After by Varian Krylov Page B

lift the weights until his muscles shook, then more, until his arms felt soft and weak, and then he'd make himself go another three sets. Even now, so wound up, he could picture how he'd feel tired after. Tired and empty. It would feel good.

    * * * *
    In his gut, Smith was dead sure Kosinski had been tormented past his limit, that he'd hung himself out of terror or unbearable humiliation or sheer loss of faith that life could ever be better than awful. That someone, or some group of someones, had driven him to suicide.
    But there was no note. No marks on the body, at least none his untrained eye could detect. And he'd looked damned carefully, feeling, in the end, like he'd committed another violation on the corpse of that poor kid.
    And he'd called in every man, asking one after the other, discreetly as he could, if they'd noticed anything. Had his behavior changed suddenly? Had he said anything?
    Was there some incident that coincided?
    He was about as good at playing detective as he was at impersonating a shrink.
    Except for some squirming and evasive eyes he got nothing out of the likely suspects.
    And all he learned after the rest of those twenty-one interviews was that in the months since the remnants of the soldiers stationed at the base had been thrown together, no one had really gotten to know Kosinsky. He'd been quiet after the dying, and he'd stayed quiet. Some of the men were shaken up; as with the patrols that went out and never came back, it was hard, seeing their small number dwindle further. But no one seems sad about Kosinski in particular.
    Most of the men seemed to think he'd killed himself out of sheer depression at what had happened. Christ, they were all mad as hell, scared as shit, going out of their minds. And since Smith could find no evidence that it was anything else, he let the men believe that Kosinski had hung himself because the end of the world had been too much for him. Not like he was the first. The others had just done it so early in the aftermath, they'd gone almost unnoticed.

    * * * *
    Evan. Beautiful Evan. So good, warm and safe, holding him this way, in the dark, the two of them curled up together.
    In his arms he felt Evan shudder. Was he crying?
    Diego felt guilty about it, but he couldn't stop hating Kosinsky for doing that.
    Didn't he know, didn't he care that it just reminded all of them how close they were to death? Diego kissed the back of Evan's head and pulled him closer.
    Worrying over Evan was easier than thinking about the other stuff. Kosinsky. The whole world shrunk down to twenty-two men and that small corner of the base.
    “When did you know about me?” Diego whispered, eager to talk about something happy. To help Evan not to hurt.
    “That you loved me?”
    That wasn't exactly what he meant, but he said, “Yeah.”
    “When Jen died,” Evan said, and Diego could hear from his voice that he really had been crying. “When I told you, and you saw how much her death hurt me; the way you were looking at me, I knew you were feeling more than sympathy. It was like my pain hurt you as much as if it was your sister who'd died in that accident.”
    Diego buried his face in Evan's neck, feeling embarrassed and also just wanting to be closer. Thinking back, Evan was right. Diego hadn't even known, then. Not until months later, when there had been talk of their unit deploying, and he'd realized he wasn't even afraid for his own safety. That the thing that scared him was the thought of Evan getting injured, getting killed.
    Now everyone was dead, and they were still alive.
    “It seems so unfair,” he whispered against Evan's neck, against that soft skin he knew was pale with one little freckle just below the hairline, even though he couldn't see it now, in the dark. “You had to go through that, losing her, thinking about how her life ended so young. In the end, she didn't lose so much time.”
    “No, I'm glad. She got to die quickly. No pain. Even my parents, I'm glad for