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Ghosts
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DAY 9
Artie woke up before sunrise to the sound of rain pounding the windows of the Andersons' living room. He propped himself up on his elbows, adjusting the few couch cushions he was using as pillows, and wished he could see something — anything. There was no light inside (they'd had a few candles lit earlier, but had extinguished them before going to sleep) and with rain clouds obscuring the sky outside, there was no moon or starlight to cast even the slightest shadow. Artie waved his hand in front of his face, feeling it brush his nose, but was unable to see it in the pitch black.
He sighed and laid back into the couch again, restlessness tugging at his bones but knowing that without any light he wouldn't be able to get up and into his chair. He let his hand fall off the edge of the sofa and reached down to fumble in the dark for Caitlin, who was sleeping on the floor next to him in a borrowed sleeping bag, and felt her shoulder. Pamela had offered the second-floor guest bedroom to them both, but Artie wasn't able to get up and down the stairs and Caitlin absolutely refused to leave his side, and the living room was the most convenient option. Once he was satisfied that Caitlin was still breathing beside him, he drew his hand back under the covers.
Artie's stomach churned and twisted and he fidgeted incessantly beneath his blankets, hating the fact that he was trapped on a couch in the dark. Even with his handicap, he'd still always been active and had never thought of himself as restricted. And now, he was confined to a single piece of furniture in an unfamiliar house, left to imagine all sorts of dangers closing in on him in the dark.
Stuck in this state of constant anxiety was how Artie stayed for hours while the rain battered the house and the windows slowly, finally grew lighter in the dreary dawn. As the sun rose unseen behind the thick cloud cover, the living room gradually filled with hollow grey light, and a chill ran over Artie's skin. He shivered and pulled the blankets more tightly around his shoulders, watching the rain pour down the window panes in torrents. He thought about getting up, but his chair was on the other side of where Caitlin was sleeping and he would have to wake her up in order to reach it.
Eventually there was a rustling behind him — the sound of slipper-clad feet on hardwood — and Pamela walked through the living room, heading toward the kitchen. She glanced down at Artie and Caitlin to check on them, and stopped when she realized Artie was awake.
"Good morning," she whispered, adjusting the tie on her robe. "How'd you sleep?"
Artie gave her a thumbs-up, not wanting to disturb Caitlin, but his sister stirred and lifted her head anyway. She rubbed her eyes and sat up.
"Morning," Pamela repeated, no longer whispering. "You guys want some breakfast? We have Pop Tarts and I think some cereal, but no milk. Caitlin, would you like a Pop Tart?"
Caitlin didn't speak.
"She's shy," Artie said awkwardly, knowing full well that shyness had very little to do with it. "Pop Tarts sound great, thanks."
Pamela smiled and disappeared into the kitchen.
"Hey, Cait, can you bring my chair over?" Artie requested once Pamela was gone, patting Caitlin's shoulder. Caitlin yawned and stood up, pushing Artie's chair close to the couch and helping him sit up and swing his legs over the edge. From there, Artie heaved himself into the seat, then grabbed his glasses off of the coffee table that had been moved back to make room for Caitlin's sleeping bag.
A heavy clumping noise made Artie look over toward the stairwell by the front door, where Blaine was putting on a pair of rain boots and a raincoat. He gave Artie a wave in greeting.
"What are you doing?" Artie asked.
Blaine zipped up his coat, tugging the hood up over his mussed hair. "We're running low on water, so I'm going to get some buckets from the tool shed," he explained. "We can collect some rain."
Artie nodded. "Smart."
"See you in a bit," Blaine said, and ducked out into the downpour. The door thumped shut behind him.
Artie grabbed his sweater from where he'd draped it over the arm of the couch and pulled it over his head, rubbing his arms to get rid of a wave of goosebumps. "Are you cold?" he said to Caitlin.
She shook her head wordlessly.
"How'd you sleep?" he asked, brushing a few dirty strands of hair away from her forehead. Caitlin's hair had been pinned into a braid with the same barrettes for almost a week straight — it was his own doing, but he'd never had to braid anything before and it was mediocre at best. Either way, it had to be so tangled at this point that he was beginning to wonder if he should just cut it off her head entirely.
She only shrugged, her lips tightening for a second before she looked away.
"Caitlin, please talk to me," he pleaded, reaching up to grip her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye again. "Come on."
Caitlin said nothing, only staring at him. She hadn't said a word since their house had been raided five days ago.
"We're safe here," he told her softly. "I promise, we're safe."
She still remained silent, but there was a grumble from her stomach. He sighed, his head dropping for a second, and he squeezed her shoulders one last time before letting go.
"Okay, let's get you some food. We can talk later."
In the kitchen, Pamela laid out untoasted Pop Tarts and dry Cinnamon Toast Crunch, wishing that they had hot water readily available so she could make coffee. But with water in short supply and the stove not working, it didn't seem worth it to heat up the little water they did have over the fireplace just for a caffeine fix.
Craning her neck to peer out the window over the sink, Pamela could see Blaine stomping out of the tool shed with a few buckets in hand, the hood of his raincoat shielding his face. She suddenly felt a wave of pride swell in her chest — so many horrible things had happened in the past nine days and she barely knew how to function any more, but Blaine was so unbelievably strong. Much stronger than she'd expected.
She looked out the other window, peering through the rain down the grassy slope behind the house to where Cooper was buried, and had to release a long, slow breath in a weak attempt to rid herself of the knot of pressure coiled in her lungs. So much had changed in what seemed like the blink of an eye, and Pamela realized that she was grateful she didn't believe in God. If she had spent her life putting her faith into an omnipotent being from above, she probably would be full to the brim with nothing but rage and fury — because really, how could any of this be allowed to happen if it were in the hands of some omniscient singularity? But without anyone watching over them and without anyone to blame, Pamela was left only with her grief for one son and her pride for the other.
It was… freeing.
The sound of Artie's wheels squeaking softly on the kitchen tiles finally made Pamela turn away from the window, forcing a smile. "Pop Tarts and cereal," she said. "As promised."
Artie pulled himself up to the edge of the table, gently patting Caitlin's shoulder as she followed his lead and sat in the chair beside him. Pamela briefly wondered if she would ever hear Caitlin speak.
"Thanks, Mrs. Anderson," Artie replied politely as he poured a bowl of dry cereal for Caitlin.
For half a second, Pamela instinctively opened her mouth to tell Artie to call her by her first name, but the words caught in her throat. She heard the front door open and shut out in the foyer as Blaine came back into the house, and Pamela watched Artie giving his sister her breakfast and only one thought passed through her mind, almost startling her in its harshness:
This boy is not my family .
Blaine walked into the kitchen then, having ditched his galoshes for wool socks, and shook the rain out of his hair. "I got the buckets all set up," he announced, plopping into a chair across from Artie and grabbing a blueberry Pop Tart. "Hopefully the rain will keep up for a while."
Pamela reached over to ruffle her son's damp hair. "Thanks for doing that, sweetie."
And then, for one blissful moment, a wave of calm washed over her as the knot in her chest faded away, leaving her with only a fleetingly wonderful sense of normalcy . She wasn't sure where it came from, but her heart almost broke when Timothy leaned into the kitchen with a severe expression etched into his face and asked to speak with her privately. The calmness was shattered on the kitchen floor.
"I'll be right back," Pamela said, swallowing as she left the kids at the table and followed her husband into the living room. "What's going on?"
Tim ran a palm over his face, clearly hesitant to speak but still determined. "Pamela, when you brought Artie and Caitlin back with you yesterday…" he started, scratching at the underside of his jaw.
"What?" Pamela prompted, already suspicious of where this conversation was heading. No, she had not consulted Tim before bringing the Abrams siblings back with her and Blaine. But they weren't stray dogs she'd rescued from some alley, so surely Tim couldn't really be struggling with her decision?
Tim let out a huff. "Pamela, how much do you think we can really spare, feeding those two?"
Pamela's eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"
"It's just that it's difficult enough to feed three people right now, we can't—"
"Those two?" Pamela echoed, drawing herself up to her full height with her spine ramrod-straight. " Those two are incapable of protecting themselves on their own. He is in a wheelchair, and she is a child ."
Tim pressed his mouth into a thin line, his jaw twitching. "I understand that—"
Pamela cut him off a second time, refusing to hear any more. "How could you even consider throwing them out?"
"Pamela, we can't…" Tim trailed off, his words catching in frustration. "Look, I know you miss Cooper, but having two more mouths to care for isn't going to—"
"You know, you're right," Pamela snapped lowly. "We should just get rid of somebody and make it easier on everyone else. So how about you walk out the front door and go fend for yourself?"
Tim held up his hands, his brow furrowing. "Now, wait, Pamela—" he stammered. "You know that's not what I meant."
Pamela crossed her arms, glaring. She had never been so angry with her husband in almost thirty years of marriage, and her outrage was boiling hotly in her stomach. "Doesn't feel so good, does it?" she asked through gritted teeth.
Tim huffed through his nose, carding his fingers through his hair (and were there a few more grey hairs on his temple than she'd noticed before?).
"Those two are staying," she insisted, then turned on her heel and walked back to the kitchen to join the kids, leaving Tim to his own thoughts.
They are not my family, but I won't throw them to the wolves.
The first thing Kurt was aware of through the haze of exhaustion was that a woman was shouting, loud but indecipherable and muddled to his fatigued brain as he struggled to wake up. God, his muscles were sore, and he really, really didn't want to move just yet.
An arm slapped him on the back suddenly, jolting him awake and forcing him to sit bolt upright. He didn't recognize the room he was in, and he felt dizzy and out of place. Maybe he was still half-asleep.
"Kurt, get up!" Rachel slapped her arm against his shoulder a second time, and Kurt abruptly realized that the woman he'd heard shouting at first was not, in fact, in his head and instead was standing in the doorway to their motel room, yelling profanities at the four of them.
Oh. Right. That's where they were.
"The hell makes you think you can just break in and sleep here without paying?!" the woman cried, her finger jabbing at Santana threateningly. "I don't care if you all ain't old enough to vote; I'm gonna call my boyfriend and he's gonna come here and beat you with a tire iron! Get your asses out!"
"We're going, we're going!" Dani protested, her hands held up placatingly as Rachel and Santana quickly shoved the few things that had been unpacked the night before back into their bags. "Kurt! Get UP!"
Kurt blinked, finally snapping into motion and grabbing his backpack.
The motel owner seemed hell-bent on spewing threats and curses at them constantly, barely stopping for a breath as they rushed out the door and past her. "You come back again and I swear to God Almighty, I will call the goddamn police and I will sue your asses!" she screamed after them as they ran (or limped quickly, in Rachel's case) across the motel parking lot, heading back for the road.
"Jesus," Santana muttered as the motel owner continued to yell from the doorway even after they could no longer make out what she was saying. "And people wonder why I hate New Jersey."
Kurt had to agree. Yesterday they'd made it to the western side of Newark — all the way to Morristown — but even imagining the city lit up by electricity, he hadn't seen a whole lot to impress. New Jersey sucked.
Dani squinted at her watch, her eyebrows knitting in surprise. "It's eleven o'clock already," she said. "How the hell did we sleep that long?!"
Kurt shielded his eyes from the sun, still adjusting to being awake. He was sure there were dark circles underneath his eyes, but at this point he figured personal grooming was one of his lowest priorities. "Walking for an entire day straight tends to take it out of you," he answered dryly. "Plus, it took us a long time to find the motel. We didn't get to sleep until almost midnight at least."
"Well, we need to be getting up earlier," Dani insisted. "We can't waste this much daylight again."
Rachel's crutches suddenly scraped loudly against the pavement and she nearly lost her balance, quickly catching herself by landing on the toes of her injured foot. She sucked in a breath through her teeth, wincing.
"You okay?" Kurt asked, stopping to wait for her.
"Yeah," Rachel insisted, wiping a couple drops of sweat from her forehead with her sleeve. "I'm good. Just sore. Let's keep going."
She hobbled past him, catching up in a couple of steps with Dani and Santana. Kurt followed, but something was inexplicably nagging at the back of his mind. He frowned at Rachel's back, studying her and trying to figure out what was bothering him. After a minute or two, though, he saw nothing he could identify as wrong, and he shrugged it off. Everything was fine.
Carole had spent nearly all of her working life in hospitals, and she had seen plenty of crazy, horrific, and unusual things, but nothing had ever unnerved her quite as much as working in a hospital without electricity. It was dimly lit and quiet, with an oppressive hush like a graveyard that almost made Carole want to whisper every time she opened her mouth to speak. Nearly all the staff was gone, and the hospital was empty and barren on most of its floors. Carole and the four other doctors and nurses who were still coming to work despite lack of pay had laboriously carried all the remaining patients to the first floor for easier care. In the entirety of St. Rita's, there were barely thirty patients left. The rest had either been just barely well enough to go home or had been too ill to live more than a day or two without the support of machines, leaving the upper floors — mainly the ICUs, ORs, and coma wards — littered with corpses.
Sitting behind the nurses' station, Carole was reviewing the handwritten file for Mr. Prescott, the elderly man in room 10 who was slowly dying from pancreatic cancer, and trying to think of another way she could make it easier for him without taking the risk of giving him too much morphine. She wasn't coming up with anything, though, and without an electrically monitored IV drip Carole was forced to return to Mr. Prescott every couple of hours and administer another injection herself.
She sighed, wondering if she should make another round to check on the patients residing on the first floor, despite having checked on them only fifteen minutes ago. Being a nurse within the current state of things was very, very different from before, and Carole found herself obsessively checking and rechecking even the smallest of tasks. With less to keep her busy, she was left feeling jittery and restless, but at least she'd made good friends with Mary Khouri, an immunologist several years younger than Carole and one of the only two doctors still working. Social interaction was something Carole would never again take for granted.
"Well, Mr. Prescott's developed a rash," Mary announced as she approached the counter, circling around the corner and dropping into the chair next to Carole. "It's probably just a mild allergic reaction, but I need you to keep an eye on it."
"No worries," Carole said, shutting Mr. Prescott's medical file. There was nothing else she could do for him right now. "Hey, listen, I was thinking…"
Mary looked up from re-pinning her bun. "Yeah?"
"Maybe we could make signs," Carole suggested. "You know, post them up around town and let people know the hospital's still open."
Mary nodded in agreement. "That's a good idea. There's got to be some stuff in the supply closets we can use."
"We'll have to figure out a way to laminate them or something, to keep them safe from the rain."
"Hm," Mary's brows knitted and her mouth pursed in thought for a moment. "Oh! We could get a few wooden boards from the hardware store and use those."
Carole smiled. "Perfect," she said. "My husband has some spray paint in our garage — I'll bring it tomorrow."
She wasn't sure why this seemingly trivial conversation was suddenly making her so happy — after all, they were stuck in a horrible situation that actually required them to put up signs around town just to let people know there was somebody here to help — but a moment later Carole realized that it was exactly because it wasn't trivial. Yes, they were trapped in horrific circumstances that had left the top floors of the hospital a virtual graveyard of unclaimed corpses and there was no sign of anything changing soon, but the conversation itself was a small change. They were trapped, and left without help, and they were beginning to figure things out. New systems were beginning to take shape, coping with the new world and catering to their survival.
Maybe, just maybe, they'd be okay even if the power never came back.
Carole was yanked out of her thoughts as a loud bang made her and Mary jump in their seats. A man was standing on the other side of the glass door at the front of the lobby, frantically pounding it with his fist. Clutched in his other arm and clinging to his torso was a small boy.
"Is there anybody in there?! Please, I need help!" the man screamed.
Carole and Mary both leapt up from their chairs and ran toward him, yanking the sliding doors apart to let him in.
"What's wrong? What happened?" Mary demanded.
"He — he's having an asthma attack," the man pleaded. "You have to help him, please, I — I can't—"
"Sir, what's your son's name?" Carole asked as calmly as possible, leading him over to the waiting area. "Can you sit him in this chair for me?"
The man set his son down in one of the visitors' seats as Carole directed. "His name is Ph-Phillip," he said, brushing the boy's hair back from his flushed and sweaty face. The boy was wheezing terribly, his mouth open as he fought to draw air into his chest.
"I'll go find an inhaler," Mary said, sprinting out of the room.
Carole unwound her stethoscope from where it hung on her neck. "And how old is he?" she asked.
"Eight." The father wrapped his shaking fingers around Phillip's hand. "It started two hours ago, and-and his inhaler ran out last week, please tell me he'll be okay—"
"Dr. Khouri's getting him an inhaler now, it shouldn't be more than a minute or two," Carole said, sticking the eartips of her stethoscope into her ears. "Until then, I need you to help me keep him calm. Okay, Phillip, sweetie, can you hear me?"
Phillip nodded, panting and unable to speak.
"Everything's going to be just fine," she promised. She lifted the boy's shirt and pressed the stethoscope diaphragm to the side of his torso. She could hear the air hissing thinly through his lungs, choked off and tight, and even louder, his heart was racing like a rabbit's. His ribs were desperately expanding and compressing as much as they could while his lungs refused to open.
"His heart rate is fast, but I don't hear any arrhythmia," Carole said, dropping her stethoscope onto the chair next to him.
"Is that good?" Phillip's father asked shakily.
"It's a good sign," Carole answered. She placed her palms flat against Phillip's bare chest. "Sweetie, Dr. Khouri's coming back very soon with an inhaler for you, but right now can you just try to breathe with me? In through your nose, out through your mouth. Just try to breathe as slow as you can."
Carole drew a deep breath in through her nose, coaching Phillip as he struggled for oxygen. She pressed on his ribs with every exhale, and gently forced his ribs to squeeze the breath out to make room for new air.
Mary came rushing back into the waiting area then, an inhaler clutched in her hand, and she dropped to her knees next to Carole.
"You're doing great, Finn," Carole assured him as Mary held the inhaler to his mouth. "Just take a deep breath, you're going to be okay."
As Mary helped the little boy inhale short bursts of medication and his breaths gradually slowed, deepening until he was breathing normally, Carole brushed his hair back and held his other hand. She didn't even notice that Mary was watching her out of the corner of her eye with a frown.
"You feeling better now?" she asked, smiling reassuringly.
Phillip nodded, his fingers tightening around hers. "Yeah," he said, his voice tiny and thin and hoarse. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
"Thank you so much," his father said.
"We'll give you a few more inhalers to take home," Mary told him, standing back up and adjusting her doctor's coat. "Use them as sparingly as you can. We don't know when we'll have the chance to get more."
The little boy and his father stayed in the waiting area for a short while, waiting for the attack to fully subside. Phillip's father thanked Carole and Mary again and again as he carried his son outside, and Carole swallowed, trying not to think of what might have happened to Phillip if they hadn't come to the hospital.
"We need to make those signs as soon as possible," she said to Mary as they closed the doors again.
"Carole, who's Finn?"
The question sent a cold spike shooting through Carole's chest, radiating out to her fingertips. "What?"
"You called him Finn," Mary said, her brows furrowed.
Carole blinked. She hadn't even noticed. "…Oh."
"Are you all right?"
Carole's lips pressed together tightly for a moment, but she managed a nod. "I'm okay," she forced herself to say.
"Who's Finn?" Mary asked again.
Drawing a deep breath into her lungs — this time because she actually needed it — Carole attempted a swallow to dislodge the boulder nesting in her throat. "He's my son."
"I didn't know you had a son," Mary said carefully, her hands resting in the pockets of her white coat. "Where is he?"
Carole looked away, out through the glass door. "He died."
"Oh, Carole, I'm so sorry—"
Carole shook her head, holding up a hand to stop Mary from saying any more. "It was before the blackout," she explained, as if that made it any better. "There was a bleed in his brain, and he was just… gone."
"I'm so sorry," Mary repeated. Carole really didn't want to hear that, but she couldn't really blame Mary for saying it either. There was nothing else to say.
Despite having absolutely nothing to occupy his time other than making sure he and Carole had enough food and water each day, Burt couldn't shake the feeling that he was trapped. He felt like a caged animal, pacing back and forth between home and wherever he could scrounge for supplies in Lima. His fingers constantly itched for some more challenging task, but it was clear that his mechanic skills would go to waste so long as none of the cars would work. Whatever the problem was, it wasn't limited to vehicles and it went deeper than a few faulty spark plugs. Carole at least was able to go into town and offer her nursing services at the hospital, which left Burt feeling all but useless. And lonely too.
The house was far too quiet to begin with, and it was even worse when Carole was out. Burt found that he was talking to himself aloud more often than not, and he wondered if this was what it looked like when a person began to go insane.
So finally, Burt left the house on his own, walking towards the center of Lima with the intention of finding anything that he and Carole could use – ropes for clothesline, containers for water, hammers and axes and anything else that might come in handy for even the most trivial jobs. On one of the roads leading into town he found a truck left by the side of the road with a flatbed trailer hitched to the back, and after he'd managed to detach it he dragged the trailer behind him. The metal wasn't meant to be pulled by a person, and it cut into his hands and hurt his palms, but he knew he couldn't carry nearly as much without it.
He reached the center of town sometime around three o'clock, if the sun's position in the sky was any indication. He'd crossed the Spencerville Road bridge over the Ottawa River (which was really barely more than a stream) and over McClintock Lake, and made a mental note to start drawing water from there instead of trying to find bottles in the stores. He'd have to get a water filter too.
When he rounded the corner and stepped into Kinney Square, he stopped in his tracks, the air rushing out of his lungs. The destroyed plane was no longer a new sight, but it still sent a chill down Burt's spine every time he saw it. The fuselage of the Boeing 747 had stopped burning a week ago, but the metal siding remained blackened and sooty, still carrying a strong odor of smoke and spilled oil wafting off the wreckage in the breeze. The one wing that was still attached stretched up into the air and cast a long shadow across the grass in the middle of the square like a gigantic sundial. Burt could hear the wind whistling slightly through a few of the plane's broken windows, and it made his stomach turn to think of what might be inside.
But then again… there had to be luggage inside the fuselage. Luggage meant supplies, and whoever owned it was unquestionably deceased. It wouldn't be quite the same as stealing.
Burt swallowed the nausea that had suddenly welled up in his stomach, and began to drag the trailer on its squeaking wheels toward the wreckage. As the fuselage loomed overhead, eventually covering Burt in its shadow, Burt's heart began to race.
He left the trailer on the pavement close to the plane's side, next to where someone had anonymously left a bouquet of flowers and a couple of candles as a sort of memorial. The flowers had long since wilted and the candle had burnt out, but it still caused a small wave of guilt to wash over Burt.
Some people respect, and some people reap.
Letting out a heavy sigh, Burt edged toward a spot closer to the tail of the plane, which had been partially ripped away from the whole and left a huge gap torn through the plane's side. As Burt stepped through the gap, he was suddenly slammed with an awfully overpowering stench of decomposition, and if he had eaten within the last couple of hours he would have turned around and vomited. Instead, he stifled a gag, and lifted the collar of his t-shirt over his nose and mouth. It did little to abate the smell.
Burt held his breath as he reached up to grab the armrests of the nearest seats and hoist himself up and into the fuselage, carefully bracing his feet against the seats' bases since the floor was tilted almost at a forty-five degree angle. It wasn't as dark inside as he thought it would be, since there was sunlight coming through all of the windows, and as soon as he looked down the slanted aisle toward the front of the plane, his heart stopped.
Nearly every seat was occupied.
"…Oh my God," he whispered, not realizing he'd spoken aloud. It took him a minute to unlock his muscles, all of which had gone rigid.
His chest felt tight, and he wasn't sure if it was due to the putrid air he was now breathing or if the reason was some unseen force screaming at him to GET OUT . But he managed to draw a slow inhale and forced himself to reach up and open the overhead compartment on one side of the aisle.
There were zero pieces of baggage that were undamaged by the fire, but Burt managed to find a handful that seemed only singed on the outside, leaving their contents still useable. Refusing to waste time inside the plane rooting through the passengers' luggage, he only pulled out the suitcases and briefcases and totes and threw them from where he stood to the gap in the wall, letting them land on the ground outside. He'd sort through them in the fresh air that didn't reek of charred putrefaction.
As he worked his way down the aisle, slowly opening each compartment as carefully as he could, the nausea in his gut only worsened. The stench grew stronger the closer to the front of the plane he got, and the air was thickening in his throat. He stopped to catch his breath next to Row 17 and felt his heart squeeze painfully in his chest. Sitting in 17A, next to the window, was the burned and rotting body of a child. He couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it couldn't have been older than five.
An abrupt shock of panic coursed over every nerve cell in Burt's skin, and a dull roar filled his ears.
What if Kurt was lying somewhere dead in New York, a thousand miles away and with no one to take care of him? What if something had happened to render him as unrecognizable as the child in 17A, so that even if Kurt's friends were alive and well, they wouldn't even know it was him?
What if Kurt was gone?
A sob wrenched out of Burt's throat, startling him with its loudness. He hadn't even realized he was crying.
He clenched his jaw, fighting a second wave of tears, and made a quick decision. The corpse in front of him was somebody's child, and he had no way of knowing whether the two adults in 17B and C were the parents. If his own son were in a place like this, he would give anything to keep his little boy from being left to the crows.
Burt searched the floor of the plane until he found an undamaged blanket tucked underneath one of the seats, and carried it back to Row 17. Leaning over 17B and C, he draped the blanket over the child's body and tucked the edges underneath the torso. The seatbelt had been burned away, and so it was easier than Burt expected to lift the child out of the seat and cautiously maneuver back into the aisle.
With the small body wrapped in the blanket and cradled in his arms, Burt slowly made his way back to the gap he'd come through, struggling to step back onto the ground without the use of his hands. Rigor mortis had set in a long time ago, and the child's body didn't move as Burt laid it on the bed of the trailer. He pulled the corner of the blanket up to cover the child's face.
He would come back for the luggage later. Right now, he would find someplace far away from all this where he could bury the nameless child and leave a marker of some kind — a cross made of sticks, or carved into a tree, or a pile of stones, anything — to make anyone who passed by realize that a life had been lost.
Because, God damn it, someone should be screaming to the heavens and anyone who would listen that this — all of this — was wrong.