“We have the count for you, Reverend,” says a rough looking man covered in dirt with a shovel on his shoulder. He limps up to the table where the three of us—well, the five of us if you include the alien and the dog—Ben, Belle, and I are handing out plastic water bottles to the last of the downtrodden people making their way through the dwindling dinner line. The collective sentiment in the air is one of exhaustion and despair.

“Thank you, Chuck,” says Ben. “What’s the damage?”

“Thirty-nine bodies, covered and buried. Thirty of those were ours. Twenty-one of which were on the defense team.” He lets the shovel slide off his shoulder and sticks it in the ground point down. “Seems the attackers were indeed government oriented, although it’s murky from their visages from which faction they were sent. They went for our security team first, taking them out systematically within the first few seconds. After that, they just tore through anyone who got in their way. You and your daughter were the primary targets, obviously. How you both managed to take all of them out by yourselves back there is beyond me.”

“Let’s call it … divine intervention,” says Ben, glancing at me.

The man shrugs, puts his shovel back on his shoulder. “No children were hurt, thank God, but a couple women were killed, regretfully.”

Ben nods. “We’ve got something special for the grieving families at tonight’s vigil,” says Ben. “How many have remained?”

“All-in-all, five hundred and fifteen, give or take as they come and go.”

“Thank you, Chuck. I really appreciate you and your team’s hard work and dedication to this cause,” says Ben. “If only we had more like you and your crew.”

“Just doing our part, Reverend,” says Chuck with a tilt of his cowboy hat. Then he turns on his heel and walks away.

A little boy takes a bottle from Gus’s jaws and pats the good doggy on the head.

Gus looks up at me, panting, his tongue sticking out the side of this mouth.

The clouds make it seem later in the evening than it is. But it’s dark enough that when the stage lights flicker on and Enya's ethereal tones flow from the speakers, everyone snaps to attention. The remnants of the crowd start to gather at the front of the stage, settling into their fold-out lawn chairs, blankets, tents, and truck beds. I spot people clinging to each other, some even crying.

Ben lets out a sigh and looks at me. Then he looks at his daughter.

“Are you ready?” I say.

Belle squeezes her dad’s bicep and gives him a warm smile. “He’s ready,” she says.

Ben looks back at me. “Question is … are you ready, Jack?”

I open my mouth to answer when, “He was born ready,” says Xeno, his excited tone feeling completely out of place for this melancholy evening.

Ben sucks in a deep breath, lets it out, and nods. Then he turns and walks off towards the stage.

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Belle and I both watch him vanish through the tent. Then Belle turns to me, her eyes squinting slightly, a soft smile on her face.

“What?” I say, and I can’t help smiling back.

She doesn’t respond, only keeps staring. It's like she's trying to peer into my soul. It gets to the point where I’m looking around uncomfortably.

“What?” I say a little more firmly.

“Nothing,” she says, turning away, then hands a bottle to a child who ran up from behind a tent. “Here you go, honey,” she says to the kid.

Belle looks back at me, smiles, then begins to reorganize the water bottles. There are only a few more people in the food line and our station is at the tail end of the dinner line. Tonight’s meal? All the remaining bacon for the latest delivery. And water. That’s it.

Belle and I sit down in our plastic fold out chairs. I crack a bottle open, take a swig, then lean over and dump the rest into a plastic bucket for Gus.

He goes at it, lapping it up.

When I turn back around, Belle is resting an elbow on the table staring at me again. There’s a dirt smudge on her forehead, I realize, and it’s adorable.

“Ok,” I say. “You keep staring at me and it's starting to creep me out.”

“I appreciate what you said to him in the RV back there,” she says. “You know, you should maybe look into preaching.”

“Jack? A preaching?” Blurts Xeno with a gurgly laugh. “The boy can barely put two words together. I would make a better preacher and I just learned how to speak a month ago.”

I shrug, smile, then put my gloved hands flat on the table. “Thanks for your vote of confidence, Xeno.”

Belle puts her hand on the back of mine. “It was just what he needed to hear.”

I look at her hand and my heart starts pounding.

"Jack, why is your heart suddenly racing?'' Xeno says. “Is something wron—oh, she’s touching you. I get it.”

Belle is biting her lip now. And I’m at a loss for words. I glance back at her hand, then panic strikes and I yank my hand away and hold them up.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t want to go prematurely—send you prematurely, I mean. I don’t want to touch you, and you know ...” I clear my throat, searching for the words. “It’s not that I don’t want to touch you. I wouldn’t mind touching you at all, I just,” I blow out a breath, and force out a soft laugh. “I sound like a bumbling idiot right now, don’t I?”

“See?” says Xeno. “My point exactly.”

Her smile broadens so big I can nearly see every one of her perfectly white teeth.

“So you’re saying I’m not allowed to touch you?” she says. “I don’t like being told I can’t do something, Jack. I’m usually the one telling guys like you what they can and cannot do.”

“I’m … different,” I say.

“Yes, best not to touch him right now, Belle,” says Xeno. “Until you’re ready to go to Paradise. His touch has that effect on people.”

Belle and I both burst out laughing.

“What? What did I say?” says Xeno. “As you know accidents often happen when his emotions get all riled up like they are now.”

“Am I riling up his emotions that much?” she says, her eyes locked on mine.

“Oh, yes,” says Xeno. “The guy is like a vat of boiling soup right now.”

“Xeno,” I say.

“You see,” continues Xeno, “I’m constantly monitoring his vitals and chemical composition. And I’ve learned you can accurately determine a lot of a human’s emotional state simply by their blood flow. And I can say with some degree of confidence that a large portion of his blood is currently being reallocated to his nether regions, which is a good indicator that—”

“Xeno!” I say.

“What?” says the alien.

“Can we please not—”

At that moment, Enya cuts off and feedback from the PA system squeals as the announcer takes over. The lights around the crowd dim and the lights on the stage illuminate.

“Brothers and sisters, please join me in welcoming Revered Doctor Benjamin Brock to the stage once again.”