The Last Orphans

by N.W. Harris

  Shane grabbed his aunt’s hand and pulled her along as fast as he could. The dark cloud closed in, and he saw individual insects buzzing ahead of him. He noticed more than hornets in the swarm. He saw several kinds of wasps, yellow jackets, and honeybees as well—like everything with a stinger and wings joined forces to chase them.

  “I’ve been stung!” His aunt screamed and slapped at her head.

  “We can’t slow down,” Shane yelled over the sound of a million tiny wings beating the air.

  She screamed again and flailed her free arm, swatting at the bees. Shane glanced over and saw several of the massive, shiny, black-and-yellow hornets on her chest and neck. A wall of angry bugs towered behind, a giant wave about to crash on top of them. A hot surge of fear prodding him to a sprint, he turned onto the packed, red clay of Granny’s driveway. His aunt tripped and fell, her hand jerking out of his grasp.

  Spinning on his heel, Shane dove down to scoop her up, and the dark cloud of bees engulfed them. It sounded like he’d stuck his head into a jet engine’s intake, and he couldn’t see a thing. He cringed, expecting thousands of stingers to pierce him at once. He felt the heat created by the swarm and could barely hear his aunt screaming in agony as they stung her. Holding his breath to keep from sucking the bugs into his lungs, he reached down and patted the ground. Finding his aunt’s leg, he moved his hands up her body, which felt encased in a writhing fur jacket. A thick layer of bees covered every inch of her skin. Terror turned his blood to ice, but adrenaline spurred him into action. He scooped her up, threw her over his shoulder like a sack of feed, and charged on in the direction in which he guessed Granny’s house lay.

  Leaping free of the deadly cloud just as he made it to the steps of the front porch, Shane gasped for air, rushed up, and pulled open the screen. The door was locked. The swarm closed in on him again, blocking out the light. Shane leaned back and kicked with all his strength. The jamb exploded into splinters, and the door slammed inward. Rushing into the house, he elbowed the door shut behind him. He lowered his aunt to the floor and then used a chair to prop the door closed.

  His aunt rolled back and forth, swatting and wailing. Hundreds of wasps and bees clung to her, their bodies curled up so they could inject their venom. Louder than the noise of her screams, Shane’s pulse banged in his ears, his head seeming to swell. He picked some insects off and stomped on them, but he knew she’d die before he could save her with just his hands. The ones he didn’t manage to squash flew back onto her and sank their stingers in again. Desperate to find a way to help her, he scooped his aunt up and took her into the bathroom. He stood her in the shower, turned the water on, and tried to wash the bees away.

  “Please make them stop!” his aunt yelled, thrashing around so much he had trouble keeping her in the tub.

  “I’m trying, Aunt Lillian,” he replied, his voice choked with terror, “but you have to be still.”

  Shane grabbed a stack of towels from the cabinet and wet them, using the towels to wipe the bees from his aunt’s skin. The shower curtain tangled around his arm and he jerked to break free, bringing the rod down on his head. Cursing, he slung the curtain aside and the rod slammed into the vanity mirror behind him, shattering it into a million shards that fell around his feet. Dripping with sweat from the effort, he used the wet towels to bury the bees in the tub. After an arduous half hour with his aunt shrieking in agony the entire time, Shane managed to free her of the last of the vicious insects. When he wrapped her in Granny’s bathrobe, she collapsed in his arms and he lifted her out of the tub.

  Her face was swelled up as if she’d been beaten with a baseball bat, and her arms looked twice as thick as they should.

  “Shane,” she wheezed, “I can’t see.” Her eyelids were swelled closed, and her bright red face oozed blood from all the holes the stingers created. “My whole body feels like it’s on fire.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said, the words sticking in his throat.

  If she puffed up any more, he feared she might explode. He’d never seen anyone with so many stings, and he couldn’t imagine how she could survive. She needed to see a doctor, and quick, or he knew she would die.

  Tears blurred his vision, and he carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed, trying not to think about Granny dying there just days before. Rushing into the kitchen, he grabbed the phone and dialed 911. It rang and rang, but no one picked up.

  “Please—somebody answer, damn it,” he whispered into the receiver, dizzy with panic. After a minute, he dialed zero to see if he could even get an operator. With no answer still, he went back in to check on his aunt, worried she was running out of time.

  She looked even worse than before. Massive red-and-purple welts, most of them bleeding, covered her face, ears, lips, arms, and every exposed part of her body. She shivered violently, and her breaths came short and harsh.

  “You all right, Aunt Lillian?” He used a finger to clear her wet, black-and-gray hair from her face. Her eyes and smile had always reminded him of his mother, but now she was unrecognizable. She barely looked human.

  She moaned a feeble response. Shane attempted to check the pulse at her wrist and then her neck, as he’d learned to do in CPR class for his part-time summer job as a lifeguard at the county pool. Her lumpy flesh made it impossible to find, and his fingers left sickening indentations in her skin when he removed them.

  Smothered by dread, Shane rushed to the front door and pulled back the curtain hanging over the small, diamond-shaped window. A thick layer of bees obscured the glass, crawling around and searching for a way in. They assailed all the other windows in the house as well, and it grew darker as more joined the swarm. Cold fear rushed through Shane’s veins. Had every bee and wasp in the county converged on Granny’s house?

  A wasp buzzed past his ear and he smacked it to the floor, stomping it with a vengeance. It suddenly occurred to him he hadn’t been stung once. How was it possible? His aunt suffered hundreds, if not thousands, of stings, and he was right next to her, had even held her in his arms and smashed some of the insects against his skin. Something strange and unnatural was happening, but he couldn’t begin to guess what.

  The keys to Granny’s old Ford Ranger hung on the rack by the front door. Shane snatched them and rushed to the garage, praying her beloved truck was inside. The garage was dark and stuffy, the windows blanketed with hornets. A couple made it in and buzzed threateningly around the truck.

  A sharp sigh of relief hissed between his clenched teeth. He’d drive his aunt to the hospital, and they would save her. Latching onto the measure of hope, he ran back to the bedroom in such a hurry that he slammed into a doorjamb, the dishes rattling in the china cabinet on the other side of the wall.

  “Don’t you worry, Aunt Lillian,” he said, rubbing his shoulder and wincing from the sobering pain. He tried to sound encouraging. “We’re gonna get you to a doctor.”

  She didn’t move or make a sound, and he feared her body had lost its fight against the massive dose of venom. Leaning close to her puffy, red face, he could hear her wheezing with each labored breath. She sounded like she wouldn’t make it for much longer—sounded a lot like the cow they’d hit right before it died.

  Shocked by how hot her skin felt, he lifted her in his arms. Shane carried her through the house and into the garage, turning sideways so as not to bump her head or swollen feet against the doors and walls. He could hear the insects buzzing around outside, wanting to come in and finish his aunt off.

  “Not today, damn it,” he growled, anger surging.

  Laying his aunt on the seat, he smacked a wasp flying into the cab after her. He ran around, climbed in, and jabbed the key in the ignition with such force that he cut his finger on the chrome ridge surrounding the keyhole. When he jerked his hand away, the silver chain with a cross on it hanging from the ring wrapped around his hand and the keys came flying out, landing on the passenger floorboard.

  Shane cursed and leaned over
to retrieve the key. His aunt let out a weak moan when he pressed against her, and he knew he had to calm down or he’d never get her to the hospital. He let out a slow and shaky breath, reinserted the key in the ignition, and twisted it.

  The small block 302 roared to life, and Shane was grateful he’d done a tune-up on the engine two weeks earlier. It would get them to the hospital in a hurry without issue. After a last check to ensure the windows were rolled up tight, he said a silent prayer and clicked the garage door opener. Bees spilled in under the aluminum door as it rose, engulfing the truck.

  Shane turned on the windshield wipers and smeared insects across the glass. Hoping he could kill even more, he floored the accelerator. The rear tires squealed on the greasy, concrete floor. When the tires bit, the truck charged out of the garage and down the driveway with the engine roaring.

  By the time he turned on Rural Route 2, heading east toward town and the hospital, his aunt started having a seizure. She flopped around on the seat next to him, punching him and kicking the passenger door so hard that he expected it might fly open. Shane pressed his right arm over her to keep her on the seat and struggled to keep the truck on the road.

  “Please hold on, Aunt Lillian,” Shane begged, tears making it even harder to see through the bug-gut-covered windshield.

  Shane glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that hornets blanketed the back window. Sick with terror, he pushed the truck harder, the speedometer rising above eighty. The tires left the ground at the top of a hill, and they screeched around the bend at the western corner of the Douglas’ farm.

  His aunt stopped bucking and kicking, and she stiffened as if every muscle in her body contracted at once. Shane’s heart rose into his throat, and hot tears spilled down his cheeks.

  “Aunt Lillian!” Shane shouted. “Don’t give up on me! You hear me, damn it?”

  She didn’t move. Shane couldn’t breathe.

  “You’ll be alright,” Shane said, sniffling. “I’m not gonna let you die.” He used a fist to wipe his eyes and then gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles cracked. Shaking his head in defiance, he pushed the accelerator into the floorboard.

  “We’re going to the hospital—they’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

  He feared he was only lying to himself at this point, that she was already dead and he was rushing her corpse to the morgue. But he couldn’t be certain—she might just be unconscious. He had to drive faster, had to get her help.

  Shane steered the truck around the hairpin blind turn at the Douglas’ driveway and came out of it with the dual exhaust pipes and the rear tires belching white smoke. Up ahead, he saw a massive, dark box blocking the road. The Ranger barreled toward a tractor-trailer flipped over onto its side. His eyes went wide and he slammed both feet onto the brake pedal, pulling the wheel hard to the right. The old pickup slid sideways, rocked up onto two tires, and slammed into the belly of the rig. The window on his door exploded, glass pelting his face and landing in his lap.

  Stunned, Shane took a quick account of himself. Other than the painful bruise on his shoulder from running into the doorjamb at Granny’s house, he seemed uninjured. The engine stalled, and only the clicking sound of cooling metal punctuated the morbid silence. Realizing he didn’t have a window to keep the hornets out, Shane jerked his head around to see outside of the cab. He expected insects to swarm in, but they had vanished. Not a single wasp buzzed around the truck.

  Aunt Lillian lay motionless next to him, looking asleep. Leaning over, Shane put his ear by her mouth and his fingers where he thought her carotid artery should be. No air flowed in and out of her, and he couldn’t feel a pulse.

  “No, please,” he gasped, acidic bile burning his throat.

  Lifting her chin and blowing into her lungs, the metallic taste of blood on her engorged lips drew vomit up into the back of his mouth. Swallowing hard and trying to stay focused, he compressed her chest thirty times and blew two more breaths into her. He kept doing CPR until sweat burned his eyes and her ribs cracked under his palms with each compression. His arms went rubbery, and spots swam in his vision. Shane leaned against the dash to keep from collapsing. Panting, he stared down at her. Her tan skin had turned a pale gray color, and her swollen tongue protruded between her lips.

  Silent tears welled in his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He cried for her, for Granny, and for his mother. Death stole too much from him. Fresh anger erupted in tiny fires throughout his body, growing into an inferno that made him grit his teeth and caused a red haze to close in on his vision.

  He slammed his right fist into the roof of the truck. Bits of the insulation exposed by rips in the old headliner rained down from the impact. Following with a left fist, the sheet metal reported a loud thunk and more of the crumbling headliner fell. He threw another right fist, punching again and again, yelling until his throat hurt. When his arms gave out, refusing to push his bruised knuckles up into the ceiling of the cab anymore, he collapsed and hugged his aunt in his arms. Sobbing into her damp, black hair, Shane’s voice was hoarse as he begged her to wake up. Pressing her tight against his chest, he tried to will life back into her limp body.

  She was dead. Gone forever.