Hell Followed with Us(53)

They’re dead. For the first time in a while, I have to stop at the sight of a dead body because God, oh God, O God, Your shade is what protects us.

Something moves over my shoulder. I turn to find Carly staring at me, at the Grace, tears streaming down her cheeks. She’s supporting someone whose left arm is charred beyond recognition.

I point to the back door. “That way!” Carly nods and takes a step back, and the smoke swallows her.

A scream from the gym. Shit, the gym. I fling open the doors.

It’s an inferno. Apartments crackle and collapse, and there goes everything. Our beds, our belongings, the trinkets and pages of books held up like wards against evil. All gone.

Through the smoke, I see them: two Angels sweeping the aisles, checking apartments one by one and setting them alight. Glimmering like demons, ash smearing the hems of their robes.

Brother Faring. Brother Heard. Of course I recognize them. I always do.

I jam my shoulder into the Grace’s side. They spring forward, clattering across the waxed gym floor, and grab Brother Heard by the torso to fling him into the fire. His robes catch immediately. Brother Faring lifts his rifle but—

CRACK. He falls. An ashen hand bats aside a sheet door from an apartment just feet away, and Aisha crawls out, smeared with soot and cradling her gun like a baby.

“Benji,” she gasps, “Benji, you’re okay.”

I grab her arms to steady her as the Grace digs into the second Angel to make sure he’s really, really dead, pulling out ropes of dripping insides. Aisha is shaking and wheezing.

“I’m okay,” I manage. “Where is everybody?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. We got split up.” She’s clinging to me, barely able to pull herself out of the apartment. My head feels like it’s going to explode under the heat and the pressure. I tell myself there’s more than one way to the back door, and just because I didn’t see anybody on the way in doesn’t mean all my friends are burning alive. “Some people are still upstairs, I think? We need to go.”

She looks over my shoulder and freezes.

“What the fuck,” she whispers, “what the fuck, what the fuck.”

I look too. The Grace is staring at us, head tilted and wreathed in smoke. Part of their skin bubbles where they’re too close to the fire.

Look away, I whisper, and when they do, I shove Aisha toward the door. She tries to drag me with her, but I peel her fingers off my sleeve, and she sobs, turns, and runs.

It’s too hot in here. The high ceilings aren’t doing anything for the smoke anymore, and my chest feels too tight, like my ribs are squeezing in. I’m slick with sweat, but my eyes are so dry, they hurt when I blink. The Grace wanders up, rumbling, and nudges me.

I need to get out of here. Get away from the fire and into fresh air where the smoke won’t suffocate me.

But I’m the reason the ALC is burning. I can’t just leave.

I promised I would be good.

The Grace comes back to my side, and together we run. Out of the gym, through the lobby, down another hall. The Grace rounds a corner ahead of me, and I follow to find them bashing an Angel against a wall, over and over, until there’s nothing left of him but sludge.

We reach the media room.

It’s white with fire, so bright I have to squint. Breathing feels like swallowing rot. I shield my eyes, tears of strain gathering in my lashes. It’s hard to see, but I make out the only shapes that matter: an Angel behind Nick’s shitty armchair and Cormac behind the couch. He’s stuck. No weapon and no way to the door. And people never hold positions alone.

I don’t care that he tried to turn me against Nick. I whisper to the Grace, “Go.”

They screech through the doorway, descending on the Angel like something from Heaven, dragging the soldier toward their gaping maw. The Angel screams and is cut off with a crunch.

I stumble through the flames and grab Cormac by the jacket. “Come on!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Cormac shrieks. The whites of his eyes burn. Soot smears his face. “That thing—”

I whisper, “Find someone to help,” and the Grace tosses their head and disappears into the blazing halls. Cormac stares at me, and I hiss, “Get your ass up,” and he’s with me.

“Why didn’t it kill us?” he rasps.

“I don’t know,” I lie and pull him toward the door.

There’s something awful building in my stomach, a pounding in my head like Seraph is clawing through, but I get Cormac into the hall. The flames are as tall as a person, and it’s impossible to breathe without hacking. Cormac wrenches himself out of his jacket and presses it against my mouth. I shove it back at him, he needs it more than I do, but he takes one half to block the smoke and shoves the other against me again, and I let him.

We stumble through the back door.

Dozens of people are out here. It’s chaos. Salvador smashes a window on the other side of the courtyard and boosts someone through, into the safety of a strange building. Sadaf shouts at Sarmat to hold someone down while she cuts clothing away from a festering burn.

People are alive. This is my fault, but people are alive, God, they’re alive.

I get two steps into the courtyard before the Grace dies.

I feel it in the Flood, in my skull. My knees give out from under me. Cormac stumbles, trying to catch me under the arms, but he’s too late. Vomit wells up in my throat. I can’t take down my mask to throw up, it’ll show my face, I can’t—