Hell Followed with Us(54)

“Benji?” Cormac whimpers.

I snatch his jacket.

“Shit,” Cormac says, “Nick! Nick!” I hold the jacket like a shield and barely pull down my mask before I vomit. My jaw opens so far it hurts, and the tear across my cheek strains. Something big comes up, and I have to get it out with my tongue, and it falls into the grass, wet and heavy and way too big. “Nick, where are you?”

Two sets of hands bring me to my feet, around my waist and under my arms. I cling to the jacket, vision blurring. Acid burns the back of my tongue.

“You’re fine,” Cormac says while I work my mask back up. “You’re okay.”

I slam the jacket against Cormac’s chest to get it out of my face, and the first thing I see is Nick—to my left, our sides pressed together, holding me tight. Then he lets go. He’s in front of me, climbing through the window, holding out his hands for me. Salvador boosts me through and says, “Glad you made it, kid.”

“Sit,” Nick says, a hand hovering over the back of my neck. Like he knows I thought, for a second, of running back in. “Now.”

I collapse against the wall and slide down. This building—a bank, I think?—is full of wide-eyed, fire-red kids, checking on their friends or lying on the floor, eyes closed. Some cry and some are too shocked for tears. Some have marks from bullets, blood soaking their clothes and hands. Lila, a girl with a cane, has found a first aid kit in the back room and is going around with what little supplies she has, picking up the work Sadaf can’t manage.

Nick says, “Are you okay?”

For the first time, I look down at myself. My skin is red from the heat and shimmers with sweat. Ash cakes my clothes. Blisters are starting to form on the backs of my hands. Parts of the soles of my shoes really have melted, and it looks like the hems of my jeans were singed. I toe off one of my sneakers to find the bottoms have stuck to my socks through a hole in the padding.

Nothing too bad, considering. I didn’t even notice, but I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I decide on, “I’m fine.”

Nick’s hair has come out of the bobby pins. Strands fall across his sweat-slicked forehead. He’s just as much of a mess as me, singed and overheated and exhausted.

He’s not moving. God, does he even want to see me right now?

Do I want to see him?

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Um. Can I get some water?”

Nick disappears and comes back with a bottle. I shove it under my mask and drink as much as I can, head tilted to keep it from falling between my teeth. He waits until I finish, standing at my side to block the torn side of my face from view.

“Stay here,” he says when I’m done and shoves a piece of paper into my hands.

“Wait—”

But Nick is already gone, climbing back out through the window. “Cormac,” he says, “get in the bank.”

“I’m fine,” comes Cormac’s voice from the courtyard. “Benji got me just in time.”

“You’ve been inhaling smoke for too long. Absolutely not.”

“I’m fine.”

Alex sweeps up beside me and leans out the window. They look awful. Bloody hands, a scrape on their chin, mask stained gray. What happened to the radio? I don’t remember if I saw it in the lobby. There are so many things to worry about that I just add it to the list.

“Get in here,” Alex snarls through the window, “or I’m going to make you regret it.”

“All right,” Cormac snaps. “All right.”

Salvador gets him through the window, and he collapses next to me, head held between his knees.

We both do nothing else for a little bit. Eventually, Alex takes up the spot beside him, the three of us in a line next to artificial plants, a writing desk, and chairs.

“The abomination just killed those Angels,” Cormac says. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah.” I sure did.

“What the hell?”

“It helped you.”

He groans. “I know.”

I hold out the bottle. “Water?”

He yanks down his mask and tips half the water into his mouth. He pours some into his hand and splashes it onto his face. Then he passes it to Alex, who takes a gulp before dumping the rest over their head.

I unfold the note in my hand.

I’m sorry.

The same I’m sorry Nick wrote in his room, the same I’m sorry I left on the floor with my knife, the same I’m sorry he couldn’t say but needed me to know anyway.

I press that I’m sorry hard against my upper lip and pretend the smoke tears on my cheeks are actual, human tears, the kind I haven’t been able to cry in years.

I’m sorry too.





There’s some kind of awful, enduring myth: that after the end of the world, people will turn on one another. That people will become hateful and selfish. That’s just not true. It’s never been true.

—”The Wasteland Lie,” a 2031 essay by Toni Quaye



We work long into the night. Breaking into buildings for fire extinguishers, doing head counts, soothing burns and pulling broken glass out of wounds. I help Lila, Sadaf, and Sarmat, sterilizing needles with a lighter for stitches. The cool night air is the one thing keeping me from vomiting again. My blisters ache, but I have better things to do than nurse them.