Emmy Laybourne - Savage Drift

I sit down on a free edge of the bed. My weight can add to our pathetic blockade.

We know it is nine o’clock when we hear the bell over the PA and the lights go out.

Lori tries to herd the other kids into the other room and get them into the bunk bed.

“Come on, you guys,” she scolds. “What would Mario tell you to do? He’d tell you to go to sleep and you know it.”

“But I’m not tired!” Heather protests.

“It’s just stupid to think we’re going to sleep!” Freddy insists.

Lori tries to put a hand on his shoulder and he dodges her grasp.

“You guys need to go to bed,” I say, trying to help Lori.

“I’m staying up to fight!” Freddy says.

“Me, too,” says Aidan. “I owe you, after how I got you in trouble with Venger.”

“You don’t owe me,” I say. “Venger was out to get me from the start. He was just waiting for me to slip up.”

“Well, I’m not going to sleep and that’s final!” he shouts.

“Yeah! We’re not going to sleep! No way.”

“Fine,” Lori says. “You want to stay up, STAY UP! See if I care.”

She goes and stands by the window, looking out into the fluorescent-tinted nighttime sky of our containment camp.

I scratch my head.

“Have you guys ever heard of Mrs. Wooly?” I ask them.

Aidan looks at me askance, like I am trying to trick him.

“Who’s Mrs. Wooly?”

“That’s a dumb name,” Freddy says, still bouncing on his toes.

“I tell you what,” I say. “You guys get into bed—”

A chorus of nos and no ways!

“You guys get into bed and I’ll tell you.”

Three sets of crossed arms and defiant expressions.

“Look, it’s not like you’re going to sleep through the fight!” I tell them. “If the Union Men come, we’re all going to know it. But it’s cold in here. Look at Heather, she’s shaking.”

And she is.

Winter is drawing near and the temperatures are really dropping when the sun sets. I make up my mind to try to trade those men’s shoes for some more blankets, if we make it through the night.

Many people have taken to wearing their blankets shawl-style during the day. The boys have resisted this so far, but their pride about it will probably fall as the temperatures do.

“Get in bed where you’ll at least be warm.”

So they do.

Aidan and Freddy get onto the top bunk. Heather lays on the bottom one. Lori has no intention of sleeping, I can see that, but she lays down with Heather, to help keep her warm.

“What kind of a dumb name is Mrs. Wooly?” Freddy asks again.

“You’re taking the whole blanket,” Aidan complains.

I tuck the blanket around the two of them.

Four sets of big, scared eyes blink at me from that bunk bed.

I sit on the floor.

“The day before the earthquake and the spill, I was on my way to school on the high school bus. I was sitting next to my friend Trish and we were just talking about… I remember we were talking about our bake sale to raise money for immigration reform. Hail started falling, but it wasn’t regular hail. It was monster hail, giant hail. There were hailstones as big as softballs! It was like being fired on by cannons. Our driver, Mr. Green, sped the bus up and lost control. We crashed.”

I can remember the smell of the ice in the air and the blood.

“Our bus crashed in the parking lot of a Greenway superstore.”

“We have a Greenway in Castle Rock,” Aidan says.

I nod.

“That’s where Mrs. Wooly comes in. See, Mrs. Wooly was the driver of another bus, right behind us. And it had kids from both the elementary school and the middle school on it. She had really little kids, as little as five years old, in that bus.

“Mrs. Wooly loves kids. You wouldn’t think it, because she can be very gruff, but she’d do anything to protect her kids.”

Heather takes her thumb out of her mouth to say, “Like Uncle Mario.”

Has she always sucked her thumb? I hadn’t noticed.

“Yes, she is kind of like Mario, only a lot younger. So the hail was crashing in through the windows of the bus and Mrs. Wooly was scared that her kids were going to get hurt. She did a crazy thing.”

Not a peep from the bunk bed, so I know I have them.

“She drove her bus through the front window of the Greenway!

“But remember, I was still in the crashed bus outside, and it was lying on its side so the hail was coming down through the windows, right on top of us. I got hit on the head and that’s where I got this scar.” I run a hand up to the dark gash, the flesh still depressed under my fingertips.

“Mrs. Wooly made the kids get out of her bus and wait where it was safe, in the store. By this time, the engine of our bus had caught fire. It was going to blow and we were all going to die.”

Gasps from the bunk bed. The slight shimmying of excited bodies.

“And then Mrs. Wooly backed her bus up, out into the parking lot. And she used an ax to chop open the lock on the emergency door. Then she helped us get out.”

I pause, not for dramatic effect, but because I remember Niko half dragging me down the aisle.

And then Astrid holding me on that bus. She held me in her arms like I was a baby.

I don’t think I ever thanked her for her kindness to me on the bus and now it is, of course, too late. Far too late.

“Then what happened?” Heather asks.

“Did the other bus explode?”

“It did,” I say, shaking my head to clear it. “Mrs. Wooly drove us into the store and the crashed bus exploded before we even got inside. She saved our lives, no question.”

“Wow!” Heather murmurs.

“We were snug and safe in there,” I go on. “We had all this food and even lights and heat. And all the clothes we could want. Imagine that!”

“Oh man,” Lori says. “I would kill for clean underwear.”

“And toys? Was there toys?” asks Aidan.

“Aisles and aisles of toys,” I tell him. “And candy!”

The questions stop and I can see all four of them, luxuriating in the idea of a safe place filled with games and sweets.

In the Greenway I had spun fantasies about Mrs. Wooly rescuing us in a tricked-out bus and the kids dreamed about returning to their lives and parents.

In the Virtues I told a real account of Mrs. Wooly’s actions and the children fantasized about living in the Greenway.

Imagine that.

Lifted up by my real-life fairy tale, the kids drift off to sleep.

I go and sit out on the bed against the door.