He’s not moving. God, does he even want to see me right now?
Do I want to see him?
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Um. Can I get some water?”
Nick disappears and comes back with a bottle. I shove it under my mask and drink as much as I can, head tilted to keep it from falling between my teeth. He waits until I finish, standing at my side to block the torn side of my face from view.
“Stay here,” he says when I’m done and shoves a piece of paper into my hands.
“Wait—”
But Nick is already gone, climbing back out through the window. “Cormac,” he says, “get in the bank.”
“I’m fine,” comes Cormac’s voice from the courtyard. “Benji got me just in time.”
“You’ve been inhaling smoke for too long. Absolutely not.”
“I’m fine.”
Alex sweeps up beside me and leans out the window. They look awful. Bloody hands, a scrape on their chin, mask stained gray. What happened to the radio? I don’t remember if I saw it in the lobby. There are so many things to worry about that I just add it to the list.
“Get in here,” Alex snarls through the window, “or I’m going to make you regret it.”
“All right,” Cormac snaps. “All right.”
Salvador gets him through the window, and he collapses next to me, head held between his knees.
We both do nothing else for a little bit. Eventually, Alex takes up the spot beside him, the three of us in a line next to artificial plants, a writing desk, and chairs.
“The abomination just killed those Angels,” Cormac says. “Did you see that?”
“Yeah.” I sure did.
“What the hell?”
“It helped you.”
He groans. “I know.”
I hold out the bottle. “Water?”
He yanks down his mask and tips half the water into his mouth. He pours some into his hand and splashes it onto his face. Then he passes it to Alex, who takes a gulp before dumping the rest over their head.
I unfold the note in my hand.
I’m sorry.
The same I’m sorry Nick wrote in his room, the same I’m sorry I left on the floor with my knife, the same I’m sorry he couldn’t say but needed me to know anyway.
I press that I’m sorry hard against my upper lip and pretend the smoke tears on my cheeks are actual, human tears, the kind I haven’t been able to cry in years.
I’m sorry too.
There’s some kind of awful, enduring myth: that after the end of the world, people will turn on one another. That people will become hateful and selfish. That’s just not true. It’s never been true.
—”The Wasteland Lie,” a 2031 essay by Toni Quaye
We work long into the night. Breaking into buildings for fire extinguishers, doing head counts, soothing burns and pulling broken glass out of wounds. I help Lila, Sadaf, and Sarmat, sterilizing needles with a lighter for stitches. The cool night air is the one thing keeping me from vomiting again. My blisters ache, but I have better things to do than nurse them.
“Are you all right?” Sadaf asks me, her pale pink dress splayed out in the ashes while Sarmat helps her last patient stand. Lila measures out a length of bandage. In the moonlight, with her rescued medical kit and bloody hands, Sadaf looks more like an angel than any Angel ever has.
“I’m fine,” I say, which I’ve been lying about all night.