by Hugh Howey
“Turn it up,” he said as Zola grabbed the remote.
The experts at the hurricane center rattled off all the reasons the storm was changing and moving, and some of the excuses for why they hadn’t seen it coming. They repeated what the officer had said about the Gulf Stream. They showed similar storms from previous years, even one that crossed Florida twice, stopping in the Gulf and inexplicably reversing directions. “These things happen,” they said. “It’s an inexact science.”
When they went back to satellite shots of Anna, her clouds ticking through the last half day of movement, Daniel could see it deflect northward, riding the warm and upward flow of that giant mid-ocean river off the East coast. A meteorologist drew in the lines of a cold front with a digital marker, showing how it was sucking the storm northward. There was a lot of talk about Charleston and “another Hugo,” even though the current track lines had it running right through Beaufort.
“They’re worried it’s gonna brush Charleston,” Zola said.
“But it’s gonna slam into us,” Daniel muttered.
“Zola, help me round up the candles.” Their mom hurried off toward the utility room. Zola dropped the remote and went to the mantle to grab the fancy ones.
“What can I do?” Daniel asked, not taking his eyes off the TV.
“I’ve got the tubs filling with water,” Carlton said. How about you filling some containers with some more. Tupperware, buckets, anything you can find.”
“For drinking?”
“I’m not drinking out of the bathtub!” Zola yelled from the dining room. She stuck her head around the corner, a bundle of red candlesticks in her arms.
“Nobody’s drinking out of the bathtub,” Carlton said. “It’s for flushing the toilet and whatever else we might need it for. If we lose power, we won’t have the well pump.”
Daniel followed Carlton into the kitchen and started rummaging around in the cabinets for pitchers and containers with lids. He noticed a few flashlights and a ton of loose batteries on the island counter.
“So the worst that can happen is that we lose power for a while?” He topped up a pitcher with water and set it on the counter. Carlton fit the lid inside the pitcher and rotated it closed. He slid it to the side and frowned at Daniel as he began filling the largest Tupperware.
“The worst is that we lose the house or someone gets hurt.”
Daniel saw that he was serious. “Were you here for Hugo?” he asked. Some things lived in his brain as legend, or historical curiosity. For him, Hugo was nothing more than before and after pictures in Charleston area restaurants. It was commemorated lines on the sides of buildings showing how high the tide got. It was the news clips of boats in trees that they used to scare people into evacuating, convincing families to get on the interstate and sit for twelve hours on what should be a two hour jaunt. In his neck of the woods, Hugo had become the name of the prototypical storm, even though he was sure there’d never be another like it. It was the bogeyman of meteorology. It lived in the weather closet, and parents used it to terrify kids.
“I was in Charlotte for Hugo,” Carlton finally said. His eyes seemed to focus far away, his lips pressed together. When he returned his attention to Daniel’s face, he must’ve seen the relief there, for Carlton’s guise hardened further.
“It was still an amazing storm, even that far inland. Tornados were spun off every which way. You’ve never seen so many trees down or houses demolished. Nobody had power for days, most for weeks.”
Daniel felt water spill over the lip of the full container. He sloshed a little more out so it could be handled and passed it to Carlton. He grabbed the next one as the window over the sink rattled in the wind, absorbing its fury and shivering with it.
“What do we do next?” Daniel asked. He looked out at the fluttering leaves and the twisting trees in the back yard. He remembered, as a kid once, helping his father put plywood over every door and window when Floyd looked like it might be the next Hugo. It became a category five, the worst sort of storm, but never made landfall. They had done all that work for nothing. And now they had done nothing in preparation, and already the wind outside seemed dangerous.
“Now you should go get some sleep. Take a flashlight with you. Your mom and I will wake you up if it gets bad.”
Daniel handed him the last container and shut off the water. Carlton squeezed his shoulder. In that instant, and for the first time, Daniel realized Carlton was his own person. It seemed obvious in retrospect, but the thought had never hit him before. This man who had stumbled into their lives, and then their home, had existed before he did either of those things. He had lived somewhere else. He had been through other storms. He had been a kid just like Daniel. These were alien thoughts.
“Try and get some sleep,” Carlton said.
Daniel patted his stepdad on the arm, even though he felt like doing more. He was just so used to doing less. He grabbed a flashlight, clicked it on and off to make sure it had juice, then ran off toward the stairs. He stomped up them, rounded the bannister at the top, and headed for his room. As he passed his sister’s room, he saw the door had been propped open with a chair. She was inside, sitting up in her bed, holding her nonworking phone toward the window and grumbling at it.
Daniel laughed at her as he changed into sleep pants and a clean t-shirt. He placed the flashlight on his side table, turned off the light, and rolled over to gaze out the darkened window. Outside, shadows shivered. Trees waved their arms like ghouls, and leaves threw themselves flat against the glass, peeked inside for a moment, then raced off to some hurried elsewhere.
11
Daniel woke to a flashlight shining in his face. At first, he thought it was the cops. He was back at the party. Had he passed out drunk? He was dreaming of being naked at a party with his entire class there, even his parents. Everyone was laughing. Was he being arrested for being naked in public?
“Daniel, I need you to get up.”
“Huh?”
He sat up and rubbed his face. He was home. Why was he getting up? Wasn’t it a weekend? Was it Monday already?
“Daniel, honey, get some clothes on and come downstairs.”
Daniel saw flashlights dance through the hallway outside. He could hear Carlton and Zola conversing. He reached over and twisted the knob on his lamp. It clicked and spun, doing nothing.
“The power’s out,” his mom said. She pressed a flashlight into his palm before he could begin to think of groping for it. “Put on some pants and some socks and shoes. And bring a pillow.”
With that, his silhouette of a mom took her cone of light out of the room. Daniel could hear her rummaging in the upstairs bathroom while he tugged on a pair of jeans. He grabbed socks, slid them on, his head still groggy as he reached for his shoes.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It’s two o’clock.”
“Only two?” He’d only been in bed for a couple of hours. He slid a shoe on. Whistling sounds coincided with vibrations throughout the house. He could hear air forcing its way through the tiny gaps around his window. Studs in the walls creaked as the upper floor seemed to move a little. Daniel grabbed his flashlight and raced out of the room, then remembered his pillow. He went back, grabbed it and his comforter, and ran downstairs, trailing the blanket behind.
“Zola?” He waved his light over the living room, but nobody was there. Pillows and a blanket were scrunched up on the sofa, the remote lying on top. It was where his mom and Carlton had played sentry while they slept.
“In the bathroom!”
Daniel walked through to the kitchen and shined his light down the hallway. The bathroom door was open.
“Are you using it?”
“Don’t be gross! Carlton’s in here.”
Daniel went down the hallway, confused. A lambent glow spilled out of the bathroom. He peeked inside and saw candles on the counter. His sister was scrunched up on the tile, between the tub and the wall, a pillow behind her head. She looked upse
t at having been awakened.
“Are we supposed to all fit in here?” He stepped over Carlton legs and sat down beside his sister. She reached for his comforter and spread it out over her knees.
“This is so stupid,” she said.
“It’s in the center of the house,” Carlton explained. “No windows, and the walls are close together. It’s this or sitting in the pantry and hoping the canned goods don’t jump off the shelves.”
“Why couldn’t we just sleep through the whole thing?” Daniel asked. He flicked off his flashlight to save the battery as their mom squeezed into the bathroom. She unloaded an armful of their toiletries by the sink, then sank down with her back to the cabinet door.
“Everyone okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” Carlton said. He squeezed her knee. “How’re you?”
“I’m not needing this right now,” their mother said. She tucked her hair back behind her ear, then pressed both hands against her face. “I’m so behind at work. I did not need this right now.”
“So Hunter gets to spend the night at Chen’s?”
Carlton threw Daniel a look. “Her parents are there. The officer who brought you two home said it was best not to be on the road if it could be helped.”
“How long before they fix the cell phones?” Zola asked.
“Please stop with that,” their mom said. Her voice sounded strained.
Daniel frowned at Zola, who pouted and looked near to crying. She flopped over on her side and curled up in a tight ball, knees to her chin, her phone clutched in both hands.
“How long do we need to stay like this?” Daniel asked Carlton.
“Just ’till it blows over,” he said. “It could be hours, so if you can sleep, you should.”
Daniel leaned back against the side of the tub and hugged his knees. He rested his chin on his kneecap and watched the candles throw shadows everywhere. Upstairs, the house creaked and popped as it moved around on unsteady joints. The wind was whistling louder and higher. Daniel thought about his father, who had built the house many years ago. He wondered if he’d fucked that up like everything else. The thought made him suddenly fearful about the sturdiness of their shelter. Still, Daniel had heard heavy storms assault the house before. It had always survived. As Zola kicked his feet to the side, making more room for herself, he thought about how ridiculous it was for the four of them to be crammed into a single bathroom. He was thinking this as he drifted off to sleep—
••••
There was a period before every hurricane where the only things stirring in the air were excitement and anticipation. Daniel had grown up with a series of near misses. He had watched news crews roll through town, had spent entire days in front of the weather channel as track lines were plotted and re-plotted. He had gone to the beach to watch the surfers in their wetsuits paddle out through rushing walls of foam. He remembered standing up on one of the many boardwalks that crossed over the grassy dunes to the hard pack of Beaufort’s beaches beyond. The waves were crashing all the way up to the dunes, slicking the sea grasses down like hair on a wet scalp. Daniel had stood at the end of the raised wooden platform and held onto the rail as the angry ocean leapt up, over and over, to crash across his thighs and knees, threatening to sweep him off into the street.
Another time, with the sea not so enraged, he and Roby had tried to swim out through the storm-angry breakers. Even without surfboards in their hands, neither of them had been strong enough to dive down and swim through the powerful currents engendered by the curling waves and walls of foam. There had been a moment during that exhausting swim when the fun and excitement had taken a bad turn. The raw power of the ocean around him, the roar of the foaming and spitting sea, the endless reserves of strength nature seemed to possess as it sent one riled wave after the other, never letting up—Daniel remembered the fun turning to panic.
Swimming out of the ocean, calling for Roby, letting him know that he was giving up, he had felt the largeness of the universe around him. He knew, then, what it was to be a speck floating in the infinite. There was no crying “mercy.” It wasn’t Hunter, who could be pleaded with. He couldn’t change his mind, couldn’t beg the ocean to stop, to let up on the roaring foam. As he swam back to where his feet could touch, straining on tiptoes to push toward the beach, the piles of white froth on the surface of the water had gone into his nose and mouth. The ocean was a rabid dog. But as he pressed further, and the walls of crashing wave stopped spilling over his head, then crashing at his back, then pushing against his knees, then lapping his running, high-stepping, shivering ankles, Daniel saw it as something worse than an enraged mutt. It was, instead, a destructive and unfeeling thing. It threatened without knowing.
Roby’s eyes had been wide and dripping with fear as he joined Daniel high up the dune. They had laughed with nerves and shivered in the strong, chilling wind. The ocean, meanwhile, kept thundering. It was a dozing giant, a disinterested beast that could kill with a sneeze, rattle with its exhalations, strike one down with its barest of shivers. And that, the soulless impersonal giant Daniel saw that day, scared him more than the anthropomorphized monster he used to liken to an angry Earth. He was an ant underfoot. A fly flattened by a mindless windshield. A grain of sand plummeting from a shrugged shoulder and spiraling to its doom—
••••
Daniel woke to thunder and the sensation of falling. The house was shaking, his mom crying out in alarm, powder from the ceiling drifting into his eyes as he looked up. He had a sudden image of a wave crashing over their house, of it disappearing in foam, his nightmare images leaking out into the noise and clamor of the real.
“What was that?” Zola asked. She sat up and clutched at Daniel. The house was still reverberating from the great crash. The echo of the noise, the sound of it from his dreams—and then Daniel realized the boom that woke them had been much louder than any of the other storm noises. The wind outside was terrifying and loud. It seemed to have grown louder. Daniel could hear the bones and joints of their house cracking and popping, almost as if the nails his father had driven by hand were now coming loose.
Carlton lit a candle. “Sounded like something hitting the house,” he said.
There was fear or sleepiness in his voice. Daniel could hear a swishing sound beyond the howl of the wind as sheets of rain pummeled the siding. It sounded like a massive straw broom was being raked violently across the house, over and over.
“Like a boat, or something?” Daniel had images of Hugo in his mind. They were miles from shore and the nearest marina, but he couldn’t shake the image of waves crashing over their house, like in his dream.
“Probably a tree.”
“Is there anything we should do?” his mother asked. She lit another candle, and Daniel saw for the first time that his all-powerful mom was scared and at a loss. He pried Zola’s fingernails out of his arm and patted the backs of her hands.
“Sorry,” his sister said.
“Can I take a flashlight and go look?”
His mom and stepdad both frowned at him. “This is the safest place to be until the storm’s over,” his mom said.
“I’ve gotta pee,” said Zola, bouncing her knees.
“Just a quick look, Mom. Just to see what it was. I won’t be long.”
Their mother looked back and forth between him and Zola, then turned to Carlton.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s going on out there,” Carlton admitted.
“Alright. We’ll move out into the hallway and take turns using the bathroom. Nobody flushes, okay? We’ll do that last.”
Zola groaned. “Are you serious?”
“And I’ve got a garbage bag here somewhere for the toilet paper so it doesn’t clog up.” Their mom dug in the bag of supplies she’d been using as a pillow.
“This sucks,” Zola said.
“You’re lucky you’re going first,” Daniel told her. He grabbed one of the flashlights. Carlton flicked one of the others on and back off again. The
three of them shuffled into the hallway as Zola lifted the top lid of the toilet, still complaining under her breath.
“Damn, the house is moving,” Daniel said.
“Watch your language,” his mom said.
“We forgot to crack the windows,” Carlton hissed. He flicked on his flashlight as Zola pushed the door shut, squeezing off the light from the candles inside.
Daniel turned on his flashlight. “Why would we crack the windows?”
“It’s supposed to regulate the pressure inside and out. I don’t know if it’s an old wives tale or if there’s anything to it—”
“My dad used to make us do it as well,” his mom said. “They used to say it kept the roof from sucking off.”
“Is that what that noise was?”
“Nah, I think that was a tree hitting the house. It probably sounded a lot worse than it actually was.”
“We should crack the windows, I think,” his mom said, indecision in her voice.
There was a flushing sound in the bathroom.
“I’m sorry!” Zola called out. She cracked the door just as their mom was reaching for the knob. “It was a habit. I couldn’t stop myself!”
The toilet gurgled; Zola pouted in the cone of light from Daniel’s flashlight. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It’s okay,” their mom said. She patted Zola on the arm. “You wanna come out while I go?”
Her eyes darted to the sides as the howling outside intensified during an especially powerful gust. The house swayed. “Can I stay in here with you? I won’t look.”
Their mom laughed. “Okay.” She kissed Carlton on the cheek. “I would just crack a few of them several inches or so.” She squeezed Daniel’s arm. “Be careful and don’t be long.”