Death Management

The first thing I noticed when I boarded the bus was that the driver’s belly was the size of a watermelon. I quickly averted my gaze and handed her the ticket. It wasn’t nice to stare.

I plopped down in an empty seat. It was quiet on the bus. I looked over my shoulder. A woman wearing scrubs hunched over a textbook sat in the middle. A boy with his hood up sat by himself in the back, looking out the window at the decrepit skyscrapers. Pitter patters of rain tapped on the bus. Distant thunder boomed.

“Gas masks on!” barked the driver into her PA system, “Next stop in thirty seconds.”

I fumbled around with my mask.

“Everyone ready?”

I raised my thumb over my head.

The door opened. A gust of wind howled like a coyote and blasted the inside of the bus. I looked up and saw a middle-aged woman with red lipstick drenched in rain throwing her arms around in front of the driver. “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! I ran here all the way from the nail salon in my heels! They couldn’t get me in right away. Can you believe it? I told them I had somewhere to be, and they said the next available stylist would be with me soon, but—”

The door slammed shut. I removed my gas mask.

“Ma’am, I just need your ticket.” said the driver.

“Oh, my, yes, sorry.” She fished around in her purse and produced a ticket. The driver shooed her away.

She picked the seat right next to me. “You work in death management?” She saw my company polo shirt, “It must be rough working that kind of job in the storm season. On the plus side, you must get a steady stream of clients. Not me, though! I took my vitamins!”

“I heard those vitamins only work half the time. The radiation eats your brain the rest of the time. Then you die.” The driver was looking at us in the mirror above her.

“I don’t know about that,” said the woman with red lipstick, “Hey, doctor! Do these vitamins only work half the time?”

“Well, I’m not a doctor, I’m a nursing student, but-”

“Bah! She’s a nursing student! She doesn’t know anything.”

“They’re fake. They don’t help like the man on the radio says.” said the boy with the hood up. We all look at him, even the nursing student, “My uncle died from radiation s’poser.”

“How old are you, kid?” asks the woman with the red lipstick.

“Eleven, not that it’s your business.”

She asked where his parents were, and he said some mean things. He went back to staring out the window like he was imagining a life free of radiation storms.

I understood that look. I saw myself in him.

“What a brat!” said the woman with the red lipstick. She sat down behind the driver so there was a buffer row between her and me.

The nursing student and the boy were further back.

“I hope my kid doesn’t turn out like that,” mumbled the driver.

“He’s gotta be a runaway or something like that. No good hoodlum,” said the woman with red lipstick.

Hours went by. We were in the middle of Rivington, one of the towns that was hit the hardest. The bus weaved through abandoned cars. The fog was so thick, making the visibility low, so the driver had to drive slowly.

I peeked at the boy who now had his hood down, unveiling a brown mop. He stood on one leg and sat on the other one as he looked out the window, this time smiling. “I’ve never been this far from Sanctuary before.”

I lost my balance; it felt like some apparitional spirit tried to push me out of my seat. The boy smashed his face into the back of the chair in front of him hard enough to break his front teeth. I looked at the driver and saw her clenching her stomach as she moaned.

The bus careened to the side of the road. We lurched to a stop.

“Hey, what gives?” yelled the woman with the red lipstick, “Why are we stopping? My girlfriend Taylor’s birthday party is tonight. I have to be there!”

I stood up and walked over to the driver. Her seat and the ground below her were covered in water.

“Yo, no way,” said a muffled voice. The boy was standing behind me with his hand over his nose. He took his hand away, and blood gushed down his nostrils.

“Kid, let me take a look at you. I think you broke your nose,” said the woman wearing scrubs.

“Might wanna rethink your priorities,” said the boy, “this bitch havin’ a baby.”

I carried her into an empty seat and laid her down. The boy stood with his head tilted down as he pinched his nose and watched the nursing student prop up and spread the driver’s naked legs. The woman with the lipstick called him a creep. He said it was cool, that he watched his sister go through something similar. He pulled out a phone, not seeming to care about the blood on his fingers or dripping off his face. “The nearest clinic is an hour away. Next clean air zone is 30 minutes,” he said.

“Can’t you just deliver it here?” asked the woman with the red lipstick.

”I don’t have the training for all this.” said the nursing student. “It’s only my third semester. And, the energy shield around the bus isn’t enough to protect newborns. We have developed immune systems. Infants don’t. Someone has to drive there as fast and safe as possible.”

They made me drive. The boy sat with the driver and the nursing student once his nosebleed stopped. The woman with the red lipstick got off when the screaming started and said she’d catch the next bus. I guess her friend’s party wasn’t that important after all.

The fog lifted soon after, which made things a lot easier for me - it let me drive faster as I slalomed through the cars. I caught myself thinking about the family memories lost to time and had to shake the thoughts away. I had to focus on the family that was about to start. I had to make it to the clinic.

The nursing student was giving the boy tasks that he readily obliged to by the time I saw a green sign hanging diagonally from a highway overpass: FAIRWELD, 1/2 MILE. Graffiti sprayed over it said: END OF RAD ZONE.

I laughed and cried. You lose so much perspective when you work around death as much as I do.