I walked back to my seat.
Slowly.
Which was strange, because every part of me wanted to do the opposite.
Run.
Where exactly, I had no idea.
Suzzy looked up as I sat beside her.
Whatever she saw on my face made her straighten.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She stared at me.
“The driver is crying.”
Her eyebrows pulled together.
“Crying?”
“Yeah.”
“Like... crying crying?”
I looked at her.
“What other kind is there?”
She glanced toward the front of the bus.
For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t have a clever response.
Maybe someone had died.
Maybe he was going through something completely unrelated to the thirty-something strangers sitting behind him.
People cry.
Drivers are people.
There.
Perfectly reasonable.
I leaned back.
The bus hit another pothole.
Everyone bounced.
Someone screamed dramatically from the back, followed by laughter.
The music continued.
I tried joining in.
I really did.
But something had changed.
Once your brain decides something is wrong, ordinary things stop looking ordinary.
I noticed the windows.
Then the glass separating us from the driver.
Then how long it had been since we’d passed another vehicle.
I checked my phone.
No bars.
I raised it slightly.
Still nothing.
Suzzy noticed.
“No network?”
I shook my head.
She checked hers.
“Mine too.”
That didn’t mean anything.
We were in the middle of nowhere.
Of course there was no network.
I looked outside.
Trees.
More trees.
Rainwater collecting in the grooves left by tyres.
I tried remembering the last house we’d passed.
Couldn’t.
The last person we’d seen.
Couldn’t remember that either.
I looked toward the front again.
The driver’s silhouette remained perfectly still behind the glass.
Both hands on the wheel.
Something cold settled in my stomach.
“Khaleel.”
I turned.
Suzzy was watching me now.
“You’re thinking too much.”
I almost laughed.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I was ruining a perfectly good trip because I’d seen a grown man having a bad morning.
So I forced myself to stop.
For about thirty seconds.
Then I stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To ask him something.”
“You couldn’t ask him the first time?”
“Apparently not.”
I made my way forward again.
This time, people barely noticed me.
I reached the partition.
The driver saw me in the mirror.
I know he did.
His eyes moved.
Just slightly.
Then returned to the road.
I knocked.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
Harder.
He kept driving.
“Boss!”
Nothing.
I hit the glass with my palm.
The music behind me faltered.
Not all at once.
Someone lowered the volume first.
Then conversations began dying around it.
Suddenly, I became aware of thirty-something people watching me make a fool of myself.
The driver finally turned his head.
Only slightly.
Enough for me to see his face properly.
Tears had soaked both cheeks.
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Then his lips moved again.
One word.
So quiet I almost didn’t hear it through the glass.
“Sorry.”
He faced the road again.
Something inside me dropped.
“Sorry for what?”
Nothing.
“Where are we going?”
No response.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
“Khaleel. Ya mei ne ne?”
“What is it?” he asked in Hausa.
Saleem.
I barely looked at him.
Then the bus rounded a bend.
And there it was.
At first, I thought I was looking at the sky through a break in the trees.
White.
Massive.
Then more of it appeared.
A dome.
It rose above the forest in the distance, impossibly clean against all that green and grey.
For a second, it was almost beautiful.
Someone behind me whistled.
“Ei. Is that where we’re staying?”
People moved toward the windows.
Phones came out.
The mood changed almost immediately.
Excitement.
Curiosity.
Relief.
Apparently, the crying driver had already become less interesting.
I kept staring at the dome.
Something about it bothered me.
Not how it looked.
Something else.
I could hear something.
Very faint.
I tilted my head.
Rain.
Tyres against wet earth.
The low hum of the engine.
People talking behind me.
And underneath all of it,
something else.
I held my breath.
There it was again.
Distant.
Thin.
Gone before I could place it.
I looked around.
Nobody reacted.
“Saleem.”
“Hmm?”
“Shh.”
He frowned.
“What’s up?”
“Just listen.”
We did.
Nothing.
For a few seconds, I actually felt stupid.
Then,
there.
A sound somewhere beyond the trees.
Long.
High.
I couldn’t tell what it was.
Another followed.
Then another.
The first could have been an animal.
The second made that harder to believe.
The third sounded unmistakably human.
I looked at Saleem.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore.
He was staring at the dome.
“Khaleel...”
“I know.”
Behind us, someone turned the music back up.
And just like that, the bus came alive again.
Laughter.
Singing.
Someone was already recording the dome through the window.
That was somehow worse.
Everyone else was still having fun.
I grabbed Saleem’s arm.
“We need to get off this bus.”
He stared at me.
“How?”
I looked at the windows.
Then at the road rushing beneath us.
Then back at the dome.
Closer now.
Much closer.
“We jump.”
He stared at me long enough for me to realise how insane I sounded.
So I returned to Suzzy.
She looked from me to Saleem.
“What is happening?”
I crouched beside her seat.
“I’m going to ask you to do something incredibly stupid.”
Her expression changed.
“What?”
I glanced toward the front.
The driver was looking at me in the mirror.
I froze.
He wasn’t crying anymore.
His cheeks were still wet.
His eyes were still red.
But the tears had stopped.
He was just watching me.
That frightened me more.
I turned back to Suzzy.
“When I move, stay close to me.”
“Khaleel.”
“Please, Suzzy.”
Something in my voice stopped her.
I looked outside again.
The dome disappeared behind the trees as the road curved toward it.
Then appeared again through another opening.
Larger.
Closer.
We were near enough now that I could make out smaller structures beneath it.
And I didn’t have to strain to hear the sounds anymore.
Neither did Saleem.
I looked at him.
Then Suzzy.
Then the emergency window.
“We need to get off this bus before it stops.”