He made a fist with his right hand and began hitting the steering wheel, the dashboard, the roof above him. "NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE NO MOOOOOOOOORE! And you know what I did? I took that beautiful bone saw—God it was the most perfect thing under heaven there in my hand—and I stepped forward and swung it up in this smooth arc and just buried it right in Grendel's kneecap, and he screamed and spun around and fired off a shot, but the shot, it went wild—that gave me enough time to cut one of Thomas's straps, and once his hand was free it came up and he grabbed Grendel's nuts and started squeezing like a vice, then Arnold snatched one of the Mason jars—it had a uterus in it—and he heaved that thing straight and hard right into the back of Grendel's head and it shattered but the thing is, Grendel still hadn't dropped the gun, so I went for his hand with the saw and he got off another shot that went right through the meat of Rebecca's right shoulder and she dropped the torch and poor Thomas's pants and shirt caught fire because what none of us had noticed was that the jar with the had been filled with alcohol, and when it shattered, most of it had splattered onto Thomas's face and clothes but we couldn't do anything right then because Grendel had the gun, so I took the saw and hit his collar and then I stripped a chunk out of his bicep and then rammed it right into the middle of his hand and he threw back his head and screamed and dropped the gun and there was blood all over him, all over me, it was on the floor and all over our shoes—we started slipping around like a couple of dancing partners and when we went down, we hit the concrete hard and it hurt—Christ! it hurt—but as soon as we hit he grabbed my throat with his good hand and dug in his nails and tried to crush my windpipe but Rebecca, she had his gun now and she didn't even bother aiming, she just pushed it right between his balls and his asshole and blew the whole works all over the floor—Grendel screamed like I'd never heard anyone scream, he was spitting blood and foam and I swear to Christ, I'll swear on a stack of Bibles, until the day I die I'll swear that his eyes turned into two bright red burning coals right before he shuddered and squittered shit and piss out of what was left down there and then passed out."
We were at 90 and the bus was beginning to shudder and swerve; people looked out in shock as we blasted past them.
"Thomas's face, all those burns on him—it was our fault, we just—Jesus, we just wanted to kill Grendel so much none of us even thought about what was in the jars—and Thomas, he can't pull himself off that table and run for the sink because his other arm and his chest are still strapped down"—
—93…94—
—"Christopher, please, you have to slow down, if you don't you're"—
—"so I pull down this piece of tarp that's covering a crate of medical supplies and throw it on top of him and then all three of us are on top of him and patting down the tarp and there's smoke and the smell of burning flesh"—
—"going to kill us, you're going to ram this thing into the side of a truck or"—
—95…96—
—"and Thomas is bucking and shaking and screaming again and… and"—
—"make this fucking bus shake apart or lose control of the wheel and flip us about a thousand times"—
—97—
—"and it's all so… so unnecessary! Jesus, Mark, there was no need!"—
—98—
—"I'm begging you, Christopher, I'm—LOOK AT ME, WILL YOU? I'm BEGGING you to please"—
—"No need for any of it, for things like Grendel to be walking around all safe and sound and sleeping so peacefully like some baby with a fresh soul"—
—99—
—the bus was shaking like some giant iron lizard having a seizure the wheel was rattling right off the column—
—"SLOW DOWN!"—
—"while there are kids like Thomas who have to apologize to monsters like it was them who'd done the wrong"—
—I reached over and yanked the pistol from him and fired a shot into the roof, then one into the floor between my legs, then turned it on him—"SLOW DOWN RIGHT NOW OR I'LL SHOOT YOU AND"—and the sudden absurdity of what I was about to say hit me; if I shot him, he'd let go of the wheel, the bus would spin, the trailer would jackknife, we'd probably do about a dozen somersaults across all three lanes on this side, and there wouldn't be enough left of either of us to identify once the gas tank and ammonium-nitrate went up.
This wasn't a threat I was making; it was the punchline to the dumbest fucking joke never told.