There were two more vacant seats on the bus. Two more people he would never see again. He glanced at Conrad, a low look under the lashes. Conrad shot him a cautionary glance back. Jake forcible relaxed back into the seat, setting his face to a passive, blank gaze. He didn’t look out the window, none of the passengers did. They all kept their eyes ahead, their glazed look of not seeing was more than perfected by now.
The bus slowed to a jolting halt with a soft mechanical hiss. The gate creaked open, the hinges scraping against the weight of the metal, until it came to rest with a heavy clang.
There was a moment of resistance against the brakes as the driver revved the engine. Jake braced himself for the sudden release, 0-60mph in three seconds flat.
They set off with a start, racing through the towering mesh fence, past the razor wire, the barren scorched earth beyond. He kept his eyes drifting ahead, not seeing the road. Conrad was two rows in front today. They rarely sat together, it was Conrad who had suggested that they should once in a while; never would have been just as suspicious as always.
Then it started, the shouting, the screaming. As it drew nearer, the tension in the bus shifted. The air hung heavier, a shuffling whispered through the bus as each passenger audibly stiffened. He felt a wideness creep into his desperately vacant gaze. He anxiously pushed his thumb hard into his forefinger. The sharp pain of his nail between his joints filled his mind. He concentrated on it. The screaming grew louder, ringing through the metal. Then came the soft thuds against the bus. Sometimes it was things, sometimes it was people. The trick was not to look.
They had all been out there once, that is why they were here now, doing this. No one volunteered to go on the buses, it was how he would earn his place. The thuds were coming faster now, some crashed and shattered, others bounced off with a loud crack that echoed through his seat. Then there were the sickening one, the gentle thud, the hammering, the sudden jarring bump and crack. Only the ones who had given up jumped at the bus, desperately trying to cling onto the tiny ridge around the windows before they fell to the wheels. He had seen people go like that himself, out there, when they couldn't face another day of it.
Jake felt a self directed fury course through him; thinking about it made it so much harder. He cast a subtle glance at Conrad, who was too engrossed to notice. All the passengers shrunk into themselves, their muscles tensed, some near shaking with attempts at self control. If they wanted to live on the inside, they had to act like those on the inside. Not care. He was about to break his wandering vision when he noticed the man next to Conrad visible start. Every muscle contracted at once in a jolting contortion. Conrad breathed a gentle word to him, and the man, to some degree, softened his tensions.
There were only two ways off bus duty, Outside, or Inside. Jake either went on enough factory runs, brought back enough full bags, or he broke, and completely snapped. To be kicked back out there without a single hope left. His mind wavered on the edge of remembrance before he caught himself and shifted thoughts. They were going to Factory E today, if they went quickly enough, they could catch B as well.
They each had a harness round their waist, the corded fabric affixed with expandable bags. 10,000 full bags got you inside. Most buckled before they made it halfway. It was talking to Conrad, whispering between bunks in the small hours, that made him realise that was the entire point. He wasn't sure if anyone had ever actually lasted long enough to get inside. The most he had seen anyone get on a good day was 18 bags. Even at that rate, it would be this bus trip, everyday, for over a year and a half. They were working for a reward that was never supposed to come.
So Jake and Conrad had come up with a plan, it had taken weeks, but they had figured out how to smudge the numbers. It would be at the expense of others, but it would get them Inside within a year. Conrad had carefully reprogrammed the some of bags on the other’s belts to read with one of their numbers when scanned. It had been a painstaking ten and a half months so far, but they were nearly there. If they had a good day, if they hit E and B today, Conrad reckoned they could make it within weeks.
Jake focused on this, letting the possibles of inside fill his mind. He heard they had fresh clean water, from a well, that there were gardens, real vegetables. Even that people had their own houses, and didn't fear their neighbours.
Gradually the thuds subsided, the soul wrenching screams became more faint. Until finally, a red light came on. Each passenger lifted his feet from the floor, and shuffled away from the side of the bus. They would pass through the electrical fields surrounding the factories. They were entirely automated, filled with countless machines, churning out wireless requests from those Inside. The factories were positioned above an automatic mine. It was the perfect set up. Five miles away from their own fences. He was sure that had seemed pretty close in the beginning, when people had retreated to this place.
As the red light turned off, the bus began to slow, the passengers finally coming to life, silently standing, getting their bags ready. Poised to struggle out of the bus and dash to the nearest repository, to push each cushioned package into their lumbering bags. The people who built this place must have been able to build machines that could have collected this, delivered it straight to the Inside. The part of him wondering this stopped as soon as the doors hissed opened.
It was a very good day. They managed both factories, everyone hit double digits. He didn't feel bad about taking from them, the system was rigged, the others would never make it anyway.
They both stayed up past dark, whispering without a light about how close they were, forming what could their final plan, before Conrad called it a night.
The next morning, he woke up feeling a bit lighter. They could be as little as two weeks away. He glanced over at Conrad's empty bunk, that man always was an early riser, and they had a lot planned for today.
Jake wasn't expecting Conrad as breakfast, the smell of warmed slop normally drew him from whatever distraction he had found in the dawning hours, but today was different. It was the best chance to fiddle with the belts, check the square scanner code was still reading as theirs. He had mentioned something about one not working last night.
He thought he caught a glimpse of Conrad boarding the bus, it was hard to make out from the peripherals of his fixed vision. He tried to see without looking, they were all so suspicious, if Jake looked at anyone too long they may start wondering why. It was only then he realised it. There were two more vacant seats on the bus.
I wrote this story this evening, this is my first try at constrained writing in this sense, I have worked from prompts before but it was really fun to grow a story around the same start and end. I have always thought it looked tricky, but this was definitely a good constrain to start with. Hopefully I get to the next round with more than a few hours before the deadline! I really struggled to name this story, and had a lot of possibilities, but I finally committed, I was so tempted to call it The Impossible Accomplishment, but in the end I kept my working title.
This is my entry to 
's constrained writing contest - there isn't long left for this round but you can always give a follow to catch the next one!
Photo Credit by Pixabay User Free-Photos who has over 9,000 well shot photos in the public domain. I edited this one to not quite black and white using Pixlr
Love and Sparkle - Calluna