The Last Orphans (15 page)

Shane watched Kelly
slowly walk over to the group of kids and sit down beside her little sister. He couldn’t imagine how hard the conversation she was about to have must be. There was little he could do to help her. He joined Aaron in scrubbing the rest of the blood off the Stryker, wondering how long until he and his friends started killing each other like these soldiers had done. The M-16 on the seat in front of him would make the end come fast, not that it was much conciliation, but he preferred going by bullet instead of arrow or the blade of a knife. Kelly stepped into view at the rear hatch of the vehicle, her eyes moist with tears.

“How’d it go?” Shane asked.

“I told her I had work, that I’d just be gone for the day,” Kelly replied, sniffling. “She didn’t seem to care.” She let out a pained chuckle. “As usual, she’s dealing with all this better than I am.”

“She’ll be fi
ne here,” Shane said, putting his arms around Kelly and giving her a quick hug. “And, if all goes as planned, we’ll be back by tonight, like you said.”

“I
sure hope so,” Kelly replied. “I hope you don’t mind, but I convinced Laura to stay here. The other kids need someone older to watch out for them, and she’s younger than me so the weapon won’t get to her right away.”

“S
ounds like a good idea,” Shane agreed. Tracy and Laura were always at each other’s throats anyway, and the trip would be easier if he didn’t have to play referee between them.

The Stryker’s engine grumbled to life, and Kelly and Shane climb
ed in the back with Aaron and Steve. Tracy was up front in the driver’s seat. Steve closed the rear hatch, and the Stryker lurched forward, almost throwing Shane off his bench.

“Sorry,”
Tracy yelled over the noisy diesel. “She’s a bit touchy.”

It took Tracy several miles to master operating the heavy vehicle.
While they bounced along, Aaron showed everyone how to use the M-16s, and then they changed into fresh clothing. Kelly faced forward and the boys faced the rear to give her some privacy. Putting on the bulletproof vest and helmet Tracy and Aaron retrieved from the dead soldiers, Shane was careful not to study the camouflaged material too closely, fearing some of the splotches of dark belonged to the prior owner. He stood on the bench, sticking his head and shoulders up out of the Stryker’s rear hatch. Wearing the same protective gear, Kelly rose up through the hatch next to him, and Steve stood through the gunner’s hatch in the middle of the armored vehicle, manning the machine gun mounted on the roof.

They rolled through an upper
middle-class neighborhood with large homes on either side of the street. The yards were well kept, covered in lush, green grass, and the houses had flower gardens in full bloom, some with the stars and stripes and the Georgia state flag hanging from their porches.

Everything lo
oked peaceful, tidy, and normal—except for the dead bodies.

A two-
story red brick house with white pillars supporting the roof over the front porch had a middle-aged woman and an older woman laying near the flowerbeds, presumably a mother and her daughter. Their large, matching straw sunhats lay next to them, and a plastic tray of flowers sat in the grass nearby, ready to plant. The older woman had a gardening spade sticking out of her chest, and her daughter had the spike of a sprinkler head protruding from her eye.

Shane glanced
at Kelly, knowing he’d never get the horrible image out of his brain. Had these poor people been driven insane when they attacked each other, oblivious? Or worse, were they conscious of what they were doing, yet unable to stop themselves? She put a hand on his forearm and squeezed, then returned her somber gaze to the passing houses.

He worried some of these houses might harbor children who were too young to get out or take care of themselves. The Stryker’s engine was loud enough to drown out any other noise, but he wondered if the screams of starving babies would fill the air in the absence of the deafening diesel. He felt guilty for not stopping to investigate, but at this moment, they had to keep going. The children would certainly die if they didn’t shut down the weapon. They could come back and investigate afterwards, though he knew he and his friends didn’t have the resources to care for any
more kids than they were already responsible for. He could only hope other teenagers were taking responsibility for the youngsters who had lost their parents. Right now, he had to stay focused, or everyone was doomed.

Two blocks away, a man in a business suit lay
facedown in his driveway, a pistol on the bloody ground next to him. The next house had a woman in the yard, a shotgun next to her and a dark red spot covering her chest. Shane tried not to look at any more of the bodies, focusing his attention on the road ahead. It didn’t help much, because there were dead adults littering the streets as well. Some of them looked mangled, their bodies bent in unnatural ways, run over by psychos who mowed people down with their cars. Others were shot, and more bludgeoned with gardening tools and household items like the mother and daughter Shane saw at the other end of the street. And there were mutilated bodies, most likely torn apart by crazed neighborhood dogs or wild animals.

The Stryk
er rolled out of the neighborhood and onto a main road lined with businesses. The buildings grew taller with each passing block, and the number of the dead on the streets increased. Shane knew they must be getting closer to the capitol building, praying it would stay this quiet all the way there.

A movement
to the left caught Shane’s attention. He looked down the side street and saw a motorcycle zip through the intersection. Its rider’s helmetless head turned, looking at Shane just before the bike disappeared between buildings.

“Someone’s following us,” Shane yelled to Kelly and then leaned forward and told Steve, pointing down the
street at the next light.

Steve nodded, and climbed down
into the Stryker. He popped up with two M-16s, handing one to Shane and one to Kelly. She took the weapon and looked at Shane with concern.

“Don’t worry,” Shane yelled confidently in her ear. “They won’t dare mess with us while we’re in this beast.” He patted the armored, green roof of their rolling fortress.

Each intersection they passed, Shane glanced down the side streets and saw more motorcycles shadowing them. And then
Tracy slowed the Stryker. A blockade of cars with a bunch of teenagers standing in front of it obstructed the road ahead. Shane tried to count them, guessing there were over a hundred. They all held guns, but at least they weren’t pointing them at the approaching Stryker. He felt a surge of hope. If they could get this army of kids on their side, then disabling the Limbic Manipulator Weapon might be an easy task.

Tracy
brought the Stryker to a halt fifty feet from the blockade. Steve manned the machine gun mounted on the roof, and Kelly held her M-16 ready. Shane remembered how he used to think she was so feminine and sweet. Now he saw her differently. After all, she killed some of the escaped inmates who attacked the girls in the gym. And now, her gentle and caring expression was replaced by the steely look of a soldier, ready and willing to fight. The gun in her hands and her helmet and body armor made her look even tougher.

Shane left his M-16 laying on the roof of the Stryker, crawled up out of his hatch, and sat down next to Steve’s machine gun, attempting to make it clear he wanted to talk and did not plan to immediately attack.

The
teens pushed closer together, and he worried one of them might get too excited and start shooting. In the front of the pack, a thick kid with a slight grin and malice in his eyes started to raise the shotgun in his hands but a taller boy, Shane guessed to be about seventeen years old, put his hand on the barrel and pushed it down. The tall boy’s eyes never left Shane, and with the way the thick kid obeyed, it was clear who the leader was.

Once
Tracy killed the Stryker’s diesel engine, tense quiet fell over the street. Shane had been to downtown Atlanta a few times, and he was certain it was never so quiet. The hot breeze whispered between the sharp corners and flat faces of the towering buildings, warning of the fragility of the momentary peace.

“
Nice toy you got there,” the tall guy in the middle of the group shouted. “Where y’all headed in such a hurry?” Shane noted he had a black police utility belt around his waist with a gun holstered on it.

“Downtown,” Shane replied
firmly, while also trying to keep threat out of his voice. “Would you please be so kind as to step aside and let us pass?”

The guy smiled, revealing a gold grill over his upper teeth. He rested his arm on the
smaller kid next to him, who held the shotgun.

“Name’s Shamus,” the
tall guy said. “Downtown is my jurisdiction. Nobody passes without my permission.”

“Great,” Shane replied,
still hopeful this could work out. “Maybe you can help us.”

“Oh, we’d b
e glad to help you,” Shamus mocked. A chuckle passed through his large and intimidating gang. “Just exactly what would we be helping you with?”

Shane glanced at Steve, who had the Stryker’s
machine gun trained on Shamus. Steve shrugged as if to say,
Tell them everything—maybe they will help us
. Shane decided they had nothing to lose, and he sure as heck didn’t want to have a shootout with these kids, even if the armored vehicle put the odds in his favor.

“We know why the animals
killed the adults and why the adults attacked each other,” Shane began. “There’s a top secret weapon downtown causing all this to happen.” Shane paused and tried to read Shamus, whose golden smile reflected the dim sunlight passing through the thick, green clouds overhead. The city was eerily silent as they stared at each other, and yet the tension made the quiet seem to roar.

“Go on,” Shamus said.

“Well,” Shane continued, “we’re gonna shut it down.”

Sha
mus’ eyes narrowed. He pulled at the scruffy, dark goatee growing on his chin. After a moment, he said, “No.”

“Uh
… what do you mean,
no
?” Shane asked, resisting the urge to reach back and grab his rifle.

“I mean, no
, you ain’t going downtown to shut the weapon off,” Shamus replied, his tone ominous and threatening, though the malicious grin never left his face. He stood straighter and put his hand on the pistol strapped to his waist. “You see, ever since the animals and the adults went crazy, we’ve been living like kings. We own this city now, and we ain’t planning on stepping down from our throne any time soon.”

“But you don’t understand,” Shane said
, trying to salvage the negotiation. “The weapon is going to cause the animals to go after younger and younger people soon. Any moment now, you could be attacked, or you guys will turn on each other like the adults did.”

“Yeah? I ain’t buying it,” Shamus said
casually, slipping his pistol out of its holster. He crossed his arms over his chest, the barrel of his gun resting over his elbow. “Now turn this thing around and get out of my city. Get on back to your fantasyland, talk’n secret weapons and such. What’s next, we’re gonna be jumped by a bunch of unicorns?”

T
he gang laughed at their leader’s joke. Shane heard a nervous undertone in their chuckles, and several of them glanced at their weapons, perhaps shifting the safeties off. Not wanting to appear intimidated, he stared at the tall and skinny kid for a long moment, deciding what to do next. Steve could probably mow most of them down with the machine gun in a matter of seconds, but Shane didn’t have the stomach to order their execution.

“Alright,” Shane
said, holding his hands up in defeat. “Suit yourselves. We’ll leave.”

Steve gave Shane a,
What the heck
look. Shane put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. Then he dropped through the hatch into the Stryker and crawled forward to where Tracy sat, in the driver’s seat.

“Turn it around,” Shane ordered
, hoping he was doing the right thing.

“We can’t let these punks stop us,”
Tracy snapped. “We got them out gunned, and their bullets can’t even penetrate our armor.”

“Yeah, but I’m not read
y to slaughter them,” Shane countered. “Are you?”

“Well no—
of course not,” Tracy replied. It seemed she hadn’t thought about the fact that they might have to kill a bunch of kids. Her brow furrowed and she blinked her eyes, refocusing on Shane. “But we have to get down there and shut the weapon off.”

“And we will,” Shane replied. “Just turn around
, and we’ll drive a few blocks away, then take a different route.”

“Okay,”
Tracy said, reluctance clear in her voice. “But you know they’re gonna come after us when we turn back.”

“Not if we can steer far
enough around them.” Shane feared she was right, but they couldn’t just start shooting—they had to at least try to avoid a fight.

Tracy
started the diesel and backed up a block. When she was well clear of the thugs, she caused the tires to rotate in different directions, pivoting the machine one hundred and eighty degrees so fast it made him dizzy. The Stryker lurched north. Shane grabbed his M-16 and stood through the hatch, worried the gang would attack the rear of the vehicle as they drove away. Still holding his gun in one hand, Shamus waved at him, smiling broadly with his gold teeth.

They drove over a hil
l and out of sight. Then Shane dropped inside and told Tracy to turn left and go ten blocks before heading downtown.

“You know they’ll still
catch up with us,” Aaron yelled, reiterating Tracy’s warning when Shane sat down on the Stryker’s bench seating across from him.

“
I think we’ll have a better chance of busting through them. They won’t have time to set up a barricade,” Shane replied, agitated by how both Tracy and Aaron naysaid his ideas but didn’t offer any other options.

What they would do once they made it past the thugs, Shane hadn’t figured out yet. It was going to be hard to get out of the Stry
ker at the capitol building if an angry mob surrounded them.

He crawled forward and looked at the GPS
—four miles to the capitol building. Not very far, but Shane expected it would be the roughest drive he’d ever take in his life.

“Better go
topside,” Tracy said. “Just saw a motorcycle cross the intersection up ahead.”

“If we r
un into any trouble, just keep driving,” Shane ordered. “Don’t stop until we make it to the capitol.”

“Got it,”
Tracy replied.

Shane took a dee
p breath and crawled to the rear of the Stryker. He tapped Aaron on the shoulder and pointed at Kelly. “Take her place.”

Aaron nodded
. Shane climbed on the bench and stood up through the hatch next to Kelly.

“I need you to go below,” he yelled.

“Why?” Kelly asked, her forehead crinkling in confusion. “I’m fine here.”

“Please.”

“What, you don’t think I can fight?”

“It’s n
ot that,” Shane stammered. He’d insulted her, not his intention. “It’s just that…” Shane couldn’t find the words.

“Fine,” she shouted
louder than necessary to be heard over the roar of the Stryker’s diesel engine. She glared at him and dropped below.

Aaron po
pped up a moment later, giving Shane a,
What did you say to her
look. Shane shook his head and picked up his M-16. Kelly proved herself in action; she could hold her own. His behavior was as much of a surprise to him as he supposed it was to her. It was an instinctive action to send her below, done without premeditation. He didn’t care if he got killed, but he couldn’t stand the idea of her getting hurt. Whether she hated him for it or not, that couldn’t happen while he was alive.

“Heads up!
” Steve yelled, pointing in the direction they headed. He hadn’t moved from his position on the Stryker’s machine gun since they entered the city.

Shane leaned forward
and saw a group of motorcycles cross an intersection two blocks down. He glanced at Aaron, clicked the safety off on his gun, and saw him do the same. They went three more blocks, Tracy swerving around deserted cars so fast that Shane got slammed against the edges of the hatch, adrenaline masking the pain of the bruises he sustained to his ribs through his bulletproof vest.

They swerved through another intersect
ion. Shane glanced left in time to see the word MACK on the chrome grill of a dump truck, the shiny, little bulldog hood ornament glaring down at him. It slammed into the side of the Stryker, knocking Shane off the bench, making him fall down the hatch and into the armored vehicle. He blinked in the dim interior, stunned. Kelly lay crumpled on the floor in front of him. The dump truck hit them so hard that it caused the Stryker’s engine to stall.

“You okay?
” she groaned. A red stream flowed away from her split open lip.

“I’m fine—
what about you?” Shane wiped blood off her chin with his thumb.

A deafening explosion went off before
she had a chance to answer. It sounded like it came from beneath them and felt like the Stryker jumped into the air and slammed back down onto the asphalt. When the armored vehicle came to a rest, Shane scrambled to his feet and rose up out of the hatch, his M-16 ready. Aaron and Steve dumped rounds into the street behind the dump truck, and Shane heard pings and saw flashes as kids hiding behind cars returned fire. The Mack truck idled sickly just behind the Stryker, its front end smashed and its driver leaning forward with blood running down his face from a hole in his temple, a precision kill no doubt delivered by Aaron.

Steve pumped rounds out of his machi
ne gun, yelling the entire time. Aaron had an eerily calm look on his face, like he was in the woods hunting deer. He lined up his sights on a target, smoothly pulled the trigger, and then shifted his gun to the next target, not waiting to see if the bullet hit its mark. A boy fifty yards out dropped.

Before Shane could level his weapon, t
he armored vehicle’s diesel engine grumbled to life. Tracy pulled the Stryker forward through the intersection. Shane couldn’t see the damage the dump truck caused, but the Stryker still seemed to be working fine at the moment. There was a large hole in the road and charred marks where the explosion occurred, and Shane realized the thugs must’ve set off some kind of bomb under the Stryker after they’d hit it with the Mack truck. Sparks erupted where a bullet ricocheted off the metal hatch next to him. Without really aiming, Shane returned fire at the cars where he saw puffs of smoke from the gangsters’ guns.

“Use short burst
s,” Aaron shouted, slamming a new clip into his M-16. “We have to save our ammo.”

Steve clearly didn’t hear Aaron’s advice, still yelling and spraying bullets. Tracy got them across the intersection and onto the next block. The Stryker’s engine roared, and she drove it up onto the sidewalk to get around the cars blocking the road.

A flash came from inside the dark
ness of a second floor window of a building they passed, and Shane felt a sharp burn across the side of his neck. He put his hand up to the spot and felt something wet.

“You’ve been hit!” Aaron yelled.

“Hit?” It took a second for it to register—he had been shot.

“Go below,” Aaron said
, his expression full of concern.

The Stryker pulled through the next intersection
, and a barrage of gunfire made Shane duck inside before he could respond. Aaron and Steve dropped inside to take cover as well.

“Close the hatches,” Kelly
yelled over the pinging of bullets hitting the vehicle’s armor. “Stay inside. We can shoot out of these little holes.”

Shane reached
up and pulled his hatch closed, as did Aaron and Steve, muffling the sound of the guns outside. But when the bullets hit the Stryker, it sounded like they were inside a drum. Kelly shoved the barrel of her M-16 out of a gun port, and fired. His ears felt like someone set firecrackers off in them. Shane slid a narrow port open next to Kelly and put his gun through it. When he pulled the trigger, the gun’s report didn’t seem as loud, he assumed because he was going deaf.

Taki
ng aim at a boy who held a shotgun on his waist about fifty feet from the Stryker, Shane pulled the trigger. He could see the boy’s eyes go wide, the fierce look on his face replaced by a limp expression of shock. Dropping the shotgun, the boy stood for a moment, an eternity for Shane. He seemed to stare into Shane’s eyes, suddenly appearing young and innocent. Then the boy dropped dead to the asphalt.

The boy’s slack expression seared itself onto the insi
de of Shane’s eyelids. Every time he blinked, the dying, young face was there, staring blankly at him. Shane’s rifle clicked—its clip empty. Unable to focus on another target, he pulled the barrel out of the gun port and slid the narrow door closed.

Sitting back on the bench on the opposite side of the Stryker,
he gritted his teeth to hold back a surge of vomit. When he’d shot the juvenile delinquent in the gym with his crossbow, he hadn’t seen his face like that of the boy he’d just killed. And this kid looked so innocent just before he died; maybe he’d never really done anything wrong to deserve getting shot. How many good kids had been recruited by Shamus, kids who had the same reservations about killing that Shane did? Maybe they had nowhere else to turn, or the gangster didn’t give them an option.

Kn
owing he had to keep fighting, Shane crawled forward toward the green, canvas bag filled with M-16 clips sitting just behind Tracy. His ears ringing, he couldn’t hear very well, but he felt a disturbing change in the vibration coming from the diesel and knew something was off. He leaned over Tracy’s shoulder and saw the oil pressure dropping to almost nothing and the engine temperature climbing into the red.

“The engine must’ve taken a hit,”
Shane yelled into her ear. “It won’t make it much longer.”

“What do you want me to do?”
Tracy asked. Her expression frantic, sweat drenched her face as she jerked the steering wheel back and forth to get around obstacles in the road.

Looking out the
slit of bulletproof glass that comprised the windshield, Shane could see Shamus’ gangsters running ahead of the Stryker, ducking into buildings and shooting at the armored vehicle. There had to be hundreds. If they broke down here, the gangsters would encircle them, wait until they used up all their ammo, and then crawl all over the Stryker until they found a way to break in.

“Get us out of here,” he ordered.

“What?” Tracy glanced back. “Shouldn’t we just plow through and try to make it to the capitol building?”

“We’ll never make it,” Shane replied
, giving in to his instincts. “We have to lose these guys before our engine dies. Turn us around. Now!”

Tracy
looked at him again, like she planned to object. But his expression must’ve convinced her, because at the next intersection, she spun the heavy vehicle around and gunned the engine. After heading a few blocks in the opposite direction, the pings of bullets hitting the armored hull diminished and then stopped altogether, the thugs seeming satisfied they had won the fight.

Kelly leaned back from her port
hole with a confused expression on her face. She crawled over and shouted into Shane’s ear. “What happened? Why did we turn back?”

As if to answer, a
loud, banging noise came from the diesel and an acrid stench filled the cabin. Shane knew the smell all too well. It was the odor of metal grinding against metal. There was no oil left in the engine to lubricate or cool it. The smell meant the overheated engine was about to seize.