Hell Followed with Us(62)
But now Benji isn’t here. Nick reaches over to the balled-up jacket on the other side of the copy room that Benji had been using as a pillow. It’s still warm. He hasn’t been gone long.
Maybe he got sick again? Nick grabs a bottle of water and heads to the courtyard, practicing what he’s going to say when he finds him. He can’t say, Are you sick? because that’ll be obvious. Maybe, Are you okay? But the answer has been “No” for so long, what’s the point in that?
Benji. So instead he says the name over and over. Not Seraph. Benji. He, him, his, not it. Benji’s real name comes so much easier than any other name ever did, and it is a relief to let go of the wrong pronouns. The actual ones are a blessing because they are the truth, and as much time as Nick spends lying, the truth is beautiful.
How could he ever have thought he could turn Benji over to the Vanguard? The moment he looked Benji in the eyes and refused, said they didn’t have the ears, said they couldn’t afford the Vanguard’s help, it was a relief like drinking holy water. He wouldn’t have to be a monster. It was proof he still knew the value of a human life, no matter how much the Angels tried to beat that out of him.
Fuck them.
There are some people awake in the lobby when Nick passes through. Sarmat is on guard duty, face smushed into his hand. Probably waiting for Calvin to come back. Nick will offer to let Salvador and Aisha decide if Calvin is allowed to step foot within the group again; it’s only fitting.
“Have you seen Benji?” Nick asks Sarmat.
“Benji?” Sarmat holds up a hand to his chest. “Brown hair, yea big?”
“Yes.”
“I think so?” Sarmat points in the direction Nick just came from. The window to the courtyard, as suspected. “Didn’t look like he was in a good mood, though. Everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” Nick lies. “Thank you.”
But the courtyard is empty. He checks the shadows by the grave, ducks inside the ALC, even stops by the Grace corpse. Benji isn’t there.
That’s how Nick finds himself on the sidewalk just beyond the broken fence, rolling his beads between his hands. Maybe Benji’s just going to the bathroom. It’s no big deal. Benji’s not a little kid. Well, he’s little, but he’s not a kid, not really. He’s practically grown in the grand scheme of things. Benji is allowed to do what he wants.
God. He deserved it when Benji yelled at him. What kind of person is he anyway, keeping a sick boy tucked away as a possible sacrifice, a living backup plan? Pretending Benji isn’t a person when so many people have done the same to him? Erin was right, like she always is. Hadn’t he spent years begging to be seen as anything but a horrific collection of fuckups? That he wasn’t just the mistakes he was made of and his parents’ condescending pity and God, I’m a person, I’m a person too?
Nick almost laughs. He doesn’t laugh much, because it comes out weird, but he does because there’s no one around to listen. What the fuck is wrong with him? What the fuck is wrong with him—
In the distance, at the far end of the street, right where his vision ends: movement.
Nick stops. Every nerve narrows to that single pinprick.
A dark form stumbling away.
Nick runs back to the bank for exactly the amount of time it takes to grab a pistol, an extra mask, and some bobby pins.
He doesn’t know much about people, but he knows a hell of a lot about anger. He knows what anger will make people do.
God, he knows that much.
* * *
The monster Nick finds halfway between the ALC and Reformation Faith Evangelical Church does not look much like Benji at all.
Consciously, Nick—hiding in the shadow of a pickup truck and digging his nails into the corner of his eye to calm down, just calm down—knows this thing is Benji. This thing has Benji’s hair, Benji’s tiny body, Benji’s clothes. This thing looks like Sister Kipling took out all of Benji’s insides and sewed a wolf under his skin, and it’s only now that Nick is seeing it for the first time.
It’s not him, but it is, and Nick is transfixed.
Benji’s eyes are locked on the death squad just yards from him, ghosts with blood on their robes praying to God. Their guns are down. Their eyes are closed in the shining glory of the Lord, the invisible light beaming in their chests in the darkness of night. Nick knows the type. Their job is to flush out survivors like vermin. They’re soldiers who can’t be trusted with anything else, the ones too bloodthirsty to guard caravans, the gates, or the bridge. The ones New Nazareth can afford to lose, the ones they unleash like rabid dogs to clean up what the Flood, mass shootings, executions, and suicide attacks missed on Judgment Day and every day after.
No matter how expendable these Angels are, Benji can’t take six full-grown men on his own, he can’t—
As soon as the thought crosses Nick’s mind, Benji lunges from the shadows and sinks his teeth into a soldier’s throat.
Everything else turns off like a switch.
Nick lifts his pistol. At least the Angels taught him something.
CRACK. He drops the Angel closest to him—aiming between the shoulders, right above where the spine emerges from the Kevlar vest under the robe. The bullet casing spits from the gun and hits the ground with a distinctive clink.
Nick counts his rounds. One.