Further up the street, the cops that had been evacuating people from the building and across the road were standing near the street. They’d been touched by the gore-explosion, and now they were drawing their guns.

“Don’t hit them!”

“I’m not going to hit them!” Jasper called out, swerving so the side and then the rear of the bus was between us and them.

It hadn’t been five or six minutes yet. It couldn’t have been. The building hadn’t been hit yet.

I climbed up higher, standing on the headrest of Jasper’s seat to reach a higher point on the bus, looking over the roof.

Where?

The worst possible location.

An eighteen wheeled logging truck was coming down the road. The front had been reinforced with metal braces. It was coming from the direction of the water, only four hundred or so feet of road between the waterline they’d started near and the community center, but it was going full speed, straight for the side door.

“Fuck me.” Jasper’s voice.

Even if Crystalclear saw—

“Hit it!” I called out.

“What? Are you insane?”

“Hit it! The others are waiting on the other side of the door!”

I scrambled to get in position.

“Trusting you,” Jasper said, and the bus picked up speed.

You shouldn’t, I thought.

I had one partial glimpse of the inside of the truck.

Multiple costumes.

And then the impact.

Daybreak 1.4

There was no way to process the series of collisions that followed me hurling myself down between the logging truck and the school bus. My focus was on deflecting the impact, clawing at the logging truck with everything I had to try to put it off course, before the bus made contact and hopefully moved it further. As the two vehicles came together, I extended my whole body, trying to push them apart in a way that would keep the collision from being the head-on sort that might kill Jasper.

In no particular order, the school bus hit the logging truck, the logging truck hit the school bus and the wall, and I, my forcefields down, hit the ground rolling.

I came to a stop and lay where I was, face down. I felt the sting of the scrapes where I’d come into contact with the road, and waited for the real pain to start. I wanted to know where the real damage was before I moved the wrong part and made it worse. My ears rang from the sharp noises and impacts. Playing dead helped, too, because the villains were rousing, opening the door of the truck cab, glass tinkling down to the street below.

“What the hell?” someone asked. They were younger—probably teenager. I couldn’t pinpoint if they were male or female.

“Are you okay?” a deeper voice asked. The nature of the voice made me think brute. “Any injuries?”