Chapter 20 #2
“Right, except the eyes.” Blake quickly explained what happened before they met up, when Judd and Victoria shot at one of the Monkey Cat’s eyes. “There’s always a weakness, and if any of my wild guesses are even close to correct, the Monkey Cat’s weakness is their eyes.”
The group absorbed what he said. “You think they’ve been fighting each other for a long time?” Judd said.
Blake chewed his lip. “I don’t know. But it makes sense. If your enemy used EMPs, wouldn’t you create a weapon that used teeth and claws? And if the Off Formers struggle with an accurate hit, wouldn’t they create a round that didn’t need to be accurate?”
Because why hit a vital organ when you could burn through the entire body?
Even so, it took a while to take a Monkey Cat down, which means all their major organs, blood vessels, arteries, and central nervous system are small.
Buried deep. Which makes them not very intelligent, but disposable weapons.
“Holy shit,” Gabriel swore, raking his fingers through his hair.
“That’s not all,” Blake said warily. “I think the Off Formers set off a second EMP after the Monkey Cats broke through the shield.”
“Because the radios stopped working?”
“Yes. And the cars. Even the older vehicle we used to get to the shield worked while the shield was up, but after the zappy balls stopped falling, we couldn’t find a vehicle. That’s when the Monkey Cats hit the streets.”
Tommy looked up from where he was sitting beside Phin. “Wouldn't we have felt it?”
“No, not unless you had a pacemaker or something.”
Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. “So what? They waited to put up their damaged shield for when the Monkey Cats arrived?”
Blake shrugged. “If it was broken or their energy source was weakened, they probably wanted to save it. They set off an EMP to disable us and then put the shield up to protect themselves from the Monkey Cats. They used the zappy balls until the EMP went off, which might have disabled their guns or just put the shield down, and the Monkey Cats were more effective on the ground.”
Blake didn’t exactly understand the technology, or really anything that was going on. All he was doing was making guesses based on his observations. For all he knew, he was talking out of his ass.
Color drained from Gabriel’s face. “Irving said the Monkey Cats destroyed what the Off Formers didn’t. Which means we aren’t getting a ride out of here.”
Judd swore and just barely resisted the urge to throw a picture frame, catching his arm at the last second. Phin ground his teeth so hard Blake thought his enamel might crack. Even Victoria looked angry, her lips pursed as she limped toward the kitchen.
No one quite knew how to handle the fact that their country was…gone. Invaded or a big crater. And what wasn’t completely ash was being invaded by aliens. Their entire way of life, everything they’d ever known, was gone.
Victoria returned to the living room with six warm bottles of beer. She dropped them into the center of the room.
The glass bottles clanked as they rolled across the carpet.
Blake grabbed a bottle and used the corner of the coffee table to pop the top, but he stopped when he saw a single bottle left untouched in front of Gabriel.
In his desire to do something with his hands, to distract himself, he’d completely forgotten.
Looking up, he caught Gabriel’s eye. The soldier was staring at the bottle, hands clasped in front of him.
He smiled softly when he noticed Blake looking at him and nodded, giving his permission.
Blake gave his bottle to Judd. Phin watched him with his bright eyes but said nothing.
Victoria offered to take the first watch, and no one argued with her. Judd chugged his two beers and collapsed on the floor, tucking an arm behind his head for a pillow. Tommy and Phin were talking quietly on the couch, so Blake took his beer toward the back of the apartment.
Everyone else seemed to give in to their fatigue, choosing the numbness that came with mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion, but Blake couldn’t relax. He ached, and he felt like someone had strapped cinderblocks to his arms and legs, but he couldn’t sit still. Not when his mind was racing.
For the longest time Blake felt like his brain was a separate entity. A possession he could never quite exorcise. It paced and screamed at the back of his mind, and the more he ignored it, the louder it got. Eventually he learned to live with it—or at the very least keep what he saw to himself.
But when Gabriel asked for his observations, it was like opening the door he’d tried for so long to keep closed. And now, given free rein, his mind was racing.
He couldn’t stop running through the last few days. An endless loop of horror and confusion. Desperate for something he might have missed, a small detail that might give them the chance they needed to escape. To put this hell behind them.
But with every fractured and incomplete memory, his anxiety only increased.
Blake wasn’t a soldier, and his medical skills meant nothing when people were literally melting, but this was something he could do.
Something Gabriel needed. This was the one thing he could do.
The one thing that might mean something, and there was nothing.
If the lack of vegetables and surplus of beer wasn’t a clue that the place belonged to a young, single man, then the bedroom was a dead giveaway.
There was a queen bed on the floor, half covered in clean clothes freshly dumped from a laundry basket.
A single pillow was situated at the head of the bed, creased from where Gabriel had been lying earlier.
He took note of all of it but didn’t really notice. Blake was too busy trying to remember what he’d seen when the Monkey Cats first appeared or what he knew about EMPs. God, he wished he’d listened to his crazy conspiracy theory uncle when he ranted about Faraday cages.
Pacing across the bedroom, he tried to imagine what it meant to not have anyone coming. To be completely alone. The only good thing about it was that it meant that the US government wouldn’t be firebombing them. At least that removed one horrible way to die out of the equation.
What they needed was a plan. A way to get out of DC, where most of the major fighting seemed to be. Somewhere easier to hide. But even if they could get out of DC, there was no guarantee they could find other refugees or safety. There might not be anywhere safe.
Raking his fingers through his hair, he tried to organize his thoughts.
One thing at a time. That’s what he needed to do—but he couldn’t.
Not when every other thought was something new, and equally as pressing.
He felt like he was too big for his skin.
His heart was racing, adrenaline dumping into his veins as his brain screamed at his body to do something, but wouldn’t elaborate as to what that something was.
“Blake?” Gabriel asked as he stepped into the bedroom, his eyebrows drawn.
Without sparing him a glance, Blake turned to the bathroom.
“Medicine. It won’t be as good as my jump bag, but it might be something.
Lots of people keep prescription medication they never finished—antibiotics, pain meds, hell, maybe even some bandaging material.
I would love to find some disinfectant, too.
Hydrogen peroxide slows down healing, but it would be better than nothing—"
“Blake.”
“Straight alcohol could work; maybe this guy has some vodka or something in the kitchen. Something without sugar. Or if the fighting isn’t too close, we could raid some of the other apartments. It won’t get us any closer to getting the hell out of DC, but at least I won’t be so useless—"
“Blake!” Gabriel grabbed his wrist, spinning him around. He only had a moment to register a strong, calloused hand cupping his cheek before he was being kissed.
By Gabriel.
And like that, his mind was quiet.
Like a marionette with its strings cut, Blake went limp.
He had never felt anything like this. They said that kissing should be like fireworks—explosions of sound and color, but with Gabriel, it was the opposite.
Nothing else mattered. His whole world narrowed down to the places where their skin touched.
To the taste, smell, and feel of the man holding his cut strings.
And in this newfound peace, Blake found something new—desire.
Blake had kissed before. He’d been kissed. But it had always been halfhearted. Attempts to put slot A into tab B. Formulaic, and while pleasant, it wasn’t like this.
Gabriel’s kiss was like a full-body experience. It started at his lips and gained momentum as it raced all the way down to his toes, licking like a drug along his veins, lacing him with a need that was quickly turning into an addiction.
He wanted more. He pushed onto his toes so he could kiss him back.
Chasing more of that high, that heat, that pulled and pushed him in ways he’d never known.
Blake’s lips parted, and Gabriel sought more contact, his tongue licking along the seam of Blake’s bow in a question whose answer promised so much more than a deepened kiss.
Blake wrapped his arms around Gabriel’s neck.
The soldier groaned softly as he licked into Blake’s mouth, his tongue hot, warm, and insistent.
He tasted like mint and beans, which should have been unpleasant, but Blake found it was only adding to Gabriel’s appeal.
Like weeks from now, when he was parted from these lips and this man, he might eat a can of beans and brush his teeth just to bring himself back to this moment.
They kissed until they were breathless. Until Gabriel’s hand had slid around Blake’s hip, fingers burrowing under his borrowed hoodie to just barely caress the hint of skin over his belt.
You’re my type.