“Damn,” Clay said. “It looks now like the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket.”
“What happened has happened,” Jake said. “But we can’t look back now. We have to keep our eyes on what is in front of us. We have to survive.”
“Survive, then what?” Karin said. “What do we do then? Do we just live out the rest of our lives in isolation?”
“You heard Gregoire. There will be others like us,” Jake said. “We will establish contact with them.”
“And once we establish contact, then what?”
“We’re not ready yet to decide then what,” Jake said. “As I said, our first duty is to survive. And we do that by facing one challenge at a time, one day at a time.”
James Laney stood on the roof of The Indies, a seven-story condo built ten years earlier for people who wanted a vacation beach home for themselves, and also for those who wanted investment rental property.
Not one unit was occupied now, as many had been taken over by the bank in foreclosures. Even those units that were owned outright stood empty now because there was no fuel available for the owners to come down, nor incentive to do so, since there was neither electricity nor running water.
A few minutes earlier James had climbed the stairs to the top of The Indies in order to have a better view of the Gulf and, more importantly, the sky over the Gulf.
“We’ve got a hurricane comin’,” he had announced that morning to Jerry Cornett and Bob Varney. “I can feel it in my ankles and in my knees.”
Since James had accurately forecasted both Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, Jerry and Bob took him seriously. They were sitting at a table on the deck behind James’s house when he came back.
“Did you see anything?” Jerry asked.
“No,” James said. “But I know damn well one is out there.”
“What are we going to do?” Bob asked.
“What can we do? If we combined what fuel we have left and all crowded into the same car, it would not be enough to get us away from the storm,” James said. “And even if we did we wouldn’t have enough fuel to come back here. We don’t have any choice. We are going to ride it out.”
“I thought we said that, after Katrina, we weren’t going to ride another one out,” Bob said.
“Yeah, we did say that,” James agreed. “But I don’t think we have a choice now.”
“James is right,” Jerry said. “We don’t have any choice.”
“Jerry, your house is right down on the front line,” James said. “You and Gaye might be better off coming here to stay with Cille and me.”
“Yeah, I think we will. What about you, Bob?”
“We’re a little farther back from the beach than James, even,” Bob said. “We’ll ride it out there, then come back over here after it passes.”
Because there was no functioning TV or radio, Bob and the others of the little group had no news on the hurricane with regard to either its strength, or its name. They took it upon themselves to name the storm, calling it Hurricane Ohmshidi, declaring that no matter how strong it was, it couldn’t possibly do more damage than the president had already done.
Bob convinced Ellen that they, and Charley, should ride out the storm in their minivan. “It presents less of a surface to the wind,” he explained. “Besides, if you can drive a car at a hundred miles an hour on the highway, it seems reasonable to assume that the car can withstand one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds.”
The wind started increasing in strength at about six o’clock that evening, getting progressively stronger until midnight. Bob, Ellen, and Charley were in their Toyota Sienna, looking through the windshield onto the street in front of their house. The wind was howling like the engines of a jet airliner sitting on the end of the runway just starting its takeoff run, and the minivan was buffeted about like an airplane flying through rough air.
The rain that pelted the windshield made it very difficult to see, because each drop of rain was filled with sand that had blown up from the beach. When they could see, they saw roofs from houses, balconies, outside steps, and large pieces of wood tumbling by in front of them. Bob had parked under his house, so the van had some protection from the tumbling debris by the large doubly braced stilts upon which his house set.
At midnight the eye passed over them and everything stilled. With no rain nor wind, Bob flashed on the lights so they could see. The street was piled high with wreckage from houses that had fallen before the storm.
Bob had a small, handheld, two-way radio. He depressed the talk button. “James, do you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“You folks making out all right over there?”
“We’re fine,” James said. “But there is water all the way up to the back of my property line. There’s water from here all the way down to the Gulf. How are you folks doing?”
“The car is getting buffeted around quite a bit, but other than that we are doing fine.”
“You can always come over here if you want.”
“No, we’ve come this far, we’ll ride the rest of it out. Fact is, I don’t want to go outside now, anyway, because the wind is picking up again.”
“All right, we’ll see you in the morning.”
When the rain started again, Bob put his seat back down.
“What are you doing?” Ellen asked.
“I’m going to sleep.”
“In this? How can you sleep in this?”
“What else is there to do?” Bob asked.
Charley had been sitting on Ellen’s lap, but he jumped over onto Bob and lay down on top of him. He was shaking badly.
“You don’t need to be afraid, Charley Dog,” Bob said. “You aren’t going to get wet or blown away.”
“I hope that’s true for all of us,” Ellen said.
Bob reached up to take her hand. “It could be worse,” he said.
“How could it be worse?”
“This could be ten years ago when my mother and your mother were still alive, and they could both be in the backseat.”
Ellen laughed. “You’re right,” she said. “It could be worse.”
Though the noise of the storm and the wind continued unabated for at least seven more hours, from midnight until seven o’clock the next morning, Bob went to sleep. He didn’t wake until Ellen shook his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“The storm has stopped,” Ellen said.
“Good,” Bob said. He put his seat back up. “Did you get any sleep?”
“ No.”
“Why not?”
“Someone had to stay awake.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why,” Ellen said. “It’s just that somebody needed to stay awake.”
“I appreciate your dedication to duty,” Bob said.
The rain had stopped, and they could see, but the wind, while no longer at hurricane strength, was still blowing very hard. However, the wind had stilled enough that large pieces of debris were no longer flying by.
“Let’s go over and see how the others fared,” Bob suggested.
Walking was difficult, but by leaning into the wind, they were able to stay on their feet. Charley could not stand up against it, and was rolled up by the wind, so Bob had to carry him. When they reached James’s house, they saw that the water had come up to the very edge of his property. Every other house in the compound, at least those that remained standing, were in water that was halfway up the stilts upon which all the houses were mounted. They were surprised to see two women with James and the others.
James introduced them as Sarah Miller, who was twenty-one, and Becky Jackson, her aunt. Though she was Sarah’s aunt, Becky was only twenty-three.
