The decision to stay was not a vote. It was a slow, collective surrender to the reality of their broken bodies and the sheer, vertical wall of the world above them. The idea of climbing, of dragging shattered limbs through mud and briars towards a road that offered only the echo of gunfire, was a madness worse than staying.
"We'll be seen from the air," Miss Perkins said, her voice trying to conjure conviction. "Or… or a ranger will come. They'll see the scar on the hillside. We just have to stay together and stay put. That's what you do. You stay put."
No one argued. The adrenaline that had fueled their escape was leaching away, leaving behind a deep, bone-marrow exhaustion and the creeping insistence of their injuries. They huddled in a small, relatively clear patch of pine needles about fifty feet from the husk of the bus, a grim monument to their old lives. The drizzle had softened to a mist, but the cold was pervasive, seeping through denim and cotton.
The first order of business was triage, a grim parody of the first-aid unit they'd covered in health class. Miss Perkins, her hands still shaking, moved among them. Leo's broken arm was the most visually obvious injury after the silent tragedy of Sarah and Mr. Riggs. Using Danny's pocketknife, she helped Leo cut his spare shirt—a faded grey baseball tee he'd packed "just in case"—into rough strips. With Jake's help, she fashioned a crude sling. The process was agony. Every touch, every slight adjustment to support the limb, sent flares of nausea through Leo. He bit down on the sleeve of his good arm, tasting fabric and blood, tears of pain squeezing from his eyes. The sling helped, a little, by taking the dreadful, dangling weight away, but the pain remained a constant, throbbing companion.
Then there was Kayla.
A quiet girl who loved drawing horses, she sat perfectly still, as if movement might detonate something. A long, vicious shard of windshield glass was embedded in the outer corner of her left eye. It wasn't in the eyeball itself, but had sliced deep into the socket, a grotesque, glinting intrusion. Blood had dried in tacky rivulets down her cheek. She wasn't crying. She was in a state of silent, shocky horror.
"Don't touch it," Miss Perkins whispered, her own face pale. "Oh, honey, don't you touch it." The teacher's first-aid knowledge reached its limit here. They had no tweezers, no antiseptic, no idea of the damage beneath. To pull it could cause bleeding they couldn't stop, or do worse damage. "We just… we have to leave it. For the doctors." The word 'doctors' hung in the air, a fragile, distant hope.
They cleaned what they could with bottled water and napkins from lunchboxes. Cuts were wrapped with strips of t-shirt. A boy named Ben, the one with the compound fracture in his forearm, sat rigid and grey-faced; they immobilized his arm with two sticks and more fabric, a makeshift splint that seemed a pathetic defense against such a brutal injury.
As the grey afternoon light began to fade, the cold became an active enemy. That's when Miss Perkins, rummaging with frantic hope through her own spilled backpack, found her salvation: a cheap, plastic lighter from a gas station, decorated with a cartoon frog. She and Jake, who had once been in Scouts, gathered drier twigs from under the pine boughs and built a small, hesitant pyre in a ring of stones. The first flick of the lighter, the first tiny flame catching on a curl of birch bark, felt like a miracle. It was a point of light, of warmth, of primal human defiance.
They fed it carefully, the fire growing to a modest, crackling heart. They dragged logs close to sit on, their faces, streaked with dirt and tears, turning towards the warmth. The light played over their features, making them look older and younger all at once.
Then, the business of sustenance. Lunchboxes and backpacks, many torn but most still containing their precious cargo, were gathered. The spread was a surreal snapshot of a normality that had shattered: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now smushed, bags of carrot sticks, apples, juice boxes, bags of chips, chocolate chip cookies wrapped in foil. Miss Perkins, trying to impose order, collected it all. "We have to ration this," she announced, her voice thin. "We don't know how long…"
They ate in silence. The food tasted like nothing and everything. It was fuel, but it was also a memory. Leo's sandwich, made by his mother, had a note drawn in the corner of the bag: a smiley face and "Have fun!" He stared at it, the paper grease-spotted and damp, and felt a sob rise in his throat so sharp he had to choke it down. He ate with his right hand, movements clumsy, his left arm a burning log strapped to his chest.
As full dark fell, the world beyond their firelight contracted and expanded at once. The woods became a wall of impenetrable blackness, full of unknown sounds—the scuttle of an animal, the creak of a branch, the relentless drip of water from leaves. But the real world, the world of people and help, felt galaxies away. They had seen no planes, no helicopters. The only signs of civilization were the occasional, distant sounds that twisted their stomachs: another burst of far-off gunfire, once a long, booming crash that might have been an explosion.
Conversation was sporadic, hushed.
"My mom will be so worried," a girl sniffled.
"They'll find us tomorrow," Jake stated, poking the fire with a stick, trying to believe it.
"What was wrong with that car?" Danny asked, his voice small. No one had an answer.
Kayla just rocked slightly, her good eye fixed on the flames, the glass in the other glinting with an obscene cheerfulness.
Leo sat close to the fire, the heat on his right side a small mercy. He watched Miss Perkins. In the flickering light, he saw the teacher's façade cracking. She was watching the dark, jumping at sounds, her eyes constantly drifting back towards the dark shape of the bus where two of her charges lay dead. She was in over her head, and they all knew it.
The plan was simple, fragile, and born of utter helplessness: Stay by the fire. Stay together. Eat a little in the morning. Wait. The food and water would last a few days. Surely, by then…
But as the night deepened and the cold bit harder, Leo, cradling his broken arm, felt the terrible truth settling over them heavier than any blanket. They weren't waiting for rescue. They were waiting to see what this new, silent, screaming world would do next. The fire was a tiny, defiant signal in the vast, uncaring dark—a signal no one might ever see.