CHAPTER ONE

[https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.b80d51016d9fb9802ada557b015b8154?rik=9rI%2bA8W2u5HqLg&riu=http%3a%2f%2fclipart-library.com%2fimages_k%2fline-divider-transparent%2fline-divider-transparent-3.png&ehk=tBUnNQY2BI7As0h6TLQz%2fL2h9UxXDysR94U77MBhOBo%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0]

The bus heading down Route 90 towards Woodland Park Zoo was as regular as could be.

Jam packed with bored kids, it was the same as a thousand other school buses rumbling along the slick streets of Washington state that dreary Monday morning. They were tired of being trapped in close quarters with their classmates for the better part of an hour, and there was little to keep them occupied other than staring out at the endless woods that loomed on either side of the parkway.

That, or make trouble for their babysitters.

“Tommy, keep your hands to yourself please. Emily! I see you! Leave Janiya alone, she doesn’t feel too good, so just let her sleep.”

Julian Nguyen slumped back in his seat with a heavy sigh. He’d originally agreed to chaperone the seventh graders on Cartwright Preparatory School’s annual zoo trip with a couple other high schoolers when the parent volunteers had begged off, sick with the flu that had been going around town.

He was coming to regret that decision.

One of his fellow chaperones, Leah Roberts, plopped down in the vinyl covered seat next to him.

“Hey, Jules. Got any water?”

He nodded distractedly, reaching for the backpack he’d tucked under the seat in front of him. He pulled a half empty water bottle out and handed it to her, which she took gratefully.

“Thanks,” she said and took a swig from it.

He made a noise of halfhearted protest.

“C’mon, waterfall it at least.”

Like the rest of Cartwright Prep’s class of ‘23, he’d learned a long time ago Leah would do exactly what she wanted, no matter what anybody else said.

“Don’t worry,” she grinned. “I don’t have cooties or anything.”

Julian snorted.

“No way I believe that, not after what you did with Jesse Richardson at Rachel’s house after winter formal.”

She gasped and bonked him on the head with his water bottle in retaliation. He rubbed the spot, not hurt but vaguely offended.

“I told you that was a secret.”

“Well, it’s not really a secret if everyone at the party saw you guys go into the bathroom together and come out half an hour later,” he grinned.

“Hey!” she said in mock outrage. “Not everyone saw.”

Julian went to say something else when a ruckus behind them cut him off.

“Let me play, Eric! You’ve been hogging it for hours!”

He didn’t have to get up to see who’d said that or where they were sitting. It was the Antonucci twins, in the far back: Leah’s section. The dynamic duo from hell had been fighting for control over their shared iPhone since before the bus had left the school parking lot at 8:30 that morning. The two high schoolers shared a quick but long-suffering look and the petite blonde stood up to go deal with whatever drama was unfolding now.

“Alright, alright, break it up kiddos. Eric, give the phone to Taylor. You each get a fifteen-minute turn with it. And Taylor, remember, inside voice, ok?”

Julian pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes.

Remember, you need this, he reminded himself. It’s just a day, and Ms. Thompson said she’d sign off on the rest of your community service once it’s over.

With graduation just a few months away, that was a good deal. Clearing forty hours in a single day was better than he could have hoped for. It meant he was free to focus on getting the best possible final grades in his final semester of high school rather than spend his precious free time picking up trash on the side of the road or volunteering at some beach clean-up. Ensuring a solid GPA would go a long way in earning a good scholarship to a university of his choice. It was just-

The impact of something wet striking the back of his head disrupted his thoughts.

Snickering sounded from the rows behind him, but he didn’t bother to turn around and see who the culprit was. It would just encourage the little hellions further. Cautiously checking to see if it was a spit ball, Julian was starting to think those parents had lied about being sick just to get out of the field trip.

His hand came back with a clump of half-chewed gum.

God, I hate kids.

There was a package of towelettes in his bag for just such an emergency, and he grabbed one to wipe his hand clean of the hot pink blob of bubblegum. He realized that he’d forgotten to bring a trash bag, but he was reluctant to leave the used towelette in his bag. That was a recipe for a sticky, ruined backpack.

With another sigh, he got up to look for one. Bus drivers usually kept a little trash can at front for messy passengers. He remembered that well enough from elementary school. If none could be found there, Ms. Thompson, the sole teacher who’d been willing to supervise the trip, should have something.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

He stood up and started making his way down the aisle between the rows of seats. Unfortunately, he was sidetracked every few steps, the wad of towel and gum growing uncomfortably damp.

“Tamara, put your lunch away please. We’ll eat when we get there, and food isn’t allowed on the bus. Thank you. Aidan, I can’t believe I have to say this, but no tugging on people’s hair. Does Sophie look like she likes that? No, of course she doesn’t. Knock it off.”

It seemed like a long time since Julian had been a middle schooler, but he couldn’t remember being half as destructive as the little monsters he was supposed to be supervising had proven to be. He continued on, shaking his head.

iPad kids.

There were a few feet left to go when the bus lurched suddenly and sent him flying to the left.

He pinwheeled his arms, grabbing two seatbacks at the last second and just managed to keep his balance. It happened again when the bus slammed to a halt. His grip on the seats was wrenched free and he fell painfully to his knees on the hard metal floor.

Some of the kids let out shouts of surprise as inertia rocked them against their seatbelts. Unsecured backpacks and lunch bags flew through the air and fell to the floor with hollow thuds.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” the driver swore, turning back to the rest of the bus with a wild look of terror on his face. “Did- did anybody else see that? Did you see that?”

Ms. Thompson pulled herself up from where she’d slid to the floor like Julian in all the commotion and focused her wrath on the fat, quivering man behind the wheel.

“Language, Mr. Burton! And watch the damned roa-” she cut off, a confused frown pinching her wrinkled face as she turned to face the front.

Julian followed her gaze and froze. Disbelief and incredulity warred with each other as he saw what lay outside.

Ahead of the bus, where seconds before there had been miles of asphalt stretching between them and Seattle, was nothing but bare dirt and scrubby brush. The trees still stood tall on either side of them, but they weren’t the same spruce and pine he was familiar with. In their place stood massive sentinels, dark and towering with rough, black bark and thorny branches that interlocked to form a dense canopy blocking out the sky. What little light managed to break through was...different. Somehow colder, thinner, than even the weak February sun that had shone down on them through the late winter clouds moments before.

The breeze coming through an open window had a metallic, acrid stench to it that made his nose sting.

“Where’d the road go?” the driver asked dumbly.

“I- I-,” Ms. Thompson floundered, staring blankly out the windshield.

Some of the kids started unbuckling to stand up and get a better look outside themselves. They muttered quietly to each other, looking just as confused as Ms. Thompson and the bus driver.

“Um, where are we?” asked a girl sporting a thick braid of red hair, raising her hand.

No one answered her, but the muttering continued.

Violence broke the uneasy chatter.

With the sound of straining metal, the bus jolted forward, and middle schoolers yelled out in genuine fear as a force struck from behind. Not wanting to get tossed around anymore than he already had been, Julian pulled himself up into a seat next to a wide-eyed boy with braces and a sponge bob band-aid on his chin.

“What the fuck-,” he heard Leah start to say when a deafening growl cut off the rest and something rattled the walls of the bus.

Julian realized with a cold kind of dread that something was pushing against it from the back. Not a car, not some fallen tree, but something alive.

An old, animal instinct in Julian reared its head. Adrenaline quickened his heartbeat. Fear made the baby hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his palms slick with sweat. In that moment, he knew one thing to be true.

They were being hunted.

The boy, Connor if he remembered, looked up at Julian with silent tears starting to slide down his cheeks.

“Hey,” Julian said, trying to cover the panic that was bubbling up inside him and reassure the kid. “Hey, it’s okay, Connor. Got your seatbelt on? Good. Okay, um, you got your bag? Hold onto it, okay? Everything’s fine.”

His babbled the words more out of some sense of need than anything, but Connor complied. He seemed just as desperate as Julian was to cling to something as he buckled himself in. The bus shook once more with the force of whatever was ramming it before the driver seemed to shake himself out of his daze. Mr. Burton stepped on the gas and with a roar, the bus took off into the trees.

It shook hard enough to make Julian feel seasick as they rumbled over the rough terrain, but Mr. Burton kept it from crashing into any of the monstrous trees that boxed them in.

A howl of rage came from behind them, followed moments later by answering calls in the distance. It sounded like they were coming from all around them.

Julian saw Rashod, another chaperone, walking down the aisle making sure the other kids had their seatbelts on. The muscular boy looked as scared as Julian felt and flinched every time the bus hit a rock, but he kept going. He was a reassuring presence and the kids calmed down as he talked to them, despite the fact that they’d somehow been run off the road by some wild animal.

That has to be what happened, he thought wildly. Some crazy animal, a bear with rabies or something, knocked us off the road. We just have to find our way back before it catches up.

“Mr. Miller! Mr. Miller, sit down!” Ms. Thompson called to Rashod, trying to keep order in the front as a girl with glasses started wailing.

Tommy Harris pressed his nose against a window and shouted.

“It’s coming back! I think it’s a wolf! I can see it, look, it’s a-”

Tommy didn’t get to finish his sentence.

A huge, dark shape came bolting out of the screen of gnarled branches straight at the side of the bus. It moved too quickly to get a proper look at it, but Julian saw more than enough: glowing red eyes and a widely grinning mouth filled with shining teeth.

Dread filled his stomach like a lead weight.

That’s not a wolf.

The creature slammed head-first into the bus, metal crunching and glass shattering with the force of its impact. Cries of surprise mingled with shrieks of pain as the safety glass in the windows sprayed the middle schoolers like shrapnel.

The bus slowed, but managed to keep going, swerving to miss a spur of rock that stuck out of the earth. A thump sounded from above and Julian snapped his head up to follow it. The ceiling distended and warped as another one of the creatures landed on top of the vehicle. Claws like black daggers pierced the metal, tearing through it like it was tissue paper.

Rashod started beating at them with a thermos, but it didn’t do more than dent the metal of the bottle.

A third creature struck the bus from the other side and nearly tipped it over. More glass shattered, little pieces raining down on top of Julian as he covered Connor with his body.

It tinkled as it struck the floor, almost musically.

His mind raced, unable to keep track of the chaos unfolding around him. The only clear thought going through his mind kept repeating over and over.

What the fuck is happening?

The bus righted itself, engine sputtering, and kept powering on through the brush. Sometime while Julian wasn’t looking, the thing on the roof had been knocked off, or simply let go to follow them on foot with the others. All it left behind were jagged holes in the ceiling.

“Everyone, stay down!” Ms. Thompson called out. “Keep your heads down-”

Boom.

One of the creatures, having sped ahead of them, slammed into the front of the bus, its massive head breaking through the windshield as its forelimbs scrambled for purchase.

Time slowed. Everyone in the bus stared with shock and horror at the beast that had been hunting them. Julian felt a wave of nausea hit him as he looked at the nightmarish thing, a sense of wrongness as intense as his fear.

Its gray skinned face was flat, with a mane of coarse black fur framing a round head. Intelligent red eyes burned with malevolence as it glared back at the terrified children. Worst of all, its horribly wide mouth pulled back into an almost human smile as it watched them hungrily, revealing row after row of needle-sharp teeth.

Mr. Burton started screaming.

Drawn to the sound, it turned to the unfortunate man who lay trapped between the driver’s side window and the creature itself. Its forelimbs thrashed, clawing at the hole its head had made. It managed to get a hooked finger in and tugged at the weakened glass.

The hole widened.

Mr. Burton hadn’t stopped screaming, Ms. Thompson joining him as she put an arm out as if to shield the children behind her. The creature ignored her, eyes trained on the driver as it continued its work.

Another finger slipped in, then another. Flexing them, the creature tugged, hard. The world froze as the windshield cracked under the beast’s strength. A chunk of glass came loose, and the thing made a pleased trilling deep in its chest.

“Oh, God. Please, please, God, no,” the driver babbled, staring into the slavering monster’s eyes as it pulled itself inside.

It stood on all fours and filled the front of the bus entirely. Scaly rat tail flicking like a cat’s, it looked like it was savoring Mr. Burton’s fear. The bus driver was pale and sweating, eyes bulging and mouth slack with fright in the face of his death.

Then, with a sound like laughter, it pounced.

Mr. Burton’s screams were cut off by wet gurgling noises as the creature savaged his throat. Blood sprayed Julian, blinding him as it got in his eyes. He wiped at them desperately with a sleeve, but it took precious seconds to be able to see again.

By the time he could, everything was chaos.

The thing was gorging itself on Mr. Burton’s twitching body. Children were rushing to the back to get as far away from it as possible, shepherded by Ms. Thompson. The bus veered slowly to the left with no one to steer it. Then, an opening in the trees. The beast yanked Mr. Burton free of his seatbelt and clambered out the way it came, giving Julian a good view of what lay ahead.

They were high above a great expanse of black woods that stretched for miles in all directions and beyond, a dim horizon obscured by noxious clouds. But that wasn't what caught his attention. Thoughts running quick with adrenaline, he realized how high up they were...

...just as the bus began to tilt over the edge of a cliff. [https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.b80d51016d9fb9802ada557b015b8154?rik=9rI%2bA8W2u5HqLg&riu=http%3a%2f%2fclipart-library.com%2fimages_k%2fline-divider-transparent%2fline-divider-transparent-3.png&ehk=tBUnNQY2BI7As0h6TLQz%2fL2h9UxXDysR94U77MBhOBo%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0]

Julian wasn’t sure what happened after that.

Panic, the coppery reek of blood, shadows all around, screams, and then-

Darkness.