No one wanted to talk. That was fair – who’d want to spend what could be their last night jawing with anyone in that room?
Sullen mugs, eyes all staring at the next morning already. The ones with weapons to clean or sharpen had done it a dozen times over. The ones without sat and stared as if they were doing the same with whatever in their mind or body would defend them instead.
Everyone still carried some hope like that. The ones who hadn’t were already dead.
The paper in the wastebasket, what little was left of it, lit again. Angeline’s eyes frosted over with blue light, like she was giving what warmth she had to the blaze instead of lighting it from any spare inferno inside her.
Giving it all she still had. Her sister, whose only sharp edge had been prophecy, had killed herself over a month ago.
They’d all pulled into themselves like kicked snails after that. If prophecy wasn’t any hope, what was? What could be?
Just cutting prophecies to pieces, maybe. Brey whetted his long black knife like a lullaby.
Just shooting prophecies from far enough away that they hadn’t come true yet. Liam shouldered their rifle again, squinting down the scope, even though this threat was still hours too distant for even them to see.
Just fighting. Screaming curses until fate smothered them. Heathe sat in the corner by the radio, nothing but static for months now, bunched up as small as she could be. She knew as well as the rest of them that she had the worst chances of seeing the sun set again. What burst out of her on the battlefield was more and more stubborn about going back in, and she was making peace with coming apart sometime soon like a secondhand suit.
Liam studied her through the scope. No secrets in that stinking little bunker – everyone knew the two of them had been sharing a bunk since the last screams on the radio. If it came down to it, they would swear to put her out of her misery, but they wouldn’t have the strength for it in the end. No prophecies needed to see that.
Angeline would go cold and still, if she went on her own terms. The others had their plans. They didn’t share. Didn’t even look at each other, except for the lovebirds with the rifle and the thousand-yard stare. And even when the two of them shuffled off to bed, five unconvincing minutes apart, they wouldn’t speak. Just hold each other in the dark, just one more time, and think about how, for a person to kill a prophecy, they’d have to become something strong enough, wild-dog mean enough, to break whatever was human in them, surely, first.
