longer flew, but instead of dropping immediately to the ground she went into a slow hover and settled back gently. The joyful shimmer in Leslie‘s gaze was evident even in the dark of the desert.

They each took turns holding onto Leslie as they floated along. Erin actually teared up at one point and Leslie gave Coach a quick hug. Nadia had no idea how she could even describe the sensation of barreling through the air. It was terrifying in the first moments to just be floating with someone’s arm gripping yours. It was less substantial than the swing seats she remembered from Knotts Berry Farm as a kid.

Those were some of the nicest times with family. They would take an eight-hour trip and then drive along the West Coast for more than a week. He hated the feeling but still internally celebrated it and later fed it with off-road driving. But that was Paul.

Nadia focused on the sense of exhilaration, of being free to move around the air in ways that only astronauts and people riding NASA’s Vomit Comet managed. Only it didn’t feel like she was constantly falling. It felt like she had turned off her sense of gravity while still being able to move in the direction she wanted. Perhaps there was nothing else like it. And she felt immensely honored to be able to experience it.

When Leslie finally released her to settle back to Earth, she felt a pang of jealousy about the hesitant Eva. It took a good while before Eva‘s tense and nervous body language finally fell away and she glided with wide-eyed curiosity through the desert night with Leslie as her escort.

In this fledgling flight fashion, they circled around to the far side of the lockup. The actual challenge of getting into it seemed equivalent to having brought a supercomputer to take on a basic math equation. They had so many options. Gina flexed her fingers in anticipation of seeing if she could knock out the electrical system. Erin aimed her telekinesis at the lock. Eva pondered whether inanimate objects might respond to her commands. Leslie hovered safely above the barbed wire. And Nadia just wanted to fly through the air again.

Ultimately, it was all of the above, as Gina managed to shut down the power by holding out her hand. She marveled at the luminescent sparks and pondered whether she would supercharge her phone or just short it out. Erin had to strain for several seconds but was able to manipulate her telekinesis in several directions to delicately unlock the main gate. As an afterthought, Leslie slipped over the top of the fence and greeted the girls on the other side. All the while, Nadia couldn’t shake the notion that these were all enhancements and accelerations of everyone’s abilities.

Just yesterday, Erin barely managed to stop that tile from wounding her. She forced the memory of what she saw in the bathroom out of her head. And Gina was barely able to make a phone battery tick back up and now here she was shorting out electrical systems. And whatever Leslie was doing with flight also seemed like an enhancement. Even though Eva hadn’t demonstrated her abilities recently, Nadia had a hunch that they would be more substantial the next time.

Beyond was right. Just by being around these girls, she was doing something to their abilities. It made perfect sense. She had warned the woman she loved about this, but she reacted more like a teenage rebel. Eva would probably have a much more subdued and wise reaction, but it took a lot to just tell Erin. It took the terror of seeing her bleeding to death in a version of yesterday that never happened. She hoped… never happened.

They all looked at Nadia and it took her a moment to realize they were looking because she locked up the bus. Erin and Tonya were also present, but she took it the last few feet.

There were a lot of them, they were tightly packed, and this cluster was decorated identically. More had come in on Saturday and Sunday, which changed the entire landscape of where Tonya and she dropped it off. She had a decent spatial awareness of where the bus should’ve been in relation to vague landmarks.

“What’s that?” Gina sharply whispered. Everyone froze. A droning, incessant buzz from one of the distant floodlights filled the air but no other sounds emerged. Gina quietly explained that she heard a scuffing sound, much like when that entity did its creepy walk after them. Eva tensed up and scanned all around with a furrowed brow. No shadowy figures, but the buses felt like a strange artificial forest blocking out but also trapping sound. The sounds of their shoes as they turned and looked around felt magnified.

No unexpected noises caught their ears. Leslie offered to scope out the area but Eva vigorously rejected that. Nadia swallowed and crept between the rows of buses, looking for the specific number Paul had been assigned. After several false alarms, she found 6090.

The doors at the front had been additionally sealed but she tried the emergency access on the side. Typically, this worked as an easy way to get back in when the bus was idle. She flipped the cover and pulled on the handle while depressing the button. Naturally, for security purposes, it didn’t pop open. Before they moved on to the next option for breaking in, Gina positioned her hand and focused on the energy she had drawn out of the security system. The lights popped on with a flicker and the door wiggled but it was more like providing a random electric shock than any intentional jumpstart. A bit of smoke wafted out from the side panel and Gina sheepishly took a step back.

Erin took a try but the locking mechanism seemed too complicated for her to wield her telekinesis in the specific directions needed. The lock just rattled around a few times. As a final attempt, Eva put on a scary face, as Gina termed it, and intoned her will about the lock opening. Nothing happened. Her attempt was relatively quiet compared to her successful effort in the abandoned Sears but even that volume made her glance in all directions nervously. After a few different phrasings, she conceded that this wasn’t going to work. Gina playfully remarked that she sure did intimidate it though. Eva did her best to ignore her.

The emergency exit was the next option but the position and the amount of pumping of the latch required, while assisted by a hovering Leslie, was exhausting from the outside. The final option before having to break something was the window latch high on the back. Leslie boosted them, pulled the latches up together, and slid through to gain access. Then, it was just a matter of helping the others through.

The interior of the bus felt very different at night and surrounded by other buses. Cell phone lights helped but also added to the eerie ambiance. Nadia settled into the driver’s seat with instant familiarity. It was pushed up to where it had been comfortable for Tonya, which suited her as well.

Erin immediately asked, “How are we going to access the footage? Doesn’t the bus need to be on?”

Nadia smiled and leaned forward to a place on the side of the dash. She dug into a crevice and pulled out a single vehicle key.

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“Just in case. Every bus I’ve ever driven has one of them hidden somewhere. And, if they don’t, I put one there.”

Turning the key in the ignition, Nadia made sure to start the electrical but not the engine. The security footage monitor was built into the lower console. The girls flipped up the hooded section protecting it and watched a black and white monitor showing them currently. Nadia stamped out their frantic questions by assuring them that she could keep it from saving this. It was set to record in case of overnight break-ins, but she would make sure there was no evidence they were here.

Before that, she rewound the digital footage. It took a good while to go back through Saturday to when they dropped it off. Outside, there was a strange, sharp sound that cut through the dim buzzing. Several of the girls stretched up and glanced around, but couldn’t see anything.

For saving the footage, there was a USB cable that Gina was able to attach to one of the ports on her phone. The mobile operating system acknowledged it as a garbage string of numbers and letters. Nadia explained that she would be able to take a sample of the video and transfer it over to the phone. She had done this more than once before to make backups of incidents for insurance.

It was easy to tell when they came to the specific section of the footage in question. There was a massive, blinding visual whiteout. She advanced several hours until she got back to regular driving. It was disconcerting but fascinating to see Paul. A life that she would never live again. Without too much struggle, she was able to get to a spot right before the encounter.

The angle was not the best, distorted the view, and wasn’t able to look out the window at what was causing the blinding light. Gina still eagerly anticipated getting it on her phone. At the expected moment, they all slumped over in their seats when awash by the alien beam. Nadia frowned though. Something seemed off. She replayed it a few times but couldn’t quite put her finger on what was bothering her.

It wasn’t till they got to the long stretch of everyone unconscious that she jerked up and paused the footage.

“Movement…” Nadia gestured to the left side of the screen where part of Erin was cut off. Something had moved. Advancing it slowly revealed even more. The girls leaned back with their mouths open.

Tonya was standing while everyone else on the bus was unconscious. Urgently, Nadia rewound to the part that bothered her earlier. It didn’t take long to find. She gestured and told everyone to watch. As they did, it was obvious. Tonya was the very first person on the bus to drop down. She slumped even before the light flashed through the windows. It was like she was anticipating it. None of them knew what to say.

Speeding back towards the main section of footage, they watched silently as Tonya leaned towards the view of the camera but then spotted it in the corner. She darted away. While barely visible, she unlocked the main door and then was gone into the darkness. What followed after that was mostly still and unchanging until some of the windows unlocked and little projections of light drew their unconscious bodies out of the bus and into the blinding brightness. Once they were gone, there were several minutes of slightly distorted but still clear footage of the light washing over the bus until it blinked off. Several hours followed of the empty bus with just their bags, snacks, and possessions until it felt like the footage reversed itself with the lights flashing back on and their bodies slipping back in through the open spaces. Each of them hovered and dipped with delicate precision.

The only difference was Nadia and young Erin in place of their former selves. Their clothes stuck in place, as though steadied by an unseen hand, then heavily drooped once they were deposited back in their seats. When everyone was back where they should’ve been but not necessarily as how they should’ve been, the light blinked off. The shadowy figure of Tonya crept back through the open door and dropped onto the seat where she had been. It was again obvious and unsettlingly suspicious that Tonya was one of the last of the girls to wake up afterward.

It didn’t take too much effort to grab a file from just before to after they woke up. The size was in excess of a gigabyte, but Gina gladly waited on the transfer. Everyone seemed to be nursing the same thought with wide eyes and panic in their expression. But before they could scream about it…

*Scriff scruff scriff scruff… scrape…*

Footsteps echoed against the metal corridors of buses positioned against one another. They were regular but not as hauntingly even and intimidating as earlier. Human footsteps, likely. Perhaps a security person. Gina grimaced and urged the transfer to hurry along. The bus had an older version of USB and the data moved at a frustrating trickle.

Meanwhile, Nadia deleted the most recent footage and set the camera to sleep mode. Leslie peered around and tried to see movement. When the transfer finally finished, Gina yanked out the cord and Nadia put everything back in its place with the key tucked away covertly. Crouch walking, they hurried to the back of the bus. Preparing to slip out of the back window, the sound of footsteps was clearly right next to them. Eva urged everyone to pull back. Nadia glared at the ajar emergency window but didn’t feel confident enough to stand up and close it. Swiftly, everyone found a seat on the bus and hid in the shadows.

The footsteps washed out their muffled breathing. Whoever was outside made their way over to the doors and fiddled with the lock. Everyone listened silently as a key opened them up. Nadia wished that she had a small mirror to see better. Gina tilted her blank phone screen like a lens but was frustrated by the vague, blurry details she was able to catch. Erin chanced a risky glimpse through the dim light and scattered seats. She managed just a split second before ducking back down.

It was Tonya. She had to clasp a hand over her mouth to resist the urge to cry out. Her assistant coach, a girl that she had known for years as one of the best high school volleyball players she ever taught. What was she doing here? What was she doing awake when the others were all unconscious? But a sickening reality burned through Erin‘s mind as she pieced together the single frame of Tonya she saw etched against the windshield. 

 

Her eyes were complete, pure black.

 

 

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm actually not that far ahead this time and I am wide open for possibilities for this particular story. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I have to cut down on my editing due to release speed and my programs don't seem to be catching lowercase sentences. Thank you for reading!]

Poll below

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