mother, his father, Fleur, their lovemaking, and, of course, Richard Weal. Jordan’s lips and jaw felt numb, and he was utterly relaxed.
Outside, the city was consumed by the night and vanished entirely, leaving an eternity of highway stretching north as far as he could see. Only distant neon stars, rendered opalescent by the rain, broke the blackness. Lulled by the motion of the bus beneath him, Jordan yielded to the barbiturate admixture of painkillers and whiskey coursing through his system. He closed his eyes again, and slept.
CHAPTER FOUR
The bus travelled a north-northwest route along the Trans Canada Highway towards Georgian Bay, exiting onto highway 69, continuing north around Georgian Bay towards Parry Sound. The rain stopped, giving way to thick fog that drifted in from the rolling farmlands on either side of the highway, which then gave way to tracks of young pine forest.
The moon, which had begun its ascent hours before in the rain, came out from behind the scudding black rain clouds, frosting the road on either side of the bus with silvery light.
In Barrie, a mother and her five-year-old daughter boarded, and in Parry Sound, four passengers who’d boarded in Toronto disembarked. But no one from Parry Sound boarded. After five hours, the bus pulled into Sudbury for a half-hour refuelling stop.
Jordan slept through Jim Marks’s announcement that all passengers could step out, stretch their legs, and get something to eat at the diner next to the terminal.
No one boarded after the break, Jim noted sourly. His mouth tasted like bad coffee and cigarettes and his back ached. He felt his jacket pocket for the Dexies he kept there. He hated using the amphetamines, mostly because of what they did to his stomach. Though at his last physical, Doc Abelard had warned him that the Dexies, in conjunction with his hours, the cigarettes, and the forty extra pounds he was carrying around his waist wasn’t doing his ticker any favours.
He looked back. He counted five passengers in the back of the bus as he pulled out of the lot: an old lady sitting two rows behind him who had asked him three times already “just to be sure” that he was stopping in Whitefish; the teenage boy sleeping against the window halfway to the back who hadn’t gotten out at the Sudbury stop; the tired young mother with her little girl-Missy, he’d heard the woman call her back at the dinette; and the guy in the very back row reading a book.
There were fewer and fewer passengers on the northern routes, Jim realized, and he wondered how long Northern Star would be able to hold out. His retirement wouldn’t come a moment too soon.
Jim turned the bus west on Highway 17 and repeated the name of the coming towns like a mantra: Whitefish, Spanish, Serpent River, Thessalon, Garden River, Lake Hepburn, Sault Ste. Marie.
It would be hours yet before dawn. It was going to be a long fucking night.
At 4:15 a.m., Jim Marks pulled the bus over to the side of the road to investigate what he feared might be a flat tire on the right side. He took his parka down from the overhead compartment, put it on, and stepped outside.
Overhead, the full moon shone down like a headlight. The thought came to him-as it happened, one of the last thoughts he would ever have-that he’d never seen a night this bright and clear up north. The radius of the moon’s light aureole was such that while the larger sky was as blackest black, the area around the moon itself was indigo blue.
He shone his flashlight along the undercarriage of the bus. The tires were all intact and none were damaged. He shrugged. Whatever he had heard and felt, at least it wasn’t a flat. He’d include the incident in his report and the mechanics could check it out when they pulled into Sault Ste. Marie. He checked his watch. They’d only lost fifteen minutes. He stepped back onto the bus and looked down the aisle. The passengers seemed to have slept through the stop, which, given that most bus passengers on long routes were light sleepers, was itself a miracle.
Jim settled himself into his seat. He fastened his seat belt and started the engine.
In his peripheral vision, he caught an abrupt flurry of motion in the rearview mirror and looked up.
The man in the army surplus jacket from the back of the bus wasn’t asleep at all. He was wide awake. He was running along the aisle of the bus with spider like agility, past the sleeping teenager, past the woman and her little girl, towards the driver’s seat.
Jim opened his mouth to tell the man to go back to his seat and sit down, but nothing came out. Then, suddenly, the man was directly behind Jim and drawing back his arm. In his hand, he held something long that gleamed in the overhead light of the cabin. The last thing Jim Marks saw was a flash of silver in the gloom as the man’s arm came down viciously in a wide arc.
Jim threw his arms up to protect his face, but it was too late. There was a short, blinding sheet of white-hot pain and sharp pressure as the chisel end of the archaeological rock hammer split open his skull, but his conscious mind barely had time to register it as pain. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Jordan was jolted awake as the bus swerved on the highway. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He’d been dreaming that he was caught in a thunderstorm, or an earthquake. There had been the sound of thunder and of a woman singing some sort of high-pitched, screaming lament. It had been a harsh, unpleasant sound-one that, even asleep, had filled Jordan with dread.
He blinked and looked around him. Then he felt his face begin to throb, and he remembered that he was on a bus.
Jordan looked down at his watch. It was five a.m. His mouth was parched. He half-stood in his seat and looked around. The darkness inside the bus was complete except for the green glow coming from the dashboard. Squinting, he could make out the shape of the bus driver hunched over the steering wheel, but nothing else. He tried to remember what time they’d left Toronto-six? Six-thirty? It was now five in the morning. They weren’t due to reach Lake Hepburn till after six. And had the bus been full? He tried to remember-half full? A quarter full? He switched on the overhead light above his seat. The weak bulb illuminated nothing besides his seat and the seat next to his.
The bus was moving very slowly and he heard gravel under the wheels.
Jordan stood up and was assailed by an unfamiliar odour that made his stomach clench. For a moment, he was sure he was going to puke. It reminded him of iodine and rust, or the rotten smell of sulphur, or stagnant pond water, or shit, or some foul combination of all four.
He stepped out into the aisle of the bus and felt his way along the rows in the darkness. The smell grew thicker as he advanced. The bus was unbearably hot, as though the driver had turned up the heat as high as he could. Again, his head throbbed and he felt his stomach contract in protest against the thick smell in the air.
Jordan took another step up the aisle and slipped in a slick patch on the floor. The forward motion of his foot and his own weight carried him backwards. He lost his balance and fell, landing on his tailbone and elbows. Bolts of sharp pain shot up his arms and spine. Wincing, he rose to his feet and flicked the switch above the nearest empty seat. In the watery halo of lamp light, Jordan held his hands out in front of him and stared. His first thought was that perhaps he’d cut himself when he fell. Then he looked at the legs of his jeans. They were smeared and wet, and as red as his hands. Jordan knew what the smell was. He was covered in blood-not his blood, someone else’s. Someone very close by. He stifled the scream that threatened to erupt from his throat, and turned on the light above the seat in front of him.
