Hugh Howey - The Hurricane

“Maybe Zola can stay in his room until he does?”

Carlton frowned and gave Daniel a look. Daniel bit his lip and dropped the discussion.

They worked and chatted until noon, the late summer sun creeping overhead and drawing the sweat out of them. They drank nothing but water, leaving their supply of canned sodas and cartons of juices for later. The Tupperware containers and pitchers Daniel had helped fill were emptied first, poured into glasses with the last bit of ice from the freezer. They enjoyed the clinking luxury and refreshing coldness before the lack of power melted such things away.

Midway through the afternoon, as the pile of debris along the cul-de-sac grew wider and taller, Daniel started thinking about all the things he took for granted and would have to go without, possibly for days. The internet and cell phones were the most obvious. He was dying to get in touch with Roby, to call or e-mail him about the girl with the soldering iron and unfortunate name. As used as he was to not hearing from his friend over the summers, being suddenly cut off from him right as school resumed felt unnatural. It was also crazy that they couldn’t get in touch with Hunter. The entire concept was bizarre. His brother was probably no more than fifteen or twenty miles away, but it might as well have been thousands. Daniel knew, in the back of his mind where logic slumbered, that twenty miles wasn’t too far to walk and that some people even chose to run or bike such distances for pleasure, but it felt like an endless, impossible trek to him. He would drive around a parking lot looking for the closest spot, investing more time in the irrational pursuit than the time it would take to cover the extra distance by foot. He never pointed out this inherent silliness when his family left one shop in a strip mall, got in the car, then drove through the parking lot to visit a store just seven or eight doors down. All that seemed normal and natural. Walking fifteen or twenty miles as a means of locomotion seemed absurd. The prior hundred million years of four-legged scampering and eventual bipedalism couldn’t compete with the last hundred of flexing an ankle and steering. Not yet, anyway.

“That was the corner with the DirecTV dish on it.”

Daniel snapped out of his ponderings and looked to Carlton. He was peering up at the tree resting snugly against the house. “I think it got crushed,” he said. He wiped his brow and went back to work sawing a too-big branch in half with a handsaw.

“How are we gonna take showers tonight?” Daniel asked.

Carlton stopped sawing. “Hadn’t thought about that.” He pinched the hem of his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat dripping from his chin. “I reckon we’ll be sponging off from buckets out here.”

“ Outside ?” Zola asked, listening in to their conversation.

“The upstairs tub is empty,” Daniel offered. “We could take buckets up there and rinse off.”

“We’ll have to conserve the water,” their mother said. “We need to assume it’ll be a week without power. It could be even longer.”

“There’ll be places we can go if it gets to be that long,” Carlton said. “After Hugo, they had generators running at the YMCA and we stood in lines for hot showers. But still, we’ll have to be careful with how much we use of everything.”

Daniel absorbed those words and thought about how surreal their lives had become, and in an instant. He could actually picture what the end of the world might be like. He felt he was getting a hazy glimpse of Armageddon.

“It’ll get better once we get a car back,” their mother said. “Once Hunter shows up, we’ll go try and find some supplies, see if we can borrow a chainsaw, find someone who can get that tree off and patch the roof, even if temporarily.”

“Can we get your car out of the shop?” Daniel asked Carlton.

He shrugged. “We’ll have to run by there and see.”

“There is so much I need to be getting done at work,” their mom said out of nowhere. She tugged off her gloves and rested her hands on her knees. “This couldn’t have happened on a worse week.”

Carlton rested his saw on the tree in front of him and went to her side. “There wouldn’t have been a good week for this,” he said. “When are you not busy at work?” He put an arm across her shoulders, and Daniel and Zola looked to each other in the uncomfortable silence. Chainsaws buzzed in the distance, but it was getting so Daniel hardly noticed them. They were the new sounds to replace the chirping birds, who still had not returned from wherever they had gone. Daniel was waiting for them and Hunter to return. He was waiting for some reason or excuse to visit Anna down the street, even though the idea of just walking to her house filled him with nervous jitters. He was waiting on these things—but it was a surprise visitor who came to him first. The visitor arrived that afternoon as the sun was beginning to set and dinner was being scraped off dishes and into the yard.

It was then that Daniel’s father came home.

The unexpected arrival of their dad brought the same bittersweet sting and salve that his departure had wrought. The excitement came from the sight of a power company truck, one of the bucket machines with large tires and metal tool cabinets everywhere. Its brakes squealed to a stop in the cul-de-sac; Zola turned to the window, saw it first, and let out a squeal of excitement.

“We’re gonna get power back!” she said.

She left the dishes to dry on a towel spread across the dining room table and ran toward the front door. A chair squeaked on the wood floor as Carlton got up to follow her out. Daniel hurried after them, hoping to hear some news from the outside world besides the Charlestonian static from his Zune.

Zola was halfway down the driveway when she stopped cold. The passenger door had opened, disgorging a man familiar at any distance. She stood there, frozen in place, as he shrugged a green duffle up on his shoulder and walked toward them, smiling.

“Frank,” Carlton said, more out of stunned recognition than by way of greeting.

Their father nodded. “Carlton.”

“What are you doing here?” their mom asked. She moved briskly down the driveway, past Daniel who had taken a spot by his sister, his arm moving around Zola’s back. The driver got out of the truck and slammed the door, then rummaged in one of the tool boxes.

“I had no place else to go,” their father said, lifting his hands. The smile on his lips dimmed, then faded altogether. “I lost the boat,” he said quietly.

Their mom raised a hand to cut him off. She walked past him, toward the man from the power company, who rounded the truck with a chainsaw in his hand. Everyone else stood on the driveway, casting uncomfortable glances.

“How long before the power’s back?” Daniel heard his mom ask.

The man shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Can’t say,” he said. “We’re just doing a survey right now.” He walked up the driveway and set the chainsaw down by their father’s feet. “I told Frank I’d drop him off since I was heading near here anyway.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We came in on our service road by the lines. I think you guys are cut off, but somebody will probably be by in a day or two to let you know more.”

“In a day or two?” Carlton asked. “How bad is it out there?”

The man frowned. “Governor’s calling it a national disaster. They’ve got trucks and men heading this way from as far away as Florida, but coordinating it all is gonna be a nightmare. Columbia got hammered. Storm went right up twenty six. The entire interstate is closed down while they get it cleared of trees. Hell, it took us all day to work our way over here.”