Dan was awakened by the sound of the jail cell door opening.

“Time to go,” said Deputy Worley. He waved Dan toward the door.

Dan stood up, his head still foggy. As he approached the door he looked around as if he were in a hotel room to see whether he had left anything behind. Of course he had not. The officers who had processed his arrival had taken whatever he had on his person.

The duputy led dan to the desk where he had been booked (was that the right word?). A clerk handed the deputy a clipboard, which the deputy tucked under his arm, and a plastic bag that contained Dan’s wallet, his cell phone, his car keys, and some change.

The deputy moved to the glass door that led out of the building, opened it, and waved for Dan to pass through.

Dan stepped outside, where a large bus was parked. The bus looked like an ordinary long-haul bus, except that it had no windows behind the driver’s area. It also had no brand name painted in large letters on the side. The only markings on the bus were a few rows of small block letters and numbers—registration codes of some kind, Dan presumed—painted in black beneath the driver’s side window.

The sun was low in the sky to Dan’s left, to the west.

Two large men in forest green uniforms stood beside an open door in the midsection of the bus. The names stitched above their right breast pockets identified them as Orris and Parker. Dan wasn’t sure whether these were their first names or last names. The stitching above their left breast pockets said that they worked for a company called TranSecure.

“He’s all yours,” the deputy said. He handed the bag of Dan’s belongings to Parker and the clipboard to Orris.

Orris studied the form for a moment, then looked at Dan. “Roberge?”

“Yes.”

Orris slid a pen out from under the clip of the clipboard, signed the form, tore off a pink copy, and handed the clipboard back to the deputy.

“Let’s go,” he said, and climbed the three steps into the bus. He stepped toward the rear and and turned toward Dan. Dan started up the steps and Parker fell in behind him. Orris gestured toward the front of the bus.

Dan looked toward the front and saw a small caged area of the bus with four small padded benches, two on each side, one of each pair facing forward ant the other facing backward. At the front of the caged area was an unpainted steel wall. A caged door opened toward where Dan stood.

Dan looked to his left. A similar caged area extended to the rear of the bus.

Between the caged areas on the side away from the door were two comfortable looking black leather chairs bolted to the floor, separated by a counter on which sat a radio with a microphone, and below which was a steel cabinet secured with a heavy duty combination lock.

Orris said, “You’re seated in our first class section to the front of cabin.” He gestured again.

Dan stepped through the cage door and looked back toward Orris.

“Any seat you like. We don’t have any other passengers, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the trip.”

Dan took the seat that faced backward toward the door he had entered. This gave him the best view of where the two guards would be seated. He couldn’t see outside and he had nothing better to do on the trip, os he might as well watch the guards.

Orris closed Dan’s cage door and locked it. Parker opened the locked cabinet beneath the counter. He placed the plastic bag of Dan’s possessions inside, then closed and locked the cabinet. Parker took the seat toward the rear of the bus, and Orris took the one nearest to Dan’s cage.

Orris picked up the microphone, depressed a switch on its side, and said, “Let’s move.” The bus began to vibrate.

Dan looked around for a seat belt.

“Don’t bother to look for a belt,” Orris said. “They don’t install them in the cells. Some passengers try to strangle themselves or others.”

The bus jerked into motion, then jerked to a stop.

Suddenly an audience’s cheer burst from above the guards.

Dan jumped. Parker burst out laughing and Orris rolled his eyes.

Mounted in the ceiling above the guards was a pair of speakers. A twangy guitar began a riff that he recognized he couldn’t quite place, joined almost immediately by drums playing a country train beat. Country, Dan thought. Something old.

The bus jerked into motion again.

The Johnny Cash began to sing. “I hear the train a comin’; it’s rollin’ ‘round the bend…”

Dan looked at Orris. “Oh, Jesus, you didn’t. ‘Folsom Prison Blues’?”

Now Orris started laughing, too.

“You guys are going to be a real hoot,” Dan said.

This set Parker howling, and Dan couldn’t help laughing himself.

After a moment Parker settled down and wiped the tears from his eyes. “It always gets ‘em. Every time.”

The laughter stopped for a while, then Parker began laughing again. Orris looked at him and said, “Hey.”

Parker mocked a poker face.

“Folsom Prison Blues” ended.

“Folsom Prison Blues” started again.

Parker burst once more into howls of laughter, and this time Orris lost it, too.

“You fuckers,” Dan said through laughter of his own. “Is this going to play all the way to Sacramento?”

But the word “Sacramento” sounded more like “Uhbacramento.” His mouth felt twisted, as if it had opened or closed or shifted or spasmed.

The interior of the bus was suddenly brighter, and the light was coming from behind him. Had someone opened a window behind him? He hadn’t heard anything. He now heard silence.

Even with all the light Dan couldn’t see the bus. Where Orris and Parker had been sitting, howling with fits of laughter, was now an unfathomable pattern of green, first lighter, then darker, repeating from somewhere down to somewhere up. The pattern was crystal clear, he could see it perfectly, but it made no sense–it had simply appeared in the bus.

And the bus had swapped right to left. He had sat with the cage wall to immediately his left, and the unoccupied part of the cage to his right. Now there was a wall to his right, and empty cage to his left.

Except that it wasn’t the cage. It was… it was… the word didn’t come.

Something wrong, Dan thought, and his legs collapsed. In the long, long few microseconds before he hit the ground he had time to think, But I’m sitting down. How can my legs give out?

A word came into Dan’s head: Stairs.

What did that mean?

The pattern of alternating lighter and darker green didn’t change, but Dan suddenly knew what it was. It was stairs. How had he not recognized stairs?

A stroke, Dan thought. I’m having a stroke.

Somewhere beyond the top of the stairs a woman screamed. Then the her voice was modulating, pausing, changing quality.

I know what that is. That’s talking. Yelling. Someone is yelling.

“Dan, no!” the voice said. “Dan… Zoe, what’s… what am I… Oh my God!”

It was Faith’s voice, the voice of his dead wife.

Something fell out of Dan’s hand onto the stairs in front of him (but I wasn’t holding anything) and for a second or a minute or an eternity he didn’t know what it was but he did know what it was but he didn’t know what it was.

Then Dan’s understanding caught up with data his senses were sending him.

The object on the stairs was his gun.