Chapter Text
Parrot had thought about this for a while now, but hadn’t ever figured it out. This was actually a really interesting question, and he needed to know the answer.
He turned to his friend, Spoke, and asked, “Who the fuck actually thought school buses were a good idea?”
“Huh?” Spoke said, brushing his black hair out of his eyes. “What, Parrot?”
He was intensely focused on his geometry dash game on his phone.
“I mean,” He continued, gesturing at the raucous high schoolers around them, “What actually was the idea behind this, bro? Like being crammed together with people twice our size who kind of hate everyone was smart.”
“Speak for yourself,” He snickered at Parrot.
Parrot scowled at him. “Not everyone can be six five like you!”
“Ok, …But, um….” He half stuck out his tongue, tapping the phone screen.
Parrot leaned over him, looking at his game. Thankfully, he’d turned off the annoying music that came with it. As he did, Spoke missed a jump, and his square fell on a spike.
“NOOO!!!!” he shrieked, practically flinging the phone away from himself. “PARROT!! Bro, you messed me up! Now I have to start all over again.”
He violently shook him, then pulled away, tugging up the hood of his black hoodie, glaring at Parrot. His pale gray eyes stood out against the dark of his skin.
Parrot was familiar with Spoke’s little temper tantrums; they never lasted more than a minute. He was the kind of guy who was always running around, shouting enthusiastically. he sighed, and rummaged around in his backpack at his feet. He could feel Spoke’s eyes on him, now more curious than angry. He found what he was looking for, and leaned back.
“I have snickers,” He offered.
Spoke’s eyes went wide.
“Ohh, yes! Gimme, gimme!” he squealed, making grabby hands. He frantically swiped at them, and Parrot held them away from him, out into the aisle of the bus.
“You have to apologize for shaking me first,” He laughed.
Parrot suddenly felt the chocolate get jerked out of his hands, and instantly knew who it was. Spoke’s face fell so fast it was almost comical.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” A voice drawled.
“Reddoons,” Parrot said coolly, “Give it back,”
Reddoons grinned. His short red hair was perfectly coiffed as always, not that he was surprised; he was one of the richest families in town.
“No, I don't think I will,” He smirked, then quickly changed the subject. “What’cha guys doin’? I mean, other than being absolute geeks,”
“Tax evasion,” Parrot threw out, annoyed. Reddoons liked to annoy them, sometimes stealing things, sometimes ‘accidentally’ pushing them in the halls, sometimes just saying rude things. Whatever he was doing, Parrot didn't like it.
He laughed, and clapped his hand on Parrot's back. He stiffened. He knew there was no way he could feel his wings under his clothes and his binder, but it still made him nervous. No one except for Clown knew he had wings. Although, actually, Leo, the guy who’d made him a binder that would work for hiding his wings as well as his chest, knew as well. Leo was a relatively nice guy, and Parrot figured he’d probably have helped him and kept his wings hidden, even if Clown hadn’t bribed him, and threatened him, and blackmailed him.
Parrot honestly couldn’t decipher Reddoons’ expression behind those shades. Every time he put a hand on his shoulder back, he was terrified that he would figure it out.
“Soooo…” Reddoons continued. “I think that I can do much better things with these snickers bars than you can. Like investment!”
Spoke looked like he was going to burst into tears at the mere thought that the snickers might not be eaten.
“OR!” Spoke almost shouted, “You COULD give them back! So I could eat them!”
“I don’t think I'm going to do that,” Reddoons taunted, swinging the candy around.
Parrot sighed, and glanced out the window at the houses sliding by. School was almost over, and then he could be free of Reddoons for a whole 3 months. Although, that kind of worried him. 3 months spending almost all day with Clown. Not that he disliked him, although they’d just had the worst argument they’d ever had, so he kind of did hate him right now. Just. His mind disturbed Parrot sometimes.
Something in the sky caught Parrot’s eye, and he craned his neck, trying to look up at whatever that thing was. As it came into view, something must have shown on his face, because Spoke and Reddoons arguing above him had quieted.
It looked almost like a whirlpool, but in the sky. The edges of it were blurry, and the sense of wrongness that emanated from it, just by looking at it, was so strong he felt nauseous. It was as though a huge hand had grabbed a fistfull of the fabric of our universe, and then twisted it until the fabric ripped. Light bled out from the center; it was somehow the brightest thing he'd ever seen, but didn’t hurt his eyes like the sun. As he watched, it grew in size, tearing open further. More light dripped from the center, like blood, if blood was pure light and hovered in the air. He got the distinct feeling that something - or someone - was tearing it open, trying to get into their universe, or world, or dimension, he didn't know what.
“Holy moly,” Spoke gasped, his eyes wide.
“What. Is that.” Reddoons asked flatly.
“It’s our death, approaching.” Parrot said, resigned.
“It's. Um. The WORMHOLE!” Spoke gulped.
Reddoons’ gaze slid from Parrot to Spoke. His eyes narrowed. “How the actual fuck do you know that?”
“Oh, so I’m right?” Spoke looked pleased, like he hadn’t just dropped a bombshell on them.
“I have no idea whether you’re right or not,” Reddoons said impatiently. “But why are you callin’ it that?”
“Oh! Because that’s what I thought of,” Spoke chirped, “‘Cause it looks like those wormhole thingies in space!”
Parrot heard someone behind them say, “Bro? What’s that?” and the answering, “I don’t know, but I’m gonna call my dad,”
All around them, people were slowly starting to notice something was wrong.
Reddoons muttered something, and then walked up the aisle to the bus driver.
“Hey,” he said urgently, “You need to stop this bus.”
The driver took out his earbuds and squinted at him. “Eh? What, why?”
Reddoons glared coldly at him. “Look outside. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I don't want any part of the freakyness that’s happening.”
The driver blinked, confused. Then he looked up at the twisted hole in the sky, and slammed on the brakes so hard, they nearly flew out of their seats.
Reddoons instantly opened the bus door, and ran out onto the street. Cars honked at him, but he seemed not to be worried about getting hit. Some of the other cars were slowing down or stopping, presumably because they had seen the wormhole.
Parrot glanced back at the wormhole. It was definitely bigger than before.
“Parrot, LOOK!!” Spoke shouted, pointing frantically back at the street.
He whirled around. A section of air above the road looked like it was warping and twisting, the colors behind it blurring. The cars were either backing up or speeding up to get away from it. Reddoons pulled out his phone and took a picture of it, and then ran as fast as he could in the other direction. Parrot had never seen him run before, although he knew that he was a good runner. He always had this air of leisure around him, like he didn’t need to move fast to win.
The warped air above the road seemed to contract, and then expanded, a point of bright light in the middle. It reminded him of the videos his teacher had shown us of a black hole forming.
“The end of the world is fun!” Spoke cheered.
Parrot glared at him. “How is the end of the world fun, bro?!”
Spoke let the smile slide off his face. He looked desperately sad and scared. “Parrot, I just don’t know what to think, bro. I need something that I can focus on so that my brain doesn’t explode with confusion.”
He had a point. Parrot had hyper focused on Reddoons running so that his brain didn’t try to comprehend the wormhole. He guessed that something was ripping a hole in the space-time continuum, but really he had no idea, even if he was in AP physics.
He looked back up at the original wormhole. It had grown more, but what was most interesting was that it looked like the light was trying to stitch the hole back together again, while something from the other side was trying to open it.
Then something long and sharp, a huge claw, appeared from the middle of the wormhole. There was a huge rush of sound, like a sonic boom, but much more loud, and it shook the earth so violently, the distant figure of Reddoons fell onto the ground.
Then the rest of the giant clawed hand slammed down through the wormhole, crushing several cars. The car alarms wailed loudly, making Parrot’s shoulders hunch up despite the fact that they were about a mile away. He despised loud noises as a rule, except for Spoke’s noises, because he was okay.
Then his mind snapped back to the reality of the situation. The claws were attached to an armored front leg, and he could see a little of what the leg was attached to, an heavily armored body.
By now, people were running around screaming. The bus driver was gone, and the kids inside the bus were freaked out, frantically trying to call their parents, or trying to open the bus door. The driver had run away with the keys, and the doors had automatically locked shut, effectively trapping 50+ kids inside. Spoke was smiling, as a last ditch effort to not run around screaming like a chicken with its head cut off, but Parrot could see the terror in his eyes.
Outside, the cars were jammed. Some people had tried to drive away, while others had just left their car in the middle of the street and ran. Already, there was a collision behind them, with a Subaru and a Tesla, and as Parrot was watching, a fast moving Sedan tried to swerve away from a Honda in its path, and clipped the side of it, sending it spinning into another car. It was pandemonium, utter chaos as people tried to go in all different directions.
The metallic, extraterrestrial leg retreated, and then two different sets of claws appeared, trying to wrench the hole bigger. Brilliant light dripped from its claws, and hovered in the air, the claws scratching Reality, making glowing scores across the air.
A figure fell from the wormhole, tiny limbs flailing as it fell. And then another. And another. Humanoid creatures falling from that world to this one. The claws tightened, tearing the hole open, more people fell from it. Parrot felt Spoke grab onto him, his hands squeezing so tight it hurt.
“Parrot. What the hell. Is going on?” Spoke gasped, audibly on the verge of tears.
A second, smaller boom echoed through my skull, and he turned to look at the other wormhole.
A corpse-like hand clawed through it, followed by the rest of its body. Parrot had seen dead bodies before. He'd seen Clown come back from a fight, covered in blood and guts and triumphant. But he’d never seen a half-decomposed corpse work its way out of a portal to another dimension, grab onto a panicking 3 year old, and start to devour them. The corpse - zombie - wrapped its hand around the child’s neck, and sank its teeth into her arm. It tugged on the piece of flesh it had in its mouth; the kid struggling and screaming for help. It tore it off, with a spray of blood, as it swallowed, its bloated neck moving. It moved in to bite them again, and Parrot looked away, his mind swimming in sludge. Any semblance of order that had once existed before the zombies came through was gone.
More of them pushed their way through the portal. Parrot guessed that the bodies falling from the other wormhole were zombies as well, and they would be up and trying to eat them. Zombies. Other dimensions. And Parrot and Spoke and 50 other teenagers were locked in a bus like a sacrifice.