Monsters and Maidens

Rick returned to reality with a jerking motion and a short fall that ended with a heavy grunt. The world felt very, very wrong, but his brain had yet to process it in full. The man lay on his back against what should be the ceiling of the bus. The seats hung overhead like swords of Damocles arranged in rows, ready to fall on him at any second. The inside lights flickered from underneath him, casting the world above in strange shadows.

The now new floor was cluttered with tiny pieces of glass, backpacks, people, and, Rick realized with growing horror, blood. There was destruction all around him. The bus was bent and broken in places, the windows gone.

A nagging ache mixed with panic and pushed him further awake, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

His first thoughts were of moving. Everything around him looked just about ready to jump at him. Rick crawled towards the nearest person he could reach. It was a slow, woozy affair. His mind refused to stop its spinning. The more awake he was, the more his thoughts were buzzing with questions, questions, and more questions. Not quite able to recognize who it was he was checking up on, Rick tugged at the shoulder and froze when he saw the empty brown eyes staring into the infinite void, unblinking. A part of him wanted to remember the face, certain it was familiar. The rest of his mind couldn’t pull out the name. A former sophomore, the young man’s chest was drenched in blood, skin pale and cold to the touch. A stillness remained upon the body that took Rick a moment to comprehend, an inevitability that snapped in place with dread once the slurry of thoughts had receded.

The student wasn’t breathing.

Rick’s gut lurched, but he held it down, head much clearer now that his heart hammered in a thunderous race against his chest. Gagging loudly, Rick turned to get out of the vehicle as fast as he could, not wanting to stay there a second more than he had to, but fearing his arms might give out any second. The ache from his body was barely bad enough to be a headache rather than an impediment. Not that it would’ve stopped him in his half-stumbling crawl to escape into open air.

He grunted as he made his way out through the frame of what had been once the window. The glass had fortunately been tempered and was now spread across the ground in tiny little, almost pebble-like pieces rather than sharp, jagged ones. The young teacher welcomed the dirt under his palms, a reassuring, if uncomfortable, sensation that felt real. Several dry heaves followed. He closed his eyes tightly and pushed it back down.

“Count to ten,” he muttered under his breath, eyes clenched shut and ignoring the stabbing sensation of little pebbles against his clenched fists, of the bruised pain that came from all over his body.

One second at a time, he pushed the feelings down, down to where they couldn’t make his hands shake or his head fog with panic. He needed to count to fifty before he could dare open his eyes again. One hundred more before he could force himself to sit with his breaths coming in slow and steady. Only once he had calmed down in full did he allow himself to chew through the situation.

“Crashed, need to call for help.” The words were self-reassuring more than anything else, meant to give himself impetus, to push him towards not staying still, to set down a goal to aim for.

To spur him towards avoiding falling into the pit of panic.

A thought bubbled forth, a memory, old one, of a dull class. It’d been a grayish afternoon he’d used to go through the mandatory lessons every teacher was meant to doze their way through.

Step one, make sure his life wasn’t in direct danger.

With shaking hands, he sat with his legs crossed. Carefully, Rick took the time to check himself over. There were bloody stains on his clothes and shoes, but most all of it was dry, and not even nearly at an amount that should draw immediate concern. Still, he pushed himself to fixate on following protocol. He used slow, methodical squeezes to confirm what hurt, what didn’t, and what might be out of place. Rick categorized his injuries carefully. There were several shallow cuts that had stopped bleeding already, some bruises, but no part seemed out of place, there were no broken bones, and nothing oozing. His stomach wasn’t hard as a rock, so his courses in first aid told him he shouldn’t be having some heavy internal hemorrhaging either.

Step two, was he in a safe location? He cursed himself. No, that should’ve been step one.

Still, the confirmation was fast. All around him, Rick only saw trees. But it wasn’t a forest he felt any familiarity with. The trees stood thick and tall, larger than any sky-scrapper he’d ever seen up close. They were wooden behemoths, gigantic in their size and abnormal in their width. A city of dark mossy towers that could not have been any less than two hundred meters tall, their leafy greens hiding the sun from view as the branches connected one another in a labyrinths of wood. The world was left in a dusk that became darker the further away one looked. Rick couldn’t see anything else, only the woods and the wreckage of the bus.

It was as if the universe had swallowed everything else. There was nothing but the unsettling dark forest as far as the eye could see.

Pulling his attention away from the skies and the gigantic trees, the young teacher reminded himself of the task at hand. His attention returned to the ground.

There were people spread around the area. A dozen or so laying near the bus itself. Blood seeped into the dirt. Some barely moved, others not at all. The sounds of grunts, groans, and gasps drifted through the air. Rick frowned before focusing on the vehicle itself. The discomfort in the back of his brain kicked into high gear when he realized why he couldn’t look away.

Bus, vehicle, gasoline, petroleum derived and flammable. It could ignite with a spark. In gaseous form, it could even produce an explosion. Chemistry made way for common sense. Rick focused on his sense of smell. He couldn’t detect the scent of gasoline, nor could he see anything spilling from the wreckage. He sighed in relief. That would have to do for now.

At a glance, it looked he was safe. For now, at the very least. Next step, contact emergency services and assess the condition everyone else was in. The sooner they were on their way, the fewer chances they came a moment too late.

Rick’s hands dug through his pants, pulling out his phone. Its screen was cracked and the frame bent, but it turned on all the same. Still, a curse left him. Not a single bar worth of signal, no reception whatsoever. He tried dialing for the emergency services anyway, nothing but the dead tone. His phone was as disconnected from the world as he felt it.

He pushed the trickle of panic down. Rick tightened his jaw. He had to keep himself focused. He’d need to find the road to manage contact with anyone and call for aid. Could he afford to? His attention shifted towards the groaning sounds. No, without a certainty of how far he’d have to go to call for help, he couldn’t afford to leave, at least not until the situation was under control.

A shiver of fear ran through him as he looked at the blood. His hands curled into fists. With a deep breath, he stood up. Time to check on everyone else.