The List:
-Crow, Jonas
-Corvallis, OR
-Century
-Cards
The Result:
"The Corvallis Catastrophe"
Jonas slumped down in his seat. The others had cracked every
window on the bus, but the temperature just kept climbing.
“Sorry, folks!” the driver climbed back into the bus. “As
far as I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be anything broken or leaking in the
engine compartment, I just can’t get it to turn on. I’ve put in a call to the
repair shop in Corvallis, but there is no telling how long it will take them to
get a mechanic all the way out here.”
The elderly couple from Connecticut gripped each other’s
hand. “We’re all going to die!” the lady yelled, quivering in her Cancun
t-shirt.
Jonas crouched even lower and cranked up the volume on his
headphones. He didn’t need to hear this, on top of everything else that had
just happened to him. He was going to Canada, and that was that!
The driver pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his face,
but it was already so saturated that the sheen of sweat remained.
“What can we do?” demanded the father of two who had been
looking forward to vacationing in the Columbia Gorge with his family. “Do you
expect us to walk all the way to Corvallis?”
The driver shrugged. “I’m saying we probably have enough to
survive a few hours, but these buses are not typically equipped for a lengthy
emergency situation—so you best prepare for that possibility.”
“Daddy? I’m hungry!” the little girl whined.
“I want water!” her younger brother chimed in. “Great,”
whined the young man traveling with his girlfriend, “Now I’m thirsty, but my
water bottle is already empty!”
“I’m so hot!”
“Why isn’t anybody coming? What’s taking so long?”
“Excuse me,” said a middle-aged woman to the passenger
sitting next to her. “I need to use the facilities.” She stood, edged out of
the row, and turned toward the tiny lavatory at the back of the bus.
The driver grimaced. “I wouldn’t, ah, do that, if I were
you,” he muttered.
Her jaw tensed and she turned to him in agony, holding her
legs close together. “And why not? Isn’t this exactly why buses like this even have a toilet?”
“Yeah, but,” The driver gestured to the front of the bus.
“With the system outage up front, the, ah, filtration system would be
non-functional, as well.”
Her face melted at the realization. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
she cried. “Can we get off this bus
already?” She sat in the nearest seat, but did not dare relax.
“Great,” muttered the man sitting behind Jonas, “now I have
to pee too…”
“Hey!” A man in a sweaty business suit leaned forward, “I
have a friend waiting to pick me up at the bus station!”
“Any chance of that repair truck showing up?” somebody else
joined in.
The driver patiently checked his phone. He prayed that the
blinking battery symbol in the corner had only just begun, that he would at
least have a few more hours of juice left till help arrived. “No word yet.”
“Should we be calling 9-1-1?” somebody piped up, only for
those around him to start yelling objections as the young children burst into
tears at the suggestion.
“Ugh, I hate this
bus!” an impeccably-dressed woman with a pinched face complained. “Here I was,
trying to be economical, but hey, I guess you get what you pay for!” She stood
up and nailed the driver with a steel-eyed glare. “Serves me right—though if I
end up surviving this hellish trip, I promise you I will demand a refund, and I
am never taking the bus again!”
The driver held up his hands as the palpable agitation
thickened all the more. “Now, now, everyone,” he tried to maintain an air of
professionalism, “just stay calm. We will make
it through—“
“Do I smell burning?” A man three rows from the back jerked
up straight.
In seconds, everyone was sniffing and staring.
“I smell it too!” Cancun Lady wailed, and the driver leaped
to maintain control of the situation. “All right, everyone, we’re going to
evacuate the bus—“
“Evacuate?” Mr. Dad cried. “Are you kidding? I just got the
kids to settle down!”
“Smoke!” Bathroom
Lady shrieked, pointing to the windows on her side.
Panic set in, and every passenger rushed for the tiny steps
leading to the narrow door—every passenger except one.
Jonas was focused on being as invisible as possible, making
no noise and pretending with all his might that he didn’t even exist, when a
shove on his arm nearly sent him through the window beside him.
“Dude, are you crazy?”
the guy demanded. “The bus is on fire! We’re getting out of here!”
Jonas felt his heart catapult into his throat. Fire? How was
he going to get to Canada? How was he going to survive now?
He hobbled after the guy. In the bright light of high noon,
he saw the driver and about five passengers frantically unloading all of the
luggage, piling it on the ground as others formed a chain to transport them to
the shady side of the bus.
Bathroom Lady came around from the front of the bus, looking
very relieved.
“Thank God no one saw me, but I hope I never have to do that again!” she told the harried mother
who was in the middle of trying to console two very cranky, very overheated
kids. Jonas saw Businessman pace by him, phone pressed to his ear.
“Yeah, hi! We are on…” he looked around, as if the name of
the road would be posted somewhere obvious. “Well, the main road into
Corvallis… That’s the one! Yeah, our bus broke down and then we smelled smoke,
and—yeah, we called them, but there doesn’t seem to be any… Well, not exactly—I
know that, ma’am, but if you cou—What? I couldn’t quite ca—“ he peeled his
phone away from his ear and stared at it. “Oh you have got to be kidding
me!”
“What happened?” asked a young woman.
The man clenched his jaw and his fists, though the hand that
held the phone looked about ready to snap it. “Stupid, piece-of-crap junk
phone!” the Businessman seethed. “I just
upgraded last week and all of a sudden now it doesn’t hold a charge?” He stopped to kick a clod
of dirt. “What else could go wrong?”
“Daddy?” the little boy whimpered, ‘I’m hungry!”
Jonas huddled at the back of the crowd, trying his best to
be as inconspicuous as possible. What if Deus Maximus was behind all this bad
luck they were having? What would these people do if they found out he was to blame?
A stiff wind swept through, making everyone shiver. The bus
driver glanced up at the sky as clouds skated across the sun’s light. “Hey, at
least it’s cooler now…” he began, but no sooner did he say this, than a young
passenger cried out, and people dashed for their coats and any sort of cover as
a sudden rain poured out of a once-clear sky.
All forty passengers huddled fruitlessly against the side of
the bus as the downpour intensified.
“Oh God, WHY?” somebody
wailed, and immediately, everybody started yelling out to whatever higher power
they believed in.
Jonas felt a jab in his shoulder. Bathroom Lady squinted
suspiciously at him.
“Hey, why aren’t you praying?” she hissed. “It seems about
the only thing we can do. Maybe your contribution would bring good luck to the
group!”
“All right, here it is!” The driver announced, backing up to
where the whole crowd could see him. “There has got to be something seriously
wrong with this trip, and only one person responsible for all the weird
coincidences that have left us stranded.”
Businessman wagged his head. “You’re crazy! How can you just
assume one person is at fault for all this?”
Thunder boomed overhead. “You have a better theory?” the bus
driver yelled. He pulled a comic book out of the inner pocket of his jacket.
Jonas recognized it instantly: B.Y.B.L.
Issue No. 29. “I have been reading this comic since I was a little boy,
and it always seemed like there was some higher power like Deus Maximus
watching out for some people and dealing judgment on others in the real world,
just like in these comics.”
The passengers began shifting apart, glancing suspiciously
at one another.
“So how do we find out who is responsible?” somebody asked.
Jonas mouthed the words as the bus driver said them. “Cards
of Fate!” He listened with a sinking stomach as the driver explained.
“The hero, Remus Hemptor, would use it when he was out in
the field, cut off from Deus Maximus, and he needed to figure out which choice
would be the right one.” The driver squinted at the group before him. “Anybody
have a deck of cards?”
“I do!” The mother dug through her daughter’s travel pack
till she found the slim box.
The driver took the deck. “All right, here’s how it works:
I’ll pray to Deus Maximus, because that’s what Remus does, then I’ll shuffle,
and each one of you will take the top card. The person who ends up with the
Jack of clubs is guilty of bringing the wrath of God on this trip.”
“I still think you’re insane!” declared the Businessman.
The driver ignored him, clasping the deck in both hands. He
bowed his head and whispered discreetly to himself for several minutes. When he
finished, he shuffled four times, and moved to the far end of the crowd. Once
forty-one cards had been handed out, he announced, “All right, show!”
Everyone turned over his and her card. Jonas knew exactly
what his would be before anyone registered what he was holding.
“Jack of clubs!” Bathroom Lady shrieked. “It was you all
along!”
As one body the whole crowd converged on him, the questions
coming as thick as the raindrops.
“Who are you?”
“What do you do?”
“Who do you work for?”
“What kind of karmic being did you anger, that would invite
consequences on the rest of us for it?”
The driver waved his hands. “All right! All right, let him
speak!”
All voices drifted to silence as all eyes focused on the young
man in the grubby tee shirt.
“Um, hi?” he stammered in the silence. “I’m Jonas Crow; I’m
a blogger, and I write about the hidden messages and theories that I get from
the B.Y.B.L. series.”
“Hidden messages?” the driver blinked. “Like they have on
the official Remus Hemptor blog?”
Jonas could feel his face flush bright red, but there wasn’t
much he could do about it. “Um, actually, that’s not an official blog—that’s my
blog.”
The man’s eyes snapped wide. “You’re the blogger for Remus Hemptor?”
Jonas nodded. “Yeah, and I was supposed to be on a mission
for Deus Maximus—“
“Deus Maximus gave you a mission?” The driver’s face was so purple Jonas wondered if he
was going to pass out before the end of the conversation.
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to do it, so I ended up on this bus
because I’m running away.”
The driver hauled out his comic book. “So let me get this
straight,” he said slowly. “Deus Maximus himself gave you a mission, and you decided to run away instead—so now we’re
getting punished with bad weather and a
broken bus just because you're here
instead of where you’re supposed to be?”
Jonas nodded miserably. And the Award for Idiot of The
Century Goes To….
>>>>>
This excerpt is a scene from an unfinished novel I started a couple years back, The Astonishing Adventures of Jonas Crow, which
would be a modern-day adaptation of the Bible story of Jonah. In
particular, this scene is the famous "Storm on the way to Tarshish",
where Jonah tries to run from God and gets found out, just before
getting swallowed by the whale. Enjoy! If you would like to read more
excerpts from this story, click the hyperlinked text >HERE<
Also in the A-to-Z Challenge Series: ( * Continuations of Suggestion Box installments)
Also in the A-to-Z Challenge Series: ( * Continuations of Suggestion Box installments)
-Letter I* ] [-Letter S*
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