As I picked up the small, tightly wrapped parcel, I could sense Seb’s emotions entwined with it, his love for me clear. I winced; I didn’t feel up to dealing with whatever this was. I tucked it away in my pocket, unopened.
Reaching behind me, I pulled out Alex’s present instead.
His quick, spiky handwriting was barely visible in the moonlight. I angled the paper to bring it into view…and as I read the lines on the page, my throat closed.
When I slipped into our room, the bedside lamp was still on. Alex lay asleep with the covers half thrown off his chest. He looked so tired, even while sleeping, so vulnerable with his bandaged arm.
The tension from the argument with Seb fell away. I leaned against the door, taking in the rise and fall of Alex’s breathing. Wonder came over me. How could it be that I knew Alex so intimately, that I’d seen his body so many times…and could still be so entranced by the sight of him?
Silently, I got undressed, draping my jeans and the black sequinned top over the chair. I lined Meghan’s lucky shoes up carefully and brushed a smidge of dirt off one. I wanted them to be perfect when I gave them back to her tomorrow.
As I slipped on a camisole top, I could feel I was being watched. I turned; Alex lay gazing at me with his good arm propped under his head, the woven bracelet a splash of colour against his wrist.
“Just enjoying the view,” he said.
I smiled and crawled into bed next to him. “How are you feeling?”
He yawned and put his arm around me. “Yeah, okay. I took another pill. Did you have a good time?”
I didn’t want to even go into the conversation with Seb – Alex would say I should have minded my own business, and he’d be right. I shrugged. “Being with you is a lot better.” I fell silent as I stroked his chest, gazing down at him. “I loved the poem,” I said quietly.
He gave an embarrassed grimace. “I guess it was kind of a stupid present.”
“It wasn’t. It made me cry.”
“Okay, then it was definitely a stupid present. It was supposed to make you happy.”
“They were happy tears.”
Alex regarded me with a small smile. “Happy tears,” he repeated. “You are such a girl sometimes.”
“Is that a problem?” My breath caught slightly as his hand moved down my side, caressing every rise and fall of me.
He shook his head, his eyes steady on mine. “No. That is totally not a problem.” He’d eased up my camisole; though I could feel he was still in pain, he bent and kissed my exposed waist softly, lingeringly. “I meant every word, Willow,” he whispered. “It was like my granddad was right inside my head – it’s exactly what I feel. I couldn’t get through any of this without you.”
I swallowed hard and put my hand over his. His fingers were warm under mine; we wove them together as we gazed at each other. If holding me was greater than any universe…then so was looking into his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll never have to.”
9
AS THE WEEKS PASSED, ALEX kept himself and the others as busy as possible. He didn’t know what else to do. Thankfully, there was a lot to occupy his thoughts: the daily running of the base, the continued training of the AKs. Tearing down the old Salt Lake Eden set took several days, and Alex relished the mindless work as he and the others pulled out nails and stacked planks of wood.
The fact that they needed more raw materials for new sets was a relief too. He and some of the other guys went to the ruins of Vegas, where they spent a few days scavenging building supplies. As they sifted through ruins and dragged out salvageable pieces, the autumn sun beat down – sometimes hot enough for them to peel off their shirts. The work was hard and dusty, and Alex buried himself in it, refusing to dwell on the reason why additional training sets were necessary.
Brief excitement came when a trio of angels appeared over the almost-intact Caesar’s Palace, gliding in a triangular hunting pattern. Alex got two, and either Seb or Sam got the other, and everyone cheered, clapping them on the shoulders. And though Alex knew better, for a second he felt a sense of hard satisfaction.
As if three angels out of millions even made a difference.
“Come on,” he said finally, turning away. Quarters crunched under his foot from a shattered slot machine. “Let’s get back to work.”
When they returned to the base, they built a new set: a forest simulation, this time. They all stayed up one night cutting out leaf shapes and painting them in the training room, until it looked like every autumn tree in the world had shed its leaves on the floor.
“Looking good,” Willow said, pressing briefly against him. She wore an old sweatshirt and had a smudge of paint on her nose.
Alex nodded. “Yeah, it’ll be a realistic set.”
She glanced up at him, started to say something, and broke off. Finally she just squeezed his hand and went back to painting.
He caught Willow watching him sometimes now, and knew that she was worried about him. Apart from when they’d seen the Third Wave arrive, he’d kept silent about his fears, even to her.
What was there to say? The world was screwed.
Alex struggled grimly against that deep-down conviction, against the nagging inner voice that said that if he were any kind of a leader at all, he’d know when to quit – just go start a settlement high up in the mountains somewhere. Jesus, what was wrong with him, that even
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. It was late November, after midnight, and he was in the empty rec room with his laptop and a long-cold mug of coffee. Tiredly, he brought up a Word document filled with his notes. If they were to have anything more than a suicidal chance at this, they had to get camps established all across the country: small teams that recruited and trained people themselves, then splintered off to do the same thing again, over and over, until there were hundreds of sniper groups fighting the angels.
In the base’s office, they’d found details of another facility in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho – smaller than here and too remote to be of much use. The teams would somehow have to source their own shelters, along with food and ammunition, and this current group of eighty-seven would need a lot more training. Not to mention survival skills, if they were to have any hope of existing in the wild.
Alex added these thoughts to his notes, though it felt like a waste of time. Yeah, sending everyone out to set up more AK camps was great in theory…but once Raziel realized the Angel Killers were still around, he’d annihilate
