Chapter 1 #2
“Where is your finger?”
Lesandro jerks his head slightly to the north. “Bodega. Block that way. Where they j-jumped me.”
Weak words. Heavily accented English. The rhythm of the accent sounds Dominican.
Orphan X cinches the knot. He proffers the tail of fabric to Lesandro so he can hold it tight. “Fist or mouth?”
Lesandro’s right hand clenches weakly. “Mouth.”
Orphan X guides the end of the makeshift torniquet to Lesandro’s teeth, and the boy clenches down. Orphan X sends a second text to 911. Retrieve severed digit in bodega one block west.
From behind them: “Yo, bitch. We gonna take your head.”
Orphan X rises once more, turns to face his recent interlocutor. He’s the biggest of the group, a low wide belly stretching a guayabera shirt, slugs of belly fat hanging out the bottom hem on either side.
“How thick is that pipe?” Orphan X asks him.
The fat man’s eyes jag briefly to the pipe in his raised fist, time enough for Orphan X to crash forward and lock it up with both hands, slamming it into the man’s broad chest. One of the other men swings the machete at Orphan X’s head but X skips forward, propelling the fat man with him, and the blade sails past him, embedding in the shoulder of the third man.
An unhuman wail. The injured man falls away, the flesh-buried machete coming with him, his friend staring with dismay.
Orphan X twists the pipe from the fat man’s grip and in a single swift motion rotates it up beneath the padded chin, shattering the jaw.
Before the man can tumble, Orphan X spins to crack the last man standing on the side of the neck.
A debilitating blow that crushes the carotid artery, disrupting blood flow to the brain.
It also strikes the vagus nerve, dropping heart rate and blood pressure, and the man himself to the asphalt.
Five men down, drawing rasping breaths or whimpering. The flickering streetlights bathe them in horror-movie lighting.
Orphan X returns to Lesandro. White-faced, the boy holds the end of the tourniquet between his clenched jaws. Orphan X tries to take it back from him, but the boy will not let go.
“Hey. Hey. Look at me. It’s okay. You did great. You can let go now.”
Lesandro releases his jaws.
Orphan X slips the slender pipe through the knotted fabric and twists it, cinching the tourniquet tighter. After a turn and a half, the boy passes out.
That’s good. He could use a break.
Orphan X tucks the pipe beneath the boy’s armpit to hold the tension and walks back to his truck.
The man puddled beside the passenger door manages to hoist himself up onto his elbows, blood from his shattered nose streaming over his mouth and chin like a wide-based goatee.
As Orphan X passes, he stoops to strike him in the side of the head, a quick jab that knocks him unconscious once more.
Orphan X hops in the truck and reverses swiftly, tucking the truck into an alley ten meters away.
From the locked vaults in the truck bed, he removes a bag of saline, tubing, and duct tape.
As he jogs back to the boy, he notices the man with the machete embedded in his shoulder hunched on his side, fingers digging at the leg of his jeans.
The denim cuff has hiked up, revealing a revolver in an ankle holster.
Orphan X kicks him in the side of the head, knocking him out for good.
He removes the revolver, heels it down a sewer grate.
Back to Lesandro. Spiking the saline bag, he slips the catheter into the antecubital vein in the good arm. The boy stirs but does not wake.
Orphan X squeezes the bag to start the saline bolus. Lesandro’s eyes flutter open.
Orphan X eases him onto his side, cupping his cheek so it doesn’t strike the pavement. “You’re safe now,” he says. “You can rest some.”
At last comes the sound of sirens, perhaps a half mile away.
Orphan X duct-tapes the saline bag to the brick wall above the boy’s body, letting gravity do its work.
To his side, the fat man grunts and sits up abruptly and stiffly, a vampire rising from a casket. His lower face is ruinous, a morass of bone and blood, his teeth chipped down to little jagged nubs. The sirens grow louder; Orphan X can even make out the squealing of tires.
As Orphan X walks over, the man raises his hand, fingers splayed against what is coming. He is fortunate to still have both arms to raise.
Orphan X leans over to squeeze his trachea, thumb and fingers expertly seeking out the right arteries, veins, and nerves without crushing the windpipe.
The fat man gurgles and stares up with pleading eyes. When his pupils roll up, Orphan X releases the compression. The man collapses once more, the back of his head knocking the asphalt.
Flashing-light projections come visible on the main street ahead, throwing patterns against the storefronts.
Orphan X returns to Lesandro, checks the saline bag and the infusion. The boy stares up at him, his sclera pronounced. “Wh-what’s gonna happen … me?”
He looks so scared, so lost.
Orphan X wonders what will happen to this young man. Will he be able to handle what he needs to in order to repair himself? Can he afford the medical interventions necessary to put himself back together? Do Orphan X’s responsibilities to Lesandro end once he is out of sight?
These are not the kinds of questions Orphan X has been trained to contend with. Nor are they ones he welcomes.
He crouches over Lesandro once more.
“There will be pain,” Orphan X tells him, “and it will be hard. But you will be whole again.”
Lesandro nods, tears leaking.
Orphan X rises. The wind tunnel of the narrow street plasters his shirt to his torso. You might make out the outline of his appendix carry holster and the ARES 1911 ghost gun it contains.
All this time he had a pistol. He just never bothered to draw it.
The sirens are close enough now that they sound like a scream.
The red-and-blue strobing on the main street grows more intense.
Orphan X ducks through the shattered window near Lesandro’s curled form, vanishing into the building.
As the emergency vehicles sweep around the corner, their approach masks the sound of an F-150 engine turning over and coasting invisibly away.
If you could check Orphan X’s vitals, you’d find them normal. Body temperature 98.6°F, heart rate 60, respiratory rate 14, oxygen saturation 99 percent, blood pressure an athletic 105 over 55. He has not broken a sweat.
He is all fight. No flight.
You might wonder if he is real.
You might wonder if anything scares him.
You might wonder if he sleeps and, if he does, what nightmares haunt him.