Extra Story

The Bus bounced along the main street, just beginning its run. The bus driver was awake, as she had been for the past few hours. She couldn’t wait for her morning runs to be over so she could get a moment’s reprieve. The kids on her bus, scattered randomly in the seats, some sleeping, some doing homework, bur they were all quiet. One of the sophomores in the back seats couldn’t sleep. She flipped through the play lists on her ipod and glanced out the window. The bus was passing by the fairgrounds, empty for that year. Old candy wrappers still skittered across the mud. The old tractor that pulled the sled for the garden tractor pulls still sat there, rusting from no use. Beyond the fairgrounds there was another road that was part of the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot. Beyond that road was the mountain range. Within the range was he local ski resort. At the top of the mountain there was a radio tower, it hadn’t been used for years since the new one was on the other side of town. But as she watched a trail of smoke came out from where the tower was, arced over the cornfields lazily then dropped over a farmhouse, which burst into a thousand pieces. The ground burst open and lengthened into a crack, which followed up to the bus. The ground shook and rattled; the sleepy kids on the bus woke up with a start, their worst dreams coming a live. The crack in the earth opened up below the bus like a giant yawning mouth eating an unsuspecting prey. The bus drier pushed on the horn to get attention before all was lost, to no avail. The school bus fell into the earth, taillights first. All the children screamed as the fell, pulled down by gravity. The bus flipped over, headlights over taillights. Books, backpacks and bodies were thrown all over, a child was fortunately knocked unconscious, and he did not learn what was about to happen. The bus bounced off the chasm walls, glass shattered, the alarms were gong off. The driver stayed in her seat, fighting to gain control of the bus although she had a swollen eye and a cut lip. She could see what was to befall her and the children, a lake of molten lava. As the chasm seemed to grow deeper, the surface began to close; the lips of the earth came together, closer and closer. The crack closed, trapping the bus in a rock like hug, upside down, forever suspended. If the bus shifted just right, the passengers would fall, into lake of molten lava. If it stayed all person on board would perish, by being crushed to death.