Kendra sat in a state of shocked terror, not knowing what to do, and not trusting anyone around her to decide for her:

The bus driver, indecisive and too polite to be in charge of anything—and white besides—had just submitted to the demands of the crazy man.

The crazy man was at least known to her; an orthopedic tech that had always irritated her so when he brought her patients to X-ray. He was some loudmouthed sweaty kick-boxer or something and had just killed one lady EMT and threw this big gimpy fat one, who worked up in admittance, on the seats so hard she might never sit up straight again.

‘Three white people; one crazy and two more afraid than me. I can’t trust them. What about the brothers and sisters?’

She looked around to see the Mexican lady screaming—‘Great, invasion of the body snatchers and we still have an illegal alien on board!’

She then noticed the sweet big-headed giant, the retarded boy with the bible comics, hugging the Mexican lady and trying to calm her down talking about Jesus, ‘He can’t lead shit, probably be the first to get eaten, impregnated; whatever those messy bugs are wanting to do to us!’

She then felt a sweaty quivering hand, like a giant gelatin claw, droop over her forearm, and was looking into the eyes of the immensely fat burger boy, who was babbling, “What do we do Miss Nurse? You should know—you a nurse. Do you work with the crazy kung-fu doctor?”

His watery eyes had indicated the insanely violent tech, pleading for sanity. Kendra had to at least set some reality down, “What’s your name?”

“Malcolm, Malcolm maam!”

“Okay Malcolm, I am not a nurse, but an X-ray tech, and he—that crazy man right there—is an orthopedic tech; beats the shit out of drunks on the night shift in the ER and casts broken arms for the real doctors—who are all stuck in that building that we are leaving behind going God only knows where! Sit right here next to me Baby.”

‘Great, I have a four-hundred pound toddler to care for’, she thought as Malcolm squirmed onto the two seats next to her.

She then regarded Oldman Jones; at least a real man, but old, and only as capable as a man who has swung a mop his entire life could be expected to be. The older janitor nodded to her approvingly as she hugged the giant baby to her small breast. Then she glimpsed her one hope at sanity in this mess; the one person who she could at least hope was a kindred soul, the young sister with the plastic flower in her wig, who was pacing the aisle angrily, smacking the window and cussing at the big disco-ball-eyed spider that was eying her hungrily.

‘Yes’, she thought, ‘a sister at least, someone to speak with while the crazy man barks orders and the cowards cower.’

The bus was now picking up some speed going past the next stop. Their attention was then all drawn to the figure of a tall young black man running along the sidewalk waiving down the bus. They all stood and watched him swatting at flying bugs and calling for help. There was no help coming from the bus driver, as he obeyed the crazy tech, who continued to give orders, “That’s right Brother Man, no admittance. That dude has got an infestation already. We cannot endanger your passengers.”

Just then the young man on the sidewalk screamed hysterically, looking into their eyes, as he raced along the bus; unlike most of them being fast enough to actually catch the thing. She looked into his panicky watery eyes—for it was her, the sympathetic mother-figure on board—with whom he chose to lock eyes and plead silently. She placed her hand on the glass and spoke out loud, “Oh Baby I’m sorry—Oh Baby lookout!”

He was still running, palms on the side of the bus, pleading to her with his eyes and screaming for the driver with his mouth. Then two of the nasty spider-bugs leaped from the bus and sailed into him; one smacking into his eye and flexing grotesquely, peeling his eyelid back, and the other sailing right into his mouth!

All of them, but the driver, even the crippled admittance lady, had come over to press their faces against the windows, in morbid fascination as to the terrible skittering fate that seemingly sought them all. When the spider latched onto the young man’s eye and began spreading the lid and inserting the tip of its abdomen into the tear duct they all gasped in horror. But when the other spider sailed into his open mouth they all sucked in their breath in disgust, except for the crazy tech, who cruelly stated, “The creepy-crawlies from outer space just whacked another one of us. Here, I have these masks like I’m wearing. You should all put one on and have some spares—”

Just then the man shed a tear with his unmolested eye and threw himself down beneath the bus, which made a bumping motion accompanied by a sickening crunching sound as the poor man took the easiest way out available to him. Before the sounds of disgust faded away she was attacking the heartless tech, pounding his hard chest with her little hands, “You, you racist—if he wasn’t a brother! You let him die! We could have saved him—you white people—”

The crazy man was now hugging her, trying to soothe her, and this brought her beyond words, to a white hot anger, “Arrrgggheeeah!”

The driver spoke up, “I was just doing what the man said—I’m sorry!”

Oldman Jones spoke up, the hugging tech apparently beyond words also, “Listen Baby Girl, this man survived out there—he knows, is jus’ lookin’ out. Weren’t nothin’ racial about it.”

Malcolm then patted her back as the bus cruised on, “Besides, this dude ain’t white—he Puerto Rican or some shit.”

The big-headed boy then spoke up, “No, he’s Italian; an ethnic kind of white man.”

Malcolm seemed perplexed, “Really, Italians are white? I thought they was like rich Puerto Ricans?”

The man that was hugging her then spoke up in his own ethnic defense, “My parents were Greek, I’m an American!”

Malcolm, now unafraid, spoke out loud, to no one in particular, as if the object of their discussion were not even present, “What the hell is a Greek?”

The big-headed boy chimed in, “They are like really hairy Italians with bigger noses. Their ancestors discovered civilization and they own a bunch of diners.”

The man was no longer hugging her and was just looking from person-to-person as if he was wondering what the verdict concerning his ethnicity would be, when Oldman Jones bellowed, “Okay Mister, I don’ care if you the Mafia Pope or Jackie Chan, what is you plan?”

The tech then gently pushed away from her and seemed uncomfortable speaking to them all, “Ah, ah, Mike here said he was taking us up to the college campus to maybe wait for the National Guard or some other first responders.”

He said this as the bus was banking left onto Rossville, not right toward the campus. Then the driver let out an oath and tried to turn the bus in the intersection, causing it to jerk and them all to crash into the right hand side of the bus. The big admittance lady fell on Kendra’s ankles and squealed. Then the driver yelled, as more bugs smacked into the bus, “Shoot, I’m sorry folks, I just was turning out of habit. Damn, I don’t want to risk the undercarriage over the median. Let me back this thing around and then we can head up—wait, you see that Nick?”

Kendra was now sliding back up onto the seat, prying her foot out from underneath of the big admittance lady with Malcolm’s help even as Oldman Jones helped the crippled woman up onto the seat across the aisle. Nick, as so the crazy tech was apparently named, hurried up to the bus driver’s shoulder as they all looked ahead through the windshield at the stop in front of the apartments off to the right.

The driver pointed to the two young people at the stop, a muscular young man and his pretty white redheaded girlfriend with the tweezed eye-brows and the attitude. The girl was shielding her head with her purse and the man was swatting the spiders that hovered about menacing her with a rolled up apartment guide. Oldman Jones then began to inch up front, “Is that?”

Nick then cut him off and answered him at the same time, “Yeah Oldman, that’s Hot Stuff!”

Malcolm then chimed up, “Oh we can’t let her die!”

Big-head then chirped in his squeaky voice, “I’ll help!”

The bus roared into action as the driver hunched over the wheel and Nick produced a surgical mask from a small box and held it up, “I need someone who can run.”

‘You have got to be kidding me. Just because she is pretty and tweezes her eyebrows and has a wide white ass they are going to risk their ever-loving lives?!?’

She looked to the back, up into the eyes that she expected would offer a comforting note of sane agreement, and possibly some defiance, to the ghetto girl with the plastic flower in her store-bought hair. If she had hoped for agreement from that quarter though she was mistaken, as the girl stepped forward to grab a mask, “I’ll out run your ole gyro-eatin’ Jackie Spam ass!”

The bus roared on and people yelled encouragement, but someone closer yelled in supreme indignation up at the ‘heroes’ poised to rescue the damsel in distress, and she was surprised to realize it was her voice, “Are you all sick? We let that man die back there. Now we go to rescue some bitch just because she’s fine and manages to squeeze into them tight blue jeans?”

Oldman Jones perked up, “Pretty much Baby Girl.”

Nick agreed, “It’s doable.”

Malcolm then chimed in with his quivering voice, “Can I help?”

She looked at him in disgust, “You too?”

Then the black girl yanked the hat from his head, “I’ll take this fat boy.”

Kendra’s ire was now turned on the younger sister, and she looked up with blazing eyes, “Seriously, this somehow makes sense to you? We let a brother die and then risk everything for some fine little white girl?”

The dark-skinned girl looked down into her eyes harshly, “Lady, I’m gonna let that boy out dare die too, ‘cause I a lesbian. And, if this shit is the last day on earth like this Big-headed retard say—the hell if you gonna be my last booty call! Here, hold my hair bitch!”

Kendra was left in shocked awe, holding a nasty cheap-made wig with a plastic flower in it, as the bald ghetto girl slapped on Malcolm’s greasy hat and seized Oldman Jones’ mop, and prepared to offload from the front door as they banked over to the stop.

Despite her reservations about the blatantly sexist, racist, and apparently ‘homosexual-ist’ motivation behind this rescue attempt, she found herself cheering for Nick and ‘Ghetto’, and hoping that the young man who was just now fighting so heroically to protect his much-desired lady friend from the hovering and lunging spider-bugs that menaced them, would somehow prevail. Kendra was kneeling on the seat, leaning over the fire-extinguisher box, and found herself screaming through the closed window, “Kill them nasty suckers Baby Boy.”

‘Please Baby, kill them all, and get up in this bus.’

To be continued in Black Mercedes: First Contact #5…