Chapter 77: The Emotionally Abnormal High School Student

Chapter 77: Chapter 77: The Emotionally Abnormal High School Student

Chapter 77: The Emotionally Abnormal High School Student

The school-bus driver was a middle-aged man with long hair, a faded shirt, and the general appearance of someone who had never completely left the 1960s behind. He stared at the enormous hole torn through the roof, then at the blood-covered Axel Vance lying beneath it, and looked as though his brain had simply stopped working. "I knew I shouldn’t have listened to my mother and gotten a real job," he muttered. "The outside world is way too dangerous."

After the first round of screaming, the students gradually quieted down as well. Dozens of teenagers stared at Axel with a mixture of fear, curiosity, and disbelief, apparently unsure whether a dying man had fallen from an airplane or some completely different nightmare had just entered their bus. The driver finally swallowed and asked, "Hey, man... do you need an ambulance? Or should I call the police?"

Before Axel could answer, a skinny boy with glasses jumped out of his seat. "I know what happened! He came from underground." The boy excitedly pointed toward the hole in the roof and added, "There has to be some secret tunnel leading to the center of the Earth around here."

Axel felt his injuries hurt a little more just listening to him. "I came from Miami." He looked around at the students and added, "You kids have impressive imaginations."

The boy’s face immediately turned red, and he quietly returned to his seat. The driver looked back at the damaged roof before cautiously asking, "Okay, then how exactly did you get up there?" Axel simply pointed toward the hole above him, lacking the energy to invent a believable explanation for falling out of the sky.

"Pretty much like that."

Axel braced one hand against a seat and tried to stand. His left leg immediately gave out, and a violent stab of pain forced him back against the seat before he could put any real weight on it. After checking himself as carefully as possible, he realized his lower leg had suffered a serious fracture, while broken pieces of the bus roof had left several additional cuts across his already battered body.

Considering that the Creeper had carried him thousands of feet through the air and tried to crash him into a highway, Axel supposed things could have been worse. The vitality he had stolen through Color of the Stars was still helping his body recover, but even that new power could not instantly repair a badly broken bone. He took several slow breaths before looking toward the driver again.

"Where exactly am I?"

A blond teenager wearing a baseball cap stood from one of the nearby seats before the driver could answer. He had the expression and posture of someone accustomed to having several friends nearby whenever he decided to start trouble. With both hands in his pockets, he looked Axel up and down and said, "Forget where you are. Who the hell are you?"

Axel stared at him for a moment.

A classic American high-school tough guy.

Exactly what he needed.

Axel pulled his identification from his chest pocket and held it where the teenager could see. "Police officer. Now let the adults talk."

Instead of backing down, the blond boy stiffened as though his reputation had been challenged. "How do we know that isn’t fake?" he demanded, taking another step forward. "You think waving some fake badge around means you can order everybody—"

He reached toward Axel.

Axel’s hand moved first.

A quick flick against the teenager’s forehead produced a sharp thump, and the boy stumbled backward while both hands immediately flew to the growing red mark above his eyes. Tears appeared from the sudden pain, but this time he wisely kept his mouth shut.

The driver hurriedly stepped into the conversation before the situation became even stranger. "Okay, okay, nobody needs to fight the injured police officer who fell through my roof." He then looked toward Axel and said, "We’re outside Greenville, Louisiana. This is a bus from one of the nearby high schools, and we were supposed to be heading out for a camping trip by the lake."

Louisiana.

Axel’s expression darkened.

The Creeper had carried him far farther than he had realized.

At the same time, he looked again toward the blond teenager and felt a trace of suspicion. A blood-covered stranger had just smashed through the roof hard enough to tear open a school bus, yet the boy’s first instinct had been to walk over and pick a fight. Axel had met plenty of stupid people, but that reaction felt unusually reckless even by teenage standards.

Something else bothered him more.

His system had never confirmed the Creeper’s death.

After everything Axel had already seen the monster survive, he was no longer willing to assume that being smashed into a highway had permanently killed it. If even a severed head had been enough for the thing to regenerate once, there was every chance it was still somewhere nearby.

Axel looked through the windows on both sides of the bus. Thick forest surrounded the highway, quiet enough that almost anything could be hiding beyond the tree line. Every shadow between the trunks suddenly looked like somewhere the Creeper could be waiting.

He could not stay helpless.

Axel gritted his teeth and looked toward the damaged section of the roof. Using pieces already torn loose by his crash, he improvised enough support around the injured lower leg to keep it from shifting as badly when he moved. The process was rough and painful, but his only goal was basic mobility until he could reach proper medical help.

The students watched in silence.

Seeing Axel bend damaged roof metal with his bare hands had clearly changed the mood inside the bus. Even the blond teenager who had challenged him earlier slowly sank lower into his seat and apparently decided his forehead injury had already taught him everything he needed to know.

Axel tested the injured leg carefully.

Pain shot upward immediately, but it held well enough for him to stand with most of his weight on the other side. The energy stolen from the Creeper was still supporting his recovery, although repairing the fracture would clearly take much longer.

"Everybody stays inside the bus," Axel ordered. "Nobody goes wandering into the woods."

The driver nodded almost immediately.

So did most of the students.

Then Axel felt something strange.

A weak energy fluctuation moved through the rear of the bus.

It was not Holy Power, ghostly resentment, demonic corruption, Spirit Binding, or anything resembling the Color of the Stars. Instead, the strange force brushed gently against human emotions, almost too subtle to notice unless someone already possessed supernatural sensitivity.

The purified Jason-bone protective effigy at Axel’s waist became slightly warm.

Its mental barrier immediately isolated him from the influence.

Axel turned around.

His attention locked onto the final row.

A girl sat alone there with her head lowered and both hands tightly gripping the straps of her backpack. She had long golden-blonde hair, fair skin, and delicate features, but the expression on her face was dominated by fear and constant unease. Her shoulders trembled as though she were desperately trying to make herself smaller.

The energy was coming from her.

Axel stared for another second.

Carrie White.

The name surfaced from memories of a horror story he knew far too well.

Carrie was supposed to be a painfully shy, isolated girl whose emotions were tied to a terrifying telekinetic ability. In this world she was apparently attending a Louisiana high school instead of growing up in Maine, another timeline and location change Axel had learned to expect from this increasingly chaotic universe. Still, the frightened posture and invisible pressure surrounding her were unmistakable.

The rest of the bus began changing almost immediately.

The blond teenager rubbed his forehead and glanced toward the back row. Whatever humiliation he had felt toward Axel abruptly shifted into something uglier.

"Hey, look at Carrie," he said loudly. "The freak is doing that creepy thing again."

Several students beside him turned around.

Their expressions became harsher.

"Every time something bad happens, she’s around," one boy said. "Remember that fire in the science lab? She was the last one out."

Another teenager immediately joined in. "And somebody dumped paint all over Susan’s locker last week. I bet she did that too." What might normally have remained petty suspicion rapidly hardened into absolute certainty.

A girl across the aisle sneered toward the back. "Just look at her sitting there acting scared. Who are you trying to fool, Carrie?" More voices joined hers, each one crueler than the last.

Axel’s eyes narrowed.

The energy surrounding Carrie was growing stronger.

It did not seem to be directly controlling the students like puppets. Instead, it amplified emotions already present—jealousy, resentment, irritation, prejudice—pushing minor teenage hostility toward something far more vicious.

Within moments, nearly everyone seemed to have forgotten that a blood-covered police officer had fallen through the roof. Their fear over the accident had been replaced by a sudden collective need to focus on Carrie. Insults spread across the bus until the atmosphere felt oppressive enough to make the air itself seem heavier.

Carrie lowered her head even farther.

Her hands tightened around the backpack straps.

Her entire body shook.

The space around her began to feel strangely thick.

The driver finally lost his patience. "Enough! Everybody sit down and shut up!" His voice filled the bus, but the students barely reacted, as though their hostility had become more important than listening to the adult responsible for them.

Axel leaned against the damaged wall and watched the situation carefully.

Something was clearly wrong.

The more malicious the students became, the stronger the energy radiating from Carrie White grew.

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