Several Minutes Earlier
"Is that Andy?" asked Emily from the seat behind the stairs at the front right side of the bus. Leaning against the pleather half-wall, the black-haired girl with the more almond-shaped eyes watched as her best friend stepped down off of the boy's bus and into the rain.
Andrew looked up towards their bus, giving a slight wave of his hand as he slipped his phone into his pocket. Reaching up, he pulled on the strings of his hood and pulled it tighter as he turned around and walked away into the heavy rain in the direction of the cabin. Emily watched him pause and take a long look at the cars already parked ahead of them before continuing and walking up the path.
Lightening flashed.
The girls had gotten quiet, confused why they had stopped on their way back out of the parking lot. "You kids are great, but I was planning on being asleep by now," said the older, gray-haired bus driver who'd actually been driving for Washington since graduating high school there in the first graduating class forty years ago.
"We all can't be Jessica," remarked Emily with a smirk, glancing back to one of the middle seats where blonde-haired girl had slept through the cheers most of the others had been participating in the last hour. Whatever she'd been doing the night before it had clearly drained her energy all day long. "Not that we'd want to be."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Jessica's best friend, Linda. The curly-haired brunette looked up from her mirror as she sat in the seat across from Jessica and turned her eyes towards Emily.
"Nothing," Emily said curtly, waving a hand towards Linda and then looking back out the front of the bus. "Ms. Hemlock, do you mind if I go ask Coach Banks what's up?" The driver just shook her head. "Weird that only Andy had to go to the bathroom, I guess, but it is a long trip back to the highway..."
"Don't just just change the subject!" said Linda as she stood up and then pulled her white shirt down to her waist as it was a bit short and almost showed her bellybutton for a moment. It was against school dress code to have any piercings that weren't in the ears and she had to make sure her navel didn't reveal.
One of the smaller girls stepped up behind Linda. "S'cuse me," came the voice of Zelda.
"What do you want?" demanded Linda.
"Off. Bathroom," Zelda remarked bluntly, leaning to pass Linda in the isle. Normally that'd be tight, but Zelda was small for her age at only 5'2". Even as a Senior she was easily the smallest on the bus... both thinnest and shortest. As a result, she pushed passed Linda while otherwise ignoring her. As she stepped near the front area, she reached down and zipped up her black hoodie. On its right sleeve was two stripes, one red the other white, with an 'N7' in narrow white font over the left chest.
"You? Going out into a park?" Linda sneered as she watched the smaller girl stand behind Emily who was waiting for Ms. Hemlock to open the door. "Aren't you afraid the air is going to attack you!?"
Zelda scowled. She turned on her heel and pointed at Linda. "Shut up!" Zelda yelled. "You keep doing this! You say 'Oh, I would never!' but when you want to hurt me, it's always 'Isn't he cute?' and you're showing me a [bat] photo," she said, dropping her hand. Zelda hadn't participated in the cheer on the bus earlier as she was too busy editing on her laptop with her headphones on... but curse would mark another even as she kept yelling. "Yeah, they are!" she kept going. "But phobias are stupid bullshit... their fear isn't logical... if you had any fucking empathy you'd stop poking!"
"Swearing!" Mr. Hemlock interjected, reaching for a clipboard that was down in a pouch to the left of her seat. She looked over at Zelda.
Linda laughed. "Way to get written up by the old crow."
"And Mrs. Letterman for calling the bus driver an 'old [crow]'," Ms. Hemlock wrote in cursive both their names an infractions. Emily and Zelda smirked. "But not 'old crone' or 'old bag'... 'old crow', like what I called my teachers forty years ago," she smirked as she finished adding Linda's name. "You two want to keep going? Or would you rather I just forget to turn this in until Monday so you have a nice weekend?" she inquired.
"I'm good," said Zelda who nodded towards Ms. Hemlock while putting up her right hand. Linda just huffed and sat down. With that, she put up her hood and turned to follow Emily out of the bus as the driver opened up the door for them.
"I just saw Andy talking on his phone before he went inside," Emily said.
"Boy," Zelda said, but in a joking matter. Zelda was a lesbian, and therefore, whenever Emily would talk about a guy, she'd faint disinterest by saying 'boy'. This time, Emily just frowned at her. "Sorry. Force of habit," the smaller girl said as they approached the front of the boys' bus. The reverse lights lit up for a second as it looked like the front wheels had been lower than when they got to the door. It had backed up two feet onto the pavement.
"Zeddy. Where's the road?" Emily asked. She'd stepped up to the bus door but was now looking off into the rain where the headlights were lighting up the trees. Taking a step forward, she looked across the front of the bus as Zelda tentatively stepped up beside her. "Like, seriously... where is the road!?" she had panic in her voice. "It's literally vanished!"
Zelda stood there, staring ahead. Where they were was open enough for her, but she wasn't about to move forward into the woods from there to go look. Still, it was a question. And a good one. And with that, Zelda unzipped her fanny pack and removed her phone. Gripping the durable and waterproof case, she held it up and activated the streaming app.
As she aimed the phone at Emily and pressed the button, Zelda blinked and then tapped the screen a few more times. "What are you—" Emily started to ask one thing, but then noticed Zelda's reaction. "What is it?"
"I have three bars and can't broadcast."
"We are on a mountain."
"No," Zelda said. "I have bars," she repeated. "It's like the app isn't acknowledging that I'm even hitting the button... not that it's timing out or something," she clarified. It was technology. These things happened... but something felt weird about it as a coincidence to Zelda as she swapped over to her basic camera app and began recording. "All this rain and darkness is going to look like shit, but please explain to my viewers what—"
"Can I help you girls?" came Coach Banks's voice from the now open door to the football team's bus. Zelda turned to focus on the dark-skinned older man, then back to Linda.
"When were you gunna let us young woman know the road has completely vanished?" she asked.
Zelda shifted to look towards the Coach for his response. "Right about now," he said as he began pulling on a yellow rain slicker. "Andy said there's no one around and that he was gunna check the bathroom. I figure if it's open we could all use a rest stop real quick," the coach offered.
"It's not real quick if there's no road!" Emily declared.
"Then let me talk with Mary—Ms. Hemlock, I mean... and the other chaperones and all get on the same page," offered Coach Banks. He glanced at Zelda who was doing her best to capture every moment of the conversation. The two girls glanced up, seeing the boys on the bus getting rowdy without an adult present.
"Boys," said Zelda, which translated to 'lets go back to our bus because who knows what these stupid apes may do', it's just that her one word was more concise. She lifted her camera up to scan over the side of the shaking bus, then dropped it down to follow Coach Banks back to theirs.
For the next few minutes, Zelda and Emily listened to the adults talking while simultaneously watching the football bus' shaking get more apparent. Rhythmic. "What the hell?" Emily said softly to herself after a few minutes. Coach Banks, who was standing outside the other bus in the rain looked over to her. "Oh. Uh. Shouldn't Andy be back by now?"
The coach glanced at his silver watch on his wrist, then wiped off some of the rain to better see the time. Blinking, he pulled his phone to his face. Squeezing the button he walkie-talkie'd to Andy: "Everything OK?"
"No," Andrew responded quickly. "This place is super-cursed."
"Cursed?" Thaddeus chuckled. Ms. Hemlock just smiled.
As Andy responded, there was a pause after each period for the walkie-talkie's sake: "Vanishing road. No thunder. Foreign Cars. Porno-smell. No room keys in use. No one here. Berlin Weather Channel." After his remarks, there was a longer pause and just before Banks was to interject, he asked: "Everyone can hear this?"
Coach blinked. "Rain is heavy, so not really. Just me, Mary, Emily and Zeddy," he said. "Why?"
"Your not on our bus with the guys?"
"No. I'm out filling them in on the missing drive."
"I've grown a tail."
Emily and Zelda bother looked at each other. Ms. Hemlock just chuckled... a reaction of disbelief. Coach Banks frowned. "Must'a broken up. Please repeat."
"Coach I've grown a tail. A wolf tail. It's big. It's black," Andy responded, doing the pauses again. But then, he went on... and the walkie lost his transmission at the end: "It's crazy, right? It's definitely a part of me, but... I love it... it's so right... and that's wrong. I don't know how to expppppp—" the voice fuzzed out and cut off at the end.
"Andrew?" the Coach asked. "Andy?"
"There he is," Emily said as she saw the Assistant Coach walking down the path towards them.
Andy's body language went still as he stopped and pointed towards the boy's bus. He yelled, but no one could hear him over the rain. Andrew pointed again and pulled his phone back up to his mouth with the sound coming out of Coach's phone: "What's happening on the bus!?"
Coach Banks head quickly turned towards other vehicle.