My fists clenched as I remembered her, that bitch. I wanted to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze till she stopped singing forever. I wanted to tear her to pieces. I wanted to make her pay for what she’d done, for all the lives she’d taken. For Debra.

Debra. I laid there, trying not to cry again. Every night this past week I’d cried myself to sleep. I still couldn’t believe Debra was gone. The wound opened every time I thought about her, or that day. I cried because I should have saved her. I always saved her. The very first time we met, as freshmen in high school, I saved her from some older girls that were making fun of her. She was so small and frightened, like me only she was showing it while I was trying so hard to hide it. Attacking those girls let me take control, let me overcome my own fears. I ended up in detention for slapping them, but it had been worth it. She found me the next day and gave me cookies.

We’d been inseparable since. Even as we got older and things started changing, we always hung on to each other. I hated that she was going to university and I was just bouncing around in pointless day jobs. I was afraid we’d drift apart.

Why had I let her stay? If I hadn’t been so permissive and made her come with me instead, we wouldn’t have been anywhere near the place when the angel attacked. Why did she have to pick ice skating on that day, when she knew I couldn’t afford it? We could have gone to the movies or grabbed a meal somewhere. We could have done anything I suggested and that would have been better: she’d still be here. Why hadn’t we?

The room held no answer for me, so I let the misery swallow me again.

I was up before breakfast and spent my time thumbing through one of the old magazines they’d left me. The pictures were surreal and I couldn’t help staring at the pictures of beautiful women, and men in carefree poses. All of this was from before the angels attacked us. Did people still look like this, out there in the world? Were people still this relaxed? Did anyone care about the clothes you wore or what the celebrities were up to this week?

I knew I didn’t give a shit about those things. I was too poor to buy really nice clothes or live anything like the lifestyles promised in most of these magazines. At the best of times, it felt like reading about aliens.

Someone knocked on my door, which was odd. I was used to people just walking in when they wanted. “Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s August. Can I come in?”

I sat up and brushed my hair back with my hand. Seeing the magazines spread out on my bed, I had the sudden urge to hide them. With a frantic look I realized there was nowhere to put them out of sight, so I tossed them on the floor. “Come in,” I said.

August strode into the room, his grey coat whipping behind him as he did. Underneath, he wore a crisp black suit, though he had no tie and his shirt was unbuttoned at the top. I’d never cared for suits on men before, but he looked good in it, even if it seemed far too serious for him. It made him look older, more dignified. My stomach flipped as he grinned at me.

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“Hello,” I said, all nonchalant.

“Hello to you,” he said, sitting down and setting that briefcase on the floor.

I glanced behind him and saw another soldier take up a position by the door like G.I. Joe had. “Still can’t visit me by yourself I see,” I said nodding towards his follower.

He shook his head. “Sorry, no, they won’t allow that.”

Sitting back, I crossed my arms. “What the hell is going on here August? Just who the hell are you?” Even though he made me feel some...inappropriate feelings and I wanted him to like me, I’d had enough of this. I needed to know what the hell was going on.

August blinked and sat back. “Sorry, I guess this must all be terribly hard on you. There are, ah, things I can’t disclose,” he said, flicking his eyes towards the open door and the soldier beyond. “However, I can tell you this. I’m a civilian contractor working with the military and the U.S. government on this project.”

“You mean me,” I stated.

“Well, yes. Listen, I know you are cut off in here, but it’s been bad out there. New York wasn’t the only city they hit.”

Oh god. “Where? How many?”

He shrugged. “The first day? Paris, Cairo, and Riyadh. And that’s just the ones we know about.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. How could you not know if something like an angel attacked a place?

August looked down, shaking his head. “Before they attacked, they did something, we aren’t sure what. It knocked out nearly all our satellites, especially military and communication ones. They just started raining out of the sky. While they did this, they also severed the transatlantic cable. In one swoop, they kicked us back about seventy years, communication wise. All our pretty toys; our phones, our portable computers, our pads, are now paperweights.”

I just stared at him, trying hard to parse what he was saying. “When? How?”

He shrugged. “Just before they attacked. We think it had something to do with the Mount Everest Choir, but we don’t know for certain.”

Shooting stars. I remembered falling stars over Mount Everest right before the television went dead. That must have been it.

It was too big, too horrible to wrap my head around.

“How did we stop them?” I asked, my voice weak.

He shook his head. “We didn’t. After they spent some time killing people or destroying things, they just disappeared.”

“So they just get away with it? We can’t stop them?” I asked him. My voice came out higher than I’d meant it to be.

“At the moment, there is not a lot we can do. We have little warning of their appearance and when they do manifest it’s so sudden and brutal…” he trailed off and finished quietly, “By the time any sort of response is mustered, they are long gone.”

“We have to do something,” I said, clinching my fists over and over. “We can’t just let them keep killing people and not do anything about it.”

The smile returned to his face. “I didn’t say we weren’t doing anything.”

I cocked my head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He glanced back at the soldier and then to me. “The military is putting together a project based on things we’ve learned over the last year since the angels first appeared. There are all sorts of details that have been kept from the public. Based on the effects of their visits, we are formulating a strategy to fight back.”

“How though? You don’t know when they are coming and you can’t stop them once they get here. What the hell can I do? Because that’s really what we are talking about here, about what I can do? I’m the one that’s gone all freaky weird.”

August glanced out at the soldier again before leaning close to whisper to me.

“You aren’t alone Peri.”