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The Mexican Bus by Walter Greatshell

Walter Greatshell is the author of the novels Xombies: Apocalypse Blues and Xombies: Apocalypticon. A non-zombie novel, Mad Skillz, is forthcoming. On his website, waltergreatshell.com, Greatshell says that the last real job he had was as a graveyard-shift nuclear-submarine technician, and before that he was the general manager of the Avon Cinema, a Providence, Rhode Island, landmark. In addition to writing, he currently dabbles in freelance illustration, numerous examples of which are available on his website.

In 1957 Jack Kerouac published On the Road, a lightly fictionalized memoir of his road trips crisscrossing the U.S. and Mexico. The novel was written single-spaced and without paragraph breaks on a 120-foot long roll of tracing paper that Kerouac called “the scroll.” (It originally used the real names of Kerouac’s friends and acquaintances, including the free-spirited ex-con Neal Cassady and the poet Allen Ginsberg, but their names were changed in the published manuscript, at the publisher’s insistence, to Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx.) The book has been massively popular, influencing artists from Bob Dylan to Jim Morrison to Hunter S. Thompson, most obviously in the latter’s 1972 road novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

On the Road also seems to have exerted an influence on our next author, who writes, “This story is an offshoot of my Xombies storyline. It’s about a young guy, a college dropout, who is bumming around Mexico and has the extreme misfortune of being caught in the middle of a zombie-type epidemic-what I call the Sadie Hawkins Day Massacre. Almost every woman in the world simultaneously turns blue and goes berserk.” He adds, “I actually was a college dropout, because once I discovered hitchhiking I was done with school. I have all these notebooks of stuff I wrote while on the road, hundreds of pages of obsessive beatnik musings that I hoped might come in handy someday. Who knew it would be for a zombie story?”

Tres Estrellas de Oro. Three gold stars on a green medallion, possibly signifying the Holy Trinity-or perhaps nothing at all. It didn’t matter; what was important was that his two years of high school Spanish were not completely wasted. He was not just a college dropout with little money, no prospects, and all his remaining possessions stuffed into a rain-soaked dufflebag, but a romantic figure: a bohemian man of the world. What did he need with Aristotle and Copernicus?

Tres Estrellas de Oro-beautiful.

This wasn’t the bus he had started out on. That one had been red and white, with the words Norte de Sonora on the side. But heavy rains had washed out the road, and the bus had been forced to turn back. All that headway south, hours of travel, just to return to the border and start over! But it was okay; he had nothing but time, and no place he would rather spend New Year’s Eve than on a Mexican bus going anywhere. He had learned what was possible if you had a map…and time…and a little money. Just follow the dotted line.

It was near midnight when the second bus stopped.

The young man awoke from his doze and realized he had been drooling. His neck hurt and his face was sore from being pressed against the vibrating window, but he didn’t dare move lest he disturb the beautiful Canadian girl who was using his left shoulder as a pillow. An elderly man across the aisle winked at him. There was nothing to see outside but flat black-the windows might as well have been painted over. Inside the bus it was dim and cozy, with cigarette smoke drifting across the overhead reading lights. Muted Spanish conversation simmered in the cabin, and it wasn’t necessary to understand the words to know what they were saying: What now?

Gears clanked and the bus moved forward, weaving around a line of cars. Another highway accident, that’s all-they had passed enough of those. The passengers relaxed as the bus swerved clear and gathered speed. Things were looking good, but a moment later it abruptly stopped again with a hiss.

They waited. Perhaps there was still a chance this was only a short delay. The sense of collective yearning was palpable, forty people hanging on the edge of their seats. Then the driver turned off the engine and all hope collapsed. Without a word, he opened the door and got out.

Abandoned, the passengers gave in to resignation. Actually there was a certain sense of relief, as if everyone could now relax and be themselves. No one was particularly angry or upset. This was why he loved Mexico.

The Canadian girl came half awake, taking her fragrant head off his shoulder. “What’s going on?” she groaned.

“Nothing. We’ve just stopped. It’s probably a car accident or something.”

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere.”

The Mexicans were making a party of it. Cigarettes were lit, snacks brought out, and the volume of conversation increased. A radio was turned on, playing a live New Year’s Eve countdown from Mexico City. Some folks got up to stretch their legs, and the young man decided to do the same. He would scope out the situation and bring the girl a full report-show her he had everything under control. As if a sixteen-year-old girl traveling alone through the backlands of Mexico needed reassurance from him.

Outside it was quite a scene. The bus was part of a long line of stopped traffic in the middle of the desert-a festive-looking chain of lights spanning the void. Many people had gotten out of their vehicles and some were wandering down the road trying to find out what was going on. There was a lit Pemex sign ahead, but the gas station itself was hidden by a dip in the fathomless landscape.

The young man wanted to walk down there and see, but he was reluctant to venture too far from the bus. What if the traffic started moving, or the bus turned around and went back? Last thing he needed was to be stranded out here. But he figured he was all right as long he kept the driver in sight, so when that officious old character and some other men started down the hill, he tagged along behind.

It was nice to be outside in the fresh air. He had been a prisoner for hours, afraid to budge. And it was so stupid: as if he had any chance with this incredible girl. Confidence with the opposite sex was not his strong suit; his record with women was a catalogue of rejection-it was a rejection, in fact, that led to his dropping out of college and impulsively heading for Mexico. He tended to rush things, that was his problem. Unrequited love was a bitch.

But…he couldn’t help feeling that this situation was different. For one thing, this was Mexico-a whole different universe. For another, he and the gorgeous Canadian were the only gringos on the bus. Initially they had been in separate seats, but jolly Mexican ladies had insisted they sit together, playing matchmaker for the clueless estudiantes. Embarrassed, he had been all too ready to decline-no, no, gracias-but to his amazement the girl came over and sat by him. And from that moment on, he was in love.

Yet…he didn’t want everything to depend on a girl. Not again. Not here. As he walked, he tried to fully immerse himself in the moment, in the extraordinary fact that he was alive, here, now, on this beautiful Godforsaken highway somewhere in Mexico. The gravel crunching under his feet, the rolling horizon like a black cardboard cutout under dimly luminous clouds, the tiny flecks of rain in the breeze-it was all marvelous.

Below the highway embankment he could see an army of tall, pale figures with arms upraised-saguaro cacti. For a second he had a wild impulse to run down there: a hike out into the desert would put things in their true perspective. But he knew he wouldn’t really do it.

The Pemex station came into view, an island of sickly fluorescent light. It looked as desolate as a base on the Moon. Now he could see the trouble: there was another bus down there, a sleek white charter bus, straddling both lanes of the road. It didn’t look damaged, but there must have been an accident of some kind because a lot of people were laying on the ground, with a bunch of nurses giving them CPR. Not nurses-nuns. A busload of nuns. Other people were running around frantically yelling for help.

Was he crazy or were some of the nuns chasing them?

The bus driver and his party ran to offer assistance, other men joining them along the way until the group snowballed to twenty or thirty people. They passed at least as many running in the opposite direction, who frantically tried to warn them off, shouting ¡Monjas locas! ¡Locas! but they kept going. Meanwhile, police and military vehicles began arriving from the south, pouring on their sirens as they sped along the shoulder of the road.

Having fallen behind the driver, the young man was about halfway down the hill when he realized he was walking into something very wrong-and he stopped.

An olive-drab truck full of soldiers pulled into the gas station first. Before it could even begin unloading, a group of people-including several nuns-rushed the truck’s bed and leaped in among the surprised troops. The canvas cover bounced cartoonishly from the violence within. A police Bronco stormed onto the scene and four smartly uniformed federal officers charged out, shouting orders. Nuns rushed them and they disappeared from view. Was it the fluorescent light, or did those nuns’ faces look weirdly blue?

At the same time, the bus driver’s posse was nearing the outer realm of glare from the gas station. The men’s elongated black shadows stretched behind them as though reluctant to get any closer, but the determined hombres did not waver. From their vantage it was likely they could not properly see what was happening to the police and soldiers. Weirdly manic female silhouettes rushed to meet them, and in a second the two groups collided.

It was a massacre: the thirty volunteers suddenly found themselves senselessly, viciously assaulted. Tackled in flying leaps, half of them were pinned to the ground before they knew what hit them, their faces crushed under the searching mouths of their attackers. Stranger still, some of these attackers were the “accident victims” who had themselves been receiving CPR only moments ago. And more were jumping to life every second.

Frozen in place, the young man watched all this with increasing disbelief, unsure of how to react, but at the sound of gunfire he realized he was in over his head. The bus driver obviously had the same thought: As the rest of his party got caught up in the fighting, he had an abrupt change of heart and ran for his life. It was a close thing. He was a heavy smoker, and not young either, but he could move when he had to.

“Come on, man, come on!” shouted the American. It had occurred to him that he wasn’t going anywhere without that bus driver.

The driver was faltering, wheezing badly. He had already run quite a distance, and now the running was all uphill. In desperation, the young man sprinted down to him and took the driver’s leathery arm around his neck, half-carrying him up the road. The older man smelled of sweat and Old Spice-it reminded him of his grandfather.

As they retreated alongside the line of traffic, they passed the bizarre spectacle of what appeared to be people making out in some of the cars: mismatched couples locked in furious sexual combat…though the men were clearly not the aggressors. In fact the women seemed to be sucking the very life from their reluctant male prey. Like spiders, the American thought wildly. Black widow spiders.

A man’s flailing leg kicked through a windshield, spraying them with glass as they hurried by. A car pulled out of line and drove down the steep embankment, plowing into the ditch at the bottom. Truck horns brayed, and they could hear small children screaming. Over it all was a shrill, rising din-the hyena laughter of the insane.

Now the young man was tiring. Almost there…almost there. They had crested the hill, and he could see the bus-Tres Estrellas de Oro-but all around them things were getting sketchier by the second. People were bursting from cars and fleeing in all directions with blue-faced monstrosities hot on their heels. Any second one of those things would notice them and it would all be over. The number of scary maniacs was doubling as the victims revived and joined their ranks-very soon there wouldn’t be anyone sane left. From the direction of the gas station, they could hear a demonic host approaching. It was hopeless.

But nothing noticed them-or perhaps they were beneath notice, this shambling, silent pair, so ploddingly steadfast amid the general panic-because suddenly they were there, miraculously at the bus, on the bus, clambering up the steps and slamming the door behind them.

It was empty.

“¡Lupe! ¡Lupita!” the driver called, searching frantically, but the bus was completely deserted. It was also a ransacked mess, the aisle littered with women’s shoes and spilled luggage, as well as teeth and tufts of ripped hair. And blood-blood everywhere-flung in drabs and spatters and hectic smears, as by the hand of a mad impressionist. It was just as well that the two men couldn’t see much of this in the dark. The only sound was a high-pitched whine coming from the radio.

Bad things had happened here, as everywhere else, but for now the bus was empty; it was dark; it was safe. It was life. For a brief moment, the terror outside was muffled and remote. The two exhausted men fell into seats, crying and gasping for breath. “Se viene abajo…se viene abajo,” the driver sobbed.

“What the fuck is this, man?” the younger man babbled. “What the fuck is going on out there? What’s happening to everyone?”

“La ley ya no está en vigor…”

“It must be some kind of chemical weapon! A gas attack or some kind of mind control thing…but then why don’t we have it? It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Sea lo que sea, no lo puedo creer.”

They continued like this for a few minutes, purging the raw adrenaline from their systems. Catching his breath a bit, the driver reached into the overhead rack and turned off the radio. He then pulled down two plastic bottles of milky liquid. Handing one to the American, he said, “Pulque,” and took a deep drink.

“Don’t you understand? I’m fucking losing it, man! I’m losing it!”

“A otro perro con ese hueso.”

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying! I don’t understand anything! No entiendo-you get it?”

Shaking his head, the younger man swigged from the bottle and nearly choked at the soapy, medicinal taste-he had been expecting lemonade. But the alcohol in it helped his shakes and he forced down another gulp.

Reaching a decision of some kind, the driver sighed and got up. “Me he hartado de esto,” he said gravely.

Alarmed, the American caught his arm. “No, what are you doing? Sit down, man, they’ll see us.”

The driver patted his shoulder, saying gently, “Hombre de muchos oficios, pobre seguro.” He walked forward and climbed behind the wheel, belting himself in. Then he smoothed his hair back and started the engine.

“Dude, what do you think you’re doing? We can’t go anywhere-we’re blocked in, bumper to bumper! We should just wait here for help to come!”

“No siempre es fácil salir de un apuro.”

“I don’t speak Spanish!”

“Seet down and shut up.”

At the sound of the diesel, things started happening again. The naked, blurred creatures outside suddenly froze into sharp focus, gaping mouths and black eyes all trained on the bus. There were hundreds of them now: men, women, and children. They came fast. Bodies slammed against the sides, leaping for handholds, while others swarmed the door and front windshield. Hard objects starred the glass, quickly knocking out holes through which blue arms lunged like snakes. The young man couldn’t stand to look, but worse than the sight was the sound of them: “¡No hay cuidaaado!” they screamed. “¡No hay cuidaaado!”

The bus lurched forward, smashing a dozen creatures against the rear of a trailer truck and shaking off the rest like fleas. The impact destroyed what was left of the windshield, but succeeded at ramming the truck a few feet ahead so that it rear-ended another vehicle. Then the driver shifted gears, jumping the bus into reverse and slamming into the traffic immediately behind, plowing a wide space in which to maneuver. At once the American realized what he was trying to do: a U-turn! It made a certain amount of sense because the northbound lane of traffic was clear, but the narrow highway didn’t look nearly wide enough to swing this huge bus around-certainly not before those maniacs out there got inside. With the windshield gone the bus was open to all comers. But surely the driver himself must know better than anyone what was or wasn’t possible; he was a professional. Flinching at each crash, the American hung on tight and surrendered to hope.

A loud drumming of feet could be heard on the roof. Hideous blue faces were gibbering upside-down through crazed windows. It was now or never: the bus driver cranked the wheel to its limit and backed over the near edge of the roadway, his rear tires settling deep into the soft bank. Then he rolled the steering wheel hard to the left and gunned forward into the massing loonies. With a lurch, the vehicle came back onto the pavement, turning in as tight a radius as was physically possible…and it was almost tight enough. But no-now the front of the bus was dangling over the opposite shoulder! One more correction was necessary, one more reverse…

Too late. As soon as the bus stopped again, those blue horrors were inside. They came like locusts, heedless of injury as they leaped and scrambled over the sill. The driver produced an old machete from under his seat, hacking furiously, but it didn’t slow them down one bit: multitudes of hands pinned him down while a terrifying madwoman straddled him and crushed his resisting mouth under hers. Was it worse because he recognized her? Would it have been better if it was a stranger? For the inhuman beast stealing the breath from Don Diego’s lungs was someone he dearly loved, who often kept him company on these long road trips since his wife had passed away: his virtuous eldest daughter, Lupe. They were inseparable. As her mouth turned inside-out, filling him like a sack of live eels, he convulsed as though electrocuted…then went limp.

Watching the others come, the American suddenly realized that they were familiar to him as well, if only of brief acquaintance-they were his fellow bus passengers! Women, for the most part, though such a word hardly seemed to describe them now. Hags. Furies. Banshees. Blue-skinned ghouls, storming the bus as though it belonged to them, and why not?-they had paid the fare. They came piling in like grubs, brazenly naked or wearing only scraps of clothing, their black eyes fixed on him with implacable, cold lust. Old or young, male or female, they craved him.

Backing down the aisle he felt like an object; a piece of meat. It was a new sensation, being wanted, and not as pleasant as he might formerly have imagined. Leading the pack was the Canadian girl, her pale, perfect beauty now transformed into something washed up on the beach: all jaws and cartilage and kelp-like red hair. That hair obscured her eyes, but it seemed to him that they were messed up-empty holes crying black tears.

She came fast and there was no place left to go but the restroom. Ugh. No time to think about it-he fell inside and turned the latch. As violent blows started falling on the flimsy door, he pressed his back against it, bracing his legs against the opposite wall.

They didn’t give up. They weren’t going to give up. Ever. Looking at himself in the mirror, he thought, This is it, man: now you’re stuck like this. Trapped for eternity in a Mexican toilet, with women clamoring for his body-it had to be a joke. The thought wrung a ragged, involuntary laugh out of him, or was it a scream? He clamped his hands over his mouth to silence it. Please God let it be a joke.

The pounding became more frenzied, jarring his spine. The whole bus shook with it. As the door deformed in its frame, blue fingers wormed in at the weak spots, clamping tight and pulling with inhuman strength-any second they were going to rip the thing right off its hinges. The man closed his eyes, whimpering through gritted teeth…when all at once the hammering stopped.

As if by magic, the monsters disappeared.

Then he realized why. The bus was moving.

The cause was simple: the driver hadn’t set the brake, they were on an incline, so the bus was rolling backwards. It glanced off another vehicle, then tipped sickeningly over the edge of the roadway and down the high bank. Veering sharply right from the angle of its tires, it toppled over onto its side, hitting the desert floor like a great carcass.

The young man emerged. He climbed out of the vehicle and dropped to the sand, vomiting his guts out. He was dyed blue from head to foot, soaked with raw sewage and the disinfectant liquid from the exploded toilet. Defenseless, half-blind, he expected to be attacked any second. When no maniacs came for him, he realized their fevered attention was being drawn elsewhere-to a caravan of new arrivals. He could hear the screams. It was a hellish fly trap up there, with more flies arriving by the minute. Down here, in the dark, he was already forgotten.

Hugging his aching ribs, he dragged himself as far from the road as he could, a mile or more, huddling under a bush amid stands of tall cacti. At one time he would have been worried about snakes or scorpions, but now he didn’t care about much of anything. He would wait here until morning-wait for help to come. Then, as if a switch was thrown, he was out.

White. He came to in a world of muffled whiteness, with surreal ranks of cacti looming above him like sentinels. It was fog-dense morning fog. His body hurt all over, and he was cold, curled up in a ball with his jacket collar around his ears. It took him a second to remember where he was and why-much longer to believe it. How long had it been? Five or six hours at least. Everything was dead quiet. Maybe it was over.

Stiffly climbing to his feet, he hobbled back in the general direction of the highway. Just to see. He was a little disoriented, but it didn’t matter if he went back the exact same way he had come, as long as he found the road. And a drink. Definitely a drink.

It was a long hike, much longer than he remembered. The terrain became very rocky. He didn’t dare consider that he might be lost. When the fog clears, I’ll see exactly where I am, he thought, but when the fog cleared there was nothing-just more rocks and a barren vista of brown hills. Topping each rise, he kept praying to see something hopeful, preferably a mercado with a cooler full of ice-cold sodas…and was forever disappointed, falling deeper and deeper into despair until by the time he finally did sight the road he had practically given up. But there it was.

“Oh thank God,” he croaked.

It was the highway all right, however a different, more level stretch than the one he had left behind. There was no traffic-jam here, no Pemex station-the lanes were clear in both directions. Hiking down to it, he fell on the pavement with the gratitude of a shipwreck survivor. But was he north or south of the pile-up? Rather than heading into trouble, he decided to stay where he was and wait for help to come to him. Which was just as well-he couldn’t move another inch. His blisters had blisters. But the thirst was getting out of control; if someone didn’t come along soon…well, someone had to come along.

He got as comfortable as possible and waited. As he sat there, a couple of large black birds landed nearby. It took him a minute to realize they must be vultures. That was interesting, sitting under the hot white sky and watching turkey vultures waddle along the opposite side of the road like fat little undertakers-it was the corniest thing ever. Real vultures! Back and forth, back and forth, exactly as if they were pacing. Which they were, of course. It was too stupid.

An hour passed. Then two. Dozing under the makeshift cowl of his jacket, he heard the truck before he saw it. It was a big one-some kind of heavy construction vehicle. It came rumbling around the bend of a hill, and at the sight of it the American let out a hoarse cheer: it was a huge red dump-truck bristling with armed men. His body had stiffened from sitting so long; it took a painful effort to get to his feet. By that time the truck was much closer, coming on fast. Its wheels were taller than he was, and there was a railed walkway around the high cab on which several men were standing. They were pointing at him and calling to the driver.

Tears streaking his face, the American waved his arms and shouted as best he could, “¡Por favor! ¡Por favor!”

The truck slowed, its passengers shading their eyes to see him better against the late-day sun. He could see them well enough: a harsh-faced bunch in dirty coveralls, bearing picks and shovels-a prison road crew escaped from their keepers. He didn’t care; to him they looked like angels of mercy. But at the last minute the truck swerved wide and throttled up.

Crying, “No, no!” the young man ran to intercept it, to block the road if he had to. “I’m not crazy!” he shouted. “¡No estoy loco!”

The truck grew bigger and bigger; the truck took over the landscape, expanding like the Big Bang until its right wheel alone was bigger than the entire world-the whole universe. A black rubber sky studded with shiny pebbles, turning over on him.

The last thing he saw was stars.