A light breeze blew up Eden's sleeve, and she shivered. She hugged her arms around herself as she walked into the campsite. The scent of copper filled her nose as she passed the tent where Mary had emerged from just before the fight. Saliva filled her mouth, and she covered her nose with her sleeve to keep herself from vomiting. They had built a big fire in the center of the site. Something was buried beneath the ashes, and as she bent over it, she noticed the shape of a strap.

Eden used her thumb and index finger to grab the strap. It was light, and it was easy to shake off most of the ashes, revealing a backpack--the same backpack that Ariel had taken with him when they had gone to see the houses. She knelt on the ground with it to look inside it, and she found a jacket, a bag of some dried meat, water bottles, and one of their uncles' hunting knife. As she grabbed the knife and looked at it eight-inch long blade, she realized how upset Levi would have been if he had known that Ariel had taken it from him. To her disappointment, the can was not there.

Eden sat on the ground and sighed.

"You're upset over an old can of peaches?" Samael asked.

"I was going to eat that with Ariel," she explained, "but if it's missing, then we won't be able to eat it when we find him."

"I see."

"You would tell me if he died, wouldn't you?"

"Of course."

Eden nodded. She stuffed all of Ariel's things into her own backpack, and she discarded his bag onto the pile of ashes. Avoiding looking at the tent she knew would be full of something unsightly, she turned to the tent that Ariel had checked first remained open, and Eden ducked inside it.

It was the tent she had shared with both Ariel and Mary. There was a dirty green backpack laying on top of a pile of things that used to be inside it: pens, notebooks for teaching the twins how to read, bags of dried food, and a couple of books. They were both old books with the front covers missing, but one read *Paradise Lost* and the other *Fahrenheit 461* on the title pages.

As Eden looked at the dried food, she noticed some were dried fruits, something she had thought they had run out of a while back. She shoved the dried food in her backpack, and she realized she needed to save room for the most important things. The notebooks were full of notes she had been making while reading the books.

Pain rose in her chest as she remembered how important it had been to Mary that she and Ariel had been able to read. It was difficult to hold onto books because they were always traveling, but every book she did have, she made sure she read it with both of her children so that they understood it and could understand other things.

Eden knew it was important to save room in her backpack for important things, especially food and water, but after leafing through the notebooks, she realized she could not leave them behind. She stuffed everything into her back, trying not to damage the books even further than they had already been damaged. Shrugging on her heavier backpack, she left the tent.

Still avoiding the one that smelled of blood, Eden went into the other tent, but as she approached it, she noticed the dark spots staining the gray and blue canopy. She hesitated to go inside it.

"Something bad happened in there, too, didn't?" Eden asked Samael, but the angel remained silent, giving her just the answer she needed.

Covering her nose to protect herself from the smell of blood, Eden took a deep breath, but the heavy weight in her belly only grew even heavier. She reached a trembling hand to the slider of the zipper, and while pressing her hand harder against her face, she yanked on it. The flap fell open, and the first thing she noticed was a hand. The skin was dark but darker with streaks of blood. There were some simple rings adorning the fingers, but it was difficult to make out the type of metal they were with all of the dried blood caking them.

Tears spilled down Eden's cheeks, and she turned away from the hand, feeling saliva pull in her mouth and acid rise in her throat.

"Oh, Aunt Dana," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Eden forced herself to look at the body. Dana had been wearing her favorite coral sweater that day, and now it was full of holes and soaked in blood. She had been such a beautiful woman, but now her face was contorted in fear and surprise. Her other hand held a small doll, something her mother had taught her to make out of sticks and strings.

Eden looked at the backpack in the corner of the tent. Dana's bare foot sat inside it, and Eden could see some of the supplies she had kept inside it. Shaking her head at her own disrespect for her beloved auntie, she grabbed the backpack and tried to shake Dana's foot loose. Her body was already too stiff, and Eden realized that would not be enough to work the backpack free. She grabbed Dana's pant leg, and she pulled the stiff foot out of the backpack.

"I'm sorry, Dana," she said as she lowered the foot back onto the ground. "I'm so sorry."

Eden grabbed the backpack, and she ducked out of the tent. She knelt on the ground, facing the least gory tent, and she sifted through the backpack with trembling hands. The contents were similar to what Mary had had. There were even a couple of books, but there were no pads of paper. Dana had liked to read as well, but she had been a fan of "silly" titles, as Mary had always called them. They were books meant to be entertaining rather than works of art that scholars could analyze and judge.

"I just want to have a good time for a little while," Dana used to say whenever Mary would complain about Dana's tastes in reading material.

Eden felt that stabbing pain in her chest again. She pressed a hand over her chest as she paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Neither the pain in her chest nor the lump in her throat faded away. The weight in her belly grew even heavier as she stuffed Dana's food rations into her backpack, and she even took the books. There was now too little room left for anything else, but she could not bare the thought of leaving her family's treasure behind.

Now there was only one more tent left to explore, but Eden wanted to do anything but look into it. Seeing her Dana dead had been terrible enough, but she was certain that her uncles' tent would be even more troubling--even more difficult to get out of her mind. Bile rose in her throat just looking at it, and she turned her head. She vomited a yellow liquid on the ground.

Eden shrugged on her backpack once again. She closed her eyes as she climbed back to her feet, and she turned to face the direction of her uncles' tent.

There was little she understood about normal family dynamics, but when she compared the experiences of the characters in books to her own interactions with her family, she could decide the role each person had in her life. Dana was more like an older sister to her aunt, even if they had no blood relation to each other at all. Levi and Ron were not relatives to her either, but she thought of them as older siblings as well. There had been a few times when they had been more like scary father figures to her, especially Levi, the more serious man, but they had always been warm, comforting presences that sometimes liked to pull little pranks on her.

Eden opened her eyes. Inside the tent, which was already a faded black, she saw a pale hand protruding from the opening. The fingers, covered in russet blood, were curled on an upturned palm. She stepped toward the tent, and she felt the cool skin of the hand. There was a ring on the pinky finger, and she knew the hand belonged to Ron, who wore that ring to symbolize the love he had once felt for a girl long dead. It was a simple silver ring with no gems or fancy designs etched into it. He had promised her he would give her that ring when she found someone to love herself, but that opportunity had been stolen from it. Tears fell onto his palm as she looked at it, unwilling to see what had happened to him.

"Take it, Eden," Samael said. "He would want you to have it."

"It would feel like I was stealing from him," Eden said, but her voice warbled with grief.

"He wants you to have it, Eden."

"Can you speak to the dead? Levi used to say that angels carried the dead off to Heaven, so does that mean you can talk to them?"

"We can. Your family is here. Dana, Levi, and Ron are all here to watch over you until you can join them in the afterlife."

A shiver went up Eden's spine, but she nodded. She bent back Ron's stiff finger, and she managed to slip the simple ring off the little finger. His hands were so much bigger than hers that she was sure that would fit just fine on her ring finger, but she tucked the ring inside her pants pocket, where it was least likely to get lost.

Eden looked inside the tent, and she found Ron laying on his back. His black hair was plastered to his forehead with blood. The uncles, who had been identical twin brothers, had both preferred to wear dark clothing, making it difficult to see what had happened to him, but she dared not look too closely to make sure of it. She stepped over Ron's body to get inside the tent, allowing her to see Ron's frozen look of terror on his face.

Further inside the tent, a body was laying on its side, its back away from her. Its long black hair was tied into a ponytail. Her uncle Levi had been fond of sleeveless shirts, which allowed him to show off his muscular arms, but it just made it easier for Eden to see that he was covered in blood.

There were two backpacks resting on the other side of Levi. It was normal to find guns and ammunition in the uncles' tent. They used them to hunt for meat, as well as to help protect the group from fiends and "scoundrels," as Ron called them, but all of those things were missing, meaning that the fiends had taken them.

"Is Ariel still alive?" Eden asked.

"He is."

That made the weight in her stomach lighten, but it was still so heavy that it was starting to hurt.

Eden stretched her hand over Levi to grab the bag. She told herself not to look at his face.

"Don't look. Don't look," she repeated. "Don't look. Don't look."

Eden looked. Levi's mouth hung agape. There were claw marks on his cheeks. She was uncertain if they came from his own nails or Mary's, but they were easier to look at than the horrible gash in his throat. It was a deep cut, and she did not want to think too long and hard about how his head was tilted at an unnatural angle.

Eden stretched her arms over Levi to grab the backpacks. Both of them were heavy, making her sore body hurt even more, but she was just strong enough to lift them. She tucked them under her arm, and she ducked out of the tent. They made a heavy thud as she dropped them to the ground near the spent campfire.

Levi and Ron had kept several rounds of ammunition in each of their backpacks, and despite the missing guns, there was still an entire burlap sack full of ammunition left in the backpacks. The fiends must have been in such a hurry that they had not even bothered to leave through everything. Other than the bags of brass cylindrical tubes of death, there were bottles of water and some dried food rations. They did not put as much emphasis on finding fun hobbies as much Dana or Mary had.

Eden shoved the bottles of water and food in her backpack, and that made the back so stuffed that it was difficult to close it. She set the overstuffed backpack on the ground near the tent she had shared with her mother and brother.

Then, Eden went back to Dana's tent. She grabbed the fallen woman's wrist, and she dragged her into the center of the campsite, kicking up a cloud of white ashes. Eden did the same with Ron, although he was much heavier than Dana, and she rested him next to Dana's body.

Eden went back to the uncles’ tent, but as she saw the cut in Levi’s throat, she had to turn away before she vomited more stomach acid. She could not help but wonder what happened, but she was also afraid to know just how savage a fiend could be once they slipped inside a human’s body.

Eden turned Levi onto his back, and she could see just how far the cut in his throat went. There was only half an inch of skin attaching the head to the body. She wondered if it would tear the rest of the way when she lifted him.

As Eden glanced around the tent for something to help, she noticed that Levi had tied his jacket his waist, and she pulled it free from his weight. She wrapped it around him like a scarf, and she slid her hands beneath his shoulder, using her arms to help his head stay in place as she pulled him out of the tent so he could rest next to his brother.

"What would they want, Samael?" Eden asked. "Would they prefer to be burned or buried?"

"Burning them will endanger the forest, but you're in no condition to dig large holes. You don't have the proper tools for it anyway."

"I just want to respect their wishes."

"They're fine with whatever you choose, Eden."

"What do you think I should do?"

"You could just leave them. Your family is fine with that, and you've found everything they wanted you to have and more. There's no reason to do anything at all."

"I can't just leave them like this. It wouldn't be right."

"The decision is yours alone. Neither option is of any consequence to me."

Eden's body had only gotten sorer after her walk there. Burying her family was the better option because she would not have to deal with the smell of dead bodies, but it would also take a long time and make different parts of her body sore. Burning them would bring up a terrible stench, and Samael had already reminded her of the danger it would bring to the forest.

"I don't really like any of the options," Eden admitted.

"I understand, but you have to make one."

"I can't leave them here as they are," she said, "and I don't really think I would be able to bury them. All I can really do is burn them. Could we control the fire somehow?"

"Any place that would be better for burning is too far away, so no, there's nothing we can do. We can only pray the fire stays contained in this area enough that it does not cause too much damage."

"You can't tell what will happen with your angel powers?"

"I can guess the future, but I can't say for sure what exactly is going to happen."

Eden nodded. Having made up her mind, she went in search of things to help her. She found a bottle of lighter fluid near Dana's tent as well as a pair of flint rocks, and she poured the liquid all over their bodies, setting their bodies ablaze with the sparks from the flint rocks.

Eden watched the fire spread across her family; she watched their clothes blacken, and their flesh bubbled. The smell of burning meat struck her nose, and she covered her nose with her sleeve. Her eyes burned with the heat of the large flames, and she turned from them, squeezing her eyes closed. She felt tears stream down her face.