While the smaller towns were safe from the aliens, they weren’t safe from other people. It didn’t take long before people began looting and killing. Whether it was desperation or greed, Blake didn’t know. He’d heard some real horror stories from people passing by. Sometimes one of the soldiers volunteered to take smaller groups toward the border and to the bigger camps for some protection.
People had become desperate. And there was nothing worse than a desperate person. In high school, he had an ambitious English teacher who tried to teach a room full of hormone-addled teenagers about philosophy. He kept bringing up some scenario about a man stealing bread.
Turns out when faced with annihilation, humanity will kill, steal, and rape without remorse.
Sometimes Blake wondered if they deserved to live at all.
Crossing the main road, he broke the frosty dew clinging to the grass and made his way down the grassy slope toward the river.The Judgewas moored to a small dock, bobbing in the gentle swells. Following a well-worn trail, he ended up settled just above the shoreline.
Ignoring the cold and damp, he sat. The sky was pale gray, the sun trying to pierce through the thick clouds. It might do it. They were at the tail end of winter now, and Blake tried not to think about what that meant.
Soon, it would be a year since he’d spoken to his parents. Sometime around Christmas—which ended up being just another day, despite Tommy’s insistence they slow down and celebrate—he’d come to terms with the fact that he would probably never see them again.
Blake wasn’t sure if it was easier to think they were dead, or happy and healthy somewhere. As if, somehow, Florida had remained untouched, and one day his dad would look up from a documentary on invasive Lionfish and remember he hadn’tspoken to Blake in a while. They’d turn on the news and realize what had happened. See footage of DC in ruins, and they’d mourn him.
For someone who didn’t speak to his parents much before, he thought about them a lot now. Sometimes it hit him out of nowhere. He’d hear some random fact and reach for his phone to text his dad, only to remember a beat too late that he couldn’t. And then it would hit him all over again.
More than once, he’d imagined telling them about Gabriel. His dad would like him. They both had that quiet stoicism about them, the kind people couldn’t help but gravitate toward. No, it would be his mom who would be the problem. She’d sit there with pursed lips, coldly polite to Gabriel, constantly pushing him to see which button would set him off. And when it inevitably didn’t, she’d begrudgingly start to let him in.
If he closed his eyes, he could see her now with her dark hair brushing her shoulders, wearing athleisure and flipflops. She’d be sitting beside him despite the cold. She’d look out over the water, content to let Blake squirm in the silence. His dad would have spouted out random information about the river or the deciduous forests of the northeast United States, but not his mom.
She’d get right to the point.
How long are you going to sit here feeling sorry for yourself?
Her words would cut deep, just like she’d meant for them to. A harsh slap. But like all things with his mother, you’d have to look deeper. To understandwhyshe was saying it more than what she was saying.
His mother’s love language had always been criticism. Blake had just been too stupid to understand that.
The worst part was that he couldn’t even get mad at her—she was right. Blake was feeling sorry for himself. Sorry, that forthe first time in his life, he’d found someone he thought could be the one. But he was so worried about saving lives and not dying that he couldn’t even properly be with him. That every time they got lost in themselves—whether it was the first time Gabriel tackled him into the pool, kissing him as they hovered over the bottom, or discovering just how much hereallyliked sex—he was reminded that people died. Were dying. Cities were destroyed. Tomorrow, an alien could immolate him.
After they first got to the motel, it was like the world outside didn’t exist. They were coming down off the adrenaline high of surviving DC, finally able to stop and breathe—to enjoy each other. They talked about everything back then. The big stuff, and the little stuff. Their dreams, their pasts. Gabriel showed him all about intimacy, physical and emotional, and made him feel treasured. Protected. Valued.
And then the hits started coming, bringing injuries and death. Gabriel would leave on missions with larger teams and come back without them. His smile became a little slower, more brittle. Fingers twitching toward the pocket he used to keep his crochet hook in. Phin nearly lost an eye, and Victoria once had to drag the entire team into a drainage ditch, hiding while Monkey Cats and Off Formers destroyed themselves above them.
He’d come back and force himself to smile. It was so fragile, Blake wondered if he kissed him hard enough, it’d crack.
And Blake noticed. How could he not? But he just…didn’t care. No, that wasn’t it. Hecouldn’tcare. He was so busy flipping through textbooks he didn’t understand, desperately hoping that something would stick. A dosage. A diagnosis.
Sarah Conner didn’t have that problem with her shit kicker boots and enough ammo to wipe the aliens off the face of the planet.
Real life was always more disappointing than movies.
Blake was so busy trying to save a life, he was losing the one good thing that happened in this godforsaken dystopia.
And now he was sitting here whining about his boyfriend not taking him along on missions.
God,he was even pouting on a riverbank like an insufferable lead in an indie flick. All he needed now was a folksy soundtrack. Maybe a ukulele?
Sighing, he curled his arms around his legs and rested his chin on his knees. Sunlight was dappling on the quiet river. It looked cleaner than he’d ever seen it. Blake might even be tempted to swim in it come summer—if he were still alive.
Footsteps crunched behind him, and for a brief moment, Blake’s heart lifted, hoping it was Gabriel. But when he turned, he saw Tommy’s slight figure shuffling down the lawn, his fuzzy hood pulled up over his head.
Despite his grumbling, Blake never truly minded Tommy’s presence…but he wished it were Gabriel. He wanted to talk to him.Shouldtalk to him. But he didn’t know what to say. Or how to say it.
Tommy flicked off his hood, his overgrown hair flopping down in his face. Unlike Blake, he looked cute with his long hair. Like one of those designer cows with the big eyes.
“I think about the zoo a lot,” Tommy said, his voice bright.