Too late. She was always, always too damn late. The shout froze in her throat- it was either going to be a “No” or “Stop” or maybe just a scream, but regardless, it never made it past her teeth. The dark hole in the center of Wesley’s forehead froze her innards, preventing her even from throwing up. The body of her cousin was still, his erratic, shuffling and uninhibited aggression finally ended. Amanda was unable to look away from his face, his glazed eyes still open. There must have been something. There must have been something she could have<span style="font-style: italic">done</span>.<br/><br/>She felt eyes on her and snapped back, a shaky voice she barely recognized as her own calling,<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“W-wait!”</span></span>to the man who had just added lead to her cousin. Before she could gain enough awareness to be properly angry, chaos erupted.<br/><br/>Bus. Glass panes exploded from the garage client entrance, a delicate tinkling reinforced until it was a symphony of destruction. Instincts kicked in and she dove to the side, feeling the front bumper of the vehicle rake across her lower leg. She landed in an ungraceful heap, scrambling to her feet, unwilling to register the signals to her brain that suggested a deeper problem in her ankle. Dust from the ceiling clouded her vision, but she didn’t need to see clearly to get a decent understanding of the situation; obviously, everything had gone straight to hell.<br/><br/>Some of them looked like Wesley. Thick, black lines running over their bodies in the same vascular pattern, leaking a thick, dark liquid that barely resembled blood when they were struck. They didn’t speak, didn’t cry out, whatever their injuries from the bus crash. They just… writhed, and struggled, and reached, and bit. Perhaps it was because these faces weren’t familiar, but a thought occurred to her that hadn’t with her cousin:<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-style: italic">Them or us.</span></span><br/><br/>It didn’t take her long to realize that they had been effectively locked in with them.<br/><br/>Whatever they were, they weren’t the only things that had survived the crash. People, with average skin smeared in the blood of their fellow bus riders, struggled and kicked and screamed; Amanda spun around and yanked up a chair from the waiting room floor, squashing down the disappointment that it was so much lighter than she’d hoped. At least it was something, something to use against them. People needed help. No time to panic, ponder or puke, not yet. Her teeth grit in determination, she heaved the heavier, leg-end of the seat toward one of the gurgling things, breaking its grip on the leg of a kid in his late teens. The boy scurried backward, tucking his legs beneath him, caved over his own exposed left ulna. The ranger almost took a step forward, to press the brief advantage, before she realized she didn’t actually have one; an armless, black-veined thing lunged toward her, mouth-first, just ahead of a few more that were pulling themselves along the blood-smeared garage floor. The chair met its gaping jaw, prompting the sound of shattering bone before its skull slammed into the side of the bus. Still, more were coming from an untapped pocket near the back of the destroyed vehicle, and the green-eyed woman took a large step back. A woman in her mid-forties pulled herself from the wreckage of the windshield, cradling her left arm over her bleeding midsection.<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Here!”</span></span>Amanda called, jerking her head to the teenager behind her. The woman latched with desperate eyes and limped over, barely ahead of another grasping, black-lined hand. The ranger was starting to feel more than a little cornered, and it showed on her face.<br/><br/>A long, pressured moan rattled from one with functional legs, and she saw the piece of wall that had bounced off its chest. Her eyes lit on the man, pressed against the wall, staring with as much horror as the rest of them. The disfigured thing that he hit jerked its head toward him, vocalizing again but this time with intent. She slammed it with her chair-bludgeon from behind, knocking it into the wall, where it promptly shuffled to regain footing without missing a beat. Amanda felt the bile that had been frozen in her gut start to bubble again; there was no stopping them.<br/><br/>A voice rang from a hole near the door, at the end of a path that was mercifully free of any black-blooded things, for now. Somehow, she couldn’t understand and didn’t care what was said; all it meant was an<span style="font-style: italic">escape</span>. Without waiting, she grabbed one of the two people behind her (it turned out to be the boy) with a free hand, still holding the chair in the other, the woman limping painfully but hurriedly after them. The two crash survivors seemed to regain some sense as they stood beneath the hole, using part of the bus and piece of broken chair to scramble high enough to grab the offered hand. One thing, its leg broken from the shin, pulled itself into the path toward salvation, its arms yanking it forward with disturbing slowness toward the man with his back against the wall. She could bean it with her chair again, but judging from the last few, nothing was even going to daze them unless it was fatal. She had to hit in such a way that it would be pushed back, so that at least the distance would give more time. Hoping she didn’t hit the person she was trying to help, the ranger hit the crawling thing with the chair from its front end, shoving backward; there wasn’t a lot of impact, but the strength behind it pushed it back a good few feet.<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Come on! Go, go!”</span></span>she barked, volume covering any shakiness in her voice. Her eyes swept around the garage, trying to identify any remaining people who were still… well, people.<span style="color: #FFBFBF"><span style="font-weight: bold">“Move!”</span></span>she commanded, standing just beneath the hole in the wall, fulling planning to grab that life-saving arm the second the last person was either outside… or beyond help.