by Ginger Booth
Chapter 13
Interesting fact: The U.S. had more guns per capita than any other country, at about 0.9 guns per person. The runners-up were Serbia and Yemen, with less than 0.6 guns per person. These statistics were civilian guns, not including the military.
I had three invites to choose from for New Year’s Eve. Zack’s band of soldiers, political cronies, and community garden gang planned an outdoor bonfire party at the Route 1 barricade. Mangal and Shanti wouldn’t go anywhere near that. They invited us to a quiet party at home with their Jain friends. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Shelley and Alex chose Zack’s. And Adam invited me to his house, for a reprise of our dinner and hot tub evening for two. Though this time he asked me to bring the food. All three options sounded fun.
I opted for Adam’s house.
Early the day before, the rains began. The news simply reported heavy rain in the Northeast. The talking heads joked about driving extra-carefully to those New Year’s Eve parties, wink-wink. Increasingly, tuning in to the news was like receiving video-grams from an alien planet. Our world was turned upside-down, but they cheerfully pretended that most of life was unchanged in middle-class America. There was truth reported there, but watered down to prevent alarm. For instance, the Ebola epidemic in New York City was a particularly bad flu season. And today there was heavy rain in the Northeast. Cut to heartwarming puppy segment.
I checked the satellite feeds and pre-censored National Weather Service. The ‘heavy rain’ was a tropical storm sporting large circular bands of heavy weather, named Nolan. This was our second ‘N’ of the year. Nadia was one of the hurricanes that hit Houston. They’d started the alphabet over with flipped genders. Nolan was off the outer banks of North Carolina when the hard rains reached us in Connecticut, still only a tropical storm. They expected the eye to track east off Cape Cod. That was the highest probability track, at least. There was the usual wide fan of other possibilities, including the entirety of the mid-Atlantic and southern New England seaboards.
I called Zack. “Hey, Zack, it’s Dee. How’s the car-shopping going?”
My car had not survived the Christmas night battle by the reservoir. Its burned hulk now formed part of the Route 1 barricade. Zack said he used it as a fire-bomb on the looter gang. I didn’t press for details lest the conversation go further downhill. None of our guys died. Many on the other side did. Good enough. Zack promised to replace the car with an electric one.
“Just teasing. Say, Zack, I hope you have an alternate venue for your party tomorrow. This rain feels warm and tropical to me. Doesn’t it feel tropical to you?”
“Now that you mention it. Yeah, it is a bit warm,” said Zack. It was in fact over 60 degrees, at a time of year that often saw lows in the teens. “Could get worse before it gets better, huh?”
“It could. Yeah, I’d really rather not have Alex out in that kind of storm. You know me, I’m such a scaredy-cat with the weather. My head spins. Well, let him know if you plan to move the party indoors, OK?”
“Right. Thanks for the head’s up, Dee. About the car –”
“Bye now.” I hung up. OK, so maybe I was still a little peeved about him making a bomb out of my car. I didn’t expect to stay mad at him, but it might take me a few more days to get past it. That and a replacement car.
By early New Year’s Eve, Nolan had strengthened to Category 1. It was nearly unheard of for a tropical storm to develop into a hurricane as it headed into the Northeast. Generally they weakened as they headed north across colder water. They broke up fast, of course, once they hit land. But so far Nolan stayed offshore. Though the track had edged westward slightly. It was now predicted to clip the arm of Cape Cod, about 200 miles east of us. Not a good night for Nantucket, or anywhere else within the Boston-Providence borders. But ‘heavy rain’ and gusts up to gale force were all we should see near New Haven.
The censored news continued to report nothing more than ‘heavy rain’, don’t drink too much, good night to cozy up at home, wink-wink. I suspect many screens around that time were bashed in with chairs and bottles, in reaction to the fake news reports. I was even more critical than most, being in the business. But I needed my screen, so I confined myself to rude gestures and cat-calls.
Adam picked me up at 8 p.m. as promised. He held on to my arm firmly as we walked into slashing sheets of warm rain. We still had to stop once for a few moments and just brace against the wind. The sustained winds felt like gale force to me, and that gust we braced through was a whole lot stronger than that. It was a battle closing the car doors after us.
“Adam, maybe we should stay here,” I suggested.
“It’s just a rainstorm,” he said, and started the car.
I laid my hand on his. “It’s not just a rainstorm. That was a hurricane-force wind.”
He pulled out onto the street. “We’ll be fine. But I would like to close my storm shutters, OK?”
I pondered when exactly the man closed his storm shutters, as I watched trees wave and bow nearly 90 degrees in the wind. This was especially impressive for trees with no leaves on them. I nearly slammed into the windshield as he skidded to miss a bough and live power line dancing on the road. He just backed up and went around.
“Remember the Canadian border, Adam?”
“I’m not likely to forget it, Dee, but we’re going to my house tonight.” He swerved suddenly again, off the pavement, but made it back onto the road. He’d missed a large animal, but I wasn’t sure what kind. Adam really was a skilled driver. If pig-headed. “Maybe you should let me concentrate on my driving.”
Our guys at the southern bridge simply waved us through the single-lane break in the barrier, without trying to make us stop. “They know you?” I asked.
“I just drove through here 20 minutes ago, Dee. We’re fine.”
There were white-capped waves on the sheltered estuary, crashing onto the bridge, shooting spray into the air over the car. It was still a couple hours shy of high tide. I settled back in fatalistic enjoyment of the ride. I couldn’t see much except in the path of the headlights.
Adam parked a couple blocks inland from his house. He claimed the salt water had never reached there, even in Hurricane Irene, when his stretch of houses was crushed in 2011. Not that he lived there then. He carried the box of supper I’d packed, and I held onto his arm as we trudged into the unbroken wind off Long Island Sound.
He’d been busy. All the deck furniture was tied down to a storage garage at the back of his property, farthest from the waves. The waves weren’t breaking on the pylons yet, but they’d washed through the carport under the house. I could see fresh seaweed before the doorstep, as we entered via a utilitarian enclosed staircase. This staircase column was tacked onto the rear of the house, behind one of the 6 foot diameter concrete pylons, wrapped in winding burlap like fat stubby palm trees. The main entrance to Adam’s place was exposed outdoor slat steps leading up to the glorious waterfront view from the front deck. I was grateful we weren’t climbing up that in the buffeting wind.
When we emerged into the relative quiet of the kitchen, Adam left the house lights off, but brought up the deck floodlights onto his stretch of beach. He peeled off his foul weather jacket. I kept walking, rapt, to the front picture windows.
‘Storm surge’ is a wonderful term to describe it, the massive megatons of grey-brown water heaving, cresting, crashing forward on the beach, and then that irresistible undertow drawing back into the next vast wave. Next to a few of those waves, the gorgeous house I stood in, up on its brave tubby pylons, amounted to tinker toys. Between the slashing rain sheeting the windows, heaving hills of water, and the short range of the floodlights, I couldn’t see very far. Yet the undertow scoured out the sand in front of the house, unearthing boulders I hadn’t seen before, and drawing mere head-sized rocks back into the cauldron. Wind gusts slammed into the side of the house to my left, sometimes making the floor lift, just a little bit.
I usually loved storms, standing small a
nd in awe before the exhilaration and power of nature unleashed. But I was uneasy then. My best friend, Earth, was going a little crazy lately. With a human friend, like my late coworker Connor, you made allowances, you tried to help, maybe added a little distance, let go if you had to. But Connor didn’t frighten me, much. There’s a power imbalance with a planet, with storms that can crush you in your trans-million dollar house to kindling with a single swat. More like a small child realizing their idolized God-like parent is going a bit bonkers. Only more so. This one storm, let alone Earth, was a lot more powerful than any parent was. This storm made me uneasy. Something was wrong.
Well, of course something was wrong. Hurricane season used to end months ago. Hurricanes couldn’t feed on the vast and cold dark waters of the North Atlantic in winter. Three hurricanes devastated Houston in a week.
No. What’s wrong with this picture?
My eyes narrowed. Another blast of wind pounded the wall to my left, and I looked out the picture windows that way. And back at the front window, where rain and ocean spray streamed almost horizontally left to right across it. The waves hit the beach on a diagonal, left to right, crests flying off the breakers to the right. The easterly wind was piling the storm surge into Long Island Sound. High tide would be extra-high.
I drew a circle with my finger on the glass, counter-clockwise, like a water drain, or a cyclone in the Northern Hemisphere. Shit.
“Adam, this is a hurricane. The wind is blowing from the east. That means we’re north of the eye. This hurricane isn’t going to miss us.”
“The news said this isn’t…” He considered my face. “You know for a fact that this is a hurricane?”
“Yes. It was Category 1, last I checked. They said it was tracking for Cape Cod, that it would pass east of us. But it isn’t passing east of us.”
He took me seriously, and pondered this. I was gratified that he drew a circle with his finger, too, and looked worriedly at the left and front windows. Left, to the east, rain pattern splat. Center, to the south, rain pattern horizontal, east to west.
“Category 1?” he asked for confirmation, and drew out his phone.
I nodded. “Can this house take a Category 1 storm?”
“Sure.” He swallowed a little nervousness. “Even Category 2. With some damage. Excuse me, Dee. I need to make a phone call.” Northwest seemed to be the best signal in the house, as he drifted thataway. Which made sense. The small New Haven airport was over that way.
“Hello. Lacey here. I need to talk to Niedermeyer… Yes, it’s urgent… I’ll wait… Sir, I’ve just learned that this storm is a hurricane –”
“Hurricane Nolan,” I supplied.
“Hurricane Nolan,” Adam echoed to the unknown Niedermeyer. Unknown to me, anyway. “Category 1. It was expected to track east of us and hit Cape Cod. But where I’m standing the wind is easterly, which says it’s due south of us… I’m home, in East Haven… Southeasterly in Groton?… Yes, please, I’ll wait… Northeasterly in Stamford? Awesome… I don’t think that’s an option, Sir… It’s probably alright. I wouldn’t do anything to it in the storm. Ferreira can keep an eye on it. But if it starts to go, there’s not much he can do about it… Yes, sir… No, sir… I can inquire and call you back… Yes, sir.”
Adam looked at me strangely. “You caught that? You’re right. The hurricane seems to be tracking toward right about here – the eye seems to be east of Stamford, west of Groton, south of us. So it’s pretty much coming straight at us.” He stopped to consider how to word the next. “Any chance you can get an update on whether it’s still Category 1?”
“Any chance of protecting my anonymity?”
“Certainly, oh Oracle. We need to know what, not who. And somehow that news didn’t make it where it needed to go.”
“To your ark?”
Adam’s eye flicked upward, as it often does when someone adjusts the truth. “Yeah. The ark.” He met my eye this time, and tilted his head in reluctant apology. “Niedermeyer is actually Coast Guard, in Groton.”
“And he didn’t know? Christ. I’ll check. Adam – maybe it’s time to draw those shutters?”
We swapped corners as I called Mangal. He needed to get private and login, then I had to walk him through it over the phone, where I’d found the wind speed data.
“It says 105 mph sustained,” Mangal reported, “but it was 100 an hour ago. Oh, here, yeah, the storm was upgraded to Category 2 a couple hours ago. I guess 110 and higher is Category 3. Landfall, let’s see. Right about high tide. In an hour. That’s… bad, right?”
“It’s not good. You’ll be alright, there. Don’t try to leave the house or anything. Especially not during the eye of the hurricane. You’ll lose power, of course.” The power lines ran above ground, frolicking in the tree tops. We always lost power.
“We’re getting the eye of the…? Ah. Yes, I see that. I’ll, um, call Alex and Shelley and make sure they stay put. And remind them about that eye thing,” Mangal offered.
I hung up with Mangal and realized that he wouldn’t contact Zack. Zack was in charge of pursuing violence, and Mangal could not contribute to violence. I turned my back to Adam and called Zack. “Hey, it’s Dee! An even better band! Category 2 is playing in downtown New Haven! Don’t you just love Category 2? Oops, starts in one hour. Gotta go. Seeya!”
Adam was looking at me funny, but simply confirmed the facts he’d overheard. “Upgraded to Category 2 now, 105 mph sustained winds, landfall one hour at high tide?” As I nodded, we traded places again, him taking his phone to the northwest, and me taking over at the storm-shutter master control panel at the southwest corner by the windows.
I didn’t eavesdrop on him this time, because I saw something out the window, a flash of light behind the beach houses to our left, eastward. As I finished closing the front shutters, Adam turned on low lights in the kitchen and killed the floodlights. I peered out an unshuttered window at the back trying to get a better angle on what I’d seen, not easy through the stormy dark and runnels of rain. But I spotted it again, a couple flashlights and a group of people, at least three.
“Adam, do you have trouble with looters here?”
He begged off his phone call abruptly and joined me at the window. “We have, um, protection,” he said. “I suspect there’s a ranking Mafia type up the beach a ways. The… ‘security force’ came by and asked me for a ‘donation’ to subscribe. Three grand.”
My eyes widened. “What did you do?”
“Gave them four grand, and thanked them for their efforts on my behalf, to butter them up. I don’t want to sit around here all day with a gun, protecting my property. But I didn’t see any of them out there tonight. What did you see?”
I pointed. “Flashlights, a group of people, maybe armed. Can’t see them very well.”
Adam kept peering out the window, and made another call. After the call, he confirmed to me, “Security doesn’t have anybody out there tonight. Too dangerous in the storm.” He sighed and considered a moment.
“Think we should leave?” I asked. “Wouldn’t they call a mandatory evacuation on this beach, if they knew a Category 2 was headed straight for us?”
“They would have, yes.” He considered. “The waves are already washing under the house. If we want to evacuate, we ought to leave right now. I’m sorry. ‘You were right’ doesn’t begin to cover it.” He spotted something, and ducked down lower to see. “More of them.”
“Well, if we can’t walk away from the house safely because of the waves, they can’t walk into it, either,” I suggested, weighing the options.
“Until the eye of the storm, maybe,” Adam countered. “And after. There are plenty of houses on this beach for them to break into and take shelter in.” He sighed. “Including this one.”
“I want to go,” I declared in sudden decision.
“We’ll try it,” Adam agreed, with clear reservations.
He immediately pulled his raingear back on. I’d never taken mine off. He took my
hand and drew me down the sheltered back steps in the dark. Fortunately there was no storm door on the back door. There was some water on the floor already, though, despite the floor being several steps above the paving stones of the carport. Adam opened the door and let the rain and wind in, and made sure the door would lock after us. A wave rushed past us into the back yard. He studied the undertow as it pulled back out.
Without ceasing his focus on the few sample waves, Adam called, “Whatever happens, don’t let go of me. You’re too light by yourself. If we get pulled back toward the water, we’ve got to make it back to this door. Right?”
“Right!”
The waves washing in were maybe 9 inches deep, over the top of the first step below us. We watched three more waves come in and out to get the pattern. “Now?” I called against the wind.
Adam jerked me back. “Not this one.” He was right. I’d gotten the timing right, but it was a higher wave than the others, coming over the second step. He waited until that one was mostly withdrawn and the carport was almost clear. “Now!”
We ran full out, holding hands, the pull of that last wave still sucking our shoes backwards a bit at first, but too shallow to grab us. We got past the back mini-wall of the carport when I heard the next wave crash behind us. Adam grabbed me around the waist and we ran as fast as we could. The wash from the crashing wave caught us. We fell and ran, fell and ran another 30 feet or so, the water pushing us forward. Then Adam dove forward, sliding us into a fence post just as the water turned and started rushing out around us. We both held on to the post for dear life as the water tried to suck us back into the sea and the next wave crested in front of the house.
“Phew!” yelled Adam, grinning from the adrenaline rush, and surprise that we’d made it this far. “When I say go. We need to make it across the street this time. And… Go!”
The water wasn’t as powerful back here, but still we set off as the last shallow bit of the undertow finished washing back. We headed into the street. The waves were less powerful here, but I hadn’t bargained on the street being lower than Adam’s yard. It was already flooded a foot deep. That really slows down your running, and was none too soft on the falling and splashing part of the program either, as the next in-rush of water knocked us down. On the plus side, that foot of water had tons of inertia that weren’t pulling back into the Sound, so the undertow wasn’t as vicious. We continued running – or at least wading fast – across the street during the ebb of the wave, and kept going until Adam had a good hold on a small ornamental tree in the across-the-street neighbor’s yard.