“You some kind of racist?”
“No, I’m just tired!” he protested.
Junior seemed on the verge of opening his mouth, but Turnbull subtly grabbed his arm.
One thug swung the butt of his AK into the old man’s gut. He crumpled to the ground, then rolled around moaning. The other passengers watched, indifferent. Then the thugs turned away to return to the SUV; they made their point and there was no sense hauling him in. The bitter woman smiled as the old man struggled to his feet and stumbled back to the bus.
They rode south for several long hours, the bus shaking and clattering nonstop as the driver seemed incapable of missing even a single bump or pothole. The old man clutched his abdomen and moaned every once in a while. The passengers tried to sleep or just stared out the dirty windows.
A few miles south of Tulare, which was nearly deserted, there was a sign for the Corcoran State Prison and Social Rehabilitation Center. Most of the traditional criminal convicts had long since been released as victims of the racist prison-industrial complex. The prison, and the camp built beside it, was now devoted to social criminals in need of reeducation. The bus grew quiet as it passed by the sprawling penal colony.
They covered still more miles. Bakersfield was never a particularly pretty place even before the country split apart, but now it seemed to be barely a city at all. There was almost no activity to be seen from the freeway – the factories and warehouses and grain silos were silent. Parking lots were empty except for abandoned cars and the occasional bum pushing a shopping cart. The fast food places that had once lured travelers were simply abandoned. Before, when a particular restaurant had to close, the company would swoop in and remove all the signs, logos and trade dress. It would not do to have a closed down McDonald’s just sitting there. But here in Bakersfield, no one had bothered. McDonald’s, Carl’s, Jr., Wendy’s – at some point the companies had just walked away.
When the country split, there had been promises of free trade, that nothing would be different as far as commerce, that it was simply a matter of social laws and lifestyle and that the two nations would be like brothers, just living in separate houses. The blue coasts would live their way, and the red interior its way, but nothing would get in the way of business. That lasted about a year, and within five years the blues had closed themselves off from the red states completely. Many companies just walked away from their investments in the blue states – they left everything. And now the corpses of those thriving businesses simply decayed, anything salvageable long-ago pillaged by the scavengers.
The bus wheezed and chugged as it began the long climb up old Interstate 5 – now the Barack Obama Freeway – to the Grapevine, the pass through the mountains north of the Los Angeles basin. The road rose on a miles-long ramp from the floor of the Central Valley through a crack in the hills heading south. At the base lay abandoned what had been a massive truck stop and rest area – the faded signs promised Starbuck’s and Chevron and a host of other forgotten brands. It was a transient camp now, made possible by the government water tanker parked in the middle of the parking lot. Junior estimated the line of people waiting in the sun to fill their jugs and bowls was 200 meters long.
Another billboard came into view: “DEATH TO THOSE WHO SUBVERT THE PEOPLE’S RULE!” It depicted a bunch of smiling kids gathered around a gallows. The former blue states had largely gotten rid of the death penalty for actual crimes well-before the Split. Once independent, their new leaders wasted no time in resurrecting it for crimes that involved challenging their rule.
As the freeway continued south, it worsened. The bus slowed considerably, which at least buffered the jolts and shaking from the deteriorating road bed. Without air conditioning, the atmosphere inside the coach was stifling. Turnbull felt the sweaty skin of his arms stick to the vinyl seat back, peeling off slowly whenever he moved.
The bus entered into the main cut of the pass, the grade steep enough to slow the bus to a crawl. There was a shudder, unlike the usual ones from the potholes, and then a stream of obscenities from the driver. The engine now sounded like it was grinding metal upon metal, and from under the front window rose a cloud of steam condensed on the glass. The driver, with effort, turned the slowing bus to the right and pulled off to the side against a sheer cliff face of grey shale.
“What’s wrong?” yelled a bald man sitting behind Turnbull and Junior.
“Shut the fuck up!” the driver shouted, opening the door and stepping out. A tractor trailer rig passed by and made its way slowly upwards.
“This could suck less,” said Turnbull.
“What do we do?”
“What they always do here. Sit here, wait to see what happens, and hope it doesn’t get any worse.”
The driver managed to get the cowling up, and the steam dissipated. But he just stared at the engine as if doing so would somehow change the circumstances. It was clear he had no idea how the bus he operated worked. So he just stood there.
“What’s going on? What are you doing?” the same man shouted. This time the driver ignored him.
“This is bullshit!” swore another passenger.
The hateful woman who had narced on the old man turned around in full scold mode. “You shut up! You should be grateful we even have a bus! You think they have buses like this in the racist states?”
Junior raised an eyebrow. They certainly had no such public transportation in the red.
“Fuck you, bitch,” the bald man responded. “There aren’t any cops here and I will fuck you up!”
“Racist –“
“Bitch, you better shut the fuck up!”
Outside, another bus pulled to the shoulder in response to the driver’s desperate waving of arms.
“Time to go,” said Turnbull, standing up and making his way forward past the angry woman. She stared at him, as if she were demanding his intervention, but Turnbull ignored her.
The driver ran to the door of the rescue bus. It opened and he disappeared inside just as Turnbull and Junior exited their own.
“Get our gear,” Turnbull said as the other bus’s door slammed shut and its engine roared.
“You’re shitting me,” he said as the other bus pulled back onto the freeway and began to climb the Grapevine again.
Junior re-appeared with their packs from the storage bin underneath. “No way.”
“Way.” He took his pack and stepped around to the roadway. From inside the bus, they could hear the passengers screaming and shouting at each other. There was a crash of glass – someone had kicked out a window.
Down the road was a pick-up truck slowly grinding its way up the grade. Turnbull dropped his pack and stepped out into the freeway waving his arms. In his hands, he held a stack of bills.
More people were coming off the bus now; inside, it sounded like they were tearing out the seats.
The blue Ford pick-up, probably from the early 2000s, slowed and stopped. The driver was in his fifties, with a dirty denim shirt and greasy hair.
“You want a ride, huh?”
“LA. We got a hundred.”
“Four hundred. Each.”
Turnbull did not hesitate. “Okay. Four hundred each.”
“Well, if you’ll pay four hundred, you’ll pay five hundred,” he said.
Turnbull threw his pack in the back and nodded for Junior to join him. Then he opened the door to the cab and leaned in to the leering driver.
“How about four hundred each and I don’t rip your throat out and take your piece of shit truck?” he said pleasantly. The driver took the eight hundred total, and Turnbull hopped into the back. They shared the space with an old transmission and about twenty feet of rusty chain.