Hell Followed with Us(37)

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—”