The Last Orphans

by N.W. Harris

  “You alright, man?” Aaron asked with an unsteady voice, putting a hand on Shane’s back.

  “No,” Shane cried. “I’m not alright! I’m sick of this. It’s all bullshit.”

  He shrugged his shoulder, throwing Aaron’s hand off. Sharp bits of gravel cut into his hands and knees, and he wept into his regurgitated peanut butter and jelly sandwich. His eyes clamped shut, and it felt like a belt tightened around his chest.

  A delicate hand held a paper towel between him and the puke, wiping his nose and mouth.

  “Come on, Shane.” Kelly’s soft voice cut through the agonizing haze of sadness crushing in on him. “Sit up for me.”

  She tugged him back so he sat on his calves, his head still drooping forward.

  “We’ve got to get going,” Tracy shouted sternly from her bus.

  “Give him a minute, will ya?” Kelly retorted.

  Kelly combed his hair back from his brow, her touch soothing him like a dose of a powerful painkiller. “She is right though,” she said. “Staying here isn’t doing you any good.”

  “What’s the point?” Shane muttered. “We got no one—they’re all dead.”

  “You’ve got us, Shane,” Kelly replied. “We need you.”

  “For what?” he whispered. “It’s hopeless.”

  As depressed as he felt, he hated how he sounded so pathetic and wished he hadn’t said that to Kelly. Shane already knew his dad must be dead, expected it before he ever stopped at the auto shop. But still, seeing Dad’s corpse, sitting there in the office where Shane had so many memories—it felt like he’d been shot with one of the metal-tipped bolts from his crossbow.

  Dropping to her knees next to him, Kelly tugged his chin over so he looked at her.

  “You saved me, Shane. If you weren’t there when my parents died, I don’t know what I would’ve done.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and studied him with moist, sympathetic eyes, forcing aside the darkness closing in on him.

  “I need you. And those kids need you,” she continued, pointing at the bus. “If you haven’t noticed, everyone looks to you when they don’t know what to do next. We won’t make it without you.”

  Shane glanced at the bus. Kids pressed their faces against the windows, their wide and tearful eyes focused on him. Embarrassed at having so many people see him in this broken state, he looked at Kelly and tried to glean strength from her. He hated life, despised the world right then. But he couldn’t help feeling a little flame of hope ignite in his heart when he looked at her freckled cheeks and nose, her soft, pink lips pulled tight with concern. He didn’t care if he died right then and there, but he wanted her to be safe.

  “You’re right,” he murmured dejectedly.

  Kelly hooked her arm through his and helped him to his feet. His knees shaking, he walked to the bus and climbed on. After Shane sat in the driver seat, he looked down through the open door at Aaron, who wore a worried expression on his face.

  “You okay to drive?” Aaron asked, his voice full of empathy but also caution.

  “Yeah,” Shane replied. “I’m fine.”

  Aaron studied him, uncertainty crinkling his brow. The dogs killed Aaron’s mother, so what right did Shane have to give up when his friend was so determined to keep going? He cleared his throat.

  “Really, man. I’m good.”

  “Alright,” Aaron said, not sounding convinced. He gave Shane a concerned look for a few more seconds and then turned to walk away.

  “Hey, Aaron.” Shane stopped him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for going in there with me.”

  “No problem, man,” Aaron replied. “I got your back—you got mine.”

  “I got your back—you got mine,” Shane repeated. They said it to each other in the locker room before every game.

  Flashbacks of a childhood gone forever—of casting their lines in the pond below the garage where they never caught any fish, playing football together from the time they learned to walk, and getting greasy up to their elbows learning how to rebuild car engines—rolled through Shane’s thoughts. He watched Aaron walk to Tracy’s bus and climb aboard. Rubbing his hand down his face in an attempt to strip away the mixture of debilitating emotions, he started the diesel and shifted the bus into drive. They drove out of the parking lot, and Shane didn’t dare glance back at the auto shop, afraid he’d fall apart if he did.

  His chest aching from his father’s death, he steered his bus onto the on-ramp behind Tracy, and they entered the freeway. Heading south, they encountered only a few abandoned or wrecked cars on the road, so they managed to get up to a decent speed in spite of the thick, foggy drizzle limiting their visibility. At this rate, Shane reckoned they’d get to Atlanta in an hour and a half.

  Every time he blinked, his dad’s half-eaten corpse flashed in his mind, like the image had been tattooed on the insides of his eyelids. Kelly sat in the first seat behind him. He could feel her watching him, perhaps worried he’d lose it and crash the bus.

  “How are the girls doing?” Shane asked, wanting to divert her attention. He felt ashamed about falling apart in the parking lot in front of his dad’s shop, and the pity in her eyes wasn’t helping.

  “I’ll go check,” she replied.

  Kelly stood and reached forward, putting her hand on his arm. She gave it a comforting squeeze and smiled at him in the large rearview mirror. Shane tried to smile back. Then Kelly made her way down the center aisle of the bus, stopping at each seat to check on the passengers.

  They had all the assaulted victims of the gym on their bus, as well as a few of the younger kids. Fortunately, there was enough room for each person to curl up on one of the green naugahyde bench seats.

  Shane glanced at the clock—two o’clock in the morning.

  Every part of his body, toes to brain, suffered the bite of exhaustion, but he didn’t expect he’d ever be able to sleep again. In the rearview mirror, he saw Kelly handing out blankets to their passengers. She paused at some seats and unfolded one of the green blankets over the sleeping passengers. He knew she had to be as torn up as he was, but she managed to put aside grief and be a caring nurse, offering her empathetic smiles as medicine.

  “They’re doing okay,” Kelly reported after she made her way forward and returned to her seat. “Five of the girls have fallen asleep. The other three are staring out the window, but at least they aren’t crying anymore. Rebecca’s face looks pretty bad. I think she has some broken bones in her cheek.”

  “Hopefully, we can find a doctor at the Air Force base,” Shane said. Thinking about how he’d seen the proud redhead get punched down, Shane was sick and angry about the incident all over again.

  “Yeah—that would be good,” Kelly replied. “At least she has some ice on it.”

  With what happened to the girls, Shane worried they needed a doctor for a lot more than Rebecca’s face.

  “How’s Natalie?”

  “She’s asleep too.” Kelly yawned. “Has been since we left the school. Lucky her. I guess kids can sleep through anything.”

  “How about you? Why don’t you get some rest?”

  “No, I’m alright,” she said. “Besides, you need company.”

  Only the growl of the diesel and the wind whistling over the bus disturbed the silence for a few miles. Shane glanced in the mirror at Kelly, who stared blankly out the windshield. Her drawn face and sad eyes made him worry she might be reliving the horror of watching her folks get killed. He wished he could take the memory from her and burn it, knowing she’d probably never again be the happy, carefree girl he had a secret crush on since middle school.

  Funny how they hadn’t really talked much before. Being a grade ahead of him and a year older, she’d always seemed out of his league. And every time she’d talked to him at church, he couldn’t help but clam up. Now she looked to him for answers. Did she truly believe he could get her and her sister to safety?

  Had she always thought so highly of him? <
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  They traveled along a stretch of freeway with no accidents on it, and things almost looked normal for a minute. Then they were forced to slow down and steer around a motorcycle entangled with a buck. The rider lay thirty feet ahead of the bike, facedown. Shane guessed he’d been thrown over the handlebars when the deer hit him and died on impact.

  “My gramps loved his Harley,” Kelly said, sounding lost in memories.

  Shane had seen the old man many times. He had to be at least six foot four, and he looked a bit like Abraham Lincoln minus the goatee. He’d always seemed so reserved and formal, wearing a suit to church every Sunday. Shane would’ve never guessed he liked to ride motorcycles.

  “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.”