The Last Orphans

by N.W. Harris

  Light faded from the gloomy heavens as Shane climbed over his aunt and out of the passenger side of the cab. Ominous green clouds still choked the sky, but the air was calm and quiet. He walked a few yards away and turned around, staring absently at the wreckage and wanting to die. The truck door hung open, his aunt’s swollen feet sticking out. Crippling numbness overtook him, pressing in on all sides, as if he were being buried in wet cement. It invaded his mind, drowning his thoughts, and leaving only dejected questions that no one could answer. What was he supposed to do now? Why did he have to still be alive when everyone he loved was being taken from him?

  “Help!” A girl’s hysterical voice ripped through his viscous daze like a bullet through a soda can. “Can you please? Help!”

  The voice was pitched with agony and grief, but also very familiar.

  Shane pivoted, the weight of his aunt’s nightmarish demise making it hard to move.

  Two girls ran up the Douglas’ long, gravel driveway toward him. The taller one’s tangled, blonde hair billowed behind her. She wore cutoff blue jeans and a baggy, white T-shirt with crimson paint smeared across her chest. She dragged a shorter version of herself by the hand behind her as she ran. It took a second for Shane to register who it was.

  “Kelly?” he shouted, his voice hoarse with shock. Struggling to break free of the catatonic state threatening to turn him into stone, he jogged heavily down the driveway to meet her.

  “They killed my dad and my mom!” she shrieked, her eyes wild and her gaze darting like she expected some horror to jump out of the fields and attack her. “They went berserk and trampled them!”

  “Wait—slow down.” Shane grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Her distress tore his mind away from the despair seeping through every part of his body, starving him for breath and welding his joints together. “Who killed your parents?” He realized the red on her clothes was fresh blood.

  “The cows,” she cried, collapsing into him. “Dad went out in the pasture to herd them into a paddock, and they killed him.” She hugged Shane, pressing her face into his shirt and weeping.

  Kelly’s little sister looked up at Shane, her tear-streaked face slack with confusion and grief.

  “What about your mom?” Shane whispered, afraid to hear the answer.

  “She was standing by the fence,” Kelly replied without taking her face out of his shirt. “After they got Dad, they turned and ran through the wire like it wasn’t even there. It was horrible. Then the dogs attacked my grandfather and killed him too.”

  Kelly leaned back and looked up at him with wide, wet eyes. “Why is this happening, Shane?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked down the hill at the Douglas’ farmhouse. Wretched bewilderment coiled around him, a python tightening its grip for the kill. “Something’s gone wrong, bad wrong.”

  “What should we do?”

  Having been content with dying moments before, Shane’s mind hadn’t come to the answer yet. He didn’t have a clue. Turning his attention to her bloodshot, wet eyes, he didn’t have the heart to tell Kelly that. He stared at her for a long moment, trying to think of something. Scanning the field around them, his gaze stopped on the road.

  “We’ll have to go to town and see if we can get some help,” he said, at a loss for any other ideas.

  Putting his arm around Kelly’s waist and leaning into her for support almost as much as she leaned into him, he led her up the driveway. The green clouds hung low and heavy overhead, and an ominous bolt of lightning arced beneath them. This was one of the most picturesque stretches of Route 2. It twisted over rolling hills and past the straight, modern fences. Mature oaks separated the fence from the road, allowing a broken view of the green pastures of the Douglas’ farm. But at the moment, it looked like Hell on earth.

  Shane remembered the pastor at the church his grandmother made him go to preaching about the Book of Revelations, and wondered if this was the beginning of the end. Maybe his aunt and Granny were taken to heaven, spared from the horrible things yet to come. Had he and Kelly been left behind because they weren’t good Christians? Had they already sinned so much in their short lives as to incur the wrath of God? If so, why would Kelly’s little sister still be here? Shane always understood that the children would be spared in the apocalypse.

  “What happened there?” Kelly asked between sobs once they got to the road, pointing at the flipped rig with the brown-and-white Ranger entangled in its undercarriage.

  “There was an accident,” Shane replied, his voice trembling. “Stay here for a minute. I’ll go get the truck.” Although she no longer sobbed uncontrollably, tears still streamed down Kelly’s face. He didn’t want her to see his aunt, figuring it would only make matters worse.

  Shane used a tarp he found stowed behind the seat of the truck to cover his aunt’s body and then tugged her out of the cab. The bee venom left her swollen and stiff. Her skin felt cold and damp, with fluid leaking from thousands of puncture wounds caused by the stingers. Shane wanted to puke and cry at the same time when he touched her, but he managed to keep it together, knowing he had to help Kelly and her sister.

  He cradled his aunt, uncertain what he should do with her body. Leaving it on the side of the road seemed wrong. She wasn’t heavy, but Shane’s legs grew rubbery and the world began to spin around him. Rushing to get her out of his arms, he lifted her up and lowered her into the back of the truck. She rolled in and made a horrible thud as she settled onto the metal bed. Guilt adding to his list of torturous emotions, Shane tucked the tarp around her and placed rocks on either side of it so it wouldn’t blow off while they drove.

  Climbing into the cab from the passenger side, he held his breath and turned the key. To his limited relief, the truck’s engine roared to life.

  It took a couple of tries, going from reverse to drive, to get the Ranger dislodged from the belly of the semi, and then Shane backed down the road to where Kelly and her sister waited.

  “What were you doing?” Kelly asked after she’d climbed in and shut the door. She’d stopped crying, but her eyes were red and moist. Her voice was weak, just audible over the growl of the engine. Her little sister sat in the middle, looking up at Shane with a heartbreaking expression.

  “Uh, the truck was stuck against the rig. It took a few minutes to break it free,” Shane replied, sensing he didn’t answer her question.

  “What did you put in the back?” Kelly clarified, slipping the seatbelt around her sister.

  “My aunt,” he whispered, glancing down at the little girl and back up at Kelly.

  Horror flashed through Kelly’s blue eyes, but she seemed to understand Shane wanted to spare her sister the details.

  Shane steered the truck into the ditch, so they could get around the overturned semi and back up onto Route 2. Coming by the front of the big rig, he caught a glimpse of the cab. Dead crows lay on the ground and dangled from the grill and off the mirrors. The front window of the cab hung in a sheet of thousands of crystals. It reflected the last of the diminishing light, fractured and peeling away from the driver’s half of the cab and lying folded across the hood.

  Visible through the opening, the driver was limp, suspended by his seatbelt at the same odd angle as the broken windshield. His dripping face hung in shreds, his blood painting the wreckage. A solitary crow perched on the steering wheel, pecking at the holes where the man’s eyes should be.

  Sick from the sight but still numb from his aunt’s horrific death, he looked away from the dead man and focused his eyes on driving. The cushion sank to his right. Kelly’s little sister was pushing her hands down into the bench seat, raising herself up to see. He leaned forward to block her view and gunned the pickup onto the asphalt.

  Bringing the truck up to speed, he smiled down at the little girl the best he could, hoping to put her at ease. “What’s your name?”

  She looked up at him for a long moment, her eyes glistening and sad. It seemed hopeless. How could he cheer her up w
hen he was suffering so much inside? She blinked, her lower lip puckering out like she might start bawling, but her eyes stayed fixed upon him and she answered, “I’m Natalie.”

  “Now that’s a pretty name if I’ve ever heard one,” he said, struggling to sound normal and failing miserably.

  “It was my mommy’s mommy’s name.” She spoke a little louder, though so quiet he could just hear her over the engine. Even still, her voice sounded sweet and innocent, like little glass bells ringing.

  “That makes it even more special, doesn’t it?” Shane replied.

  “I guess so.” She gave him a feeble grin, and the weight pressing in on his chest seemed to lessen. “Kelly calls me Nat. You can call me Nat too.”

  “Well, alright.” Shane cleared his throat and winked at the girl. “I think I will.”