I stopped in front of the stairs that led back into the building. I pushed down on the center of the steering wheel and a deafening sound came from underneath the hood. I watched the front door open as I stepped down from the driver’s seat and stood at the steps with the lever of the door in my left hand. I saw out the back window of the bus that the Unluckys were only a few yards from where I was parked. I knew that if they were to trap the bus, we would be dead to rights. I ran back over to the wheel and pressed down with both hands on the horn, but this time it was for a long while. The sound of the horn traveled through Ely like air raid sirens racing through a small town during the nuclear bomb scare of the 1960’s. It was so intense the Unluckys themselves stopped to look around, trying to figure out where the noise originated from.

I looked over my shoulder out the side window of the bus and saw Michael and the others running down the steps. The Unluckys were trying to attack them, but the metal rails on each side of the stairway held them back. I grabbed the handle and pushed it outward making the door slide open.

I helped everyone board the bus as quickly as I could. Michael was the last to get on board. He had a worried look as he saw me standing in the doorway of the bus. He told me he would drive; that I needed to rest. He sat in the driver’s seat and I stretched out on the seat behind him. I told mike that we needed to get back to the SUV. Before he started to drive he questioned why we should do that sort of thing and put us even deeper in danger. I explained that we needed to get our supplies if we wanted to make it to Haven.

Michael did not say anything as he shifted the bus into first and pulled away from the school building. The sound of bodies hitting against the vehicle’s metal frame rang throughout the interior. I felt us pick up speed. Then without warning the bus bounced up violently as if it hit a curb. I looked up over my son’s shoulder and saw that we had in fact jumped a curb and were driving through the park dodging huge trees that were everywhere. To my left I saw the duck pound and just beyond that was the SUV!

Michael bounced the bus from the park and back on the road. He drove around the SUV and backed the bus up next to the old vehicle. The professor got up and looked down at me, then he reached into his shirt and pulled out a small vial. It was supported by a leather strap that looped around his neck. He took it off and handed it to me, telling me to stay where I was and to hold on to the vial, just in case something were to happen to him. The professor watched me put the leather strap around my neck and drop the tube down inside my dirty shirt. He then walked to the back of the bus and opened the emergency exit door. The others followed him outside, while I stayed inside the bus, exhausted.

As I watched them unload the SUV and load supplies into the bus, my thoughts began to ponder about what secrets were held inside this vial the professor gave me. The last one contained the antidote to the greatest plague man has ever seen. What could possibly be in this one that could equal the magnitude of the first? I reached into my shirt and pulled the small container out. I examined it for a while; it was a simple glass tube with an aged looking cork stuffed into the top. I tried to see what was inside, but the glass was too dark to make anything out.