At this moment in his life, Henry had never been as scared for his life as he was right now. The thought of close to what looked like more than 100 violent and savage people walking this close to something he was trapped and hiding in was unnerving.
Henry looked over at Dennis sitting calmly on the floor row across from him. A single bead of sweat formed on his brow and rolled down his cheek and dropped silently to the floor. That was all the nerve that Dennis cared to show right now.
He could see Dennis leaning out slightly trying to see where the horde of people was, Henry was going to do the same thing until a loud thud was heard on the side of the bus in front of Meri. She jumped and slammed her hands on her face to hold back a scream. Tears were streaming down her face continually. Her shoulders heaved up and down as Meri silently cried while the danger began to hover around the bus.
Henry looked over at Dennis to see a little look of worry on his face as he peered over between the seats in front of him.
"Shit" Dennis whispered as he lowered himself to the ground and pounded his fist silently into his thigh.
Henry followed Dennis' gaze out the front of the bus when he saw what was happening outside. Most of the group of people outside had stopped moving. They were carefully looking over and into the vehicles on the side of the road, making sure that they did not miss anyone.
Another thud startled Henry as the luggage storage on his side of the bus was opened. The door of the compartment blocked a little bit of light as it came up and covered a portion of the window.
Over the next couple of minutes, the bus had proceeded to get a little darker as each of the luggage compartments were opened and checked for hidden passengers.
Henry's heart was beating in his chest the world outside grew quiet again, he turned to Dennis.
"Where..." He began.
Dennis turned his head sharply and threw a single finger in front of his lips.
Dennis motioned to the front of the bus and made a gesture with his hands that Henry did not understand.
A puzzled looked crossed Henry's face as he tried to comprehend exactly what Dennis wanted to tell him. "What does his charade of a butterfly have to do with anything?"
Henry mimicked the motions that Dennis had done. He placed his two hands flat in front of him and touched his thumbs together; then he turned his hands towards each other until his pinky fingers moved.
"It's a butterfly!?" Henry mouthed the words to Dennis.
A slam coming from the front of the bus frightened Henry, and he jumped a little in his seat.
He finally understood. They're trying to open the door of the bus.
He could hear fingers gripping the door trying to pull on the edges of the door, fists began to batter the door as the group sought to get in. Quicker and faster the pounding on the door continued until it suddenly stopped.
Henry could hear some commotion outside and took a very quick look out the front of the bus to see some of the group beginning to leave. A smiled began to cross his lips as he had survived another close ordeal.
He turned to look at Dennis, but the same jovial happiness was not anywhere on his face. A look of hardness was all that he could make out from the man. Henry continued to look at the man unaware how he could not have any happiness that the group was leaving.
Another bead of sweat appeared on the brow of the large man, followed by another and a few more after that. A look of worry began to appear on Dennis' face as he continued to stare out the front window.
Henry turned his head and leant out from behind the seat just a little to have another look to see if the situation was improving. There was not much to see out of the windshield from this vantage point, but that all changed as one of the members of the group appeared to be peering inside of the front window.
Henry moved as slowly as he dared to pull his head back into the safety of the shadows as the man in the green suit peered in the window trying to see inside.
The man appeared to be standing on the bumper of the bus with his mouth held slack and open, he was drooling a thick congealed liquid from his mouth as he stared into the gloom of the bus. He held onto the windshield wipers with both hands as he swayed back and forth trying to get a better vantage point.
On an average day, the partially tinted windows of the bus kept the heat and sunlight from filling the cab with heat and humidity so visibility would have been minimal anyway. If they group had not looked under the bus first, the man in the green suit might have been able to see Henry watching him, but with the extra shade offered by the compartment, lids prevented most of the early morning light from reaching the interior of the bus.
The man in the green suit flung his head back in frustration before slamming it on the windshield. The noise filled the group outside full of noise and the thick black smudge on the windshield made it hard to see. He leant back again to hit the windshield again but went too far back, and his weight pulled on the wiper blades as they snapped off the bus and the man went tumbling to the ground.
Henry and Dennis looked at one another with wide eyes and an open mouth, both looking like they were going to say something. Neither man said a word.
Henry looked a few seats behind Dennis for Meri but could not see where she had been. Concern began to fill Henry as he frantically began searching the other rows for the girl when a small movement to his left caught his eye. In all of the concern and focus on the man looking in the window, he had not seen Meri climbing underneath the seats to get to the back of the bus and be further away from danger.
Henry let out a silent sigh as he found where she was hiding.
The world grew quiet around them again as the audible sound of the large group of people began to slowly move on.
Henry, Dennis and Meri sat in silence for another 25 minutes before anyone had the guts or bravery to stand up and check if everyone had moved one. Dennis was the first to slowly stand and look out the front window. Satisfied that he did not see anything he looked out his side of the bus, standing on his toes to peer down the side of the bus looking for anyone who might have been hiding.
He turned around and gave a very nervous Henry a thumbs up.
Dennis then nodded to Henry and motioned with his head towards the window.
Henry understood that sign and quickly got to his feet and peered over the side of the bus and out onto the road looking for anything. He could see the last of the group of people walking a few hundred meters up Kings Road slowly disappearing around the bend in the road.
Henry extended his arm out and gave a thumbs up as well, though he did not look to see if anyone had seen it or not. He continued to stare out the window, watching the group finally disappear around the corner before turning around to see his new travelling companions.
Dennis was turned around looking back out his windows when Henry turned around. He was a big man bordering close on 6 and a half feet tall and was wearing a ball cap over the top of his salt-and-pepper hair. Henry figured this guy was in his mid to late forties and judging by the condition of his hands, he was probably a mechanic or a carpenter. The bulge in Dennis' lower back caught his attention as he just stared at it. He did not even register that Dennis had partially turned arounHed and was looking at him.
"What's on your mind fellow?" Dennis said to him.
Henry shook his head trying to regain his focus. "Nothing, I had just forgotten you had a gun is all. Why did not you shoot them?"
"Are you serious?" Meri piped up from behind Dennis as she began to stand up.
Meri was not the typical teenage girl that Henry typically saw in his classroom. She was not wearing any makeup, her hair tied into a loose ponytail, she had on a pair of torn jeans and a ragged sweater. Wet marks covered her sleeves and front of her shirt; if Henry had not been on the bus with her for the past little bit, she would have looked like she had just suffered a significant loss. For all he knew, she probably did.
"What do you mean?" Henry said, looking back to Meri.
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"Well, for starters those zombies would have known we were in here and probably would have turned the bus over trying to get inside." She looked Henry square in the face. "As it was, they were only testing us to see if we would give away our hiding spots."
"Wait... back up a second." A look of concern crossed his face. "What do you mean about zombies!? They're not real, those are just really sick people. Probably have some disease or ... some... thing?"
Henry stopped speaking as Meri shot him a disgusted look and folded her arms across her chest.
"What are not you telling me?" Henry asked her. "What have you seen?"
"What have I seen today? What you should be asking me is what have not I seen today. I saw a little girl get hit by a speeding car, only to get up and start biting people who came to her aid. I saw a factory worker walk up to a police officer and rip off his arm after he had been shot eight times in the chest. That same guy then went on to kill seven more people before getting mowed down by a delivery truck that was speeding out of control." Meri sighed as if reliving these moments was incredibly hard.
"And all that was within 5 minutes of this bus stopping right where it is."
Henry brought a hand up to his mouth and began to think about everything that happened to him today. The violence downtown, the mayhem in the baseball field and the bloodthirsty look the mechanic gave him as he was hunting him down through the woods.
Henry threw himself into the seat on the bus and stared off into the sunlight.
"Are you..." Meri reached out to touch Henry's shoulder, but Dennis reached out and touched her wrist.
"Just give him a minute. Keep an eye out for any more of those bastards, would you? I'm going to check on the door." Dennis smiled at her and turned around to slowly walk down the walkway towards the front of the bus.
Meri quickly looked over at Henry one final time before she took her post and scoured the surrounding areas for anything that moved, friendly or otherwise.
Chapter Fifteen