The World Without People

The silence of the empty city was a wall around them. The group of sixteen students was fragmented, the tension hanging heavier than the still air.

Lars, his broad shoulders tense, was the first to break the quiet. "He disappears every night. Where to? Is he hunting? Stockpiling weapons?" His gaze swept across the group, landing on Chloe and Mei-Ling. "If he decides to take one of our girls, it will be too late. We have to act first. It's a matter of survival." The final word echoed, laden with a dark meaning. Two other boys closed ranks beside him, their expressions hardened by the same paranoia.

Chloe raised her voice, a counterpoint of reason intoxicated by fear. "Kill? Did you listen to yourselves? That would make us worse than him. We banish him. Let him face the void alone." Her proposal was a double exile: that of the driver and of her own humanity.

At the epicenter of the conflict, Kenji trembled. His fists were clenched, not in anger, but in impotent terror. "Mr. Kovacs... he fixed the radio... gave her water when Anya fainted..." His words sounded pathetic even to his own ears. Mei-Ling and Anya stood by his side, a fragile flank of compassion on a moral battlefield.

It was Marco who stepped forward, his face a mask of impatient disdain. "The world of rules is over, Kenji. Either you're with the strong..." he spat the word, looking at Lars's group, "...or you're with him."

The threat loomed, dissolving the last vestiges of innocence. The line had been drawn, not in the sand, but in the blood that had not yet been spilled.

The school bus, a noisy capsule, pierced through a veil of iridescent mist that didn't belong to any known meteorological phenomenon. When the strange light dissipated, what was revealed outside was a soul-crushing silence.

It was a perfect replica of the world they knew, but devoid of life. Intact buildings stood against a pale, still blue sky. There was no wind, no rustling of a leaf, no distant buzzing of an insect. Only the hollow echo of their own footsteps and the rapid beating of their hearts. Sixteen university students, divided into pairs by a now irrelevant social dynamic, wandered like lost souls through streets that were tombs of civilization.

In the early days, you, the driver, were their anchor. A guide in a world that had revoked its laws through emptiness. Your presence was a comfort, a remaining link to normality.

But absolute stillness is an acid that corrodes sanity. Gradually, the comfort you inspired turned into suspicion. In hushed voices, in the dark corners of the shelters they found, theories began to sprout. Why does he always volunteer to patrol alone at nightfall? What does he really hide in the locked compartment of the bus? What is he looking for – or spying on – in the darkness?

Paranoia, then, seeped in like a poison. An emergency knife disappeared from the first-aid kit. Several people swore they heard shuffling footsteps in the hotel hallway when everyone was supposedly gathered in the lobby. The couples, once united by shared fear, now exchange glances laden with distrust, not only towards each other, but mainly directed at you.

They desperately needed an explanation, a face for their terror. In this empty world, the only possible target for their collective fear was the only other person present. Her solitary figure, once a symbol of protection, had become the very embodiment of threat for some.