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  “I guess we’re all set to leave, then. Let’s find our way back to the highway and continue north.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Midori said as we left the valley, “what happened to your face?”

  I touched the mark Kasos had left. It was still throbbing, but the pain had begun to lessen. “I fell down.”

  “That’s a cut, not a bruise.”

  “Okay, fine, Kasos attacked me.”

  “Why would you lie about that? And why would she do that?”

  “Because she’s an angel and angels want to kill us all. Why not? I lied because I—I don’t know. It just sort of happened.”

  “Whatever. Let me see your cut.” She lightly brushed the cut, dancing around it with her fingertips.

  I averted my eyes as she studied the wound. “Um…. What are you doing?”

  “Looking it over. Don’t worry,” she said, looking up and smiling at me. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Do you… know first aid?”

  “Not at all. But don’t worry. I’ll wait until we’re done moving for the day—or night now, I guess—before doing anything.”

  We climbed out of the thicket and onto the highway once more. The moon was full and the night had no clouds. I hated walking at night, and I was glad that at least I wasn’t alone anymore. The ground was illuminated like the streetlights were still working.

  I could only spot two angels in the sky, both of them passive and distant. Still, their presence also gave me peace of mind. The last two times I had noticed a lack of angels, something bad had happened.

  I fiddled with the radio as we walked, at last finding the broadcast I was looking for.

  “…In? Oh well, it’s been a bit!” said Emil cheerily.

  “It’s on!” I nudged Midori softly.

  Naomi asked him curiously, “A bit since what, Emil?”

  “Since we’ve had the studio to ourselves! Yes, that is correct listeners, Ada hasn’t shown up today at all. So for this broadcast, it’s just me and Naomi.”

  “What kind of show is this anyway?” asked Midori, and I shushed her.

  “This is Angel Radio, and I’m your host, Emil. How’s everyone doing tonight?

  “Lovely, lovely,” chirped Naomi.

  “I was asking our listeners!” He chuckled wholeheartedly, like some ’50s sitcom father. “We start today with a good look at angel classification by the ever lovely Naomi.”

  “Aw, you’re not too bad yourself, Emil! Anyway, the gist of angels is that there’s a lot of them, and they’re all like little snowflakes of uniqueness. Well, the upper orders are. Lower down you get a lot more lazy cookie-cutter types if anything. I’m looking at Messengers especially. So boring. Next up is the archangels, who are just slightly more pimped out versions of the lower angels. Also lame. The last order of the third sphere dares to be different—applause goes here—and those are the Principalities. Unlike their other first sphere brethren, Principalities have distinctive faces, arms, legs, and bodies. Like their name implies, they used to watch over cities and communities. But watching over sure doesn’t imply protection—they don’t attack others without orders.”

  “Very informative today. I like it. I guess it’s on me to do the weather, then?”

  “We can do it together,” Naomi giggled.

  “All right, so….” There was a rustling of papers, and they both began to talk slowly at the same time. “Tonight we’re looking at a calm and temperate night. Tomorrow, expect changes and rainfall. Cover yourself up.” There was a lot of laughing as the two of them struggled to speak at the same pace. “Watch out for—watch out for—okay, one, two, three—watch out—” They continued laughing, unable to talk straight.

  “I’m sorry, listeners. I think we’re done for tonight,” managed Emil. The broadcast abruptly cut off before his last syllable was through.

  “So it’s some sort of… show you can…?”

  “No, it’s purely informational. And comforting. It’s normally more professional than that, and there’s three of them, and—” I realized I was blushing.

  “So it’s—”

  “No, just forget about it.”

  Midori looked at me oddly, and I looked away. I’m not sure what triggered me to get so defensive.

  “If you insist.”

  “Let’s just find somewhere to settle for the night.”

  “Why not one of these cars? That’s where I mostly slept.”

  “There’s dead bodies in them.”

  “Not always! Rarely. And you can move dead bodies.”

  “But it’s gross!” I protested, but Midori had made up her mind.

  “You can sleep outside, then.” She found herself a van and pulled the rotting corpse of its previous owner out onto the ground. I moved a ways away and settled on the grass, using my coat as a blanket.

  “Guess what?” called Midori. “I found a can of air freshener. You can’t even smell the decomposition!”

  I rolled over. The grass itched my skin and a bug buzzed near my ears. I was thoroughly uncomfortable, and I eventually gave in.

  “All right fine, make room,” I said, climbing into the backseat with her.

  “You sleep on the floor, since it’s your fault for taking so long to see I was right.”

  I settled on the carpeted floor. The air smelled like chemical flowers, but at least I was comfortable.

  I AWOKE to rain falling on the roof of the van, a familiar sound that made me yearn for the days of dozing off during long road trips. Midori had left the van and her clothes behind, and I looked out the window to find her lying on the ground with her eyes closed.

  I stripped down to my underwear and joined her outside. The rain was heavy enough for a summer storm, louder than sounds of our breathing. It pelted my skin relentlessly like a bad massage, and I took to keeping a hand over my eyes to be able to see. Rainstorms were one of the things I nearly enjoyed about the empty earth, the incredible smell of foliage and the rejuvenating feeling of cold droplets on my skin.

  “I’m sorry I forgot about healing your cut last night. Maybe this rain will help,” she said, without opening her eyes.

  “Probably just with preventing infection.” I sat on the grass next to her.

  “No need to be self-conscious,” she said, sitting up suddenly and taking in my soaked underwear.

  “I’m beginning to regret keeping them on myself.”

  “Then take them off and toss them in the car to dry.”

  “I’ve made it this far,” I said, though I knew I was being ridiculous.

  “Whatever. Say, I could still try to fix your cut, you know. Let’s head into the woods and look around.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous to walk around naked in there? Like branches could scratch you, or you could step on a rock.”

  “Not if you pay attention. Come on!”

  She dragged me up and pulled me into the pine forest.

  “What are we looking for exactly?” I asked as she began to search every tree in sight.

  “Here!” she said suddenly, and I went over and watched as she began to coil a spider web around her fingers.

  “Is the spider still in that? Because I don’t want a spider on my face. Or a web for that matter.”

  “Don’t fret so much and sit down. Here, I’ll be careful applying it.”

  I hesitated, but allowed her to trace the gash out, circling its edges three times before applying the web like a glaze over it. Her eyes were closed in concentration, and with her pinky she lightly pressed some of it down the very center of the wound, and when she was done, she covered it with her hands for a few more seconds.

  “What was that?”

  “Healing, I hope. I don’t know if I did it right, though.”

  “Well it doesn’t feel any better.”

  “Stop being so cynical about it. Do pills work instantly? You’ve got to give it time to heal.”

  “Well, thanks, I guess.” I seriously doubted the medical eff
iciency of cobwebs, but I felt it would be rude to mention this to Midori.

  “You really need to work on your attitude, you know that, right?” Smiling, she took me back out into the roadway. “Look at how beautiful it is!”

  I was smiling, and I turned my head to check if she was as well. She had to be kidding if she found a highway particularly pleasant to the eyes. I didn’t say anything to her, though. I just laughed a little bit, and she grinned.

  “The sun’s shining,” I said. The day wasn’t cold but crisp, and the sun brought some appreciated heat to my goose-bump-laden skin.

  “Exactly.” She seemed particularly enthused, clenching her fists above her heart and nodding slightly.

  “It’s nice,” I said, and she continued in her excitement. Something about her was infectious, and as she looked about the roadway with delight, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a child. Maybe she wasn’t bright, or perhaps she was an angel, but something in me wanted to protect her. No matter what had happened, she was the only person I had left. Human or not.

  9

  A FEW hours later, the rain succumbed to a light drizzle. I had a lunch of soggy crackers while Midori swam in the river. We had decided not to move until the rain had stopped and we could dry off, but the rain showed no signs of stopping.

  Instead we had busied ourselves with whatever we could think of. I was mostly walking through nature, as I didn’t want to join Midori in the ice-cold brook.

  The rain had brought a heavy fog and with it the eerie eyes of angels still lurking in the woods. Midori was quite keen on them, though.

  “They’re just watching. It’s like they’re guardians of the forest!”

  “They unsettle me.” In the mist their eyes reflected light, and with the mist obscuring much of their bodies, it was like the forest was staring at us.

  “Stop worrying about them. You know they won’t harm us. They’re just spirits.”

  Midori hadn’t seen the things I had; that had become abundantly clear. She still refused to talk about her life, but her carefree attitude suggested one without much hardship. I had picked up that she was from a well-off family, and she told me that when the angels had arrived, she had been camping.

  “I was out conversing with nature for the week,” she told me. “Perfect timing, right? I was out on Bread Loaf Mountain when it happened. I did see an angel pass right over me, and a few smaller ones had found perches on the mountain. But I paid them no mind. It was not my business to intervene. None had interrupted me, and I continued to live for the rest of the week in isolation. Only when I returned back to town did I realize what had happened—but it wasn’t really my business. I left town and headed southeast on an urge, and followed my instincts the rest of the way. None of the angels acknowledged me, and I thought it may have been my destiny.”

  “Weren’t you scared, though? Everyone was dead except for you.”

  “I had few friends. I’m a nomad at heart anyway; I travel around. And most importantly of all, I’ve always believed I’ve had a higher purpose.”

  “Seems a little cocky to think that you alone were chosen to live while everyone else was unworthy.”

  “Self-confidence isn’t a sin, Erika. And it wasn’t that I was better than everyone else. I’d never think that. It was more that I had been chosen for my regularity. For whatever reason, I was just average enough to be spared. Don’t you feel the same way?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Surely there’s a reason we are alive, and being kept alive?”

  “I really don’t think so.”

  “You’ve got to work on your faith.”

  As we sat by the brook, we both saw the angel at the same time. It was unwieldy, like a melting wax sculpture, and indeed it appeared to drip pale droplets of strange essence as it walked. It was maybe ten feet tall, weaving carelessly through the trees, leaving bits of itself on the branches.

  “It looks scared,” Midori said immediately, climbing out of the water and standing next to me on a nearby boulder. “We should offer it assistance.”

  “It looks like it’s going to be in my nightmares tonight.” Its face was the closest to human I had seen in an angel, though like everything else on its body, it looked like partly melted wax. It had six arms, each hand ending in a mass of at least ten fingers. Its whole body radiated a pinkish color, and at its core a light like a candle’s flame massed.

  Midori jumped down and walked toward it, hands in the air to prove she was unarmed. I didn’t follow her but observed from a safe distance.

  The angel stopped in front of her, swaying quickly from side to side like grass in the wind. It did not look down on her, but rather its face fell from its head and slid down to come with her.

  Carefully, Midori put out a shaking hand, slowly touching the angel’s skin. I could hear its heavy breaths even from here. As her fingers made contact she shouted with glee, “I told you it’s friendly, Erika!”

  I noticed something was wrong with it, though. The bubbling on its back seemed very irregular, and stranger still was the angel itself: its only eyes were the two on its face area, and it lacked wings entirely.

  It made a jerky movement, and I yelled, “Wait, Midori!”

  But it was too late. First it was her hand, suddenly slipping through the soft surface of its face and getting lodged there. As she tried in vain to remove her arm, the angel’s body swooped down onto Midori, covering her and consuming her.

  It fixed itself up in seconds, standing perhaps a little taller. Floating inside its nearly translucent body, I thought I could make out Midori, murkily obscured.

  With a creaking sound, it turned to face me. My heart raced, ready to flee, but I kept still. I wasn’t just going to let that thing take Midori like that.

  I didn’t have a weapon, and I scrambled to grab a heavy rock. Before the angel-thing got too close, I lobbed the rock at it. The rock was simply absorbed, causing nothing more than ripples in its body where the rock had first made contact.

  While the angel continued its advance, I tried my next best idea—a full charge. It wasn’t even an idea, honestly, just a bad decision.

  Its feet were soft spires, perfectly pointed and carefully sidestepping across the brook. I only came a bit above its legs, and I drove my hands wildly into its body.

  I lost control of my arms right away, but I still had some control of the rest of my body. I jerked myself backward, tugging repeatedly at it. It was incredibly unbalanced; that was made even the more obvious as it began to topple.

  As it tried to right itself, it began to drop some body mass, presumably to act as a base for the rest of its body. In response I quickly jumped backward one more time and pulled the angel with me. For a moment I was suspended an inch above the brook as the angel slowly toppled over. The moment it touched the water, however, it began to dissolve.

  Out of its body came several egg-like capsules, which dissolved as they fell into the water. Midori emerged from one of them, as well as several other forest creatures such as deer and foxes.

  “Oh,” she said, swimming in the goo that now covered the water like a thin membrane.

  “I killed it,” I said triumphantly. “Now do you see what I meant by ‘angels are bad news’?”

  “It dissolves in water. Poor thing was just trying to get out of the rain before it melted.”

  “It also tried to… eat you or whatever.”

  “I think it just needed some things to help hold its body together. I also think it isn’t dead,” she said, pointing to some of the other capsules that had yet to open.

  She swam over to one and pried it open. There was a rabbit inside the first one, long dead. The trend continued as she opened more of them, next a turkey vulture, and then a honeybee’s nest, and finally, a human man. He was in a particularly bad state, veinlike structures from the capsule covering most of his body. His skin had been preserved, but he was very much dead.

  “Or not.” Midori sighed. “I can’t be righ
t about everything. Let’s head upstream so I can get this stuff off me. I think the rain is letting up, a real shame since that angel couldn’t live to see it.”

  When we made it back to the car, the rain had long stopped, and a cool breeze had mostly dried us off. I was shivering by the time we fully dried off (using a towel found in a suitcase), and I was very glad to be fully dressed again.

  “I’m not even sure that was an angel, to be honest,” I said. “It didn’t look like one.”

  “Maybe it was something else.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “I think it was just another kind. When I was inside it—well, I was actually unconscious. But I think I was connected with it for a moment, sort of a link between our minds, and I could tell it was an angel in a lot of pain.”

  “How do you know you aren’t imagining it? Like you’re just experiencing what you want to experience, but in truth it was nothing.”

  “I know what I felt. And I still feel its presence. I believe it to still be alive, and perhaps if we were to head back to the brook it would have reformed itself by now.”

  “So what kind of angel was it? It didn’t even have wings.”

  “I sensed a very old soul within it, one that was full of fear. It is my belief that it was not just avoiding the rain but also running away from something greater than it. Perhaps its strange appearance and its terrible fear are connected?”

  “If you’re correct, I’m just glad we’re getting away from there. Hate to run into whatever made that thing cower like that.”

  “It may still be advancing. Nothing’s stopping it, and I do say we are a point of interest amidst everything else left on this planet.”

  “Don’t freak me out. You sort of freak me out a lot and make me worry far too often.”

  “Sorry!”

  We were traveling down the highway once more. The supplies we had looted from a particularly cautious man’s car included plenty of weather-worthy clothing, a new bag for the both of us, new water rations, and food. There was also a shotgun and plenty of ammo, but Midori refused to let me take it. She did allow me to take a flare gun, although only after a lot of whining.