Our Future

We alerted everyone we were moving quickly. I and Gabriel scooted out the surroundings to find a new place. We were trying to find a place with people. We were lucky.

We spotted movement in a fenced off warehouse area. We landed a block away and jump the fence.

“Hello?” Gabriel called.

“Chig-Chig,” went a shotgun as it was loaded.

“Put the gun down,” said a voice sarcastically.

Four men appeared. Two brown-haired and two blond.

“Hi, I’m Joey and he’s Daniel,” said one of the blonds as he pointed at brown haired guy. Both were fairly pale.

Joey put his arm on Daniel’s shoulder and Daniel put his on Joey’s waist. Good, we’d fit right in.

“Hi, I’m Gabriel, and this is Nathan. We were looking for a new place to move our group of survivors,” Gabriel introduces us.

“How many you have?” Daniel asks.

Joey side glances Daniel like it shouldn’t matter how many people we’re moving.

“About forty, maybe including us?” Gabriel answers.

Daniel looks over at Joey this time.

“You boys run this place, if you want overcrowding to happen it’s not my problem,” says the older blond and he lumbers off with the other brown- head.

“Don’t mind Jason, age is getting to him,” Daniel jokes.

“So we’ll start arriving sometime this evening?” I question.

“Sure, we’ll be here,” Joey says waving us off.

We re-jump the fence and take flight. We alert everyone about us moving tonight. We organize that we’re going to fly the children there and have all the body-abled adults follow us on the ground.

“Are we going to bring your mother?” Gabriel asks.

“I don’t know. I want to but what if she causes more problems at our new home?” I reply.

We were walking down to the office to check and see if Abele had healed enough to walk or if he needed to be flown over.

Gabriel didn’t seem to have an answer.

“She doesn’t seem to want me, as myself anyway,” I whisper.

“She’s your mom, Nathan,” he says it like it’s supposed to mean something after living without her for three years.

“She also tried to kill me, Gab,” I remind him.

I flash back to the moment the knife hit my stomach and my shirt started turning blood-red.

I remember the pain, blurriness and Gabriel’s tears and whispering for me not die.

“Nathan,” Gabriel sighed.

I push open the office door and he follows me. We knock on Abele’s door and Jasper answers.

Abele had been out of his coma for about a week and a half. Jasper had healed him multiple times to make sure he was in the best shape possible.

“We’re moving tonight. Do you think he’s well enough to make the journey or do we have to carry him?” Gabriel asks.

Jasper glances at Abele.

“I think he can make the trip. How far away is it?” Jasper replies.

“About half an hour, forty-five minutes,” Gabriel answers.

“Yeah, he can do that,” Jasper confirms.

“Great,” Gabriel says a little sarcastically. “See you tonight, then.”

We left and toke up residence in our box cave. We probably weren’t going to see it again so we’d miss the place.

It was probably one of the last times we’d get privacy for a while, too. At least until we found new hideouts and secrets at our new place (maybe Joey and Daniel could help us with that).

Gabriel pressed me to a counter and held onto the edge of it as he kissed me. I ran my hand through his neck-length copper hair. I returned his kiss wholeheartedly. Soon I’m lying on the counter and he’s over top of me. He leans on his elbow and traces my stomach as he kisses me again.

“I love you,” I whisper when he lets me breathe.

He smiles and puts his mouth up to my ear.

“I love you, too,” he whispers.

The day melts away to night and soon we’re in the middle of flying children over to the new place. A lot of them are amazed by what the city looks like from above.

Joey and Daniel were waiting to let us in when we walked up. We told everyone not to tell them about our wings, but that didn’t mean a little kid like Anna wouldn’t.

Gabriel had sat down and talked to her and urged her not to tell anyone unless they already knew. If anyone who shouldn’t have known mentioned it she was supposed to come talk to us. We had the same talk with Mark but I think he understood less because he’d never seen our wings before that night.

“You have a lot of young kids, how did you get here without losing any of them?” Daniel inquired.

“We carried the youngest and told the others to keep close,” Gabriel replies.

He side glances Jasper who is nearby with Abele. He stuck by Abele for most of the night, worrying despite having healed him himself.

They directed us to a part of the warehouse with three smaller rooms. One for the guys, girls, and children. Once everyone was settled in we made our escape to the roof. It was harder to get to it because of the patrols Joey and Daniel had but we did it between the switch outs.

We could hear Daniel and Joey calling for us. They probably wanted to know something and I guess the roof wasn’t a popular place for hiding because they hadn’t checked it yet.

Daniel did eventually find us though.

So Joey and him weren’t attached at the hip like us.

“What are you guys doing?” he questioned.

“Just enjoying the peace and quiet. And the night sky,” Gabriel replied innocently.

Daniel shrugged, apparently whatever it was it could wait.

“So you guys know each other before the apocalypse or did you meet after it started?” Daniel continued.

“We’ve been friends since we were kids, a lot of us went to the same high school or were siblings before the apocalypse so we don’t actually have that many people we didn’t know before the apocalypse,” Gabriel replies.

“That must be nice. I met your siblings and mother downstairs. You’re lucky you still have them,” he comments.

I look up at the navy blue sky. Gabriel glances at me sensing my sadness. He knows I regret leaving my mother behind even if she would have caused us trouble.

“So any of your family still with you?” Gabriel inquires turning the conversation away from our family.

“No, but it doesn’t help that I moved here a year and a half prior to the apocalypse, “he comments, “Joey doesn’t have anybody either.”

“When did you and Joey meet?” Gabriel questions, bold question.

It might make Daniel suspect something.

“Couple months after I moved here,” he answers. “You okay, Nathan?”

He probably asked because I haven’t said anything.

“He doesn’t say much to people he doesn’t know,” Gabriel comments.

That wasn’t true, but I didn’t really feel like giving an explanation at the moment.

“You found them,” calls Joey as he appears at the roof’s edge.

Great. I didn’t have an issue with Joey but I just wanted some peace and quiet with my boyfriend. I was fine with Daniel being there but now whatever they were calling us about earlier would be brought up.

Daniel rolls his eyes. You could tell he was the joking type.

These guys weren’t much older than us, seven or eight years at the most.

“Did you tell them?” Joey asks.

“Who cares? It doesn’t affect them,” Daniel curses in denial.

You can tell Joey has upset him.

“What happened?” I ask quietly.

Daniel doesn’t say anything.

“Daniel, I know you don’t want to talk about it but they need to know,” Joey reasons.

“Why it’s my life? I should be able to tell who I want. It should be my choice. It’s my...” he cuts himself off.

It’s a little clearer what they’re trying to tell us. I think Joey wants us to know about their sexuality but Daniel wanted it to be kept private.

“Leave him, if it’s nothing serious don’t worry about telling us, we don’t need to know everything,” I say quietly.

“See he understands,” Daniel exclaims. “I’ll tell people when I’m ready.”

“Sorry for making you want to tell people who are like us,” Joey comments quietly.

I don’t think me or Gabriel were supposed to have heard that.

So they thought we were gay, saved us from telling them. Not that it would have taken long or been hard.

“Yeah, right,” Daniel comments sarcastically. “You’re completely sorry.”

You can tell Daniel is still upset but that he’s forgiving Joey slowly.

“We should tell them about us and our heritage,” I whisper quietly in Gabriel’s ear.

“That might get us in trouble,” he replies.

“What’s that?” Daniel asks.

I shrug at Gabriel.

I stand up and back away to the edge of the roof.

“What’s he doing?” Daniel asks.

Gabriel just smiles and shakes his head.

As I near the edge Daniel and Joey start to follow.

“Hey, what are you doing? Stop you’re going to fall!” Daniel shouts.

I let myself fall off the side of the roof, my wings break out of my shirt and start flapping to catch me. Daniel and Joey appear at the edge and are shocked to see me not dead on the pavement below.

“Don’t scare them to death,” Gabriel jokes walking to the edge, wings spread.

“What are you?” Joey asks in amazement.

Gabriel glances at me.

“Angels,” he replies.