The only person I manage to hold a decent conversation with is Sadaf, a Black hijabi girl with a medical textbook who asks me to visit her if I ever feel even slightly under the weather.
“Never hurts to be proactive,” she says, smiling so wide her eyes close a little bit.
“What do you do if someone gets infected?” I ask.
She says, “I tell Nick. He takes care of it.”
I do the math, trying to recall how long the other Seraph trials lasted. The time it took for the other martyrs to fall apart, for their skin to come off in their hands. Instead of the Flood’s usual days, hours, Seraph has given me a precious few weeks. I can hide the vomiting and the pain, but by the end of February, there will be no hiding anything.
Nick said I would be okay. Erin said I would be okay. They promised. I know that.
Right?
Our LORD’s message is clear: Mankind has disappointed Him once again. We have been tempted beyond salvation and have become a plague upon His earth. Our redemption, our eternal life, lies only in this: an eye for an eye, a plague for a plague.
—The Truth by High Reverend Father Ian Clevenger
Nick catches me at the chore board the next morning while I’m debating between cleaning duty or helping Carly fix the rain barrel, which sprung a leak in the night. He takes the chalk out of my hand. “You’re with us today. Meet me in ten.”
That’s how I end up at the back door of the ALC with Nick, Salvador, and the sunburned boy, Cormac. Cormac is tall and sharp with long red hair and a rifle, and he greets me with, “Great. We have to babysit a middle schooler too.”
Um?
“Nick,” Salvador says, clasping xyr hands together in supplication. “I am literally begging you to let me hit him. Please? Just once. Trevor would want me to.”
Nick goes through each of us in turn. “Benji, ignore him. Salvador, not funny. Cormac, one more word, and I will look the other way. Am I clear?”
“Clear,” Salvador chirps. Cormac scoffs.
My contribution is ignoring Cormac altogether and saying, “So what are we doing, anyway?”
Salvador slings an arm over my shoulder. The sudden touch startles me, but xe is warm and strong, and I don’t exactly mind it. “You know how Cormac’s been cutting off all those ears? Believe it or not, he doesn’t just do that for fun.”
Cormac snarls, “Choke on a dick,” and Salvador shoots back, “Maybe you can give me some pointers!”
Nick shoves them out the back door and into the courtyard like unruly children, and they squabble for a second before disappearing farther into the grass. A clatter of wood and metal later, they’re dragging a wheeled cart toward the gate to the street.
“If you’re thinking about joining the Watch,” Nick says, “might as well get a taste for what we do.” I step out into the sun, squinting up at the early-morning clouds. It’s a beautiful day. “Don’t want to keep the Vanguard waiting.”
* * *
The city park—Wagner Commons, according to the sign—has become an infant forest between skyscrapers and dead streetlights. Benches line a gravel path grown through with weeds, and the pond is choked with filth. Squirrels chase one another around a towering maple with a body lashed to its trunk. Flies buzz in a shifting cloud, surrounding the caved-in skull and cross carved into the stomach.
Bodies like this hang in a long, stinking row on both sides of the New Nazareth gate. They’re everywhere in this city.
“Shit,” Cormac mutters. His trigger finger twitches. “Is that—”
Nick holds out a hand. “It’s old.”