Hell Followed with Us

Benji is sixteen, a trans boy, and he has just escaped the fundamentalist sect that raised him. The same cult brought about an apocalypse that wiped out most of the world's population, and Benji carries something they put inside him: a bioweapon. He is running toward any place where the cult cannot reach him, and where they cannot reclaim what is in his body.

His flight ends when he is cornered by creatures spawned from the ruin of the old world. A group of teenagers from the Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, known to everyone as the ALC, pulls him out of danger. Their leader, Nick, is striking, autistic and an unerring shot. He also knows what Benji has been hiding. The bioweapon is changing him into a monster with the power to end humanity.

Nick does not turn him away. He offers Benji a place among the ALC's scrappy band of queer teens, on one condition: Benji must keep the monster under control and turn its strength to protecting the group. Having never truly belonged anywhere, Benji agrees. But the longer he stays, the clearer it becomes that Nick has plans he has told no one about, along with secrets of his own.

This is an angry, bloody debut about claiming the monstrous part of yourself and aiming it at the people who tried to destroy you.