William Johnstone - Phoenix Rising

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.

“They were in the Carpe Diem house,” James explained. “That’s where they rode out the storm last night.”

“Whoa, Carpe Diem is under water up to the first floor, isn’t it?” Bob asked.

“Yes,” Becky said.

“I’ll bet it was a frightening night.”

“I’ve never been so afraid in my life,” Sarah said.

“We thought we were the only ones out here, until Mr. Laney came over in his boat to get us this morning,” Becky said.

“What in the world were you doing there?”

“We had a gift shop in Mobile, but when everything started going bad, we had to close our shop. Then things got a little dangerous there. My folks have this place down here so we came down, thinking it would be safer,” Becky said.

“Of course, without TV or radio, we had no idea we were coming right into the middle of a hurricane. We got here yesterday morning, the hurricane hit last night,” Sarah added.

“You’re lucky the house didn’t blow away,” Cille said. “So many of them have.”

“Nineteen in The Dunes alone,” James said. “Including Jerry’s house.”

“I’m sorry, Jerry,” Bob said.

“It could’ve been worse,” Jerry said. “Gaye and I could have been in it.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“Wait until you see the front of The Indies condo,” James said. “The entire front wall came down last night. It looks like a giant dollhouse. You can see into every unit in the building.”

“And we’re going to have to live with this a long time,” Bob said. “It’s not like it was with Katrina and Ivan when everyone started rebuilding right away.”

“At least we don’t have to worry about the power coming back,” Jerry said. “Because it never is coming back.”

“I’d love to know what’s going on in the world,” Bob said. “It would be nice if they’ve impeached Ohmshidi. Surely, by now, those idiots in Washington have figured out that this idiot is the one who totally destroyed our economy.”

“We don’t have a government anymore,” Becky said.

“You can say that again. I mean if they are just going to sit by and watch Ohmshidi destroy us without doing a thing to stop him . . .”

“No, I mean seriously. Since the three atom bombs, Ohmshidi has dissolved the government.”

“Three atom bombs? Government dissolved? What are you talking about?” Bob asked.

“And where are you getting all this information?” Jerry added.

“There is a man in Mobile who lives close to us, who has a shortwave radio,” Becky said. “Boston, New York, and, I think Norfolk, were all hit with nuclear bombs.”

“Son of a bitch!” Jerry said. “It’s not enough I’ve lost my house. We’re losing our entire country.”

“Losing our country?” James said. “Sounds to me like we have lost it.”

“Well, there’s one good thing,” Bob said.

“What’s that?”

“It can’t get any worse.”

Despite himself, Jerry laughed. “And that’s a good thing?”

“Any port in a storm.”

“Oh, don’t talk any more about storms,” Becky said. “The one we had last night was enough.”

“Well, we all made it through, so what do you say we have some breakfast?” Jerry suggested.

“Sounds good to me,” Cille said.

“How about biscuits and gravy?” Bob asked.

“Biscuits and gravy? You’ve got biscuits and gravy?” Becky asked. “How? I mean, where did you get it?”

“You just don’t know my talent,” Bob said. “I can make something out of nothing.”

Ellen laughed. “He’s telling you a big one. But he is good at making do. And since nearly every house out here had a well-stocked pantry and there is nobody here anymore, we have sort of inherited it. Flour, cornmeal, canned vegetables, condensed milk, and several canned meat products.”

“What about water?”

“Every house out here has a hot water tank. Some of them have two tanks,” James said. “We’re okay on water for a while.”

“What happens when you run out?”

“As you may have noticed, last night we get a lot of rain. We’ll build a catchment and storage system when we need it.”

A little less than an hour later all eight sat down to a bountiful breakfast of biscuits, gravy, and fried Spam.

“Oh,” Sarah said as she took her first bite. “This is good!”

“Life is good,” Bob said. He chuckled. “Or, at least as good as it can be under the present circumstances.”