Stand on any roof, wall, or hill tonight and watch the world slow down. Watch it empty. Watch it return to the paradise our Lord intended. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Isn’t it beautiful?
—Diary of Sister Kimberly Jones
Three people welcome us back to the ALC: Alex, Sadaf, and Erin. Nobody else.
Erin nearly collapses with relief, wrapping Salvador in her arms because xe’s the first person she can reach. Alex counts us twice, checks the blackboard in the lobby, and counts us again. Satisfied that everyone has come back, they leave. Sadaf leads Aisha away, promising Faith she’ll take care of her. Every other person in the ALC, if they have the misfortune to come through the lobby at that exact moment, ducks their head and leaves.
We take turns changing out of our black uniforms in the laundry room, except Nick, who disappears upstairs. Some of us take longer than others. I’m in and out in a minute, jamming the clothes in a bin, while Erin helps Salvador get xyr arm out of the sleeve due to a nasty scrape. Erin says she’ll let Sadaf know, because someone should really look at it. Salvador insists xe’s fine, xe’s fine, it’s nothing to worry about, please don’t take her away from Aisha.
Then we pull just enough water to clean ourselves and draw straws for order. I get the shortest straw, and Faith tries to protest, but I hide it before she can take it. By the time the water gets to me, it’s cold and murky. I dunk my hair and scrub an old washcloth across my arms, and I don’t let myself take long because if I do I’ll try to scrub off my skin.
For the rest of the day, I struggle to keep down food and catch fragments of sleep. People avoid me in the kitchen and the halls. I check the mirror to make sure Seraph hasn’t etched itself deeper into my body, but there’s nothing there I hadn’t seen before.
I did good. I made them suffer. I did it.
Theo still loves me.
But what the fuck happened? Why did I end up in New Nazareth, why did I see the body hanging from the tree, why did I see the monster? I want to crack my head open and search through the brain matter for the rot creeping across my frontal lobe. I want to ask Theo to do it for me. He’d break me open if I asked him to, wouldn’t he? He understands I never asked for this. He won’t hurt me this time.
I’m scared of the beast in the trees, the barest glimpse Seraph has given me of fangs, feathers, and flesh. Because I think that beast—six wings, Death on his pale horse, the monster of the sea and blasphemy, the wrath of the Lamb, the wrath of the Lamb—is me.
I don’t sleep more than a handful of hours. The next day, I’m so tired that my eyes burn, and I’m so hungry my stomach has given up on growling. Instead, I ache all over and take too long to respond. My hands tremble. Low blood sugar, Dad would always say. Or maybe it’s Seraph. Does the Flood cause tremors? I can’t remember.
I tuck my hands between my knees as the Watch sits in the media room in a terrible, stretched-out silence. We don’t say anything. Just look at one another.
It’s Salvador that finally speaks.
“Sorry to be a bummer,” xe says, slapping the arm of the loveseat, “but I can’t do this. I’m going back to bed. Later.”
Sadaf untangles herself from Aisha and Faith to reach for xem. “Sal.”
“Let xem go,” Erin whispers.
Salvador leaves the media room, wiping xyr face and letting the door slam behind xem. Nick watches the ground. Cormac picks at his nails.
“I didn’t sleep well,” Faith says, her voice teetering on the edge of a whisper. “I mean, none of us ever sleep well. But worse than usual.”
“Me neither,” Aisha says. “I was up half the night, I just—” Sadaf squeezes her hand. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear this.”
“Nightmares?” Erin prompts gently.
Aisha says, “It’s worse when I’m awake.”
Nick meets my eyes across the room. He knows I don’t have anything to say here. That I’m used to this, that this is my normal, and all I can do is watch everyone else crumble.
Cormac says, “I don’t know why this is any different. This isn’t the first time we’ve killed people. Nothing’s changed.”
“There were children!” Aisha protests. “There were children. They were just kids.”
“And so was Trevor,” Cormac says. “Stop acting like this is so terrible.”
I can’t take the broken look on Aisha’s face. “Cormac,” I say, “shut the fuck up.”
Erin says, “Nick? What about you? Do you want to talk?”
“I’m fine,” he says.
“You always say that,” Faith whispers.
“Then stop asking. My job is to take care of you, not the other way around.”
Erin either takes the bait or lets it slide, because she keeps going. “Everyone deserves to know somebody is looking out for them. I know what you go through isn’t always understood by everyone else at the ALC.” She leans over to put a hand on the back of the couch. “Sadaf, I’m glad you’re here. This support means so much to us.”
I tune it out. The words aren’t meant for me. Staring unblinking into the face of death even as it tears you to shreds is just what Angels do. There’s no point in fear when God is so much greater. To fear is to sin; don’t you trust Him, don’t you believe in Him? Have faith, you coward. Psalm 118:6—The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
Afterward, Sadaf gathers Aisha and Faith to go make sure Salvador is okay. Erin tries to talk to Nick, but he pulls away, staring at his hands, taking the lizard from his pocket, focusing on anything but her. Then he mumbles a flimsy excuse and flees.
“Hey, Benji,” Erin sighs once we’re the only ones left. “You holding up okay?”
“Better than everyone else, looks like,” I say. “Is Nick all right?”
“He’s…hmm.” She searches for a word. The lengths she’s going to in order to avoid saying autistic is admirable, but I can’t help wondering if Nick would be grateful or annoyed. “He doesn’t like to talk, I know, but I’m still worried about him.” She picks her hair for a second, swaying on her feet, before something clicks. “Do you think you could go talk to him?”
I balk. “Me?”
“If it’s not too much of a problem,” she says. “Talking to you might be good for him. You have a lot in common, actually.”
“We do?”
Her smile—something I can almost see past her mask, creeping into her eyes, the crinkle of her cheeks above the flower-patterned cloth—looks desperate. “Yeah. And maybe he’ll see it.”
A lot in common. I can’t think of anything about us that overlaps besides being white gay guys, and in the ALC, that’s not special. What else is there? We’re both kind of short? We’re both way too comfortable with the dead?
With the way Erin is looking at me, all hope and sadness, I can’t say no.
It takes me a few minutes to track down Nick. One of the sniper girls points me in the right direction: the roof. “Said he’d take over for a bit. I ain’t complaining.” I head upstairs—which is just storage and a few doors, one of which has a key that gets passed around if you want a place to hook up or jack off in peace—and open the roof-access hatch.
The roof is flat and full of gravel, peppered with useless HVAC units and other little metal and plastic things. Nick sits in a lawn chair looking out over the street, a rifle leaning against his knee and binoculars in his lap. It’s hot up here, and the sky is perfectly blue.
I let the hatch door drop.
“Did Erin send you?” Nick says, not bothering to turn around.
“That obvious?”
“She worries too much.”
“That’s kind of her job.” I come over and sit on the concrete wall running along the edge of the roof. Nick is tapping his fingers the way he was at Reformation. His leg is bouncing too. “I promised I’d check on you, so if you want me to piss off, give me something good.”
“Something good,” he repeats.
“Yeah. So I can say, We had a good chat. He’s doing okay. She deserves that much.”
“I’m fine.”
I throw his words from the corner store back at him: “Too vague.” His nose wrinkles. “Just give me something to work with—”
“Already did.”
“—that isn’t I’m fine because holy shit, dude, none of us are.”
Nick kicks his feet up on the wall.
“Or we can just hang out,” I say. He snorts, almost as if he finds it funny, which would be a first. “That’s cool too.”
Theo and I used to do this kind of thing. New Nazareth rose from the ashes of a university in the northern quarter of Acheson, and we imagined the students would be jealous of the free rein we had of restricted areas and old basements. Our favorite place was the roof of the student union, where we would chase carrion birds, hide from our parents, and study the world beyond the gates. At first, we watched endless streams of cars and the flashing lights of the city, telling stories of the lives of nonbelievers far beyond us. Then, after Judgment Day, we stared at utter silence, at lights slowly snuffing out, at the world grinding to a bloody, sin-soaked halt.
I look over my shoulder at the city now; at the skyscrapers that are only just starting to bear the scars of abandonment, the green peeking through cracks in the sidewalk, ponds gathering in dips in the road. February is the end of spring. Soon, the city will become sweltering and nigh uninhabitable. Revelation 8:7—And the first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. Come April, the world will be parched. The river surrounding the city will become a siren song, coaxing animals toward the rapids and smashing them against the rocks. Dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Theo’s back.
He still loves me.
If I could cry, I would. It’s only been a handful of weeks since I last saw him, but it feels like we’ve been apart forever. I had to pull a knife to keep from falling into his arms, begging him to forgive the transgression that made him raise a hand against me. He did it to me, he hurt me, and I wanted to apologize.
He came for me. And I’ll go back to him. I have to.
The two of us really have changed, haven’t we? In so little time? I skim my hand through my hair, and it flops in front of my eyes. He’s turned his back on the Angels, and I’m more a boy—more visibly a boy, I guess—than I ever was in New Nazareth. I blow the hair away, but it falls right back down.
Wait. I still have Nick’s bobby pins. I pull them from my pocket and try to slide them into place, get the shaggy hair out of my face, but they don’t stay. They come loose and sag.
Figures. I never learned how to do anything with my hair besides comb it and messily braid it. Mom practically had to hold me down to put flowers in my hair for the engagement blessing, like she was trying to wrestle girl back into my head.
Nick says, “You have them backward.”
“What?”
“Here.” He slings the binoculars around his neck. “Give them to me.”
I hand over the bobby pins. Nick pulls the sleeves of his jacket over his palms, almost like he’s trying to create sweater paws, and he sweeps my hair out of my face. My fingers curl against the concrete wall, and I stare at my feet, trying to keep myself as still as possible as his hands skim my scalp. This sort of touch between the unmarried was barely allowed in New Nazareth.
Theo is back. I am betrothed, and Theo is back.
Nick slides one bobby pin into place, sweeps back my hair again, and nestles the second one at my temple.
He steps away and lets his sleeves go. His right hand shakes for a second, like he’s trying to get something off it. “Ridged side goes against the skin,” he says and drops back into his chair.
I barely remember to reply, “Right. Thanks.”
“You did good at the church,” Nick says.
“I don’t feel like I did.” Dad’s meaning of the word or Nick’s, it doesn’t matter. I know I technically did, but I still ache in my chest. Like I did something wrong instead.
“We lost nobody to abominations. You did your job.”
“They didn’t want to hurt us.”
His throat bobs. His gaze focuses on a squirrel balancing on a phone pole, tail twitching as it surveys the rusting traffic jam.
He says, “How much longer do you have?”
“I don’t know. A few weeks at most.” The skin underneath my fingernails is a bit too pale, verging on gray. Nothing too wrong. But just wrong enough. “I’m throwing up all the time, and it’s getting worse.” I don’t mention the vision, or whatever it was, at Reformation. He might think I’m losing it and shove me over the side of the building. “But I’m all right for now.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” he says.
I say, “I’m scared all the time. I’m tired of it.”
“Then do something about it.”
Like what? What else is there to do but split open my skull, beg Theo to take out the rotten parts, peel Seraph out of me cell by cell? All I can do is run away. I ran from New Nazareth, I ran from the Angels and Theo and Mom, and I’m running from this too, as if closing my eyes against it will stop it from devouring me whole.
Maybe I have to run toward something for once.
Toward Theo. Toward the beast in the trees.
I say, “This was supposed to be me getting you to talk.”
Nick says, “Good fucking luck.”
I laugh.
