“Coach?” she yelled. Her voice echoed off into the mass of trees surrounding the street, but no one returned her plea.
“Where the hell is he?” Travis climbed over his friend seated beside him and made his way to the back of the bus, scanning the scenery outside. “Anyone see Coach?”
When no one confirmed, he hastened to the front end, heading down the stairs to the base of the door. “Masters!”
Unease tightened around his nerves as his feet dropped to the gravelly shoulder of the road. His sneakers grinded against the worn, pebble-coated blacktop, and the sound seemed all the more amplified now that everyone had gone wholly silent onboard. He made his way to the back tire, seeing the whole wheel stripped of rubber. Travis knelt down and peered beneath the undercarriage, finding nothing but a black rod tucked behind the blown tire.
He strained to reach the object, but finally managed to grip his fingers on the very end. A small shard of glass clanked to the ground as he pulled it out, and he turned over the object to see the broken screen of the service flashlight. The sweat layering his palms almost made him drop it as he rose to his feet. He quickly wiped his hands on his sweatpants, but the flashlight still felt slick in his grasp.
“T-Travis,” stammered Brittany.
He looked up to see the brunette’s eyes trained below his waist and instinctively dropped his own gaze. “Shit!”
His grip immediately loosened and the flashlight fell to the ground as a low growl fixed behind him. Fear whirled the shooting guard around, but nothing could be made out through the dense fog. He shot off to the front of the bus and practically fell inside the cabin, barely managing to pry the door shut with his grimy hands.
The boy collapsed on the slated flooring of the aisle, and everybody froze as they observed the red smears painted across the side of his white pant leg.
“That’s not what I think it is…” muttered one of his teammates.
Travis raised his hand, seeing more of the mucky liquid staining his skin. “There’s something out there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s something out there,” he reiterated shakily, pulling himself up.
Brittany laid a hand on his shoulder, and he startled at the touch. “Travis, what did you see?”
He wordlessly plowed past her and the other members on the bus, heading toward the backend.
“What did you see, man?” begged his friend.
“Nothing.”
“Will you just tell us?” bellowed Brittany.
“Nothing!” snapped Travis, peering out the large rear window. “I didn’t see anything. It’s what I heard.”
“What?”
“It’s some kind of animal,” he muttered, more to himself.
“Like what? A coyote?”
Travis shot the cheerleader a dirty look. “You honestly think a forty pound coyote attacked Coach and managed to drag his body away?”
The bus fell silent again.
“Did you actually see his body?” asked Brittany. “I mean, we don’t know what happened to him. Right?”
“What? You think he got mauled by a rabid dog and then decided to ditch us to go play Animal Echo in the woods?” remarked a player.
“Can we still drive with a flat?” queried a small forward. “There could be a gas station or something just down the road for all we know. We get there, we can call for help.”
The team’s point guard went to the front and plopped into the driver’s seat and sighed in relief that Coach had left the keys in the ignition. He turned the engine over and put the vehicle into gear, letting the bus slowly coast down the stretch.
One of the girls suddenly screamed, and not a second later did the vehicle suddenly jolt at the annihilating impact that registered on the left side. A sharp shudder followed and the point guard could hear the other rear tire blowout. The backend buckled down, scraping along the asphalt before the bus came to an eventual halt. It didn’t matter how hard the point guard pushed down on the accelerator. The bus wouldn’t move.
“Anyone hurt?” called out the point guard, turning to look back at the rest of the passengers.
“What the hell is this thing?” demanded Travis, looking at the concaved siding of the bus that received the impact. The collision even managed to break several of the windows.
An aching howl erupted outside, and the whole bus was met with another blow. The backend slid off the pavement, and the cabin tilted down toward the deep trench. Everyone tried scrambling over, hoping to rebalance the vehicle, but another ram hit, sending the bus toppling off the road. The helpless passengers crashed onto the roof as their world turned upside-down.