Train Wreck: A Loud Crash in HD

>Lori opens her eyes.
>Orange.
>Black.
>Her face feels wet.
>She can hear noises.
>Cracking glass.
>Straining metal.
>Moaning.
>Coming from everywhere.
>She closes her eyes again.

>Lori wakes up to Leni calling out for her.
>And as she tries to focus through the numbness in her head and the sudden reality of what happened starts to dawn on her, Leni starts crying for mom.
>The head trauma rendered her blind.
>She can't see mom's arm draped limply beside her seat.
>Or the cold blood dripping off her fingers.
>Lori tries to calm her down, but Leni starts panicking.
>Trying to wrench herself free of the driveshaft speared through her chest.
>Until she starts going slack.
>Takes one deep breath.
>And pitifully mewls out a simpering "lincy," before her eyes close.
>Lori stares at her sister, waiting for her to wake up.
>Eventually, she reaches up to pull Leni's hair back over her ear.
>Before pulling back her arm to stare at her wrist.
>Where's her hand?

>Slowly, more sounds start to filter through the shellshock.
>She focuses on ragged breathing, looking behind her.
>Luan's looking out the window.
>Her ponytail's pointing straight up.
>She's breathing heavily.
>She looks...relatively Ok.
>As if on cue, she turns around to face her older sister.
>Half of her face has been ripped off.
>Shakily smiling with the undamaged side, she stutters out a jab about being two-faced, before trying to chuckle.
>Then she gets confused, glances around.
>Lori notices her shirt is soaked red.
>"L-Lynn? Where'd you...yo...where..."
>Luan's eyes start to droop.
>Just like Leni.
>"Ly...Lynn...?" she slurs, her words slowing down.
>Just like Leni.
>Then with a shaky sigh, her eyes close.
>She's gone.
>Just like Leni.
>Lori sees movement behind Luan's body.
>Luna, frantically whispering while tugging at something pink.
>...Lola.
>The twins were in the back with her.
>Lana's propped limply against the remnants of the armrest.
>She can't hear what she's saying, but Lori can see what she's doing.
>Luna's struggling to pack Lola's rubbery entrails back into her cavity.
>She forces herself too look away.
>Her eyes pass by Lucy and Lisa, sitting by Luan's body.
>Lucy sits stockstill, whimpering quietly as she shakily clutches something small in her hands.
>Lisa also sits perfectly still.
>Only the faint tremor across her limbs betrays the fact she lives.
>The driveshaft juts out between her legs.
>She stares ahead, her glasses are missing.
>A jagged blade of metal is wedged into the back of the seat.
>Inches from her head.
>Lori can hear a faint squelching every time Lisa's legs shift.
>She soiled herself.

>Lori spies something hanging off the roof.
>Long, thin, with...cleats?
>...Is that a leg?
>...Lynn.
>Where's Lynn?
>Lori looks at the empty seat between her and Leni.
>Where's Lincoln?
>Did they leave?
>Try to find help?
>The eldest Loud feels something swell inside her.
>She's lost three, maybe four sisters already.
>She hopes that that will be it.
>Lori fumbles one-handed to unbuckle herself.
>After a few tries, she successfully falls flat on her face two feet below.
>Vanzilla's upside down.
>Crawling under the dead and dying, she tentatively pokes at the severed limb, as if expecting it to jerk at her touch.
>Then she sees the broken window.
>And the trail of blood leading from it.
>Dragging herself through the shards of metal and glass to reach the window, she maneuver's past Luan's body, wriggling through to the cold outside.
>It takes her almost a solid minute for her to find the strength to stand.

>The minute she does, she hears a soft dragging noise.
>She follows the trail of red, and quickly finds Lynn, dragging herself across the street.
>A baby carrier hangs limply from her ruined fingers.
>Lily.
>Oh, Lily.
>Please...
>God, please, no...
>Gingerly unhooking the handle from her sister's grip, Lori closes her eyes, and turns the seat around.
>Lily doesn't make a noise.
>She opens her eyes.
>For a brief moment, she looks Ok.
>Like she's just sleeping.
>But Lori notices the signs.
>She isn't moving like she does.
>There are no puffs of hot air to betray her breathing.
>Her lips are blue.
>Lily's...

>Lori swallows down the anguished sob, along with the blood and bile and gravel in her mouth.
>Then, opening her eyes again, she looks down.
>Lynn keeps crawling all the while, mumbling to herself.
>"Lynn?" Lori croaks, trying to swallow the blood and bile coating her throat.
>The sports girl ignores her, pulling herself with her working arm.
>But it's clear she's running out of energy.
>She's already slowing down as Lori tries to stem the bloodflow from the stump.
>But she doesn't need to be a nurse to know she's lost too much.
>Eventually she stops to catch her breath.
>Closing her eyes, she mumbles something about "coming for him."
>And stops moving shortly after.
>That's when Lori sees the orange.
>Twenty feet away, face down.
>The snow pushed back from his skidding along the asphalt.
>Lincoln.
>Lori staggers forward, sheer maternal willpower strumming her jelly legs.
>Please be Ok.
>She gets within ten before stopping.
>Something's wrong.
>He's not moving.
>He looks so peaceful, lying there.
>But...something's...
>Something's missing...
>In the corner of her eye, Lori sees something else.
>Blue.
>...Lincoln's legs.
>Laying splayed out, fifteen feet away from his body.

>"Oh, get me away from here, I'm dying!"
>Lori whirls around, the sudden noise causing her to cry out.
>"Play me a song to set me free!"
>That's her ringtone.
>Lori automatically follows the tune, ignoring the blood dripping from her stump and the growing pain shooting from her shattered ankle.
>The adrenalin's wearing off.
>She's coming out of shock.
>"Nobody writes them like they used to."
>It doesn't take her long to find the ringing.
>She digs through the light snowfall, zeroing in on the cracked illumination flickering through the white.
>"So it may as well be me!"
>She pulls her phone out of the snow.
>Her left hand hangs off of it.
>It takes her a minute to pry her own fingers off her phone with her teeth.
>She collapses just after 911 answers.
>She's the last of the surviving Clan Loud to wake up in the hospital.

>Mom. Leni. Luan. Lynn. Lincoln. Lola. Lily.
>All dead.
>Luan survived her facial injuries, for about a week.
>But after almost a month without any signs of recovery, it was decided she would be taken off life support.
>She choked and wheezed for three more days, before going silent.
>Lily, thanks be to God, had it the easiest.
>When the drunk driver t-boned them, the g-forces exerted on her was too much for her body to handle.
>A clean snap, separating the base of her skull from her vertebrae.
>A hangman's break, the doctors cal it.
>"She didn't suffer," they claim.
>"Like she just went to sleep."
>Lucy was smart, trying to protect her eye from the elements.
>But it was too late for it to be reattached.
>She wears an eyepatch now.
>She grew her hair out, now flowing down, past her jaw.
>To hide the damage her other eye took.
>And the need for assistance in moving around.

>Luna shielded Lana at the last second, protecting her from the worst of the trauma.
>Her face took the brunt of the damage, tearing out or burning off almost all the hair on the right side of her head.
>Outside of the plates in her skull, the realignment of her limbs, and fixing her nose so she could breathe, Luna refuses every offer to undergo reconstructive surgery.
>"Too expensive," she says.
>"I'm not worth it," she means.
>Lori's caught her talking in her room on occasion.
>When she thinks no one's around.
>She talks to Luan's Mr. Coconut.
>"I couldn't do it," she whispers, tears coursing through the valleys of scars on her face.
>"I couldn't save both of them, and I had to make a choice,"she chokes out, staring into the doll's eyes.
>"Why couldn't it have been me?"
>Luna takes regular therapy sessions now.
>Lana recovered quickly.
>Physically, at least.
>Mentally, she's a mess.
>Before the accident, she's been separated from Lola for a day at most.
>But it's been over a month.
>She sleeps in her twin's bed, hoping to wake up to her presence.
>She starts trying to dress like Lola, struggling to fit into the tight dresses.
>Adopt her mannerisms.
>Anything she can think of to mimic her sister.
>To keep her alive in some form.
>She's scheduled for therapy in a few weeks.

>Lisa, thanks to her small size and survival instinct, was unharmed in the accident.
>But the trauma of seeing her brother be ripped in half as inertia threw him out of the van.
>And the sight of one sister being impaled by a metal spear, violently erupted from her feet.
>The sound of another sister being roughly dismembered by crunching glass and screeching steel.
>Listening to her struggle to kick out the window, to find her brother, to find help before exsanguination cruelly takes her.
>The hot, almost pork-like smell of the sister to her right having her face torn off by burning metal.
>The sound of the eye of the sibling to her left popping free of it's socket when Lynn's free legs slams into her head.
>The sickeningly comical popping sound, followed by a nearly cartoonish bouncing as it hangs freely on it's optic nerve.
>Lisa has forsaken her research and experiments.
>She can't eat anymore.
>Everything reminds her of that crash.
>She was scheduled for therapy a week ago, after she was caught burning her notes.
>She's refused to attend any sessions.
>Lori was lucky enough to get her hand reattached.
>Almost a month of physiotherapy later, she's got a good deal of her dexterity back.
>But every now and again, her hand suffers from tremors.
>Sometimes just a tingle, lasting only a second or two.
>Other times, she collapses from the pain.
>The other times happen more often, but the medication she takes helps control it.
>Her ankle was less lucky.
>Three of the bones in the joint had to be fused.
>For longer distances than a short hallway, she has to use a cane.

>Dad lost his legs in the crash.
>He refuses to talk about what happened to mom.
>The insurance, as well as the court settlements, made sure the rest of the family are well off.
>A sizeable chunk of the money goes to the funeral.
>Every last casket is closed.
>Mom will be buried with sweet, precious Lily in her arms.
>The funeral goes fairly well, until it's Lori's turn to talk.
>She's partway into her eulogy, retelling a story, years old, about a fight between her and Lincoln over a seat in the van, when she remembers.
>He asked if they could trade spots.
>He wanted to sit by the window.
>She told him to buzz off, the window seat's hers.
>And then the crash happened.
>He grabbed her hand in a panic when the van was flung in the impact.
>Lincoln screamed for her when he was thrown out of the sunroof.
>It's takes the pallbearers, plus three more men, to pry her off Lincoln's casket.
>To the end of her days, Lori Loud believes her little brother's last cry was to blame her.