“Again,” Gabriel commanded, his voice leaving no room for disobedience.
Blake tried again. It was easier.
It only took a few more tries before Blake was seeing the motel room and not the blood-washed sheets of the conference room. He was breathing normally, too. Gabriel was still holding him. He was kneeling on the bed, his jeans open where he had been in the process of getting dressed. He’d lunged across the bed to get to him.
Embarrassment crept up Blake’s spine. Two panic attacks in less than two days. He tried to pull away, but Gabriel didn’t let him. He hugged him close; temple pressed to Blake’s.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel whispered. “I should have been there. I should have—I should have stopped it.”
“How could you have? It had to be done.”
“I would have done it for you.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Blake said.
Gabriel would have told Blake he could do it. Taken his hand and told him hecould do anything.Just like he always did. And Blake would have believed him. He would have done it, and it wouldn’t have worked, but Gabriel would have been there. When it was all over, he would have taken the axe from his hands and held him as he wept. Told him it was okay. He wouldn’t have minded the blood all over his clothes, or the sweat beading on Blake’s forehead. He would have kissed it and helped him just like he did a moment ago.
But he wasn’t there.
The truth of it hung between them. A chasm too deep to push down and too wide to get over.
Swallowing, Blake extricated himself from Gabriel’s arms and finished getting dressed. Gabriel watched him from the bed, his face blank.
Blake tugged on his hat and then kissed Gabriel on the cheek before leaving the room. As he closed the door, he remembered one of the first things he told Gabriel all those months ago.
I want the truth.
The truth had been a lot easier back then.
“Do you think the aliens drink water?” Tommy asked, as they were both staring down at the low pool water.
When they first arrived at the Potomac View Motel, the water had been mostly clear. A few thick branches and some leaves had gathered in the corners, but the chlorine had done its job, and it was easy to see the bottom and the ring of dark blue tiles along the edge.
Now it was a different story.
Over time, the water level had dropped from evaporation and use. In the dead of winter when it was too damn cold to go far, they’d used the water for non-potable uses—toilets, some cleaning, things like that. But as it sank lower and lower, icing over, they’d begun ignoring it. Now, only the bravest of chickens hopped down the steps to drink out of the stagnant water.
Which should probably concern him. He was eating their eggs. But in the grand scheme of things—between being eaten, or immolated, by an alien, vs being slowly poisoned by a chlorine egg—he’d choose the egg.
And hell, maybe he’d even develop cool superpowers. Who’s to say there wasn’t a comic book in the works for a guy who ate an egg laid by a stupid pool water drinking chicken? With Blake’s luck, he’d end up with a really dumb superpower. Like living for two weeks with his head cut off.
Blake blinked. “What?”
“I just wondered,” Tommy answered as he shifted the bucket in his hands. “Like, are they drinking the fountains in the cities or are they having to scavenge fresh water?”
His own bucket seemed to grow ten pounds heavier with the question. He stared down at the cold river water in the five-gallon bucket and debated considering Tommy’s question or not.
It’s not as if he had anything better to do while schlepping buckets of water up the grass hill and across the street from the river. It was an unceasing chore. For people who didn’t have access to washing machines and only took cold, sink baths, it was truly amazing how much water they went through. The two buckets they were carrying were destined for the conference room once they’d been properly boiled.
“I doubt the Off Formers do,” Blake finally responded, taking the bucket in his left hand so he could shake out the right. Hisfingers were cramped in a curl, the wrinkles in his fingers bright red and bruised from the weight of the water. “They can’t even handle our atmosphere. Probably have fancy backpacks full of water like the marathon runners do.”
Blake didn’t want to imagine an Off Former incinerating people with their guns while mouthing the straw from some alien Slurpee in a convenient backpack.
“Maybe the Monkey Cats.” Tommy pushed past Blake, leading the way toward the grill where they would boil the water to be used for drinking or cleaning wounds. Most of them didn’t bother to boil water for baths. Not anymore. It was one of those things that seemed so important when you first started living like this. No one wanted to bathe in the Potomac waters.
Now it was just part of life.
Besides, people used to pay good money for algae masks and stuff. This was free.
