Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  She laughs. I notice the tiny creature she arrived with, the one she calls Blue, is hovering over her left shoulder. They bob up and down as though acknowledging me. I nod back, feeling a bit stupid.

  “Have you talked to August yet?” I ask.

  Raven sighs. “I don’t know where he is. Sky told me not to worry about it. She says his hand will be fine in a few hours.”

  Blue draws a big, slow circle in the air, but I don’t think Raven notices. She connects a few more wires before speaking again.

  “Sky says August has gotten it into his head that I’m his Offside, because his original Offside is dead and…” She shrugs.

  “Are you his Offside?” I ask.

  “I’m not a Nahx, you know.” She stands back from her work, staring at the tangle of wires. “You should get going. You want to be back before dark.”

  I lean into the cockpit, where Mandy is half submerged in a torn-apart dashboard. “See you later, Mandy!”

  She grunts her reply, waving a wrench. I don’t know when these two learned how to repair Nahx transports. Mandy says their minds are working at a thousand times normal speed, so I suppose that helps.

  “Hey,” Raven calls out to me as I jump down from the hatch.

  I turn back. “What?”

  “You haven’t changed, Xander. Not like me.”

  Tugging my tuque out of my pocket, I pull it over my ears.

  “You haven’t changed much either, Raven.”

  I jog back down the hill before she can argue.

  Topher, Nova, and Aurora are waiting for me outside Sky’s cabin. I notice Tucker is no longer up the tree, but he’s nowhere to be seen either.

  “He’s not coming with us,” Topher says, anticipating my question.

  “I hope he’s planning on staying away from August.” I say it offhandedly, without much thought, but Topher snaps back at me.

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “About August? Because he saved my life. Multiple times.”

  “Yeah, and he killed my brother.”

  I take a cool breath. “Tucker told you.” I’ve been wondering when this would happen.

  “Of course he told me. I’d like to know why you didn’t, though.”

  “Because if you decided to try some revenge fantasy with August, he would snap you like a twig. Anyway, Tucker’s not dead. You were just talking to him.”

  If Aurora and Nova could whistle nervously, they probably would. Topher frowns at me, slinging a rifle over his shoulder.

  “Whatever. Let’s go.”

  The sun beats down on us until we reach the tunnel through the glacier, and is still shining brightly when we emerge. Though it’s cold, by midday when we climb up to Topher’s camp, we’ve both unzipped our coats and tucked our mittens and hats into the pockets. Topher looks brighter with every hour in the sun. I suspect he’s been literally hiding under rocks for months. Who could blame him?

  His camp looks the same as we left it, and since we have two Rogue Nahx to keep watch, Topher and I decide to make a fire in the shelter so we can have a hot lunch. It’s just soup we brought from Sky’s cabin, heated right in the can and eaten that way too, with two spoons, but it tastes like a gourmet meal.

  Outside, Nova and Aurora carefully dig up Topher’s cache of weapons, insisting we rest while they work. I still can’t get Aurora to stop babying me, even after more than a week of trying.

  Topher swigs from a canteen and hands it to me, lying back on the pile of sleeping bags.

  “I want you to reason with Tucker,” he says. “He thinks that once we get the web down he’s going back with Raven for some great battle up north.”

  “Tucker is no more likely to listen to me than you.”

  I silently wish that my mind could work a thousand times faster than normal too, even just for a few hours. The last couple of days have been too much to take in. Tucker, Mandy, and Raven still alive. August still alive. I poke at the fire, thinking of those weeks after I was rescued and taken to the refugee camp, how I mourned him secretly, never able to tell anyone, never able to get the image of him on fire out of my head. Now here he is. Back in my life like a phantom, though he has barely looked in my direction.

  Since the invasion I’ve gotten used to people dying. Now, bizarrely, it seems I have to get used to them undying.

  And Topher—everything I thought was finished is obviously unfinished. There is certainly no lingering tenderness between him and Raven. It’s almost like, with Tucker back, they have no need for each other anymore. That gives me a strange feeling. I have so much need for all these people—Topher, Raven, August, Nova and Aurora, even Tucker—that it makes me a bit sick.

  “It doesn’t sound like the kind of battle that will have many survivors,” Topher says, breaking my defeatist reverie.

  Outside, Nova’s shovel goes chuff, chuff, chuff into the frozen ground.

  “How deep did you bury this stuff, anyway?”

  Topher slides over, patting the sleeping bags beside him. “Deep. And the ground is frozen solid. We’ll be here awhile.”

  “Should we help them?”

  “Hell no. I think I’ll take a nap.”

  I lie beside him, and we both stare up at the neatly entwined boughs that make up the curved roof of the wickiup.

  “Raven’s parents are alive,” I say.

  Topher sighs and doesn’t answer for a while. I explained the register to him the day we found each other and told him that none of my family or his family were on it. But I think we’ve been avoiding talking about Raven—for a whole bunch of reasons.

  “That’s what she always believed,” he says at last. “Never shut up about it, in fact. She was sure they made it to the coast.”

  “Well… they did.”

  “Have you told her?”

  “No. I thought it might be better to wait until the web is down and she could get back to them. If that’s what she wants.”

  The question of what happens when this mission is over, of who goes where and with whom, I leave unspoken. I’m thinking about how to bring up the topic of Jack’s offer for me to live with them when Topher rolls over to face me. He has the same dark and moody look on his face that always made me stupid.

  “Raven and I never slept together,” he says.

  “I… okay.” Like I said. Stupid.

  “I know what it looked like from the outside. But it wasn’t that. We were just… I was trying to…”

  I roll onto my side, and when he closes his eyes, like he can’t find a way to go on, I reach forward and put my hand on his face. He lifts his own hand to cover mine and we lie like that for a few seconds, taking deep breaths of the warm, smoky air of the shelter.

  Topher speaks without opening his eyes. “I shouldn’t have dropped you like that when Raven came back. I don’t know why I did. It was just such a shock to see her alive, and she was so… traumatized that I was sure something had happened to her out there, something terrible. I felt like I needed to protect her. At least until she could tell me about it. Or tell someone.”

  “But she never did.”

  “No. Because…”

  He opens his eyes, and there is something sharp in his gaze that’s both beautiful and a little frightening.

  “Something did happen to her?”

  “The Nahx happened to her,” he says bitterly.

  “August never hurt her, Toph. Honestly, he’s not like that.”

  “He never hurt her? He turned her into a zombie!”

  From what I’ve seen, Raven, Mandy, and Tucker are far from zombies, but one of them is not my twin brother, so I don’t think I can argue. I know what it feels like to live without a sibling you love. If what Mandy says is right, Topher will grow old and die, and Tucker will have to live without him for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Or there’s the other possibility.

  “Do you think they know things they’re not telling us?” Topher asks.

  “About what?”

  �
��The whole thing with the nuclear bomb sites and whatever it is that Tucker wants to go back to.”

  “I think they know as much as we do. Why would they keep secrets?”

  Topher moves my hand off his face and scratches his beard.

  “I suppose because their plan is for us to go west and them to go east.”

  Something changes, and whatever moment we were having is suddenly a different moment. We both roll back and face the ceiling again.

  “When we get the web down, I’m going with them,” Topher says.

  “With who?” I ask. “With Raven?”

  “With Tucker.”

  “With Raven.” I repeat it as I sit up, brushing dirt and pine needles from my snow pants. “She doesn’t need you, Toph. None of them need us. We can get out of here. Go live on the coast. Be humans again.”

  “Tucker needs me,” he says. I don’t turn around, but I hear him stand and start to fold up the sleeping bags. “Tucker can’t be a human again.”

  “We don’t know that.” I stand and kick dirt onto the fire, because it’s starting to look like we’re done here. “Maybe there’s… a cure or something.”

  “Why would he want to be cured?”

  “Is that what this is? You’re jealous? Why don’t you ask one of the Nahx to dart you?”

  When I turn, the way he’s looking at me makes me want to crawl under a rock myself. “I’m s-sorry,” I splutter. “I didn’t mean that.”

  He shakes his head, leaning down to push the door flap open and look out into the clearing. Nova and Aurora are now hip deep in the hole they’ve dug and are scooping dirt out with their hands.

  “That’s what I hoped for, you know,” Topher says, letting the canvas flap fall. With the fire nearly out, the shelter darkens until I can barely see him. “After the Nahx killed… darted everyone else, I hoped they would come back and get me. Sitting up here in the dark, bodies all around me? I prayed for it.”

  “I’m sorry, Topher.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “I’m sorry I said that.” When he doesn’t seem satisfied with my answer, I go on. “I’m sorry I went with August that day. I’m sorry I didn’t come back for you sooner. I’m sorry I… surrendered so easily, when Raven came back. I should have fought for you.”

  Even in the dark I can see his eyebrows creep up. “Why would you fight for me then? I was being a world-class dick.”

  He’s still being kind of a dick, but since when has that ever stopped me? Or anyone? I put my hand on his shoulder and, after a second, slide it around to the back of his neck.

  There’s a moment, an instant really, where he tenses and a look crosses his face like he might, just shove me away and dive out the flap to run off like a startled animal. But I wait, and the moment passes.

  Then I pull him forward and kiss him on the lips.

  When we part I give him time to take a single breath before saying anything.

  “Don’t freak out,” I whisper.

  “Why would I freak out?” He slides one hand, then the other, into my coat and around my back.

  “You did the first time we kissed.”

  He chuckles, pulling me close. “I got over it, though, didn’t I?”

  We kiss again. He tastes of soup and smells like sweat, and his lips are chapped with cold, and the skin is peeling off the tip of his nose from frostbite, and his beard itches. Also the world has come to an end and most of the people I love are either dead or zombie soldiers.

  But apart from that, this is perfect. A glorious five minutes pass before we’re interrupted, five minutes where my mind empties of all the garbage that’s been building up in there and refills with melted chocolate and homemade dumplings and clean warm towels fresh out of the dryer.

  It’s Nova who pokes through the flap. She waits for us to untangle before speaking, but her curt signs are easy to interpret.

  Time to go, mud brains.

  Nova and Aurora simply jump off the steep cliff down from Topher’s camp, landing gracefully at the bottom, where they wait for us to clamber awkwardly after them.

  “Wouldn’t you like to be able to do that?” Topher says, steadying me as I dislodge my toe from a root.

  “Jump off cliffs? We can cliff dive on the coast if you want.”

  He falls silent and stays that way until we reach the bottom, where the trickling waterfall has frozen into glistening spindles and swirls.

  Some parts of the hike back to Sky’s cabin are like a pleasant winter stroll, marred only by the fact that Nova is carrying a pack with twelve live grenades inside it. Topher checked them all before we set out, making sure the pins were tightly in place and the safety clips securely fastened to the levers, but it still makes me uneasy. Garvin had grenades too, and I hated it when he showed them off. I don’t know why they bother me more than guns. I’ve gotten used to carrying a gun again, but I suppose grenades remind me that this is really a war, not just some kids fooling around with their dads’ hunting rifles.

  Topher holds my hand for the easy parts, where we stroll across flat plateaus, crunching through the crust of ice that has settled on top of a foot of snow. Nova and Aurora hold hands too, or they walk with Nova slightly behind, her hand on Aurora’s shoulder. It’s sweet and quiet and peaceful, and I could almost pretend, if I turned my face away and looked up at the mountains and the puffs of clouds in the blue sky beyond, that life was normal. And safe.

  But as we get closer to Sky’s cabin, Topher lets go and keeps lagging back, letting me get ahead of him. Finally, when we’re in sight of the small glacier that marks the entry into the Rogues’ territory, I stop.

  “Breather,” I say. Nova and Aurora wander a few yards farther up toward the ice while I turn back to Topher, who crouches down to retie his boot.

  “It’s not that I don’t want anyone to know,” he says, not even looking up at me. “I’m not closeted or anything.”

  “Okay…”

  “You didn’t tell Raven either.”

  “I guess I assumed you would.”

  He stands, pulling his mittens back on. “I just don’t want complications. Not now.”

  My face gets hot, and I turn away so he won’t see me blush. Am I being dumped again? Already? That’s got to be some kind of record.

  He crunches up behind me, pressing against my back, his forehead on my shoulder. “It’s not that I…” He exhales, and a little cloud of his breath puffs around my neck. “I always knew there was something wrong with me.”

  “Jesus, Toph. There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”

  He snuffles against my coat, and at first I think he might be crying, but when he steps back and I turn, I see he’s laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You!” He laughs until he has to bend over and catch his breath. Glancing back, I see Nova and Aurora watching us, their heads tilted quizzically to the side. Topher straightens up, wiping tears of mirth away with his scarf.

  “I meant I’m so… stitched up. It always made me so uncomfortable for people to notice me. And identical twins get so much attention, it drove me crazy. I used to hide in our room at our birthday parties. Tucker would eat all the cake.”

  “That sounds right.” I’m not that different. I don’t mind attention, but I definitely want it on my own terms. “That’s probably why things were so hard for you… without him. No diversionary tactics. No one to hide behind.”

  “Yeah… God.”

  His mirth dissipates. I put my hand on his shoulder and leave it there. It feels surprisingly good. Solid. I can see why the Nahx like to walk this way.

  “Listen, Toph. We’re about to attempt a literally insane attack on a Nahx stronghold. If we survive that, we have to figure out how to travel a thousand miles across Canada in the middle of winter—whether we go east or west. And one way or another, some sort of zombie alien apocalyptic battle is looming. I’m pretty sure no one is going to notice anything different about you or me or anyone. And if they d
o, they’re not going to care. The Rogues certainly aren’t going to.”

  As though to demonstrate this, Aurora and Nova have started throwing snowballs into the trees.

  Topher shakes his head, looking down, kicking at our footprints. “You’re right. I just… want you to know it’s nothing personal. If I act cool around you. It’s just because I’m weird. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you.” He leans forward and gives me a quick kiss.

  I momentarily lose my ability to speak. I’m not exactly happy with where we’ve landed, but I understand at least. “Let’s get these grenades on the road again.”

  He slings his arm around me as we head up to the glacier and rejoin Nova and Aurora.

  “Grenades,” Topher says with a snort. “People will probably notice that.”

  AUGUST

  There’s a tapping noise on the door of the stone hut. I stare at it, trying to latch onto the familiarity and let it lead me. To move. To do something.

  Tap tap tap.

  Answer it. I need to answer the door. Muddy death, that is so simple. How could I have struggled with that?

  Sky is behind the door when I open it. She is in her armor except for her helmet, which hangs over her shoulder, the long breathing tentacles looped and clinging to her, as though waiting to be fully connected.

  You’re in your armor, she signs. Good.

  I was sleeping.

  She nods.

  Now I’m not sleeping.

  Sky smiles, reaching forward and touching my arm gently.

  Yes, Summer King. I can see that.

  My body heats up, and I try to think cold thoughts to cool myself down, but it doesn’t work very well. So I look out at the snow over Sky’s shoulder and imagine rolling in it.

  I’m sorry, I say after a moment. I’m still a little confused.

  That will improve with time, Sky says. She has explained this to me before. She says some of the other Rogues were brought to her after they’d let themselves run down, and it took them a while to be able to function again, to think and talk and make decisions without getting stuck in a loop of muddled thoughts.

  We are preparing to go, she says. Will you come with us?

  Yes. Yes.

  I have no rifle or any other supplies, so I simply join her on the small porch of the hut, pulling the door closed behind me. According to Sky, there were darted humans in this hut when she found it. Their packs are still piled in one corner. Though I’ve been bored up here by myself, and I like to look at human objects, I haven’t touched them. The darted humans were taken away by other Nahx about a month ago, Sky says. It feels wrong to disturb their things, as though maybe they might come back for them when it’s all over, whatever this is.