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Tom stopped in the second-floor hallway of his house to listen to the hacking cough coming from his mother's bedroom. Guilt shot through him. He'd left her there alone in the basement. He'd figured she was all right and other people needed him more.

And then, the next day, he'd taken the canoe out with Carlos and Carlos's dad, trying to help more neighbors who were stranded. His mother had gone down, once more, to try to bail out the basement. And now this morning, she'd started with this horrible coughing.

Moving to her door, he knocked. “Mom, can I come in?”

“Sure,” she answered, which set off another fit of coughs.

His mother was still in bed and looked pale. “Have you eaten anything yet?” Tom asked her.

She nodded, catching her breath. “Some cereal.”

“You found milk?” he asked hopefully.

“I had it dry,” his mother replied. “Listen, there's not much food left. Can you go into town and see what you can find? And, maybe by some miracle, you can still get that dehumidifier.”

Tom nodded. “Okay, yeah. It's cold in here. Do you have any other blankets?” His mother pointed to the top shelf of her closet, and he
pulled down a woolen blanket to tuck around her. “I'll take the canoe out and go into town.”

“Is the water still that high?”

“It's down about a foot from yesterday, but it's still high enough that the canoe is the best way to go.”

“Okay. Be careful. There's money over there on my dresser. Or take my debit card from my wallet.”

“No one's taking cards. They all want cash,” Tom told her.

“Why not?”

“I don't know. It's just what I heard.”

“Then take the cash. And get me some cough syrup.”

Downstairs, Tom pulled open the refrigerator door. What a disgusting mess! His stomach rumbled. He counted the money in his pocket. Two hundred dollars. That should be enough to stock them up for a while, but he'd have to remember to buy only nonperishable items.

“Larry!” he called, and the golden retriever scampered in from the living room.

Tom ruffled the fur that curled like a mane around Larry's neck. Now that Larry was dry, he turned out to be a gorgeous animal with a thick, red coat. Tom hoped no one was looking for this dog right now. The possibility of giving up Larry was something he didn't want to consider. In only days, Tom had grown completely attached to him. “Come on, buddy, let's go find you some dog food.”

Stepping outside to the back deck, Tom saw that the brown floodwaters were just about a foot below. He turned and began to untie the canoe that he'd tethered to the picnic table anchored to the deck. The table had withstood the blast of the storm, so he figured there was little danger of it floating off now.

He untied the canoe from the table, dropping it over the railing to the water below. Grabbing the oars from the table, he whistled for Larry as he descended the deck steps and grabbed the canoe at the bow. The dog came running, and Tom leaned aside to let him leap into the canoe. “Whoa, there!” he cautioned, laughing, as the canoe rocked from side to side. “You don't want to land in the water again, even if you are a good swimmer.”

There was a strong current that required him to hang on to the deck while he climbed in, to keep from being swept away. The racing water carried him out to the street without even using the paddles. But then he had to stroke hard against the flow to turn the boat toward town.

Neighbors instantly noticed him and opened their windows.

“Hey, Tom, can you take me to the doctor?”

“I have money for food. Can you buy some for me?”

“Tom, the mold is making my sister sick. She needs to get out of the house.”

“I'll be back soon!” he called to them. “I have to do something right now. A Red Cross boat will probably be by soon.” Sage Valley had been officially declared a disaster area, but there were places, especially places south of them, which had been even harder hit. Various groups offering aid had come in, but Sage Valley was apparently lower on the list of places in need of immediate relief than others.

As he spoke, his words seemed to him shameful and cold. But he'd have felt just as bad if he helped them and ignored his mother yet again. “I'll be back,” he repeated to no one in particular. He set his gaze dead ahead to avoid meeting any of their eyes as he threw his back into the task of rowing the canoe to town.

Niki balanced the tray as she went up the steps to bring her father his lunch of canned chicken soup. She wondered if he'd appreciate the fact that she'd warmed it outside on the gas grill, using the last bit of propane left in the tank. Would the soup taste any different—smokier, more satisfying—for having been cooked outdoors? He probably wouldn't even notice.

Her mother usually did this, but she'd gone to see Niki's grandmother, who needed her medications refilled—and whose pharmacy hadn't reopened since OscPearl swept through. When Niki's mother had discovered she was out of gas, she'd taken Niki's bicycle for the four-mile trip. “I used to think Grandma lived close by,” she said as she walked the bike to the puddle-dotted sidewalk. “Suddenly it seems like she lives far away. Not being able to drive certainly changes your point of view about distance.”

Niki had nodded, though she hadn't particularly wanted to think about it. She still didn't want to spend time dwelling on any of this—not the aftereffects of the hurricane, not the war, not the gasoline shortage, certainly not her depressed, out-of-work father. Niki didn't want to spend time worrying about global warming, or about the
possibility of more superhurricanes tearing their way up the coast. She was sick of hearing about all of it.

Niki just wanted to be left alone to think about Tom. He was a good kisser, a great kisser—better than Brock, whom she was surprised to realize she didn't think about much at all anymore. Brock's kisses had been sort of slobbery, now that she recalled.

It was pleasant to think about Tom, thrilling to think of him coming across the lake on the Jet Ski, to remember how his arms felt around her.

These memories almost made everything else go away.

But not completely.

“Come in,” her father called in a sleepy, groggy voice when she knocked at his bedroom door.

“I brought you some soup.” She hadn't intended for her voice to sound as annoyed as it did, but the sight of him lazing in bed, tranquilized, unshaven, wearing pajamas he hadn't changed in three days, was infuriating.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the tray from her. “Your mother told me that storm I heard was a big hurricane. Is that true?”

Niki rolled her eyes and fought the urge to knock the tray over on him. “It was a
super
hurricane,” she informed him stiffly.

“Oh, really?” he said, slurping his soup. “This is a little cold, Niki.”

She ignored his criticism of the soup. It was too obnoxious to even acknowledge. “Yeah, a real slammin' hurricane,” Niki said, her voice rising angrily. “The lake was halfway to the back deck. We
still
have no electricity, and now we have no gas for the generator, either.”

“Go to the corner gas station and get some,” her father suggested.

“Oh, you missed that, too. Marietta's private gas tanker can't get through the floodwater. There's no gasoline. No food. Nothing! And there's no way to get out except to walk like a bunch of refugees with all our belongings stacked in wagons or on our heads—and to where? No place is better off than Marietta, and Marietta is in big trouble. So you can imagine what the other towns are like.” Niki threw her hands into the air. “Basically…we're all going to die.”

Her father gazed at her blankly for a moment and then tossed his blanket aside. “If things are so bad, I guess I should get out of bed.”

“That would be a start,” Niki snapped.

“Sorry to leave you to handle it all. I guess I've had a sort of meltdown since losing my job.”

“I suppose it's understandable,” Niki grumbled begrudgingly. With everything that had happened recently, the idea of crawling into bed and simply staying there had a certain appeal.

“But what could I do about it all?” her father wondered aloud as he dragged the blanket back on. “What would be the point?”

“The point is that Mom and I could use some help!” Niki shouted.

“You two seem to be handling things.”

“Dad, you're not an invalid! Snap out of it!”

Her father pushed the tray with the half-finished soup onto the bed and rolled over, facing away from Niki. “It's just all too much to deal with,” he muttered.

Niki could only stare at his back, dumbstruck with disappointment. Then she picked up the tray and walked out. He had always seemed so in control. Was it his job that had been holding him together all along? How pathetic!

What held her together? As she walked back to the kitchen with the tray, she discovered that this was a question she couldn't easily answer. Nothing leapt to mind.

She didn't have many close friends. Was it Tom or, at least, the pleasure of thinking about him? Before Tom, being Brock's girlfriend had given her a sense of where she fit in.

Was it cheerleading? It
did
give her a sense of purpose—to her school, to her team. It was part of who she was.

But was that all she was? A cheerleader? Brock Brokowski's girlfriend? Tom Harris's girlfriend?

If those things were taken away, would she be just like her father, adrift and useless? Niki suddenly realized her eyes were wet with tears, and she quickly brushed them away.

This question was one more thing she didn't particularly want to think about. Only, somehow, Niki couldn't manage to put it out of her head.

“This is definitely weird, Larry,” Tom said as he canoed into the center of the Sage Valley business district. “Where is everybody?” Were any stores even open? He'd heard they were.

His canoe made a rough, scratching sound as it scraped the bottom of the road. The business district was at a higher elevation, closer to the valley's rim, than where Tom lived, so it was less flooded. “We'd better stow this thing,” he told Larry as he got out of the canoe. Seeming to understand, Larry jumped out, splashing into the water, which came to the tops of his legs. He stayed by Tom's side as Tom dragged the canoe into some bushes, pushing the canoe deep into them until only a bit of orange peeked through. It wasn't a perfect hiding place, but it would have to do.

Tom slogged through the water with Larry leaping along at his side. The first store he came to was Maria's Deli.
CLOSED
—
OUT OF EVERYTHING
.
HOPE TO REOPEN NEXT WEEK
read the sign on the front door. The pizzeria he came to next wasn't open, either:
PIZZA OVENS OUT OF ORDER DUE TO FLOOD
.

By the time they were at the center of town, the water was below his knees. There were lights on in the post office, so he headed in. A line of people wrapped itself all the way to the door.

“No dogs!” the clerk behind the counter snapped.

“Aw, come on, man,” Tom complained.

A hand shot out to wave to Tom. It was Mr. Curtin. “Give the kid a break, Les,” he said to the clerk.

“Aw, what the heck. Okay,” Les grumbled.

“Hey, Mr. Curtin,” Tom said, joining him at the back of the line. “How's it going with you?”

“Hopefully better once I pick up this care package my sister sent. Everybody here is picking up packages. I guess we're the lucky ones. I can't even imagine how much it costs to send a package nowadays. How are things at your house?”

“Not so good. The water is still much deeper than here, and my mom's not feeling so good, either. She spent too much time in the basement trying to bail floodwater, and now she's coughing.”

“I hope the mold in your house isn't getting to her,” Mr. Curtin said. “I know mold grows fast in wet conditions and some people can get really serious respiratory conditions. I don't want to worry you, but you should be aware of it.”

“I hope she doesn't have that. I thought it was just a head cold from standing in the water for so long,” Tom said. Mr. Curtin
had
worried him.

“Maybe that's all it is,” Mr. Curtin agreed unconvincingly. He took a pad and pen from the pocket of his corduroy sports jacket. “You know where I live. This is my cell phone number if we ever get electric and cell phone service again. If not, just come over if you need help of any kind.”

“Thanks,” Tom said, taking the paper from him. “When do you think school will open again?”

“Soon, I hope,” Mr. Curtin replied, moving forward in line. “I'm desperately in need of a paycheck.”

“I'm desperately in need of food,” Tom said. “Do you know where I can buy some?”

“Do you know where the little A&P just about a mile up the road is? I heard that's open, although there's probably not much left.”

“Great. Thanks,” Tom said, backing toward the door. “I'll go there now.”

“Okay. Good to see ya. Remember, you're welcome at my house anytime.”

“Thanks.” Tom motioned for Larry to follow him, and the two of them left the post office, going in the direction of the old A&P, built before the day of the superstores.

As they took the road back down into the valley, the water once again began to rise around them, and Tom wondered if he should have gone back for the canoe. He was a quarter mile down the road, looking at the houses, taking in the various kinds of damage they'd sustained. He came to one where a very large tree had come down right on top of a red hybrid parked in the driveway, crushing the roof on the driver's side. Tom recognized the vehicle.

Brock Brokowski came around the tree and waved to Tom. “How's it going?” he asked.

Tom shrugged. “Sorry about your car.”

Brock shook his head miserably as he surveyed the damage. “I saved for this since freshman year,” he lamented.

“Got insurance?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, but we've got no cell signals and even the landlines are down.”

“I know. Sucks,” Tom sympathized.

“Listen,” Brock said, and an uneasy expression came over his face. “Have you seen Niki since the storm?”

Tom immediately saw himself kissing Niki there on the island and hoped Brock couldn't tell what he was thinking. He had no reason to feel guilty. Brock and Niki had broken up, and Tom had heard rumors that it was Brock who had broken it off. And apparently, Brock knew he was involved with Niki, or he wouldn't have asked if Tom had seen her. Just the same, Tom felt incredibly awkward. “Yeah, I saw her a few days ago. She's okay, I guess,” he answered. “She's still living at Lake Morrisey.”

“Do they have electric over there yet?”

Tom shook his head. “No, and that gas station that was getting fuel is shut down now, too.”

“Man,” Brock said with a sigh, “if those rich people over there can't get any help, what chance do we have? But you said Niki's okay, right?”

“Yeah, she seems to be,” Tom told him. It sounded to Tom like Brock was still stuck on Niki. But if he was, why had he broken it off with her? Tom didn't know Brock well enough to ask. “I have to get going,” Tom said instead. “Good luck with the car.”

“Thanks,” Brock said with a wave, returning his attention to assessing the damage.

By the time Tom and Larry neared the grocery store, the water was just below Tom's knees. The large, white building was in sight at the far end of a midsized parking lot, which was spotted with large puddles but was otherwise pretty dry. Tom noticed a vacuum machine about the size of a small car in the far corner of the lot, its orange hoses dangling, and assumed it had been used to suck up much of the water from the lot. This struck Tom as a hopeful gesture, considering that although
there seemed to be about twenty people in front of the store, there were only three cars in the parking lot. He knew that right now most people couldn't get their water-logged engines running, and those who could start their cars couldn't find gas to fuel them.

He started to cross the lot but stopped walking when he realized that people were milling outside the store. Something about the scene wasn't right, but he couldn't quite figure out what. Then, suddenly, a man was knocked to the ground and Tom knew what was really happening. They were fighting. A curse was hurtled through the air as if to seal his new understanding of the situation.

A young woman ran toward him, pulling her little daughter along by the hand. In her other arm, she clutched a paper bag that looked half full.

“What's going on?” Tom asked the woman as she passed him.

“They're fighting over the food. The store is nearly out and closing down. Those who haven't been able to get any are attacking people as they come out with their bags,” she reported.

“But you escaped? You're okay?” he checked with the woman.

“Yeah, I was able to grab this bag even though some spilled,” she said without stopping.

Tom stared at her, aghast. She looked like a nice, normal person, a mother with her small child.
She
had robbed someone of their groceries?

“Don't look at me like that!” the woman shouted over her shoulder at Tom. “The kid is hungry. What am I supposed to do?”

Larry barked at her as if giving a reprimand, though Tom knew it was probably only a reaction to her agitated tone. He was caught between his impulse to avoid the fighting at the grocery store and
intense curiosity. His curious nature won out, and he walked toward the front of the store.

Angry, shouting voices snapped in the air as he came close to the front entrance. One man punched another and sent him tottering backward so close to Tom that Tom had to leap out of the way. “You're not getting my food, you—”

Before the man could finish, the other man was off the ground and running back, his head bent as if he were a ram intending to butt horns with a rival, and shouting ferociously. The first man grabbed his groceries and began to run. He didn't get far before he was tackled to the ground by the guy he had punched, sending his food rolling out of the bag.

While the two men wrestled on the ground, three women and two men pounced on the spilled food, fighting to get as much of it as possible. Two of the women struggled over a jar of tomato sauce until it went flying out of their hands and smashed onto the parking lot's blacktop, spraying Tom and Larry. Larry licked his face clean with his long, pink tongue.

Tom saw that two boys about his age were shoving each other. He realized that one of them was the tall, Mohawked kid he'd seen Gwen with that day he'd been talking to Carlos by his truck. Hector. Maybe he knew where Gwen had disappeared to.

It didn't look like the best moment to speak to him. Hector was clutching his bag of groceries to his body while the other boy was trying to tear it away from him. “Hey!” Tom shouted at Hector's attacker. “Get your own food.”

“Get lost,” the other boy snarled.

“Why don't
you
get lost?” Tom countered, shoving the boy away from Hector.

As he staggered back, the kid glowered at Hector. “You're lucky your bodyguard showed up. Next time I'm gonna mess you up.”

Hector just stood there panting as he hugged his brown bag of groceries. After the kid stormed off, Hector looked to Tom. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “I'm not sure there's going to be a next time.” He shook his head. “You know what I have in here? Anchovy paste. And canned corn. And pasta in the shape of unicorns. Basically, the only things left are the things that nobody ever really wanted.”

A grocery clerk came to the door and quickly turned the inside dead bolt, locking the door. In the distance, a police siren sounded.

A heavy woman came flying between them, having just been pushed away from an abandoned grocery cart by another woman.

“Let's get out of here,” Tom suggested to Hector after a quick check of the woman, who seemed to be unharmed as she ran back into the fray of people fighting over the cart's contents.

“Good idea,” Hector agreed.

They walked to the back of the parking lot, skirting the wide puddles, without talking until they were far enough away to feel safe from the fighting. Two police cars came into the lot, their sirens screaming. Tom ducked his head away and noticed that Hector did the same. The last thing they needed was to be picked up for fighting in public; Tom supposed they would call it disorderly conduct. He had to wonder how the jails were functioning without power.

With a nod of his head, Tom signaled Hector to follow him even farther out of the lot until they were on a quiet side road. “Hi, I'm Tom,” he said once it seemed safe to stop and talk. “This is Larry.”

“Hey, Larry,” Hector said with a small wave. “He's a great-looking dog,” he told Tom.

“Thanks, I found him in the flood. Listen, we've never met and you don't know me, but—”

“I know who you are,” Hector interrupted him. “You live behind Gwen. At least you used to before her house went up in smoke.”

“How do you know where I live?” Tom asked.

Hector gazed at him as though filtering his reply, deciding what he wanted to say, and then he shrugged. “I think Gwen and I walked past your house one day and I figured it out.”

“Of course, sure, I remember,” Tom said. “That's why I wanted to ask if you know where Gwen is. I haven't seen her since the fire.”

“I saw her after that,” Hector revealed. “She was going off to find some old mine shaft to live in to keep safe from OscPearl.”

“Are you kidding me?” Tom cried, alarmed. “And you let her go?”

“I couldn't really stop her,” Hector defended himself. “She has her own mind. If she'd stayed with me, the cops or social services would have picked her up. Besides, right now, I'm living at the shelter in the basement of the elementary school. OscPearl demolished our trailer. I went up to the hills looking for her yesterday and the day before. I found a couple of mine shafts, but they were boarded up from the outside. There was no way she could have gotten into those.”

“So where do you think she is?” Tom asked.

“No idea. Maybe she found Luke and they went off somewhere.”

“She wouldn't have said good-bye to you? You're her boyfriend, right?”

“Did she tell you I was?”

“No, but I…you know…I assumed.” Tom had meant to be casual when he'd asked if Hector was seeing Gwen. After all, it was none of
his business, really. He'd just been kissing Niki yesterday. But he'd definitely detected a certain strain in his voice when he asked, and he wondered if Hector had caught it also. “Do you think we should go look for her again?” he suggested.

“Yeah,” Hector said, “I think we should. I don't know where else to look except in the forest some more.”

“I have a canoe. We can take it part of the way,” Tom said. He whistled for Larry, who had gone off to explore some tall grass. “Let's go.”

 

Tom tied the canoe to a tree, stowed his oars, and steadied the boat as Hector and Larry climbed out. They were all standing knee-deep in water but the canoe could no longer move forward. Without a word, they trudged up the muddy dirt road leading to the forest.

Tom's thoughts focused on Gwen. If she had been up here during OscPearl, how would she have survived? A mine shaft was probably good shelter, but did she have enough drinkable water and food? And OscPearl had ended four days ago—why hadn't she come down and let Hector know she was all right? “Why wouldn't she contact you? You
are
her boyfriend, aren't you?” Tom checked.