Lin Mei’s red chalk snapped against the graph paper.
She didn’t stop to pick up the broken tip. She grabbed another stick from her pocket, her chalky thumb pushing her cracked glasses higher up her nose as the Route 04 night bus lurched around the flooded corner of 14th Street.
“Mac, floor it!” Lin Mei shouted through the driver’s cage. “The countdown timer is already at negative twenty!”
“The accelerator is pinned to the floorboards, kid!” Mac roared back.
The twenty-ton armored bus rocketed down Oakhaven Boulevard, its front snow-bumper throwing twin rooster tails of dirty river water across the sidewalks.
A block ahead, the wrought-iron gates of Oakhaven Academy loomed out of the yellow smog.
In the center of the wide four-way intersection of Avenue B and Oakhaven Boulevard, three hundred people were trapped in a terrified, shivering huddle.
There were teenage academy students in dark blue blazers, elderly boardinghouse maids clutching cardboard suitcases, and parents holding crying children. They stood shoulder to shoulder on the wet asphalt, their eyes wide with sheer panic.
