Chapter 10 John Wayne #3
It was Blake’s too, and look where he was? Hiding in the station while people died. That man burned alive from the inside, right in Blake’s hands and he couldn’t do jack shit to save him. He couldn’t even help people evacuate because he didn’t know about it.
He knocked Gabriel’s hand from his hair and stood. Trying to straighten the tangled locks, he mumbled something—he wasn’t sure what—and stepped out of the living room. He didn’t have a destination in mind until he was unlocking the back door and breathing in the sunshine.
Such a beautiful day was uncalled for.
The back porch was really just a cracked cement slab stuck out into a weedy courtyard. One of the firefighters had a grill out there, and they sometimes were able to grill when there weren’t too many calls. Surrounded by a tall privacy fence, at some point it probably had been nice.
Crabgrass clung to the thin dirt. Little prickly assholes that were as ugly as they were stubborn. Blake slid down the brick wall, hitting the cool cement and slumping backward. Grit crunched behind his head as he looked up at the roof.
Calling it a roof was generous. It was one of those weird coverings that looked like lattice. Like the top of an apple pie. Which didn’t make any sense because isn’t the job of a roof to cover things? Sun and rain could fall through this thing. There was no protection.
Not that a sturdy roof counted for anything when it really mattered. Not when the whole world was ending.
That hit Blake like a freight train. Or a loose tire. He’d been so busy worrying about Tommy, his parents, and the rest that he hadn’t really considered it all.
Aliens.
What the absolute fuck was going on?
Blake wasn’t a biologist or whoever the hell studied E.T. He couldn’t even begin to fathom why the hell the aliens were here. Hell, he could barely process the fact that his entire life had changed in the span of forty-eight hours.
He closed his eyes and tried not to float away.
It was petty and selfish, he knew, but thinking of the big picture was too big.
Too scary and vacant. He couldn’t process how many people had died.
Or that the US government had been fucked to hell.
He had always assumed the government would destroy itself from the inside, self-implode in a flurry of conceited money grubbers hiding behind good guy smiles and fake concern for the little guy.
No, actual aliens, had broken through the atmosphere and destroyed the city.
His city. The little bodega with his favorite homemade cookies.
The high school he would have given anything to be destroyed back when he’d had to sit through Ms. Walsh’s math class.
The park where he broke his wrist. All of it was gone, and it wasn’t coming back.
And the death. They were just people. Average, normal people who had never done anything to anyone. Going to work, running errands, whatever people did on a Tuesday. People who didn’t deserve to be blown apart.
But they weren’t just people at all. No matter how much Blake wanted to think of faceless anthropomorphic blobs. Those people were Tommy’s parents, his parents. Every one of those dead people mattered; they had lives and loved ones, hopes and dreams.
Gone. And for what?
The least of which—but what felt like the biggest to him—was his life. His apartment was probably destroyed, all the shit he’d saved up for now ashes in the wind. He didn’t have a job. If he survived, what would he do? Where would he go? His parents again?
Did they think he was dead? Were they pacing around their tiny retirement home with a beach theme, despite being two hours from the coast, trying to get through to someone, anyone, to find out if their son had miraculously survived the end of the fucking world?
Blake’s chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe. He’d never seen his mom concerned about anything. Ever. She told everyone to calm their tits and fixed it. One step at a time, or if that was too much, one breath. In, out, repeat. Was this the crack that shattered his mother’s calm?
He chuckled, the noise startling him. How was it that he was in the middle of a warzone and he was worried about his mother’s mental health?
She would kill him for that. Beat his ass if she knew he was being so stupid. Or worse, look at him in that way she did. Disappointed.
Taking a deep breath, he forced his thoughts toward something productive.
The truck was low on gas. They wouldn’t get much more out of it. That was if the collision with the FUD hadn’t destroyed something. Blake had a pretty good stock of medical supplies, but there was only so much he could do in the face of aliens with melting ordinance.
Three soldiers. An EMT. And a paramedic.
How could they possibly survive, let alone be helpful?
Gabriel seemed to think getting information to his people would make a difference, but he wasn’t even in the Army anymore.
He was part of a private organization. Was his boss just going to stride into some kind of governmental meeting and tell everyone to shut the fuck up and listen?
That’s assuming there was some kind of government meeting. And assuming the information they had was at all helpful.
Unless Gabriel’s boss was capable of rousing a government and coordinating an attack against aliens, then it’d be pointless. DC was gone. And who knows what else with it.
The door opened quietly, and Gabriel stepped onto the cement slab. Blake opened his eyes in time to see him scan the yard, holding his handgun in what he could only assume was a ready position.
“You shouldn’t be out here.”
“I know,” he admitted. “I just…needed space.” He was desperately trying to hold together what little self-respect he had left, and melting down in front of everyone wasn’t going to help.
Gabriel’s face softened as he closed the door behind him quietly. “I see.”
And somehow, Blake knew he did. The tall soldier sat down beside him, boots scraping against the crack in the cement as he shuffled. Knees to his chest, he rested the gun against his knee, pointing away from Blake.
They sat in silence for a long moment, both just watching the back fence like it had the answer to all their problems. Gabriel’s face was carefully blank.
Too blank. Like he was purposefully holding back whatever he was thinking.
For some reason, that pissed Blake off. Or upset him.
Honestly, at the moment, he had no idea how he felt.
He just didn’t like the idea that Gabriel wasn’t being authentic with him. Truthful.
“Sorry,” Blake muttered, hating how small the word sounded. “I’m not a super badass soldier who can handle this situation. I’m still trying to get over the fact that my life just became every dumb sci-fi movie I ever stayed up too late to watch.”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “I was nineteen the first time I shot a man.”
Blake’s eyes widened. Grimacing, he dragged his attention to the soldier beside him. “‘I was nineteen the first time I killed a man’, that’s how you open a conversation? Ok, John Wayne.”
Instead of getting mad, Gabriel chuckled. “I suppose that did sound a little…cliché.”
“You think?”
“I only meant that I’ve been dealing with this for a lot longer than you have.
” His smile was pointed at his lap, but it was fake.
More of a grimace braced for pain. “I used to think if I could just remember how many…if I could somehow carry the lives I took with me, it would be okay. Like they were living with me. Or through me.”
Blake didn’t know how he knew, but he knew this was hard for Gabriel to admit.
Everything was quiet around them, but it had been quiet for ages.
With the occasional shriek of gunfire or the rumble of an explosion, the world had grown silent.
But this was different. A deferential hush.
Like stepping into an untamed forest with nothing but the push of nature.
Of not belonging, silencing all extraneous noise.
“That’s fucked up,” he said because it was the truth, and he’d always found comfort in the truth.
Gabriel inhaled shakily. “Pretty much.” He wasn’t looking at Blake, but he suspected that would be for the best. He thought about Gabriel from last night.
The one who talked about tacos while they huddled under a bulldozer.
Not because he wanted to, but because Blake needed it.
He needed the distraction. The small bit of normalcy that broke the tension.
But this was not the same Gabriel from then. Alert, but settled, and thinking god knows what. No, this Gabriel was delving into something that was not meant to be aired out between them. Not meant for Blake at all.
Yet he wanted to hear it. Clung to it like a lifeline he didn’t know he needed.
“By the time I realized that the voices were too loud. I was outnumbered by the ghosts I carried with me. Started drinking to silence them. I was functional with the drink. Convinced myself I wasn’t an alcoholic.”
Blake had seen it a thousand times. Firefighters and EMS self-medicating with booze was all well and good until one beer turned into ten, then when the beer wasn’t enough, liquor. Then, as a tolerance was built up, liquor wouldn’t be enough anymore. On and on in a vicious cycle.
“Functional until you weren’t.”
“Isn’t that how it goes?” Gabriel finally lifted his head, tapping the gun on his knee.
“I tried so hard to hold onto every life I took. But it didn’t matter. The lives I meant to take were not half as bad as the one I didn’t.”
Gabriel raked his fingers down his face, sighing into his palm.
“They called it an accident, but it wasn’t.
That young soldier didn’t accidentally walk into my office and try to talk to me.
She didn’t accidentally get ignored because I was too hungover to notice the pain in her eyes.
She didn’t accidentally write a letter saying goodbye.
She didn’t accidentally pull out her service weapon and pull the trigger. ”
His teeth squeaked with how hard he clenched them. Staring out into the scrubby grass as if all the answers he ever needed grew between the weeds. Like he could find the words he needed to forgive himself, or maybe forget, could be found in the shade of an old privacy fence.
“Phin was the first one who caught onto the drinking. Never could hide anything from my battle brother.” His lips curled, but it wasn’t a real smile. A halfhearted attempt to remember something more pleasant.
“He walked into my room and punched me in the face. Locked me in the bathroom and wouldn’t let me out. Called in sick to my superiors so I wouldn’t be dishonorably discharged. Kept it quiet. To this day, I think he’s the only one who knows. And now you do, too.”
Blake didn’t know what to do with that responsibility.
He didn’t know if he was strong enough to hold it, but he also knew he would never drop it.
Would break his arms before he let this secret out into the world.
This secret that was more than a secret.
A hushed tether between them, a bond that could not be erased.
No matter where Blake went in the world, this would be something of Gabriel’s he had.
Shuffling, Gabriel reached into his pocket and pulled out the crochet hook he’d seen him fiddling with.
It was old, all the gold paint nearly flecked off.
“After I came out of the bathroom, covered in my own sick and ready to claw my skin off, Phin handed me this crochet kit. Pretty sure he got it at a truck stop.” He thumbed the hook.
“Told me to crochet every time I wanted to drink,”
“Did it help?”
“Made a lot of scarves.”
Blake swallowed. “Why did you tell me?”
Gabriel didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did it came with those softly burning hazel eyes.
The spark in those irises were more than a spark of life, though that was there.
No, it was something different. Like speckled starlight on a glassy lake—there but not.
The light conditional on a thousand variables that had to come together to produce something so simple and breathtaking.
Finally, he shrugged. “I guess I wanted to.”
I trust you.
Blake heard it even if Gabriel didn’t say it. He’d asked for honesty and been rewarded with truth. With trust.
They’d touched before. But now, even with the inches between them, it felt intimate. Each studying the other with thoughts concealed behind closed lips but broadcasting with eyes that didn’t know how to lie.
“You know, I think you’re actually pretty badass.”
The spell broke with an almost audible shatter. Blake blinked like he’d just stepped into the light. “What?”
“Earlier, you said you weren’t. But you had a working vehicle and could have run. Could have gotten to safety, but you stayed to help. Jumped into the fray to save us. Unarmed.” He lifted his eyebrows like this impressed him. “Not everyone would do that.”
He snorted. “I don’t think anyone knows what they’d do during an alien attack. Not the kind of thing you can prepare for.”
Gabriel pushed himself to his feet, offering a hand to Blake. He took it, marveling at how easily Gabriel pulled him up.
After talking, the panic in his chest was replaced with a heaviness. Exhaustion, for sure. Standing so close to Gabriel he was acutely aware of how disgusting he was. He needed a shower. Blake wasn’t sure which was worse, the dried blood crusting to his skin or the dirt and sweat.
Gabriel reached forward and tucked a strand of Blake’s hair behind his ear. “You should get some sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I’m the commander,” Gabriel reminded him. “I’ll sleep after my men.”
Blake rolled his eyes, stepping around Gabriel to wrench open the door. “God, you are the most dramatic person I have ever met.”