The Last Orphans

by N. W. Harris

  “We sat in the backyard, by the pond, and had a picnic… just before it happened,” she continued, staring out the window with a distant expression. “Natalie was trying to do a handstand. She had us all laughing so hard.”

  “At least you have that to hold on to,” Shane replied, hoping to comfort her.

  “What about you?” Kelly asked.

  “My granny was buried this morning, and we attended a funeral service for her afterwards,” Shane replied, unwilling to talk about his rotten last moments with his father.

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said, sounding guilty for asking.

  “No, it’s okay,” Shane replied, not intending to make her feel any worse. “I’m glad she passed before all this happened. The world was right when she died. And she passed away in her sleep.”

  “I suppose it was for the best,” Kelly agreed. “At least you got to spend some time with your family before it happened.”

  “Yeah,” Shane replied, wishing he and his dad could’ve spent the morning under the hood of a car together instead of fighting. In the shade of the garage, covered with grease, trying to diagnose an engine problem, they always got along best—those memories made Shane realize how much he loved his father, enough to forgive and forget all the arguments and drunken insults.

  The red taillights on the bus in front of him lit up, startling Shane out of his sad reverie. Shane stepped on the brakes.

  “The road is blocked up ahead,” Tracy’s voice chirped through the CB radio. “Looks like there’s a bunch of kids hanging around a pretty nasty accident. We’d better stop and check it out before we get too close.”

  Shane brought his bus to a stop behind Tracy’s, its air system letting out a loud hiss when he set the parking brake. Kelly handed Shane a crossbow, their fingers touching for a brief moment on the stalk. They paused, their gaze meeting above the weapon. Although sadness weighed heavy in her eyes, the right side of her soft lips turned up for an instant. A flash of heat surged through him, pushing back the numbing gloom. Before he could respond, she looked away and darted down the steps, joining Steve, Matt, and Laura, who climbed off the supply bus. The momentary thrill vanished, and depression enveloped Shane once again.

  He was grateful no one said anything about what happened back at his dad’s auto shop. At this point, no words could comfort him, and he feared he’d break down if they mentioned it. They silently walked forward together and stood next to Tracy and Aaron near the front of the lead bus.

  “They look harmless enough to me,” Aaron observed. He sighed with exhaustion and adjusted the compound bow slung over his shoulder.

  “We have to be careful,” Tracy warned. “It could be a trap.”

  “Don’t be so freaking paranoid,” Laura replied. “It’s just a bunch of scared little kids. That looks like a church bus that’s flipped over behind them.”

  “Yeah, well, there could be somebody hiding in the bushes off to the side, or behind that bus,” Tracy retorted, “just waiting to ambush the poor fools who try to offer help.”

  “Seems unlikely,” Shane said, trying to defuse the tension boiling between the two girls. “But we should be careful.”

  He guessed Laura and Tracy never spoke a word to each other until today—they mixed about as well as vinegar and baking soda.

  “Look at them,” Kelly said, sweet sympathy prevalent in her voice. “The oldest one can’t be more than ten. And they’ve probably sat out here in the rain for hours.”

  “We should load them up and take them with us,” Matt chimed in, his southern drawl thicker than anyone else’s was. “The poor thangs—they must be scared half to death.” Matt’s accent hadn’t been so strong a few years ago; his family was from Boston after all. Shane reckoned he was embarrassed by how smart he was and was trying to dumb himself down to fit in.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Tracy persisted. “We already have a lot of kids to watch over. And what if the supplies run out?”

  “Come on,” Kelly scolded. “We’ll be at the military base before morning. We can bring them with us and find someone to take care of them there.”

  “I say we leave them some food and blankets,” Tracy said, acting like she didn’t hear Kelly. “We can send help for them once we get to the base.”

  “You sound so insensitive,” Laura scolded.

  “We ain’t leaving them here,” Shane cut in. Shielding his eyes against the sprinkling rain with his hand, he glared at the arguing girls under it. “I’m going to talk to them.”

  Not waiting for a response, he walked toward the kids. There were about twenty of them, all of elementary school age. They squinted, blinded by the bright light from the bus’ headlamps. Huddling closer together as he approached, they seemed to fear he’d raise his crossbow and fire at them.

  “It’s alright,” Shane said in his gentlest voice, stopping fifteen feet away and slinging his crossbow behind him. “We mean you no harm.”

  He could see a few of them had tears on their cheeks, and they all wore ghostly expressions, like they’d been through hell. The warm August rain drenched their clothing.

  Looking at the tallest boy in the group, Shane asked, “What happened here? Is everyone okay?”

  The boy looked back at him, his face blank as if he didn’t understand English. He had a scratch across his forehead, and a chubby kid next to him held a wadded shirt to his nose.

  “It was the animals,” a little girl who looked to be about seven piped up. “Horses ran in front of the bus and made us crash. Then rats killed Father Jacobs.” She blinked at Shane with big, innocent, brown eyes, like she’d just told him she’d lost her favorite dolly and wanted him to help her find it.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Shane said softly. It sounded terribly insufficient. He shifted his weight, frustrated in an attempt come up with words to comfort the battered children.

  “Y’all should come with us now.”

  “Where you going?” the outgoing little girl asked.

  “Somewhere safe,” Shane replied, walking forward and extending his hand to her.

  “I wanna go home,” she said, taking it and looking up at him. “I want my mama and daddy.” Her voice broke, and tears puddled in her eyes.

  “We’re gonna get some help,” Shane promised, his voice faltering. He looked around at the group of kids, trying to make eye contact with each of them in hopes he could offer a measure of reassurance.

  Several nodded. Shane turned around and started walking back to the buses. He looked over his shoulder after a few steps and saw the kids rising to their feet and following him. Their heads hung low, and the rain plastered their hair and clothes so they looked like half-drowned kittens.

  Tracy scowled, expressing her disapproval at taking on more passengers. Shane acted like he didn’t notice, turning around at the front of the first bus and dividing the kids into two groups.

  “Kelly, will you please help this group onto our bus?” he asked. “The rest will ride with you, Tracy.”

  He gave Tracy a firm look, expecting her to challenge him again. Surprisingly, she kept quiet and guided her group into her bus. Then Aaron and Steve stood guard as several of the passengers stepped into the trees alongside the freeway and relieved themselves.

  “We should do a head count,” Laura said. She held a crossbow, looking a bit like a petite comic book heroine with her jet-black hair and black shirt and pants. She had wiped her dark makeup off, rendering her face younger than usual. “It’s getting hard to keep track of all these kids.”

  “Good call,” Shane replied.

  Laura turned and entered Tracy’s bus, then came out after a couple of minutes and got on Shane’s bus. He climbed into the driver seat, and she settled in the first row with Kelly.

  “Seventy-eight in all,” Laura reported.

  “Wow, that’s a lot of kids,” Kelly mused.

  The responsibility to ensure the kids’ safety weighed heavy on Shane, making him wish Laura had k
ept the number to herself. Why did he feel liable for the kids in the first place? He hadn’t volunteered to be anyone’s leader—yet it seemed they forced him into the role. Shane couldn’t wait to find some adults and be relieved of the burden.

  “Let’s just pray we get some help at the military base,” he said. “Or else we’re going to need a whole lot more supplies.”

  Shane watched Tracy ease her school bus filled with kids down into the median to get around the overturned church bus. When she turned it to drive back up on the highway, the tires spun in the wet grass, and the rear of the bus slid deeper into the ditch at the center of the median. She gunned it, and the diesel roared, but the tires sank in the mud. Shane put his bus in park and rushed out, waving his hands.

  “Stop, you’re gonna bury it worse,” he yelled.

  Tracy let off the accelerator and opened the folding door of her bus. “Too much damn weight,” she growled. Her angry voice and crinkled brow made it clear she wasn’t happy about Shane demanding they take on the extra kids. “Everyone off,” she shouted.

  The kids filed out in a hurry, seeming nervous that Tracy would snatch them up and throw them out by force if they didn’t move fast enough. Once her bus was empty, she tried to drive out of the median again, but all she managed to do was throw mud twenty feet into the air and slide deeper into the wet muck.

  “We’ll have to tow it,” Matt said. He and most of the dreary-faced kids had climbed out of the other buses to watch the spectacle.

  “First let’s get this wreck out of the way so we can pull her from the front,” Shane said, eyeing the wreckage. “We’ll have to push it with one of ours.”

  “I got it,” Steve volunteered, rushing to the supply bus.

  “Back into it, so you don’t damage anything important,” Aaron called after him.

  Steve waved his hand in acknowledgment. With more zeal than necessary, he turned his bus around and backed into the rear of the church bus. The overturned bus screeched, throwing sparks when Steve pushed it across the asphalt. Shane worried they might attract some less-than-friendly guests with the ruckus, hoping they could get back on the road as quickly as possible. Once the church bus spun out of the way, Steve turned his bus around, and Shane and Matt rushed in and connected it to Tracy’s with a thick chain they’d picked up at the hardware store.

  “Ease it forward, Steve,” Aaron said.

  Either Steve didn’t hear or his excitement got the best of him, because he gunned it and his bus lurched forward, causing the chain to go taut and bounce like a giant guitar string.

  “Go easy, damn it,” Shane yelled. Steve gave him a “oops” look, and he glared a warning in return. “Y’all need to get back,” Shane told all the kids who stood watching the show, spreading his arms and herding them to a safer distance.

  The chain creaked as Steve advanced. Tracy’s bus climbed up the muddy slope toward the road, and Shane felt certain they’d get it out of the ditch without a problem. The front tires made it onto the asphalt, and a loud popping sound like a shotgun going off startled Shane. Matt screamed. Shane spun around and saw him collapse.

  The tense chain had broken loose from Steve’s bumper and whipped across the road, clanging when it smacked against the side of Tracy’s bus. After a stunned instant, Shane realized the chain had hit Matt. He ran over and saw the bloody mess that used to be Matt’s left leg.

  Matt wailed in agony, putting his hands over his injury, like he hoped to push the protruding bone fragments and ground meat back together. The flailing chain had hit his thigh, and only a narrow string of flesh seemed to be keeping the leg from falling completely off. Blood spurted from the wound, forming a puddle on the wet asphalt.

  Shane cursed and fell to his knees next to Matt, wanting to help him. He didn’t have a clue where to start.

  “Now try to lie still,” he said with a shaky voice, holding Matt’s shoulders to steady him.

  “Get some first aid kits, some blankets, and an arrow, Aaron,” Tracy shouted, then squatted on the other side of Matt. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised, sounding like she’d seen this sort of injury a thousand times before. Shane knew she must be wrong—Matt had lost more blood than he thought could be in a person.

  Tracy took off her canvas belt and tied it around what remained of the top of Matt’s thigh. Aaron came running with the supplies, and Tracy took the arrow and shoved it under the belt.

  “Twist this, Shane,” she ordered, showing him how to turn the arrow to tighten the belt.

  Squatting next to her, Shane took hold of the arrow and turned it. The metallic smell of Matt’s blood and the warm sticky feel of it on his hands made Shane want to vomit, but he bit the inside of his cheek and kept turning the arrow around and around.

  “It’s got to be really tight to stop the bleeding,” Tracy said. She sounded way too cool for the situation, but her calmness made Shane believe everything might be all right if he just did what she told him.

  Matt stopped screaming, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out.

  “Wake up, Matt,” Tracy yelled, slapping his face. “You have to stay awake.”

  Matt didn’t respond. Shane tightened the tourniquet until it made the stub of Matt’s thigh look like the tapered end of a sausage before the bleeding finally stopped. Tracy leaned down and put her ear to Matt’s mouth.

  “He’s still breathing,” she said, calm as ever. Opening the first aid kit, she grabbed a bottle of brownish-red antiseptic and poured it on Matt’s wound.

  “What the hell are we going to do about his leg?” Steve asked, hysterical. “It looks like it’s been cut nearly clean off.”

  “There ain’t nothing we can do,” Tracy replied, sounding aggravated by the question. “The tourniquet has ruined any chance of saving it.”

  “We ain’t gonna cut it off!” Steve stumbled back, his damp face a greenish hue in the light from the bus’ headlamps.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Tracy replied, glaring at the six-foot-tall linebacker like it should be obvious. “Aaron, give me your hunting knife.”

  Aaron grabbed the handle of the knife hanging from his belt. He took a step back, looking at Tracy with wide, freaked-out eyes. Shane was dumbfounded, unable to say anything as he looked at his friends, his hands still holding the bloody arrow. Their voices sounded muffled and it was hard to breathe, like he was wearing a glass jar over his head.

  “Give me the damn knife,” Tracy ordered. “There’s no other way. If we don’t take his leg, he’s going to get an infection and die.”

  “How the hell do you know?” Aaron shouted. “You ain’t no doctor.”

  “Yeah? It don’t take a genius to see it’s gotta go. It’s literally hanging on by a thread,” she replied, holding her hand out for the knife. “And my mom was a vet, so I know a hell of a lot more than you. Now give it to me.”

  Shane didn’t like the idea either, but it seemed pretty clear the leg was gone. “We’ll take it with us, maybe they can reattach it at the hospital,” he mumbled through a mouthful of bile.

  With a horrified look on his pale face, Aaron stared at Shane. He tried to return his tall, skinny friend’s sickened gaze with a resolute expression, unable to say anything else to support Tracy’s dreadful plan. After a moment, a wild-eyed Aaron wiped the corner of his mouth and tugged his knife out of its sheath, handing it to Tracy.

  She washed the blade with the antiseptic and held it above the wound. Shane stopped breathing and could tell everyone around him had done the same. Tracy inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly between pursed lips. She hesitated, glancing up at Shane. He discerned a smidgen of terror in her otherwise-stoic expression. Returning her attention to the wound, she lowered the blade and severed the small piece of meat still connecting Matt’s leg to his thigh with one clean slice, like a butcher cleaving a cow into steaks.

  Aaron turned and ran a few feet away, then spewed his last meal with loud and violent convulsions. Shane couldn’t move, couldn’t t
ake his eyes off Matt’s severed leg.

  Aaron had slaughtered a lot of deer in his life, and Shane didn’t expect him to get so ill. But then again, it didn’t look like a deer leg lying there on the asphalt—it looked like Matt’s leg, wrapped in bloody denim and wearing his left cowboy boot.

  Still green in the face, Steve helped Shane lift Matt off the wet highway and carry him to the bus. Matt was lighter than Shane expected, but then he realized a leg must weigh a lot and grew dizzy from the thought. Tracy followed behind them with the dismembered part under her arm, like she was carrying a rolled-up rug or something. Shane couldn’t believe how calm she remained. He’d always thought her quiet and a little nerdy, never imagining this serious girl from school could turn out to be tougher than anyone he’d ever known.

  “Lay him on the first seat,” Tracy called after Shane and Steve once they climbed into the bus. “And keep him warm.”

  Shane and Steve carefully lowered the unconscious boy onto a blanket Kelly rolled out. Then she covered him with more blankets. Rushing down the steps and onto the freeway, Shane gasped for air and leaned back against the bus, trying not to pass out.

  “You okay?” Tracy asked coolly, closing the lid on a long, blue cooler near the door of the supply bus.

  “Yeah,” Shane lied.

  “Matt’s leg is in here, on ice,” she said, patting the cooler. “If we can get to the army base soon enough, maybe they can save it.” She sounded skeptical.

  “Good,” he replied, wanting to quit talking about the damn leg.

  He stared out into the dark forest, wishing he could run into the trees and find a quiet place to sit, a place where he could get away from everyone. He wanted to pretend none of this had happened, if only for a few minutes until his mind could clear.

  Aaron stumbled out of the darkness, hunched over so much it made Shane taller than him for once. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and looked at Shane with teary, bloodshot eyes.