Hell Followed with Us(90)

I find Mom.

She bled out from a hole in her face. The bullet went in by her nose and came out by her ear, but she’s recognizable the same way Dad was. How fitting that she went out like her husband did. To lose both of my parents to the same senseless war. We will return to the earth for out of it we were taken; for from dust we were made and to dust we will return.

Maybe it would be better if I did believe in God, in Heaven, in Hell. If I could believe she’s going somewhere that will punish her for what she’s done. But I can’t. When I pick up her body—a sad, limp bundle of meat and bones—I can’t believe that. Maybe I’ll change my mind eventually, maybe something will happen, and I will finally feel that push, that call to faith, but until then, I’m okay not believing in anything at all.

I find Theo.

His body is the one that makes me stop. He looks like me, kind of, but what my corpse would look like after days of decomposition. A version of me long dead.

…Is that what he was? A queer boy like me who rotted under the weight of what happened to him?

How easy would it have been for me to end up just like him?

My eyes burn. My vision dissolves into blurry smears of color.

I plunge my hand into his flesh.

I pull together the Flood from his body, what lingers in his corpse, and build. I take out pieces, draw from his organs and bones, and sew it together with sinew. I cut apart his skin and pull out a little creature, eyes squeezed shut and shivering, wet from the blood and pus.

Theo loved me. I loved Theo. He was wrong and he was a monster, but I did. I do. Maybe I’m just a stupid boy, but I don’t know. Maybe in another world, one that didn’t ruin him, he could have been better.

I hold the tiny creature to my chest. There is no other world. Just the one we have here. And in this one, I am alive.

I pull my engagement ring from the dirt and fit it in the creature’s little palm—and I set them down. I wave my hand and whisper, “This world is yours. What do you want?”

They stay by me.



* * *





We come back to the bank late in the evening. Erin and Aisha and Cormac, Sarmat and Lila and Carly, all of us, have been talking the whole way—about the future, about what will happen to the Angels across the world, about how Acheson will change. By the time we make it back to the courtyard, though, we are quiet. The realization of what we’ve done and what’s going to happen swirl into a blurry mass of past, present, and future, of fatigue and occasional fits of disbelieving laughter. One erupts when Faith picks up the little Grace that’s followed us home and spins them around, saying, “Hello! You’re an ugly little thing, yes you are!” The people who didn’t come to New Nazareth, who stayed back to hold down the fort, gawk at me, touch my face, and ask if it’s me, if it’s really me. Does it hurt, am I okay? Are the Angels really dead?

Not all of them, I say, but enough.

I think it hits us all at the same time that maybe we’ll live long enough to grow up.

But as soon as I find a place to breathe, Sadaf comes up to me and says, “Nick wants to see you. He’s in the copy room.”

I run to him.

The copy room has been set up as a miniature version of Nick’s room in the ALC: a mattress, his beads, dim lighting, and not much else. I squeeze my massive body through the door, wincing when my wing catches on the threshold. It’s just the two of us here, alone.

Nick tries to smile. It doesn’t work.

He looks like hell. He’s sitting up on the mattress, supported by the wall, surrounded by stained bandages and shreds of clothing. Part of his pants leg has been cut away to reveal jagged wounds packed with gauze. His mask is down, but he’s holding the same ruined cloth to his face, and I realize with growing horror that he’s just as much of a death-squad soldier as the Angels who were torn to shreds by the Flood at New Nazareth.

He takes the cloth down.

A fault line has opened across his face, from the left side of his forehead down across his eye all the way to his chin. Teeth sprout from odd parts of his cheek. The affected eye sits low in its socket, the bone holding it up shattered.

“I could—” I could fix that. I know I could. But before I can finish the thought, Nick squeezes his eyes shut.

Too loud.

Okay. He’s here, and he’s alive. That’s what matters.

I lie down beside him, the only way to get down to his level, and my head settles against his knee. Not touching it, no, but close enough. His gaze sweeps over the broad forest of spikes, exposed bone, and feathers of my back and shoulders; the kink in my wing; the wounds, welts, and cracks in my skin.

We can talk about it all later. We don’t have to speak right now. We promised we’d speak after I came back from New Nazareth, and now we have all the time in the world.

Nick reaches for me. His fingers press against my weird, broken excuse for a nose, the ridge of my brows, the soft spot under my eye, the edge of my jaw. The rough skin smothering my skull, the sores on my neck, all the things the Flood has done to me.

And he grabs the back of my head and pulls me up, arms trembling with the strain. I scramble up to follow him. He pulls me in until our foreheads are pressed together again, and I don’t realize how much I’m shaking until he holds me tighter just to keep me still.

This is home. I am alive, these are my friends, this is my family.