Everyone outside the gate wondered what was happening, and the boys stretched their necks to get the best view of what was unfolding, Zell looked towards the gate waiting to see who else would come out, no one stepped into view, he quickly turned to look in the direction the boys had headed, he could see them running up the slope the vehicle had just descended.
Unexpectedly, the boys paused and said something to each other, in the blink of an eye they had vanished into the bushes on either side of the road, one to the left, the other to the right.
They all turned as swarm of security men and other staffs appeared at the gates, the humming noise of the bus’s engine ceased as the driver turned off the ignition.
“I hope none of you has any funny idea of trying to do what those guyj did?” The driver spoke to the bus for the first time.
“There are serious penalities for such behaviors” the supervisor added.
Zell saw Kenny raised his hand and his heart skipped a beat, ‘ what was he up to? Zell wondered, Kenny had earlier on hinted that he would run for freedom if he got the opportunity to.
“What is your problem boy?” The supervisor asked.
“My bladder is bursting, can I please get off the bus and take a wee?”
“Looking at what just happened, does it look like I will allow you to get off this bus?” The supervisor shot back irritated, ” you can do it on your seat if you have to”.
With that being said, the supervisor and his driver got off the bus, carefully locked the door and went to join the gathering crowds, a small group of workers had gathered at the gate with everyone telling their version of what they had just witnessed.
Zell asked Philip to switch seat with him so that he could sit by the window, he tired to catch a bit of the various conversation that were going on and translated to Philip, however the scene was too disorderly and he could not hear that much.
“Let me do this” Philip suggested, ” I don’t have to listen to hear anything, I just have to lip-read as many of them as possible”
“Sure, that’s a sensible suggestion, if you can pull it off” Zell agreed, swapping seats again, he watched as philp signed in the bits of conversations.
“Which direction do you think they ran to?”
“Iam telling you they both ran into the bushes to our left….”
“No, it was to the right, I saw it with my own eyes…”
“There were three of them, not two…”
“Someone is going to get fired and fired for this?”
“Ohh, these internal security guys are just too careless”
“We will all be jobless if what happened here gets out, this place will be shut down in the twinkling of an eye, child labor is not a….” Philip continue with his sign language to zell’s understanding, but immediately paused.
“What’s happening here?”
“You guys are here arguing while they are getting further and further away, bring the dogs out….”
“Dogs?” Zell asked Philip, breaking into his commentary.
“Yes dogs” Philip replied, ” I don’t know what they actually meant by that though”.
Philip continued to narrate in sign language, Zell paused briefly and looked up and down the aisle, not a single seat was occupied, all the lads were pressed against the windows, everyone giving their own description of what they thought was happening.
He smiled to himself while listening to some of the stories from their colleagues, they didn’t know he was being fed first hand information on what was unfolding, he turned to look outside again, the smile on his face froze.
Standing to one side of the gate were two men with four of the biggest dogs he had ever seen in his life, they look more like little horses, the mongrels pawed the ground impatiently, the confusion making them feel nervous and uneasy.
Zell noticed all four animals had a funny device covering their mouth, which seemed to prevent them from barking or snarling at anyone, he later learnt these were called muzzles, six men joined the guys with the dogs, forming two teams of four each with two dogs to work with.
The muzzles were then taken off and the dogs went into a frantic barking spree, they now looked like beast that were ready to shred anyone who messed with them to bits, even some of the men standing at the entrance took a couple of steps back, most of the lads quietly crept back to their seats, afraid to look at the barking beasts.