11) Satuska

The bus is attacked by soldiers; we learn more of Artemis

11) Satuska

Dante stirs. Not awakening, but he rolls over and his arm stretches for me. I slip out of the bed. Ben sleeps peacefully in the other. He looks like a baby wrapped up in blankets. I can't remember how long it had been since I had properly slept, but it looks like I’ll have to add an extra day to the sleepless pile.

I sneak down the stairs. No one looks up at me; no one seems to care. The Driver had said the bus was open to Magical creatures and Humans, so were the people on board people, or not people? There was no way to tell, without asking of course, but that would be rude. I tap on the glass that separates The Driver from passengers. The Driver slides the window open.
"Yes?" He asks politely.
"Are the people on this bus human or, you know...?” I trail off, unsure of how to ask.
"The only humans on this bus are your friends." He says laughing, "Anything else?"
"Yeah. Is there anything to eat?"
"There's a bloody buffet downstairs." He closes the window. F**k. I had forgotten he'd mentioned a buffet. It seems kinda crazy, the thought that a bus had a downstairs. Weird but wonderful. The Shadow People, all seven of them stand by the stairs. I don't even glance at them when I walk past. They don't deserve my attention, they never did, but now they definitely don't deserve it. They follow me down the stairs and into the buffet.

Again. I wasn't sure why I was surprised, but I was. By buffet, The Driver wasn’t kidding. A literal buffet. Hundreds of tables and chairs. A couple dozen people. The conflicting smells of a thousand different foods. From the ceiling hang little placards with countries on them. France. England. Brazil. Russia. China. Australia. Each country has their own little stand serving their food. There must be at least two hundred stands, and each with at least thirty different foods. The smell should have been horrendous. Again, I am surprised. The smell is nothing different from that of the rest of the bus.

I look around the room, tables, chairs, stands. The people are the most interesting. A couple of winged... things, sit at one table. And on the other side of the room sit a couple of things with horns. For all the Supernatural I’ve watched, I could never have been prepared to be in a room with monsters. As I step off the last step and my foot hits the floor. The smell also hits me. Now I can smell the conflicting foods and feel the heat from the hundred stands. As my foot hits the floor, every single head in the room turns towards me. A couple of gasps murmur around the room, I swear to God I heard a couple of... things, say, "Ain't that a f*****g human?”.
I stroll towards the counter with a sign reading ‘America’; I wasn't sure what I was expecting. But I mean, it was bang on. Hamburgers, pizza, KFC, McDonalds, pancakes, bacon, steak. The typical 'American' food.
"How's this work then?" I ask the... the server? I don't know what to call it. It sure as f**k ain't human.
"You take the food you want. Then you pay. Don't you humans have restaurants?" The server clearly isn’t pleased that I chose to eat at his counter. It’s also clear, that for whatever reason, monsters hate humans. Not like I don't blame them, we are a s**t species.

I settle down at a table as far away from everyone that I can. Which is kinda hard when you're on a bus. A magical bus. Still, none the less, it is difficult. There’s a lot of tension in the room; it’s obvious. The horned creatures seem to be muttering about the creatures with wings, and vice versa.
"A goddamn, motherfucking, unicorn." I whisper. Sat no more than fifteen tables in front of me, is a goddamn unicorn, pointy horn and all. It’s weird, to see a horse sat at a table using a knife and fork and eating a steak.

"Three hours until Santa Monica." The tinny voice mutters. None of the other patrons seems to care. How many of them will get off at Santa Monica? Will any? A hand touches my shoulder; I look over my shoulder at the thing that had laid its hand on me.
"Humans aren't allowed here." Its voice slurry, almost as if it were drunk, "So why don't you do us a favour, and f**k off." The scales that cover its body bristle as it says 'F**k off’; it was almost as if those words inflicted pain in it. I just stare at it. I don't need to do anything. It sees my eyes, but more importantly, it sees what's behind me. I know something is with me, I had felt it as I tore into Ben's father, as the blade pierced his skin. I felt it; it was stood behind me, watching. Now, I feel it again. It stands behind me, and whatever it is, it's enough to scare off a drunk monster, and force silence throughout the room. The room stares at me, wide eyed, gob smacked.

A couple of minutes later, maybe twenty, or thirty, Dante appears with Ben. They spot me easily, kind of hard to miss the only other human teenager in a room full of monsters, all of whom were giving me a wide berth.
"What's their problem?" Ben asks pulling up a chair.
"They don't particularly like humans." I reply simply, the boy doesn't need to know.
"How's this work?" Dante asks.
"You go up to a counter, choose your food and sit down."
"What about paying?"
"I don't know." I do know. Of course I do. I was literally told that it involved paying. But Ben and Dante didn't need to know, they had no money.

Dante and Ben return both with plates stacked with bacon and sausage.
"Dante, how long has it been?" I ask.
"Since what?"
"The mall." I say, his face drops.
"Twenty-one months." He says quietly. Almost two f*****g years.
"Holy s**t. I'm sixteen this year!" The air escapes me. Ellie is sixteen; Max and James are sixteen. Chloe would have been sixteen. We would all be sixteen. I wonder what they're doing, Chloe in Heaven, Max and James in Parlor and Ellie in France. S**t. We've come a long way. From sitting on roofs laughing, to a magical bus. From worrying about a stupid dance, to cold blooded murder. A scream rips me from my thoughts. I look at Ben and Dante, who both stare at me.
"What the f**k was that?" I laugh.
"I don't know." Dante and Ben say in unison. We aren't the only ones to have heard the scream. Every single person in the room is staring at the stairs. A loud bang fills the room, followed by another scream. The room falls to silence. Everyone stares at the stairs. More bangs. More screams. The sound of boots on the stairs. We all watch as a person rounds the corner. A gun in hand. They raise it and squeeze the trigger. An explosion ripples around the room, a bullet slams into the head of a horned creature, sending blood spraying over the table next to it. The person storms into the room, flanked by more people. All with assault rifles.
"Nobody move." A voice yells. No one moves. I move. I don't even have time to understand what I’m doing. Soon I’m on my feet, staring at the officer who had shouted.
"And who the f**k do you think you are?" I shout. The man stares at us, he grabs a walkie-talkie.
"There are children on this bus." I hear him mutter. "You told us it was just monsters, not humans. Alright." He looks at his squad. "Orders are orders. Everyone on this bus dies." He points at me, "Apart from them." And with those simple words, the room erupts. Winged and horned creates, put aside their differences and charge towards the soldiers. The soldiers barely have time to react before they’re being slaughtered. There are more soldiers than there are wings and horns. Soon, all the wings and horns lay on the floor, only a couple of soldiers are on the floor. The rest of the room takes this to mean 'Stay f*****g still’; they sit there, in their chairs, unmoving.

The White Devil appears, it stand in front of us. And before my men or me can react. It's upon us, tearing through our armour and into our flesh. And before you can say 'F**k' everyone is dead, everyone but me. My legs lay a couple of meters to my right. I stare at them blankly. It doesn't hurt. The White Devil stands before me. I had heard rumours about it. We all had, but to actually see it, is something else. A teenager stands in front of The White Devil. The teenager stares at me. They don't scream or shout, they don't cry, they don't even seem perturbed by what had just happened.
"Who are you?" The teenager speaks with a soft voice, hard to believe that this child had just ordered the death of twenty men. The White Devil growls at me. "Who sent you?" The teenager speaks again. Then they notice the writing on my armour. "What’s Satuska Industries?" They ask, with the smallest hint of emotion. I spit blood towards them. It splatters weakly against their shoes. And that’s when I notice it, the shoes are already covered in blood, dried blood, this teenager has killed before. It becomes clear, Satuska had known what was on this bus, and had lied to me, they had told me it was full of monsters. They had known. I had been lied to. My entire life spent training, just for it to end like this. The White Devil. They had known. They sent us in unprepared. Unknowing. Sent us in to die like cattle. And die we did. Slaughtered. Butchered.

The last officer finally died. He hadn't said a word. The only information was the name, 'Satuska Industries'. Dante and Ben had fled with the rest of the restaurant, leaving only me. The man died with a smile on his face, blood seeping through his clenched teeth. I step over the bodies of twenty men and women. I climb the stairs; I step into the bus. The people, who were unlucky enough not to have been in the buffet, had been executed, military style, bullet to the head. I look around for The Driver, or his body. I glance over the dead, none of them The Driver.

I step out into the dark night, the cold breeze slithers over me. It runs its hands through my hair. The moon shines brightly. You know in books when they say the moon glistened, or some other dumb s**t? I had never understood it, no matter how long I looked at the moon; it never glistened. But now, with only the moon to light the ground, I understand. I look around. No one else is around, literally no one. The bus is the only other thing. I realise with a jolt that the doors in the restaurant probably led to different places, and the only way to get to where I was, was through the bus. I step back onto the bus, I reach the stairs, and to my horror, there are no stairs. No up and no down. I rush to the toilet; I push open the door, a s****y bus toilet. F**k. The bus is a normal bus. With a couple dead people on it, and I was the only person near it.
"F**k." I scream to the sky. "F**k. F**k. F**k." I look around. I don’t have a s**t where I am, I could be miles from the nearest human. Dante and Ben could be on the other side of the world. The only other people near me were, of course, The Shadow People. They watch me as I scream into the sky, as I collapse to the floor. I stare at the sky. It's beauty astonishes me. Somewhere, out there, is life, and somewhere, some place, something else is doing the same as me, staring into the darkness, and wondering. Soon the night transforms into a memory.

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"What'ya thinking 'bout?" Chloe asks, her head presses into my chest as she rolls over to face me. Max and James lay on the floor engrossed by some s****y movie, Ellie lay next to James, quite close, but that isn’t unusual, they always seem to be close. They aren’t dating, they don’t even seem to like each other, but they’re always close. Hell, we’re all always close. If I stretch my foot out, I can kick Max in her buzz cut head, if I stretch the other, I can kick James and Ellie at the same time. Chloe rests her head on my chest, like always; it seems to be her favourite place to lay.
"What'd'ya mean?" I ask mimicking her.
"You've gone quiet." She looks at me. It's not like I could tell her what I was actually thinking, that if I hadn't know Max for my entire life, and if I didn’t know every single little thing about her, and her twin brother wasn’t one of my best friends, I'd probably find her quite attractive. No, I definitely couldn't tell her I was thinking that. None of us exactly understood why she shaved her head, when she told us she wanted to do it, we all told her it was stupid and not to. But against our better judgement, a day later, she walked into school with a shaved head, not completely bald, but the military cut. A couple of boys had taken the piss out of her new 'hair' cut, which ended as well as you'd expect. Max and James had been doing some sort of martial arts ever since I met them, granted, James was useless and had given up long ago; Max on the other hand, seemed to have some sort of natural talent for hitting people. I notice Chloe still looking at me.
"Oh, no, im just tired, that's all." I whisper, brushing hair out of her face.
"Go sleep then." She says pulling a weird face. She rolls her head back to the TV.

"Back then, the days we spent together, the nights, I never thought about Chloe, Max, James or Ellie. I just accepted that they were my friends, I never once gave it any thought that one day we might not be friends. I had always taken it for granted, never once told them how much I loved them." Here I sit. In a stupid office, with a stupid person without a name, talking about memories and monologuing to some unknown person. The Shadow People watch, they always watch. Watching, watching, waiting, watching. I don't understand them; what they are, who they are, what they want, what they're doing. I look at one now; it stands there. Hair dangling over its shoulder, it’s either a guy with long hair, or it’s a girl. It stands monotone, just there, its body conveys no emotion. I look at another, short hair, not a single strand dangles. They all have their differences; different hair, different ways of moving, but they all share one similarity; they convey no emotion. They just stand and watch. And the only time they speak is when something bad is happening or going to happen. But their voices, aren’t voices; it’s like a feeling, when they open their mouths, it isn’t words I hear, I feel them speak, it shivers through my body, scratching at memories, peeling away thoughts, sending neurones firing. When they speak - when I feel them speak, it’s like everything I have ever known and loved, ceases to exist. The feeling tears through my body and makes me wish I were dead. That's what it's like to hear The Shadow People talk. "And now, that they're gone. And the world I once knew is up in flames; now, I look back onto memories, and wish I had told them that they mean the world to me. I'll never hear their voices again, see them smile, feel Chloe's head on my chest, watch Max make stupid choices, watch through gritted teeth as James flirts with anything in a dress, watch as Ellie achieves brilliant grades effortlessly. I'll never know if she suffered... if they suffered."
"You talk as if they are all dead." Desk-head says. I stare at them. God. They’re an a*****e, I hate them so much.
"They are dead. Chloe is dead. Max, James and Ellie. Could be alive. But I’ll never know."
"Why won’t you know?" Desk-Head looks at me, at me - No, Desk-Head looks through me. "Why don't you, as soon as we're done here, go out and find them." Desk-Head continues to look through me. They're right of course, why don't I just leave and go find them. Is it cause I don't want to? I can't bear the thought of facing them? Why don't I just go? I could just get up and leave. Right now. I could stand and leave. Never see Desk-Head again. A choice. I toy with the ring on my finger, sliding it off. I cup it between thumb and forefinger. I place it on the table. It clinks against the glass.
"Chloe gave me this ring, on my twelfth. On that day, she made me promise, made me promise that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t run. I wouldn't leave, I wouldn't get up and walk out. Those are the words she made me say, 'I won’t run. I won’t leave and I won’t get up and walk out.' She made me say those words, three years before they would mean anything. She made me say I wouldn't walk out. It was as if she knew that one day, I would face that choice. I made the promise. I told her that no matter what happened I wouldn't walk out."

I sit up. I brush the dust off my clothes. I made a promise. I promised Chloe I wouldn't run. I wouldn't leave. I wouldn't get up and walk out. "I will never break that promise." I say to the sky. I stare at what's before me; a bus full of dead people, and open land. Literally nowhere to go. I look down the road. Nothing, no head lights, nothing, not even a street light. Nothing, but the distant twinkle of lights. Far. Very far. But on a clear night like this, you can see straight down the road, and out to sea. I don’t know where I am, but I know that Santa Monica is close to the sea. Or at least I think it is. I’m not sure. But, miles away there are lights. Be it a petrol station or a town, hell, some sort of monster nightclub, would do. I don't care what it is. I just need somewhere. I take one last look behind me: no cars, no lights, and nobody. I start the long walk towards the light.