CHAPTER 2 – The Bus to Nowhere

I didn’t wake to the sirens.

I woke to silence.

Cold bit into my back. Damp seeped through my shirt. For a second I lay there, eyes closed, sure I was still on the street and that the next thing I’d feel would be hands on my chest, paramedics shouting numbers, bright hospital lights burning my retinas.

Instead, there was… nothing.

No traffic. No city hum. No voices.

Just my own ragged breathing and a faint, distant hiss, like a radio between stations.

I opened my eyes.

I was lying on cracked concrete under a flickering streetlamp. Not the one by my apartment. This was an old, leaning thing, paint flaking off the metal pole, the light encased in a cage of rusted wire.

Behind it, a sign tilted at an angle: **BUS STOP** in chipped white letters.

Fog hugged the ground in every direction—thick, white, impenetrable. It rolled over the curb and swallowed the street, blanketing everything beyond a few meters like someone had erased the world with a soft brush.

I pushed myself up on my elbows. My body expected pain—shattered bones, torn skin, something—but there was… nothing. No ache, no blood, no glass embedded in my feet. My shirt and jeans were damp but intact.

My heart hammered.

“I… survived?” I whispered.

No bruises. No broken ribs. My bare feet were dirty but uncut. Even my hands were fine, with no wine bottle cuts, no scrapes.

I remembered the car. The impact. The feeling of my chest caving in. The taste of blood.

I looked down.

No tire marks. No puddle of blood. Just cracked concrete, a few dead leaves, and a faded cigarette butt.

Panic tried to claw up my throat. I swallowed it back.

“Okay,” I told myself, voice shaking. “You’re in shock. This is a… coma dream. Or an afterlife lobby. Or—”

My mind, traitor that it was, supplied images from stories I’d written: liminal spaces, foggy platforms, halfway houses for the dead.

I wrapped my arms around myself. The air was cold and thick, smelling faintly of wet stone and old metal. The kind of smell underground parking garages had, or tunnels.

“Hello?” I called.

My voice disappeared into the fog, smothered instantly. No echo. No answer.

Alone.

I pushed myself to my feet, hugging my arms tighter, and took a careful step forward. The fog curled around my ankles like fingers. Somewhere above, the streetlamp buzzed and flickered again.

“Is anyone—”

Headlights cut through the fog.

I flinched back, heart ramming my ribs. For a second, I saw the car again—white hood, blinding light, the driver’s horror-stricken face—and my body froze.

But the lights this time were higher. Wider. Two rectangles of weak yellow, side by side, rumbling toward me with the sound of an old engine and squealing brakes.

A bus.

An old city bus, the kind that should’ve been retired decades ago. Its paint was a patchwork of peeling white and gray, metal streaked with rust. Half the windows were fogged from the inside. The front destination sign was dark, nothing but a black rectangle at first.

It rattled to a stop in front of me.

The doors hissed and folded open on their own.

Inside: darkness. No strip lighting, no driver silhouette. It's just a yawning black mouth.

Every horror writer instinct I had flared red.

No.

This was wrong. This was too familiar.

I’d written something like this, once. A short story about a bus that only appeared to people who’d crossed a line they couldn’t uncross, ferrying them to a place that wasn’t Heaven or Hell but something worse.

My stomach lurched.

“Okay,” I whispered. “This is a dream. This is a nightmare, and my brain is recycling my drafts because it’s a jerk.”

The fog curled thicker around my ankles, tugging faintly toward the open doors.

From inside the bus, a voice drifted out. Not from the front where a driver should be, but from somewhere deep in the dark.

“Why are we stopping?”

It was male, bored.

Another voice, rougher: “Newbie at the station.”

A third, higher-pitched and nasal: “Ugh. Being a scared newbie.”

A low, amused male voice answered them, closer this time, like he was sitting just inside the doorway.

“She’ll run.”

He sounded entertained by the idea. Like this wasn’t the first time he’d watched someone like me hesitate at these doors.

The hair on my arms stood on end.

Nope.

Instinct screamed at me to get away. I took a step backward. The fog didn’t like that; it clung more thickly, cool, and damp, making every step feel heavier.

“I’m not getting on that thing,” I said, more to myself than to them. “I’m not insane.”

Silence from inside. Then, a faint chuckle from the low voice. It's not cruel, but not friendly either.

The bus loomed, patient.

I turned sideways, thinking I could skirt around it and find… what? A sidewalk? A hospital? An exit sign? Anything that wasn’t this.

The fog wall was solid. When I stretched my hand into it, it felt like pushing against cotton candy made of ice. My fingers sank in a few centimeters, then met resistance—soft but unyielding.

Panic tightened in my chest again.

“Hello?” I called louder. “Is anyone else here? Is this—am I dead?”

From the bus interior, a few dry laughs. A mutter: “Every time.” Another voice: “Just get on.”

“I’m not—” I started.

The fog at my feet surged, flowing over my toes like cold glue. My balance tipped toward the open doors.

“No.”

I jerked back, heart slamming. The bus didn’t move. The doors stayed open, breathing out cold, stale air that smelled like old leather, rust, and something metallic underneath—blood, maybe, if blood could get old and dusty.

“I’m not getting on,” I said again, louder. To the bus, to the fog, to whatever cosmic script writer thought this was clever.

No one answered.

The low, amused voice said, almost lazily, “Three… two…”

“Don’t you count at me—”

“One.”

Something grabbed my wrist.

It wasn’t a hand—not the way hands should feel—but it was *strong.* Cold fingers of shadow and iron clamped around my skin, yanking me forward with inhuman force.

I screamed as my body flew toward the open doors, bare feet skidding on the concrete. The fog snatched at my ankles like it wanted to keep me, then let go.

The world blurred into motion, metal and darkness, and the shock of being manhandled by invisible strength.

I didn’t have time to grab for the doorframe. Didn’t have time to brace.

I flew through the threshold and slammed into something solid and unyielding.

A chest.

Hard muscle under a thin layer of fabric, smelling like cold night air, steel, and the faintest hint of something wild—fur and old blood and something older than both.

Big hands closed on my upper arms, steadying me like I weighed nothing.

My breath left me in a painful exhale. My head snapped back.

And I looked up.

He was tall enough that I had to crane my neck. Sharp cheekbones, straight nose, mouth set in a line that was almost bored, almost cruel. Hair black enough to blend into the shadows, cut in a way that brushed his forehead and the tops of his ears.

His skin was pale, not sickly but unnatural, as if sunlight hadn’t touched him in a long time. His eyes—

His eyes were wrong.

In the darkness of the bus, they should have been unreadable. Instead, they caught the faint light from the open doors and threw it back, reflecting a strange, muted **red and gold**, like banked coals behind glass.

He looked down at me without surprise. It's more like he’d been expecting exactly this.

Death, I thought wildly, staring. Of course, Death has cheekbones.