A World Split In Two

Chapter Seven!

Chapter 7: The Wheels On The Bus Are Falling Off

There were many reasons why Zack was glad he was in the driver's seat and not in the back with the rest of the kids. For starters, there were no seat belts in the back (yes in the year 2040 they still never added them) so whenever he hit a bike, or swerved to avoid a two headed cat, everyone in the back fell out of their seats. Also their bus was not meant to hold forty-six people and a bunch of supplies, so he was thankful to be in his very roomy driver's seat. True, it would have been nice to talk to someone on the long ride to a safer area, but there was time for all that later.

By now he had decided that it would be safe to assume that all the grownups--or at least all the ones living in his town--where gone. They didn't pass any corpses on their drive from town, leading him to believe that the Ralams didn't attack at midnight--which was something that happened more than not. They did however pass a few other kids creeping down the streets and a few even tried getting Zack's attention, but he didn't stop. If they didn't know what was happening that wasn't his fault, and if the grownups never returned, the kids would eventually catch on.

True, he probably should have been a little nervous about what would happen if he awoke the next day to find that all the adults had returned, and were angry about him stealing a school bus, robbing a few stores, and smashing just a couple of stop signs. But really who could blame him? If he would've just sat tight and waited what would have happened if the grownups never returned, and he could have lost his only chance at survival.... At least this is what he would argue if anyone did return, but by now Zack was hoping they didn't.

He was able to navigate the bus out of the city shortly after leaving the hardware store, allowing him to stay on, relatively straight, country roads that were easy enough to drive on.... True, it got boring after the first hour or two, especially since he had no idea where he was actually going, causing him to turn at any given point, and occasionally double back on a road he had just visited. But at least it was better than biking....

Finally at 6:27, after everyone said they were tired and hungry for about the hundredth time, Zack figured it would be safe to stop for dinner before dark. By now he figured they were a good distance from town, though the barren deserted farm fields weren't really his idea of a good enough cover to stay long at.

As you could imagine, being the very responsible children they were, dinner consisted of two carrots, a protein bar, and a nice little cup of yogurt for dessert. In no way was it a full on raid of sugary foods, raided from both grocery store and hardware store checkouts. In no way did this total unguided raid, that definitely didn't happen, lead to everybody jumping and screaming on the rest of the remaining short portion of the trip.

True, a trip away from town should take more than a few hours. And really shouldn't have ended anytime soon, but because of all the excitement, no one noticed that a box of nails was left out, why there was a box of nails out in the first place, Zack frankly had no idea. But when the bus was driving away it rolled right over the box of nails.... Which did no harm to the bus at all, so really the entire predicament just seemed rather odd to Zack.

Anyway it was getting pretty dark, but despite this, none of the group seemed to care and just kept shouting, cracking jokes, playing a cliche song by R. E. M. on repeat, and doing a lot of other loud things that shouldn't be done while trying to keep a low profile. This was their first big mistake.

As anyone knows it would be too good of a day if all that went wrong was getting chased by a wrongly named guard dog, getting kidnapped and mocked by girls, and... well actually those are the only bad things that happened to Zack so that's why a giant RipJaw must have decided to attack them.