By the time the December ship comes, there is no one left in the shelter that had come in with him.
Peter is cleaning cots when the ship begins to unload and within minutes, he begins to catch bits and pieces of hushed news and whispered rumors, as he always does. People are quick to assess the groups coming in and are faster still at jumping to conclusions based on where they had been found. If there were a large group of survivors from one area, it meant that there was hope of rebuilding in that country. If there were no survivors from another area, it meant hope was lost for them and good riddance, nothing to be done about it.
Generally, he ignores the gossip, as much of it is rarely true. There is not anything new to be learned; most of the world is dead, including his beloved family, and beyond that, he doesn't care to know. He doesn't want to return to the surface and see what had become of the land and he certainly doesn't want to see the pit full of fire blackened skeletons just outside the bunker doors. And so he ignores them as the haggard team of rescue workers begins to carry new survivors inside and continues to clean the beds alongside the other boys.
"'aven't y'heard?" One says.
"What?" Asks another.
"'bout who they found in t'last run!"
"Ahh, I did!" A third chimes in. "About the blonde guy, eh?"
One of the boys shakes Peter's shoulder. "Did y'hear?"
Peter eyes him warily and goes back to his work. "No."
"'verybody they found was in th' Netherlands an' France, 'cept for one."
"Yeah!" The second boy nods enthusiastically. "They found 'im above the German border."
"So?" Peter has only been half listening to them in the first place, staring placidly at the dirty canvas in front of him. He doesn't care. Gossip is gossip and it's never done any of them a lick of good and he's had quite enough of getting his hopes up.
"So, they found 'im on the last patch 'f dry land in Denmark. Y'know, the one that sunk? They said 'e was speakin' Swedish."
The bucket clatters and spills rank water all over the floor when his foot catches the handle as he bolts for the bunker doors.
It takes him fifteen minutes of pushing through throngs of people before he finally makes it to the front of the line where workers are unloading the caravan full of people. Some are able to walk on their own, but most are being brought in on makeshift stretchers or are being carried and Peter watches, anxious, as they bring each group in, frantically searching for the rumored Swede. As the groups began to thin out, he yanks the sleeve of another spectator.
"I heard they found a guy in Denmark...didn't they bring him in?" He asks.
"Yeah," the man replies and jerks his thumb in the direction of the wall. "Brought him in first. They wanted to keep him close to the doors."
Peter frowns. "Why?"
The man just laughs. "Less distance to carry him in the morning. People are already staking claims on his clothes."
Peter's eyes widen at this and he pushes away from the man and begins to search the walls, looking for any sign of who he is looking for. There are plenty of new faces; all of them are wrapped in threadbare wool blankets, some crying and others staring blankly ahead, all coughing and reeking of infection, clutching their belongings to their chest and trying to ignore the greedy looks of the others.
At the far end of the bunker, tucked in the corner, Peter finally finds the man in question, laid out on the floor beneath a blanket, surrounded by a tight ring of whispering people, waiting like vultures, but not bothering to get close enough to check for life. Peter shoves past them all, shouting at them to move, and drops to his knees beside the covered figure on the ground, hands hovering above the dirty blanket. Through the fabric, he can hear the man taking wet, rattling breaths, shallow and too fast to be healthy, his shoulders just barely moving beneath the blanket.
