Page 13 of Pack Fever

Her grip is a lifeline, but I’m lost in a whirlwind of adrenaline. My heart is thundering in my chest, vivid images from the accident flashing in my mind.

Spinning out of control.

Me crying out for Dad.

Us flipping onto the roof of his sedan.

And just like then, the bus is losing control fast, the tires not finding purchase on the drenched road.

“We’re going to crash,” I yell, the words tearing from my throat.

I need to get out. I need to escape.

That manic desperation comes over me, and I can’t stop seeing us upside down in the car, Dad dead. And it’s about to happen again to all my friends.

“Calm down,” Casey says over the screeching tires, the grunting and now smoking bus engine.

Kayla and Jess are huddled close, holding onto the seat in front of them as the bus swerves left and right. We’re speeding up now as if the brakes no longer work, hurtling toward the edge of the road. All four of us are thrown against each other in the middle of the bus in the aisle as the driver fights the steering wheel to gain control, shouting at us to hold on.

But it’s no use.

The bus slams into the trunk of a massive tree, and the sickening crunch echoes in my head. The front windshield shatters, and the driver is flung out, as if he’s nothing more than a rag doll.

Jess is screaming.

We’re all thrown forward, tumbling and trying to stop ourselves. Dread swallows me as I feel myself spiraling to my death. My world tilts into chaos as the bus lurches back onto the sloping road, the steering wheel swinging wildly left and right.

“We need to grab the wheel. We gotta control this thing,” Kayla screams, but no one’s moving as we’re barely holding on, bodies flat to the floor between the two rows of seats, and I sure don’t want to be flung out the window.

I stare back at the enforcers at the rear of the bus, and they’re shoving open the escape window at the back, one of them already climbing out.

Hope gathers in my chest that we’ll escape this death trap.

Barely seconds pass when suddenly the whole bus crashes onto its side. We must have slammed into something as we’re all thrown forward, skidding across the floor. We rush up to the front, and I grab hold of a seat, catching myself, then snatch Kayla’s arm to stop her. The other two hit the front of the bus.

Looking back, I see both enforcers behind us have left us in the bus. Assholes.

Casey moans and pushes to get up, her face streaked with tears and terror.

Then the hiss and crackle of smoke bursts out as the engine at the front seems as if it’s going to ignite.

“We can get out the back,” I state, but as I glance back, I discover another flame flicking and growing from the back tire. With the wind, it’s curling around the rear window, meaning we’d have to pass through the fire to escape that way.

Fuck!

Heat burns against my skin as the putrid stench of smoke grows more intense. My panic is in overdrive. Dread slams into me. For those few seconds, fear trumps my anxiety. I scramble to my feet, with Kayla alongside me as though she somehow reads my thoughts.

“The bus is gonna blow,” she cries out.

Jess leaps to her feet and drags Casey up with her. Kayla is rushing to open the escape latch that’s normally on the roof of the bus. With us being on the side, it’s reachable. She wrestles with the latch, but finally gets it open. We lunge for it, squeezing out, one at a time, desperate to escape. As we spill out onto the road, a brutal boom erupts behind us.

I cry out as the force of the explosion of the engine flings us away from the bus.

Landing hard in a shrub on the opposite side of the road, the branches claw at my skin. My head throbs with a sharp ache. For a split moment, I can’t move, the shock of the fall, the explosion, the accident holding me down.

Groaning, I finally shove myself up as a deep pain in my hip protests. My ears are ringing, and the world tilts, but at the sight of the bus, ice fills my veins.

My ears are still ringing as monster flames and smoke curl up from the bus in a thick curtain.

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