by N. W. Harris
“You’re going to have to drive my bus,” Tracy said to Aaron, her tone all business and no sympathy. “I’m riding with Shane to look after Matt.”
Shane turned to Steve. He cleared his throat and tried to show a semblance of the calm confidence Tracy managed with such ease. “You should lead the way in the supply bus. It’ll be better to keep our passengers in the rear in case we run into trouble.”
After giving a feeble nod, Aaron staggered over and climbed into Tracy’s bus. The rear tires were still fifteen feet into the median, but out of the deepest part. Looking like a zombie, Aaron leaned over the steering wheel and stared out of the windshield, his face slack with shock. He started the bus and shifted it in gear. The rear tires spun, spitting gravel and mud into the ditch, but the bus moved forward and climbed onto the asphalt. Even in his shocked state, Shane trusted Aaron was a better driver than Tracy was. Aaron had hung out at the mechanic shop since they were both little, and they’d raced go-carts on the North Georgia circuit until they were fourteen. Few kids in the school had as much time behind the wheel as Shane and Aaron did.
“Matt will be okay,” Kelly announced. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. She climbed out of the bus holding new shirts and shorts from the hardware store and a gallon of water in her other hand. “He’s sleeping now.”
“Probably better if he’s asleep,” Shane replied, fearing Matt might be dying. “He’d be in a lot of pain if he were awake.”
“Wash up with this,” she held out the gallon of water, “and put these on.” After setting the water and clothes on the bottom step, she turned and climbed back up into the bus.
Beyond caring that everyone might see him, Shane stripped off his blood-soaked clothing, down to his underwear, and rinsed with the water before passing the jug to Steve. The color returned to the big guy’s face, but he still looked like death. After they got dressed in fresh clothes, Steve walked down the freeway with his head hung low and entered the supply bus.
Shane noticed the children who had exited the buses staring at him with horrified expressions on their faces. In the midst of all that had gone on, he’d forgotten about them. The numbness he’d experienced after his aunt’s death set its teeth in again, and he stood taller. Images swirling in his head of his dead family and of Matt’s blood squirting out of the hilt of his butchered leg blurred and then vanished, his mind becoming dark and empty. He remembered how much it frightened him when the blankness came after his aunt died. Now it felt like a cheap, wool blanket pulled around him, warm and almost comforting, but also scratchy enough to remind him it couldn’t be right—that if he embraced the numbness long enough, he’d likely snap and go mad.
“Load up,” he shouted at the gaping, young faces, annoyed how they looked at him like he had all the answers.
The kids blinked, as if waking from deep sleep. They focused on Shane for an instant longer, and then calmness flowed across their faces, his gruff instructions saving them from catatonia. Splitting into two groups, half marched over and climbed into Aaron’s bus, and the rest walked past Shane, climbing onto his bus.
After the last kid was loaded, Shane climbed aboard and plopped in the driver’s seat, ensuring his eyes didn’t fall on Matt as he did. The metallic smell of blood permeated the air in the bus, sending another wave of bile into Shane’s throat. When he turned the key, his Freightliner’s diesel roared to life, the deep, soothing sound echoing off the dark pine forest lining the freeway. The smell of exhaust and the sounds, from a diesel or gas engine, had always been a comfort to him. Even though it reminded him his father was dead, he allowed the grumbling diesel to relax him once again. Steve’s supply bus lurched forward, and he led the way, heading south. Shane pulled past Aaron’s bus, taking up the second position in the small convoy.
“Maybe we should use this antibiotic ointment on the bandages before we put them on,” he heard Kelly say.
He glanced up into the rearview mirror, getting a snapshot of his growing human cargo. The kids sat two in each seat, all wearing the same somber expression, looking like their youthful souls were sucked out of them and they’d never smile again. Tracy held a stack of gauze over Matt, with Kelly squeezing out little tubes of antibiotic ointment from the first aid kits onto them. Kelly’s long hair was pulled up into a sloppy ponytail. Looking at her made a bit of the foggy numbness draw back. He had to get her to safety, if no one else. She was his focal point.
Further south, the road got more cluttered with wrecked cars. By the time they reached the exit leading into Canton, the buses slowed to a crawl. Steve used the supply bus like a bulldozer, pushing cars out of the way to clear a path through which they could drive. Shane kept his bus ten feet behind Steve’s, so he couldn’t see the road just in front of him. But the big vehicle rocked over something soft once in a while, giving him a sickening reminder that the dark road beneath his tires had the corpses of adults and animals strewn across it.
“How are you doing?” Kelly asked.
Shane jerked, having almost forgotten a busload of people sat behind him. Kelly slipped up next to him without him noticing, perched on the top of the steps, rubbing her eyes like she’d just woken up.
He opened his mouth to answer, but his parched throat couldn’t make a sound. Kelly’s brow rose in understanding. She reached back under the first row of seats and pulled out a soda. Popping it open, she held it in front of him. Grateful, he latched onto the drink, draining half of it in three gulps. The carbonation soothed his throat, and the sugar and caffeine seemed to flow straight into his brain, waking him up.
“Thanks,” he grunted, his nose tickling. “I’ll live.”
“Sun’s coming up,” Kelly mused with a hopeful tone, pointing out the open window on Shane’s left side.
“Yeah it is,” he replied and took another gulp of the cola.
She stood next to him in silence, slipping pieces of a granola bar into his mouth so he could keep his hands on the steering wheel. He didn’t feel hungry and wouldn’t have eaten if it weren’t for Kelly. His last meal had been the meager jelly and peanut butter sandwich the night before, and he’d barfed most of that up, so he knew his stomach was empty.
“How’s your little sister?” Shane asked, suddenly hating the silence.
“Asleep,” Kelly replied. “She’s doing better than I am.” She fed him the next bite of his breakfast. “I think she’s figured out that things aren’t good. We had a long cry together, and then she started consoling me, telling me everything would be alright. I swear, it’s like she’s an old soul. So much wiser than me.”
“I can see that about her.” Shane twisted his head to the right and then left, trying to relieve the tension built up in his neck from driving all night.
The sky went from black to dark green. They crept across a tall bridge, and a loud screech of rubber sliding across the highway filled the hot and humid morning air as Steve pushed another car out of the way. Shane wondered absently how busted up the supply bus’ front end was. He worried it might break down before they made it to the military base.
Kelly crumpled the empty granola bar wrapper and shoved it into her pocket. Sitting down on the top step, she leaned back against the partition separating the front right seat from the exit. Instead of the sky turning to a lighter blue with the rising sun, it became the unnerving lime green color it had been the day before, with ominous, thick clouds hanging low overhead.
“At least the wind is gone and the rain stopped,” Shane said, looking up at the heavens and worrying about what weather might be in store for them today.
Three quarters of the way across the bridge, the supply bus in front of Shane came to a halt.
“There’s another bunch of kids up ahead,” Steve’s tired voice chirped through the CB radio. “They look pretty rough.”
Tracy stepped forward between Shane and Kelly, snatched the radio handset out of its cradle, and spoke into it. “We’ve got to drive by this time.”
She glanced at Shane, her steely eyes saying, Don’t be so dumb as to take on more passengers.
After a long pause, Steve’s agitated response came, “Well, what the hell do you want me to do?”
It was clear he wasn’t taking orders from Tracy—he waited for Shane to decide. Shane’s questioning gaze fell to Kelly.
“I think he’s talking to you,” she said, pointing at the radio.
Wondering why the hell he had to be the boss, he took the handset from Tracy and raised it to his mouth. “She’s right,” he said pensively. “We have to get some help for Matt.” He released the talk button and put the handset back in its holder.
The sense he may have just condemned a bunch of innocent kids to death nurtured a thick lump in the back of his throat. But why? Did he really think the kids in these buses, who followed him blindly and looked to him at every crisis, were any better off than those out on the street?
The supply bus grumbled and rolled forward. Shane glanced down at Kelly. She returned a blank expression. Evidently, his answer to Steve wasn’t so horrible, or she’d just go along with anything he said at this point.
“It doesn’t look good down there,” Steve’s weary voice reported over the radio.
Steve steered his bus across to the right side of the road to get around a car flipped over onto its roof, and Shane could see what he was talking about. The bridge towered above the trees, allowing a clear view of the suburbs and city they drove toward. His thread of hope that Atlanta was unscathed vanished. Hundreds of bent columns of thick, black smoke climbed into the green clouds from every part of the city. Atlanta loomed ominous and crippled—a battlefield littered with destruction and rot, where in all likelihood the dead far outnumbered the living. It looked like Sherman had risen from his grave and marched through the grand old city once again, intent on burning everything to the ground.
“It’s a war zone,” Aaron’s stunned voice came from the CB radio. Driving the passenger bus behind Shane, he hadn’t spoken since Matt’s injury.
“At least we don’t have to drive far in,” Tracy said. “The military base is just ahead.”
A loud boom came from the south.
“I bet that’s the army there,” Tracy said, leaning over the front seat in excited anticipation and squinting her eyes as she looked through the windshield. “That’s probably them fighting back.”
“At least I don’t see any animals around,” Kelly commented. “Maybe they’re winning.”
At the lower end of the bridge, they drove past the kids Steve reported seeing from the top. The long line of boys and girls looked fresh from a holocaust, their faces and clothes grimy and covered in soot. Clean tracks striped their blackened cheeks from the constant flow of tears. Their heads hung solemn and low, most not seeming to notice the buses creeping by. A tall, skinny boy raised his gaze and contemplated Shane through the bus windshield. A massive, black bruise surrounded his eye and a trail of dried blood ran down his chin from a busted lip. The kid shook his head, as if to tell Shane to turn back, that they were going the wrong way.
“Why are they walking away from the city?” Shane asked no one in particular.
“They don’t look like they’re intentionally heading in any direction at all,” Tracy answered. “I think they’re just wandering.”
Shane wasn’t convinced. The line of kids resembled refugees he’d seen on the news, fleeing war-torn areas so far from Georgia that they never seemed real. His instincts screamed for him to turn the bus around and get as far away from Atlanta as possible.
“What if things are worse down here?” Kelly expressed his concern. “What if we run into more boys like those at the gym?”
“We got weapons,” Tracy dismissed, seeming annoyed by Shane and Kelly’s questions. She grabbed the CB radio handset and raised it to her mouth, “Take the next left, Steve.”
The buses rolled past concrete barricades and signs warning they approached the entrance to the military base. Hope surged in Shane. Soon they’d be safe, protected by the military. Soon these kids would be out of his charge and someone else could worry about them.
“That’s odd,” Tracy said under her breath, her confidence faltering for the first time. “There should be a gate guard.”
The red-and-white striped gate was in the vertical position, open and allowing them to enter the base. Not a living soul was in sight. Driving past, Shane peered into the guardhouse, fearing he’d see a soldier dead inside, ripped to shreds by animals or insects. It was empty. Another boom echoed across the runway in front of them loud enough to rattle the windows on the bus. Shane worried they might get hit by a stray mortar, but they’d come this far, and the sounds of fighting promised at least a few adults still lived.
Steve pulled his bus into a small lot beyond the gate, and Shane followed. Once they parked, Steve, Aaron, Shane, and Kelly climbed out and looked in the direction from which the boom came. Shane noticed the others carried their crossbows and compound bows out of the buses with them, and then realized he had his weapon in hand as well. He’d grabbed it automatically, without even thinking about it, and he reckoned he’d feel naked without it. How dramatically changed he was from the guy who woke up yesterday morning, who was nervous around guns and couldn’t stand the idea of shooting anything.
“Something’s going on beyond those trees,” Aaron said, pointing at a thick grove of pines growing alongside the runway.
“Obviously,” Tracy replied, condescending.
The distant rat-tat of gunfire came from the same direction.
“This area is certainly deserted,” Steve said, using the scope of a crossbow to scan the base.
“Let’s move the buses over to that hangar.” Tracy pointed at a green, metal building a quarter of a mile down the road leading past the end of a runway. “It seems quiet enough. Then a few of us can sneak through those woods and see what all the noise is about.”
“Or we could just load up and get out of here,” Kelly suggested, stepping closer to Shane. “I’m not so sure we’re any safer here than in Leeville.”
“We didn’t come all this way to leave without any answers, did we?” Tracy glanced from Kelly to Steve and Aaron, and then stopped with her stern and inquisitive eyes on Shane.
“Let’s check it out,” Shane agreed, deflated by the idea he was not to be relieved of his involuntary command any time soon.
He glanced at Kelly, hoping he hadn’t offended her by siding with Tracy. She looked at him with trusting eyes, and gave a slight nod. For some reason, though he didn’t particularly like it, they’d made him the leader. That being the case, he decided he’d do whatever it took to keep them from looking like the beaten-down kids they’d passed crossing the bridge.
“Maybe we can find more supplies here,” Aaron said, walking toward his bus. “Maybe even some guns.”
“Yeah, I’d feel a whole lot better with an M-16 instead of this dumb crossbow,” Tracy said, slinging the weapon over her shoulder.
They climbed into their buses and drove down the road to the massive hangar at the other side of the runway. Tracy jumped out as soon as Shane brought his bus to a stop. With her crossbow aimed and ready, she slipped through a small, metal door hanging open before Shane had a chance to stop her. He respected her bravery but wanted to send Steve and Aaron in with her in case she ran into trouble. Moments later, the large hangar doors opened wide enough for the buses to drive inside, and Tracy stepped out and waved for them to enter. Shane drove his bus in behind Steve’s. Inside the cavernous, metal building, the diesels’ grumbles were amplified to a roar.
After killing his engine and setting the brake, Shane climbed out. Aaron and Steve shut down the other two buses, and they swept through the hanger ghostly quiet. It felt like they trespassed in a massive tomb.
“Anyone alive in here?” he asked, scanning the hanger. Translucent panels in the metal roof let daylight filter in, illuminating three fighter jets and an attack helicopter.
“Afra
id not,” Tracy replied.
“Do me a favor,” he said, giving her his sternest look.
“Yeah?” Tracy spun on her heel and studied him with her stoic, gray eyes.
“Don’t take off and run into any more buildings by yourself like that,” he replied, trying to convey he didn’t want to argue the point. “I know you’re a badass, but we can’t afford to lose you.”
Tracy stared at him, as if formulating a retaliation. To Shane’s surprise, she gave a slight grin and turned to investigate the hangar.
“Would you look at these babies?” Steve walked toward one of the fighter jets with wide eyes.
“It’s odd that they’re in here,” Tracy said, sounding unimpressed. “Seems like they should be out, flying around and trying to protect people from the animals.”
“Maybe the animals attacked the base, and the soldiers didn’t have a chance to do anything but try and defend themselves,” Shane replied, walking over by Steve and looking up at the fighter jet. On any other occasion, he would have been in awe of the vicious plane. But now, he was too worn out and depressed by all the death he’d seen to care.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Aaron announced. “We have to sneak over and see what they’re shooting at.”
“I’ll take that as you volunteering,” Tracy said, climbing onto Shane’s bus and coming out with an extra quiver of bolts for her crossbow.
“Everyone else should stay here and protect the kids.” She pointed at the buses. “We don’t want to leave them alone again after what happened at the gym.”
“We have weapons now. What happened at the gym will never happen again,” Laura said, a hint of defensiveness in her tone. She sat down on the bottom step of the bus and pulled her black hair into a ponytail. “What about Matt?”
“What about him?” Tracy replied nonchalantly. “I’ve done all I can—if he lives, he lives, and if not, that’s just the reality of the shit we’re in. Isn’t it?”
