1:35 PM, Thursday, August 01, 1968
The land lay motionless. Heat had smothered away all life. The sun stared down from its celestial pedestal like a perverse deity as the world wallowed below, drenched in scorching suffocation. A feeble wind stumbled through the New Mexican badlands, as if attempting to flee, but it too sputtered away into nothingness. All was still, and all was silent.
In the distance, mesas and plateaus spanned the horizon, lonely spires in the dust. Down among them, a thin vein of road slithered through the landscape, dotted with carrion and sizzling like a griddle. Through the nation's artery the rusted cell of a bus rolled along.
The hum of the solitary fan, the snap of a lighter, the grumbles of a discontented driver, mechanical creaks and groans, boyish murmurs and the occasional guffaw filled the vehicle as it ran toward its destination.
In the front left rows, a group of high school boys wearing identical letterman jackets chatted noisily, snorting aloud, making vulgar conversation.
The overweight, sweat-stained driver took a long drag from his cigarette; the smell of cheap tobacco hung in the air like a corpse from rope, a festering stench. He glanced up to his rearview mirror, and unwittingly hit a few dips in the road as he did, rattling the passengers. One of the teenagers shot a perturbed glare at the driver's mirror, but soon returned to their group discussion concerning the assets of their female classmates.
The driver's eyes shifted toward the back. A suited woman was shaken from slumber. She groggily opened her pale gray-green eyes, grimacing somewhat. She wiped sleep away and massaged her temples. Yawning gently, the woman pivoted her head languidly to the grimy window, watching yellow endlessness run by and admiring the scenery for a brief moment. It had a certain kind of beauty about it, but she soon reminded herself that she wasn't there to sight see.
On her lap, a tidy letter sat beside a pair of rounded, tortoise shell, sunglasses and a bus ticket, complimentarily paid for. The woman held the envelope and removed the letter of acceptance to read it over once again.
Bold, black type spoke of thankfulness for taking the job and praise for seeming to be the only qualified applicant. The note went on speaking of all the wonderful opportunities that were now suddenly open to her. The letter, as a whole, was enthusiastic and upbeat, unsettlingly so; it had that deluded bias politicians were fond of. It finished with well wishes and curvy signature from someone named Pauling.
The natural cynic in her knew that she was likely the only applicant, despite the promises of ridiculously good pay. From what she could gather from some prior digging, her new employers, a daughter company of TF Industries, were known to be, at the very least, questionable in their dealings. It was no place for any real honest people, aside from the ones who were just dumb enough not to notice. They had their secrets, but so did she. Deceit came with her job.
She finished reading the letter and peered at the return address.
"Teufort," she mused to herself. It was an odd name for a town. She'd never heard of it, even with all the years of travel she'd spent. She had been in America before, but it seemed like a lifetime ago. Even then, she had been confined to only large cities, strictly on business. Rural America was unfamiliar and strange, but most places were when compared to the crowded sprawl of European cities.
She folded the note and placed it neatly back into its home, stowing it away in her suit pocket.
Boredom was a fickle thing, seeming only to prod those waiting. The woman toyed with the idea of resting her eyes again to pass time but decided against it. Having gone all this way just to miss her stop didn't appeal to her at the moment. She instead pulled out a small, hard-backed book with yellowed pages and a beaten binding from one of her many pockets. It was an old collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, the Grimm Brothers, and Charles Perrault. She opened to the "The Shadow," a favorite of hers. The woman read through the book cover to cover several times over but still found it to be entertaining and a fantastic way to occupy herself, a distraction from the otherwise dull world.
She read for what felt like another hour, leafing through pages. Then, she felt the bus slow and finally halt.
The driver fell into a coughing fit but eventually spat out, "Teufort stop," in a hoarse, gravelly voice as the front exit squeaked open. The woman allowed a slight smile to cross her face, and she rose to her feet, the only one departing the vehicle. She placed the book from where it had come, and she reached to an overhead compartment containing her luggage; the large case was bound in Italian leather. Tugging at the handle, she brought the suitcase down with her left hand, and she made her way toward the front exit of the bus, putting on her sunglasses as she did.
Dust pooled about her ankles as her expensively clad feet landed on the ground. The woman turned and nodded to the driver. He tipped his hat, closed the squealing door, and drove off trailing thick, black exhaust. She was alone to find her way.