It was 5:00 am on Sunday morning, I was entering the familiar bus with sleepy eyes. The familiar faces that entered with me gave me all the comfort I needed because I knew we were all exhausted from the previous night activities. It was finally time to leave the camp and if we must reach home early, then we must hit the road early enough. The 10 hour road trip would be a long one, but the bus was really comfy and luckily for us, some of the people who made it uncomfortable for us during the trip were not going to be coming with us. I didn’t care why, I guessed a lot of people did not care too, because the relief on everyone’s face was obvious. Now we only needed to hope and pray there would be no traffic that would prolong our already long journey. Taking note of the one we had to endure for about 5 hours on our way to the camp site made my stomach turn. However, what we did not know was that we were just about to find out that this journey would be even more mysterious than what we had to endure coming to the camp site.
Taking the really comfy sit I took while we we coming, it was as though there was an unwritten law that everyone should make sure they sat in the same place they sat while we were coming, or maybe no one wanted to offend those who sat on the really comfy positions and some of us decided to get to the bus early so no one takes our spot. For me it was the latter, because I knew I was going to do absolutely nothing if I came and discovered that someone was occupying my seat. I am not the type of guy that would create avoidable troubles, so long I can avoid it, I would do so. The best option for me was to come early enough to claim my seat so that I do not sit in a position that would give me issues during the long journey, knowing I have long legs, I had to make sure I sat in a position that allowed me stretch my legs easily because I would not be comfortable trying to stretch them only to discover there is no space for my legs. Sitting beside me was the lady who sat beside me during the first journey, we had somewhat become close even during the camping expenditure and we were the only ones familiar to each other.
As the bus started to move, I was so excited that I would finally be able to sleep in my own beg that night, and was hoping we would get to my city early enough. But hearing those at the front quarreling again, something in me knew we were going to be in for a really long journey. The quarrel burst into a physical fight and one of the people involved decided out of anger that they were no longer going with the bus. This brought a form of relief to everyone, but then something happened immediately that no one paid attention to. The driver said that he needed to pick up some people going our way, so he would be taking a detour. According to him, it would not affect the journey because he knew a quicker route. No one said anything, I guess we all wanted to go home and so long it wouldn’t affect the journey’s time, we were all good to go. He finally got to the place he was picking the people he wanted to pick, and that was when I looked at my new friend and said “Now our jouney begins.” I never knew how right I was. The journey had truly began, because three hours later, the bus broke down. It took about 1 hour to repair it, and from that moment I knew we were in for a roller costa of event because we were no longer passing the normal route I was used to.
Image by wirestock on Magnific
At first I did not think anything about it, the bus broke down two more times after that, and it was beginning to look like the bus was the issue until we realized it was already past 5: 00PM and we should have gotten to a certain location. It was slowly dawning on everyone that the driver was the issue. Someone decided to raise an alarm , asking the driver why we had not gotten to that particular location, when one of the new people we carried (in shock) answered that this wasn’t the road to the state we were going. He thought the person probably entered the wrong bus and was helping, not knowing that everyone in the bus was going in the same direction apart from them and the driver. This raised a really big commotion in the bus, so much that everyone was ready to beat up the driver until he finally confessed that he only carried the new people to make extra cash and was planning on dropping us and would take another three hour journey through another state to our city. This was when another person reminded us of what day it was, because the state he was thinking about passing was having a sit at home lockdown and no driver would be allowed to drive through their road.
Now there was real tension in the air as the driver finally realized he had made a terrible mistake. To calm the situation down, he said he would take a different route to pacify everyone, but unknowingly to us, he did not even know the route he was claiming to take us through. Another three hours later, we were in a forest part, it was becoming creepy, and all we could see was darkness and trees that went as the eyes could see. This was when the driver started asking the few people he could see on the road where the road led to, and the places they were calling were places unfamiliar to us. At this point everyone was panicking. The lady at my side was so scared she did not know when she squeezed my arms. A lot of us guys were trying not to show fear, but inwardly, my heart felt like it would sink into my stomach. When we got to a point, we were told that the road was blocked by a good samarithan who stopped our bus going forward. He asked where we were coming from, and informed us that there was a popular terrorist group currently blocking the road.
He told us if we were going to survive passing through that road the driver needed to cooperate and do exactly as he said. The driver in fear asked if he could turn and go back, and the man said it would be too late from this distance because it was night, and their scout would have already spotted us from this distance. Moving forward, we met these terrorist groups truly, it was my first time encountering them after seeing a lot of their actions on the news. Fear was written in all our faces, and it was as though we were holding our hearts in our hands. The driver did everything the man instructed, but the group decided to hold us until the person in charge came. We were there for over 5 hours, and when the person in charge finally came, he asked us to give his boys something for the night before they let us go. According to him, anything was okay, so we all contributed money to pay for our release. They let us go and even showed us the quickest way to our city. This time everyone had eyes on the driver so he didn't pass through another unknown route until we finally left that lonely road and got to a familiar city, that was when we all let out the breath we never knew we were holding. By this time it was already past 10: 00am the next morning now all we needed to do was wait three more hours to get to our destination.
THIS IS MY ENTRY INTO THE INKWELL COMBINED WRITING PROMPT #42
