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Foggy Nights
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"I think we should leave."
Simultaneously, Rachel and Santana stopped eating, their forks clinking against their bowls as they stared at Kurt, the light from the kerosene lamp in the middle of the table flickering over their faces. Dani straightened in her seat, bracing for what she predicted would be a passionately loud debate.
"And… go where, exactly?" Santana asked.
"Back home."
Santana put her bowl down, leaning forward with her hands flat on the table. "Kurt, I don't know if this particular detail escaped your attention," she said, "but transportation's a bit dead right now."
"I know," Kurt replied.
Rachel's eyes widened slightly. "You mean… walk?"
"People walk across the country all the time."
"…No, they don't," Santana argued.
"Look, all things considered, Ohio isn't that far," Kurt countered. "We'd only have to make it through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. That's what, two hours by plane?"
"Yeah, by plane, Kurt!" Santana cried. Dani couldn't decide if Santana looked more pissed off or astonished that the idea had even entered Kurt's head. "Do you have any idea how long that would take on foot?"
"Probably weeks."
Santana blinked, her jaw clacking shut as if she'd just realized Kurt was actually serious.
"Kurt, why would we leave?" Rachel asked.
His jaw tightened, and he looked down at his hands for a moment. "I don't think the power's coming back," he admitted. Rachel swallowed, glancing nervously at Dani. "At least, not for a long time. And if it's not, then I don't want to be stuck here."
Rachel chewed on her lip for a moment, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. "Kurt, we'll be okay here," she said. "We can get food and water from the stores, we're inside, we have beds."
Kurt's response was measured and even, but Dani could still hear a touch of trepidation beneath his voice. "There are millions of people in this city. Do you really think that supplies are going to last?"
Rachel's mouth clamped shut.
Dani swallowed, unsure if she should take part in this conversation. Honestly, she had no idea if she agreed with Kurt or not. On the one hand, it was ridiculous to assume that just because the power had been out for a few days that it wouldn't come back; plenty of places had several-day blackouts all the time. But on the other hand, she'd never seen nor heard of a blackout like this before, and she couldn't think of a single thing that would cause all electricity to be wiped out regardless of whether it was connected to the power grid. And the uneasiness settling heavily into the pit of her stomach wasn't a great indicator that everything would soon be all right.
"Kurt," Santana rejoined the debate, her voice quieter than before. "It makes absolutely no sense to leave. Okay, yeah, it's not entirely safe here, but why the hell would it be more safe for us to walk from New York to Ohio?"
Kurt yanked his fingers through his hair. "Santana, there is nobody coming to help," he snapped. Santana sat back abruptly in her chair. Kurt sighed, scratching at his forehead. "It's been three days, and we haven't seen anyone coming in from anywhere else — no military, nothing."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Santana demanded.
"I mean that it's happened to a lot more places than New York. You were saying the exact same thing two days ago, Santana," Kurt insisted. "And you were right. This isn't just a power outage."
Santana pursed her mouth, shaking her head.
Dani finally worked up the courage to interject. "Kurt, maybe it would be better to take a few days and think this over."
Kurt's eyebrows snapped together. "I thought you agreed with me on this."
"I never said I agreed with anything."
Kurt glanced at both Rachel and Santana. "Am I really the only person who thinks it would be worth it?" he asked in disbelief. "I mean, aren't you worried about what's happening back home?"
Rachel tucked her hair behind her ear, speaking hesitantly. "Kurt, it's just — we don't know what this is. We don't know what's going on, and we really don't know that no one's coming to help. I mean, what if the power comes back in a week and we're suddenly stuck in the middle of Pennsylvania?"
"Not to mention the fact that Rachel can't even walk ," Santana added harshly. "Did you factor that into the equation?"
"I thought about it, yeah," Kurt snapped.
"Where would we sleep? Are there any motels still open? How would we deal with the weather? Can you promise that we'd have food when we needed it?"
"I don't know."
"How do you know that we won't be robbed?"
"I don't."
Dani reached forward and put a hand on Santana's arm. "Come on, Santana, ease up a bit."
"Kurt, it's just not a good idea," said Rachel.
Kurt huffed. "Fine," he spat, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "We'll just sit here, then. Fine."
Blaine and his parents buried Cooper's body in the soft loam at the lower end of the wide grassy slope behind their house, close to Pamela's flower garden. There was no coffin and no headstone, only a patch of not-quite-settled soil and a few gardenias Pamela had planted at the head of the grave. It hadn't even occurred to Blaine that the spot was pretty, and he hadn't yet wrapped his head around the idea that anything that had happened in the past three days was anything other than a horrifically vivid and elaborate nightmare. His upper arm was bruised a deep purple from repeatedly digging his fingernails into his skin, attempting to pinch himself awake. And he wasn't sure why, but Blaine found that his hands would not stop shaking.
There had been no funeral for Cooper — not even just for the three of them. Pamela only shook her head and brushed it off when Timothy suggested they have a small service.
"Pamela—" Tim tried to argue, but his wife quickly cut him off.
"We'll have a service," she insisted, "when all this mess has blown over and we can have a proper memorial at the church." Her lips tightened, and Tim's shoulders slumped.
Blaine swallowed, staring out the window to the back lawn at Pamela's garden and the plants drooping in the damp. It had been two days and the fog blanketing Lima still refused to lift. Blaine picked anxiously at his fingernails, frustrated that they were still clogged with dirt from digging the grave. His stomach clenched in his abdomen, briefly reminding him that he hadn't eaten breakfast, nor dinner or lunch the day before.
"Blaine." Tim's voice snapped Blaine's attention away from the window. His father nodded his head towards the front door, picking up two backpacks from the coat rack in the foyer. "Come with me. We need to pick some things up from downtown."
Blaine really didn't want to go out there again, but he didn't have the energy to argue and the thick air inside the house was suffocating him, so he took one of the packs and followed his father to the door without a word.
"Be careful," Pamela called after them.
It was quiet out in the fog, and the mist hugged close and clung to Blaine's hands and hair and clothes. Blaine regretted leaving the house almost immediately — it wasn't any easier to breathe out here — but at least the cool air was beginning to slightly soothe the nausea resting in the bottom of his gut.
"What are we getting?" Blaine asked, his voice stifled in the murk. He shifted the empty pack on his shoulders. It was strange to be using the backpacks for anything other than school.
"We need to pick up some food and a few other supplies," Tim replied, staring ahead into the haze as they walked along the road towards central Lima. "Matches, charcoal for the grill, that kind of thing."
"Are we going to steal it?"
Tim's expression was grim. "If the stores are still shut down, then yes."
Mercedes jolted awake at the screech of a falcon somewhere overhead. She scrunched up her eyes, the harsh sunlight shooting daggers through her eyelids, and gingerly sat up. She let out a pained hiss through her teeth as her muscles were stretched, her legs screaming in protest. It felt as though every muscle fiber under her skin was burning up, sore from a full day of nothing but walking through the deadened city and then sleeping on a hard bench all night. She hadn't reached the hills to the northeast of L.A. until late evening, and she'd slept on a bench alongside a hiking trail overlooking the sprawling city all the way out to the ocean.
Groaning as she pulled the kinks out of her neck and her back and carefully extended her legs, placing her feet back on the ground and sitting straight up on the bench, she grumbled that her choice of camping spot had been a lot nicer last night. Which was true, of course — she'd gone to sleep watching the stars in the sky, listening to the sigh of the breeze and a few night birds cooing in the sparse trees further up the mountain — but now in the blinding sun it was just brownish and rocky and bright.
Coughing to clear her dry throat, Mercedes pulled out her ponytail and wrapped her already-frizzed and tangled hair into a bun as tightly as possible to get it off her neck. Stifling a yawn, she pulled a water bottle out of her pack and downed half of its contents before chiding herself for not thinking of saving it for later. There's got to be a gas station or something eventually, she thought reassuringly. I should get a map too.
For a few minutes, Mercedes sat on the bench and watched the unmoving city spread out below. After only a few days of dead cars and buses and A/C units, the haze of pollution had noticeably cleared, not quite gone but already allowing for more of a view. There were no sounds at all wafting up from the streets on the wind, leaving the whole of the city lifeless and achingly silent. She could see a few single plumes of smoke at different points several miles away, signaling the fires in looted stores and homes.
She suddenly was slammed with an overwhelming sensation of gratitude that she'd had the sense to leave before her apartment was raided. The image of the trampled corpse lying in the street outside, a crow pecking at his bruised and bloated face, flashed across her brain and she had to fight a wave of nausea.
She drew another sip of water, careful not to take too much this time.
Blaine and his father had to walk almost to the opposite side of Lima before they were able to find a grocery store that hadn't been completely gutted yet. Only about a third of the shelves were still full, and Blaine briefly wondered in the back of his mind how many people were actually just taking the things they needed and how many were hoarding as much as they could. He then wondered which category he and his father fell into.
As they quickly packed their bags with as much as they could carry, it was very gradually beginning to dawn on Blaine that, as surreal as their entire situation seemed, all of this was in fact happening and absolutely none of it was just his imagination. The realization was causing an awful sense of motion sickness, as if the ground was swaying under his feet. He grabbed the edge of the nearest food shelf to steady himself.
"Blaine?" Tim said, pausing where he was picking up a shrink-wrapped hock of ham to place in his bag. "You all right?"
Blaine nodded wordlessly, his skull feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.
He swallowed, looking away as a rock settled into the pit of his gut. The phantom smell of gasoline mixed with blood and smoke weighed on his senses, and the image of Cooper's glazed-over eyes and crushed limbs stabbed into the back of Blaine's mind. He didn't even realize he'd bitten his lip until he tasted blood.
Tim's eyebrows pulled together slightly, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he studied his son. Blaine shifted to his other foot in discomfort, hoping that Tim wouldn't try to talk about it any further.
After an agonizingly long, quiet minute, Tim finally let out a heavy breath and took his gaze off of Blaine. He picked up his bag again, slinging it over his shoulder, and Blaine's shoulders slumped in relief.
"Come on," Tim nodded his head in the other direction. "Let's get back to your mother."
And yet, as glad as Blaine was that Tim wasn't pressing, there was an awful gnawing in his stomach — an unpleasant feeling that reached all the way to his brain and the tips of his fingers. His nerves were all suddenly screaming at him, his skin abruptly too small for his body.
"Dad?" he started, his throat going dry so quickly that the word came out as a croak.
Tim stopped again, turning around. "Yes?"
I'm so sorry I didn't save him. It should have been me.
The words bottlenecked in Blaine's mouth, choking him until he was forced to breathe, shake his head, and say, "Nothing. Let's go home."