Highway to Hell

2-Moving on

With one last look back at the destroyed bus, Aden joined the others in heading back towards the highway.
“Everyone’s gone… what do we do now?” Adrianna asked, standing by the side of the road. She folded her arms across her chest, her cheeks beginning to dampen with tears now that the reality of what happened began to set in.
Felix said, “Not many cars travel this highway, I hardly saw a single one the whole way aside from the one we nearly hit. Maybe we should try walking until we find someone.”
“I agree, if we wait here, it could be hours before someone passes, or days,” Said Jaina.
Again Aden seemed distant, he was remembering what the car looked like that caused them to crash. He turned down the highway in the direction they’d come; the car was too far to make out the details. He wanted to look it over again, so he began walking back towards it.
Connor took a few steps in Aden’s direction, looked back at the others, and then back to Aden. “Where are you going? There’s nothing that way.” When Aden didn’t answer, everyone began following him.
Aden stopped a few feet away from the car, staring at the skeleton hanging out of the window. Standing this close to it and not traveling past it at sixty miles an hour he was able to see a few things he’d missed. There was a second skeleton in the car, in the passenger seat. The seat was pushed back, and the passenger side area was bent and dented pretty bad. There were a few places with long scrapes in the paint, three placed side by side with every one. The window was broken out on that seat, and the metal around it was bent out like something large was forced through it. Aden looked back at the skeleton in the seat, the chest area of its rib cage was shattered in, one of its arms was missing, and the side of the skull was crushed in.
By now the others had caught up to him, and looking at the car as he was.
“What happened?” said Felix.
“I don’t know. It looks like something might have hit them, but that’s impossible. This thing looks like it’s been here for many months, there’s no way we wouldn’t have seen this driving past. Besides, in the time it took them to get like this, someone else had to have passed them by now.”
Jaina moved up beside Aden, placing a hand on his shoulder while looking to the trees along side the highway. She felt uneasy here, and wanted to leave as soon as possible.
“Aden, I don’t like this. Let’s go, okay?”
Aden took a step back, looking over the car one last time before turning to Jaina and nodding. With a hand between her shoulder blades he ushered her to walk along side him. Sera, Adrianna, Felix, and Connor followed behind as they walked off the right side of the highway.
Sera was still crying, and Felix put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I can’t believe this happened,” she said, “Friday would have been our last game. Danny sat up front, because he wanted to talk to the coach about the game. After school he was telling me how worried about his grades he was, he didn’t want to get cut from the team.” Upon stating her memories of only hours before, Sera began to cry a bit heavier. “How could this have happened? … it’s not fair.”
Felix rubbed over her back lightly and said, “Try not to think about it. We’re all upset about what happened.”
Felix knew that would be next to impossible, for all of them. They all lost a lot of friends just moments ago, how could they not think about it?
For a while they walked in silence, all saddened by what happened, and thinking in their own worlds. It was about thirty minutes later when they were able to see something in the distance.
“What is that?” Adrianna asked. She didn’t expect anyone could see better than her, but she asked regardless.
“It looks like another car,” Aden said, squinting his eyes to see.
As they walked closer and closer to it they began to see more of what it was. They were able to tell that it was a van, and then they could tell that it was in much the same condition as the first car they’d seen. By the time they reached it the sun was beginning to set, and the sky was overcome with an orange glow.
The back door of the van was torn open, missing from view completely. It was covered in dust just as the car was, showing that it had been here for quite some time. There were no skeletons in it though; it was completely empty in the middle of the highway.
“Just like the car, empty and … old,” Connor said as Aden walked up to the side of it. He pulled on the lever of the door, allowing it to slide open to the side. He stuck his head inside, looking around. It was pretty clean.
“It’s getting late, we should stay here for the night.”
“What? You can’t be serious!” Sera nearly shouted, “There’s no way I’m spending the night on this ghost highway, in that!”
Aden blinked, turning to her with a calm expression. “Sera, we have no choice. We don’t know how long it’ll be before we find someone; it might not be until tomorrow. I know we can’t keep walking all night, and I’d rather spend the night in this rather than out on the dirt. Wouldn’t you?”
Sera didn’t respond. Everyone else remained silent while watching the two. Eventually Sera sighed and crossed her arms.
“I’m not gonna sleep at all tonight.”
“Then I’ll stay up with you,” Aden said. It wouldn’t be likely that any of them slept, after what they’d been through that afternoon.
They all filed into the strange, abandoned vehicle nervously. None of them were too happy about staying in it for the night, but it was all they had. Aden sat in the driver seat, Jaina in the passenger seat, Sera and Adrianna sat in the middle seat, and Felix and Connor sat in the back. They all situated into comfortable positions that they’d try and sleep in.
“What do you think happened here, why are these cars left like this, and why didn’t we see them when we drove past?” Jaina asked no one in particular.
Connor responded, “They look like they’ve been here a long time… I don’t know.”

Back at the bus the fires had all burned out. There was nothing left but burnt corpses and ash, along with the back end of the bus not far off.
Footsteps sounded as they approached the crash site, a low growl following. The creature that created the sounds was massive, as long as the van that everyone camped out in for the night. Its head looked somewhat like a shark’s, a pointed nose smoothly leading back to the rest of the facial features. Its skin was a dark green; it had black beady eyes that darted around, looking over the wreckage curiously. It walked on all fours; each of its paws had three finger-like extensions and one thumb. It had a long tail that swished back and forth as it walked, and it had rigid muscles covering its entire body. There was a type of fin on its back right between its shoulders, and a series of spikes leading down from it.
It was attracted by the commotion caused by the accident, and began inspecting the surrounding area while a series of low growls continued to emit from it.

When night fell it was difficult to see only a few inches. Aden couldn’t tell if anyone was still awake or not, he didn’t want to ask and possibly wake them if they had managed to fall asleep. He passed the time by thinking of the friends he’d lost, remembering them. It wasn’t long before he fell asleep.