His father lowered the newspaper slightly, looking at him over his reading glasses.
"Lief, you have been living in your own world lately. You leave before the sun comes up and come back at odd hours. Jennifer's parents called a couple of days ago trying to locate her, they wanted to confirm if she has been with you all this time."
"We are killing ourselves with a final project," lied Leif with a perfect poker face, serving himself some of the pizza he had taken out. "It is purely academic, but it requires a lot of field research and... intensive experimental tests."
"Oh, yeah?"
John left the newspaper on the table, visibly interested. "What is the subject? Maybe I can give you a lecture or review your notes."
"I am sorry, Dad. I signed a confidentiality agreement," responded Leif raising his hands in a gesture of surrender and with a half smile of complicity. "It is classified information. Top secret."
"...."
Upon seeing his son playing mysterious, John shook his head with a smile of resignation and returned to the news of the day. Meanwhile, Sarah came out of the kitchen holding a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice that she planted in front of Leif.
"Just do not exhaust yourself too much, will you?" she insisted with concern. "By the way, doesn't the bus for the academic competition in the city leave tomorrow morning? Do you have everything ready?"
"Relax, Mom. I have everything under control, the luggage is already ready," assured Leif before drinking the juice in a single long gulp.
...
The next morning dawned with a radiant sun that promised heat.
The classic yellow school bus was parked in front of the school entrance with the engine running, vibrating while groups of students boarded carrying their bags and backpacks.
Lief and Frank walked toward the line, both with simple light backpacks.
"Hey, guys! Back here!"
Jennifer poked her head out of one of the open windows, greeting them with a mischievous smile that could stop traffic.
Today she was wearing the official cheerleader uniform, an explosion of blue colors and short pleats that left exposed some toned and sinful legs.
Although she was not going to compete, as captain of the squad it was her sacred duty to lead the chants and keep morale high.
Lief and Frank got on and slid into the seat just behind her.
As soon as they sat down, Jennifer turned on her knees in the seat, resting her arms on the upholstered backrest that separated them, and lowered her voice until turning it into a whisper that only Leif could hear correctly.
"What a night, huh?"
Her eyes swept over Leif, detecting a new trace of cold energy... like water. She arched an eyebrow, playing with the double meaning. "I can still feel that it was... too intense."
Lief leaned forward, closing the distance between them, and brushed her chin with his fingers in a quick and possessive gesture.
"You were the one who asked for it to be more intense," he replied calmly, holding her gaze. "Do not complain about the rhythm now."
"What the hell are you talking about?" interrupted Frank, looking from one to the other with genuine confusion while trying to put his backpack under the seat. "Who was intense with what?"
"Nothing important," said Leif, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms behind his head with total indifference. "We were just discussing the horror movie we saw last night. Too many screams for my taste."
The bus began to roll heavily, taking with it a cargo of laughter and hormones heading to the neighboring city.
The trip began with the typical energy of a school field trip, with the afternoon sun coming in through the windows while the students killed time playing cards, sharing headphones and singing trendy songs at the top of their lungs. However, as the hours were consumed and the urban landscape gave way to rural desolation, the atmosphere inside the bus was changing imperceptibly.
When the curtain of night fell completely, the bus entered a secondary road that seemed to have no end.
"We just crossed the Poho County line, we are on Route 9 East," announced the driver, an older man with a hoarse voice, looking through the rearview mirror toward the coach who was sitting in the first seat. "This road is dead at this hour, but it will save us more than an hour of interstate traffic."
Outside the windows, the world had been reduced to nothingness.
Endless cornfields and stretches of desert extended under a pale moon that bathed the earth with a spectral light, turning the dry stalks into armies of twisted shadows. The fluorescent lights inside the bus flickered with low intensity, and the bustle of the afternoon had died down.
Most of the kids were now dozing against the glass or looking into the black void outside with a lost gaze.
Lief was reclined in his seat with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep, but his mind was more awake than ever.
From the moment the wheels touched the asphalt of this highway, his instincts went off.
It was not a simple discomfort, but an alarm resonating in his brain. He felt a trace of malice floating in the air, as if a pair of greedy eyes were watching them from the darkness of the cornfields.
Bang
Suddenly a deafening blast, similar to a shotgun shot, shook the bus, followed immediately by a violent vibration that made everyone's teeth chatter.
The bus tilted dangerously to the right, losing control.
The driver cursed and struggled with the steering wheel, while the agonizing screech of burnt rubber against the asphalt filled the highway.
The vehicle traced an erratic arc over the road, skidding several meters before stopping with a final jolt.
Panic broke out instantly among the students, waking up those who were sleeping with screams of confusion.
"What the hell was that?!" shouted the Coach, a robust forty-year-old man with the typical team jacket, jumping to his feet to take control of the situation.
"A blowout! We lost the front tire!"
The driver, with a distraught face, opened the door with a hiss and got down hurriedly to inspect the damage.
Not even a minute passed before he returned, climbing the steps with an expression that mixed incredulity with terror.
"This was not a normal blowout... look what did this to the tire!"
He opened his hand and in his palm rested an object that froze the blood of those who were nearby.
It looked like a dart... or a weirdly shaped throwing star, carved entirely from polished bone. It had disturbing tribal patterns engraved on it, and the tips were incomparably sharp, stained with a trace of something dark red that definitely was not rust.
"What kind of sick joke is this?" murmured Frank, stretching his neck from his seat to see better.
Opening his eyes, Lief looked at that bone dart, and frowned.
There are evil vibes attached to this...
He did not need to touch it to know what it was, the object stank of death.
"No one get off the bus!" ordered the Coach, realizing that this could be the work of some local gang or something worse. "Staying inside here is the safest thing! I am going to go out to check the axle and see if I can get a signal to call a tow truck or someone."
Having said this, he took a flashlight from under his seat, turned it on and went out into the pitch-black night, his footsteps crunching on the gravel while he walked toward the back of the bus, where the darkness was absolute.
Time seemed to stretch with every second that passed. The coach's figure was quickly devoured by the shadows, and the beam of light from his flashlight became a distant dot until disappearing behind the curve of the vehicle.
"AAAAAAHHHH...!"
A sharp and heart-wrenching scream, broke the silence of the night, only to be cut off abruptly.
The silence that followed was sepulchral, much worse than the scream.
Everyone on the bus remained paralyzed, while genuine terror filtered into their bodies.
"That... that was the coach's voice!" whispered a girl in the back.
"Something happened to him! Oh, my God, something caught him!"
Jennifer, who had swapped seats with Frank, unconsciously grabbed Lief's arm. Her nails dug into his jacket, her wide eyes scanning the blackness beyond the windows, sensing that there was something out there.
Just when the panic was beginning to turn into mass hysteria inside the vehicle, Lief stood up.
"I am going to take a look."
"Are you crazy?! Sit down right now!" Frank grabbed his arm tightly, his eyes bulging with fear. "Lief, do not go out! There is something out there!"
Lief did not argue, he simply patted his friend's hand with a firmness that strangely managed to loosen the grip and gave him a look that brooked no argument.
Ignoring the stifled pleas of the other students and the driver's warnings, he stepped down and ventured into the night.
As soon as his boots touched the gravel, a nauseating stench hit him in the face.
It smelled of copper, of rotting flesh and something else... like the lair of a predatory animal.
Without stopping for even a second, he followed the trail of that smell and headed toward the deep darkness from where the scream had come.
He did not have to walk far to find the scene of the carnage.
The Coach lay face up in a pool of blood under the moonlight. His right leg had been torn off from the knee with savage brutality, leaving a trail of splintered bone and shredded tissue.
And right on top of him, crouching over his torso like a gargoyle, was a shadow.
It seemed about to enjoy its still warm dinner.
"What are you?"
The shadow stopped dead.
It turned its head slowly toward the voice and it was then that Lief could see it clearly.
It was a humanoid figure with leathery and greenish gray and muscular skin. It wore a tattered trench coat. The creature looked at him with glowing and hungry eyes, but curiously it did not attack.
Instead, it let out a growl and with an explosive movement, unfurled a pair of gigantic membranous wings from its back, similar to those of a bat.
With a flap that raised a cloud of wind, the monster rose toward the sky and disappeared among the clouds, leaving behind only the echo of its presence.
Lief did not waste time chasing it, he kneeled quickly next to the unconscious coach and placed a hand over the bleeding stump.
A bluish light covered the wound for a second, the hemorrhaging stopped instantly, cauterizing the blood vessels and stabilizing the shock.
Although he could not regenerate the lost leg, at least he had ensured that the man did not die from bleeding out.
He carried the heavy body of the coach over his shoulder and returned to the bus.
When he climbed the steps, the interior light illuminated the Coach's state and terror exploded on everyone's face.
"Oh, my God! His leg! His leg is missing!"
"I-It was a monster! There is a damn monster out there!"
The driver and Mr. Henderson, the math teacher acting as a chaperone, were livid, trembling uncontrollably.
"Close the door! Close it now!" shouted the driver. "We have to get out of here right now!"
Boom
A massive impact shook the bus from above, causing the metal roof to dent inward, as if a one ton rock had fallen on them.
Crash
Before anyone could react, the glass of one of the side windows burst into a thousand pieces and a scaly hand with black claws shot in, grabbed Mr. Henderson by the throat, and ripped him from the inside of the bus with force.
"HELPPP...!"
The teacher's cry for help was silenced instantly when his body disappeared into the darkness.
On the brink of insanity, the driver tried to crawl toward his seat to start the engine, but barely took a step when a metallic screech stopped him.
The bus door was ripped off from outside and flung out into the darkness of the night.
In the door frame of the entrance, silhouetted against the moon, the terrifying figure of the demon appeared, blocking the only exit and extending its claws toward the paralyzed driver.
Swish
However, in that critical instant a figure crossed the aisle like a blur of incalculable speed.
"Get out!"
Lief connected a brutal side kick directly into the creature's scaled chest.
Bang
The sound of the impact was forceful, so the monster shot backward, rolling violently several times on the asphalt before managing to stop.
Taking advantage of the monster's momentary distraction, the students closest to the entrance grabbed the driver, pulling him toward the back.
"Block the entrance! Use the suitcases, use whatever!" They shouted while pushing backpacks and luggage against the gap where the door had been before.
With his feet already planted firmly on the asphalt, Lief was left alone in front of the creature that was starting to rise slowly from the ground.
Under the pale and sickly desert moonlight, Lief could finally see the physiognomy of the thing clearly.
It had a vaguely humanoid face, but any similarity with humans ended there.
The skin of its cheeks was not attached to the bone, but hung in folds that flapped with its breathing. It had no lips, leaving exposed endless rows of yellowish, needle sharp fangs.
But the most disturbing thing was its nose.
Just above the nasal bridge, where there should have been solid bone, there was a dark slit, a third orifice that dilated and contracted spasmodically.
Lief sensed the function of that orifice instantly.
That thing was not sniffing the normal... sniffing fear.
He could see how the creature inhaled deeply, getting drunk on the chemical "aroma" that emanated from the bus.
For this thing, the students' fear must have an irresistible fragrance that was driving it crazy with hunger.
Then, the monster turned its attention toward Lief.
Then it stood still, its third nostril agitated, searching for something in the young man in front of it, but found nothing.
In him there was not a single trace of terror, not a drop of the prey adrenaline that it craved so much.
It was a sensory void, something that made it uncomfortable and put it on guard.
However, hunger was stronger than caution.
The concentrated smell of fear behind Lief was too tempting to ignore, and this human was the only obstacle between it and its food.
"Grrrraaaaagh!"
With a roar, its legs tensed, accumulating an explosive power, and it launched forward like a cannonball.
Lief remained immobile, immersed in the memories of a movie he remembered.
"Eating people to regenerate your own damaged parts...?" he whispered to himself while the image of "The Creeper" perfectly superimposed itself onto the image of the being lunging, "I have to admit that it is a very useful ability…"
________
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