"Get in there!" the officer said as he roughly pushed a prisoner up the steps and onto the bus. The chains at the man's feet clinked as he nearly fell to his knees, but he kept his balance and shot a glare at the guard as he ascended the steps. He was one of the last to file onto the school bus and past the chain link door that separated the driver from the prisoners. The bus smelled of sweat and gasoline, and the Georgia heat made the place feel like a sweat locker.
The guard came through and checked every prisoner's chains. One woman spit at his feet when he passed, and he tightened her handcuffs until they pressed into her wrists. Once each prisoner was accounted for, he headed to the front of the bus and locked the cage door behind him. The bus shuddered to a start and began rumbling down the road.
"Where are we goin'?" an older, tattooed man yelled from the back of the bus. The guard in the front of the bus turned around to look at him.
"Georgia State," the officer responded gruffly. He put one hand on the pistol at his belt. "Now shut up. No more questions."
The tattooed man huffed and sat back in his seat. He tapped his fingers, stared out the window at the passing landscape, and tapped his foot until another inmate snapped at him to knock it off. He flipped the person off, and then looked around at the other inmates. His eyes fell on a girl sitting a couple of seats to the left of him. She had black hair pulled back behind her head, tanned skin, and a scowl that looked like she could kill with just one look. She was chained between two inmates- an older man with a beer gut and tattoos all down his right arm, and an older woman with short, spiky gray hair. She just stared silently out the window of the bus.
The school bus full of prisoners rumbled onto the highway, picking up speed as the driver merged it into the steady line of cars coming from behind them. None of the prisoners on the bus seemed to catch onto the fact that most of the cars had stuff piled inside and on top of them, as if all the drivers were going on long vacations.
The tattooed man leaned forward around the front of his seat to the man sitting there. This man was pale-skinned with carrot-red hair cropped short above his ears and a scar that ran from his temple down to his jawline. He was staring directly at the seat in front of him with his hands clenched in his lap.
"Hey, Scarface," the tattooed man said. "What'd you do to land yourself in here?"
The scarred man didn't answer, only turned around and glared at the man. The tattooed man forced a chuckle.
"Name's Martin," he introduced himself. "Armed robbery and homicide. I ain't ashamed of my past. So how 'bout you? What's your name?"
The scarred man sighed. "Ben," he responded in an annoyed voice. "And it's none of your business."
"Oh, come on, we have to talk about something. It's too boring to just sit here in silence," Martin whined.
"Everyone was fine with the quiet until you opened your mouth," Ben responded calmly.
"Well, I'm bored as all hell," Martin said, leaning back against his seat. His handcuffs clinked as he moved. "There's gotta be something else to do on here. Anyone got a cigarette?" He announced this last question loudly, and most of the prisoners on the bus turned around to see who was interrupting the relative silence. Someone yelled at him to shut up, but he looked around.
"Come on, let's do something!" he said loudly with a laugh. "Let's have some fun before-"
"Shut up!" the young girl from the back of the bus snapped at him.
"She's right," the guard from the front said as he turned towards the back. There was a glare on his face as he placed his hand on his pistol and met Martin's eyes. "No one gives a shit. Mind your own damn business."
Martin leaned back in his seat, scowling at the guard. Time seemed to pass endlessly as the prison bus drove further and further towards Georgia State. It felt like they had been driving for days when all of a sudden, the bus came to a halting stop on the highway. The tires screeched, and the prisoners were flung forward into the seats in front of them. The two guards in the front fell and scrambled to get back up as the prisoners began shouting.
"What's going on?" Martin yelled over the chatter, swiveling his head around to look out the windows. The cars all around them were stopped as well. Some were trying to turn around and drive the other way, but they were only met with more stopped cars and nowhere to go. The guards at the front of the bus were staring out the windshield at something the prisoners couldn't see.
"I'll go," one of the guards said to the other. Drawing his gun, he stepped out of the bus door as the driver cracked it open. The prisoners craned their necks to watch. The guard crept slowly down the street as people ran past him down the other direction, away from the city. Once he was out of sight, the bus went silent. They heard three gunshots, then silence. All of them waited for what seemed like hours.
The guard didn't come back.
"Alright," the second guard said. He was sweating and seemed very nervous as he drew his pistol. "I'm going out there."
"You're just gonna leave us here?" The older woman sitting in the back spoke up. "You can't just leave! You're the only one with a weapon!"
"You think I'm just gonna leave my partner out there?" He snapped back at her. "You'll be fine. I'll be right back." He turned to the driver. "Open the door man, I'm going out."
The driver pushed the lever and opened the door. But before the guard could take one step down the stairs, he dropped to the ground screaming. He fired one shot, but it missed and went out the open door. He flipped over, dropping his pistol by the driver's feet, and screamed as he was dragged backwards out of the bus. They heard screaming continue for a few seconds before he went silent. The driver was watching what the prisoners couldn't see in absolute horror. All of a sudden, the driver began screaming as well and tried to shut the door. When he realized he couldn't, he scrambled to pick up the guard's pistol but dropped it as he tried to back away.
Something was climbing the stairs of the bus. The prisoners all tried to stand to see what was going on. Finally, it came into view, and four people screamed in horror.
The thing was hideous. With rotting flesh, bloodstained clothes, and dead, bloodshot eyes, it snarled at the driver before leaning down and biting a chunk out of his arm. Blood spurted all over the windshield as the driver screamed. Most of the prisoners ducked down behind their seats. One burly man began crying and praying as the driver was eaten alive. He thrashed around, but once the thing took a chunk out of his neck, he began gurgling as he choked on his own blood. A few seconds later, he went still. The thing continued to eat him.
"Look," the girl from the back said quietly, though somehow all the prisoners were able to hear her. She pointed to the front of the bus, past the cage door. The master keys for the prisoners' handcuffs had fallen off the second guard's belt and had been kicked towards the cage door by the thrashing driver. Ben saw this as well, and sitting close to the front, he immediately got down on the ground and began trying to reach the handcuffs. He strained as much as he could, but the keys were just too far away. He grunted with effort, and the thing that was eating the driver's body turned to him.
He pulled his hands back through the cage door just before the thing reached him. It snarled and pushed on the cage door, but it was locked. Five people screamed and ducked. The girl from the back began trying to pull her hands out of the handcuffs.
"Wait, look!" Martin said to Ben, pointing at the thing's feet. Its' foot was behind the set of keys. The idea seemed to click in Ben's head, and he began clacking his chains so they made noise. The thing tried to get closer, stepping up as close as it could to the cage- and dragging the keys with it. As quick as he could, Ben snatched the keys and pulled them back into the bus before the thing could reach him. He unlocked his handcuffs, then gripped the keys like a weapon and shoved them through the cage into the thing's head. It snarled, then froze and dropped like a sack to the ground. He pulled the keys back through the cage and unlocked the door, then tossed the ring back to the girl. While she unlocked her handcuffs, he went to the front and shoved both the bodies of the thing and the driver out onto the street, then closed the bus door. The keys were getting passed around prisoner to prisoner.
The girl from the back of the bus had made her way to the front. Searching around in the various storage spaces, she pulled out and unfolded a map. Ben picked up the guard's pistol, unloaded it, counted the bullets left, and reloaded the pistol.
"Who are you?" Ben asked her as he peered out the windshield. He was trying to ignore the panicked chatter in the bus as the prisoners unlocked themselves.
"Mari," she responded as she leaned the unfolded map on the wheel to read it. "Those things are coming from inside the city. Which means we need to go the other way. The longer we stay on the highway, the more chance there is that we'll see more of those things."
Ben peered at the map over her shoulder. "There," he said, pointing to an exit leading off of the highway a few miles back the way they came. "That's the first exit off."
"We can't get this bus through this traffic. We'll need to go on foot until we reach the end of the car pileup, then find some cars and take those out." She folded up the map and tucked it into the back of her khaki pants that all the prisoners wore. "And while we do, we can scavenge for weapons. One pistol and four bullets might not cut it."
Ben stood and opened the cage door. "Everyone shut up!" he shouted over the chatter. The rest of the prisoners stopped talking and turned to face the front. He put the pistol in the back of his pants like Mari had done with the map.
"What are those things?" a tall man near the middle of the bus spoke up. "I ain't gonna get eaten, man!"
"Again, shut up," Ben said to him. "We're getting off the bus. We can't go into the city, so we're going to go on foot until we can get some cars and get off the highway. It's our best bet. And we need to do it quietly. I think those things are attracted to sound."
"Twenty of us, and you think we're gonna be quiet?" the same man asked again. "Man, you're crazy."
"You keep talking, and you're gonna be the first one they get," he snapped back. "Now while we're going, scavenge for weapons. We only have one pistol."
"And this," Mari said. She pulled a pocketknife out of one of the drawers at the front of the bus and flicked it open, then closed it. "You cover the front, I'll pick up the end with the knife."
"That works. Now let's get going." He turned and scanned the streets from the windshield, then pulled the lever that opened the door. The prisoners began filing out one by one, and Mari took up the rear of the group with the pocketknife out and ready. They picked silently around empty cars, and narrowly avoided people being eaten alive. After a few minutes, Mari heard a snarl behind her, and she turned around and stabbed the thing in the heart. It didn't react, so she pulled the knife out and shoved it away, then stabbed it in the middle of the head. It went still, and she pushed it down on top of the hood of a car.
Another one of the things emerged from between two cars up in the middle of their line. It tackled a woman to the ground and began biting into her shoulder, and she screamed and tried to shove it away, but to no avail. It bit into her neck and she began choking on her own blood. The silence of the group broke, and people began running away from the slaughter happening two feet away. The noise began attracting more of them, and one by one, prisoners began getting tackled to the ground. Gunshots echoed from the front of the group, and they all began running.
"Here!" Ben shouted to those that were left. He opened the door of a car and got in the driver's seat. People took the other three seats. Mari found a pickup truck and hopped in the driver's seat. Martin got in the passenger's seat next to her and she found the keys and started up the truck. She turned around to see if anyone was trying to get in the back. The man that had spoken up when Ben was explaining the plan was climbing up, and he tried to help another man in. The second man got pulled back by one of the things, and he slammed the back of the pickup truck bed and knocked on the glass separating him from the inside. Mari slammed the gas pedal and they sped forward in pursuit of Ben's car.
"Seven people," she said, exasperated. "Seven people out of twenty got out of that."
"At least there are some of us left," Martin responded. "Where are we going?"
"Take the map." Mari leaned forward so he could reach the map that was stuck in the waistline of her pants. A smirk crossed Martin's face, and he grabbed the map, "accidentally" letting his fingers brush her skin. She rolled her eyes and leaned back in the seat.
"We're taking the first exit off the highway. If we lose sight of Ben's car, follow the map," she instructed. A knock came from the back, and Martin turned around to look at the man in the back. He grinned and held up a shotgun and some shells, then gave a thumbs up. Martin returned the gesture and turned back to the front.
"Do you really think we'll make it out of here alive?" he asked Mari. She glanced over at him, then turned her eyes back to the road.
"I have no idea," she answered. "We'll get as far as we can."
"At least we're not in prison anymore," he said with a nervous chuckle. "We're free."
They saw one of the things walking along the side of the road. It stopped at some roadkill and began digging into it, and Mari looked away, taking a deep breath.
"How free are we, really?"
Thanks for reading!