Sam felt people staring at him. Eyes on the back of his head. Music playing from far away. Against Me! singing “Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart.”
Something was happening at the front of the bus. The driver. He was clutching at his heart.
I’ve been here, Sam thought. This happened.
This happened.
Only it would be different this time. Last time, so long ago, he had taken the wheel as the driver slumped over from his heart attack.
But had the driver had a tentacle around his throat?
And had Sam been screaming?
Sam lurched to his feet, startled to find himself doing it. He hadn’t intended to. But he was up and lurching from side to side, grabbing seatbacks for support, eyes staring at him.
The driver turned and grinned at him with teeth dripping blood.
The guardrail swung open like a big gate, and the bus roared through and plunged over the cliff. Falling, falling, the rocks and the sea rushing up at him, the whole bus full of kids not really reacting, not caring, just staring and the driver grinning, and now the worms…
Sam tried to cry out, but his voice didn’t work. He was choked by the driver’s snake arm, choked and spinning.
Sam knew it was a dream, yes, had to be because the bus just kept falling forever and nothing could fall forever. Could it?
The dreamscape changed suddenly and he was no longer on the bus. He was coming around the corner into his kitchen and Astrid, not his mother, whom he expected to see, but Astrid, was yelling at someone he couldn’t see.
No time for this, Sam told himself. No time for dreaming.
No time to waste here.
Wake up, Sam.
But no part of his body worked anymore. He was glued down. Tied with a thousand tiny ropes that squirmed and writhed like snakes or worms.
And yet now, now, somehow he was moving.
He opened his eyes. Was he seeing this? Was he seeing the room, the floor, the dome ceiling a million miles away?
Was any of it real?
On the floor lay what looked like something washed up from the bottom of the deepest ocean. Pale and fleshy, moist. No more than eighteen inches long. It was pulsating slightly, just a ripple that moved it very slightly. Like a slug might move.
Sam felt sure he should know what the thing was. But he wasn’t even sure it was real. And he had to go now. Now or never. Up out of the dark pit and out into the world while the morphine lasted.
Not real, he thought as he moved past the slug.
Maybe, he said to himself, as he shifted one foot forward. Maybe none of it is real. Except for this foot. And that foot. One then the other.
Duck felt the breeze of the first bullet.
He zoomed upward as fast he could. Which was not very fast.
The second bullet was farther from its target.
Duck yelled, “Hey! Stop it!”
“Freak! Freak!” voices cried up at him.
“I didn’t hurt anyone!” Duck yelled back.