..

The River Styx

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They were unable to give Rachel a burial. They had no shovels or spades, and so were forced to create their own way of taking care of her. It was a long time before any of them allowed themselves to speak or move, just sitting by Rachel's side and willing her to suddenly sit up and yawn, to laugh at them for worrying. The shadows grew shorter as daylight brightened into late morning, then midday and early afternoon, and at long last Dani braced her hands on her knees and softly said, "We could lay her down by the stream."

Kurt shook his head, closing his eyes. There was a boulder wedged in his throat, so tightly that he almost couldn't breathe. "We can't just leave her."

"…I don't think we can do anything else," Dani replied gently.

"This isn't fair."

Santana exhaled slow and long, pressing her forehead momentarily to her knees before sitting upright again. "I'll do it," she said, almost inaudibly, then stood.

"I'll help you," Dani offered, immediately moving to get up with Santana, but Kurt stopped her.

"No." He pulled himself shakily to his feet. "It should be Santana and me."

Dani pressed her lips together and stepped back, acquiescing.

"What are we going to tell her dads?" Kurt whispered, half to himself. The air in his lungs was too thin — he wasn't getting enough oxygen.

Santana picked up Rachel's blanket from where it had been dropped on the ground and laid it back over Rachel's shoulders. "Kurt, help me," she said, finally forcing Kurt to move.

Together, without exchanging so much as a word, Kurt and Santana tucked the blanket's edges underneath Rachel's body and lifted her off the ground. Kurt gritted his teeth, biting back tears — why was she so heavy? She'd always been such a small person, even with her booming voice and abrasive character. Kurt had made fun of her for it before they were friends, and then teased her about it after they had finally stopped nipping at each other's heels. And now, after days and days of the infection slowly poisoning her, with her arms curled stiffly to her chest and her legs bent to her stomach, she was shrunken, wasted and withered.

Kurt couldn't help wondering if she'd looked like this for weeks and he just hadn't noticed — because surely a change like this couldn't happen overnight.

It was a laborious task to climb down the slope to the stream with Rachel in their arms, their shoes slipping on the carpet of dead leaves and damp soil. The shadows in the woods were already beginning to grow longer again as the sun passed overhead, moths dancing in and out of the sunbeams piercing the canopy. There was an inconsiderate blue jay screeching somewhere off in the branches, and the noise made Kurt want to scream back at it.

"Over there," Santana said breathlessly once they had reached the foot of the hill, the tips of their shoes grazing the edge of the gurgling stream. She gestured with her head to a spot across the brook, a clump of white birch trees that stood out from the rest of the vegetation.

Kurt tightened his grip around Rachel's cold shoulders. "There's no way to cross the stream," he said.

"You really worrying about getting your shoes wet?" Santana snapped. "It's a pretty spot, and she at least deserves that."

Guilt slammed into Kurt's chest with all the force of a bullet train — why hadn't he been thinking about that? He should have thought about that. He was Rachel's closest friend, not Santana. It was his responsibility to think about things like that.

"Kurt." Santana — gentler now and almost contrite — broke him out of his daze. She nodded again to the birch trees. "Come on."

Kurt didn't move, his fingers tightening around Rachel. "I — I can't do this."

Santana swallowed, her mouth pressing into a thin line for a few seconds, the corners of her lips turned down. "Dani's right," she said softly. "This is the only thing we can do."

"What, just — just leave her?" Kurt cried, his voice cracking. "Out in the open? We — we can't—"

"Kurt," Santana insisted. She spoke slowly, every word deliberate. "Listen to me. We can't call anyone for help. We can't take her with us." A few tears escaped from her eyes, dropping from her cheeks, but she didn't falter. "This is our only option. We'll do the best we can with it, I promise."

Kurt's knees shook, and his head spun.

"Kurt. Are you listening?"

A weak breath shuddered from Kurt's lungs, and the blue jay screamed overhead. It dropped from a tree a few yards away, flapping and swooping in a sharp turn and disappearing into the brush.

"Kurt."

Kurt flinched, his eyesight blurring. He shook his head. He could feel his eyes spilling over. "This shouldn't be happening."

Santana's expression contorted, and for a brief moment she looked like she was in just as much acute pain as Kurt. "I know," she whispered. "I know. But… Kurt, we're on our own. There's no one coming to help."

Kurt squeezed his eyes shut. He just wanted Santana to stop talking.

But he knew she was right — he knew, and it hurt. In the back of his head, Kurt could still hear Rachel crying as he held her down and Santana tried desperately to make her better. None of that had worked, though. The cleansing alcohol, the penicillin… Kurt didn't think he'd ever felt so powerless.

"Come on," Santana urged gently. "We have to do this."

Kurt sucked in a deep breath, holding it in his lungs for as long as he could, and finally nodded. In this particular moment, there was no room to be weak. Not for himself, not for Rachel, not for anyone.

Water flooded his shoes as he and Santana stepped into the stream, chilling him to the bone as it splashed around his ankles. They were careful not to slip on the stones, slowly making their way to the other side with Rachel cradled in their arms. Shivering and clutching Rachel tightly as they dared, they stepped onto the far bank.

The birches swayed slightly in the breeze, their white spotted trunks echoing with creaks and cracks. The whorls in the bark were black, stark against the white, and eerily resembled dozens of hollow eyes. The leaves rustled overhead, turning the sunlight dappled against the ground.

It was pretty, just as Santana had said, but Kurt couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't real. Everything felt far too intangible.

They lowered Rachel to the ground at the foot of the birches, keeping the blanket wrapped around her. The sunlight danced over her in patches as the leaves quivered in the branches, almost making her cheeks look flushed again. But it wasn't enough to erase the bluish shadows on her lips and eyelids.

Kurt remained knelt next to her for a short while, his mind unbearably quiet — maybe because he simply didn't feel capable of comprehensible thought. Forgetting that Santana was standing there in silence with him, Kurt reached down to wrap his fingers around Rachel's hand. Her fingers were rigid and cold, the bases of her fingernails a deep purple, and for several seconds Kurt failed entirely to breathe.

It was a moment before he realized there was an object clutched in her hand, and he had to swipe his sleeve over his eyes to clear his vision enough to see what it was. He reached into her palm with his fingertips and carefully pulled it from her grasp, gradually so as not to rip it. It was a photograph, folded and crumpled, and Kurt's heart nearly stopped short when he recognized it from a frame Rachel had kept on her dresser back in Bushwick.

Rachel sat between her dads at a birthday party years ago — she couldn't have been older than eight or nine — with a lively, toothy grin and star stickers covering her face. There were party hats and face paint and confetti. Cake slices on the table. Balloons in the background.

Santana's hand squeezed his shoulder, making him flinch. "Let's take that with us," she said quietly.

"We should leave it with her."

Santana crouched next to him, wrapping her arm around his back. "We'll bring it back to her dads. They should have it."

There was a small splash behind them as Dani crossed the stream, coming to stand beside them. She gripped a large bouquet of wildflowers — Queen Anne's lace, purple asters, bluebells, orange coneflowers and violets. "I — I found these along the road," she said. "Thought she'd like them."

"Thanks," replied Santana, letting Dani tuck the flowers into the crook of Rachel's arm.

Dani stood back then, reaching into her pocket to pull out her Swiss Army knife. "I, uh… I thought you guys might want to carve something in one of the trees," she said. "You know, to leave a marker."

Santana nodded wordlessly and took the knife, standing back up. She leaned forward and, in the tree directly above Rachel's head, began to carve meticulously with the knifepoint. She didn't stop until there was the shape of a star engraved in the bark, and in the middle, the initials R.B.B.

She straightened up again, folding the knife and handing it back to Dani.

"R.B.B.?" Dani asked.

"Her middle name is Barbra," Kurt answered, clutching the wrinkled photograph in his hands. "Rachel Barbra Berry."

The first thing Mercedes heard was the sound of a horse shrilly whinnying close by, and thinking that Mr. T was in trouble, she sat up with a jolt. Only half a second later, however, she froze in confusion. She was lying in a bed — a real bed — in a sparsely decorated room by herself. Bright white sunlight spilled into the room through the curtains over the window, and a couple of flies buzzed against the glass pane. Outside, she heard the horse whinny again, followed by a man's voice.

"Whoa, now," he said. "Attagirl."

Everything from the previous night came rushing back in a blur — Puck falling from Mr. T's saddle, Mercedes screaming into the dark for help… the stranger in the Stetson running to their rescue. She couldn't remember much after that.

Throwing the thin wool blanket away from her legs, Mercedes swung her legs out of bed and found her shoes sitting neatly on the floor by the footboard. Her backpack, still fully packed, was on top of the small bureau. She tugged her sneakers back on, quickly tying the laces before heading for the door.

She then found herself in a short hallway with a handful of other doors, evenly spaced along the length of the corridor. A long, dusty wool carpet with geometric tribal patterns was the only decoration. Mercedes followed the hall to the door at the end, pushing it open and squinting in the blinding sunlight.

"Good morning!" The man waved to her from the edge of a horse corral several yards away. He was still wearing his Stetson, and his long black hair emerged from underneath it in two narrow braids that hung past his chest. In the corral stood a pair of unfamiliar horses — one cream and the other a sleek chestnut — and Mr. T, her coat newly cleaned and brushed.

"Hi," she replied awkwardly, stepping out of the small building and onto the hard-packed dirt. "Um… where are we?"

The man took off his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve as he walked over to her. "I guess things were kinda crazy last night with your friend being hurt and all," he said, beating a cloud of dust from the Stetson before returning it to its place atop his head. "This is the Ring Of Fire cattle ranch. Welcome." He extended his hand. "I'm Carter."

"…Mercedes." She hesitantly returned the handshake. "So, where's Puck?"

"He's fine," Carter replied. "We put him up in the room adjacent yours. He'll be out for awhile yet, but he'll come around."

Mercedes' heart leaped in her chest. "He's going to be okay?"

"Oh, sure." Carter nodded, giving her a reassuring smile. "He just needs a couple days of rest. Doesn't even need stitches on his head."

"What about the bite?" Mercedes pressed.

Carter shook his head. "Gila bites don't kill you."

Mercedes' brows furrowed in confusion. "…Aren't they poisonous?"

"Yeah, they are," Carter said. "They're very poisonous. But their venom isn't meant to kill you — it's meant to make you hurt like hell. And it works, as you've seen." He pulled his work gloves from his hands, tucking them into the back pocket of his jeans. "It's enough to kill a little kid, but your friend is big and burly. His body can withstand it. Sure as hell isn't pleasant, though."

"He'll be fine? You're sure?"

"He'll be good as new in a few days."

Mercedes' heart immediately returned to leaping. She couldn't remember the last time she felt this relieved.

"How'd he manage to get bit, anyhow?" Carter inquired. "Gilas are about as slow as they come."

"It was in our water bag. He didn't see it."

"Ah. Well, that would do it." Carter tilted the Stetson back slightly. "You hungry?"

Mercedes couldn't help but nod; her stomach had been aching for days.

Carter smiled and gestured toward a modest house on the other side of the corral. "Come on, then," he invited her. "We've got beef and beans cooking."

"I don't even care what it is, so long as it's not gas station junk food," Mercedes said, already following him to the house.

"So that's what you were eating out there," Carter said thoughtfully. "Makes sense. June and me were wondering how you'd made it all the way out here, especially since you said something last night about Los Angeles. That's a long way. Where are you folks headed?"

Mercedes coughed, her mouth feeling dry. She wasn't used to being up and about during the heat of the day. "Ohio," she answered.

His eyebrows shot upwards. "That's even longer."

"Well, it's home." Mercedes scratched at a bug bite on her neck, feeling out of place. Despite spending the better part of the last month crossing the San Gabriel Mountains and the Mojave Desert, she still had not fully adjusted to being so far from a city. She may have been three hundred miles closer to home, but she only felt further away.

"Listen, um…" she started before Carter opened the door to the house. "I want to thank you. For taking us in."

Carter shrugged. "I don't see how anyone could've done anything else."

DAY 20

For the past day and a half, Artie had been suppressing a particularly awful sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He had never really been an anxious person, but in the weeks since the blackout anxiety had become a familiar companion, perched on his shoulder and steadily crushing him bit by bit, bone by bone. He had hoped in time that he and Blaine would forget about seeing Mr. Schuester bloody and rotting in the middle of the street, but he knew that hoping wouldn't do much. The sight of his teacher's corpse was branded into his mind, and there was no getting rid of it.

With that image came an onslaught of terrifying questions — none of which Artie wanted to be thinking about in any amount of detail. It had been weeks since the blackout threw their lives into chaos and he had encountered nobody he knew and trusted besides Blaine. So… where was everybody else? Sam, Brittany, Kitty, Tina… Were any of them alive? Were they lying in the middle of the street with bullet holes in their chests? Were they sick, or starving? What were they doing to survive? Artie knew all too well that gangs were forming, prowling the streets and raiding homes — had his friends joined them?

And what about the people he knew who had moved on to bigger and better things? Kurt, Rachel, and Santana were in New York. Mike in Chicago. Mercedes in Los Angeles. He'd heard that Puck was joining the Air Force — was he stuck on a military base somewhere? It was hard to imagine there could be an Air Force with no airplanes. Artie realized abruptly that he had no idea what the larger cities in the country even looked like now — were they still standing or had they been razed to the ground? Maybe the National Guard hadn't shown up because Washington D.C. had gone up in flames. Or maybe they just didn't care about a small town in Ohio.

There were so many terrifying possibilities and uncertainties now that it made Artie's head spin.

"Artie. Hello?"

Artie blinked, straightening his back. Pamela was giving him a strange look from the other side of the dining table, and he realized he had been spacing out for several minutes. His oatmeal had gone cold and stiff.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sorry," Artie replied, probably a little too quickly. "I didn't sleep much last night."

Pamela didn't push him further, instead turning to offer her husband more coffee. Artie cleared his throat, catching the glance Blaine had shot him from across the table. Neither of them had told anyone about Mr. Schue, and Artie was fairly sure that neither of them would. To consciously acknowledge that the bodies on the streets were people — and might have even been people they knew — would only make things harder.

What concerned him, however, was that Blaine hadn't even spoken to Artie about it in private. Artie had asked Blaine once or twice if he was okay, but his inquiries had only been brushed aside. There was no way Blaine hadn't been affected — the past two nights Artie had tossed and turned, his dreams full of gunshots and screams and familiar faces — but if Blaine was suffering from similar nightmares, he wasn't letting on.

"Are you and Artie going on a run today, Blaine?" asked Pamela.

Despite the anxiety gnawing away at Artie's stomach, he felt a tiny surge of pride at Pamela's assumption that he would contribute. It had been far too long since he truly felt useful, and Pamela's casual inclusion of him in the day's tasks was a welcome reassurance.

"Yeah, I think so," Blaine said, scraping his bowl clean.

"Would you mind stopping at the garden center out on Angel Avenue?"

"Sure."

"I'll write you a list of things to look for." Pamela stood and began to clear the dishes, turning her attention to Caitlin as she did so. "Caitlin, would you like to help me with the garden later? We have to make room in the back yard for vegetables."

Artie was unhappily not surprised when Caitlin didn't respond, slowly chewing her last bite of cereal. He reached over and squeezed her shoulder, having adjusted over the most recent weeks to speaking for her.

"I think that'd be fun," he told Pamela.

"Nothing's fun anymore."

Simultaneously, every pair of eyes in the room swiveled around to stare in shock at Caitlin, and for several seconds Artie didn't fully comprehend that his sister had just spoken for the first time since their home was attacked. She had been silent for so long that at this point, her voice sounded strange and unfamiliar — even to him.

He responded hesitantly, carefully choosing his words in his head before uttering them aloud. "…Cait, it would be really nice for you to give Mrs. Anderson some help," he said gently. He could talk to her later, privately, about what had made her finally speak again.

Caitlin only glared at him, her eyes burning.

"Artie, it's fine, she doesn't need to," Pamela interjected.

"WHY ARE YOU PRETENDING EVERYTHING'S OKAY?!"

Caitlin's shout was loud and piercing, and it made everyone at the table jump. Artie flinched, his eyes widening. He'd never seen his sister so furious.

"Caitlin!" he said sharply, but his warning made her even more irate.

"MOM AND DAD ARE DEAD!" she screamed. "AND PROBABLY ISAAC TOO!" With that, she lurched to her feet, kicking her chair back, and ran from the room.

"Caitlin, wait—!" Artie called, fumbling to yank up the brakes on his chair. "Caitlin!" He pulled himself back from the table and wheeled quickly after her, turning down the hallway just in time to see her dash up the stairs to the second floor. He gritted his teeth, rolling to a stop at the foot of the stairwell. "Caitlin, will you come down here? Please?"

Pamela approached him from the end of the hall, her brows furrowed. "Is she all right?"

"I — I don't know," Artie sighed in frustration. Everything would be so much easier if Caitlin would just talk to him.

"If there's anything I can do, let me know."

"Thanks. And, um… I think I should probably stay here—"

Pamela cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Don't worry. Tim already said he'd go on the run with Blaine instead."

Artie nodded gratefully. "Okay. I-I'm sorry about Caitlin; she just…"

"Artie, you don't need to explain. Or apologize. These are hard times for everyone. The best thing you can do right now is take care of your sister."

Artie swallowed. Blaine's mother had been so kind to both him and his sister when it would have been so much easier to leave them to fend for themselves, and he had no idea how to thank her.

Pamela straightened her sweatshirt on her shoulders. "I'm going to go get started on the garden," she said, and left Artie at the foot of the stairs.

The minutes ticked by and Artie called for his sister over and over again, but there was no reply from upstairs. It was an immature reaction, to run and hide in a place she knew he couldn't reach, but Artie couldn't say he didn't understand it. So he waited, and eventually Blaine and Tim passed him on their way out for the supply run. With Pamela out in the garden area and Blaine and his father walking to Yoakam Road, Artie and Caitlin were the only ones left in the house.

"Caitlin?" he called, his hand resting on the stairway banister. "I know you don't want to talk, but I also know you can hear me, so just listen, okay?"

There was no sound from overhead. Artie drew a deep breath and continued.

"Do you remember what Mom told us when you were getting bullied at school last year? You were upset because Alec Pickenson kept throwing rocks at you during recess, and the teachers didn't do anything because nobody ever saw him do it."

A rock worked its way into Artie's throat as he spoke. He missed the days when their problems had been as simple as bullies on the playground.

"Mom said we were a team — you, me, and Isaac — and that we had to watch out for each other. Remember? So Isaac and I skipped classes to visit your school, and we told Alec that we would beat him up and I'd run him over after, and he never hit you again. That's our job, because we're your brothers and you would do the same thing for us."

There was a beat of silence — horrible, suffocating silence — and then a rush of relief in Artie's chest. Caitlin had stepped out of hiding, appearing at the top of the stairs.

"Mom grounded you guys for two weeks after that," she said flatly.

Artie couldn't help but smile. "I know, it wasn't what she meant, but I'm still glad we did it. Plus, the look on Alec Pickenson's face was priceless."

Caitlin pursed her lips, her arms crossing over her chest.

"Look, Cait," Artie started again. He pushed his glasses up. "Mom, Dad, and Isaac aren't here, but you can't think that they're gone. They're tough — all three of them. And look at us. We're okay, so they've got to be too."

Caitlin sniffed. Her face was blotchy. "But what if they're not?"

"Hey, come down here," Artie beckoned. At last, Caitlin came down, descending until she was standing on the last step in front of him. He reached out to hold her hands in his. "I know for a fact that Mom and Dad are up all night, every night, worrying about us. They miss us like crazy, and they're going to be on the first plane back the second the power turns on again."

Caitlin's chin trembled. "But what if it doesn't and we're stuck like this forever?"

"Then they'll find a boat," Artie countered. "Sooner or later, they will be back. I promise." He brushed a few stray hairs back from her forehead. "And Isaac isn't even that far away. I bet he's on his way from Philadelphia right now."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely positive," he swore. He really wasn't, but Caitlin didn't need to deal with all of his uncertainties. That was his job.

The garden center and plant nursery squatted at the far end of a small shopping plaza — mostly hardware and electronics stores, plus a Starbucks — on the outskirts of central Lima, where the downtown sprawl began to give way to picket-fenced suburbia. It was only four miles from the Andersons' home, so it took less than two hours for Blaine and his father to arrive at the no-longer-automatic front door. Tim wedged his shoulder against the door, forcing it to roll back and allow them inside.

Blaine was surprised to find the interior much more intact than he'd expected. The shelves were still upright and fully stocked, and in the back of the facility he could see that the greenhouse walls remained unbroken. The sunlight filtered softly through its glass ceiling and reflected into the front of the store, keeping it well-lit and comfortably warm. The air was thick with the pleasant odor of organic fertilizer, mulch, and damp soil. Aside from the cash register at the counter, which had obviously been broken into and emptied before being knocked to the floor, there were no signs of looting or vandalism.

It seemed… safe.

"Why don't you look through Mom's list," Tim suggested, handing over the folded piece of notepaper from his breast pocket. "I'll go look through the greenhouse and see if there's anything we can use."

Blaine nodded, and Tim left him to meander through the aisles. Once he located the rack storing packages of vegetable seeds, Blaine quickly filled his backpack, only glancing at the list occasionally to make sure he was grabbing the correct items.

Then, a faint scratching noise from the stack of shelves behind him made Blaine stop where he was, warily turning to look over his shoulder. At first, he saw nothing, but a small moving shadow caught his eye behind a display of tiny ceramic flowerpots. Frowning, Blaine reached over to lift away the pot in the center. There was then a hissing squeak and a flash of bared rodent teeth, and the rat leapt from the shelf and scurried across Blaine's boots. Blaine jumped, letting out a yelp of surprise as he accidentally dropped the flowerpot. It shattered on the floor with a loud crash, seeming almost earsplitting in the otherwise quiet shop.

Tim's footsteps pounded toward Blaine from the direction of the greenhouse. "Blaine?!" he called in alarm. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"I'm fine," Blaine assured him quickly, zipping up his backpack as Tim came down the short aisle to meet him. "Got startled by a rat."

"Ah." Tim calmed, his shoulders relaxing. "Could've been worse."

"I found all the seeds Mom wanted except for beets," Blaine said. He slung his bag over his shoulder. "Can't say I'm unhappy about that, though."

Tim chuckled. "You know, beets were your favorite when you were a toddler. Your teeth would get all red and you and Cooper would pretend to be vampires."

A rock squeezed into Blaine's throat without warning. Any words he might have thought of to respond with died in his chest.

Tim exhaled, glancing at the floor. He rubbed his palm over the back of his neck. "I miss him."

Blaine coughed in a halfhearted attempt to clear the boulder from his esophagus. "Yeah, me too." His reply came out hoarse. "We should head out. We can probably make it to the truck in an hour."

Tim didn't move right away. Instead, he clamped a hand onto Blaine's shoulder. "Blaine, I want you to know how unbelievably proud of you I've been the past several weeks," he said.

Blaine swallowed, avoiding his father's gaze. He was pretty sure he hadn't done anything worth being proud of, but Tim was still talking.

"You've done such an incredible job helping everyone — even Artie and Caitlin. Finding the truck, going on supply runs almost every day… You're helping us survive ." Tim squeezed Blaine's shoulder, and for a second Blaine thought his dad might cry. "Cooper would've been proud too."

"Thanks, Dad," Blaine said. His chest felt cold underneath his ribs. "We should, um… we should go."

"Okay," Tim said, patting Blaine's shoulder solidly one more time.

Outside, Blaine had to squint in the sunlight as his eyes readjusted. There had been a few splotches of cloud cover when they had arrived at the garden center, but the breeze had picked up and blown them westward. The days were getting warmer as summer gradually pushed spring out of its way. A flock of sparrows flitted and darted between the decorative bushes bordering the far edge of the parking lot, and over the treetops lining the road ahead, a twisting plume of smoke rose into the sky.

"What the…" Blaine trailed off.

Tim shielded his eyes, studying the smoke. "It's probably one of the gangs. Some of them have been setting fire to the houses once they're done looting them."

Blaine didn't bother telling his father that he already knew this. He'd been outside more often than Tim had, and he had seen for himself the houses that had been razed to the ground. But he had only seen those houses long after the fires had gone out; he'd never caught one as it burned.

"Should we go help them?" Blaine asked.

"And… do what?" Tim said. "We don't have any weapons to fight off other people." He sighed, then nudged Blaine's shoulder, gesturing southeast in the vague direction of Yoakam Road. "Come on, we need to make it to the truck and back home by sunset. It's already getting late."

Blaine hesitated. "Hey, Dad?"

"What?"

"My friend Sam lives near here. Could we go visit him?" Blaine requested. "I just want to make sure he's okay."

Tim turned over his shoulder for a moment to glance at the sun. "Looks like we've got about five hours of daylight left," he said. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Blaine nodded. "We're close anyway; it won't take long. He lives on Brackett Street."

"All right. Lead the way."

The edges of Puck's brain felt fuzzy, like his skull was filled with cotton. There was a dull throbbing ache in his hand and fingertips, stretching up through the bones of his left arm all the way past his elbow to his shoulder. His fist clenched involuntarily, sending a painful jolt over his skin as his eyes snapped open. His vision was blurry at first, and he had to blink several times before he could see that he was indoors – an unfamiliar room lying in a bed that didn't belong to him.

"Puck? Can you hear me?"

Mercedes was sitting in a chair by the edge of the bed, her hand on Puck's good arm.

"Where are we?" he tried to say, though it came out as more of an unintelligibly groggy slur than anything else.

Mercedes leaned back so that Puck could see that someone was standing next to her — a woman, copper-skinned and with her black hair pinned up out of her face. "Puck, this is June," said Mercedes. "She and her husband took us in."

"How does your arm feel?" June asked.

Puck winced, his fingers twitching. "Hurts like hell," he replied, managing to speak clearly.

June lightly tapped Mercedes' upper arm, making her move back to give June room to sit beside him. "I'm going to take the bandage off to look at the bite, okay?" she said, and it was only then that Puck realized a small section of his left forearm was expertly wrapped in clean white gauze. "I have to make sure it's healing. It might sting a bit."

Puck nodded and allowed June to reach over to lift his arm and move it closer to her, resting it on his abdomen. He swallowed, his tongue like sandpaper. His forearm was still awfully swollen — he could barely see the veins in his wrist — and it was sore and tender, but at least it didn't feel like it was on fire any more. June gently unwrapped the gauze, carefully coiling it around her fingers until it was completely off.

"It looks better!" Mercedes said, giving Puck a relieved smile.

The bite was deep, but it had obviously been thoroughly washed while he'd been unconscious. The dried blood that had been heavily caked around the wound was gone, and despite the pain currently sending twinges up Puck's arm and the fact that his forearm was still inflamed, it didn't look all that bad.

June was still frowning, squinting into the rip in Puck's skin. "It is better," she said. "But there's a tooth stuck in it."

Any relief Puck had experienced the past several seconds evaporated suddenly, and he jumped. "What?!"

"Calm down," June directed coolly, gently holding his wrist in place. "You need to keep your arm elevated."

"What do you mean, 'there's a tooth'?!" he exclaimed.

"It happens sometimes with Gila bites," June answered. She calmly stood and straightened her plaid button-down shirt. "I'm going to go get my tweezers from the house."

"I'm going to be sick," Puck said, his head falling back onto the pillow. He had to hiss through his teeth when a sudden pang shot through his skull, making his eyes scrunch up. "Ow!"

Mercedes reclaimed her seat beside him. "You hit your head last night," she explained. "When you fell off Mr. T."

Puck almost sat straight up. "Where's Mr. T?" he demanded.

"Whoa, relax," Mercedes assured him, pushing him back down with a strong hand on his chest. "Mr. T's fine. She's outside. June and Carter fed her."

Puck exhaled in a huff. He hated feeling so disoriented.

"I'm just glad you're still alive," Mercedes continued. "Don't scare me like that again, okay?"

"I'll try not to," Puck replied dryly, forcing a small smile. He let his eyes travel around the room, studying the sparse furniture and lack of decoration. "Where are we?"

Mercedes followed his gaze to a framed black-and-white photo on the far wall, depicting the silhouette of a man swinging a lasso. "It's a cattle ranch," she answered. "It's probably the only thing out here. June said we're just north of Laughlin — still in Nevada." She grinned, nudging Puck's side with her elbow. "But guess what."

Puck returned his attention to her. "What?"

She gestured out the window over his bed, holding back the curtain to expose a wide expanse of dirt and scant vegetation. There were a few fences in sight, forming corrals for a couple of horses. "You see that ridge over there?" Mercedes asked.

Puck squinted into the sunlight, lifting his head to better see where she was pointing. A little more than a mile away was a low range of jagged rocky hills, darker brown and rilled all over. "Yeah."

"The Colorado River's just on the other side."

Puck blinked. "Seriously?"

Mercedes nodded, a wide smile spreading across her features. "We made it! We're almost out of Nevada."

He couldn't suppress a laugh that jumped abruptly from his chest. "We should have stopped in Vegas."

Mercedes snorted. "To do what, gamble? Something tells me Las Vegas would be even worse than L.A."

There were footsteps outside the door, and then June re-entered the room with tweezers in hand. Mercedes moved back again, letting June sit in the chair next to the bed.

"Okay, let's have a look," June said, taking Puck's arm.

"Alright, I can't watch this or I'm going to puke," Puck said, steeling his nerves. Mercedes gave his leg a supportive pat from where she stood at the foot of the bed.

June leaned closely over Puck's arm, holding his wrist with one hand and carefully wielding the tweezers with the other. Puck sucked a breath through his teeth as the tweezers poked into the bite mark, and a sharp pinch jolted over his skin. And then, it was over long before Puck expected it to be, and June sat back.

"There's the sucker," she said, taking Puck's opposite hand to hold his palm open. She released the tweezers and dropped a tiny, sharp, blood-flecked white object smaller than a thorn into his hand.

Puck held it up, pinched between his fingertips to study it. "That is so gross," he stated. "I'm keeping it."

June cleaned the tips of her tweezers on the hem of her shirt. "How'd you get the Gila to let go? They're pretty strong."

"…I kind of hit it with the baseball bat," Mercedes said with a sheepish smile.

June's eyebrows shot up, and she didn't return the smile. "Did you kill it?"

Mercedes nodded. "Yeah, I hit it a few times."

"That's too bad." June's voice was cool, her words tight. She reached over and began re-wrapping the bandage around Puck's arm. "They're a threatened species. There's laws protecting them."

"Well, I don't think we have to worry about the police right now," Puck joked, still fascinatedly scrutinizing the Gila fang.

"No, you don't," June said stiffly, her mouth a steely straight line. "Maybe you can put the tooth on a necklace."

She deftly finished replacing Puck's bandage, then stood up, dragging the chair to a spot in the corner. "You need rest," she ordered. "Keep your arm up on a pillow so that the swelling goes down."

Puck dropped the tooth onto the little end table by the head of his bed and gave a two-fingered salute with his good hand. "Yes, ma'am."

Mercedes patted his leg through the blanket. "I'll be back later to bring you some food, okay?"

Puck nodded, settling down into the mattress. Even with his arm still in pain, he hadn't felt this comfortable in ages. Today was a good day.

It felt like he hadn't been to Sam's house in years, Blaine realized as he and Tim followed the curve of Gregson Lane toward Brackett Street. He was pretty sure the last time he'd hung out with Sam at the Evans' home was sometime in January. They must have been studying for a paper or something. Maybe an assignment for Mr. Schuester.

The memory of Mr. Schue sent a jab of nausea through Blaine's gut, and he quickly pushed the thought to the back of his mind.

As they made the turn onto Brackett, Blaine and Tim watched the houses suspiciously, watching for any signs of life or movement. The hairs on Blaine's forearms were standing on end, and his hands tightened around the straps of his backpack.

The last time Blaine had been here, Brackett Street had been a calm, quiet suburban neighborhood. Most of the residents had flower gardens in their front yards, and there was always someone out walking their dog. It was the sort of place where parents would let their children play outside unsupervised. Now, it was almost unrecognizable. The quaint neighborly street had devolved into a deserted war zone.

Blaine felt his heart thud more rapidly in his chest as they passed by a pair of side-by-side houses, both burned beyond repair. There was another eviscerated house a few doors up, and nearly every home in between had broken windows and doors. There was trash strewn across the lawns and the street, debris left behind from the lootings. The flower gardens were already beginning to look overgrown.

"Where is everyone?" Blaine said under his breath. And why does it feel like I'm walking into a cemetery?

"Maybe they've gone to look for their families," Tim suggested. He didn't sound all that confident. "Which one is your friend's house?"

"It's a little further," Blaine replied, pointing a short distance up the street to where it curved just out of sight. "Around the corner."

"It's getting late. We should hurry."

It was unbearably quiet here, and Blaine jumped when a crow suddenly squawked from one of the trees overhead. It swooped downwards and flapped off in the other direction, disappearing behind an emptied house. Blaine's heart was racing in his chest, and he was abruptly struck with the feeling of wanting to go home.

"You okay?" Tim asked.

"Yeah." Blaine forced a nod.

They rounded the bend in the road, and the breath rushed out of Blaine's lungs. All that was left of the Evans' house was the charred frame and part of the back wall. The roof, reduced to scorched shingles and melted aluminum rain gutters, lay collapsed across what had been the living room and kitchen. It couldn't have burned down long ago; the air still smelled faintly of charcoal and smoke.

When Blaine's eyes landed on what remained of the front porch, he doubled over and retched onto the pavement. A blackened corpse was lying prone with its arm hanging off the edge of the singed deck. Only the arm hadn't been charred completely, instead bearing open heat blisters all the way down to the wrist. It was a man's hand.

Blaine couldn't tell if the body was Sam or his father.

Tim quickly grabbed Blaine's shoulders, supporting him as Blaine threw up a second time. His stomach twisted; there was barely anything left of his lunch.

"Blaine," Tim said firmly. "Blaine, look at me."

His chest heaving, Blaine couldn't tear his gaze away from the corpse.

Tim moved to plant himself in front of Blaine, breaking his line of sight and forcing Blaine to meet his eye. "Listen to me," Tim ordered. "Take a breath."

Blaine tried — he really did — but the air was stretched and far too thin as it passed through his sinuses. His chest felt like it would explode any second. His heartbeat roared in his ears, pulsing all the way down to his fingertips. The blood in his veins was boiling all over his body, and Blaine wanted to scream, but his lungs had closed up tight.

He couldn't breathe.

"Blaine," Tim repeated. "Hey, look at me. You're okay."

"I — I can't—" Blaine tried to speak clearly, but his voice was hitching in the pit of his throat. "I c-can't do this."

"We need to go, Blaine," Tim urged, gripping Blaine's shoulders tightly. "Come on. Forget the truck; we're going home."

"I can't — I can't—" Blaine stammered. His brain was burning up inside his skull. His eyesight blurred and his cheeks felt wet – when had he started crying?

"Look at me," Tim coached. "Slow down."

"I can't do this. I — I—"

"Yes, you can, Blaine. Come on. Let's go home."

Despite Tim blocking his direct view, the image of the charred body was branded into Blaine's eyes, and it was all he could see. Pictures began to flash across his mind in rapid succession, of the dozens of unnamed deceased he had seen sprawled on the sides of roads and out in the open at the mercy of the crows and other scavengers. Of the numerous people he knew were entombed inside the plane wreckage at the center of town but didn't have the courage to fully acknowledge. Of Cooper. Of Mr. Schue.

"I left him," Blaine whispered.

"What?" Tim frowned, worry creasing the skin between his brows. "Left who?"

"M-Mr. Schue," Blaine said. His voice was shaking so badly he wasn't even sure his father could understand him. The words began to rush out of him, almost unintelligible but demanding to be released. "He — he brought me home the night of the blackout a-and now he's dead and I left him there to rot—"

"Blaine, slow down," Tim ordered, raising his voice.

Blaine's stomach clenched, and a sob wrenched out of him. "Am I really this numb?"

Tim blinked, taken aback or perhaps confused by the question.

The lack of an answer made a hollow ache bloom in Blaine's chest, and he couldn't speak anymore.

Burt lay wide awake in bed next to Carole, listening to the sound of his own breathing. He didn't think he'd ever quite get used to his bedroom being pitch black — before the blackout, even in the middle of the night there had always been the calming glow from the nearest streetlamp out front, the luminescent alarm clock on Carole's nightstand, the tiny blinking light on the smoke detector… He'd never realized how much light they really used at night until it was all gone.

And now, he understood what it meant to be afraid of the dark.

Most nights were now spent in restlessness, tossing and turning but being far too alert to really sleep for any healthy length of time. Burt would listen to the quiet outside the house — mostly filled with the chirps of nearby crickets or the scratching pitter-patter of a nocturnal rodent running across the roof, but occasionally a far-off gunshot would make him shudder and grit his teeth. The worst part about all of this was knowing there was nothing he could do. Not without risking his own life, and he wasn't willing to leave Carole all alone.

Since Carole had come home quaking and covered in blood, she had been different. She flinched more readily, was less willing to leave the house, and routinely had nightmares bad enough to wake her up. She wouldn't complain, but Burt knew she hated being home alone too, which made it hard for him to leave her every time he went to retrieve water from the lake. Like him, Carole had been sleeping less than was healthy, but she didn't toss and turn. She instead lay unmoving and awake, facing the bedroom window with her back to him as if she was waiting for something better to happen.

And so, when the abrupt sound of shattering glass cut through the quiet from downstairs, Burt and Carole were already awake. Burt bolted upright in bed, already fumbling for the aluminum baseball bat he kept on the floor next to him.

"What was that?" Carole whispered, her voice shaking in the dark.

"Someone's in the house," Burt hissed, gripping the bat tightly as he crossed their bedroom floor, groping for the door handle. He could hear Carole throw back the covers and follow, shivering behind him as he cautiously turned the knob and pulled the door open. In the hallway, faint light from the moon spilled in through the windows and made the shadows grow long and more defined.

There were voices downstairs. Burt could hear at least two men.

"Burt, what if we just let them take it?" Carole murmured, her hand tightening around his arm. Her eyes were wide in terror.

"They're stealing our food," Burt countered, struggling to keep his voice down. "Stay here."

"I'm not letting you go down there alone," Carole spat under her breath, slapping his shoulder lightly with the back of her hand.

Burt didn't argue with her, instead holding his breath and beginning to tiptoe down the stairs. Carole followed suit, and as they edged along the stairwell, snippets of what the burglars were saying reached their ears from the kitchen.

"…got plenty in here."

"I dunno, man, it looks like this is all they have. You sure you don't want to check next door instead? That house is bigger."

"That house has kids."

"Yeah, I'm not stealing from kids, dude."

Burt halted for a moment. That was a third voice. He counted three voices so far — all male — but he could hear footsteps in the living room too. Four was too many.

"Come on, let's pack this crap up and get out of here."

"Alright, alright. Sheesh."

But if Burt just let them take everything, then he and Carole would have nothing left. They couldn't afford to let this go — they wouldn't be able to replace it, and then they would starve.

Burt drew a deep breath in through his nostrils, waiting for the footsteps in the living room to rejoin the men in the kitchen.

"I didn't see anything else worth taking," the fourth person said, coughing lightly. Burt was surprised to realize it was a woman's voice.

"Give me your bag."

There was the sharp noise of a duffel unzipping, and cans of soup clunking solidly against each other as they were tossed inside. Burt's hands tightened around the handle of the bat, raising it over his shoulder as his muscles tensed.

"Hurry up," said the woman. She sounded nervous.

"Hey, if you want to help, you are more than welcome," one of the other men snapped. A handful of cans thudded dully as they were dropped into the duffel.

"I'm keeping watch."

"For what? There's no one here."

Burt's teeth ground against each other, his fingers squeezing the handle of the bat so tightly that his nails dug into his palm. He glanced briefly at Carole, and then carefully edged out of the stairwell and through the darkened living room. There was a flickering orange light illuminating the kitchen and reflecting off the walls, and Burt caught a whiff of smoke — one of the burglars was carrying a torch.

Burt exhaled slowly, willing his heart to slow down. It was knocking against his ribs at an alarming pace, but he managed to steel his nerves, swallow once, and step into the torchlight with the baseball bat raised.

"Get out of my house," he snarled.

All at once, the four thieves jumped. The man closest to the refrigerator let out a startled cry, dropping the cans he was holding onto the floor. Burt was suddenly struck that these people were not at all what he'd expected to find. He'd thought they'd be dressed all in black like the burglars he'd always seen on TV, tough men who were obviously seasoned criminals. Maybe a prison tattoo or three. But these people… they were dressed in jeans and hoodies, with dirty hair and scrawny limbs. The man — or boy, rather — who held the torch couldn't have been older than seventeen.

"Get out!" Burt shouted before he could lose his cool, shaking the bat.

Then, Carole shrieked behind him and before Burt could react, there was a deafening click just next to Burt's ear.

"Drop the bat," said the woman, pressing the cold nose of the gun to Burt's temple. He hadn't seen her take it out of her belt.

His blood ran cold, spreading outward from his chest to his limbs. His teeth clenching, Burt dropped his arms, letting the tip of the bat hit the floor. The woman reached forward to snatch it from him, and when she did Burt's heart dropped into his stomach.

"Sandra?!"

Sandra, who had been their neighbor for the past four years and had welcomed them to the neighborhood with her homemade pecan pie and peanut butter cookies, kept the gun aimed at Burt's head. Her hand was shaking, her finger dangerously close to the trigger.

"We're taking the food," she said. A tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek.

"Sandra, you—" Carole started, grabbing at Burt's shirt as if she was terrified she was about to lose him. "Y-you don't have to do this."

The gun trembled in Sandra's hand. "I'm so sorry," she said, her face pinched with something akin to grief. "I'm so, so sorry."