Short Stories

Survival of the Fittest

Dizzily, I awoke, my vision blurred by some occurrence. Twisting around, I noted that I was in a bus. Well of course I’m in a bus, we were on our way back from a school trip, I thought to myself, rolling my eyes at my own lack of memory.

But then I noticed what I was lying against. The inside of the bus wall, with blood on my arm. As fear penetrated my heart, I lifted my golden-locked shoulder-length head of hair and peered through my smoky brown eyes. The bus was lying on its side from some obvious toss around.

Delicately I stood up to my full five foot eight muscular figure, a nervous chuckle escaping my supple pink lips. A sudden crunching noise to my left caused me to jump in the air half a foot. Cautiously, I turned to see the bearer of this sound and the sight of her made my heart calm instantly. “Danni,” I whispered, stumbling over to my best friend whom had been sitting a seat ahead of me on this one of three buses.

“Peyton,” she said, her voice cracking ever-so-slightly as she tried to get up to her feet. A small smile planted itself on my face as I helped my lightly-brown-haired five-foot-four friend up to a balanced position. Twisting her head around, her ocean blue eyes fell onto mine. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I started, “I fell asleep when the bus was in an upright position, and I woke up with it like this. I can’t believe how much damage was done so quickly.” Slowly walking in a small circle, I become aware of the great damage that had occurred on the bus.

“The thing I can’t believe is that you slept through it all, Peyton,” a masculine voice from behind me startled Danni and I. With a quick turn, my eyes fell on Alec – Danni’s older brother by ten months, and my boyfriend.

Closing the gap between ourselves, I wrapped my arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his pale rosy lips. A soft chuckle escaped from his mouth during this moment and a purposely loud cough ruptured from behind me. “I would appreciate if you didn’t kiss my brother in front of me, thank you, you’re going to give me nightmares,” Danni stated, as the two of us turned to her with a laugh, her arms crossed over her chest.

And then my sudden life-filled face fell, as I zoned in on a catastrophe before my eyes. A muffled – due to my hands covering my mouth – scream escaped from my lips. There had been twelve students – including ourselves – on the bus plus two teachers, and a bus driver. Six of those students, and one of those teachers were bloodied in the bus – bloody and dead. And one missing bus driver.

Danni, Alec and I stumbled around the sideways bus, stepping on glass, before we came across Cassie Brookes bleeding profusely out through a head wound in the back of her skull. Leaning over her cooling skin, she coughed up blood as she tried to speak; “Watch-” A cough of blood. “Out for-” Another cough. “The bus-” A third. “Driver.”

“Watch out for, the bus driver?” Danni asked, confusion and sorrow dripping in her voice. “Watch out for what reason?” The three of us looked expectantly at Cassie as blood bubbled out from her mouth and her twitching hand stopped moving.

Sudden movement from behind the three of us caused us to jump and whirl around with quick movement. Mrs. Faigle staggered to her full height of five-foot-ten and ruffled up her thickly layered blonde hair that was smeared with blood. “He’s a killer!” she stated, crunching her way over to us, a sombre look on her face.

A sudden wave of fear overwhelmed my pounding heart as I swayed before catching on to Alec’s arm and Danni caught on to me. “He caused the bus to crash onto its side,” I whispered the obvious statement to put it up in the air.  Then a thought passed through my mind. “Wh- Where is he?”

The four of our heads whipped up as we heard the snap of a gun being fired. “More importantly,” Alec began, as his sister – with her care bear eyes as round as saucers – twisted her fingers as one of her many nervous habits. “Where are the other two students unaccounted for?”