The Last Orphans (7 page)

Using a fire extinguisher
and more aggression than necessary, Steve broke out the window to the main office of the high school. Shane boosted Matt in and as predicted, the keys hung on the back of a closet door behind the principal’s desk.

“Ther
e’s at least twenty sets in here,” Matt called out. “Which do I pick?”

“Grab the newest ones,” Shane answered. “They should say Freightliner o
n them.”

The school had
purchased several new buses over the summer, and he knew choosing them would limit the chance of any mechanical problems.

Matt unlocked the office door from
the inside and stepped out, dangling three sets of keys with numbered, red plastic labels hanging from them. He handed one to Shane, and Steve snatched another out of Matt’s hand. Glaring at Steve, Matt gave the last key to Aaron. Tracy stuck her open hand out at Steve, staring at him impassively until he grumbled and surrendered his key to her.

They walked down the
long, dark hall of the school leading from the main office to the back parking lot. Their footsteps echoed off the high ceilings and the gray, metal lockers, and everyone seemed to be in sullen contemplation as they walked. Having not been used since the prior school year, the floor was waxed to a high sheen, and Shane could see his reflection in it, even with the limited light.

Pushing through the double
doors at the end of the hallway, they got a view of the buses lined up in the back parking lot. He scanned the rows of yellow vehicles and spotted the shiny, new Freightliners on the far left side. Leading his friends to the modern, aerodynamic-looking school buses, he pushed the door in on the first one and climbed up its steps, settling into the cushy, green seat behind the wheel. Everyone else crowded in and leaned over him, eager to learn how to operate the big machines. Shane quickly showed them how to start the bus and explained all the controls and gauges.

“How the heck do you know all this?” Aaron a
sked, a bit of awe in his eyes as he gazed over the dashboard.

“My
dad has a contract with the school to do all the maintenance on the buses. He taught me how to drive them when I worked at the shop over the summer. Luckily, they’re automatics, so they’re pretty easy.” Shane’s voice cracked as he spoke. He didn’t know for sure his dad was dead, but the chances were slim he was still alive.

“Oh
yeah,” Aaron replied, his voice quiet like he sensed Shane’s thoughts.

In the dim
light from the security lamps at the back of the school, Shane could see Aaron’s brow wrinkle. He reckoned he must be thinking about his own parents, and he felt like a total jerk for lying about his mother. He knew he’d have to remedy that soon—it wouldn’t be right to keep the truth from his friend forever, but he had no idea how he’d muster the courage to tell him.

“Everybody cool with driving the buses?” Shane asked
, clearing his throat and trying to keep his focus.

His friends
nodded.

“I’ll lead the way up to Main Street,” he said.
“We’d better hurry—it smells like it’s about to rain.” He looked up at the sky and couldn’t see any stars or the moon, but at least the lightning had stopped for the moment.

Aaron,
Tracy, Matt, and Steve filed out of the bus and climbed into theirs. Kelly settled in the seat behind Shane. The diesel engines roared to life one by one. Shane maneuvered his bus out of the parking lot, glancing in the mirrors to make sure everyone managed to get their buses rolling. He led the way up the hill on a narrow, tree-lined side road with fewer accidents on it than highway 72. They came out on the east end of Main Street, right next to what everyone in town called the hardware store but was more of a general supply store, carrying everything from animal feed and coveralls to toilets and hunting supplies. The front doors lay inside in a pile of broken glass, and merchandize littered the entry area. The two other buses pulled in next to Shane’s, airbrakes hissing as they came to a rest.

“Looks like someone
beat us here,” Tracy observed, climbing out of her bus. She put her thumbs through the loopholes of her blue jeans and pulled them up, a look of determination crossing her face as she studied the building. Shane had never seen her wear anything but blue jeans, an army green T-shirt, and paratrooper boots, except on the days when she wore her JROTC uniform.

“That mea
ns there’s another group running around,” Aaron added, scanning the area like he expected to spot them.

“Shouldn’t we try to find them?” Kelly asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tracy replied, entering the dark building. “I think we should stick to our plan. At this point, we have enough people to worry about.”

Tracy
sounded a bit heartless, but her logic made sense. Thinking about the kids, sleeping back at the gym, whom they were already responsible for, stressed him out enough. The children in the gym, teenagers and youngsters, could only be a fraction of the kids in town. Worse, there were probably infants in cribs all across Leeville, screaming for their mothers and dying from thirst. What was Shane supposed to do, go door to door and gather all the children incapable of caring for themselves? And if he did, how would he tend to them? Nausea erupted in his gut, the anxiety stirred up by his concern making him ill.

“We’
ll go to the military base and then send help for everyone else,” Shane answered his own questions with trembling resolve, looking at his friends for approval. 

No one answered, apparently happy to let the burden of this decision rest on his shoulders.
They stared at him for a long moment, their eyes wide with the trauma they’d experienced over the last few hours. They looked so young, hardly old enough to take care of themselves. As horrible as it was to ignore the other children stranded throughout town, Shane knew his friends were already being pushed to the edge of breaking. They couldn’t handle any more responsibility at the moment, and neither could he.

Matt grab
bed a shopping cart and a flashlight from a rack near the front doors. Shane and the others followed suit, and they worked their way through the dark store, loading everything of any possible use into their carts. They found plenty of jerry cans for extra fuel and water, pouches of freeze-dried food that could be eaten in an emergency, and camping gear, though Shane hoped they would make it to the military base in a few hours and wouldn’t need most of the stuff. He found pants and a T-shirt and finally got out of the Sunday clothes he’d been wearing since Granny’s funeral that morning. He sighed with relief, slipping his tired and blistered feet into a pair of soft, padded hiking boots. His mood lifted when he stood.   

Aaron
made it to the back of the store first. “This is not good,” he announced.

“What?”
Tracy asked.

“All the guns are gone.”

“No freaking way,” Shane gasped, looking at the empty rack behind the counter. The glass doors the guns were usually locked behind lay in shards on the floor. The display case where the bullets were kept was busted open and cleaned out.

“Must have been whoever got here first,” Aaron mused
, sounding frustrated. “Greedy as all get out. They could’ve at least left us a rifle or two.”

“They didn’t touch the archery section,” Kelly called from the far right side of the gun counter.

Aaron perked up, and they all rushed through the ransacked gun area toward Kelly, like they worried someone else might run in and claim the weapons before they could get to them. The beams of their flashlights found a plethora of compound bows, crossbows, and arrows hanging on the wall and in empty whiskey barrels at the end of the aisles.

“I deer hunt with these,” Aaron said, picking up an arro
w with a triangular, black razorblade at its tip.

“Hey, it’s better than nothing,” Shane said.

“The good thing is, as long as we retrieve our arrows, we’ll never run out of ammo,” Tracy added, climbing onto the counter and taking a camouflaged crossbow with a scope mounted on it off the wall. Her eyes gleamed as she flipped it over in her hands. It had to be the most expensive weapon in that part of the store, the kind everyone would admire but few could afford. All the weapons in the corner had lethality in common. They looked badass, but Shane was nervous to think he might have to use one.

“Let’s load ‘em
up.” Shane grabbed an armful of bows and balanced them atop his piled-high cart, and then hung more over his shoulders. They felt foreign and uncomfortable in his hands. He was one of the few boys in town who never hunted, an embarrassing secret he hid from his friends. Hunting was a rite of passage in Leeville. It wasn’t that he never had the opportunity—it was just he couldn’t stand the idea of killing, so he’d always found an excuse not to go. The weapons and Tracy and Aaron’s enthusiasm made him uncomfortable, but he relished the notion of facing down a bunch of wild dogs or charging cattle with his bare hands even less.

They made several
trips in and out of the store, packing the third bus full. Tracy organized the supplies, shouting orders in an annoying and near condescending way the entire time. At least the work took Shane’s mind off the horrors he’d seen that day. The jerry cans went in last, with Tracy using a black marker to label some for diesel and some for water. When they finished, sweat dripped off everyone’s face and Shane’s arms ached.

T
hey took the buses across the street to the gas station and filled them up. The doors to the convenient store were unlocked and the lights were on. Shane entered, fearing he’d find the attendant dead behind the counter. To his relief, no one was inside. Shane retrieved some sports drinks for everyone from the cooler. Thinking about taking the school buses, cleaning out the hardware store, and now breaking into the gas station, he felt a sudden flash of shame. They were doing it to survive, and nobody was around to take money anyway, but all the same, it was thievery in a sense. The moment passed, and he almost laughed at his absurdness.

“We need to distribute the weapons between the
buses evenly, so we can defend ourselves if we are attacked by the animals, or worse, people looking for a target,” Tracy suggested. She lifted the last of the fueled-up jerry cans into the bus and accepted a sports drink from Shane.

“You should probably be in charge of that, and Aaron can help
you find people who can shoot,” Shane said, passing drinks out to everyone else. He picked up a bow and slung it over his shoulder, not sure if he’d be effective with it. Although he didn’t like the idea of shooting at someone, he sure as heck wasn’t going to allow anyone near him to be harmed. He’d seen enough of that.

“The bus drivers should have crossbows,” Aaron said, handing one to Shane
and taking his bow. “These babies can be left cocked and loaded so you can use them in a hurry if need be.”

“How do you get a new
arrow in it once it’s been shot?” Shane asked, liking the simple point-and-shoot ability of the crossbow better, though he always thought of crossbows as outdated wooden weapons from the middle ages. This one however, had a carbon-fiber frame and a scope on it like a high-powered sniper rifle.

“They
ain’t called arrows,” Aaron replied, demonstrating how to load one. “With crossbows, the projectiles are called bolts.”

“Try not to sound like you’re enjoying this
so much,” Kelly scoffed, dropping the end of a hose next to the water cans and walking back over to the spigot to turn it on.

“Hey, you have to admit—
they are kinda sexy,” Aaron called after her.

Shane felt a smile creep across his face. Everyone had been so depressed and
down to business, it refreshed him to hear Aaron acting like his normal comedic self. For the first time, he felt like maybe they had a chance, that maybe they could all get through this if they stuck together and used their heads.

“Let’s get this convoy back down to the school and try to get some rest,” Tracy said in the slightly condescending way in which she always spoke. All the buses were fueled up, and the water cans were loaded. “It’ll be easier to drive to Atlanta if we wait ’til the morning.”

Al
though Shane suspected no one cared to have Tracy barking orders at them, everyone obeyed, climbing into the buses and looking too tired to respond. The diesels rumbled to life. They pulled out of the gas station one at a time, swerving around the body of a woman who lay dead in the street. Her neck was missing a huge chunk where her windpipe should be. Shivering at the thought of how bad it must’ve hurt to be killed that way, Shane wondered what kind of animal had attacked the poor woman. She wore a torn, flowery sundress and one shoe, and Shane guessed she’d lost the other one while being chased down by the animal like prey. He couldn’t imagine a worse way to die.

Aaron put bolts
on several more crossbows and stacked them on the front seats while Shane drove. This time, Kelly rode with Steve in the other passenger bus, and Tracy and Matt took the supply bus. Shane realized he felt more depressed in Kelly’s absence. By needing him, she’d pulled him out of the numbness that sunk in after his aunt died and gave him a reason to keep going. If Kelly hadn’t come up the driveway asking for his help, he might’ve just lay down in the road and waited for death.

“Seems a little
excessive, having so many loaded,” Shane said, trying to distract himself from the numbness creeping back over him like kudzu swallowing a deserted building.

“It takes too long
to reload these if they’re needed,” Aaron replied, grunting as he pulled the cable back on another crossbow. “This way you can fire off a lot of bolts quickly in a crisis.”

“I think I
’ll leave the shooting to you,” Shane replied, uncomfortable at the thought of seeing the bolt from one of the crossbows kill something or someone because he’d pulled the trigger.

“I’m not coming with you,” Aaron said
, sounding like he anticipated Shane would argue with him about his decision.

“What?”
Shane looked at him in the rearview mirror.

“I have to try
to find my mom.” Aaron’s voice trembled with uncertainty, and he didn’t look up from his work.

Shane hated himself for lying to his friend
. He’d known Aaron since they were little, long enough to recognize he sounded like he already knew his mom couldn’t have survived. Shane deserved to be punched—he should’ve just told him the truth before. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, Shane glanced in the rearview mirror at Aaron.

“She’s dead
,” he blurted out, hating how insensitive he sounded.

“You don’
t know that,” Aaron said, quiet anger rising in his voice. “She could be okay, or she could be hurt and might need my help.”

Shane took a deep and shaky breath,
and then let it out slowly. He twisted his hands on the big steering wheel and tried to organize his words. Aaron would’ve never lied to him, and he knew he owed his friend the truth.

“Earlier, when you asked me if I’d seen her,” he paused
and sighed. “I’m really sorry, but I didn’t have the balls to tell you the truth.”

“What the hell are you
saying?” Aaron shouted, rising to his feet and leaning toward Shane, while still holding a freshly loaded crossbow in his hands.

“I’m
so sorry, bro,” Shane replied, feeling like he should be shot with one of the carbon-fiber bolts. “I saw her.”

He waited for Aaron to slug him in the side of the head, almost want
ing him to do it.

“Well?” Aaro
n’s nostrils flared. Shane saw them do that before, when Aaron broke his arm on the football field last year, though the tall, blond running back hadn’t shed a tear. “What happened to her?”

“Dogs,” Shane replied
, the word choking him. “I tried to throw them off, but there were too many.”

“Damn you, Shane,” Aaron yelled an
d punched the metal roof. He spun around and stomped to the back of the bus, sat down in one of the green seats, and put his face in his hands.

Seeing Aaron so upset
made Shane feel like crap, and made the pain of losing his aunt and Granny resurface in full force. He leaned forward on the wheel, feeling like a dump truck full of rocks had just been unloaded on his head, bashing him to a pulp and suffocating him at the same time.

His thoughts drifted
to his father. Shane couldn’t be certain, but his dad had to have been killed as well. No one saw a single living adult since the animals went berserk. Wondering about how his dad died caused tears to well in his eyes. Had he suffered? He hoped not. He wiped the tears clear and tried to focus on the narrow road leading down to the high school, wishing his last moments with his dad hadn’t been spent fighting.

Tall oak trees grew
up on either side, their canopies connected above the road, blocking out the sky and creating an ominous, dark tunnel. Shane’s bus coasted down the hill behind Tracy’s, its transmission whining against the vehicle’s weight. Steve and Kelly drove the last bus behind him. Shane wished Tracy would go faster; he couldn’t wait to be near Kelly again. She sparked a little glimmer of hope in his chest, staving off the cold, dark depression settling in when she wasn’t around.

Tracy
’s bus turned right at the bottom of the hill, and then roared and sped across the street before Shane could see the school. Dread knotted his stomach because he knew she wasn’t the type to mess around. Hot adrenaline bursting through his veins, Shane pulled out of the oak tree tunnel and saw orange flames licking from the windows of the three long, red brick buildings housing the library and classrooms.

“Aaron,
” he yelled over his shoulder. “We got problems!”

Rushing to the front of the bus, Aaron leaned down and
looked out the windshield. Shane floored the accelerator and zigzagged the bus across the street and into the dirt parking lot. Steve’s bus slid up beside him in a cloud of dust. As soon as the diesels stopped rumbling, they could hear the shouts and screams of the kids in the school. They climbed out and converged in front of the buses.

“Look!” Matt said
. “Those guys weren’t here earlier.”

He pointed at three teenage
boys darting across the yard and into the side door of the gym.

“And they’
re wearing orange convict clothing,” Tracy exclaimed. “Grab the weapons—they must be escapees from the juvenile prison.”

Shane forgot
all about the North Georgia Juvenile Rehabilitation Center, an experimental, high-security penal colony tucked away in the woods about five miles out of town. Rumor had it the center housed young rapists, murderers, and the nastiest of gangsters, not the kind of guys he wanted to tangle with.

“Come on, man,” Aaron
said, pushing a crossbow and quiver filled with bolts into Shane’s hands. “We have to get in there and save those kids.”

If Aaron was mad at him for withholding the information
about his mother, Shane could no longer see it in his eyes. He ran toward the gym with the others. Kelly, Matt, and Tracy carried crossbows as well, and Tracy also wielded a large hunting knife in her free hand. Steve and Aaron, who Shane knew hunted deer with bows every year, had high-end compound bows with quivers full of the razorblade-tipped arrows on their backs.

“We have the element of surprise,”
Tracy said. “They won’t know what hit them.”

“
No
,
no
!” A girl’s scream came from inside the gym. “
Get off me
!”

C
ackling laughter and hoots from several boys followed. Shane’s imagination conjured up what horrible things the convicts might be doing in the gym, and any hesitation about attacking them vanished, replaced by boiling rage.

“Let’s split u
p into two teams,” Shane ordered. “Tracy, take Matt and Steve and wait by that side door. Kelly and Aaron, come with me.”

“These boys will not
negotiate,” Tracy said. “We’ll have to shoot first and ask questions later.” The cliché warning made Shane’s stomach turn, and he feared he wouldn’t be able to kill once he was inside. His hands grew slick with sweat on the crossbow’s handle.

“I got n
o problem with that,” Aaron said, nocking an arrow and drawing the string back, the razorblade arrowhead aimed at the metal door of the gym. His eyes narrowed like he prepared to unload all his anger over his mother’s death on the young convicts.

Once she had her
team at the door about fifty feet down the side of the gym, Tracy glanced back at Shane as if she awaited his order. Another girl’s agonized scream came from inside, making it hard for him to keep his rage in check. Knowing that being in control would help them stop the convicts, he took a deep breath and raised his hand, then dropped it to signal go like he’d seen the soldiers do in movies. He jerked the door open and rushed into the building with his crossbow leveled and ready to fire.