1: The Bus Goes Over 50 Miles Per Hour
Jon
Blasting music while shooting down the freeway should have been a good thing– not even taking into account the fact that every yard took me further from school and closer to home.
But the sky was thick with dense grey clouds, and forty minutes into my journey home the sky had opened up and the rain had been cascading down for the past three hours. I was on my way back home for spring break during what was my third consecutive year at boarding school. Or, i should probably specify, a boarding school– I hadn't stayed for longer than a year at any of the places. That was probably why my mom kept sending me further form home, first Tallahassee, then Penascola, and finally all the way out to Albany, Georgia. All of the schools were crazy stuck-up secluded boarding places in the middle of nowhere. And all of them took about five minutes to make me want to rip my hair out. But it was all good. Or at least it should have been.
I sank back in my seat, shuddering as I felt goosebumps prickle my skin under my jacket. I glared up at the grey overcast as more rain peppered the window.
I've never fully understood it, to be honest– but any weather that doesn't entail a blue sky makes me feel awful. All my energy drains away, and I start to feel weirdly cramped and almost claustrophobic. It's been this way all my life, really. Never explained, or even touched upon, not by my mom or any doctors. Just a constant annoyance. Like all the weird stuff in my life. But before I get in to when stuff went from everyday weird to what-the-crap weird.
My name is Jon Griffin, and I'm fifteen years old. Average personality, average looking– I'm a real stick-to-the-background guy, in the sense that back home in Florida I wouldn't have stuck out at all, with a casually tanned skin pigment and sandy hair that had that stiff just-off-the-beach look, even when I was at school and nowhere near the ocean.
I leaned my head against the cool window glass, hoping the cold would help my blooming headache. My eyes focused on droplets of water that ran steadily down the outside of the glass. I slowly went into an uncomfortable exhausted daze. I don't know how long it was until I slipped into a light sleep, watching drop after drop of water slap onto the glass and run down out of sight.
I dreamt of an immense, shadowy chamber. The floor was made of buffed black marble that had fragments of bright rock fused into it that gave off a faint glow. To either side of where I stood, the walls stood endlessly tall, stretching upward endlessly until they faded into nothingness– but that was little to what I saw when I cast my gaze forward, and I suddenly knew everything was gone. My mind, my body, the ground, the entire world, would be dragged with me, down into the chamber, and dissolved into the swirling mass of black, a void of blackness that was darker than anyhting I'd ever seen, blacker than anything in our universe.
A voice that came from every direction, layered like sixty people screaming and whispering at the same time spoke a single word. 'Soon.' A curling strand of the null blackness curled outward towards me like a tongue of smoke–
And my eyes snapped open the bus suddenly and violently jolted sideways, making a violent waterfall of raindrops gushing down the window. I snapped out of my groggy daze when I saw
I yelped as my head whipped forward, and my face thudded against the back of the seat in front of me. Pain exploded in my nose. I leaned back, with my eyes shut, and groaned, feeling a trickle of blood run down form my nose. I wiped it away hastily and opened my eyes.
I winced with pain and stared angrily at the front of the bus, towards the drivers seat. What the hell?
Some other passengers had the same general thought. A few shouted complaints, and most others just peered up the aisle, some rubbing necks and other mild injuries. Somewhere behind me, a baby started to wail.
But then something weird happened, even going by the terms of my own experience of weird. And that's a statement, trust me.
I glanced at the domed mirror at the front of the bus- the driver's way of making sure no one was doing anything particularly illegal, I guess. But, somehow, the driver caught my eyes with his own sweeping gaze. His eyes were small, dark and beady. From my seat, six rows full of passengers back from that mirror, he glared at me, straight in the eyes.
I was unable to tear my gaze away. But not in a good way. His eyes were like tethered hooks, firmly latching my own eyes to his. The glare from this man was like knives, and I could lost feel a vice of pressure begin to press on my temples. The mirror's warped reflection distorted the rest of the driver's features beyond recognition.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped back to the road. The vice loosened around my head, and I blinked my stinging eyes. My head seemed to clear slowly, like receeding fog. I thought I could see the edges of his shifty gaze crease into a smile, but I couldn't be sure. My heart was racing in my chest, and I couldn't
I shrugged inwardly, trying to pass off the cold creeping in my chest that spiked up as I shrank down into my seat. I looked around at other passengers, most of whom had since calmed down since the bus had gone out of control.
My eyes were drawn to a girl sitting at the back of the bus, right in the corner. She looked around my age, with long, curly and dark hair that fell over her shoulders. Her skin was a bronze-brown color. She was staring up toward the driver with cold malice etched into her face. I figured she maybe hit her head when he jerked the wheel.
I resumed my position with my head resting on the window. The sky was clearer now, and I felt some of the stiffness leaving my arms. My eyes still felt heavy. I turned up the volume on my music until it vibrated in my ears. We raced past acres of green fir trees. I thought we were maybe getting closer to Jacksonville. I couldn't wait to be home. Or rather, outside my home, lying on the beach.
The brakes screeched suddenly, and my tomach lurched as the bus started swerving wildlt on the freeway. I grapped the seat to steady myself as cries rang out all down the aisle, and my eyes instinctively snapped to the bus driver's mirror. His eyes were deathly calm as a dozen more voices jioned in the chorus of yelling, intensifying when the bus screeched off the road completely, smashing the crash barrier to scrap metal.
There was a violent juddering as we bounced on the uneven grass ground. A few people fell off their seats. I glanced at the rapidly approaching tree line and braced myself.
Someone screamed as, with the sound of crumpling metal and splintering wood, the bus lurched violently forward, and backward, grinding momentarily along the trees, before slamming to a stop.
My head smacked against the seat in front of me again and my vision blacked out with a shock of bright pain across my head. I lay sprawled on the ground for a few seconds with a splitting pain in my forehead. The sounds of yells and groans of pain. My eyes flickered open and I looked around with throbbing vision.
No one around me seemed seriously hurt. Not that I could see, anyway. Most people were already crowding off the bus in a mass panicked mob, screaming and running for the gas station further along the roadside.
I got to my feet shakily, took a weak step toward the door, but my legs buckled. I shot my hands out for the floor, but someone grabbed my shoulders from behind. I looked around to se the pale, dark-haired girl holding me steady. She spoke quickly, with her eyes darting to the front of the bus like she was waiting for something.
"C'mon. Can you walk? We need to get out of here… quick."
Normally I wouldn't follow a strange girl off a crashed bus, but her earth-colored eyes were so intense that I didn't even bother arguing as she practically dragged me up the aisle.
We got about halfway before the bus driver stepped out from behind the wheel. I hadn't even noticed the fact he was still there. The wheel axle creaked as he stepped out.
The girl stopped in her tracks. I couldn't blame her.
The driver seemed a lot bigger than before– he was huge, so tall that we was crouching to stop his bald head from hitting the ceiling. His beady eyes were set in the middle of a grey-skinned, crudely featured face. He was grinning stupidly, showing a set of yellowed teeth with a few fillings made of what looked like bronze. His sleeves were ripped off, revealing two thick, tattooed arms. I figured this wasn't withstanding in the dress code for bus drivers, but he didn't seem to care.
"I knew I smelled half-bloods," The giant spoke with a deep, slow voice. His fists were clenched, making webs of veins and tendons press out under his skin.
"Half-Bloods"? I was confused, and my head still throbbed with pain. Who were these people?
The girl sighed acidly and gave the driver serious evil eyes as she let go of my arm and reached into her backpack. When she drew her hand out, she was holding a long, shining object– A dagger.
I took a half step back, eyeing up the wickedly curved blade. It seemed to be made form some deep black metal, with some carved letters along the side.
She dropped her bag on the floor and held the knife out in front of her, the point aimed at the giant's chest.
The giant began to lumber heavily forward, smiling. Each step rattled the bus.
"Your Stygian toothpick won't be enough, demigod." The giant lunged suddenly, grabbing one of the chairs by the headrest, and with one jerk of a massive hand, pulled it from the floor with a creak. He held it up, poising to throw. Instinctively, I ducked, but the girl was quicker.
Her hand shot out, palm pointing at the driver. Her movement distracted him from hurling his missile, and then–
The bus rumbled. The giant hesitated, frowning at the floor. The girl smiled.
There was a jaw-rattling BOOM. The bus jumped upwards like it had been hit by a minor explosion, but i managed to stay on my feet. The giant screamed as a spike of dark rock smashed through the floor, slamming into his chest and firing his body backward. There was another boom, accompanied by the tinkling of breaking glass as the giant was hurled through the windshield and onto the grass outside.
The girl didn't stop to admire the carnage. She used the pillar of rock as a springboard, somersaulting gracefully through the smashed windscreen after the giant.
Too much new information raced through my mind. My head had stopped hurting, but my head ached with confusion– What the hell is going on? Giants, magic rock explosions and a weird girl who was packing an antique dagger in her carry-on…
I stared at the hole of the windshield as the giant yelled and the girl grunted outside the bus.
I did what anyone else would do, I think. If they were incredibly stupid.
I took a run-up and vaulted through the windshield.
