Poop chute. Chuckles bubbled out his mouth.
Footfalls crunched on the gravel behind him. A dog barked. Bullets whizzed by.
He covered his head with his free hand. Why had he been laughing? People were trying to kill him. People were dying.
“Laughter is one of your best survival tools. Now, you know where the enemy is positioned.” Henry jerked his head to the right. “You know where your safe zone is. Now what do you need to do?”
Another round and the doll on the bench spasmed.
He flinched. Please, God, don’t let her fall. God what if she fell on him. Her brain could gush out and splatter him.
“Manny. What do you need to do now?”
She’s just a doll. It’s just a doll. He drew in a deep breath to the count of four. “Survive?”
“Too broad. Think smaller. Something in this truck.”
Something in the truck. His thoughts spun. Some— “The niños!”
“Exactly.” Instead of gripping his wrist, Henry patted it. “Now, can you see them?”
Eying the side, he rose on his hands and knees in a half push-up. In the dim interior, he spied Connie’s white hair. Her red cane lay folded on the bench behind her. Henry’s wife, Mildred’s bright red bun settled like a cherry on a sea of brown. He scanned the mass of curved backs and bowed heads. A soldier crouched near the front moving back and forth, a red cross marked his metal helmet. Manny looked for the twin’s blond hair, his sister’s shorn black locks, or his brother’s Diamondback’s cap.
“I don’t see them.” Fear tattooed his heart, changing its rhythm to a primitive beat. Where were they? Where could they have gone? Oh God! What if they’d been shot and lay bleeding out under the people.
Henry grabbed his hand and slammed his knuckles against the floor. “Stay with me.”
Pain swept aside the fog of fear. Dropping back down, he stared at the old man. Blood beaded on a cut on his hand. Outside, the time between shots blurred into one. Someone screamed. Then another. More footsteps sounded at the rear of the truck. The soldiers were advancing.
“You know where the niños are. Close your eyes.”
Manny squeezed them shut. But his ears kept feeding him information. The crunch of gravel. The rumble of engines. The waves of ragged breathing.
“Picture the interior. The way it’s been for the last two hours.” Wheelchair Henry’s voice remained monotone. “The landmarks haven’t changed. The Doc’s niece is still up front on a stretcher near an IV on a pole. A tent is still next to you.”
As if conjured by his words, Manny assembled the images. An ancient man with an oxygen tank sat next to the sick girl. An angry kid inspected his bag of arrows with jerky motions. Two white-haired old women in matching jumpsuits had read books with half-naked men on their covers.
“Do you see the niños?”
His memory panned down. They’d sat in the cramped center of the floor. The twins had colored apples on a page with a big letter ‘A’. Blind Connie had cradled his sister while Lucia read Green Eggs and Ham. Twirling his ball cap, his brother guessed at the multiplication facts when Henry’s wife flashed the cards. “Yes. I see them.”
As they had been. But when he’d looked up, they hadn’t been there. He’d seen Connie and Mildred…
“Were their heads above or below the protective sides when you last saw them?”
He rolled back the memory when he opened his eyes. “Below. They were below.”
Henry patted his hand. “Good. Now, if you had gotten up, where would you have been?”
With one last shout, the guns fell silent.
He glanced right and his vision slammed into the dead body. It wasn’t a doll but a girl. Not much older than his sister.
“Manny.” Wheelchair Henry snapped his fingers.
What? He jerked his attention away from the girl, er, doll. He grasped onto the older man’s question. “Um, I would have been above.”
“You would have gotten shot for no reason.” Wheelchair Henry grabbed the bench and pulled himself up a little higher. “And the niños would have been without their protector.”
The medic pressed bloody fingers against his earpiece and looked at them over his shoulder. “Everyone stay down. There’s still a few trigger happy yahoos that need to be rounded up.”
He sucked cold air over his teeth. “I panicked.”
How could he have been so stupid?
“You acted better than most untrained folks.” Henry lowered himself back to the floor. “Actually many folks don’t act at all. They just stay there like dolls waiting to be posed.”
He refused to look at her again.
“You’ll do better next time. I just taught you the steps to survive.”
Sure he might be alive, but all he did was lay there. The soldiers did the work. “You did?”
“Yep.” Wheelchair Henry picked up a Skittle. “The first part, stopping, that’s instinctual. Everyone freezes when the world turns upside down.”
Manny nodded. He had frozen like a chicken on the chopping block. “But then I thought of the niños and tried to reach them.”
“Thinking of someone else snaps you out of the freezing real quick. But you skipped steps two through four and rushed right into five—the action part.”
Cold washed over his skin. That one thing… “That almost got me killed.”
“Acting is good. It’ll save your life.” Wheelchair Henry rolled the candy between his fingers. “But you have to take the time to get there.”
“Time?” In a gunfight? Was the old man crazy? No one had that kind of time when bullets started flying.
“In survival situations, the brain will process everything at once. It will seem like times slows down. You’ve just learned how to process all that information.” Wheelchair Henry palmed the candy and marked each point with a finger. “Stop. Observe. Think. Plan. Act.”
He replayed what he’d done inside his head. “I didn’t plan.”
“No need to in this case. The niños were safe.” Wheelchair Henry wiped the Skittle on his flannel shirt. “A word of caution about plans though.”
He popped the Skittle in his mouth and chewed.
It had been lemon yellow. He eyed the floor. Purple. Bleah. Green. He reached for the treat.
Wheelchair Henry grabbed it first, bounced it against his palm.
He watched it jump up and down before dismissing it. The old man could eat the dirty one. Somewhere he had a half-full package. “What about plans?”
“Take ‘em out for a spin but don’t marry ‘em. You’ve got to be able to kick ‘em to the curb when they start running around on you.”
He nodded. Wheelchair Henry had deliberately eaten his favorite favors to teach him a lesson. “I won’t forget. Stop, observe, think, plan and act.”
The medic stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. “All clear. You can move back to your seats now and I’ll be around to check your injuries.”
“Good.” Wheelchair Henry offered him the candy.
Manny waved it away. “No, thanks.”
“Green’s my favorite.” He tucked it into his pocket and patted it. “Now help me up.”
Help him? Cold snaked down his spine. Had the old man been shot? Or did the fall break a bone?
“Relax. I’m fine.” Wheelchair Henry thrust out his hand. “Helping each other is what will keep us alive.” He jerked his head to the three dolls posed on the bench. “Touching another human being, laughing with them, gives us the strength and courage to live despite a broken body. Those who look only after themselves, they merely survive and not usually for long.”
Crawling over the folded tent, Manny wrapped both hands around the man’s wrists. Muscles burned across his back as he pulled him into a sitting position. The pain was good. He felt good. Alive.
Around him, the mass on the floor began shifting and sorting itself into individuals. Connie and Mildred unfolded, revealing his brother and sister underneath. An Asian man an
d a woman with the face of a dried apple moved aside to free the five-year-old twins. Lucia began gathering crayons. José smoothed the coloring books pages. None of them were hurt. None. Whispers bubbled from the mass as people helped each other.
“The niños are your reason for being, for going on when so many give up.” Henry straightened his wasted legs.
Manny righted the wheelchair. He had done things he never thought he would to keep them alive. “Sometimes I couldn’t think straight, then I’d get this image of them in my head, and my path was clear.”
The surly teenage boy set his bag of arrows on the seat and picked his way forward. “You need help?”
“Sure.” Henry crooked his arms, holding them up like a bird preparing to take flight. “Between the two of you, you should be able lift this old bag of bones.”
He took the offered arm. Sinew played like molten steel against his palm.
“Bend your knees now,” Henry coached. “Wouldn’t want you hurting your back, you’re gonna have to be our eyes and ears. Worse things are still to come.”
Worse? They’d just been shot at. People had died. And people were still dying of this anthrax thing going around. And the dog had run off.
“We can handle it.” Henry winked at him. “Together.”
Calm blanketed him, stilled his racing thoughts. Stop. Observe. Think. Plan. Act. He could do it. Jose laughed. The noise dispelled some of the tension. He would do it. No, they would do it. Him. Wheelchair Henry. The soldiers. Even the surly kid.
Together, they would survive whatever came their way.
Thunder boomed. The vibration traveled through the truck, shaking the foundation he stood on.
Shit. What if God took that as a challenge?
Chapter Six
“The explosion could have another explanation.” Audra tasted the lie as the words left her mouth. The bullet holes and blood art on the side of the busses drew her attention.
Eddie’s snort sounded hollow in his respirator. “Didn’t you learn anything from Casa Grande?”
She straightened. The ambush at Casa Grande wasn’t her fault. She’d told them not to stop for hitchhikers. God, why had she listened to her mother? Why had she taken charge? For a teacher, she seemed incapable of learning.
On her right, Tina set her Louisville Slugger on her shoulder. Her blue-black pony tail wiggled down the back of her AC/DC tee shirt and scabby knees peered from under her shorts. “She told us to keep going. If we’d stopped like you wanted, we’d have been executed on the side of the road like the others.”
Aiming his shotgun at the ground, Eddie towered over the petite Asian girl. “My brother was on that bus! We could—”
“That is enough.” Audra’s soft word snapped like a bear trap, cutting off the argument. “We have only a few weapons and barely any ammunition. We would have been slaughtered just like bus four-five.”
Eddie swiped at his damp eyes. “My brother was fourteen. My responsibility.”
And sweet, with a smile that practically tucked the corners of his mouth into his ears. She sucked air into her lungs but the constriction didn’t ease.
“I knew everyone on that bus.” Jacob. Mary. Roddy. She’d nursed them all back to health. Then she’d pressed the gas down while they lined up on the side of the road, heard the bang of the guns, and watched them fall. “Every one. Every age.”
Her voice cracked at the end and she squeezed her eyes shut. Go away. Just go away for a minute or ten. Why couldn’t she have quit last year? A montage of faces played on her lids. If she’d broken her teaching contract, she would see them as they had been: annoying, condescending and alive.
Alive forever.
“Audra,” her mother snapped. “We’re waiting.”
She scrubbed a hand down her face then stared at her mother. Not even the wind dared free a strand of hair from Jacqueline’s tidy bun. The older Silvestre didn’t carry a weapon—good manners and breeding apparently could stop anything. Good manners and breeding meant Audra had to lead.
“You two stand guard here.” She pointed to her mom and Tina, then at the asphalt. “We’ll go check out Burgers in a Basket.”
Eddie nodded and raised his shotgun at the glass front of the fast food joint.
“What about me?” Mrs. Rodriguez pounded down the steps and handed Audra her walkie-talkie. White swirled through the black curls on her head. She pulled two machetes from the black belt wrapped around her pink mumu. “Where do you want me?”
Using her flashlight, Audra pointed across the restaurant’s parking lot to the boarded up gas station. Universal emblems of male and female marked the two white closed doors. “Find out if those are serviceable then peek under the boards to see if there’s anything left in the convenience store.”
“Will do.” The machetes sliced the air as she twirled her wrist. “I’ll take Deputy Pecos as backup.”
As if hearing himself mentioned, the man in khaki pants separated from Principal Dunn and waited for the older woman.
Hitching the walkie to her belt loop, Audra opened the line and exhaled slowly. Seven adults outside. Seven. Add the requirement to keep an adult on the bus at all times, and that meant they were down to thirteen total. There had been fifty-seven last night.
Most of them had seemed to be getting better.
What in the world was going on?
Eddie hunched over his weapon and stepped onto the sidewalk surrounding the fast food joint. “Coming?”
Audra swallowed the wad of fear in her throat. “Yes, of course.”
Digging her fingers into the metal casing of the flashlight, she waded through her memories until she dragged her courses on combato self defense to the fore. Smash the assailant upside the head with the flash light. Thrust the heel of her hand into a nose. Rubbery legs carried her to the side entrance behind Eddie.
He tugged on the metal handle. The door moved half an inch; the lock kept it from moving farther. He raised the butt of the gun.
“Don’t!” She grabbed the muzzle and held on, preventing him from hitting the glass. “What if it accidentally goes off?”
He tugged on the weapon. “It won’t.”
How could he know? He had to be shown how to pull the trigger and that had been during Casa Grande when his brother had been executed. “You’ll not only waste shells but you’ll let those bad guys know where we are.”
His hazel eyes narrowed above the respirator. “Then how are we going to get inside, Princess? Say open sesame?”
“You could or we could check the drive-in window.” She jerked her head to the side where the drive through lay. “Since it says it is open twenty-four hours, the window might not have a lock on it.”
“Fine.” He stalked off. His boots pounded the blacktop. “And if that isn’t open?”
“Then we smash it.” Audra hefted her flashlight. Damaging it wouldn’t be a big loss since it was dead. The important thing was that the gun couldn’t discharge and kill someone. Or get them all killed.
His humph swirled around his respirator.
“I’ll let you do the smashing.” That should make him happy and get rid of some of his anger.
“Fine.”
Thousands of words in the English language and Eddie barely used a hundred of them in the six months since she’d met him.
He paused by the window and slapped his palm flat against the glass.
“Wait.” She hustled to his side. “You have the gun. Let me open the window, while you aim.”
He rolled his eyes and stepped aside.
“Oh Princess A.” Tina jogged to the edge of the building.
Audra gritted her teeth. Great, now even her best friend was calling her by that odious name.
Tina tapped her bat on the ground. “Mrs. R says the gas station has four clean toilets but no running water.”
No water. She shuddered. The piles would just keep climbing toward the ceiling. She’d rather use the slops pot. “Do they have tanks?”
&
nbsp; “Yep and they’re full.”
Thank God for small favors. They would get a flush out of each before the tank emptied and they could use the slops to gravity-force some more down. “What about the interior?”
Please, please, let there be batteries.
“Empty but also clean. I guess they didn’t get too far in the reopening plans.”
Her sigh stirred her long bangs. Fudge. “Tell Deputy Pecos and Principal Dunn to begin laying out the dead. Then have bus seven-nine line up to use the facilities. Everyone goes.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” After curtseying, Tina pivoted on the heel of her sneakers.
Audra reached for the window then paused. If the building was cleaned… “Tina?”
She stopped and glanced over her bat. One eyebrow raised.
“Once they enter the building have them check the storeroom. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe we will.” Whistling, Tina jogged back to the group.
Hushed murmurs and giggles floated on the air as the children streamed from bus seventy-nine. Mrs. Rodriguez ushered them in two lines to the bathrooms. Principal Dunn wrestled a wheelbarrow from Mom’s bus while Deputy Pecos cut behind the evacuating bus, heading for the emergency exit.
“Anytime now.” Eddie waved to the window with the shotgun.
“You have a date?” Tucking the flashlight between her thighs, she flattened both palms against the tinted glass.
“Yeah.” He set the stock against his shoulder. “If the toilets are clean, I plan to be the first one to take a shit.”
Nice. Her damp hands slid across the glass; she tightened her grip. The window eased open. Ha! She’d done it. Smiling, she bit back the gloating. Once the window was fully seated, she tucked her head inside. Geometric shadows melted into darkness in the cooking area. A tiled wall prevented her from seeing into the seating area. Stale, greasy air hit her in the face. “Hello?”
Eddie snorted. “You expecting anyone to answer?”
“You never know. Give me a knee.”
“Shouldn’t I go first? I have the gun.”
Was that a serious question? With him, it was hard to tell. She measured the window’s opening with her hands then held her spread hands near his chest. An inch of flesh overlapped each side. “Can you suck it in?”
Redaction: The Meltdown Part II Page 6
