“You’re with me for the foreseeable future,” Kate declared. “Don’t panic, it’s probably not going to take long. I am the head of the squad that checks for damage after storms and reports it to the right people. I need two pairs of hands and Miller is napping, so you’re up!”
“Oh, I don’t know how much help I can...”
“Let me cut you off right there,” she said. “First off, never downplay your abilities. There are plenty of people that will jump at the chance to doubt you, you shouldn’t be one of them. Secondly, I have to get you a sim card for your phone and get you hooked up to the island early warning weather system or you’ll get whipped off to the emerald city or something.”
That seemed fair. I donned the vest and fastened the Velcro straps to secure it. The ground was squelching under foot as the rain had soaked through the soil and created a dense mud. The sky was clear blue, I couldn’t even see clouds in the distance. I had thought that it would be all sun, sea and sand. I hadn’t been expecting to be wading through puddles.
“It’s not like this too often, honestly,” Kate laughed. “It keeps things interesting though, not that we need more interesting stuff to be happening. Hey, I guess this is going to be your introductory tour of the main island. Stick with me and don’t touch anything.”
I followed Kate through the back of ‘Pete’s Za’ and out onto the main street. It didn’t seem as though there was much building damage, or at least not damage caused by the weather. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at a symbol spray-painted across a shoe store window. It looked like two small flags that were both blowing towards each other as if moved by opposing winds.
“Urgh, don’t get me started,” Kate huffed. She stopped walking for a moment and pointed at the spray paint markings. “This symbol is a sign that an ancient treaty is being shredded by the young’uns and somehow, in the middle of a storm, the priority was making sure this got drawn to send a warning to any passing folk from the Conerty family. This has ‘Davick’ written all over it.”
I didn’t understand what a ‘Davick’ was, or what treaty she was referring to, but she began marching off up the street again and I jogged to catch up.
“We are looking for roof damage, broken glass, trees that have pulled down power cables or corpses. Keep your eyes peeled,” Kate said.
“Corpses?” I gasped.
“Ha, it’s unlikely but now if we find one you can’t claim you weren’t warned,” she smiled. “Okay, so this is the main street, right? If you look down there you can see the turn off for the beach, we have most of the stuff on this island, so people from the other islands come here to shop, stock up on groceries and loiter.”
“Is there a place I can stock up on shorts?” I asked. The denim jeans weren’t feeling as restrictive now as the storm had taken some of the heat out of the air, but Kate was wearing a cool cotton jumpsuit and I wanted to be wearing that outfit instead of my own.
“Dude, we even sell shorts in the drug store,” Kate laughed. “Nowhere is going to be open for at least an hour. Folks will be heading home to check on their houses, then come back to get business up and running again. We need to head to the cemetery anyway.”
“Why?” I asked. It seemed like the last place anyone would want to go and surely everybody there was already dead, we wouldn’t be looking to call an ambulance for anyone, right? Kate was already marching us away from the main street towards a slope that curved downwards gently.
“Do you see all this water?” she said, pointing at a stream that was racing us along the edge of the sidewalk. I nodded. “For some reason our cemetery is downhill. This whole place is referred to as ‘the lower ground. A few weirdos live down here, I’d stay away if I were you. Anyway, the cemetery location wasn’t well thought through.”
“Would you rather people were buried on the beach?” I joked.
“We don’t really bury people anymore. About ten years back we started building above ground cemetery structures, I guess you’d call them tombs. With these storms, hurricanes or whatever, we can get some flooding in the lower ground, and obviously that’s a problem.”
“Oh, does it mess up the houses down here?” I said. Kate gave me a confused look.
“No, the houses have all been put up on stilts. The houses will be fine,” she explained. “Do you know what happens in a cemetery when it floods?” I shrugged, why would I know that? “It can wash away the dirt, make the coffins float about, and in some cases... the bodies get out.” She had leaned closer as if she were telling me a secret and my skin shuddered.
“Get out?” I repeated.
“Yeah, just a few people that need re-burying. All the newer bodies are in the tombs so they’re fine. As long as the coffins are intact, we won’t see anything freaky,” Kate smiled. I felt nauseous. I could see that the cemetery was surrounded by a metal fence and there were trees scattered across the space like green polka dots. It didn’t distract me from the flood waters though.
Kate was in water a few inches short of her knees. I couldn’t see any coffins so felt relief, but that didn’t mean that sticking close behind my unofficial guide was easy. I had to make the decision to stay outside the gate and risk being alone if more bad weather
