11
I can hardly control the bus. It sways left and right on the asphalt. The more I push the gas pedal, I lose control even more. Leo puts his hands over mine on the steering wheel to maintain stability. I look in the rearview mirror. The boys and girls are on the edge of their seats.
“Wow,” one of the game-loving boys says. “At least we’re not going to school.”
I don’t think any of us really understands we might die any minute. Somehow, the spirit of play is still in us.
The bus next to me starts hitting the side of mine, on purpose. The outranked in my bus scream. Why is the other bus hitting us?
Leo gets to the edge of the door and fires two shots into the air to scare them away.
“They want the Jeep!” a girl yells from the back of our bus. My bus!
Of course they want the Jeep. We are almost one minute in. Students in other busses are already panicking, jumping and running away. They are trying to keep up with the speed on their feet, trusting their own bodies better than any other plan. Fifty-miles-per-hour non-stop, are you kidding me? Some run away into the forest, thinking the Summit can’t see them in there. Bad idea. On your feet or not, after three minutes, you have to use a new transportation method. That’s the trick.
“You fools!” I scream out the window. "The speed is detected by your iAm, not the vehicle you are on. If you are on a bus moving at fifty-miles-per-hour, your body’s speed is the same to the iAm." Uneducated and outranked, I think. I am not here for them. I am here for Woo. But first, I have to stay alive.
Suddenly, I find out that some of those on foot are running toward our bus. Leo signals for me to close the doors. I hesitate. I can’t. I won’t do it.
They deserve a chance. There is room enough in the bus. Leo challenges me with that daring look, and I dare to look back at him. I will not shut the door! This is my bus. I can let anyone I want on it!
He looks at me, frustrated, unaware that I am not just any other girl, submitting to his silent orders. He turns back and blocks the door himself, firing in the air again.
The back door is still open. A couple of runners jump inside. The others in the bus help them. I see some of them hanging over the edges of the open windows of the school bus in the rear-view mirror. If this was the regular school bus taking us to school every day, I doubt students would be so eager to get on it.
“You must be wondering why we would want to explode the lovely buses that bring you to school,” I hear Timmy say on the iAm, talking to the viewers. “Are we about to end school forever?”
The audience says, “Yeaaaah. No school.”
“Sorry, my friends. Not going to happen. But we’re happy to announce a brand-new set of school buses, a present from Prophet Hannibal Xitler, starting in the new semester.”
Audience praise. Audience hail. Audience boom.
Silly crowd. I swear if I outlive this, I will kick them in the loompas. Don’t ask. I don’t know what it means. I heard a girl say it to a boy in school. Still, I am afraid that if I kick them in the loompas, they’ll still laugh.
Two minutes in.
I can see a school bus dragging another bus in the rear-view mirror. I guess they replicated the idea of the jeep. Why not? But they are barely keeping up with the minimum speed. Their bus could break down… hopefully not before the three minutes.
There is also a bus with faces glued to the window, watching us. They are all tattooed and pierced with grinning faces, as if waiting for something. Their tattoos are all the same, as if they belong to a gang. The tattoo is of someone riding something, maybe surfing. No, it’s a picture of a girl riding a flying skateboard. The tattooed boys and girls creep me out. Why are they so calm and silent?
Thirty seconds to explosion.
The world around me is a mess. Fights over buses, buses colliding, crazy outranked running in the streets of the Playa. I think I just drove over something. No!
A girl is panicking behind me. She is trying to choke me with her hands, pulling me back against the pole. I struggle to keep my hands on the wheel. This will mess up everything. What is she thinking?
“We are going to die!” she screams at me. I see her in the mirror, but I can’t speak. My throat hurts. She has big hands. She is the same girl who knocked me off. Truck Girl is trying to kill me while I am driving the bus. Seeing a girl her size afraid scares me, but I am not going to take my hands off the wheel.
Leo is shooting at the other buses trying to crash into us. He doesn’t see me, and I can’t talk against the loudness of screams. The other outranked are all fighting each other or counting.
“We are going to die. You hear me?” Truck Girl screams in my ear.
I know. I know. We are going to die. What’s the point of killing me before we die? What’s the point of reminding me?
I finally manage to push her away with one hand, keeping my other hand on the wheel. She falls back. I don’t know where, and I don’t care.
Back to driving position.
Leo looks back to me, giving me a sign that he is going to the back of the bus. He suggests I keep driving until he fires a shot or something. In the mirror, I see him walk the aisle to the back, pushing anyone who tries to stop him. He fires a shot to break the rear-window open. He jumps out into the Jeep. I lose track of him, but there is a world war going on back there. Everyone is headed for the Jeep, even those who wanted to get on the bus earlier.
Leo has a war to fight on his own now.
I don’t know what to do. Ten seconds to detonation. This bus is going to explode. This is not my bus anymore!
What should I do? The other buses are too close. Any explosion could affect me as well.
Suddenly, I hear many shots. Did Leo kill anyone? I wash the thought away.
“It’s heating up,” says Timmy. “Seven.” He is counting down. He is certainly entertaining the viewers.
Something bumps against the bus’s door.
It’s Leo with the Jeep. The Jeep looks like it’s from a zombie movie. Outranked on top, biting each other, hitting each other, some of them dragged to the tail, hanging from a rail. Everyone is protecting Leo though, so he can drive. I wonder what is happening to the other buses. I get closer to the door of the bus, leaving the wheel behind. Leo is barely keeping up with the speed. He can’t lend me a hand. Busy hands. One driving, and the other shooting into the air. He should try doing stunts, if we survive this.
As I stand at the edge of the bus’s door, we hit a bump in the road. The uncontrolled steering wheel shifts. The bus sways to the left, increasing the distance between me and the Jeep. I can see the hot asphalt underneath. I can’t jump. The Jeep is too far now.
“Four.” Timmy’s voice echoes in my head.
I am going to die, just as the girl predicted. I can’t jump, and even worse, the bus I am on is slowing down since no one is pushing the gas pedal.
Leo steers the wheel to the left, tangent to the bus, looking at me with that intensity in his eyes, almost parting his lips.
"Will you speak to me if I die?" I joke. Leo's eyes are going to bulge out.
“Jump, for God’s sake,” they scream from the Jeep.
I close my eyes and jump. Funny how a ticking bomb makes you do such an irrational thing.
“One.” Timmy is happy.
I land over Leo’s lap. Leo pushes the gas pedal to the maximum as the bus explodes. The heat of the explosion burns in my back. A couple of the outranked on the Jeep fall to the ground. Leo is a mess, looking like he’s come out of a coal mine. The air against our faces cools us a little while we’re speeding up. I look back over Leo’s shoulder. There is a huge irregular foam of black smoke reaching up for the sky behind us. This looks worse than in the movies. This isn’t a game. This is war.
“Boom!” Timmy celebrates. “I love explosions.”
Slowly, a bus appears out of the smoke behind us. Okay. They made it too. We have about ten teenagers on the Jeep. With that bus, I guess maybe twenty or so others made it. Did anyone else survive?
Did all those other kids just die? Is this mass murder, or what? All in the name of the Burning Man.
The floating smoke starts to clear away slowly. I see glimpses of the scene behind us. I close my eyes immediately. It’s unbelievable. Is this what my brother watches on TV and loves so much?
I hear the sound of motorcycles approaching from behind the smoke. I wait until whatever is behind the smoke shows through.
It’s not motorcycles. These are like skateboards floating above the ground, with some kind of fire engine underneath every board. Riding them are the calm tattooed guys from the other bus. Riding on the flying boards, they are smirking at us.
Who are they? Are they trained for this?
“Hoverboardz,” Roger This says. So he made it to the Jeep after all. “Awesome!” he says, as if this is virtual reality. Somehow, this death game doesn’t bother him at all.
I don’t want to be sitting on Leo’s lap. Practically, because it feels so good. I am worse than I thought when it comes to this ape. I crawl over to the passenger seat, sharing it with two other boys, but on no one’s lap. The boys keep staring at my ripped dress. What’s wrong with these boys? Doesn’t anyone here get that we’re about to die?
Leo glances in the mirror, lips sealed as usual.
“Well. Well. Well,” says Timmy. “We have about a hundred survivors. That’s a lot, and that’s fun. I see that none of them are following the rules though, should we blow ‘em up, do you think?”
“What does he mean?” I ask around me. Everyone is perplexed. What are we doing wrong?
It suddenly hits me. I press the red button on my iAm and scream:
“I. AM. ALIVE!”