Burned

the kitchen, straight to the broken, bleeding bodies Nicole had left behind. There were five of them. Three, including Starr, had been struck by Nicole’s deflected shots. The other two had been trampled. “They’re all dead.” Stevie Rae thought it was strange that she sounded so calm.
    “Johnny B, Elliott, Montoya, and I will get rid of ’em,” Dallas said, taking a second to squeeze her shoulder.
    “I have to come with you,” Stevie Rae told him. “I’m gonna open up the earth and bury them, and I’m not doin’ that down here. I don’t want them where we’re gonna live.”
    “Okay, whatever you think’s best,” he said, touching her face gently.
    “Here. Roll them into these sleepin’ bags.” Kramisha picked her way through the rubble and bodies in the kitchen, went to the storage closet, and started filling her arms with sleeping bags.
    “Thanks, Kramisha,” Stevie Rae said, methodically taking the bags from her and unzipping them. A noise pulled her attention back to the doorway, where Venus, Sophie, and Shannoncompton were standing, white-faced. Sophie was making little sobbing noises, but no tears were coming from her eyes. “Go to the Hummer,” Stevie Rae told them. “Wait for us there. We’re goin’ back to school. We won’t be staying here tonight. ’Kay?”
    The three girls nodded and then, holding hands, they disappeared down the tunnel.
    “They’s probably gonna need counseling,” Kramisha told her.
    Stevie Rae looked over the top of a sleeping bag at her. “And you won’t?”
    “No. I used to be a candy striper at St. John’s E.R. I seen a whole lot of crazy there.”
    Wishing she’d had some “whole lot of crazy” experience, Stevie Rae pressed her lips together and tried not to think at all as they zipped the dead kids into five different bags and followed the boys, grunting under the weight of their burdens, out through the main depot building. Silently, they let her lead the way to a dark, deserted area beside the train tracks. Stevie Rae knelt and pressed her hands against the earth. “Open, please, and let these kids return to you.” The earth quivered, like the twitching skin of an animal, and then split, open forming a deep, narrow crevasse. “Go ahead and drop them in,” she told the boys, who followed her orders grimly and silently. When the last body had disappeared, Stevie Rae said, “Nyx, I know these kids made some bad choices, but I don’t think that was all their fault. They are my fledglings, and as their High Priestess, I ask that you show them kindness and let them know the peace they didn’t find here.” She waved her hand in front of her, whispering, “Close over them, please.” The earth, like the fledgling at her side, did Stevie Rae’s bidding.
    When she stood up, Stevie Rae felt about a hundred years old. Dallas tried to touch her again, but she started walking back to the depot, saying, “Dallas, would you and Johnny B look around out here and make sure any of those kids who got out through the depot understand that they aren’t welcome back? I’ll be in the kitchen. Meet me there, ’kay?”
    “We’re on it, girl,” Dallas said. He and Johnny B jogged off.
    “The rest of you guys can go to the Hummer,” she said. Without a word, the kids headed down the stairs that led to the basement parking lot.
    Slowly, Stevie Rae went through the depot and climbed down to the blood-soaked kitchen. Kramisha was still there. She’d found a box of giant trash bags and was cramming rubble into them, mutteringto herself. Stevie Rae didn’t say anything. She just grabbed another bag and joined her. When they had most of the mess stuffed away in bags, Stevie Rae said, “Okay, you can go on now. I’m gonna do some earth stuff and get rid of this blood.”
    Kramisha studied the hard-packed dirt floor. “It ain’t even soaking in.”
    “Yeah, I know. I’m gonna fix it.”
    Kramisha met her gaze. “Hey, you’re our High Priestess and all, but you gotta understand that you can’t fix everything.”
    “I think a good High Priestess wants to fix everything,” she said.
    “I think a good High Priestess don’t beat herself up for stuff she can’t control.”
    “You’d make a good High Priestess, Kramisha.”
    Kramisha snorted. “I got me a job already. Don’t try to put no more shit on my plate. I can barely handle this poem stuff as it is.”
    Stevie Rae smiled, even though her face felt oddly stiff. “You know that’s all