by D. F. Noble
Jake let loose a scream. The world had gone insane. The world had been turned on its head. This, this was totally unacceptable. Grownups were supposed to protect kids, not pull them to pieces. Jake swung his machete as hard as he could at the school bus door, but it only skidded and bounced away. It was Plexiglas. His machete would do him no good.
Fuck, Jake moaned internally. He had to save these kids. Absolutely none of them deserved this. Dropping to his knees, Jake wrestled with the door, and for a moment he feared he wouldn’t be able to open it, but the children trapped inside could see him through the windows. They began screaming for him, calling his name, and Jake felt a sudden sense of strength and urgency he’d never felt. Gritting his teeth and growling, Jake shoved the door open, then damn near fell in.
The deranged bus driver below heard the noise and jerked his eyeless face up towards Jake and stood, dropping the handful of intestines he’d been wrenching from the little girl. Mike was his name, but this wasn’t Mike—just like his mother was no longer his mother. The adults were monsters now. They were monsters of the worst kind: killers of children. Now, with some mysterious force driving them to inexplicable acts of savagery, Jake knew then that he’d have to be just as savage in return.
“Hey,” Jake yelled, lifting his bow and sliding an arrow from his quiver. The psycho shrieked at him, his voice wafting up like crackling electricity and static. The former bus driver reached up with bloody, grimy hands and Jake notched the arrow on his bow string. Jake pulled back on the string, drawing the arrow just beneath his right eye. He lined the arrow up with the creature’s face. At this range, it would be impossible to miss.
“Die,” Jake said, and released. The arrow—not even a razor broad head but the round bullet-tipped variety—zipped forward into the thing’s mouth, shattering teeth as it went. The force snapped the eyeless psycho’s head back, and the arrow had damn near shot clean through its skull, for the feathers at the end were jutting from its lips. His name was Mike, he was a bus driver, who had a wife and children of his own, and now he toppled backwards, dead as dead could be. His corpse collapsed over his victim’s and twitched just once and sighed.
Jake slid another arrow out from his quiver, just in case. A breeze tugged at his dark locks and the hot sun beat down on his skin. Something deep and primal rose up in him then, and Jake lifted his arms toward the sun. He roared, roared like a lion, a voice too big for a boy's body. The roar turned into a wolf’s howl and Jake beat his hands off his chest like an ape.
For a moment Jake was sure the wind had howled with him; not just the wind but the bugs and frogs and birds and unseen dogs as well. The world was changing, mutating beneath his feet, and Jake changed with it.
***
Jake pulled them up one by one. Joe and Greg, two Italian-looking kids, with Joe being Mario and Greg -Luigi- were first. With those two up, the others came easily. Their faces were wet with tears and masks of shock. Their bodies were covered in scrapes and bruises from when the bus went off the road, and their wails and squeals escalated as they had to step over the body of their bus driver and the little girl he'd mutilated. Jake had to yell at them, for they all wanted to talk at once, explain what had happened, and lament the girl Mackenzie.
“Shut up!” Jake yelled. “You can talk later, get out here first, goddammit!”
Randy and his sister Emily, they were usually the last to be dropped off. They lived on a farm farther out than any of them. They came up, followed by a redheaded girl named Katie, who everyone called Cat for short. Tony and his brother Bobby came next. Tony was a stoner from what Jake knew, and Bobby might have been too, for they were both long-haired and had scruffy adolescent beards. Tony was the older, heavier one, and he wore sandals. He moaned when one came off inside the little girl.
“Grab my shoe, Bobby,” Tony said from atop the bus as Jake and Greg began to pull Bobby up.
“Fuck you, dude!” Bobby said. “Not touchin' that!”
Steffi was the last, and she looked like a ghost. Jake's heart sank when he saw her. Even now she was beautiful, even in this chaos he found himself wanting her. “He... ripped his.. eyes out, Jake!” Steffi cried. “He... he killed Mackenzie... He..he-”
Jake grabbed her shoulder and squeezed it. “I know, Steffi. I...I found my mom...she... was like him.”
“Jake, I'm scared! I wanna go home!”
“Why did he do it? Why!?
“What's happening!?”
“I don't know!” Jake said, raising his voice above the chorus of their cries. “But listen, all of you! I saw planes, a bunch of them, falling from the sky. I saw my mom...she killed my baby brother! She came after me!”
They looked at him with wide, wet eyes. Jake felt that he was scaring them and lowered his voice. “Listen,” he said, “I don't think it's a good idea to go home. I think...I think something happened to the adults. I know a place that's safe, a place that's hidden. We can stay there till we figure out what's happening. We can-”
“There's more of them!” Cat hissed and pointed.
They all turned in unison. There, across the country road and out over the field, sat a house with a sprinkling of trees around it. Even from here they could tell the man on the porch was eyeless. He'd just come out his front door, and in one hand he held an ax, in the other hand he drug a small boy by the leg. He was bearded, a big bushy gray mane that curled off his cheeks and made him look almost like Santa Claus—a psychotic Santa. He tromped down the porch, dragging the boy behind him. His body left a bloody smear down the steps. A woman then appeared in the doorway, brandishing a butcher knife, her face covered in blood, and where her eyes should've been lay two black, empty pits.
“Don't watch them,” Jake said. “You don't wanna see-”
There on the front lawn, they cut and chopped into the child, and around Jake, the survivors of Bus 29 screamed. Jake watched the grownups, watched their heads jerk to the sound of the screams. Great, Jake thought.
“We gotta go!” he yelled and jumped down from the bus. “We gotta go now!”
***
Jake led them back to his house. Down the road they ran, many of them whimpering. His mind raced as he notched an arrow on his bow and glanced over his shoulder at the monsters tromping after them. He was going to have to arm these kids, with knives and tools and whatever they could muster. But can they fight? he wondered. Can they kill if they have to?
Down the driveway and up to his porch, Jake threw open the door to his house. “Everybody in!” he commanded. “Grab whatever weapon you can find! Trash bags under the sink, use pillow cases, blankets, whatever!! Fill 'em up with food, water, whatever you can use! Hurry! I'll take care of these two!”
The kids piled into the house; except for Randy, who ran to Jake's barn. There were weapons there too, and Jake didn't yell after him. Instead, he turned back to the eyeless couple marching down his driveway. Jake raised his bow and pulled the arrow back.
Fifty yards, he thought, easy shot.
He lined the tip of his arrow up with bearded man who carried the ax, lined it up to his chest, then aimed a bit higher to compensate for distance. The feathers of his arrow caressed the skin under Jake's eye. His muscles coiled. Jake took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
Fly true...
The arrow shot out, its movement just a blur, a streak, till a satisfying thwap resounded as the missile bit into its target's chest. The bearded man stumbled back, as if some invisible horse had kicked him. His bloody hands reached up and wrapped around the arrow, and then, with a grunt, the eyeless psycho plopped down on his ass in the gravel. His head sank down as if to investigate the new thing sprouting from his body, and his companion—a portly elderly woman—walked past him, unconcerned that her partner was gushing blood.
Footsteps beside Jake, and kids hollering in the house , “Kitchen knives! Get those! Do they have guns!? We need guns!” Randy came up beside Jake with a wheelbarrow of tools: hatchets, hammers, an axe, shovels and...the
pitchfork that Jake had used to kill his mother with.
“Found these!” Randy said, his country accent prominent. He looked over in the driveway, saw the crazy guy sitting on his ass, trying to pull the arrow from his chest. “Oh...Good shot, man!”
“Thanks,” Jake said and pulled another arrow from his quiver. The woman was closer now and gaining speed. Thirty yards, and power-walking like she was a broken robot, all stiff and rigid. She raised her knife and her mouth dropped open as she stepped onto Jake's lawn. That terrible static came from her, as if she were just a transistor, some beacon for the signal to pour through.
Jake notched the arrow, raised the bow and drew back. Beside him, Randy hoisted a two-handed ax from the wheelbarrow and said, “Knock her down, then we can take 'em out!”
Jake nodded and took aim. Randy doesn't seem afraid, he thought. Good. Gonna need him. Then he released the arrow, and a fraction of a second later it sank into the eyeless woman's breast. The arrow warbled like a doorstop and hit her with enough force that she spun on her feet and crashed hard onto the lawn. Her eyeless face seemed confused for a moment, but immediately, she tried to roll over and get back to her feet.
“Don't shoot no more!” Randy said and sprinted down the driveway towards the bearded man. “Save them arrows! I got this one!”
Before Jake could yell out Be careful, Randy's ax came down and split the bearded man's head in two. The heavy sharpened wedge buried itself into the monster's lower jaw, and a gush of blood shot up over Randy. Randy yanked the ax free, which brought up another geyser of blood. Head split like a cantaloupe, the bearded man lay back and twitched.
Randy turned as Jake plucked the pitchfork from the wheelbarrow. Jake didn't notice that some of the kids were piling out onto the porch behind him as he strode forward, carrying bags of goods and wielding knives. He barely heard Randy cuss when he wiped blood from his face. “Dammit! My mom bought me this shirt!” Jake focused on the horrid creature before him. He took it all in: the spider veins roaming up her pasty legs and her dirty, soiled dress, and poodle-like hair. She was sitting up then when Jake reared the pitchfork back, looking at him—almost into him—with those black pits.
Just as Jake drove the prongs forward into (and through) her mouth, the monster smiled.
***
“We tried using the phone inside,” Steffi said. Her voice was strong, but Jake could see her hands trembling. She stood with the other kids, all of them looking pale and ghost-like on his porch. She gripped a kitchen knife so hard that he could see the veins bulging in her hands. Jake was certain they had to be in shock, almost all of them. They'd just been through a wreck and witnessed several murders. Violent, brutal murders. “It was just static,” she said. “Like a dentist drill and static.”
“It's the same noise we heard on the bus before...” Joe said beside her. He didn't have to finish, he didn't have to say, When the bus driver went fucking crazy and pulled his eyeballs out of his damn face. Jake nodded and planted the pitchfork in the ground. Beside him, Randy stepped up holding the two arrows and slid them back into Jake's quiver. The guy didn't ask, he just did it.
“Look,” Greg said and pointed. “Something big in town is burning.”
Jake looked over the field. You couldn't see any buildings from here, but Greg was right. A dark pillar of smoke rose up from town. Jake thought of Dean and Alex. He didn't pray much, but he prayed then, short and sweet. Please God, let them make it here safely. Please. If there were any kids who could make it, it would be them. Dean was mean, tough as hell and a damn good fighter, and even though Alex was small, he was smart and fast, and since they'd become friends, Alex had grown quite a pair of nuts.
Jake looked back towards the direction of Tree Top. First, he would lead these kids there and take them to safety. Jake didn't fully comprehend it, didn't understand why, but these were his wards now. It was unspoken, but something in his core told him they needed him. Jake struggled then. His friends were back there, back in town. A whole city of crazy grownups, Jake thought, a thousand of them...just in that town...Jesus Christ...
Jake knew he had to find them. He would dig that gun out and head into Hell if he had to. He knew then he'd rather die fighting than lose another friend. But the water tower caught his eye and made him think. He had an idea.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Randy, can I count on you?”
“Sure,” Randy said and met his eyes.
“Can you lead everyone out there?”
Randy turned and looked up at the tower. “You want us to climb it?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, “but I need you to do something else. I need you to paint something up there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need you to paint a message,” Jake said. “Write in letters as big as you can, KIDS SAFE HERE. Got it? There's paint in the barn, and brushes.”
“Got it,” Randy said.
“If for some reason they do find you, there's only one way up; you can bottleneck them at the ladder. Just wait for me, I'll be back.”
“Why don't I come with you?” Randy asked. “I can help, I'm not scared…well, not real scared.”
“That's why I want you to stay,” Jake answered. “You're the strongest one here, and I need you to look after them.”
From the porch Greg piped up, “Hey man! I'm pretty strong, too!” Then Greg flexed one of his muscles. Beside him, his friend Joe shook his head.
“Good, then help Randy,” Jake said and turned to go.
“Wait!” Steffi said and came down the porch. She stepped in closely and locked her eyes on his. Jake found he couldn't break her gaze. She laid her hand on his chest. “Thank you, Jake,” she said, and then kissed him on the lips. An electricity shivered through Jake. Her lips were soft, and even though they were both sweating, she tasted sweet. For a moment, the whole world disappeared, and then she pulled back.
She whispered, “Please come back.”
“I will,” Jake said. “I will.”
C hapter 9
Ring Around the Rosie
Detention—Dean knew it well. He was a terrible practical joker. Not that his pranks were that bad, or that they hurt anyone (well, not often, anyway), he just had a tendency to get caught. This was mostly due to Dean's trouble with keeping his mouth shut about his latest antic. He would brag, and it was a small town. One wrong word to the wrong person and, wouldn’t you know it, Dean would find himself in the principal’s office. His second problem: Dean was a terrible liar. So much so, in fact, that he didn’t even bother lying anymore. A typical trip to Mr. Cavanaugh’s office would go like this:
“So,” Mr. Cavanaugh would start, “we’ve been having problems with the water fountains here at school. Seems like someone’s been chewing up gum or something and sticking it on the nozzles. Now we’ve had a few girls complaining that water sprays out in all directions and gets them wet, and yesterday, a girl went home because that hard chunk of whatever was stuffed in the nozzle… shot in the back of her throat. She threw up all over the hall. Would you know anything about that, Dean?”
And Dean would do his best not to laugh. He would say, “Yeah, Mr. Cavanaugh. That was me.”
Mr. Cavanaugh would push his glasses back up his nose and reply, “Well thank you for being honest, Dean. But what the hell are you putting in the water fountains?”
At this point Dean would almost be in tears from laughter. “Skittles,” Dean would answer. “I chew up a Skittle, then roll it up in a ball and push it down in there with a pencil. Did she really throw up?”
“Yes, Dean,” Mr. Cavanaugh would reply, “she did. You understand I’m going to have to give you detention… a whole week of detentions for this, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Dean would giggle, and wipe his eyes.
But Dean never held it against Mr. Cavanaugh. He kind of liked the old guy, and really, he was the principal and was just doing his job. Several times, Dean had even made the old fart laugh at a couple of the pranks he’d pul
led. That was probably the reason he liked him. Even though he was strict, Mr. Cavanaugh said he respected Dean for being honest.
The water fountain prank was a mediocre one. Dean had been going at this kind of stuff since about the sixth grade. He was a freshman now, and his pranks had been pushed up a notch. Dean would stash stink-bombs in the old hand-cranked pencil sharpeners. One twist of the handle and bam, fart sauce everywhere. He’d also taken to printing up odd, obscure and somewhat obscene fliers and would go about town in the middle of the night, dressed all in camouflage and black, and staple them to telephone poles. They would include someone’s phone number (usually one of the school’s staff members). Those fliers he would post, they would say stuff like: DEAD KITTENS FOR SALE or NEEDED! 18 YEAR OLD VIRGIN FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE and WANTED: GAY GUYS TO POUND ME SOOO HARD-IT’S ALL GOOD ON MY END.
Earlier in the year, Dean and Jake had bought almost five dollars’ worth of fake snot from a quarter machine. They rolled it up in a ball, and the plan was simple: they would sit in the back of class, and then when no one was looking, Dean would throw the huge ball of imitation snot into the ceiling fan and Jake would act like he had a tremendous sneeze. The result was an immediate evacuation of the class room, as streams of green and brown goo flung over the entire class.
Then came the old bartender’s trick. Three to five drops of Visine in someone’s drink, and in about a half-hour, you could watch them rush to the bathroom trying not to shit their pants. Of course, this prank got way out of hand. As soon as word got out, kids were dumping entire bottles of the stuff into someone’s soda, which usually resulted in a trip to the hospital and a month of nonstop diarrhea. Apparently the stuff could eat a hole in your stomach lining. Dean had never gone that far—he didn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wanted a laugh. He regretted spreading the word on that one.
