Page 2 of Antihero

He is known by different names—Orphan X, the Nowhere Man, Evan Smoak.

He removes a rugged-looking phone from his pocket and dials three numbers, gazing calmly at the men. “Yes, hello. Please send ambulances and PD to this location. I’ll text decimal coordinates now. There are six injured parties.”

The Trinitarios look at him, more perplexed than angry, their heads tilted in comical unison.

“Yes, six,” Orphan X continues. “The most acute is a young man with a severed left arm and a finger missing from his right hand. The wound has just been stabilized and I’ve started fluids. The arm is likely gone but please bring a waterproof bag and ice container for the finger in case it can be located.”

“Hey,” one of the gangsters says. And then, louder, “Hey!”

Orphan X holds up a just-a-sec finger to him, listening to the question over the phone. “The other injuries? Those have yet to be ascertained.”

On the ground by the passenger door, the fallen man releases a moan of pain before falling unconscious again.

“Rapa tu mai,” one of his cohorts hisses at Orphan X through irregular gold teeth.

“Depending on how this goes,” Orphan X says into the phone, “you may want to send a hearse as well.”

He hangs up. Frowns at the screen. Thumbs once. A bloop sound effect confirms the conveyance of coordinates to 911.

Casually, he circles the back of his truck, passing within feet of the poleaxed gang members as he walks over to Lesandro. Blood drools from the stump through the thumb and remaining three fingers of the boy’s good hand. His teeth chatter.

Orphan X takes the boy gently by the shoulders and slides him down the wall to sit. A breeze whines across the broken glass of the pane to their side. A weathered mural of a young mother and her younger girl remains faded on the brick near them, dates bookending too-short lives, a memorial for the Trinitarios’ last innocent bystanders.

Lesandro’s teeth chatter some more. “My watch,” he says. “I c-can’t find my watch.”

Crouching over him, Orphan X says, “It’s okay. We’ll get it soon enough.”

“Yo,” one of the attackers says, stepping forward. “What the fuck, mamagüevo? You know where you are right now?”

The machete tap-tap-taps the outside of his thigh.

Orphan X turns to appraise the man in full. His white T-shirt looks useful.

Orphan X’s left hand blurs and a Strider folding knife lifts from his pocket, snapped open by the very gesture. The machete has no chance to lift from the man’s side before Orphan X steps forward and punches the knife into the intercostal space between the man’s second and third ribs. Air hisses out as the lung collapses.

Orphan X push-kicks him in the hip, spinning him around, grabbing a fistful of shirt at the back collar, and whipping the Strider upward to rake through the fabric.

The man falls out of his own shirt and fetal-curls on the asphalt, lips guppying.

The three remaining men take an inadvertent step away.

Again, Orphan X turns his back on them.

Returns focus to the boy.

He pulls the ribboned shirt taut and starts tying it around the boy’s arm, just above the stump. The boy’s lost left forearm and hand will be unusable, but the missing finger of the right hand shows a clean amputation line. Given the damage on the other side, it would be beneficial for the boy to retain all five digits of his dominant hand.

One of Lesandro’s feet wags back and forth, the dirty sock half pulled off over the toes. His head dips, eyelids fluttering.

“Look at me,” Orphan X says. “Look at my eyes. See my nose? We’re here together.”

Lesandro’s gaze comes into brief focus.

“Name. What’s your name.”

His lips move but the rest of his face stays locked in shock. “L-Lesandro … Candella.”

“Where is your finger?”