by Jay Mouton
Ben Stuart, sat back down, then leaned back in the driver’s seat. He tilted his aching head against the window behind him. He turned his head, and pressed one heated cheek against the cool glass of the window; he took slow, concentrated breaths, as he attempted to fight back the agonizing pain growing more intensely in his brain.
As if caught in the middle of a thought, the monster, feeding on what was left of the child in front of it, stopped cold; blood, flesh, and splinters of cartilage slid out from its wide-open mouth, down the distended chin, and spilled onto the blood-soaked body and clothes of the dead boy on the cool pavement.
The monster looked skyward, as if giving a silent prayer for the feast it was enjoying.
Then, as slowly as the minute hand of the grandfather clock back at Granddaddy Kingsley’s house, the monster turned its gaze directly at the bus idling in the center of County Road 125. The monster stared, then turned its distorted face, sideways, as if pondering if the next meal was waiting behind the double doors of the bus.
The monster’s eyes seemed to land upon Gavin’s own. The boy’s skin crawled, and the tiny hairs on his neck curled as if they were some sort of radar telling him to run. Gavin stared back at a pair of eyes that, earlier that very morning, had flowed with love for him. Now, the only word that jumped into his head, that could ever describe the evil eyes that drilled into his, was, dead.
Ariel was still sobbing, but she had stopped fighting against her brother’s hold. He, in turn, stopped rubbing her in his attempts to sooth her, and, now, simply held her body close to his.
Gavin wasn’t at all sure if his little sister was even watching the scene unfolding in front of them, anymore. Still, he held her a little tighter.
The fragment of time, locked forever in the universe of the boy’s memory, that it took for the monster to jump up from the pile of gore in front of it and make its mad rush toward the doors of the bus seemed less than a single blink of his eyes.
WHAM!
The monster slammed into the double doors of the school bus.
Ariel screamed, again, fainted, then simply slipped from Gavin’s grasp. She crumpled onto the steps of the door well she had been standing in.
Another child yelled from the rear of the bus. Then, the volume and pace of the sound of children crying, ever louder, filled the bus with, yet, a renewed round of terror.
The monster kept slamming up against the doors in a macabre dance of lust for the flesh it must have sensed was only inches away; its hunger in no way satiated by the child it had just gorged upon.
Gavin jumped back from the door. A yelp of fear escaped from his throat. He stumbled, and fell back against Mr. Stuart.
The old bus driver had nearly lost consciousness, but the force of Gavin Kingsley falling against his shins brought him back from the stupor of the fever that was building in intensity.
The monster continued its onslaught against the front doors of the bus.
Had Gavin been able to see all of the imprints of the beast’s attempts at gaining entrance, the smear of blood and flesh would have caused him to, finally, lose the contents of his stomach that had threatened to escape back in his school room when he watched another monster nearly swallow one of Ricky Strome’s eyeballs whole.
“Young King, Kingsley,” Ben Stuart was barely able to get out. His voice slurred, the sound of the words, somewhat, garbled when they broke away from his mouth.
Gavin was startled, but had quickly regained his composure. Somehow, he knew that everything, from now on, was going to be up to him.
* * * * *
“Mr. Stuart!” Gavin yelled right down at the old man’s face; a face now dripping with sweat, and burning hot against Gavin’s fingers when he touched Ben Stuart’s face.
“Wha? What is it?” the old man stuttered.
“Mr. Stuart! We’ve got to get away from here, now!” Gavin was still yelling into the bus driver’s sweating face, but at least the boy had control of his voice, again.
Mr. Stuart tried to focus on Gavin Kingsley’s eyes, as the boy stared at him.
The old veteran had caught a taste of Malaria back in the jungles of Vietnam, and was able to think, even through the pounding inside his brain, that it was that damned Malaria coming back to hit him at this worst of times.
Gavin took hold of one of Mr. Stuart’s jacket sleeves and was gently shaking the old man. At the same time, the boy turned his head to the right and, glancing over his shoulder, made sure that his sister was still on the steps just below where Gavin stood trying to stir their bus driver.
“Mr. Stuart! We’ve got to leave! We’ve got to go!” he yelled, facing the old man, again; he shook him just a little, bit harder.
SLAP!
This time, the force of the monster outside the school bus doors slammed up against them with enough power to put a crack in one of the windows of the double door.
“MR. STUART!” Gavin yelled at the top of his small lungs. The screaming from the rear of the bus that, now, seemed non-stop, kept reaching for ever higher crescendos.
The monster hit the door, with even more force.
Gavin continued to shake the old man, this time with as much force as he could muster.
Finally, Mr. Stuart seemed to regain focus once more.
The bus, which had been idling the entire time that they had stopped and parked on County 125, in front of the EZ Stop, growled underneath them; an ominous background soundtrack for the vicious sounds the beast made as it continued its onslaught.
Ben Stuart came to. He shook his throbbing head twice, turned in his seat, grabbed the steering wheel of the ancient school bus, clutched, and, one more time, shifted the vehicle into first gear.
Just as Ben released his right foot from the break, the monster, again, slammed into the double doors of the bus; this time shattering the glass. Then the monster, once loving wife and mother, Kayla Kingsley, thrust her arms through the broken shards of glass left hanging from the stubborn frames of the door windows. Snarling, drooling, and spraying bloody spittle, she grabbed her little daughter, Ariel Kingsley, still passed out on the step in the door well, and tried to pull the child’s limp body up to her ravenously hungry jaws.
* * * * *
“Mama! Mama! No, Mama, it’s me, Ariel!” the little girl screamed as she came out of her unconscious state, the monster clutching, powerfully, on her left ankle.
Mr. Stuart had shifted the bus into second gear, and they were gaining speed as the bus weaved down County 125.
Gavin Kingsley, holding his little sister by the pits of her skinny arms, was clinging desperately to keep hold of Ariel.
The monster’s grip held.
Ariel continued to scream, as her free foot, frantically, kicked out against the monster bent on pulling her through the broken door windows.
The bus was grinding into third gear, as Mr. Stuart tried to concentrate enough to keep them all on the road.
The monster snarled and growled, as its fingers dug ever tighter into the child’s ankle.
“Mama! Stop!” Gavin yelled, immediately realizing that his mother was no longer alive. Whatever it was that was trying to get at his sister, he reminded himself, it was not his mother. The young boy renewed his struggle, calling upon every fiber of his being, to pull Ariel away from the clutch of the monster only inches away from his little sister’s tender flesh.
The bus picked up more speed.
Mr. Stuart kept them on the road.
Then, with one, horrific howl that cut high above the squalling, yelling, and screaming coming from all the children inside the wayward bus, the monster lost its grip on Ariel.
The sinewy arms of the beast disappeared out through the broken windows of the double doors. The bus reared skyward, momentarily, bounced up, and then came down back down, hard, on the paved road, the tires catching the road once more. The tremendous weight of the bus, as they continued up County 125, had crushed the wild creature rendering it little more than road kill.
Somehow, through the entire madness, Mr. Stuart had managed to keep his fever at bay, and keep them all moving on the highway.
One, by one, the old bus driver made his stops; he delivered all but four of the children to their homes sprinkled along the route.
The Kingsley children’s stop was last, so he would be putting his bus into park at least three more times in order to make sure that all of his kids made it to their respective homes.
Ben Stuart caught Gavin Kingsley’s staring, somewhat vacantly, up at him, in the glass of the buses’ wide-angled, rear view mirror.
The old man’s heart ached for the child, but there was really nothing much he could do about a damn thing that was taking place. As far as Ben Stuart knew, it might just have been about time for his Lord Jesus to return to fetch him and his misses to head on home, together.
Abigale!
He’d been so busy trying to round up whatever children on his bus route that he could, that he’d barely a moment to think about his sweet wife at home.
His sweet, sweet, Abigale; his Abby. She’d forgive him his lapse in memory. She knew how much he cared for the children on his bus route. The two of them had not been able to have children, in all their years together. Abigale Stuart, much like her husband, adored the children on her dear Benjamin’s Taylor route.
Another wave of pain swept through his head and, momentarily, he felt an intense nausea playing in the pit of his stomach; the fever that had set in, earlier, continued to burn inside his brain.
No matter!
The old soldier told himself to grunt it out, and get on with his single mission—get the little children home.
He whispered a prayer that they still had homes to go to.
Ben Stuart, in quiet contemplation, also asked God to forgive him if he was making the wrong decision in leaving them off at their stops at all, perhaps only to suffer the same fate as the little boy they’d all witnessed being torn apart at the EZ Stop.
He shook his head to rid himself of too many extra thoughts, and peeked again at the boy.
Ben felt Gavin’s soulful eyes still drilling into the back of his head.
The bus driver spoke.
“Young Kingsley, I need you to do me a favor, boy,” he said to Gavin, now leaning forward, again, from the seat right behind him.
“Yes, sir?” Gavin’s voice, sounding parched and tired from all his yelling and exertions.
“Come up here, and open my lunch pail, please,” Mr. Stuart, asked.
He nodded to the boy, as Gavin lifted the box up from behind the seat, unfastened the clips that held it fast, and opened the aged tin box.
“That’s right, boy,” Mr. Stuart directed, “now find my cell phone right in there,” he added.
Gavin fished a little, and soon found Ben’s cell.
“Got it, Mr. Stuart!” Gavin offered the phone to him, reaching over the driver’s seat, and just over Mr. Stuart’s big, right shoulder.
Just doing something to help felt better than doing nothing at all. And Gavin Kingsley wanted, more than anything, to be doing something other than thinking about his mother.
Gavin asked the old man if he wanted him to help him check his messages.
“Do you know how to do that, young Kingsley?” the driver asked, suspecting that the child, like most of them, today, could probably call all of his friends up before the old soldier could even make a single call to his Abigale.
“Sure, Mr. Stuart, I can do it for you! My mama lets me,” Gavin said, his voice trailing off with the mention of his mother. The young boy glanced over to Ariel, to see if she’d heard him. Thankfully, his little sister had fallen asleep, and was curled up in a small ball next to him.
“That’s fine, boy,” Ben Stuart said, smiling up at Gavin’s reflection in the rear view; the boys’ eyes seemed just a little brighter than they had a minute earlier.
Gavin fidgeted with the cell for a few moments.
“Wow!” the boy burst out, “You’ve got twelve voice messages, Mr. Stuart,” Gavin exclaimed, adding, “and every one of them is from Mrs. Stuart!”
The old man was even more apprehensive, now.
On any given day that he was running his bus route, Abigale, his sweet Abby, would send him one text message simply telling him, “I love you, be safe” and send it out before he left the school to drop the children off at the end of their school day.
She never called. Ever.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. She called anytime there was an emergency.
“Young Kingsley. Can you turn the volume up on that thing?” Ben asked.
“I sure can, Mr. Stuart.”
“Put her up high, and play the first message for me, please,” the driver said.
Gavin fiddled with the phone another second. Then, Ben Stuart heard his wife’s voice imploring him to come right home — “now, baby, please!” she’d said, her voice sounding alarmed. Ben could hear a, palpable, tinge of fear in her tone.
Ben knew, in the back of his, now, consistently, throbbing head, that none of the other voice mails would contain any good news what-so-ever.
Still, he asked Gavin to let the rest of the messages play.
“And, please, young Kingsley, keep the volume up so I can hear it plain and simple.”
* * * * *
Ben Stuart had been correct.
The second voice mail that Abigale had sent him was more urgent than her first, and each consecutive message more frantic than the last; every message after the second one, had less than a five-minute time lapse.
It was the last, frantic, call that was the worst of them all.
The last sound that Ben Stuart heard from his beautiful wife of forty-seven years was a most blood curdling scream; the last sound both Ben and Gavin heard, sent from the cell phone that once belonged to Abigale Stuart, loving wife to her husband, Benjamin Williams Stuart, was the snarling, growling, and thirsty sound of something that could not possibly be human.
At the sound of Mrs. Stuart’s scream, the cell phone had slipped out of Gavin Kingsley’s startled hand suspended over the back of the bus driver’s seat and held up near the old man’s ear.
But, even as the cell phone came to a stop, and lay on the floor of the bus, on the first step in the door well, they could both hear the sound of a creature that, more than likely, was only minutes earlier tearing Abigale Stuart to pieces.
Gavin drew his arm back across the top of Mr. Stuart’s seat, and clasped his hands tightly together in order to try to still the shaking of them both; it didn’t work.
Mr. Stuart, bus driver for the Westside Elementary School, holder of the Bronze Star, with Oak Leaf Cluster, for bravery in some far-off battlefield decades long past, was now crying like one of the children that he’d managed to save that cool, February morning.
Gavin watched the driver’s slumped shoulders, as his old back heaved up, then down, in his sorrow. He caught the view of the tears, now in a streaming furrow, as they ran down his friend’s contorted face. Gavin leaned back toward the back of Mr. Stuart’s seat, used a still trembling right hand to reach over and simply pat the old man on one of his slumped over shoulders.
* * * * *
Ben had kept the speed down to a careful forty-five miles per hour after they had left the outskirts of Glen Saint Mary. With the fever he’d been dealing with, his fear for the children on his bus, and his worry for his wife, he’d felt it best not to drive too fast as he made his way along the bus route towards his Taylor turn around point. It had been a wise decision, for when he and Gavin Kingsley had been listening to the voice messages from his, now, likely deceased wife, he felt himself less and less able to continue. Still, he struggled to maintain control of his body and mind, and to push his loss to the back of his thoughts, and to concentrate on finishing his mission to get all of his children to their homes.
After all of them were delivered, safely, he would contend with the scene that he feared would meet
him at home.
They rolled along at the slow rate, and made their way past Turner Cemetery Road just off to their left. Gavin and Ben, the old man’s eyes still slightly blurred and still burning from the salty tears still welled up in both, turned their heads toward the cemetery road at the same time.
Gavin was sure that the old man, just as Gavin was thinking, was wondering if, indeed, the dead were now walking the earth with the living. Gavin’s darkest thought, and it had been growing, and growing, was that the thing that his mother had turned into was not just some kind of monster.
Gavin was sure now.
His mother, Mr. Jenkins, most of the teachers he’d seen as they bolted from his school, had all become —.
He wasn’t even sure that he should say the word, even though he had been thinking it for some time now.
Zombies!
He knew in his mind that zombies were just imaginary creatures created in the movies. Created for his entertainment during his, clandestine, sneak peeks at The Walking Dead series. He knew they were all just made up monsters from a place adults called Hollywood. Just actors in movies, like the one his uncle, Alex, had let him watch one weekend called Dawn of the Dead. Gavin understood that he was just a kid, but he wasn’t a stupid kid; he knew a lot about things.
And he knew, for sure, there wasn’t such a thing in the world as a zombie.
But a thought jumped right into the center of his head, and kept repeating over and over.
What if you’re wrong?
He pondered the thought, over and over. What if he was wrong? What did his mother become? Whatever she’d changed into, it sure didn’t seem to have anything human, other than the shape of her body, about it.
Gavin looked down at Ariel, still curled up in a fetal position, and was, momentarily, thankful that she was even able to fall asleep through all she’d just been through.
He reached over and patted her little arm ever so slightly, more to comfort himself than the sleeping girl; she whimpered, but did not open her eyes. Her breathing remained deep and even.
