Chapter 6 - School Bus
As the five outsiders move away from the gym, they heard Julie's voice speaking loudly and quite panicky. It wasn't many more steps before they heard her scream out. Nobody looked back. "Up here," Hailey pointed, leading the way. Zac followed behind Miss Summers who following Kyle behind Hailey. He kept a watch out in case of anything from behind. So far, he couldn't see any brain eaters nearby. "Around this corner," Hailey whispered, raising her hand and beckoning the group forward as they approach the far end of the nearest classroom, Kyle jumps in front of Hailey and looks around the corner, "Clear, come on," He steps first, with everyone in tow, as the move forward into the centre of the school. As she passes the classrooms, Hailey takes a split second to recall one of the rooms she had Science in two days ago and can't believe how much has changed so suddenly. They can't see anyone around them, human or brain eater and they all slow down as they approach the corner. They have to cross the court yard, theres steps that drop down which can give them a bit of cover. Hailey steps besides Kyle, with the other two moving in closer, Kyle turns to them, "We move to the grass area down the steps, scope the area and head to the car park," and without hesitating he leads, quickly moving around the pillars and down the steps, into the court yard area on the grass. He looks across the ground level with the light in the sky slowly increasing. He can see two guys standing talking through the glass canteen area. "Come on," he says, looking behind him. Hailey jumps up and moves, Kyle can see a brain eater walking towards them, falling down the steps and landing the courtyard, "Go Go!" Kyle says, grabbing Miss Summers and helping her up the stairs. Zac runs ahead with Hailey and they turn the corner, revealing themselves to the two guys. One of them drops their cigarette and they both hold up a gun to everyone. "Holy Shit!" Hailey says out loud holding up her hands as if to surrender. "Are you bit?" One of the guys asks, with an aussie country twang in his accent. "Naah, we hid in an office, just left then," Zac replied as Kyle ran around the corner, not looking where he was going and ran into Zac, pushing them both over. "Oh shit!" one of the men said, running past the group holding his gun up as Miss Summers and Hailey helped the guys up. "Go, go, go!" The country guy said, lowering his gun and using to usher the group past him. They all quick shuffle on past him as a gun shot can be heard. Kyle turns around to see the other guy had killed the brain eater. They country guy lead the group and they all ran to the other side of the school, exiting quickly through one of the gates towards the car park. The group could see a school bus waiting in the car park. "Come on, lets get out of here before sun rise," the guy at the back of the group called out. They weaved through the cars and the bus door opened, younger though with short brown hair was sitting behind the wheel, "Hurry!" he said, as everyone quickly jumped on the bus. Hailey and Kyle ran to the back of the bus, where she saw a dozen brain eaters pooling into the car park from the school. The gun shot must've signalled their attention. Hailey fell back slightly against her chair as the drive put his foot down. "Easy now," one of the guys said to the kid. Hailey looked at Kyle and he put his arm around her, bringing her into his chest and she wrapped her arm around his waist. "You kids were lucky," one of the guys said, "Oh, and you too ma'am," he said, looking at Miss Summers. "We are so grateful, we were stuck there for a minute," Miss Summers gushed, smiling at one of the men. Taking a liking to his green eyes behind his nose length fringe. "I'm Mark," he returns her smile. The other guy coughs to break up their moment, "I'm James Stone, my son Rob is behind the wheel," "Hi," a voice can be heard behind the drivers seat. "Thank you so much again," Hailey said, now sitting separately from Kyle. "Look, I'm not going to lie to you guys," Mark begins, "We don't know you guys and gals," he pauses and looks at Miss Summers, "But we'd like to get to know you more," he grins at her, "But we have some protocols back at camp," "Camp?" Kyle questions, "We're preppers, we've been planning for some sort of take over now for over 5 years," James responds, "We were already in lockdown a week before the broke out spread North. We weren't taking any chances," he continues. As Kyle begins to tell the story of how they came to find them, Hailey took a moment to look out the window. Being locked in the room, she never heard any of the destruction occurring outside. Burnt out cars, smashed vehicles, brain eaters everywhere. It was a scene from a horror movie. Local shops were broken into, there were cars sprawled everywhere. She shook her head in disbelief. "Yeah, so we had to leave her behind and we followed you guys," Kyle finished, "Man, you kids got lucky," Mark said, sitting down on the chair in front of Miss Summers. The started to exchange words quietly between themselves. "Hold on everyone, it might be a bumpy right once we get out through the suburbs," James says, approaching the front of the bus. Zac, sitting behind James follows to see the destruction as he too had not heard anything since being inside the office. "holy fuck," Kyle breathed, catching Hailey's attention, she noticed he was looking outside, "It's crazy huh?" she said, shaking her head once again, almost as if she was in a dream and could wake up. He put his arm around her to comfort her and they both just watched as they drove through Perth, heading out towards the bush.
After 45 minutes of driving, the school bus was able to make it a few suburbs away from the school. They drove slowly past the Central Shopping Centre, Kyle was watching out the window with an asleep Hailey lying on his lap, when he saw hundreds of brain eaters gathered at the shopping mall doors and outside windows, some smashing through a store just as they drove off in the distance. He looked back and saw there really was no hope of getting inside the shopping centre. As he faced forward, he could see Miss Summers, Mark and Zac had all fall asleep inside the bus. He wasn't tired. After the dream he last had, he didn't want to fall asleep again. "Fuck!" He heard Rob say, feeling the bus slowing down from its normal speed, "What is that?" he said out loud again, receiving no response from James who is also watching out the front window. "Whats going on?" Mark's deep voice and distinctive accent fills the bus, waking everyone, "Whats going on?" Miss Summers quickly repeats shaken, but everyone soon can see what the fuss is. As they are driving, they can see houses in a row on fire, burning down to the ground. They can all see they must've been burning for a while or rather quickly as some houses are nearly burnt to the ground, "Didn't see that coming in here," James murmurs to Rob. Kyle approaches the front of the bus, he can see that Rob has to dodge obstacles on the road like debris of cars, brain eaters and things people must've been holding when they were first attacked were scattered throughout the area. As they passed the houses on fire, they reached a large intersection where cars had banked up, blocking the bath. Rob stops the bus. Everyone gets off the their seats, and approaches the front of the bus. Rob opens the door and James steps out, he pulls out a small pair of what looks like fishing binoculars and looks around. He looks up ahead and sees a large group of brain eaters walking between the cars, "Fuck," He says out loud, "What is it?" Mark over hears, "freaks," James pulls out his gun, as he does so, he notices one of the brain eaters fall out of a car with no passenger door. He has no top half of his head, and he has severe deep cuts running from his cheek to his missing skull. James looked at him, knowing he couldn't shoot him or he'll alert the others. He quickly rushed back on the bus, but as Rob closed the door, the sound attracted the brain eater and he approached the bus with a limp, leaning on the bonnet and looking ghoulishly up at Rob. He turned up his nose disgruntled at the brain less figure in front of him as James spoke, "there's heaps of them down by the intersection, we have to go around," he pointed to the side walk beside the road which were free. Rob quickly started the bus back up and the brain eater fell off as it shuttered. Another former elderly woman approached the bus, holding onto a side of a car as she did so, having difficulty walking, "Come on man," Mark said, rushing Rob to leave the area. As the car turned on, he put it into gear, and drove onto the side walk, quickly brushing past the stationed empty cars. As he approached the group of brian eaters, James quickly shooed everyone away from the front of the bus, "Sit down and hold on, just in case," which everyone followed. As the intersection was at the bottom of the hill, Rob had to gain enough speed to go up the hill. As he approached the bottom of the hill, the brain eaters started to hear the bus and slowly moved towards the direction of the bus. Rob put his foot down, but the best this manual driving bus could do was 65 kmph. "Go go go," Zac ushered, everyone seemed so silent in anticipation of passing all the brain eaters, As he made it across the lights, the brain eaters walked up behind the bus, following the sound of it as it drove up the hill. There were a few burnt out cars in the way, forcing Rob to dodge them and therefore slowing down the bus. As he continued on, the side path slowly disappeared into an hallway and he had to get back on the main road, but there were far too many cars to be able to continue straight. "Fuck!" Rob cried, as James grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the seat. James quickly jumped in the front and pushed his foot down, finding a break between two lanes of cars and forcing the bus through it. It slowed down, slowly having to push cars out of the way. The only problem was, it wasn't happening fast enough. The brain eaters reached the back of the bus, they started banging on the outside, moving up the sides of the bus and smashing the back windows, "Come on!" Miss Summers cried out, James managed to push the last small car out the way and made it to the opposite side of the road, making it easier to drive through with less cars in the way. Everyone took a breath, "that was close," Mark said, rubbing his eyes, still trying to wake up. "Only another 20 minutes or so to go, and we'll get there," James said, reassuring everyone.
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