Chapter Two
Avery
I settle Grandma Rosie into her bed, thankful she still has one. She has one bar of battery left on her tablet, but it should be enough to help her off to sleep. I leave the lantern in her room in case she wakes up in the middle of the night and tries to wander around, as she’s prone to do. I’d done a thorough once-over of her room and found the only damage was a broken window from the porch swing I’d forgotten to take down.
It could have been worse.
So, so much worse.
A broken window, damaged roof, those were things I could come back from. The complete loss of the house, or someone I loved? There’s no coming back from that.
I settle onto the couch in the living room after cleaning up the glass. One of the flashlights sits beside me, pointed up at the ceiling. It’s a poor substitute for the lantern, but beggars can’t be choosers. From what I can glean from the radio and the spotty cell reception I have, rescue efforts are underway, but it’s an arduous, painstaking process. The sheer number of downed trees is incalculable, making it hard for rescue operations to commence.
Needless to say, there won’t be anyone coming through tonight and I haven’t even looked outside to see what shape my car is in. I’m afraid to. One catastrophe at a time is all I have the energy to face. I’ll deal with figuring out our next steps and clearing away debris tomorrow.
Now that the adrenaline is fading, weariness settles over me. I arrange baby Rosie’s bassinet next to the couch. While she nurses, I attempt to connect to the internet, but it’s next to impossible and loads indefinitely. It’s strange, being so disconnected. It’s isolating and in a weird way freeing all at once.
It’s then that I remember the battery pack I use to charge my phone on vacations—or when I used to take vacations. I’d plugged it in when I first realized the storm was coming and there was no way Grandma Rosie was leaving her house, meaning I’d be stuck here too unless I wanted to condemn her to a horrific fate. Once the baby is done nursing and is once again sound asleep—thank goodness—I tuck her into her bassinet and retrieve the battery pack and charger cord.
Thankfully, it has half a charge, which allows me to hook up both my phone and the tablet, which I retrieve from a snoring Grandma Rosie’s room. I take a full water bottle on my way back to the couch and a granola bar to stave off the breastfeeding munchies that will inevitably come. Once I polish off the granola bar and half of the water, I finally—finally—allow myself to relax into the couch with the baby close beside me. Sleep finds me easier than I thought it would.
“I want eggs and bacon,” Grandma Rosie announces way too damn early the next morning.
I blink blearily up at her hovering over me at the couch. “What—what?”
“Look at you sleeping the day away. It’s morning time. Time to wake up.” She shuffles over to her rocking chair, freshly charged tablet in hand. “Up, up, up. Everybody up. If I can’t sleep, nobody sleeps.”
“I’m up, I’m up.” With a quick look at the baby, who is blissfully still asleep, I push to sitting.
The first thing I notice is the heat.
Then, I remember the night before.
The storm.
“I don’t think we have power for eggs, but I can make you some cereal.” I’d packed some of the contents of our fridge in a cooler while I was prepping the day before. The milk should still be good for a while.
Grandma Rosie harrumphs, but doesn’t argue. Good. Maybe today will be a good day for her, relatively.
The front door protests when I try to open it, swollen from the moisture and humidity. When it opens, it’s to an alien world on the other side. My hand flies to my mouth as I gasp. The front yard looks like a jungle. Several trees had toppled over. One thick oak limb lies horizontally across most of our fence, obscuring the front walk. Another has fallen over the front porch, its limbs spiderwebbing inside like a corpse’s fingers. Dozens, hundreds, of smaller branches litter everything.
Debris covers the roads in front of the house along with more fallen limbs. I don’t even see how we’d get help even if we needed it. There won’t be any trucks on the roads until they can get them cleared and that’ll take a couple men and a half dozen chainsaws. A water main has busted across the street, flooding a neighbor’s yard. Several limbs crush another’s car and my eyes fly to my own busted up sedan. Aside from debris blown on top, it’s relatively, shockingly, unscathed—not that it’ll do us any good now.
All we can do for the time being is sit still and stay out of the way. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but I do know there will be crews out at some point to help clear the roads, fix the downed power lines, and check on residents to make sure no one is injured. God, I hope no one has been injured.
Once I feed Grandma Rosie and the baby, I’ll take a more thorough look outside, make sure there’s no one close by who needs help. Then…I don’t know. One step at a time, I suppose. That’s all any of us can do.
While I’m making bowls of cereal, I attempt to check online for any news. The loading symbol at the top of my phone keeps going round and round and the pages stay blank. I don’t know if all the towers are down or if it’s taking a long time because of general chaos or what. It’s strange not being connected to anything at all. It makes me feel very alone.
By the time we sit down at the small dinette table, it’s nearly ten or so in the morning and already sweltering. It was a warm October before the storm, but it has to be in the high eighties, if not higher. Our house stays cool, but it won’t for long if the temperature keeps rising. Once I find a way out of here and make sure no one is injured, my first priority will be to find a generator. Perhaps I can plug a window unit into it and keep our small living room cool, at least. The nights won’t be so bad, but a hot Florida afternoon can be killer.
Later, I leave Grandma Rosie watching her shows and baby Gracie napping deeply. With the baby monitor receiver clipped to my belt, I strap on a pair of old sneakers and head outside for the first time since the storm. By the time I make it through the front yard to the gate, my legs are scraped to all hell and I realize all the fallen trees have disturbed dozens and dozens of yellow jacket nests. I’m stung twice and am left cursing and sweating, already lathered up in a mood.
Hissing through my teeth, I work my way across the road to my closest neighbor. I’m almost to their steps when I hear their shouts from the other side of the closed door.
“Hello? Can you hear us? We’re trapped inside!”
I speed up picking through the debris on their porch—including a large downed limb that’s wedged in their doorway, completely blocking the majority of their front windows and their front door. Quickening my pace, I shout back, “Mary? Tom? It’s Avery. I’m coming!”
“Avery, thank God,” comes Mary’s relieved voice. “We’ve been hollering all morning. There’s another limb that damn near crashed through the back door. We’d jump out the windows if I didn’t fret about Tom breaking a hip.”
“Fool woman,” I hear Tom mutter, which makes me smile despite everything.