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strike until it knew I was awake. It wanted me to be conscious when I died, wanted to lick up my fear with its rough tongue, soak up my death like bread swiped through spaghetti sauce.
    In my mind, I called it the Thing, but I never named it aloud. I never said a word, never made a sound, never cried out for help. I knew by then that crying out for help only worked if there was someone around who gave a damn. I stopped calling out and learned how to fight. And I fought and I fought, every single night, until finally the monster went away. Around my tenth birthday.
    It’s been seven years since I’ve seen the Thing. It’s been almost that long since I’ve thought about it. Even when I push myself to the breaking point in the weight room, getting bigger, stronger, meaner than anyone else, I don’t let myself wonder why I need to be so strong. Even when I go to sleep with the lights and the television on, I don’t let myself remember why I’m afraid of the dark.
    I don’t admit to anyone—even myself—that I’m afraid of anything.
    But I am. I’m afraid of dying in this bus. I’m afraid of Dani dying in my arms. I’m afraid of the Thing that came in the night, the Thing I almost swear I can see curled around the broken steering wheel at the front of the bus, staring down the long row of broken, moaning, twisted bodies.
    Looking straight at me.

Jesse
    Red eyes sent from hell glare above the dragon’s mouth and blood drips from its fangs. It leaps from the steering wheel, claws crunching in the broken glass. Green-and-black scales ripple over muscles way bigger than mine, thick masses of tissue that assure me that I’m as small and helpless as when I first went into the hospital.
    It’s the Thing, no doubt about it. I’ve never seen it in the daylight before, but I’ve felt that reptilian body crouched on top of me, tense and ready to strike.
    “Mina … Mina.” Dani shifts in my arms, eyelids fluttering. Her head turns and her blood smears onto my sweater.
    The skin above her right cheek is split open, and red trickles down her face. I can almost feel how much the Thing would enjoy licking that trail away, getting a taste before coming in for the kill.
    Kill. The Thing is back. It’s here. It’s real . And it could kill everyone on this bus.
    Or at least everyone who isn’t dead already.
    The bus is mostly still now. Only a few pained moans and sobs break the silence. A couple of people at the front are moving—flailing arms and legs, struggling to sit up with no help from broken bones and bruised bodies—but the middle is silent. Dead silent.
    The place where Dani’s friend sat down is the hardest hit, just ahead of the point of impact where the seats are twisted beyond recognition. The chances that Mina is seriously hurt are good and getting better as the Thing slinks into the center of the bus, crawling over debris, pausing to survey the limp bodies with satisfaction. Its eyes slit and it pulls its bloodied lips back another inch, baring more of those impossibly large teeth.
    “Mina … we have to … ” Dani’s eyes open, but almost immediately wince closed again. She shudders against me like it hurts to breathe. “I have to … ”
    We have to get out, that’s what we have to do. We have to get the hell out of this bus and away from that dragon before we’re as dead as half the student body of Madisonville Prep.
    “Hold onto me.” I scoop Dani into my arms, ignoring the sting in my side and the rush of warmth that seeps through my sweater, and fight my way to my feet.
    What’s left of the bus window shatters beneath our combined weight and my left leg plunges through the hole to sink into the muddy ground. I tug it free, gritting my teeth as one of the glass shards stabs into my calf and lodges there. I stumble back toward the emergency exit, feeling my way as I climb over the other seats, too scared to turn my back on the Thing.
    “But what about—”
    “The bus could explode,” I