The Last Bus
(Episode 4)
The driver must have sensed it too, but it was too late for him retract.
“Chidi, robbers!!!” He alerted the security man attached to the bus and pumped some power onto the throttle. He headed for the barricade.
“To the ground, everybody!” Chidi screamed as he sprung to action immediately. He cocked his rifle and ran to a vantage point, ready for what laid ahead. The bus turned into a house of commotion instantly as people scampered to lie on the floor. Some even tried squeezing themselves under the seats. There was no sort of prayers I didn’t hear on that day; everyone suddenly remembered his or her God. Mother-in-the-Lord’s ‘Blood of Jesus!’ was the loudest. The little boy clung to her the same way Fiona stuck to me.
The bus raced towards the barricade the same way our hearts ran towards our mouths. The bus flung us against each other as it rammed into the barrier and swung left and right as the driver swayed in a bid to dodge the obstacles on the road. The robbers cleared off the road but not before the driver knocked down one or two of them.
They got back to their feet and opened fire on the bus. More of them ran out of the bush and lent their ammunitions to the assault. Bullets rained into the bus from all directions, bringing down shards of shattered windows on our heads like raindrops. The pandemonium intensified in the vehicle. The security man wasted no time in returning the favour. He screamed as the shells from his bullets dropped to the ground with his muscles twitching in rhythm with the vibrating gun. More clanging sound rented the air as the bullets pierced through the bus, which was only diluted by the soft sound of bullets sinking into the cushion of the seats.
I didn’t know how many of the robbers Chidi took down or if he got any of them at all, but one thing I knew was that Chidi got a bullet to his forehead. Blood spattered into the air and poured down on our heads in a shower of blood rain. He yelled as he fell backwards into the bus. It was as if it happened in slow motion. In my head, I heard no other sound except the ticking sound of my wristwatch and the loud thud of his body when it eventually hit the ground. My eyes bulged out as I watched him fall. GBUM! GBUM!! I heard my heartbeat loud and clear. Fiona must have heard it too.
People screamed some more. Many intensified their prayers. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”, “Blood of Jesus!”, “Chineke!”, “God of Elijah! ”, “Awusubilahi!” were some of the frantic cries I could pick up in the chaos. Some could not even speak audibly. Instead, their mouths were only dancing, and their heads were nodding endlessly. At a point, I almost thought I was in a white garment church.
Grown-up men—husbands and fathers—cried like babies. Some needed to have seen how ugly they looked when they cried. The most touching of all was the little boy. He kept calling “mummy, mummy” as he wailed. His entire body trembled as he clutched to his mother. I felt a hole in my heart. The only sounds that could match the cacophony in the bus were those of screeching tyres and raging gunshots outside. Strangely, I felt more concerned about Fiona’s safety than mine. I wondered how she would survive this mayhem.
In all of this, the driver didn’t lose focus. He did not slow down a bit. He docked a few times as bullets shattered the windscreen. Suddenly, he swerved into the bush on the right, flinging us to the left. My head collided with Biggie’s. Biggie was a huge guy that had kept to himself on the trip so far. Thank God his head was not as big as Lasisi’s. My head wouldn’t have remained the same. The bus bounced up and down the undulating path as the driver sped parallel to the main road. Tree branches and shrubs scratched and lashed at the bus mercilessly. Sleeping birds were thrown into confusion. I saw what the driver was trying to do. He wanted to lose the robbers and hit back the road some kilometres at the front. For a time, we thought we had lost the robbers.
However, the robbers prepared well for such display of heroism. They had strategically positioned themselves. What our driver didn’t know was that there was another band patiently waiting for us in front.
After a few kilometres, the bus bumped back into the road only for us to be welcomed into the embrace of raging gunshots. A bullet found its way into the driver’s shoulder. He screamed in pain and lost control of the wheel for a moment. Unending sounds of metal piercing metal and shattering glass kept our hearts in our mouths. Then we heard the sound of water bursting out of a container shortly followed by that of whooshing air. The bullets must have hit the radiator and the tyres. The bus sputtered a few times and stopped.
The driver raised his hands in surrender. Sweats trickled down his temple. The pain from the gun wound burned in his eyes, yet he gave no evidence of cowardice. Blood streamed down his arm and chest, gradually soaking up his yellow shirt. A strange calmness suddenly swept through the bus—not as a result of peace but fear. We started sitting up one after the other. Fiona still clutched to me. The small boy had stopped wailing and looked on with big innocent eyes. He sniffed at intervals, trying to pull back phlegm into his nose while his mother shielded him like a mother hen hid its chicks under its wings. The look of resignation was plain on everyone’s face. The only sound audible now aside the ticking of my wristwatch was our heartbeats.
The robbers walked towards the bus.
To be continued … Watch Out for the Next Episode!
