Chapter 11 #2
The room was so quiet, Blake wasn’t sure anyone was breathing. Gabriel’s voice was even, his face stern. Blake recognized that expression. It was the same as the one he’d given Blake when he asked for the truth.
“Another man would give you some kind of speech. He’d inspire you despite all the devastation. He’d remind you of a moral duty to save those who cannot save themselves. But me?"
Gabriel took a moment to gather his thoughts. Jaw working. “I’m angry. I’m ashamed that our enemy planned a war and didn’t even factor us into the equation. That they thought we would lie down and take it. That we were insignificant.”
A whisper ran through the crowd, but Gabriel silenced them with the intensity of his gaze.
“And I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of showing my back to an enemy who doesn’t even have the decency to think of us as a threat. Because we are a threat. We’ve proven that before, and we can do it again. We can fight them.”
A murmur picked up, people leaning in to whisper to their neighbors, but Blake couldn’t take his eyes off Gabriel. Not because he looked any different, but because he was different.
He wasn’t just Gabriel.
He was Commander Lennox.
A voice rose from the back. “Why us? Why do we have to be the ones to do it?”
Gabriel lifted his chin. “Because we can,” he said, raising his voice until it echoed off the walls and windows. Until it seemed to become something they didn’t just hear but felt. Rattling in their chests and burning in their veins.
“Because despite all their impressive weapons and spaceships, we have something they never could have predicted.” He let his words sink in before his lips curled in a smirk.
“The enduring stubbornness of the human spirit. Humanity wasn’t born with the ability to climb mountains or touch the bottom of the sea. No. We took it. We reached out with both hands, bared our teeth, defied fear itself, and did it because we can. Because we don’t accept defeat.”
He stalked across the room until he was standing in the middle of the canteen, every eye following him like a magnet.
“They came here expecting to find prey. But what they’ll get instead is the byproduct of generations who had the audacity to not just survive, but to fight.
When we couldn’t see in the dark, we made fire.
When we couldn’t find a horizon, we built boats.
And when we conquered the sea, we took to the skies.
“Those aliens came here to fight each other. They’re not looking at us, but it’s the predator you don’t see that lands the killing blow.”
Gabriel slammed his fist on the closest table. “We are outgunned, outnumbered, outclassed, and in over our heads—but we will win this war.” He slammed his fist against the table with each word. “Because we are too goddamned stubborn to lose!”
The room was silent and still while they processed his words…
and then, as one, they mimicked his drumbeat.
A slow crescendo of closed fists on tabletops until their voices joined the percussion, until nothing could be heard except the stubborn, unceasing roar of a group of people given the promise of hope.
Until they were all on their feet, hearts in their hands, shoulders squared, ready to fight.
Because of Gabriel. For Gabriel.
He was among them, his eyes sparkling. Not a soldier, not a man, but something so much more—their Commander. The man who gave them not just a reason to fight, but to believe. To have a hand in their own destiny. To give them something they thought they’d lost.
Blake shoved through the throng of people until he was in front of Gabriel. The taller man grinned when he saw him. No one else would notice the red tips of his ears, or the way the corners of his mouth twitched with self-consciousness.
But then, no one else had ever had Gabriel the way Blake had.
Despite the people around them and the thrum of energy, they only had eyes for each other. Swept up in it, Blake pushed up onto tiptoes and threw his arms around Gabriel’s neck, kissing him soundly on the mouth.
“Well, Commander,” he said breathlessly. “Looks like you’ve just been promoted to General.”
Gabriel’s eyes were molten as he looked down at Blake. “Yeah? Is that what you need me to be?”
“That’s what they need you to be.” Blake smiled softly. “I just need to be beside you.”
His arms tightened around Blake. “Right beside me. From now on.”
They kissed again, and someone whistled. Blake flipped his middle finger in their general direction without taking his lips off Gabriel.
In what must be the most anti-climactic case of déjà vu ever recorded, Blake watched Judd rip the cap off a dry-erase marker with his teeth. He spat the cap at Tommy, but Phin was ready, slapping the cap out of the air. He glared at Judd.
“Okay,” Judd said, ignoring the vitriol as his marker squeaked on the surface. He marked a line down the center of the board and then wrote Operation: ET Get Fucked along the top.
Blake winced and glanced over at Sara. She was sitting beside him on the fireplace surround.
The bricks kept catching his pants, pulling at them unpleasantly.
It was the only seat available in the foyer of the lobby where they’d congregated.
She didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to the board.
Irving seemed much more put out by Judd’s unique brand of…
personality. His lips were twisted, the only indication of irritation on his bland face.
He looked completely put together and not like he’d been washing from buckets of river water like the rest of them.
How he managed to get his hairline so even without clippers was a mystery, something Blake found himself spending far too much brain power on. He even smelled good.
His perfume was probably apocalypse proof—Eau de sanctimonious asshole.
Tommy and Phin were seated at the table closest to the whiteboard with Gabriel hovering behind them, his arms crossed as he stared at the board.
Ever since his speech a few hours ago, he’d been in full-on soldier mode.
He roped people off into teams according to skill, setting them on tasks that had less to do with creating a life at the motel and more to do with assault—finding weapons, diesel, generators, more vehicles, medical supplies, and a myriad of other things Blake couldn’t comprehend.
Those gathered here were considered part of Gabriel’s ‘assault teams’.
What he meant by that, he hadn’t yet elaborated.
Blake would tease him that even he didn’t know yet, but he didn’t want to slow Gabriel’s momentum.
For the first time since they left DC, Gabriel was standing tall, shoulders squared.
Like he wasn’t a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.
Gabriel Lennox was, first and foremost, a soldier.
And sitting around licking his wounds didn’t suit him.
“Who gave the hick the marker?” Alvarez groaned from where he was leaning against the front desk.
Victoria gave him a withering look. “Since he’s one of the few people here with experience fighting the aliens and taking stock of their weaknesses, I would say he is far better equipped than…some people.”
Alvarez shrank under her glare, mumbling under his breath.
Judd locked in on the whiteboard. He wrote Off Formers on the left of his first line and Monkey Cats on the other.
Irving’s frown deepened at the ‘frankly ridiculous’ nicknames that he couldn’t get people to stop using.
Judd began to list things off under Off Formers. “We know the Off Formers cannot withstand our atmosphere. Their armor or suits or whatever are technically breachable, but it takes a hell of a lot of ammunition.”
“And unless we find something with more kick, we’d have to be in very close range to even make a dent,” Phin added, jaw working.
“Right,” Judd agreed. “Which means electricity is probably our best bet.”
“Excellent. We’ll just call Thor up and ask him to go ahead and smite the aliens for us.” Alvarez snarked, his fingers drumming on the front desk. “We don’t even have enough electricity to power up a hair straightener. How are we going to fry multiple Off Formers?”
Blake grit his teeth. Alvarez was being a dickhead, but he was, unfortunately, a correct dickhead. The Off Formers knew they were weak to electricity, which is why their EMPs were so effective. They made sure to disarm them before they even landed.
“What about lightning?” Tommy asked. “We could wait for a storm and make a big lightning rod, or something. Let Mother Nature do the heavy lifting.”
“It’s an idea,” Gabriel said, scratching his nails through the stubble on his chin.
“Not really,” Irving cut in. “Lightning is unpredictable. We have no way of knowing when, how, or what intensity of lightning will come at any given time. There is also no way to contain the lightning.” He steepled his fingers.
“It would be like trying to fill a five-gallon bucket with the water from an Olympic swimming pool—there’s just too much of it.
Any container you try to use would be destroyed within the blink of an eye. ”
Gabriel waved his hand. “All right, let’s put a pin in the Off Formers for now.”
The smell of dry-erase marker was overpowering. The board was covered with Judd’s unique, small block lettering. His fingers were smudged with black as he wiped out something, mouth working around the pen he had between his teeth.
Under Monkey Cats, he wrote ‘short life span’ and ‘biological’. Then: ‘no tentacles’.
Everyone stared. Victoria was the one who broke the silence. “They don’t have tentacles.”
“Exactly,” Judd said. “I figure we need some positivity on the board.”
“How does not having tentacles help us?”
“It makes things easier.” Judd crossed his arms. “There are only two kinds of tentacles—Kraken and Hentai. And either way, we get fucked.”
No one knew what to say to that. Irving’s eye twitched.