She immediately fetched a bottle of water from the fridge for Gary, and Mitch brought in a basin of water and a washcloth for him to clean his face. Amber gathered some dried zucchini chips—which he devoured with a ravenous speed.
"This is amazing," Gary said as he munched on the zucchini chips. "Nothing’s ever tasted so good…” He closed his eyes and snapped another chip into his mouth. "What kind of seasoning is on these things?"
Cami grinned. "I just sprinkle a little cajun spices on them before I dehydrate them. Better than any bag of chips, huh?”
“Hoowhee—these things are amazing!"
Cami nudged the bottle of water closer to Gary. "Just make sure you stay hydrated when you eat those things—you can easily eat a couple whole zucchinis worth and they'll suck the moisture right out of you."
Gary downed half the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of one filthy hand, then used the washcloth Mitch handed him to wipe his face. In seconds, the water in the basin turned muddy brown, but Gary Adams looked human again.
He dropped the cloth back into the basin and leaned back in his chair with a contented sigh. "Thank you. Cami, thank you. I don't think I could've made it if I didn't know that you were taking care of Mitch. And all this," he said spreading his hands to encompass the kitchen, the refrigerator, the power cords that lead out to the solar panels, and the plywood-cased windows. He shook his head. "It's amazing what you’ve been able to do here." His eyes narrowed, and he locked Cami's gaze. "Be careful and protect it. The world that we knew a week ago doesn't exist anymore. It's a lot harder, a lot more cruel than I've ever seen."
"What's going on out there?" asked Cami. "We haven't really gotten any decent news in the last three or four days. Once the power went out, everybody lost easy access to information. All we have are rumors."
"Well, the rumors you've heard are probably true—things are getting nasty. After I escaped the marina—that was a close call—me and a couple others managed to stay just ahead of the waves. Everything's gone…” he said and looked down at his hands as they rested on the table. No one said anything, and eventually he continued.
"The marina was…shattered like a handful of dry twigs. All the boats are trashed. There's nothing left—it's a total loss. I don’t know how many people died…I tried to tell those fools not to slip anchor…but they didn’t listen." He looked down again for a moment before he continued. "The other side of the river wasn't much better. The first wave did a decent amount of damage east of the river, but once I got across the Ashley, everybody seemed to slack off. People were more interested in taking pictures and filming the chaos on the other side,” he said, disgusted.
"Yeah," Mitch agreed as he took a seat next to his dad. "We saw that from the Walmart."
"That's where you guys were?” Gary asked. He whistled. "I ended up something like three or four miles north of there.”
"How did you get so far north so fast without a car?” asked Amber.
"Well, while everybody was trying to take their boats south and head for open water, me and a couple other guys grabbed some tenders and headed north. Tried to get inland as far as possible from the tidal surge. It didn't work—the waters caught up with us eventually, but we managed to make it to dry land before everything got swept away."
"Wait a minute—the marina was already about ten miles or so from the coast. You were another four or five miles beyond that?"
Gary nodded. "At least."
“This thing must have been bigger than anybody expected…” Cami mused.
“I can't speak to that,” Gary replied thoughtfully, “but I can tell you when all that water came rushing up the river, it just kept going further and further north. At first there wasn't enough pressure to flood the banks and spread it out everywhere, like it did back closer to Charleston. So, the water just funneled north. I bet it went several miles beyond where we got trapped. It was like a reverse flood. Never seen anything like it."
"So, if you went north in a boat…how'd you get here?" asked Mitch.
"I walked," Gary replied in a husky voice. "I walked for almost a week. I shacked up with a couple other guys that had friends nearby for a day, but I couldn't—I just couldn't sit there any longer. Once the waves retreated for good—a lot of people got tricked when the first and second waves came, thinking it was all over.”
“I can’t imagine…” Cami empathized.
“I don't even want to know how many thousands of people tried to rush back into Charleston to look for loved ones and then got caught by the third and fourth and fifth waves,” Gary said. “I don't even know how many waves there were, they just kept coming for what seemed like the first few days." Gary's stare was very far away. "Once I left that little shack we’d set up, I followed the destruction—and tried to stay out of the worst of it—made my way south and west. I followed the Ashley as long as I could, then turned off on the roads. Everything was covered in mud and water.” He looked at Cami. “Whatever they're saying the death count is, double it.”
“Is it really that bad?” asked Mitch.
”I personally saw hundreds of bodies on the way here, in just the first 48 hours,” Gary replied. He put a hand on Mitch’s arm. “There were corpses everywhere.
