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  I groaned. “I wish it did, though.”

  Midori was correct, and it was after only five minutes that he came out of the brush and stopped us in our tracks.

  “Go away, Gav.”

  “No, it’s me. I mean, one hundred percent me. Not the angel. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “When I said ‘Go away, Gav,’ I meant it. You always bring trouble.”

  “Please? I know I’ve been really weird the entire time you’ve known me, and I want to change that. My life is—well, it’s complicated. I wanted to apologize, and I hope that if I tell you what’s happened, you’ll have the heart to forgive me.”

  “Let’s listen to him,” offered Midori, and I gave her a dirty look. She was far too keen about Gav and far too mean about Fex, when the opposite should have been true.

  “Thank you!” said Gav, delighted. “Okay, so the deal with me is—”

  “Wait, who said I wanted to hear this? All Midori said was that maybe we should listen to you. My final vote is still no.”

  “Erika, who said you had the final word around here?” Midori reminded me.

  “I don’t. We have a democracy going on, and we’re at a tie, and thus, a no. Go away, Gav.”

  “We’re listening to his story.” Midori crossed her arms.

  “Okay, fine,” I grumbled.

  “All right,” started Gav. “Basically, I’m very regular. I lived in your town, Erika. I guess we never bumped into each other, but we went to the same school. But a couple months before the angels arrived, I met one.”

  “Did you touch it?” Midori asked attentively.

  “No. She was unlike these angels. She came in a veil of light and had these great wings like—like stardust. And her head was that of a lion. She spoke to me and told me she had a mission for me. She sounded very feminine, but it’s hard to tell with angels. I think she truly was genderless. Anyway, she didn’t tell me the mission. She just asked if I accepted the responsibility.”

  “And you were enough of an idiot to say yes?” I asked.

  He smiled weakly. “Unfortunately, yes. What can I say? I was—maybe still am, though honestly it’s hard to say—a Christian. And when a beautiful angel tells you she has a mission for you, from God himself, presumably, you accept it. And when I did, she just dissolved into shimmers of light. I didn’t notice anything different about me, and I became convinced it was a dream.”

  “Until the angels came for real,” Midori said.

  “Yes. Their presence only reminded me more how the kindly angel I had seen was nothing more than a dream, for how could these monsters and that divinity be one and the same? But on the sixth day, the day of killing, I knew it to be true. Because I started feeling a voice in my head—”

  “Wait. ‘Feeling’? How can you feel a sound?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t a sound. It really was a feeling, a sort of gnawing at my head that was telling me what to do. But it didn’t feel like someone telling me anything. It was like I was acting out of my own free will, but looking back I obviously wasn’t. I had no reason to do any of the things I did. I just felt like I had to do them. So when everyone was dying in their homes, I walked right out of my house and walked among the angels without a second thought as to why they were keeping me alive. I walked straight to your house, Erika, and found myself watching your every move.”

  “So has all your following me around just been some angel whispering in your head?”

  “Not quite. It’s not some direct order. For example, when I saw you faint, spared in a bath of your family’s blood, I ran in and held your head. I was made to leave right after, forced to live in the woods for several weeks as what must have been punishment. Not long after you set out on this journey, the voice left me entirely. I’ve been following you out of my own will, and out of some sort of obligation to keep you safe.”

  “An obligation set by the angels, no doubt.”

  “That is true.” Gav shrugged. “But I am sincere about it. Even if it’s some sort of software that got installed in my brain, I do feel strongly about keeping you safe from harm.”

  “But then, what about the other angel? The weird one?” asked Midori.

  “It’s very recent.”

  “Don’t you know anything about it?”

  “It arrived suddenly, and just shoved me aside and took over my body. I don’t know how it did it. It happened midway during my conversation in the woods with you, Erika. The second one, without the deer. I had intended to come clean with you and ask to travel with you, but even as I first saw you, I could feel the angel seeping into me. I was awake but powerless. And it obviously could read my mind, knowing what I had intended to say. And it stayed inside me like that for a long time. I fought that monster and… it’s been feeding you information too. I didn’t know any of that stuff about angels and animals. I don’t know what it’s been planning.”

  “How did you get it to leave?”

  “I can’t get it to do anything. It just left a few hours ago, so I ran up the road and tracked you down.”

  “So,” I said, “now that you’ve told us this, what are you going to do? Hoping to join us?”

  “I-I want to. I want to be with you and travel and all that. But I’m scared the angel will come back. And if not that angel, then maybe a new one. I seem to attract them wherever I go. I’m too dangerous to have along. What I want from you is something else: There’s another angel camp just a ways from here, and I want you to destroy them all.”

  Midori looked at me nervously. “I’d rather not.”

  “Can you do it?” Gav asked intensely. “Do you know how?”

  “I mean, we were at a camp yesterday, and we just destroyed it.”

  “You did that?”

  “Yes. I lit it on fire and it burned to the ground.”

  “Hm,” said Gav, thinking about something I couldn’t be sure of. “Isn’t that just another reason this is the job for you? It’s a very large place, but it should burn fairly easily. You don’t even have to go in. It’ll be quick, not even a detour—it’s right on Lake Champlain.”

  “I think we should do it,” I told Midori.

  “You and your angel killing. What are you hoping to achieve? There’s no way you can kill enough of them to make an impact. All you’re doing is making them annoyed.”

  “They don’t know I’m doing it.”

  “You can only visit so many places and have them subsequently catch fire before you get labeled an arsonist. Is this some revenge thing?”

  “It’s not about revenge. The first two were to help Fex, right? This time would just be the icing on the cake. You know. Luck in threes. Maybe if we burn enough of these camps down, the angels will give up on building them.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t about revenge?”

  “It’s not!” I snapped, frustrated.

  “I’d almost say all this killing should be about revenge.” Midori frowned with concern. “It’d be healthier than bloodlust. If I were to suddenly be overcome with feelings worthy of manslaughter, I’d want my actions to be because my parents are dead or something. Not just unspecific rage.”

  “It’s not about revenge for me. I don’t know. I’m a bit… over being pissed about my friends and family. It’s been months! I’ve been completely alone for months. I’ve grieved. I’ve cried. There’s a chance I lost something about myself during that time. I don’t know my own motivation anymore. I only know things. I know I want to live. And I know I want to track down some encampments of angels and just fucking burn them all.”

  Midori was silent for a moment. “Fine. One more, as long as you’re careful. Perhaps we can find another flare gun and burn it from afar,” Midori said.

  “See? It’ll be easy,” Gav said. “Anyway, if you could do that it would help immensely. And also, I’m very sorry for the confusion I’ve caused you. I mean nothing by it, and I hope that as long as angels keep out of my brain, we can be friends.”

  “I’m still not feeli
ng good about you. But I’ll leave your friend request pending. Thanks for the tip on the angel camp, though. We’ll finish it off in just a few minutes.”

  I extended a hand, and Gav shook it firmly. I laughed at how professional it felt, like we were sealing a deal of some sort. Gav again ran off into the woods. Would he continue following us until the next camp, or was he satisfied for a few days? I wonder what he even ate and drank out there.

  “You make friends with the strangest boys.” Midori sighed.

  15

  FINDING ANOTHER flare gun was proving impossible, as most cars seemed to be filled with just essentials. We did find a number of potentially useful objects, such as flashlights and clocks and even a sword. We didn’t bother taking anything, though, afraid we’d get weighed down if we just took whatever we wanted. In the end, all we kept was a good hiking backpack and some more water.

  The whole “setting things on fire from far away” was still my favorite plan, but it was looking harder and harder to make happen. I took a couple cases of matches, but I was fairly sure I couldn’t toss a match and expect it to burn the camp down. I was going to need something bigger.

  “We could try lighting an arrow on fire and shooting it,” suggested Midori.

  “Do either of us even know how to use a bow?”

  “No, but how hard can it be?”

  “I think we’re better off looking for another solution.”

  “What about a flamethrower?”

  “That would work, if only we could find one. Which I highly doubt we’re going to do, since I’m pretty sure they’re illegal.”

  “The odds are still out there. Maybe we should start with finding the camp before we get all caught up in figuring a way to destroy it.”

  “Wait, I got it—we could like, light a tree branch and drop it off a cliff. That would work.”

  “We don’t even know if there’s a cliff or hill above the camp. All we know is that it’s along Champlain, which probably means it’s on flat land.”

  “All right, I guess it’s time we got to that lake anyway.”

  The interstate had been weaving about farmlands, country homes and private houses for a while now, but it was only now starting to run nearby actual neighborhoods. At one time we ran parallel to a town, one I almost mistook for Burlington. There wasn’t an exit ramp, though, and as we passed, I realized it had been far too small anyway.

  “Do you think the road will take us right to Lake Champlain?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. Probably it will drop off somewhere near the city center, and we’ll have to find our way from there. I wonder why the angels don’t camp out in actual buildings instead of a series of identical tents.”

  Not once had we ventured off the road and gone into a town. We never slept in a wayside motel. Even Midori, who usually would sleep in cars scented like rotting flesh, refused to enter buildings. Somehow going near them felt wrong. The emptiness was just terrible, and no matter how silly it felt to be superstitious in times like these, they felt almost haunted.

  Walking through even a few city blocks was going to be harrowing.

  Time went fast, probably a bit faster than either of us had been hoping. We came to the outskirts of Burlington much earlier in the day than anticipated, and followed the highway with eyes straight ahead until the last exit before the road looped around out of sight.

  “This is it, huh,” I said. We stood together, looking ahead and placing perhaps too much drama on simply taking a certain road.

  “Are you hungry?” Midori asked suddenly.

  “Not really.”

  “Let’s have lunch.”

  Midori couldn’t eat anything, and I didn’t care to, but we still had lunch. We spread a sleeping bag on the asphalt, took a meal of nutrition bars and crackers out of the bag, and sat in silence.

  It was Midori who dragged out the radio.

  “The show’s never on during the day.”

  “Doesn’t hurt,” she said. I understood what she was trying to do: find another way to delay, an alternative to moving forward.

  She tuned the dial without paying much attention to it, spinning it back and forth without having any ear for the frequencies of static she brought forth. In one of her perhaps slower rotations, a break in the static caught our attention. She ticked the dial like the seconds on a clock until a voice rang out, loud and clear.

  “Attention. The time is now twelve o’clock. This is a broadcast from the Colony of New Haven. Hello. If anyone is out there, please respond. Hello. This is a broadcast from the Colony of New Haven. If anyone is out there, please respond. We are locate—” The radio quit unexpectedly, with a sound like a TV turning off. Then not even static came from the speakers.

  “What did you do?” I asked, shaking the radio to see if that would fix it. When I messed with the dial, I found all other stations were static as usual. Only this one was broadcasting dead silence.

  “Nothing,” said Midori.

  A few minutes of silence later, the static returned.

  “So there’s another human colony around here, huh?”

  “Looks so.”

  “I wonder if it’s the same one as where Angel Radio broadcasts from? Maybe Angel Radio is the night program, and in the day they just send out help signals.”

  “That does sound likely. I doubt two human colonies could live that close to each other, both with radio equipment, without finding each other eventually.” She looked at me in that mellow way she had been doing a lot lately.

  “We should get going. Probably should have done so a long time ago.”

  “You’re right.”

  We left the picnic behind in the dust.

  THE CAMP was lakeside, and indeed, on a flatland. It was situated on a public beach, and though there were a couple trees nearby, they were not close enough to be used as significant cover. Watching it from far off and behind a car, I could see a few people milling about.

  “Sand doesn’t burn,” Midori said.

  “I know that. Looks like we’re going to need a plan B.”

  “Got anything?”

  “Nope, nothing at all.”

  “Great.”

  “But I do know it’s going to have to be at night. We have to do it while they’re sleeping, or at least doing whatever they do when they’re pretending to sleep.”

  “So what do we do until then?”

  “Kill some time, I guess.”

  We looked nervously at each other. But what else was there to do? We had a number of hours to spend before sundown, and there was no legitimate reason we shouldn’t venture downtown and loot what we could.

  “Want to split up?” Midori suggested it, but I had been thinking so as well. As nice as she was, there are only so many days you can spend together without needing a bit of a break.

  We parted ways, agreeing to meet up at sundown on the outskirts of the camp. I took a turn and headed down a street that ran parallel to the main one. The city of Burlington itself, while technically a city, was too small to have any real skyscrapers. Or perhaps it was too old? Most of the buildings had a certain architectural sense to them of red brick, red clay, and slate roofs on pointed spires. It was all very archetypical for a New England town.

  The residential area flowed almost seamlessly into the downtown, often overlapping, the nuclear urban homes standing out amongst the bricks of the commercial venues. I wasn’t sure which side of the city to stay clear of: the homes, where people once lived, or the downtown, where people once thrived. Both brought me equal parts melancholy.

  I had originally thought of my venture as an opportunity to stock up on supplies, though I realized now there were far too many things out there. I could carry a thermos, a water purifier, a generator and a pistol with me, but did I want to? Probably not. Back pain is not pleasant. And Midori would never let me keep the gun.

  Instead, remembering my thought earlier, I found a small lightweight tent that could be rolled up for easier storage. It was only
about four pounds, and felt like less when carried with my hiking backpack. I also replenished my water supplies and praised the heavens for artificial brownies, cream-filled cakes, and other foods that had the gall to pretend they weren’t candy. Okay, they would wreck my health eventually, but for now they were all I had and tasted delicious.

  The wind coursed through the streets, running against the bricks and around the dead buildings. Even if there wasn’t traffic or music or people to drown out the sounds of nature, I still had a habit of ignoring them. But now, as I looked over the despair of the empty city, I heard everything. Birds singing, trees creaking, a windblown melody, and a strange, otherworldly rumbling.

  Actually, that last one was probably not natural. I thought I might be able to track it by sound alone, but I was unable to locate the source. It was definitely something, for its volume slowly increased and with it the lesser angels in the sky began to become agitated.

  I wondered if Midori was close enough to hear it. Right now I was betting the source of the sound was another one of those oil-slicked demons Gav had told us about. Or rather, the angel that was Gav had told us about. It was hard to keep those separate when I barely knew how to tell them apart. I just wish I had a separate name to call it.

  I ended up in a small park bordered by rows of aging flowers. For the first time, I saw one of the sky-bound angels rest on the ground. A large one, body like a spire, had curled itself around a statue of a man on a horse. A couple smaller and rounder ones about my height had settled around it.

  They looked like they could have been ill. It was the only reason I could think of they would have landed like this. No creature, supernatural or extraterrestrial or whatever else, could resist disease, I supposed. I didn’t want to get too close, even if I was unlikely to catch anything.

  Their wings had splotches of transparency, even bands of it near the tips of their primary feathers. It looked like it was just another feature of their body, but the glassy look of the markings seemed unnatural for them.

  Still, I wasn’t about to get into the business of caring. I left them behind and started sorting through another street of shops. Having found everything I needed, it felt halfhearted and pointless to try to window-shop.