Thirty miles from the coast the two-lane road disappeared beneath a lake. There were abandoned cars stranded in water up to the door handles. We paused at the edge of the water. Harnett looked at me and then pressed the gas pedal. Our motion sounded like the removal of masking tape. Two fans of brown water sprayed. The tide shouldered us repeatedly like some mammoth underwater monster. Water began pooling at my feet.
Somehow we made it. We risked two more floods and crawled around scores of fallen trees. Five miles from Lionel’s house we put the car in park and ran outside to pull a length of fence from our path. Immediately the car door crashed shut on my fingers. I waited for the pain, but it didn’t come because the fingers were wood. Staying low, I scrambled after Harnett. Twigs and rocks audibly assailed our bodies. Trees on either side of us broke one at a time. Harnett gripped the far end of the fence, I took the near. He pulled and I pushed. I saw him yell something. He waved his hands and lay flat against the pavement. I looked over my shoulder and saw the giant yellow sickle of a broken McDonald’s sign sailing through the air. It capered above us and then dove. I dropped and felt runners of water twitch as the object swooped over us. There was a crunch, muffled by the coarse bellow of the storm, and when we dared look we saw that the top of our car had been smashed in. We could still hear the mumble of bad news from the radio.
Harnett took the shovel and the flashlight. I took my backpack. We ran but it felt like walking.
Downed power lines snaked miserably. Road signs somersaulted, sparking against the pavement with each revolution. It took us twenty minutes to cross a small bridge that was sloshing and treacherous with spill. We came upon a traffic light hanging just a foot from the ground, and we fell against it, clutching it and panting. It was huge. I ducked my head against the dead red lens and for a moment the sucking howl of the storm diminished. Night was coming fast.
Lionel’s charming, pink-trimmed roof had crumpled sideways into the yard, collapsing the living room wall into a smear of rubble. His tasteful furniture and framed pictures had been yanked into the sky. We staggered through the unprotected clearing and made it to the aperture of the path through the woods. Trees beat at the trail like two endless rows of fists. The light was fading. The danger was palpable.
Harnett pressed his teeth against my ear. “YOU CAN STAY HERE.”
I shook my head.
“STAY HERE.” He nodded. The rain thrummed from his skin.
There’s no heroism, not anymore—in Edinburgh, that had been Harnett’s justification for letting the Diggers expire. But I could see from the mad glint that shone from his eyes that there was one last chance for heroism and it was now.
I grabbed him by the collar and shook my head. He set his jaw and, perhaps, suppressed a grin, and then threw an arm around my back. Joined, we plunged into the screaming whorls and hurtling torrents. Wood fired like thunderclaps and heavy branches pushed against our shoulders. Harnett fought them off with the shovel, and in those courageous strikes I thought I saw something happen between the shovel and him, an accord between man and wood, but I couldn’t be sure.
Trees gave way and there was the hill leading down to the cemetery and the ocean beyond. Only the hill had become a pulp of debris and the cemetery was gone. That couldn’t be right. I kneeled and tried to see through the silvery thrash. Harnett pointed the flashlight but it only lent definition to the layers of rain. He shut it off and we stared, and after a while we understood.
The ocean had surged to such levels that it had not just overtaken the cemetery but gutted it. Now it was a churning swamp crashing with coffins and boiling with bodies. Headstones tossed like leaves. Bones rolled white like surf. Geysers of mud erupted at the collision of gruesome things.
We stepped, then slipped, then fell. I splashed down in flowing water up to my chest. I wrapped my fingers around the buckled remnants of a fence and whipped my face through the storm until I found Harnett pulling himself upright a few feet away. I