CH 57

Seconds ticked by, and there was no room for hesitation. After a brief moment of contemplation, I spoke up, “We need to get out of the car and move the body.”

“Move the body?” The group let out a collective gasp of horror.

“What the hell! Are you crazy?” Wang Chunfu was the first to yell, “If you want to get out, go ahead, but I’m not taking any chances with this bad luck!”

“I agree,” Yuan Feng’s words were even more extreme, devoid of any hint of compassion, “Just run over her body; she’s already dead anyway.”

I turned my gaze to the young driver again, “What do you think?” 

“I…I can’t leave my position,” the driver’s face went pale as he spoke, “The old driver told me that if I wander off as the bus’s driver, the vehicle will start driving on its own.” I wasn’t sure which part of his story was true.

Glancing down at my phone, I noticed that we only had fifty seconds left. “Never mind, just open the door. I’ll go down and move the body. If you don’t want to die, then come and help me!”

The driver had no choice but to open the back door. “You can only exit through the back door, it’s the rule.”

Putting away my phone, I gestured for the passengers to come down and assist me. However, only Yi Yi responded. The little girl placed her backpack on the seat and ran to my side.

“What are you doing? Get back in your seat!” I shouted, my voice raised in alarm. Getting out of the car was dangerous, and moving the body would only make us more vulnerable to ghost attacks.

“Let me help you. You can’t drag it alone,” Yi Yi insisted.

As the seconds ticked by, the time was running out. I let out a sigh and glanced at the other passengers inside the car. “Alright, let’s hurry up.”

Together, Yi Yi and I ran down from the back door, and an eerie chill ran down our spines. Perhaps it was because the ghost was lurking close by.

We raced against time, gripping the legs of the pregnant woman’s corpse tightly. “Put some strength into it!” 

In theory, dragging a corpse shouldn’t have been too difficult. I had even sprinted a hundred meters carrying Guo Junjie’s corpse back in New Shanghai High School.

However, the corpse of the pregnant woman in front of us felt as heavy as lead. Even with all our might, Liu Yi and I could only move it a few centimeters at a time.

“Why is it so heavy?” I wondered aloud.

“Hurry up!” the passengers inside the car kept shouting, “We don’t have much time!”

Yi Yi and I were sweating profusely under the pressure, but the corpse seemed to be getting heavier and heavier, rendering our efforts useless.

“F*** it! Just drive over it!” Yuan Feng yelled, his face pressed against the windshield; In the other side, the driver’s foot already hovered over the gas pedal. His eyes were fixed on the electronic clock beside him.

“Someone, please come and help us! This thing is getting too heavy!” I shouted at the other passengers, my face turning red with exertion. “Hurry up!”

“It wasn’t me who killed her, it wasn’t me who killed her, this wasn’t my doing…”  I heard someone muttering, drawing closer. To my surprise, the one who came to help was the strange person in a hospital gown.

He grabbed the body’s waist and with the three of us exerting all our strength, we were finally able to drag it from the middle of the road.

“We’re almost there! Keep going!” I encouraged the group as we slowly moved the body away. Suddenly, the corpse seemed to become lighter, as if something that had been weighing it down had let go.

“Let’s go! Hurry up and get back in the car!” I grabbed Yi Yi’s hand and ran towards the car, but the driver had only opened the back door, so we had to circle around to get in.

As we got into the car, I heard the person in the hospital gown muttering “It wasn’t me who killed her, it wasn’t me who killed her, this wasn’t my doing…”  I turned around to see that he had not followed us and was now kneeling in front of the pregnant woman’s body, bowing his head in what seemed like remorse.

“What the hell!” I pushed Yi Yi into the car and ran back to drag the person in hospital gown. At this point, the bus had already started and we only had a few seconds left before the five minutes were up.

“Let’s go! Start the car quickly!” Yuan Feng patted the driver’s shoulder, urging him on.

At this time, the wavy-haired woman who had been hiding at the back of the bus seemed to have seen something, and she pointed outside, her voice trembling: “Don’t come over! Don’t come over!”

With her small bag in hand, she stomped her high heels on the floor of the bus, making a clanging sound, and ran towards the group of men. “She’s following us! She wants to get on the car! Drive! Drive now!”

“Wait, there’s someone who hasn’t gotten on yet!”

“We can’t wait! Drive, hurry up!”

Suddenly, this crazy woman rushed towards them and even tried to grab the steering wheel from the driver.

“Do you want to kill us all?” Yuan Feng quickly stopped Zhang Rong, but she had already been scared out of her mind by the red-clothed ghost. She flailed her arms wildly, and her nails left bloody marks on Yuan Feng’s face.

“Damn it! Everyone is a lunatic,” Yuan Feng said with a grim expression, pushing Zhang Rong to the ground. Jianbang quickly held Zhang Rong in his arms and helped her sit in the seat near the back door. “Take a rest, don’t be afraid, the three of us are here, nothing will harm you.” 

With the man in the hospital gown following me, I quickly made my way onto the vehicle. The situation seemed to have been resolved perfectly at this point.

“Close the door! Let’s go!” I urged as I pressed the man down onto the seat beside me, my breaths coming out in heavy pants.

The bus went faster and faster, but the back door was still open. “Driver, close the back door!” 

“I did! I already closed it!” 

“What?!” I quickly took out my phone and aimed the camera at the back door. In the middle of the screen, a woman in a blood-stained red dress was holding onto the door tightly. Although she couldn’t get on the bus, her hair hung down like a water snake at the bottom of a lake, slowly wriggling into the bus. 

“Not good!” It was too late to warn them. The long hair, covered in blood, entangled Zhang Rong and Jianbang, and they didn’t even realize they were being pulled towards the wide-open back door. 

“Be careful!” I stood up to go grab the two of them, but I never expected that Zhang Rong, who was held in Jianbang’s arms, had such a vicious heart. She was wearing high heels, and with them, she stepped hard on Jianbang’s cloth shoes. Jianbang screamed in pain and fell backward. She took advantage of the opportunity to push him out of the bus!

“Bang!” the bus door finally slammed shut and the young man vanished into the darkness. The commotion that had occurred at the back of the bus had happened so quickly that it went unnoticed by the other men who had been standing at the front.

It wasn’t until the door had closed that they realized someone had fallen off the bus.

“Jianbang!”

“Brother!”

Wang Chunfu and Jianye quickly glanced out the window, but it was too late as Jianbang had already disappeared into the vast expanse of the night.

“Stop the car! I’m going to find my brother!”

“No, we can’t stop the bus until we reach the next station. This is what the old driver instructed me to do…”

Jianye spun around and seized the driver’s collar, his eyes blazing with anger as he bellowed, “Stop the bus!”

“Stay calm,” Yuan Feng reached out to stop him. The dead man had nothing to do with him, and he did feel any sorrow for the guy. “We can’t bring the dead back to life; If you get off the bus now, you’ll only cause trouble for yourself.”

“You bi**! What did you do just now?” Wang Chunfu grabbed Zhang Rong and slapped her in the face. “The three of us tried to save you out of kindness, but instead of showing gratitude, you got Jianbang killed. I’m going to throw you off the bus and let you accompany Jianbang in his grave!”

After speaking, he seized Zhang Rong by the hair and dragged her toward the window.

“No! No!” The woman’s screams were particularly piercing in the car.

Despite the chaos, the majority of the passengers, including myself, remained silent, exposing the ugly side of human nature for all to see.

“You have to stop!” Only the timid girl, Yi Yi, stood up as she found her voice and tugged at Wang Chunfu’s clothing. “You can’t do this!”

“Get lost! I don’t need a little kid like you telling me what to do!” Wang Chunfu pushed Yi Yi away, but the stubborn and kind child got up from the ground and held onto Wang Chunfu’s arm tightly.

“Stop it, all of you!” I rubbed my temples and stepped in between them, trying to separate the three. “This isn’t the time for arguing and fighting. We’re all here on this bus for different reasons in the middle of the night. It’s fate that brought us together.”

“Who says I have any fate with you?” Wang Chunfu spat out, his teeth clenched. If he hadn’t seen me as someone who couldn’t be easily bullied because of my size and build, he would have already attacked. “It’s because you insisted on stopping to move the corpse. If we hadn’t stopped, we could have just run over the body, and none of this would have happened!”

These people didn’t lift a finger to help move the body earlier, yet they now spouted nonsense after something happened. I let out a bitter laugh and decided to stop speaking. After all, humans can’t reason with mad dogs.

I took Yi Yi’s hand and sat back in my seat, patting her head. “Listen to me. Leave everything to me, just stay quiet.”

In the back of the bus, Zhang Rong was being punched and kicked by Wang Chunfu until he had vented all his anger, leaving only the sound of her crying in the bus.

Looking at Zhang Rong lying on the ground, Yi Yi felt a bit sorry and said, “Look at her, her arm is bleeding…” 

“Compared to the horrible things she made, this small injury doesn’t mean much.” I tried to smile and speak kindly. “Just relax; we’re almost at the final stop.” 

Eventually, the eerie bus returned to its calm state, and I lowered my head, waiting for the next announcement from the loudspeakers.

“This night feels endless,”

After about thirty minutes, the driver slammed on the brakes abruptly.

“Why did we stop? We haven’t arrived at the station yet, have we?” Yuan Feng hurried to the front of the bus to inquire, but only saw the driver pointing outside, his hand trembling.

“Is there something outside?” I also turned my head and looked out. At the end of a large, desolate rose garden, a huge advertising billboard stood by the road. 

“Uncle, haven’t we seen this scene before?” Yi Yi’s small hand was cold, and she asked anxiously. 

I held her hand tightly and nodded reluctantly, “Yes, we’re back at the Huayuan district again!” 

Looking into the distance, the body in the middle of the road across a fence rail remained in its original state, with its eyes wide open and unblinking.