002 -

Half an hour later, Boslow Hill, about 17 km from the city border of Drada.

The wrecked bus is now surrounded by so many police and SAR officers. Eight passengers have been confirmed dead. The rest have been rushed to a hospital in Drada Metropolitan City.

“Sir! I just got information from Summerfield High School. There were 32 students on this trip, and one teacher.”

“Thirty two?” the captain mumbles curiously. “Then, we are missing one student here.”

The police captain receives a document from the lower rank officer, and examines it. There he finds the name of Jimmy Hendrix marked in a red circle.

“He lives at his aunt’s house since her mom died six years ago. And about his father, Thomas Hendrix, doesn’t that name ring a bell to you?” asks the lower rank officer rhetorically.

The captain glances by raising one of his eyebrows, showing some kind of interest.

But…

“Naah, I bet he just went looking for some help.”

However, that one lower rank officer shakes his head. “Actually, his cousin, a girl named Cynthia McNeil, also took part in this field trip. She sat near this guy, and got the chance to see him, inside the bus, with both legs broken.”

“Broken legs? Then how did he get out?” The captain bites his bottom lip, losing in deep thoughts.

Meanwhile, a certain hospital in Drada is busy with parents of the students who have just experienced that unfortunate accident.

Most of them are in an open ward accompanying their children.

It’s so quiet, and haunting.

Most of these students, who think they are so holy and religious, are glancing at Anna with resentment.

“It’s because of you!”

“How could you do that in front of so many people?”

“This is punishment from God. And we are affected by your sin.”

They share their resentment with restrained voice. But Anna clearly feels what those people currently expressing while looking at her with hateful gazes.

“Stop staring at me with that look!” she snaps.

“Like I have any interest in looking at a dirty girl like you,” replies a male student as he takes his gaze away.

Anna keeps looking down, while hiding the bandaged wound on her face behind her black long hair.

Later, she glances in another direction, at Dwayne who looks so innocent without showing any remorse, nonchalantly smiling while making some jokes with his rich dad.

She believes it was Dwayne’s fault, not her. But all her classmates are putting the blame on her for being so noisy with her moaning.

At least, there is someone else which is quite annoying, which steals these students' attention. It is Jimmy’s aunt, Molly McNeil, complaining in front of her daughter.

“How could they still employ a 70 year-old man as a bus driver? What about his eyesight?”

Jackson McNeil, the lady’s husband, whines with restrained voice. “That’s enough. We are in a hospital.”

Molly takes her face away by raising her chin. She turns silent for a moment. Only for a moment, before she goes back to complaining about other things, which is Jimmy.

“And now we have to figure out how to find that kid!”

“He must have gone to get help and got lost,” Jackson speculates.

“Let’s hope so,” utters Molly with a sour face. “If he really broke his legs, it would be a pain in the ass having to pay for his treatment too.” 

***

On the other hand, in a certain hillside, Jimmy wakes up in aghast, in a shallow cave with a smooth ground having a unique circle.

He steps out of the cave to check things out. There he is stunned, finding himself in the middle of a tropical rainforest, and in broad daylight.

Even weirder, there are two moons above, looking pale like the face of a girl has just woken up during her period.

“Where am I?”

The sun has already leaned slightly to the west. It’s so weird, because it was already dark when the bus got into an accident.

“Ah, that’s right! The bus?”

He still cares about his classmates. But then, his face turns sour as he remembers how those people laugh at him when he was dumped by Anna.

“Why should I care about them?”

Soon, he is back to his anxiety, worrying that he might have already been transferred to the world of the dead.

He rushes up the hill, trying to learn his current location. His heartbeat is racing, sounding like a galloping horse. After reaching the hilltop, there he learns that he is on an island surrounded by ocean.

“Oh, God!” He holds his head with a disbelieving face. “Why did you put me on an island like this? If this is heaven, where are the beautiful angels?”

There is one part of the island which looks like a swamp. And there in the swamp, he notices some movements.

He squints, and sees some people moving with weird movements. Some even stupidly fall to the swamp, slowly trying to get back, and then fall again like a drunkard.

Instead of humans, they look more like…

“It can’t be! Are they zombies? No way! Am I in hell now?”

He believes he wasn’t that bad as a person to be damned in hell like this.

The more he observes the view, slowly some images appear in his mind, images he often imagined in the past, before going to sleep as his father told him some story.

“Hold on, wait! This is…”

Yes, this is Icalaterra, where people hunt monsters, and get some reward and gold coins for completing some kind of quest, an interesting way to get rich fast.

As a kid, he always took it as just fairytales. Never once he thought that Icalaterra would be real.

And also…

“Inventory!” he issues.

In that instant, an interface hologram appears in front of him, in the form of a rectangular measuring 25 cm x 40 cm, with 40 small boxes in it.

“Holy shit! It’s real! It’s just like what he told me!”

Eight of the boxes in the inventory contain pictures of objects, such as stored items. There are matches (3), crowbars (1), torches (2), Handgun (1), handgun magazines (1/20), metal water bottle (2), crossbow (1), leather quiver with metal arrows (13/50).

He touches the handgun box, and immediately…

[!]

[Would you like to take out the handgun?]

“What? Um…, Yes?” he replies unsurely.

A blue light appears in the air right in front of him, and from it a handgun drops.