Hell Followed with Us(65)

I can’t say it. I should, I know, but—”Out.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?”

Nick says, “It does.”

I need to tell them. I have to tell them.

I can’t do this alone.

“Can we get Erin?” I say. “I really, really need to tell you guys something.”



* * *





The only place I can talk is the roof of the ALC, where nobody but the birds will hear when I inevitably lose it. Ash streaks up the sides of the building. The night-shift sniper has been sent down to get some rest. Our footprints track soot in the gravel. The moon is high in the sky, Erin has her hair up in a silk scarf, and I’m still wearing Nick’s jacket.

The city is beautiful. I stare at it instead of Erin and Nick standing close together, watching me.

I’ve been up here with Nick before, but it’s so different at night. The empty, still city. Perfectly quiet, perfectly dead. It’ll take decades for this world to start breaking down, centuries for it to fall, and eons for Earth to swallow every bit of it and wipe all trace of us from the world.

“Are you okay?” Erin asks. “I don’t mean—” She gestures helplessly at my face. “Because I know that isn’t—it can’t—”

I say, “I fucked up.”

Erin laughs a little. “What?” She looks to Nick, who says nothing, and back to me. “If it’s about the Flood, we can figure something out. If you want to tell everybody, we can do that. They’ll accept it, I promise. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

God, I need to tell everyone. “It’s not that. I’ve been lying to you.”

It all comes crashing out.

My voice is high and desperate. The words tumble out like prayers, or maybe begging, or maybe they’re the same thing. I do not leave out anything. Finding Theo at Reformation and how happy I was to see my fiancé again. The food and masks I stole for him. How I went back to him. How terrified I was when he asked me to stay. When I realized it was him that brought fire down on the ALC, and it’s all my fault.

My fault. I did this to them.

I stop, eyes burning. Erin holds her stomach like she might be sick. Nick just stares. Nothing else, just staring. I hate it. The silence hurts like a gaping wound filled with every little thing in this city: the quiet murmurs of the bank; the howling of feral dogs; a gunshot far, far in the distance. The smallest things that let us know we’re not the only ones left alive.

They should be doing something, anything. Walking away, yelling at me, dragging me to the side of the building to throw me off. They could do anything, and I’d understand. Anything except just stand there.

A terrible whining noise rises up in my throat, small and pathetic like a kicked animal.

“I know I should say sorry,” I whimper, “but that’s not going to make this right. There’s nothing I can do to make it okay, but I want to do something to fix it anyway. Which is why I wanted to talk to you. Because I trust you, and if anyone can figure out what I can do, it’s you.”

Nothing. Oh God, there’s nothing. James 5:16—Confess your faults one to another, and pray for another, that ye may be healed. I don’t feel healed. I don’t feel anything, I just feel hollow.

It’s Erin who speaks first.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Benji.”

I whisper, “I know.”

“I mean, you’re right,” she says. “Sorry isn’t going to change anything. But I still want to hear it, you know?”

It doesn’t want to come up. I dig my feet into the gravel of the roof and force it out the way I pulled flesh from my throat. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” She doesn’t say it’s okay because it’s not. I want to look away, but I have to face what I’ve done. “I don’t—I don’t know what else to say. This is…”

“A lot,” I finish.

“Yeah.”

Nick pulls out his notepad, the same notepad he had in the meeting room, and a pen from his pocket.

He starts to write.

“How sure are you that Theodore knew?” he asks, not looking up.

“I was headed out to confront him about it. I’d bet a lot of things on it, but…” Like I wasn’t heading out to tear him to pieces. “Why?”

“Because I’m sure.” Nick crumples up a sheet and throws it on the ground. “That son of a bitch.”

“Did you know him?”

“Well enough.” Of course he did. There’s no way soldiers the same age wouldn’t know each other. “I have an idea, but I need you to trust me. Do you?”

“Yes.” I don’t have to think about it for a second. “Just tell me what to do.”

“If New Nazareth wants you so badly,” he says, “that they’re willing to come all the way out here and risk an entire squad to force you back to them, then we’re going to give them everything they asked for.” He jabs his pen against the paper. “And we are going to make them regret it.”

Erin looks over his shoulder at the notepad. Her eyes flash. “You brilliant bastard.”

In the middle of the night, bathed only in the moon and stars, we go through the plan.