Chapter Six: That's How A Cowgirl Says Goodbye

Swish-swish, swish-swish, swish-swish; the wipers worked quickly, clearing the windscreen of muck, before the driver turned them back off. Grim faced, uninterested in engaging his passengers, Hatarei Pokaitara stared out at the road, the 124 bus travelling just below the speed limit through the quiet suburban streets. Every now and then, his communications radio crackled, flared briefly into life, and died again, reminding him how close he was to finishing his round. This was the last 124 of the day, though he would transfer buses and finish out his shift on another run, tonight.

 

Stopped at a set of traffic lights, Hatarei flicked his gaze towards the camera monitor, keeping track of how many passengers were left. Not too bad tonight, a pair of young couples, a middle aged man and a woman who could have been anything between 15 and 35, but was probably on the younger side, if the plastic hammer she carried was anything to go by. Those were all the rage around this time of year, amongst the younger folk. They got them, he assumed, from the showbags at the Ekka, and for the next few months, his daytime buses were filled with children duelling; hitting each other, themselves, or fellow passengers, with the horrible things. In fact, they were such a nuisance that during the day, he usually banned the hammers on his bus for a full month after the Exhibition was over. He’d told the woman as much, when she entered the bus; cautioned her that if she so much as looked like she was going to engage in any tomfoolery with the toy, she’d find herself off the bus quick-smart.

 

When the light changed, he accelerated again, taking his eyes off the camera and looking back at the road. The quiet streets of Moorooka slid by and he noticed, too late, the young man he hadn’t expected to see at the bus stop outside Moorooka School. He swore to himself, but made no effort to turn back. “The young man will just have to find an alternate means of transport tonight,” he told himself.

 

Over the next couple of stops, both couples and the middle-aged man all exited the bus. He looked back in the mirror, and was surprised to realise he couldn’t see the indiscriminately aged woman at all. He shrugged to himself, assuming he had merely missed her getting off the bus - it was late and he wasn’t, after all, the sort of person who would keep tabs on his passengers. Frankly, he didn’t care as long as they weren’t disruptive or untidy, and, of course, as long as they paid their fare, preferably without involving him in the process.

 

Unnoticed at the back of the bus, she waited quietly, curled under the seat in the shadows.

 

Briefly, he thought about the announcements that had gone around the drivers lately; dire warnings and announcements; scraps of information about a so-called series of murders involving bus drivers, but gave the information a shove back to the edge of his mind. It was, he figured, blown way out of proportion. All they really had to go by was that over the past year, four bus drivers had been murdered while ‘on the job’. As far as he had heard, there wasn’t even a similarity between the murder methods used. No, it was just media hype, probably in support of some campaign or other; the most it would do to concern him would be if people began to use other forms of public transport in fear, and that seemed unlikely - after all, at no time had this supposed serial killer harmed anyone other than the bus drivers she was apparently targeting.

 

Dropping his ruminations, Hatarei leaned over and flicked off his camera. Not a lot of point to leaving it on at this junction, he thought to himself. He would, however, finish out his run appropriately, just in case. You never knew when somebody would decide they wanted to take the last bus a stop or two instead of walking; at this time of night sometimes it really was the most sensible of choices.

 

He felt a momentary pang of guilt for the youth he’d left behind at Moorooka and hoped the young man had made it home safely, considered turning back, but decided against it.

 

As he drove, she slid her body and what little she carried with her, soundlessly along the floor, beneath the chairs, until she was almost at the front, just behind him, and there, she waited.

 

His communications radio continued to crackle sporadically into life with the occasional question or traffic notification (all the things a bus driver needs to know, such as, “there’s a speed trap on the corner of Wembley and Ewing Roads in Logan Central”, or “watch out for the accident on Musgrave Road in Coopers Plains”) until, a stop or two before the end of the route, he turned it off, frustrated with the “on again, off again” babble of the thing.

 

Grasping the opportunity in both hands, she gently probed at Hatarei’s mind for weaknesses that she could exploit in order to gain the upper hand in what was to come. Placid, although not exactly easy-going, he presented something of a challenge for her. It crossed her mind, then, that he might not be the one she was looking for, but she couldn’t take the chance that he might yet be. She had to find a way to make this work for herself, and her best weapon, she decided, was surprise. Surprise, that is, coupled with the ability to tighten the strap of his seatbelt enough to prevent him fighting back. She nudged his mind, planting and encouraging the idea that he was early enough to want to stop for a moment.

 

“Should take a quick pit-stop,” he found himself thinking. “No point getting there this early,” he yawned to himself. “I’d only have to sit around in the other bus, if I were to do that " if, of course, that bus had even arrived yet...” Leaving his audio and visual equipment turned off, Hatarei pulled the bus over on a deserted Sunnybank street. He reached for his book, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream’, by Ralph Steadman, and she took her chance.

 

In one swift movement, she pulled herself upright and stepped out of the shadows, simultaneously using her telekinesis ability to tighten his seatbelt just enough. As he struggled against the belt, she slipped her thick gloves off, revealing the latex pair underneath and pushed the inflatable hammer into his mouth before taping it in place, first with masking tape, then over again thick brown packing tape. He gagged slightly, his eyes bugging out in fear or anger or maybe just plain surprise, and if she wasn’t so busy, she might have looked into his mind again to find out. While he struggled and gagged she focused her attention; she had to leave enough control on the seatbelt to keep him bound, but not so much that she didn’t have enough for the second part of her job tonight. Concentrating deeply, she began to tug with her mind at the little plug in the hammer. Gradually, she could feel it loosening in his mouth, and so, it seemed, could he. His struggles ceased, he stared at her in pure, shocked, horror now. As the plug popped loose, he frantically resumed his struggles. Ignoring his attempts to free himself, she ran a slip of tape across his nostrils and squeezed gently at the inflatable hammer, encouraging the noxious fumes to enter his lungs.

 

As the fumes took hold, his struggles began to weaken, gradually, and before his struggles completely ceased, she nudged gently at his mind with her own, dropping pieces of her own most painful memory into his mind, where it would torment and haunt his final moments. As the memory ravaged his mind and the toxic gases ravaged his body, she leaned forward and whispered four simple words in his ear and waited for death to claim him.

 

Once certain the man was dead, she quickly used her talents to plug the hammer again, in case the gas had not evaporated completely, and pulled the tape off his face. Stuffing it into her bag, and carrying the hammer as though it were a toy, just like earlier that evening when she had boarded the bus, she managed to get the bus doors open and carefully stepped down, making certain not to touch her off with her Go Card, lest they trace her through that.

 

Blending into the shadows created by the trees and broken streetlights, she walked the back streets of Sunnybank, eventually making her way to Sunny Park, opposite Sunnybank Plaza. In the bins outside the notorious restaurant section, she carefully dropped just the inflatable hammer, using a discarded plastic fork to telekinetically pop the toy’s plastic, and allowing the poison gas to disperse into the air. If the police thought to look for the discarded hammer here, an unlikely occurrence as it was, the fish stink should cover over the smell of the ammonia and bleach. She kept the ball of tape in her bag for long enough to detour to the other side of Mains Road, where she dropped it into one of the bins outside the McDonalds bus stop, then walked towards Altandi Station where she called for a Yellow Cab.

Author's Note

Please bear in mind this is a very rough first draft as I'm throwing together 50,000 words in a month. Feel free to add reviews and comments/fix grammar and spelling/find plot holes and problems (these things are heavily encouraged!), but please do be gentle on this, as well as bearing in mind that part of the NaNo experience means unnecessary padding and/or weird moments/dares.