Hell Followed with Us(4)

Steven lets up, just a bit, and I think it might have worked, but he’s wrestling me up and pinning my head against his chest. He smells so much like sweat, I almost taste it.

A flick, and there’s a knife to my throat. A thick one, with a black blade glinting in the sun.

“You want to be a boy so bad,” Steven says. “I think we can start cutting shit off. That’s how it works, right?”

I can’t get the word out. I shake my head. No.

“That’s what I thought. So be a good girl and do what he says.”

I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry.

I say, “Okay.”

Brother Hutch picks up the Bible from the bridge checkpoint as Steven gets me into a set of whites and hooks a mask around my ears—a flimsy fabric mask worn only beyond the walls of New Nazareth, where we step beyond God’s protection. “Whore,” Steven whispers, glaring at my bulky denim shorts before they’re smothered by robes. The bridge guards take their places behind the Jersey barriers, waiting for nonbelievers to string up and Angel messengers from distant camps to let through. The soldier by the Grace gently coaxes it out from behind the cars, and its virus-melted body shivers in the humid breeze coming off the water.

“Lord,” Brother Hutch cries, raising his free hand as if reaching for the bodies swinging overhead. Everyone joins him but me. “Lord, how I praise You; how great You are in Your never-ending mercifulness, to bring our blessed Seraph back to us!”

I will be good. I will be good. I will be good. I will keep Seraph hidden, locked up in my chest, whatever it takes to make sure the Angels never get the weapon they made of me.

But I’m just so tired of running.



* * *





The death squad takes me away from the bridge, away from Acresfield County, and leads me through the streets of Acheson toward New Nazareth. I ask if I can clean myself, but they refuse, so Dad’s blood is still on my face, hair, and hands. Get off. I smear it down my sleeves, but it’s settled into the lines of my fingers and the creases of my palms. I want to stick my hands in boiling water. Get off, get off, get off.

Steven grabs my shoulder and shakes me. “Shut the fuck up.”

I wince. That sort of language would never be allowed inside the New Nazareth walls. Not even if you don’t say it out loud. Mom said God would know anyway.

Besides the soldiers and the Grace dragging itself along with us, the only things we see all morning are abandoned cars and empty buildings. The world is only two years gone, so everything is almost exactly how it used to be: clusters of stickers clinging to bus shelters, weeds springing up between cracks in the sidewalk, trees outgrowing their dirt squares in the concrete. A corpse hangs from a flagpole, and massive letters on the building behind it scream REPENT, SINNER.

That’s the way it works now. Everybody is dying, and it’s just a matter of what kills you. Whether it’s Angels or the Flood or heatstroke or good old sepsis.

For most of humanity, it was the Flood. Theo’s mom was martyred on Judgment Day, and he grieved her in the only way he was allowed: by learning everything. How the virus burned through billions, missionaries like his mom carrying it to every major city in the world. How it either kills you when a new set of ribs grow through your lungs or how an unlucky few survive long enough to find salvation as a Grace. How the death squads infect themselves with a taste of the Flood at their initiation ritual, walking the fine line between taking a step closer to God and succumbing to the sickness…

How Seraph is a balance of the Flood’s need to devour and its need to survive—ravenous enough to turn me into a monster, patient enough to do it right. Because Sister Kipling made the Flood powerful, and she made Seraph perfect.

She made me perfect.

The Grace rumbles, shaking like a horse twitching away flies. I come up to its hunched-over chest, maybe. When its mouth is closed, I can see remnants of the person—people—it used to be. Human teeth between serrated fangs. The remains of a button nose.

Brother Hutch catches me staring. I avert my eyes, but it’s not enough. He slows down to match my stride. In front of us, two soldiers peer at a map, murmuring about previous ambushes and new paths through the city.

Acheson has been devouring Angels lately.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Brother Hutch croons, spreading his fingers toward the Grace. “This new life they’ve been given? How merciful of our Lord to allow them to be born again, to become warriors in our fight for His plan. Just like you.”

Just like me. This is what I was chosen for. For the virus to turn me into a monster that will lead the Angels to Heaven.

That will wipe humanity from the earth once and for all, just like God demanded.



* * *





A little after noon, the youngest of the squad calls for a rest. We’re on a wide street lined with restaurants and hipster offices sporting strange logos. Some were abandoned long before Judgment Day, thanks to skyrocketing inflation, rent prices, and everything, really. Water-conservation flyers and open calls for protest peel off brick walls, next to eviction notices and Going Out of Business signs. I haven’t seen any bodies or Angel propaganda for a few blocks. This must be a new path.

“I need a drink,” the youngest soldier whines. I’ve been trying to place him the whole walk, but I keep coming up blank. Whose brother is he, whose son? “My feet hurt.”