Counterfeit Transit

By J. A. Mathison

Carl and Joseph Vernon are brothers. They are former physicists with NASA, now retired from the Space Center in Houston. They are genius, senile, bored, and missing the action of years spent in the Control Center.

The Vernon brothers, in their tedious lives, have come up with a hair-raising plan that they find truly exciting and have conjured up an idea that puts them back in action.

First element of the plan, the brothers walk out of the South Shore Manor Senior’s Home, unsure that they will be returning.

Joseph, a septuagenarian, will take on the job of driving a refurbished city bus. But his frightful daily run provokes his commuters.

The scheme doesn’t go as smoothly as intended, and obstacles fall into place, throwing things off track. Can the brothers pull off their plan? They intend to do exactly that.

All the while, police officers are hot on track to find the missing brothers, who are piling up misdemeanors and suspect of something menacing.

A backup strategy is necessary, and brother Carl steps up in an attempt to complete the plan.

Excitement peaks when the brothers come upon a discovery that blows them away. This is that one last fling they’ve waited for, for old time’s sake.

A wild turning point occurs that translates into the brothers’ restoring and retaining their self-acclaimed intelligence and all their achievements with dignity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638854685

Book preview

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Counterfeit Transit

J. A. Mathison

ISBN 978-1-68526-761-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-469-2 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63885-468-5 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 J. A. Mathison

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

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1

It was Friday evening, and a real freaky hand of bad luck was about to unfold on an exceptionally hot day for September. The humidity was heavy and unwelcome. It just didn’t want to cool down, even at five o’clock.

A vast group of ambitious Wall Street types made up of men and women, who spend their day working in corporate America, now engaged in the evening rush to get out of the city. This same crowd gathered at the bus stop on Westbrook Boulevard every weeknight. Some walked independently; some walked in clusters. There were the energetic, intense walkers, but watch out for the bold, push-you-out-of-the-way walkers, and make way for the brutes that jump the curb to be the front-runners, whose mindset was I gotta make that bus. All this every night, begging just to get out of downtown.

But on this night, they were about to experience a hellish evening ride home, a trek more alarming than the previous rides home, daunting as they were.

Downtown Benning evolved into what was now a healthy financial district. This busy metropolis located in the center of a midwestern mother city wasn’t always rated high in its business affairs. It wasn’t until the wizards of the declining markets got involved and called in shrewd financial elites to challenge the status quo. They took a development stratagem and turned their sagging money markets into a vigorously accelerated economy. When healthy solutions emerged, new blood moved into the Benning marketplace. Growth and profits turned into sweeping gains as a result of the new direction taken. Benning business was now fully backed up with power by the sharp, ahead-of-the-curve CEOs.

A string of law firms, investment conglomerates, and trading enterprises were planted up and down the business district located on Westbrook. This gave an insight into the number of daily transient commuters that flock in and out of the city.

Traffic along Westbrook was constant. Any exchange of talk at the curb on Westbrook had to rise above blasting taxicab horns and screeching brakes. The city noise buzzed in and through your senses to the point of becoming insensitive to it all. If anyone tried to call out, Wait up, to catch up with a friend, it had to be sung out over the din. But the northbound bus passing the curb crowd was the worst. Right in the faces of the tired and now-impatient white-collar workers, it roared past with hot and putrid-smelling black diesel exhaust, sheathing everyone unlucky enough to have been standing there in its wake.

With four traveling lanes of traffic, it was hard for impatient commuters at the end of the workweek to wait for the traffic light to change in their favor.

Champing at the bit in a keep-moving momentum, the throngs of power people, business execs, and the rest simultaneously step off the curb with the changing traffic light. They crossed in a sort of massed mob, heading for the bus stop, leaving the financial marketplace behind.

It was precisely a quarter after five, and the temperature was still hovering around ninety degrees at this late afternoon hour. The city’s towering buildings acted as a barrier blocking out the cool breeze coming off the massive lake that wraps its shoreline around the fringes of Benning’s cultural complexes, theaters, and museums.

The group made it to the bus stop on time. Everyone was tired and anxious to get home for the weekend. Dressed for business, these fellows anxiously got out of their suit jackets and carried them in their hands or sling them over their shoulders. The endless heat caused neckties to be pulled loose from their knots, like machismo types. The personalities that tend toward orderliness and tidiness—their neckties were tucked neatly away in a briefcase.

Easily, it was the evening commute that seemed to put everyone on edge lately. There were anxious feelings looming over the entire lot of passengers due to the grim commute home. These feelings had escalated ever since the regular evening bus driver, who went by the name of Ed, sadly became a victim of bad luck. His accident left him with a broken leg and an injured back. His falling off the ladder while cleaning the gutters on his house now affected his work status. His condition, due to the accident, took him off the roster to drive the bus. This necessitated a replacement bus driver to cover the evening ride to Carrington.

Ed’s replacement was Joseph. Joseph was not an employee of the Western States Bus Company but was given the evening driver position as a temporary job replacement. He got in by a friend of a friend who hired out of some small obscure temporary job agency.

Joseph was a bit quirky, a real oddball; and with the first week behind them, with Joseph behind the wheel, everyone on the bus felt uneasy at the hands of this lunatic who was in control of the trip bound for home.

The designated route that bus driver Ed drove to get his passengers to the park and ride in the town of Carrington began in downtown Benning and traveled north along the crowded interstate highways. After exiting the well-traveled speedways, Ed would progress onto State Highway 43, which was not as frenzied and bogged down as the interstates. State 43 would ultimately take the bus to what was also known as the Westley Avenue Park and Ride in Carrington. It’s a safer and more efficient bus route.

The new driver did not keep to Ed’s regular route. The new driver had an agenda. It involved his brother Carl. And as far-fetched and absurd as the plan was, the brothers’ scheme was all set to go. It involved bringing in a bus that the brothers have worked on for some time. They redesigned the bus for their exact purpose. They did all the mechanical and engineering on it themselves, an incredible overhaul. They even tested it themselves until it was verified by themselves based on their background in engineering. And this was the bus that Joseph was driving to pick up his passengers on the 5:25 p.m. run.

His game plan was to attempt the run every night until he got it right. He would remain driving the bus on the interstate highway because that would allow him to get the acceleration of the bus where he wanted it.

2

The group of riders was gathered in front of the Benning Chamber of Commerce Plaza to await the bus.

Boredom and fatigue went along with the usual waiting game at the end of the day when the would-be passengers wait for the bus to arrive. On this particular night, to temper the tiresome delay, some of the standees in the bunch got into a fun conversation recalling the captivating theater production that some had attended the previous Friday night. A buzz of chatter developed over the stunning dancing activity of the Aurora Borealis adaptation they viewed at the Franklin Warfield Theater of the Arts in Benning’s theater district. These people endorsed the downtown programs. Therefore, the lively discussion was an enjoyable diversion as they wait for the ten-minute late bus in the miserable heat.

According to the passengers, the evening bus was driven by a loony crackpot. The talk and the joking inevitably came around to riding with the demon. It was Joseph, the new bus driver that had everyone stirring, and it had come to be a subject on everyone’s lips both with humor and with anxiety.

There’s something going on here that smells, John Hawk