Wednesday

Iris paused and set the potato peeler down to brush a sweaty string of sandy blonde hair from her forehead. She sat it on the cracked cutting board she’d been meaning to replace for five months. Next to it was her best knife, duller than Sunday scripture at First Methodist down on Orange Ave.

She watched Dorian through the open kitchen arch. He sat on the couch, working his new coloring book. In one chubby fist he held a neon blue crayon and currently he was slashing back and forth, illustrating the various wildlife that inhabited the lush jungle on the page. His face was set, determined—grim, almost. His hair was light brown, darker than hers, and almost as long. She made a mental note to find a barber shop somewhere nearby and filed it in one of the many cabinets in her tired mind. Five minutes later she was back to peeling and the thought was as good as gone.

There was so much work to do. Potatoes to be peeled, chicken to be sliced, beets and carrots and green beans that needed preparation before being dumped into the Crock-Pot. After dinner she’d have to get him bathed. Dorian hated water, hated getting wet. She didn’t look forward to the small war she’d have to wage getting him into the tub. She had to make sure Pop was taking his medicine. She’d thought she could trust him to it: he was eighty-two years old, after all. Then one day two weeks ago she’d been rooting through the trash can, looking for an old check the state had sent her, hoping against hope that Dorian had taken it upon himself to throw it in the can (he’d recently discovered the push trigger at the bottom of the garbage that opened the lid and was enamored of it), hoping that it wasn’t lost somewhere in the back of the junk drawer, that mystical place where things went and never seemed to come back. Instead she’d found needles and strips, unused, beneath a pile of wet paper towels and an empty bag of Doritos.

“What’s this?” she’d asked, blowing through the creaky bedroom door like a strong gust of wind.

“Looks to me like medical supplies, darling,” he’d said, the thin smile another crack amongst a face of so many.

“Looks to me like someone telling lies. Are you skipping tests?”

“I don’t like the pricks on my damn fingers. It hurts.”

“You know what hurts worse?” She’d been nearly screaming at this point, only managing to keep her voice down by a fierce desire to not wake her son and have to complete the pre-sleep ritual with him all over again. “Kidney failure. Or a heart attack or stroke. I can’t believe you.”

“Hurts my damn fingers.”

“Well looks like I’ll be the one hurting your damn fingers now on, Pop.”

He’d attempted some reply but the door was shut swiftly behind her before the words left his lips. Every night since she’d been the one in charge of monitoring his blood sugar. Of course, that was after she got home from her eight-hour shift on the phones at Consolidated Credit. And made dinner. Let Winston out and cleaned up any mess the damn mutt had made while she was gone. But before she bathed and read to her son, always before. Pop liked to yell like a child every time his finger was poked.

And now there was the damn house to worry about if this storm was really coming. Two days ago it had been a tropical depression somewhere off the coast of South America; now it was a Cat one crossing over Puerto Rico and gaining strength, fast. It was all over the news. People in South Florida were slow to react (“I don’t get out of bed for anything less than a Cat three,” Ricky had told her proudly as he chomped his egg salad sandwich in the breakroom), but she knew from experience it was better to be on the front side of things. Once the warnings came down from the National Hurricane Center, things were apt to get hectic. Walmart and Publix would sell clear out of water and canned goods in hours; Home Depot and Costco would have lines that slalomed all through the store and halfway through the parking lot.

“Mommy?” Her trance was broken.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Why’s Pop-Pop playing music?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. Why don’t you go on back and ask him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really want to.”

“And why’s that?”

“I guess I don’t care.”

“Yeah I guess I don’t either.”

The tv was murmuring softly in the background and now it caught her attention. Mike Sebring was on, the local weatherman, and he was gesticulating theatrically at a map of the southeast United States and the Caribbean.

“Baby turn that up for me, would you?”

It was five p.m., time for the updated cone from the NHC. His voice rose steadily before Dorian threw the remote on the wood table with a loud bang.

“Sorry.”

“As you can see, South Florida is now solidly in the cone of uncertainty and that includes us here in Palm Beach County as well as folks up in the Treasure Coast. The NHC is forecasting that Hurricane Erin will make landfall somewhere near Lake Worth late Saturday night.” His hands swung as the map zoomed, showing a wide swatch of land that included her home in Fort Pierce. Mike Sebring grinned his giddy weather man’s grin, the one that always seemed to drive Iris halfway to insanity: it was a grin that said, “This is all fun and games to me, this is the shit that I live for.”

“Lucky you.”

“Did you say something Mommy?”

“No baby, shh.”

“Now we do want to warn that this expected landfall is more than seventy-two hours out, and anything beyond seventy-two hours faces an exponential level of uncertainty. A lot can happen between now and then, folks. Still, it doesn’t hurt to get prepared. Now is the time to make sure you have enough water to last you a week, maybe two. You want to make sure you have your non-perishable food items. Stock up on enough medicine to hold you over for two weeks. Make sure that generator’s working, get some gas. The NHC is projecting that this storm will make landfall as a Category three storm, and folks that is a major hurricane, not something to take lightly. With a Cat three we can expect storm surge of at least four to seven feet, winds of at least 111 mph…”

Iris pulled a heavy breath into her lungs and let it hold her for a moment. The magic words had been spoken. Cat three. Major hurricane. Let the madness begin.

Pop was standing behind her, breathing hard.

“I don’t like it,” he said, crossing to the living room. “Make room, squirt.” He sat down heavily next to Dorian and ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Course it’s a female name. Seems the lady storms always seem to bring a little somethin extra with ‘em.”

“Quiet, Pop. I’m tryna hear.”

“See what I mean?” He looked down at Dorian who was once again lost in his lively jungle. 

“What about Michael last year? Not strong enough for you? Wiped out half the damn panhandle. Ivan, Charlie? Heard of ‘em?” Iris’s face reddened as she ticked off names.

“You heard of Katrina? Irma? Frances or Jeanne? I know you know them names, girl. Know ‘em well as I do.” He turned now, facing the kitchen, leaning on his cane. “Say, let me teach you some, Iris. You know how many names was retired in the entire 1950s? Bet you don’t. You wasn’t round yet.”

When she gave no answer he continued. “They retired the names of eight storms entire decade. How many of them storms was named after men? One. Hurricane Ione, and that ain’t even really a man’s name. Old Greek name. Girl’s name.”

“Sure, Pop.”

“Yeah, ‘Sure, Pop.’ Know how many names was retired in the ‘60s? Bet you don’t. Was eleven. All lady names ‘cept one. How about the 70s?”

“Didn’t know you were a meteorologist.”

“Nine names, baby. Nine. Only two were men. How about the ‘80s? Huh? Seven names. Three men. Hurricane Allen in ’80, Hurricane Gilbert in ’88, and Hurricane Hugo in ’89. Boy was he a sumbitch. I remember watching him close.

“They started retiring the names of the real bad storms in ’55. From that year to 1989—that’s thirty-four years if my math is to be trusted—they retired thirty-five names. Twenty-nine them storms was named after women.”

“What’s your point?”

“Lady storms are worse. They got a fire in ‘em the men don’t have.”

“They named a storm after me this year,” Dorian said.

“Yeah? What he do? Blew out to ocean. That Dorian wouldn’t hurt a fly. Maybe a seagull. Say, what you drawing there?”

“It’s the rainforest.”

“Awful pretty.”

“So what, Pop? We don’t know what she’ll do yet. She’s far off still.”

“Got a bad feeling about this one, Iris. Real bad feeling. Feel it in my bones.”

“Probably arthritis you feel in those old bones. Gotta get you into the doctor sometime.”

“Ain’t got no goddamn arthritis, girl. I’m telling you. I got an awful bad feeling that we got a storm coming. Felt this way back in ’04 and ’05, ‘cept this time it’s worse. Whole lotta worse. Why you think I was out there playing that music?”

Iris could feel her agitation growing. What she wanted was to finish prepping dinner and take a hot shower. She needed ten minutes alone. “Couldn’t fashion a guess if I wanted to. Haven’t seen you take that old thing out in years.”

“She’s a little out of tune but she strums mighty nice. You know, the Tequesta people used to play tunes like that any time they felt a storm ‘cause—”

“Enough, Pop!” She slammed the knife on the counter hard enough to silence her grandfather and widen the eyes of her son. “We don’t need no more of your Native tales right now, okay? Okay? News tries hard enough to scare people as is. Just please…not now, Pop. Not now.”

Iris dumped the chicken into the pot and left her family to gape as she marched down the hall and closed the bathroom door, hard.

“It’s all right, bub,” Pop said as he slipped an arm around his slack-jawed four-year-old great-grandson.

“Storms always get people actin’ a little wild. She’ll be fine. Say, what about this guy up in the corner?” He pointed to a toucan perched on a tree, still in black and white. “Why, I bet he’d look real good in red. You got a red one?”

Inside the bathroom with herself, Iris felt a little better. She let the shower run a minute while she undressed.

Pop. Always with his damn stories. He relished in the tiny sliver of Native American heritage he could claim. She herself was as white as white gets in Florida: always tanned and at least a little red. Pop was almost as white as her and just as southern if not more in his dialect. But Lord did he love his legends. His myths.

How they’d scared her as a child. Especially back in 2004 when the first storms had hit. She’d been ten—barely. He’d gone on and on about what the Natives used to do to ward off the spirits, the creatures that the wind could bring. She’d been close to hysterical when the winds began. But mom was still here then, calm and comforting as she always was.

God it hurt to think about mom. It wasn’t fair, being the woman of the house since the age of seventeen. Why was it the Lord asked so much of her? How could she be expected to carry the weight of so many different worlds on her bony, groaning shoulders?

Iris slapped the tears from her face as she stepped into the shower.

Thursday

It was sunny today, and hotter than all hell. September in the land of perpetual summer. Both windows were down in her beaten Chevy and the air outside smelled of dirt and ozone and oranges. She was saving for a new car—something with a five-star safety rating, a real back seat for Dorian—and therefore refused to put another dollar into Old Blue, not even the dollars it would take to get the A/C working again. Dorian bounced alongside her as they rolled down the dirt drive, studying the toy in his hand.

It wasn’t much of a toy. Wasn’t really a toy at all, in fact. Originally it had hung on the antenna sticking out of the truck’s peeling hood. Then the antenna had broken and she’d throw it mindlessly onto the passenger’s seat, a green gator wearing an orange sweater with a big blue F on the front. Iris couldn’t have cared less about college, or football, and there might not have been a care further from her mind than college football (she was one of few who could say so honestly in her neck of the woods), but she liked the token enough to pick it up from her gravel driveway the morning she’d discovered it laying there, next to the antenna it had brought down with its own weight. It was a keepsake, something Millie had sent her from the UF bookstore her freshman year. That had been 2012, the year she, Iris, had met Riley. Two years later they’d had a son and damn if the boy didn’t have his father’s soft brown hair, the crease just above the eyebrow when he was working something hard, that way of looking at her as if he knew something about her that she herself didn’t know.

Six months after the boy was born, Riley had left. No goodbye, no explanation, just gone. She’d always assumed he’d found someone else, had loaded her into his souped-up Firebird and put St. Lucie in the rearview with nothing but the money in their pockets and the smiles on their young pretty faces and—

But it was no good to think of such things. No good at all. Her fingernails slipped from their familiar ruts in the weathered hide of her steering wheel as she unclenched her grip. Then the truck was slowing to a stop in front of a small house the size and shape of a trailer.

“Stay put a minute, baby,” she said as she lowered the sun visor. It made a meager shadow some eight inches above the boy’s head. “If you start feeling hot go on and sit down there.” She pointed to the well in front of the seat, under the dashboard. Dorian shook the alligator and growled to himself, lost in some fantasy.

She closed the door of the truck and grabbed the basket of eggs from the bed. As she walked past, she paused to look through her window again. The toy almost looked more like a man than an alligator. He was standing upright, on two feet, wearing a sweater, a manic grin pasted to his face, showing teeth, so many teeth. It was the school’s mascot, she was pretty sure: Alfred or Albert or something. Had to be. She assumed it was meant to look fearsome, intimidating.

“You like him, huh?”

Dorian growled at her and shook the toy. “I’m gonna eat you with my teeth!” he said in a voice that was so low it seemed to coat her sunburned sweaty body in a sheet of ice. He sounded like a boy possessed

(spirits they ward off spirits)

and that thought was followed by a train of even more unpleasant memories.

(in the wind, from the water, in the dark, in the wind)

But then he was just her son again, smiling his sweet, small-toothed smile. “Does he have a name?” she asked, forcing her voice even.

“He’s the Gator-Man. He eats up the bad people.”

“You better be good then.” She dropped a quick wink and started walking toward the house. The front door was open and she could hear The Weather Channel through the screen: talking about wind speeds and troughs and ridges. Iris yelled through the screen door and a moment later she heard Robert shuffling down the hall. It was dark inside and brighter than the inside of a lightbulb in the yard, but she had lived next door to Robert long enough to recognize he and Patty’s footsteps without needing to actually see who was coming.

“Got my eggs?” He opened the door and she stepped into the hall. The tile in the entranceway was surprisingly cool when she slipped her shoes off. The house smelled of old cigarettes and older furniture.

“Nope. This here’s a basket of Winston’s droppings. Left them in the sun so they’d turn nice and white for you.”

“Too bad,” he said, taking the basket. “Had some oranges I set aside for you but I guess I’ll give ‘em to old Harlan down the way.” He cut the word oranges short, the way most old southerners—Pop included—did, which left the word sounding more like owrnjs.

Iris peeked through the screen door. Dorian’s head was barely visible through the windshield; she could see his hair and the top line of his eyebrows.

“Boy don’t want to come inside?” Robert followed her gaze.

“Can’t stay but just a minute, no need.”

She walked into the living room. The carpet was badly stained and felt desperately thin on the soles of her feet. Robert set the basket of eggs on the counter and went back to his chair. Patty was behind the counter, pouring beans into two bowls.

“Hey girl.”

“Hi Patty.”

“Just one second I’ll fetch those oranges.”

“Take your time.”

Iris looked around idly. She’d been coming into this house as long as she could remember.

Patty and mom had gone to high school together, down at Central. They’d always felt like a second family, especially when she had needed another family most of all. It certainly didn’t hurt that they were her closest neighbors, even if they were at least a quarter-mile down the road.

“How’s the old man?” Patty asked as she lifted the bowls and crossed into the living room. She sat one on Robert’s lap and the other on the easy chair next to him.

“He ain’t no different than he’s ever been.”

“Well of course not, darling. Man of that age not likely to pick up any new habits any time soon. You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks.”

Patty went out back and Robert said, “Got plenty plywood out back if y’all need some. Can help you put it up over the windows too—probably too much work for Pop these days.”

“What are they saying?” she asked, crossing to where he sat so she could see the tv.

“Cat four most likely. They’ll say at the update at five. Moving fast. Looking like it might come here after all.”

“Great.”

“Oh, just part of living in the Sunshine State, dear. Gotta pay the price for the lovely weather we get year-round. Ain’t nowhere on this Earth that God made perfect.” He fanned himself with the newspaper as he spoke and Iris realized the irony was completely lost on him.

“Guess so.”

Patty came back in with a plastic Walmart bag filled with oranges. “These are the best ones from the tree, girl. We know how that old man likes his oranges. Should be happy with these.”

“Thanks Patty. I should go. Boy’s waiting in the truck.”

“Say hi for me.”

“Will do.”

“Remember what I said,” Robert added. “Plenty plywood. Help you board up if needed.”

“Thanks Robert.”

Five minutes later they were pulling to a stop in front of their own similarly sordid house, listening to the gravel crunch beneath the tires of the truck. When she killed the engine, the world fell quiet. She heard the reedy hum of insects that lived in the tall grass. She listened as the wind spoke in its strange, soft language, shaking trees and blessing birds. And she heard the sad chords blowing by from her own backyard. The strumming of out-of-tune strings.

“I didn’t know Pop-Pop could play guitar, mom.”

“I don’t think Pop-Pop knows that he can’t play guitar.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing honey, Lord only knows. Let’s go in. Think you can carry those oranges for me?”

“Sure can.”

“What a gentleman.” She kissed his head and they went inside.

Iris went directly to the tv. It was five of five. She was anxious to see the new cones. Her heart was fluttering in her chest like a trapped insect underneath a mason jar. She hated hurricanes. Hated them especially when they came at night, like they were predicting. Hated the way the dark sky turned darker, hated the way the clouds raced across the sky like they had somewhere to be, hated the way the wind shrieked like it was alive, alive and looking to hurt. She fucking hated them.

And she hated the sound of Pop’s guitar as he struggled through his superstitious chords.

“Go on take those oranges out back to Pop-Pop, baby.”

She heard the door open as she got the tv on. No need to find the channel; it was right where it needed to be and wouldn’t go anywhere the next few days. It would be all they talked about on the news, on the radio. She remembered well. In 2004 they’d been smacked in the face by two hurricanes, back-to-back. Hurricane Frances in early September: she made landfall overnight in Jensen Beach, just south of them, and moved slow, slower than Winston on his evening walks after cleaning his bowl.

“Are those for me?” The guitar stopped. She was grateful. “What’s that? A bag full of money?”

“It’s oranges, Pop-Pop.”

“Oranges? Next best thing! Want to split one with me?”

Frances had screamed all night long, the wind like so many voices, so many prying fingers, trying to get underneath the plywood, to push against the windows, to push them in and break them and take the roof and ruin her home. She’d cried that night.

“Boy! This dang thing’s almost as big as your head!” She listened as Dorian giggled.

Frances knocked out the power with her arrival. It stayed out for two weeks, and she was only a Cat 2 at landfall. Three weeks later Hurricane Jeanne showed up; they’d just gotten power back three days prior. She arrived as a Cat 3 and also made landfall overnight. Once again, the eye of the storm came onshore in Jensen. Unheard of, the media said. Jeanne was stronger but faster moving. Iris preferred that. Not only because the poor old house was likely to fare better if it spent less time beneath the powerful cyclone, but because it meant less time jamming her ears, burying her face in her pillow, crying and praying, praying and crying. Less time listening to the voices in the wind.

The picture resolved itself on the screen; Sebring was talking through the recent update.

“What’s that?” She glanced over her shoulder, watched as Pop pulled a piece of orange peel from behind her son’s ear. He shrieked in delight. “Looks like you’re ripe!”

“Quiet, I’m trying to hear!”

“The question is,” Sebring was saying, his voice slowly rising, “how will Erin react when she gets right about here.” He was drawing a line on the electronic map directly east of Great Abaco. “The NHC forecasts one of two things. The first is that this low- to mid-level subtropical ridge to the north of the hurricane will force it west, directly over Abaco and Grand Bahama. Now the Bahamas don’t offer a lot of elevation, so it is unlikely we see significant weakening of the storm as it crosses over—if it does. But the storm is likely to slow in this scenario, giving the steering currents more time to collapse. If this happens, we could see Erin stall for a moment, before this mid-level trough along the eastern United States deepens and becomes the dominant steering feature.

“Now this would be fortunate for folks in Palm Beach and Broward and St. Lucie counties; the storm would likely take a more northern turn and narrowly skirt the Atlantic coast of Florida.”

“Full of shit, he is.”

“Watch the language, Pop. Seriously?”

“He don’t hear me, he’s got orange peels in his ears!” Iris raised the volume again to drown Dorian’s gleeful shouting as Pop clamped two big peels to either side of his head.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s time to let our guards down or start taking down those shutters. There is some agreement amongst the models, but the NHC warns that this is all highly dependent on the speed of the storm. Erin has been steadily increasing speed, moving north north-west at about twelve miles-per-hour. We expect, and I emphasize the word because there is still a good deal of guess work involved, that she is likely to begin slowing soon. If Erin does continue at this speed, there is a chance she will turn west just above Abaco. This would be great news for the Bahamas, but for folks along the Atlantic coast of Florida this would likely result in direct landfall. Less time for the low- to mid-level subtropical ridge to the north to dissolve, meaning steering currents would likely guide the storm somewhere near Palm Beach. And folks, I want to emphasize that there is currently very little vertical wind shear off the coast of Florida, and the water in the Gulf Stream is very warm, which will give Erin an optimal environment to continue strengthening. If the forecast trends in this direction, it is very likely we could see landfall of a strong Category four or even Category five hurricane.

“As for now it is impossible to say, but we want to emphasize how important it is to prepare for the worst. We of course will keep you updated as new information rolls in from…”

Iris muted the tv and walked to the kitchen. A steady thumping was beginning behind her temples. She was hot, tired, stressed. She’d been hoping for good news, any indication that the sinking feeling in her stomach might be off, that another year might pass with them dodging the chaotic, spinning bullets shot from the coast of Africa or South America in their direction.

“Are we getting a hurricane, mom?” Dorian was back inside, holding the remains of a gutted orange in his small hands.

“Looks like we might be.”

“Are hurricanes scary?”

“Only a little bit, honey. We’ll be fine. Go on and wash up.”

They ate dinner in silence; all three had trouble keeping their eyes from the wide living room window and the tranquil sky above it.

Later that night, Iris found herself rooting through the top shelf of the dresser in her closet. Dorian was asleep, finally. Pop had taken his medicine and retired to his room. She was hunting for treasure; bitter, stinking, satisfying treasure. Her fingers scraped the corner of the box and slipped off the cellophane. Yes! Still there. There were two cigarettes in the pack.

She’d kicked the habit eight months ago. Well, except for those days when life seemed especially determined to fuck her. But what was the occasional cigarette to someone who’d had a pack-and-a-half-a-day habit? Hardly anything worth turning over in your mind. And if the very fact that there were still two left in this pack she’d bought last December wasn’t enough to prove the point she wasn’t so sure it was a point worth proving.

She slipped quietly from her room, down the darkened hall, and put her slippers on as she slowly pushed aside the screen door to the back porch. Pop was a dark shape on his rocker, gently motioning forward and back, his small guitar on his lap. Iris quickly put the cigarette behind her back, like a caught teenager.

“What are you doing out? Thought you were in bed.” She let the door whisper closed behind her.

“Same thing you’re doing, I suppose. Dealing with this dang storm.”

“I just needed some air. Can’t sleep.”

“Air’s a lot fresher in your bedroom than it is at the end of that cigarette.” He turned his head toward her; she could faintly see the reflection of the moon in his glasses. “Don’t look so surprised, girl. My nose’s good as it ever was. You’re more than welcome to your occasional nightcap. But that dang smell don’t come off your fingers no matter how much toothpaste you lather ‘em with.”

The ruse lost, she removed her hands from her back and settled into the chair next to him. The first drag made her cough, turned the dark backyard watery through her stinging eyes. Almost immediately she felt relaxed, lighter—as if the anchor that wound its way from her skull down her neck into her gut was loosened, as if she might very well float away into the black silent sky where huge clouds spun and spun forever just off the coast.

“Storm’s really got you worried,” Pop said, lifting the guitar. He strummed lightly. She listened to the sound his large, surprisingly dexterous fingers made as they slid around on the strings. She’d tried guitar, years ago, as a teenager. Tried to learn on the very guitar he was holding now. They couldn’t afford to get her one of her own, much as mom wanted to. She was glad, ultimately, that mom didn’t waste the money: the thing made her fingers hurt. She just didn’t seem to have the knack.

“Wonder whose doing that might be.” She took another drag, relished the weightlessness.

“You were always a worrier. Your mother too. Can’t put that all on me. Everyone has their nature. Just the way they are.”

Iris sat up. “You don’t think your little stories might’ve had something to do with that? Think the sound of that goddamn guitar triggers my PTSD.”

Pop strummed again. Slid his fingers. Strummed. She was never quite sure—not when she was ten, not now—if he was trying to play a song or just make noise. But these were definitely the same chords he’d played in 2004. The gooseflesh on her arms told her that.

“I play this guitar to keep us safe. And if you hadn’t been such a darn little curious thing, I might not have had to tell you those stories or why I was out here doing what I do.”

Silence sat with them.

“Suppose I regret that a little, lookin back. Thought you’d want to know a little bout your heritage…traditions…that sort of thing. Didn’t know I was scaring you so bad, darling.”

She wanted to speak then, to accept his apology, but she couldn’t. The familiar fear was in her throat, the images he’d put in her mind. She saw claws and scales and teeth and heard growls. But that was just the wind passing under the eaves. Just the wind.

“I ain’t told the boy, if you haven’t noticed. He asks me every day this week, ‘Pop-Pop, why you playing those sad songs?’ But I won’t tell him. No ma’am.”

“Don’t you even think of it.”

Iris let another drag from the cigarette settle in her lungs as she leaned back into her chair. It was almost out. And she only had one left. Fucking hurricanes. She hated them. Hated the way they sent everyone into a panic, the way they interrupted regular life—as if life wasn’t full of its own catastrophes and tragedies as it is.

A short sarcastic laugh escaped her mouth. The sound was like a hurt dog barking in the night.

“ ‘My heritage. Traditions.’ That’s rich.”

Pop had begun strumming again, but now he stopped. “Laugh all you want girl. Same blood runs through your veins as mine.”

“What are you Pop, like one-tenth Seminole? So what’s that make me? Huh? White. I’m white. Look at me. Look at your damn self.”

“Your heritage is a lot more than the color of your skin,” he said, speaking slowly now. Iris felt herself shrinking, becoming a kid again under that voice. “Don’t matter much how I look or talk. It’s something I feel in my bones. Our family has been here as far back as anyone can trace. Hell, I grew up in this house, same as you. This land, far as I’m concerned, is a piece of me. Always will be. Don’t matter that we’ve gotten whiter as the years have gone on. That began all the way with my own grandmother marrying a white man. Slowly but surely we’ve been moved away and mostly forgotten about. But I’m still here. And I ain’t forgotten.”

They settled into the silence once more. Iris crushed the filter of her smoke under her shoe and picked it up, dropped it into her pocket without thought.

“And I’m one-quarter, goddamnit. Not no one-tenth.”

“Big deal.”

“You know,” he said, turning again in her direction, “it’s not so simple as being ‘Seminole.’ Seminole ain’t so simple as people think. Not just one group of people or the mascot of some annoying school up’n Panhandle. It’s a lot more than a bumper sticker or a war chant. You know the Seminole were a bunch of different people from all over the state come together?”

“Guess not.” And as he went on, as she responded when prompted, she found herself at ten years old again.

“Calling me or you ‘Seminole’ ain’t even really right. There was the Mayaimi people, who lived around Lake Mayaimi. Course they call that Lake Okeechobee now—‘nother Indian word. Means ‘Big Water.’ Guess you can figure how they named that city down south. Bet no one down there knows they’re speaking Hitchiti when they talk about how bad the damn Dolphins are this year.

“Then there was the Tequesta tribe, also south-east Florida. Name prob’ly sounds familiar too. The Santa Luces. Pull up a map of Florida and point to anywhere, bet you come up with a town named after some group of people most people either forgotten or never knew. But some of us remember. And it’s a lot more than just the names of tribes we remember. It’s a lot more than just what your hair or skin looks like, Iris. Some of us remember the old ways. The old stories.

“You know I seen that toy the boy was playing with. Little gator thing. Boy does that thing give me a bit of a start, no matter how many times I see it on a t-shirt or decal on a car or even on the damn tv on Saturday.”

Iris wanted to speak, to stop Pop from going where he was going, because she knew, oh yes, she knew. She knew exactly who he’d be talking about if she gave him another minute uninterrupted, but she couldn’t because he was her grandfather and she was ten years old and she was lonely and she wanted to hear his stories, wanted to hear the warm comforting rasp of his voice, even if what he said made her a little scared. They were only stories anyway.

“Lots of people out there probably think naming storms is a new thing. The way we personify them, make them out to be something more than just wind and rain. Those meteorologists started naming storms in ’47 if I’m not mistaken, but the people who was here before them…before there were meteorologists and radar and weather-maps and forecasts and cones of uncertainty…they used to name the storms too. The bad ones, that is.

“Of course, back then it was something entirely different. You didn’t get no five-day warning. There wasn’t no Walmart to run to, no water to buy, no shutters to put on your windows. Ain’t no one had windows. No, back then you simply headed out about your business when all a sudden the sky got dark, the wind started to pick up, and you noticed there was a storm blowing in off the coast—and God help you if you was close enough to the coast to see it coming. Your only warning might be the animals. They get real spooked. They feel it in their bones somewhere too. Animals know. Course back then people weren’t so much different than the animals.”

Pop paused for a minute, perhaps to catch his breath, perhaps to gather his thoughts. He picked up the guitar and strummed again, and God, did it have to sound so lonely, whatever he was playing? Did it have to sound like a lost child crying into the wind?

“Guess that makes sense. The animals have it in their bones. The people learn from the animals. And eventually the people start telling other people, and those people tell their kids, and this way people who never even been through the storms can know about them. That’s when they started the rituals. Playing the songs to keep them away.”

Pop sat up. Iris’s heart gathered speed.

“See, they knew about the spirits. The spirits that brought the winds and the rains. It’s easy now, I suppose, to dismiss that as so much antiquated nonsense, as people trying to figure out the world around them. They didn’t know as much as we do. But is that true? Maybe we’ve just forgotten everything they knew, same way we forgot most everything about them. Where they were, who they were. Maybe they lived and learned and died and we’ve forgotten their lessons.

“I learned how to play this from my cousin Rich, you remember Rich? That sumbitch was full-blooded Calusa. Could trace his family back to the sixteenth century. We always called them cousins, though I’m not sure how the blood works out. They was on the Gulf side, we kept mostly to the Atlantic, but it’s the same stuff at the end of the day. He showed me how to play these songs. The braves used to get together when they felt a storm coming. They’d pound their drums, drink their black drink—like they was getting ready for war. Because war is really what it is, right? War with nature. Worst war you can fight. And they’d play these songs and try to ward off the spirits, try to keep the storms from coming.

“People will tell you—historians, that is—that they were superstitious because the storms were devastating, naturally. Course they were. Destroy crops, scare animals, decimate their homes, kill people. Sure, all that is true, I suppose. But Rich, he told me the real truth. See, there’s lots more to fear in these storms than just some wind and some rain.”

Pop picked the guitar back up and strummed as he rocked, rocked. The chords came a little more easily now; the sound of his fingers sliding along the strings was more muted. All at once the impression was too much: sitting on this chair under the dark moon, listening as Pop played his songs and told his stories. The picture was complete. She found herself frozen in fear, locked inside her body, ten years old, a kid helpless to listen.

“They call him ‘Halpatnakni. Alligator-Man.’ Real simple translation. Muskogee-Hatchiti. Rich was fluent. I’ll never forget the night he told me that story. I was much younger then. We’d been sitting around outside, somewhere in the middle of the state, sitting around a fire and there was nothing nowhere, not for miles. We was drinking rum straight from the bottle, passing it back and forth, and once he started drinking he was liable to talk. He told me the story that his father told him and his father before him going back as far as anyone can know.

“His people come from over Fort Myers way, been there longer than the Spanish can claim the state. They was real superstitious-type about the storms, because they knew. They’d been visited by Halpatnakni. Way the story goes, people was sitting around, listening to the wind. It was dusk. The group of men—able-bodied men, that is—had gotten back from a hunt earlier not long before, and they was tired, weak-type feeling. They’d been chasing wild hogs, hoping to corner one and stick it. Probably still had the damned thing’s screams in their ears when they made it back to the fire that night. Winds had been getting worse all day, and slowly they’d gotten the idea that a real sumbitch of a storm was blowing in, not your regular summer thunderstorm.

“Well they got the fire going, best they could. And the men start telling tales from the hunt, telling what happened. Details ain’t too important, ‘cept for one thing. There was one man with ‘em, real wild-type. Didn’t respect the rules. Lot of people think having respect for the environment is some new thing, some liberal-driven happy feel good stuff, but they was caring about the environment long before they knew the consequences. There were rules, Iris, and you followed them.

“One of those rules was that you only hunt what you can eat, what you can use, and you use every damn part of that animal if you decide you have to kill it. I’m talking bones and skin and all the parts you can’t eat. All of it must be used.

“Well, they was hunting boar, like I might’ve said. Boar’s a good animal, lot to eat, strong bones. Can do a lot with ‘em. Well, wild-man over there, he gets tired of the chase, because hunting boar is mostly that, a chase. He decides to duck off to the water, maybe dip his feet, have a drink, who knows. Well, old boy sees a gator, tanning its hide by the shore. Decides he wants its foot. Call it a good luck charm. So he sneaks over, real quiet like, and he jumps on its back like goddamn Steve Irwin, pins it down, holds its neck so it can’t turn around and snap his hand off. After a minute the thing stops thrashing. It lifts its head, turns slightly and says, ‘What do you need? I mean no harm.’

“He grabs his little hatchet, cuts its foot off without a word. Kicks the thing into the water, leaving it to die, although anyone who knows gators knows it probably didn’t die. Those things are like tanks. Can hardly kill ‘em. Dinosaurs, really, that’s what they are.

“He meets back up with the rest of the men, all tired and satisfied, slinging the boar back to the village, and he shows the men his foot, his good luck charm. Course they get mad, probably smack him upside the head or what have you for his ignorance. After they tell him how much of a dang idjit he is, they start making their way back to camp.

“The men leave this part of the story out when theys is telling it round the campfire. So they’re eating, listening to the wind, worrying about the storm—this was before they knew about the singing, the songs, the dancing, the black drink, all the rituals to keep the demons away. But the fire went out once the rain really started, so everyone sort of went back to their huts, some sleeping in groups the way they did, others off’n their own. Way he tells it, everyone had a real bad feeling, like something was coming. Some folk thought it was karma maybe, coming back around to hunt them the way they hunted those pigs. Others—the men, those in the know—thought maybe it was karma for something else. Must’ve been his great-great-on-and-on-granddaddy that was there to see it happen. For all we know we share the same great-great-and-all-that-granddaddy. Somewhere, at some point, we was the same people.

“Anyway, Rich’s great-great-so-on-and-so-on-granddaddy was one of them off on his own. He ain’t had no family yet, no family of his own that was, meaning wife and kid, because they was all one big family. Way he tells it, daddy was trying to sleep, having a hard time on account of the wind screeching the way it does, you know what I mean?”

Iris didn’t respond but she might as well have not been there. Once Pop got going it didn’t matter if he had an audience or not, he was apt to finish.

“But then he starts to hear something else, something underneath the wind. A sort of growling type noise. Well, he grabs his spear, thinking some sort of animal must’ve gotten spooked and found its way to them. Thinking underneath that maybe one of the pigs they couldn’t corner had trailed them back—not that boars act that way. Maybe he was trying to keep other thoughts from creeping to his mind. Then he hears screaming. He hears huts being torn down, broken open, hears women and kids crying and shouting, hears men screaming louder than the kids. But it’s the smell that stops him, right as he’s bout to bust out of his hut. A smell like the bottom of the ocean. Like everything dead and floating at the top of the lake.

“Old daddy stands there, frozen in fear, not quite understanding why, when all the sudden his choice is made for him. In one triumphant screech his hut is blown in and he’s left standing in the dark, standing in the wind, shielding his face with his hands, listening to his brothers and sisters scream into the night. He goes to run but he stops, because he’s no coward. Plus, where’s he to go?

“He charges in the direction of his people. The warriors and hunters slept to the outskirts, sort of guard-keeping. So he runs the direction of the screams, and that’s when he sees him. Halpatnakni. Standing on two feet like a man, skin all green and scaly like an alligator. He’s at least seven feet tall, if not eight. Big sharp teeth shooting out of his mouth every which way. And his eyes. Dark yellow, the way the moon gets sometimes, and glowing too. He says the thing lets out a bellow, turning its head up into the storm, as if the storm is its doing, and it roars, like a dinosaur, same damn sound a gator makes if you hear one now. You ever heard a gator in the canal at night, creeping and grunting the way they do? Well, like I said, old daddy ain’t no coward. He takes his spear and chucks it hard as he can; even with the wind blowing the way it was, the thing stays true and goes straight into Halpatnakni’s chest. And it bounces off. Doesn’t even scratch the beast.

“Thing turns and screams again, looking directly at him. Now old daddy gets a proper look at it, standing there, gleaming in the rain. The way the cracks run down its ancient scales, splitting them open like dry lips. The muscles, standing out beneath its hide. He sees the claws at the ends of its hands and feet—and hands is what they was, cause the damn thing is standing upright, arms bent at the elbow, way a man in anger would, and at the end of those hands is three long fingers that turn to dark claws, and one extra finger hooking out from the side, almost like a thumb, but more like a claw, way you see on a cat. Way Rich tells it the thing points and smiles, as if to say ‘I’ll remember you,’ and its lips start moving as if it’s trying to speak. Then it goes back to business, reaching into overturned huts, tearing people’s faces with its claws, ripping their arms off, their heads, biting and growling and roaring the way it does.

“Rich said no one in the family ever allowed that story to be forgotten. Seems they carried around the crazy idea that Halpatnakni might still be out there, looking for the remnants of old daddy that might still be kicking around. Or, looking for one of their brothers. One with a good luck charm clipped to his waist. Thing is, nights like the night he told me, real dark, with the wind kicking…it don’t sound like such a crazy idea. Not to me.

“Night he told me that story we was sleeping in tents. Well, maybe he was. I didn’t get a lick of sleep. All I could think about was how it would feel if a storm were to start kicking, to start prying at my tent, trying to lift it off the ground or open it up. How I might react if I heard Halpatnakni out there growling and gibbering. Next day I asked him more but we was both hungover and he wasn’t much in the mood to talk about it. He said they didn’t know where it came from or why, just that it came in the storms. No one knows if the spirits summon it, or if the wind drags it in, or if maybe it’s not the storm surge, kicking and spitting out the ocean’s blood on our shores that drags it up from the stony bottom of the sea and sends it into town, looking for people whose homes are being blown about so that it can drink from their fear and misery.”

Pop suddenly went silent and grabbed for his guitar. He strummed frantically, playing louder now, his face turned up to the sky. “All I know is anytime I hear a storm coming our way I plan to damn well do what I can. And if that scares you I’m sorry Iris, but it won’t stop me. I got the worst feeling about this one. It’s always the female names you gotta watch for. Rich told me that too.”

“Pop.” She managed to speak. “Go to bed. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long night.” Pop stood slowly, laid the guitar on his rocker. On his face he wore the expression of a man who’s just been woken from a trance. “Night sweetie,” he said, and touched her face lightly as he hobbled inside.

Iris sat where she was for a moment, looking into the yard. It was dark. Anything could be out there, stirring with the wind. To her right, far off, she saw a glowing light on the side of Robert’s house. She thought she might take him up on his offer to help board the house tomorrow. How nice it was to have family, community, so close. Although she didn’t think a quarter-mile would feel so close if their roof was blown off and they were running for safety. Running through the dark winds. Running not toward the screams but away from them.

She reached for Pop’s guitar. Her fingers naturally slid to the only chords she’d ever managed to learn. In the darkness just past midnight, alone on the porch, Iris strummed the opening notes of Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana. The light breeze blew the notes past her house, into the open darkness. It was a big world out there, an old world, and she was just a little kid, a scared kid. She strummed and wondered where the melody might find itself; whose ears might be waiting in the darkness to receive it.

Friday

Iris found herself being pulled from light, restless sleep in the darkness of early morning. There was someone tapping her window, tapping irregularly but persistently. The sound penetrated her dream and allowed her mind’s eye to see the long nail, black and ragged at the edge, tap-tapping her window, asking to be let in.

She awoke to a gasp. It was only the small palm tree growing behind her bedroom, of course, fronds being stirred in the wind, but for a moment the shadow in the darkness could have been anything. It was 5:12 am, still dark, not even the slightest hint of blue on the horizon. She knew she should go back to sleep as well as she knew there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d be able. She opened her phone to check the NHC’s five am update.

A moment later her pulse was thrumming in her throat and she was standing in the living room, wiping sleep from her eyes, trying to get the tv on. The apocalypse was coming and it was to be broadcast live in HD.

“Again, this is new information from the National Hurricane Center, just came in minutes ago with the five am update,” Sebring was saying. She had a moment to wonder if he ever went home. “Our situation here on the southeast coast of Florida has changed dramatically. Instead of slowing, Hurricane Erin has continued picking up speed—a move that has the meteorologists down in Miami baffled—a move that also might spell disaster for one of the largest population centers in the state of Florida. It appears that Erin has already swept above Abaco island and has made an almost ninety-degree turn to the west and is currently barreling toward Palm Beach county.”

Iris stared in disbelief, her eyes huge and glassy. In her terror she hadn’t noticed the tv’s volume, still blaring from yesterday, and now Dorian was at her side, sleepily rubbing his eyes. In one hand he held his alligator toy.

“Is it time to get up?” She didn’t hear him.

“At this advanced speed the ridge to the north will continue to be the dominant steering force, and as you can see, the updated cones are calling for direct landfall somewhere just north of Palm Beach. I repeat, the NHC is calling for direct landfall of a major hurricane north of Palm Beach. An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft has reported peak flight-level winds of 160 miles-per-hour and a pressure of 927 millibars. Based on these observations the NHC has placed an initial wind speed of 150 miles per hour, making Erin an extremely dangerous and life-threatening Category four hurricane, one that is on the cusp of becoming a Category five as she crosses into an environment of extremely warm waters and low vertical wind shear, an environment that is prime for continued strengthening.”

“Mommy are we getting a hurricane?” But she couldn’t answer because she wasn’t mommy, she was ten years old, she wasn’t anybody’s mommy, and where was her mommy? Where was she?

“It’s okay, bub,” Pop said, closing his big hands over Dorian’s collarbones. “It’s okay.” He drummed lightly with his fingers on the boy’s chest. On his face he wore a similar sleep-infected, slack-jawed look as his granddaughter.

“This is damn-near unprecedented, folks, excuse my language, but this has just become an extremely dangerous situation for millions of people along the southeast coast of Florida. It would not be an exaggeration to say that if you’re watching, now might be a good time to call your friends or family or neighbors who might be sleeping and wake them up. At this increased speed Erin is forecasted to make landfall tonight, that is tonight folks, Friday night overnight, no longer are we looking at a Saturday arrival. We expect evacuation notices to roll in at any moment and of course we will relay those to you as those are available.”

At that moment the sound to the tv cut off, replaced by a rhythmic high-pitched beeping and a sound that reminded Iris of dial-up internet when she was a little girl. At the same time her phone started vibrating; she checked the phone and read the words that the tv screamed at them in a monotone voice, the sound like an old-fashioned newsreel.

“ALERT: A HURRICANE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR THE FOLLOWING AREAS: BROWARD COUNTY; PALM BEACH COUNTY; ST. LUCIE COUNTY; MARTIN COUNTY…”

The strength suddenly seemed to run out of her legs and she fell hard into Pop’s lazy chair. 

“Mommy what’s happening, make it stop! Make it stop!”

The loud newsreel voice boomed from their tv, announcing the apocalypse with as much intonation as a man reading names he doesn’t recognize off of a list that means nothing to him. Pop fumbled for the remote and dropped it, the batteries shooting out of the back and tumbling across the floor. He bent to grab them but it was futile; he was apt to fall flat on his face if he tried any harder. Instead he roped an arm around Dorian and dragged him away, still screaming and holding his ears, leaving Iris to sit alone in her grandfather’s oversized chair and listen as her fate was ticked off emotionlessly.

“EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE ERIN EXPECTED TO HIT THE SOUTHEAST COAST OF FLORIDA BETWEEN PALM BEACH AND MARTIN COUNTIES LATER TODAY…LIFE-THREATENING STORM SURGE…HURRICANE-FORCE WINDS…AND VERY HEAVY RAINFALL EXPECTED…”

Her phone buzzed again in her pocket. Faintly, beneath the sound of the tv, she heard her son crying, heard Pop trying and failing to comfort him. Where was she? Who was she? She answered the phone. A woman’s voice, peppered with the same faint southern accent most locals held, began reading to her:

“This is a message from St. Lucie County Public Safety, please press one to confirm receipt.”

A brief pause.

“As of five am on September 13, 2019, there is a mandatory evacuation for residents on North and South Hutchinson Island, those living in low-lying coastal areas, and manufactured homes. Please be advised the following shelters are open: Our Pet-Friendly Shelter, Fort Pierce Westwood High School, 1801 Panther…”

She dropped the phone on the chair. Stood. Turned the tv off. The quiet in the house without its dire warnings of catastrophe was palpable. And now she could notice what had initially woken her in the first place: the wind. It was stronger. Already. The outer bands were still at least forty miles off shore, but already the air outside was beginning to gather in that way she hated, and she knew if she were to step outside and look up she would see the clouds above her racing away, racing inland, running from the storm the way she should be right now.

Although, she wouldn’t see that just yet: it was dark. Just like it would be tonight when Erin arrived. She’d be stuck again, a prisoner in the dark, in the wind.

The evacuation notice had been for those in coastal areas—they were ten miles inland. Manufactured and mobile homes. This wasn’t either, but it was old, maybe one of the oldest homes in the county. No concrete walls rated to survive Category five strength winds, no impact glass, not even proper hurricane shutters. The roof was old, missing shingles. It had been a miracle they survived the Cat 2 and Cat 3 that came in 2004, Frances and Jeanne, twin sisters out for blood. No way the house could stand a Category five. No way.

But where to go? They had no money for a hotel. The truck could barely run, and the three of them could barely fit in it all together without any bags packed. Iris knew the roads would be chaos, absolute chaos; when people begin to panic it spirals, it builds, it spins and spins and becomes a thing of its own, its own storm, this one on land, not over sea, filled with hot tempers and fearful faces instead of wind and water. God, she hated everything about it. And what if the truck broke down as it was so apt to do while they were sitting in traffic on 95 or the turnpike? Erin would crush them like bugs in a tin can. No, there was nowhere to go, and no way to get there if there was.

That meant staying and facing the storm and whatever it might bring with it. That meant the clock was ticking. Some fifty miles offshore a beast churned and gurgled and spit. One more sunrise stood between it and them.

Iris grabbed her keys and stepped into the windy morning.

Her first stop was close, less than 1,000 feet down the road. Robert was up—late to bed, early to rise was Robert—and she was glad to see it, although she was not above pounding their door to get him out of bed if the situation demanded it. There was very little she was above this morning. And how apt of a metaphor was that? she wondered. Because drowning is what this felt like. Drowning in deep dark water that smelled of the black spots at the bottom of the ocean.

Robert was shuffling toward the back of the house when he saw her truck. “Take it you seen the news. Good. Didn’t much feel like driving down there to wake y’all. Would’ve though,” he added with a confidential nod. Robert’s house was already boarded, the windows shut tight behind spray-paint covered boards of plywood like a child covering their eyes to keep the monsters away.

“Y’all making for shelter?”

“Gotta get the house boarded first. That offer still stand?”

He stared at her a moment, thinking, and in the dawn’s soft light his face looked old, haggard. “Iris…”

“Robert. Please. Please.”

He made to check his watch but gave up quickly; instead he turned his head to the sky, squinting into the breeze which was already finding life.

“Help me get this wood into your truck then, come on.”

They worked quickly, Robert and Iris mostly, Patty lending a hand when she could. The boards were heavy and she was grateful to have their arms alongside hers, pinning them to the walls. She used Robert’s drill and screws she’d found in her glovebox. Pop came outside to watch as they boarded the central window at the front of the house, the wide slice of sky they usually enjoyed while eating dinner. They’d need lights now to see each other inside the house, even in the afternoon. And once the power went out…

Iris racked her mind. Did they have flashlights? Candles? How much water did she have sitting in the foyer, next to the door? Why was she so unprepared?

Dorian was sleeping, Pop told her. He was shaken, but he’d calmed considerably. “The joy of being a kid,” he said, wearing a smile that did little to comfort anyone, Pop himself included. His face slacked. “Wouldn’t hurt to hear a little comfort from his momma, though.”

“Well his momma’s busy making sure he’s going to have a house to live in after this fucking storm is gone.”

With the house shut off as well as they could manage, its eyes blacked, its mouth taped over, its ears stuffed against the steadily rising scream of the wind, she thanked Robert and Patty and told them to stay in touch. Let me know where you end up, okay? Will do, sweetie. Maybe we’ll come find you a little later, ride this thing out together. That’d be great, darling. You be safe. You as well. And do you need water? We’re taking what we have to the shelter but we could leave you some. No, no, I’m heading to the store now.

Iris and her grandfather watched the Clarks’ truck rattle down the dirt road, back to the old house in the distance. Then Pop said, “Better take that little .22 of yours if you really mean to head to town. Liable to be crazy folk everywhere after a broadcast like that.”

He wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know, which is why the pistol was sitting in the truck.

She tried Walmart first, which was a mistake. She’d thought the neighborhood market store off Wilcox would be her best bet—not too many houses nearby, and there were two Supercenters closer to the water. But life has a way of teaching that there are no original thoughts, no new ideas, and when life delivers that lesson it doesn’t let you down softly.

The parking lot was a mess. All spots except the ones in the very back filled, people had resorted to leaving their vehicles in the emergency lane out front. Iris spotted three collisions in the lot, cars backing out or turning around and running directly into each other. She parked in the back and jogged to the wide automatic doors. She hadn’t run since high school; by the time she reached the entrance she was breathing hard, knuckling sweat from her brow.

Things were worse inside. The shelves were cleared—the useful ones, anyway. Water, canned goods, batteries, toilet paper, Gatorade. Fans and hammers. Bread and milk. Even the flavored water selection was terribly slim. There were fistfights over cases of Zephyrhills. People reaching into other’s carts and taking what they wanted. She left when a burly man with a faded red hat pulled a revolver the size of her thigh over the last package of Jimmy Dean sausages.

In the parking lot a silver-haired woman with hollow eyes bull-rushed her. Iris cursed herself for leaving the pistol in the truck. Her hand went automatically to her waist, grabbed at air. She wouldn’t let it happen again. Couldn’t afford to. The woman was crying. She repeated: “Have you seen my daughter? She was right here. Have you seen her? Have you? Have you seen my daughter?”

Iris mumbled and averted her eyes.

It was total societal breakdown, and that was what frightened her most. The way people became so much like animals when the panic set in. The way they were all so much like wild creatures with their noses up, sensing danger in the wind. Doing things we all implicitly agree not to do; the way those barriers fell and those walls broke down as if they never existed.

The lines at the three gas stations she passed were colossal. Luckily she had a quarter-tank and no generator to worry about powering. She was making her way home, trying to choke the panic in her throat, to keep it from boiling over and spilling out in a foam of misery, when she noticed a CVS with a nearly abandoned parking lot. Without giving herself a chance to second-guess, she pulled in.

It was almost funny, the direct juxtaposition: The outside world a hectic flurry of mayhem, the Walmart with its raucous mobs, beating each other over the head for a bag of rolls; stood side-by-side with the cold, white, almost sterile inside of the drug store…it was like entering an alien world. One with quiet overhead music and a blank-faced teenage boy manning the lone cash register.

Moving quickly, Iris hooked to the far left of the store, trying to stifle the hope that maybe she’d found forgotten treasure, a hidden gem sitting barely below the dirt. And then she saw it: cases of water, four of them. Chips and cookies and toilet paper. All of this directly across from a display of t-shirts urging people to VISIT FORT PIERCE, FLORIDA – THE SUNSHINE STATE, which was a bit redundant, considering the location of the store.

She grabbed what she thought they needed—two cases of water, Doritos, Gatorade, candles, batteries, three flashlights, toilet paper, ibuprofen—and left.

All told the trip took two hours.

Robert and Patricia were still home, climbing out of their truck as she drove past. She slowed and hollered from her window. “Forget something?” Her heart nearly stopped when he turned to face her: Robert was pale and sickly, a man who’s just received a terminal diagnosis.

“Shelter’s full,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard over her idling engine. She shut it off.

“Which one?”

“All the shelters, Iris. Every last one. Turned us down at the door, right along with thirty, forty others.”

“You tried Westwood?” She tried to keep her voice even but the panic, the dread, was setting in.

“And Central. And Lakewood Park, and Treasure Coast High. Full up. Got Sheriffs outside with guns to keep the crowd down, but I don’t know how well they’ll hold.”

Iris tried to grasp the reality of what she was hearing.

“They can’t all be full,” she muttered.

“We’re grabbing the last of what we got in the pantry and heading out. Radio says the roads are pretty bad, but if we stay off the major highways I think we’ll be okay. Know a couple roads that cut west across the state that ain’t likely to be busy.”

“The storm’s supposed to cut clean across the state, Robert. Going west won’t help.”

“Better than being right here when she makes landfall.”

“Where are you going? What makes you so sure they won’t be full up over in Sarasota or Tampa? You plan on riding this out in that old thing if worst comes to it?”

“Iris, we can’t stay. We can’t. This house ain’t rated for no Cat 5. Yours ain’t neither. Y’all should load up and follow us is what you should do.”

“I can try the special needs shelter over on Virginia. Pop counts. Don’t know if they’ll let us take Winston but I got an old man and a kid to worry about first.”

Robert coughed out a laugh. “Full up, Iris. Like I said. Every last one. They sent the overflows down there this morning. Governor said they had to open up the hotels and let people inside but there ain’t no room there neither. It’s time to leave.” He turned; Patty turned with him.

While they went inside to scrape together the remainder of their food, Iris opened her phone. Checked Waze, then Google Maps. When the Clarks returned, she shoved the screen toward their faces.

“Those dark red lines look so much like arteries? Those are the roads. This one here,” she jabbed at the screen with a badly chewed nail, “your secret path? Ain’t no new ideas, Robert. Not when something like this is coming.”

Robert chewed his tongue, grew paler.

“Please,” she said, “just listen to me. We have to stay together. Better to be holed up in an old house than stuck on the road. We don’t have time.”

Their bags hit the ground. Their lungs fetched deep, sorrowful sighs.

“If I’m riding this out, I’m doing it in my own damn house,” Robert finally said. “Y’all are more than welcome, but I know that old man’s gonna say the same.”

Iris wanted to argue but she felt time was running short now. She also knew Robert was right; there was no way Pop would want to sit around at the Clark house, what he always referred to as “that damn yella eyesore.” And Robert would take just as much convincing to camp out in their place. She looked from their tired faces to her house; suddenly it seemed very far away.

She said: “Well, we’re not that far really.” An idea struck her. “Hang on.” She grabbed the set of toy walkie-talkies Pop had given Dorian for his birthday. “Range isn’t too good, but should work for us.” She turned one on, handed it to Robert. Then she powered her own and tested. One quick clamp of the button on the side and her voice, scratchy and robotic, was coming from Robert’s hand.

“Great,” he said. “What is it I’m supposed to say? ‘Looks like our roof just came off, hope y’all are well.’ ‘Cept it would sound more like this, I’m sure.” He blew directly into the mouthpiece and then started screaming. It was a horrible sound, and horribly loud, too, with the other receiver close to her ear, but it wasn’t as bone-chilling and paralyzing as it would be in the darkness of night, Iris would find out. Not even close.

“We’re not that far,” she repeated, touching his hand. “And we’re family. No matter what happens, it’s good to have people that care about you nearby.” His face softened the slightest, but the haunted look remained. “Besides, one of these houses has gotta survive, right?”

They smiled, but neither much believed it.

The waiting was the worst part. She remembered that now. It was funny, Iris thought, how much of what you think you’ve forgotten is really just lying in wait, patiently picking its moment to resurface. The memories were back in full force, had been since the 24-hour news cycle had picked up the storm and dragged it to the front of every conversation. That was just a few days ago now, but a few days can mean a lifetime’s difference in perspective.

The three of them were sitting together in the living room, Pop and Dorian on the couch, Iris on her grandfather’s big lazy chair. Three members of the same bloodline, three separate generations. Only one was missing, wasn’t that right? There was a gap between Pop and herself, a gap that should have been filled by mom, would have been filled by mom if not for—

Ah, but not now. Now was not the time. Plus, the Clarks were just down the road, and they fit neatly into that blank spot, that missing generation.

Dorian worked his coloring book with the same grim determination they’d come to expect his face to display. He looked so much like Riley, standing over the hood of his Firebird, hands on his hips, lips drawn down into an expression that was either disgust or total concentration. She’d always had trouble deciding which mood her boyfriend was in. Was he seconds away from clapping in excitement and reaching for whatever tool the job demanded, or was it a tantrum bleeding through his face? An outburst of kicking and shouting and cursing. She didn’t miss him. She wished her son wore a different face.

Pop sat fiddling with his guitar. Both Iris and Dorian had come to not even notice his playing, so much background music in their sealed-off home. And background music it was, because the wind was really gaining now, really shouting. The power had flickered a few times, but so far held on. Once they’d checked in with Robert and Patty through the radios. They were watching The Food Network, trying to stay distracted. When the power went out, they had candles and cards.

Now they were watching the news, watching as the big red spinning mass slowly approached the eastern side of their state in the radar images. Outer bands had already made landfall; the eye was still churning over warm water just off the coast, the same place where Iris had spent so many sunny afternoons blessing the saltwater on her skin.

It wouldn’t be much longer now. Pop set the guitar down and got up, hobbled to his room. It was the third time he’d done that. Iris allowed him a moment and then tiptoed down the hall. The door was cracked. Pop was crouched down on the far side of the bed. She could see the top half of his head from behind, the wispy white hairs, so much like baby hair, combed over the crown of his skull. He lowered his head, raised it up, sniffled, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Iris listened as he spoke to himself in a low voice, too low to make out the words. Was he praying? Crying? His head bowed again and she heard it, yes, she was certain this time, she heard slurping, and then his head was up again, he was sniffling, rubbing his lips.

Iris stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind her.

“What are you doing?”

Her grandfather jumped, snapped his head guiltily, began shoving something away like a teenager caught with stolen beer.

“Just talking to m’self,” he said, now trying to stand. “I’ll be out in a minute, darling.”

“What you got there?”

His face said he considered lying and decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Pop raised a glass in his right hand, a glass half-full of murky, dark brown slush. It looked like a scoop of mud.

“Perhaps you remember what I said about the braves and their black drink. They’d drink it before going to war, same way they would when they’d play their songs and prepare for the storms.”

Iris noted the black smears along his lips, turning them purple, turning his face into one of a drowning man in a cold ocean.

“Didn’t want to scare you or the boy with anymore stories.” He sat on the bed and took another sip, grimaced.

“What’s in that?”

“Not quite the right stuff, unfortunately, but I think like most things if the spirit of the thing is right, you might be okay. And from the taste I can tell you, it’s close enough. Mostly roots ground up. I keep a few plants out behind that tree you might or might not’ve noticed.”

“Don’t make yourself sick you old fool. That’s the last thing we need.”

“No, Iris. The last thing we need is something else entirely. Think we both know that.”

There was silence between them again, a heavy silence, interrupted only by the harsh screams of nature against the house. It was raining now, coming down in irregular sheets, like someone throwing clumps of dirt and rocks at the roof. The power flickered again. This time it stayed off a few seconds before returning.

“Mom?”

“Coming sweetie,” she yelled.

Pop drained the glass, swallowing hard four times, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing harshly with each one. “Gotta be ready,” he said, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. “Gotta be ready.”

A piercing wail rose along the eastern wall of the house, the loudest one yet. Both Iris and Pop sensed they could feel the house rocking with it. There was a groan from somewhere inside the wall. The lights flickered again, went out, and this time didn’t return.

“Mom!” Now there was panic in Dorian’s voice, panic inside all of them.

Alone in the dark alone in the dark alone in the dark alone in the dark in the wind alone in the wind in the dark in the wind

Iris got moving, as much for her own sake as her son’s. “I’m here, honey, I’m here.” She used the light from her phone to find a flashlight. She knew she had to preserve her cell phone’s battery. With the flashlight found she lit some candles, settled on the couch next to her son. He’d put the coloring book down and his eyes were huge and watery.

“Mom I’m scared. It sounds like voices outside.”

“I know honey, I know. It’s okay. Just gotta get through the storm.” Iris slid her arm around her son and pulled him close. His wet face against her side was very warm.

Pop settled into his chair and leaned back, his face pointed toward the ceiling. He looked unwell. In the dancing shadows created by the candle in front of him he looked like a ghost, an old spirit haunting a campfire.

Iris reached for the walkie-talkie on the table. “Looks like the power’s down,” she said.

For a moment there was no response. Her fear grew and she tried to bite back the urge to call to them again when Robert’s voice chirped back. “Yep. There she goes. Starting to get serious.” There was a graveness in his voice that none of them liked. “Got some candles lit,” he said. “Now time for gin rummy. Which in this house is gin plus go-fish.”

That elicited a genuine laugh from Iris; the sound jumped from her mouth like a trout from the river. “You enjoy. Try to stay part-way sober until the eye gets here at least, okay?”

“Think your mother would’ve said the same thing.”

No words were spoken for the next ten minutes. Each person—man, woman, and child—slipped into their own head. Pop broke the silence reaching for his guitar. A number of strings vibrated and thrummed as he fumbled his grip.

“Here,” he panted, jutting it toward the couch by the neck. “Play something.” He was breathing hard and sweating. Iris saw his slick skin glowing in the firelight.

“Pop?” There was no hiding the panic in her voice now as she sat up.

“I’m fine. Better actually. It’s working better than I expected. Must not have been so far off as I thought in my ingredients. Just play something. Please.”

She took the guitar. “I can’t play.”

“Sure you can.” He paused, fetched a trembling breath. “Heard you the other night, after I left. Same few chords—damn familiar chords, too—” he coughed, cleared his throat, spit on the tile. “Don’t matter what you play. Long as the spirit is right.”

Iris let her fingers fall into place. She played the opening notes to Heart-Shaped Box, played them again, again, again. The sound was almost soothing. It was a sad song, and the sound coming from Pop’s old guitar was lonely, perfectly in place in this dark house surrounded by the angry wrath of the world.

Within minutes she heard the familiar sound of Pop snoring. Dorian was leaning on her side still, drooling. And then, still strumming, she was falling too, falling into her own head. Nirvana followed her into her dream, and the candlelight, but gradually that began to fade, the music began to fade, and all that was left was blackness masking her eyes, so much like plywood nailed over a window, and the sound of the wind as it scratched at the walls and pushed on the house.

They awoke at the same time, all together. It was impossible to say how much time had passed; all had been black, outside and inside, for hours.

What pulled them from sleep was the huge crash they heard in the backyard. The wind was much stronger now, beating down on the house, shaking it, trying to slip its fingers under the edge of the roof so it could lift, pull, strain, rip the old thing right off. And then they’d be in the storm, really in it. The rain would be blinding, the wind would be deafening, and where would they go? Iris suddenly felt very alone and very stupid for not hightailing it out of this damn old house before the storm arrived. She was young and able-bodied; she might be able to sprint to Robert and Patty’s—assuming their house was in any better shape. But what about them? Pop was eighty-two and he could barely walk, let alone run. Dorian was four. What the hell had she been thinking?

“What you reckon that was?” Pop asked. He was sitting upright and his voice was stronger, more alert. Their nap had done someone good at least.

“Fence, you think?”

“Maybe.” He was getting up.

“Where you going? Not like you can see with the wood covering everything up.”

The wind screamed and another crash came, this one closer, beating against the wall. Dorian and Iris screamed.

“What was that?” Pop turned, walked toward the sound. There was no limp in his step.

The beating continued, there was something outside, banging on the wall.

“The old gutter, Pop,” she said. “Was barely hanging on already. Must’ve come loose.” He placed one large, gnarled hand against the wall and closed his eyes.

“Suppose you’re right.”

The rain was heavy now, a constant slamming on the roof above them and the walls around them. The wind was the sound of a freight train passing inches from your face: it was huge, all-encompassing. All around them the house made noises, groans and bumps and shifts. The storm was trying to get underneath, to the foundation, so that it might lift the house from the Earth and take it up to the sky where it was.

Iris wasn’t sure how much longer the old thing would survive.

Another sound came, this time from the front door. It sounded like someone outside, scratching. Asking to be let in. Pop strode toward it and this time there was no mistaking, he was walking tall, his cane discarded on the floor. He looked ten years younger, the way he was when the last hurricane came. Hadn’t he been spending a lot of time in his room that night, too? Hadn’t he come out lethargic and confused? Napped, came back different?

“Don’t you open that.”

He turned to her, jerking his neck. In the candlelight his eyes glowed dark yellow, like the moon.

“Why?” Even his voice was deeper, steadier.

“The pressure, are you crazy? You let the wind in and the roof is coming right off!” She had to shout now to be heard. The wind was blanketing her words, trying to silence her. Miraculously, Dorian was fast asleep.

Suddenly there was a huge rending crash, the sound of something being torn apart. It was hideous and gruesome and loud enough to be heard from a distance. Both turned toward it; Dorian stirred.

And then he was awake, pulled from his deep sleep by the horrible, wretched sound coming from the walkie-talkie.

Robert was screaming. The wind was trying to drown his voice the way it was drowning everything, but the piercing screams cut through.

“OHHHHH GODDDD—”

Iris grabbed the radio, tried to respond: “Robert! Robert! Are you okay!” Pop’s fists were balled tightly and he was breathing hard.

Robert was still holding down the signal button so their message was not received. From their half of the radio connection the screams continued, the wind battering the voice supplying them.

“IRIS! RUN! OH GOD IT’S GOT PATTY OH MY GOD NOOOOOOOO!”

“Robert! ROBERT!” She was crying as well as screaming now, crying with him, because she’d never heard such a painful sound, never heard that much sorrow and suffering issued from a human voice.

“Mommy make it stop!” Dorian was plugging his ears, crying with her, with them: Iris, Robert, the Earth.

“NO NO STOP NO DON’T OH MY GOD NO STOPPPPP—” His voice was cut off suddenly, but not the transmission, because still they heard the wind, whooping and cheering as it destroyed another structure, another monument to human arrogance constructed on its once unblemished face. The Earth was reclaiming the land and there was nothing they could do to stand in its way.

That’s when they heard the growling. Robert no longer screamed but something was alive at the other end of the radio, something that growled and chirped and gibbered, almost like words but too guttural to be human. They listened, man, woman, and child, to the sound of flesh being ripped and ligaments being separated and insides becoming outsides as something feasted and talked on the other end, something that tried to speak with its mouth full, something that perhaps was trying to say You’re next.

“Halpatnakni.”

Iris was too stunned, too disturbed, to speak. The radio cut off as suddenly as it had come on. Another vicious blast of wind made the house cry, the sound coming from above them. She could feel the roof holding on, the old nails protesting, trying to dig themselves in.

“Time for you two to go to the closet.” Pop paced across the room and lifted Iris by the arm. His grip was the talon of some huge eagle. “Come on, bub.” He lifted Dorian and carried him down the hall. Iris followed.

He was placing her son in the walk-in closet in her bedroom.

“Pop-Pop, I’m scared.”

“It’s okay, bub, just go on get in. Mom’s coming.” He faced her. “Get in.”

“Pop…”

“Get in. That’s not a request.”

“We need to leave, Pop.” Her voice was thick with tears.

“Too late for that now. Get in.” The wind urged them on. “Safest place in the house, girl. No windows, no doors. Y’all just get in and wait. I’ll take care of this.”

“Pop no. Please…”

He reached into his waistband and handed her the .22. “No matter what you hear, you don’t come out. You stay inside and you protect that boy. Him behind you, up against the wall, and you keep this pointed at the door.”

She took the pistol.

“I love you, darling, and I’m sorry if I scared you. Sorry for all of it.” He kissed her on the cheek and closed the door.

Once again they were in total darkness.

It was Friday the 13th and there was a full moon. Neither of those things had crossed Pop’s mind until he was standing in the living room alone, deafened by the wind that probed all the weak spots of his old house.

Friday the 13th. Full moon. And a storm. Maybe that was why. Maybe the conditions were just right. Or maybe that had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was just that ancient evil doesn’t forget. Maybe we’re sometimes doomed to pay for the sins of all those that came before us. Maybe heritage is a lot more than just the color of your skin or the way you talk: maybe fates are inherited. Maybe our own endings are sometimes written by people that will never know us.

Well, if that was the case, it was too late for him, not that Pop much minded. He was eighty-two and most days he felt even older. He’d had a good life, a long life. All he wanted now was to make sure his bloodline didn’t die in this damn house. Not this way. Not at its hand.

And was he excited, just a little, to finally get a look at it? To see the madness in its eyes and know that the fears he’d carried with him his whole life weren’t for naught? Yes. To be scared was one thing; to be vindicated, something else entirely.

Pop slipped the small knife with the engraved wooden handle from his pocket. The blade was old, but well sharpened; he’d seen to that himself this week. He rubbed the ball of his thumb across the tip and watched as the edge turned red. There were animals engraved on the handle, birds and deer and boars and yes, alligators.

He took his guitar from the couch, tucked the knife into his palm, and used his bloodied thumb to pluck the strings. It wouldn’t be long now. He could smell the ocean, the dead things at the bottom of the ocean.

The wind screeched again so he played louder.

Iris prayed. She didn’t pray often, not anymore; usually only when things were really bad. Tonight, huddled in the closet, smothering her badly frightened son, listening to the wicked sounds of nature as it flexed its might—she wasn’t sure things could ever be worse. So she prayed.

Dorian couldn’t make out the words coming from his mother’s mouth. The wind was loud, the loudest sound he’d ever heard, and she was mumbling, every other word slipping to a whisper. Both had their eyes shut tight against the never-ending midnight inside the closet.

Twice Iris meant to stand, to leave, to join her grandfather in the living room and face the beast at his side. Both times Dorian had seized her waist in a panic at the first indication of movement. So she stayed where she was, because his little hands around her waist were somehow more immediate than the sound of their walls holding fast against the storm, or the sounds they’d heard through the radio.

That moment—the awful wails of pain—replayed in her head, echoing in the dark chamber of the closet. She couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t. Every time she got close…unreality washed over her mind, spilling like wet paint down white walls, dripping madness into the foundation. It was too much, too much, yet, to not believe, that seemed even more dangerous. It felt too close to giving up.

Faintly, she heard the sound of Pop strumming the guitar. She strained her ears, trying to hear that sound underneath the darkness that was screaming outside their windows, needing to find confirmation that her grandfather was still out there, still alive.

Iris leaned into her son, pushed him further against the wall. Her right hand curled around the pistol, the barrel pointed outward. She tried to fall into her mind, to find somewhere, anywhere she could go in her head that might bring calm, even just a bit of it.

She saw the beach. It was sunny. The wind was gentle, soothing. Beneath her legs was warm golden sand and above she saw deep blue, uninterrupted as far as the eye could see, which was quite far indeed on the coast of Florida. No mountains, no hills, nothing to disturb the view: just gold sand and blue water and open sky for miles and miles.

She’d been in the water already, it seemed. Because her skin was cool; a few goosebumps painting her forearms with strange valleys. Also, she could smell the sea. It was on her skin. Salty and pungent. It was one of her favorite smells, so she leaned in, breathed deep of her own skin. It was comforting. Soporific. Overwhelming. She gagged on the odor, the smell of dead fish on ice at the grocery store, their vacuous black eyes and open mouths demanding answers to unarticulated questions.

Iris opened her eyes, desperate to escape this mental vision which had all at once turned sour. But the smell followed. It was in the closet with them, all around them.

“Stinks mommy. Ew.” Dorian plugged his nose. It wasn’t just dead fish they were smelling, it was all the black decay at the bottom of the ocean. Slick, black-green, half-rotted seaweed; broken shells, jammed with drifts of sand; sightless creatures with no eyes and bulbous suckers at the ends of their tentacles; forgotten artifacts of humanity, dropped from some shipwreck, resting eternally in the dark depths the sun never penetrated.

The front door exploded in one strike. Immediately the wind swept in, lifting from beneath, and the roof bulged. It sounded as if the train that had been chugging alongside their house for hours had finally busted through the walls and was blowing its horn proudly in the living room. Pop screamed and something matched him, roaring victoriously.

Iris bolted for the door. “Mommy wait! Wait!”

“Stay here!” Screaming inches from his face she could not be sure he even heard her. The roof let out another creaking moan. “Stay in here and wait for me! You do not come out for any reason, none! You understand?”

“Mommy!”

“Stay!”

Iris sat her son down and turned. Her hands were shaking and her fingers felt numb. She looked at the gun in her hand stupidly, as if she’d never seen it. What was she doing?

She picked Dorian up, hooked one of his fingers into her belt loop. From somewhere deeper in the house the roaring continued. She thought—hoped—that part of that roar belonged to her grandfather.

“Come on! Don’t let go!”

Sheets of rain slapped their faces as they stepped through the closet door. Iris looked up and saw dark sky above her bedroom in the far corner. A massive piece of the roof was gone and even as she stood now, staring blankly at the mess in front of her, she could see the wind getting beneath the rest, prying it from the mainframe. The wind was deafening. It gusted through the opening and slapped their faces, pushing them backwards, stifling their breath.

They rounded the corner and began down the hall. Ahead, in the living room, the roof was almost entirely removed. Their house had become a convertible. Torrents of rain pelted their furniture, their tv, doused their candles, turned the tiles at their feet slick. And still the wind shrieked and celebrated, ripping what was left like an infected hangnail.

Pop was backed against a wall. Iris could only make out his white tee, glowing in the wet night. Mostly he stood in the shadow of Halpatnakni. Iris’s scream died in her throat.

He was nine feet tall, at least. It seemed as if his head was jutting above the walls of the house now that the roof had been removed. His skin was dark gray-green but it looked black in the darkness. Iris saw old cracks and channels running through his scaled hide. He stood upright on two heavily-muscled legs, like a man, but those legs ended in long alligator feet, tipped with claws the size of Pop’s knife. His arms were bent at the elbow, fists gripped tightly, fists that also ended in long, yellow-gray claws. A tail protruded from his lower back and sat on the floor, the top of it ridged with small dinosaur spikes.

And he was speaking.

The sound was low enough to be heard, even with the wind. A deep, guttural chant was coming from its throat. There were words in that noise, Iris was sure, old words she couldn’t understand. She doubted anyone alive on the planet could, but one day, one day long, long ago, might there have been someone who knew this thing’s language? Had someone taught it the very words it was speaking in her living room?

She found her voice just as Halpatnakni reared its left arm, so much like the biceps and triceps of a body-builder, and pointed its deathly claws at Pop’s throat.

“Pop!”

Halpatnakni turned. Behind it, she saw her grandfather’s stunned face. They made eye contact and in that short gaze she wished she would have listened to her Pop, because he was ready to die, but now he would have to watch his family murdered in front of him first. Even if she had to die, she wished he didn’t have to know it.

All of this went through her mind in less than a second. Her eyes shifted from Pop to the abomination that towered above him. His eyes were a dark yellow-orange, the color of a full moon as it creeps above the horizon. Underneath those eyes was a long snout, lined with sharp, angular teeth. The lips pulled back and it grinned. Then it started down the hallway, toward Iris and her son, chanting its long-forgotten words.

Pop propelled himself forward, pushing off the wall behind him. His arm swung in a looping hook and came around the front of Halpatnakni, driving his weathered knife into the thing’s dark gray-green flesh to the hilt. Iris saw hurt and surprise register in the thing’s eyes and was savagely happy to see it. It could feel pain. It could bleed, as evidenced by the dark, viscous liquid gouting from its muscled neck.

Halpatnakni lifted his head to the sky and bellowed. At the same time thunder crashed and the wind gusted with its hardest blow yet, removing the rest of the roof in one blast. Iris and Dorian were knocked to the ground.

The Alligator-Man grabbed the knife with one slimy claw-hand, pulled it out, looked it over. It seemed mesmerized by the handle for a moment, all the carved animal faces, and then it took the blade in its other hand and snapped the knife in half. Dropped it on the floor. Turned and faced its attacker.

“Pop no!” Iris screamed from her spot on the wet floor, a floor that was quickly turning into a river.

Halpatnakni advanced on the old man, speaking louder now, its voice coming out in yips and howls. Iris fumbled for her pistol. It had fallen out as they tumbled to the ground and was laying behind Dorian, its barrel half-submerged in the water accumulating in the hallway.

The monster grabbed Pop by the throat, its thick claws digging into the pallid flesh of the old man’s neck. It lifted Pop higher, higher, holding him by his throat, until Pop’s feet dangled six feet above the floor. Halpatnakni roared again, the sound ear-splitting, a pick being driven into Iris and Dorian’s heads.

At that moment, the meteorologists watching the radar at the National Hurricane Center averted their attention from the eye-wall, the heart of the storm, now passing over Fort Pierce, Florida. Eight tornadoes formed simultaneously across the state, along the outskirts of the cyclone. Just as quickly, they all disappeared.

The wind subsided slightly at the conclusion of its roar, enough for Iris to hear the last words her grandfather would ever speak, mumbled through his collapsing windpipe: “You don’t fucking scare me.” He spit into Halpatnakni’s upturned, grinning face.

The creature gripped Pop’s left arm just above the elbow and pulled, tearing the arm free at the shoulder socket. Pop cried out in pain. Halpatnakni turned the arm over his own head and let blood and tendons rain down on his face. Then it bit into the gaping hole where the arm once connected to the body and yanked the humerus out in one swift motion. The sound of the bone crunching in its mighty jaws was sickeningly audible through the storm. It chewed and swallowed. Halpatnakni grabbed the other arm, intending to duplicate the process, when ten crisp pops rang out in the darkness, each accentuated with a hot stinging stab in its back. He dropped the old man, roared, stumbled to one knee, turned around.

Iris was reloading. She advanced down the hallway, firing, screaming, not words, just a high, piercing scream. She fired ten more rounds, each staying true, connecting with the beast’s chest, neck, face. Halpatnakni crumbled, crying out. She was out of ammo.

Iris scooped Dorian and ran through the open arch where their front door had once been. She grabbed the keys to her truck which somehow still hung on the wall in the entranceway and ran into the darkness. From behind they heard another roar and the sounds of Halpatnakni struggling to get up.

The truck was in surprisingly good shape. She’d parked it against the front of the house, the western side, perpendicular, and so far as she could see the only damage was a broken driver side window and a few new dents in the bed. She opened her door and shoved Dorian in, pushing him in further as she climbed into her seat.

Another roar. This one more anger than pain. She was out of ammo, had dropped the pistol in the hallway. If the creature was still capable of standing after that…

Iris turned the key. The truck wouldn’t start. She wasn’t sure if the storm had done something to it; on a good day it could take a few turns to get going. The alternator was beyond its last legs, somewhere near its final toes. She turned the key again, listened as the engine chugged and chugged, trying to spark some life into the battery.

Iris noticed she could hear the car. She could hear a lot. The wind had mostly died down.

A huge crash rocked the silence as Halpatnakni burst through the front windows and the plywood strapped over them. He stood in the yard, peppered with holes, dripping dark black liquid like motor oil from a dozen places. He was directly in front of the car. Iris tried the ignition again, nothing.

Dorian didn’t scream, he sat silently, his face a rictus of pain and fear. She thought if they survived this, he’d need a lifetime of therapy, and even that probably wouldn’t save him.

Halpatnakni advanced toward the car, slowly. Iris tried the key, listened to its failure. The creature put its hands on the hood, leaned over like a mechanic inspecting the gaskets. As he leaned down, digging his claws into the hood, the car bowed forward under the weight, groaning.

And then the wind stopped entirely, the rain too. They were in the eye. Halpatnakni stood where he was, looking through the cracked windshield with his yellow moon eyes. Iris tried the ignition and this time the engine jerked to life. She revved the car, her eyes not leaving the eyes of the beast in front of her. She shifted the car into reverse, grabbing at the column-shifter three times because her hands were so unsteady.

Slowly they rolled backwards. Halpatnakni watched, his eyes never leaving hers. Iris reversed down the driveway, turned in the road and stopped. Halpatnakni was looking up at the clean circle of sky above them, surrounded by a wall of churning clouds. He looked back down, raised his arm slightly in their direction, and said something. Iris didn’t think she needed a translator to figure it out.

Before the storm could return, she drove, heading west. There was a huge warehouse less than a mile away, Tropicana or Walmart or someone’s shipping depot. She drove in that direction and prayed someone would be inside, someone who could let her and her son in before the other half of the eyewall fell over them.

And she prayed it would be far enough.

Saturday

At just past midnight, someone began frantically pounding at the steel garage door.

“The hell is that?” Fenks said.

“Tree, maybe?”

“Trees don’t beat on doors like that you fuckin half-wit. Someone’s out there.” He stood up, a burly man with a heavy southern accent and fingers that looked like swollen sausages from a lifetime of hard use. He was less than happy to be stuck in the fulfillment center the night of the hurricane, but it was better than his trailer. The trailer that surely no longer existed if the wind they’d heard screaming against the concrete walls was any indication.

“Put that damn thing down and call Mullins, wouldya?”

“Sure, boss.” Peterson left his guitar on the chair he’d been lounging in and went to the walk-in office to call the big boss on the intercom. Mullins was somewhere inside the actual warehouse floor, not the small garage he and Fenks were hanging out in. Probably working, he thought. Probably how he got to the top.

Well, Peterson thought—a skinny, young, tattooed kid who’d just graduated from Central High—if that’s what it takes to be the boss man, maybe I don’t need to be the boss man.

Fenks watched as he walked, not ran, to call the boss. Fuckin imbecile, he thought. Kids they hire keep getting younger and they sure as shit don’t have half the work in ‘em that we used to. He was at the steel door, trying to undo the latch and roll it open.

“Please help us! I have my son, please, please, you need to help us!”

There was a woman outside. Her voice sent a shiver down his spine. Something in his mind told him to stop—don’t open that door!—but he shook his head and ignored it. Probably those damn Jack Stetson novels he was reading putting ideas in his head. Oh well, something to pass the time. And distract him from the God-awful guitar playing of his younger counterpart.

Fenks rolled the door open.

“Oh, thank God! Thank you!” The woman was soaked to the bone, as was the little guy in her arms. She had dark wet hair pasted to her face, hair that would probably look blonde in other circumstances, Fenks thought, and she was pretty. Both her and the boy wore faces that were haunted, too skinny, hollowed-out.

The woman hugged him with her free arm, slamming the kid into his chest.

“Oh thank you.”

“Sure, sure.” He didn’t know what to say. Fenks wormed free of her embrace. “Where’d y’all come from?” He looked out the door, as if expecting additional company. The truck she’d driven over was falling apart, still spitting and choking outside the garage.

“I don’t think you can pull that truck in here, and it’s liable to take some damage when the storm picks back up. I could try to move it over back if you—”

“No, shut the door. Shut the door!”

“Relax miss, we have a few minutes yet until it picks back up.”

“Shut the damn door!”

Forget the Stetson novels, Fenks thought, whatever this is makes that shit look soft. He slammed the steel garage door and bolted the lock.

“Let me see if we got some towels for you and the boy. Say, what’s your name, pard?” He crouched down to the kid’s level. The boy simply stared, thumb in his mouth.

“Fuck me,” he muttered, walking to the storage closet.

He looked over his shoulder twice as he went, observing the way the woman turned her head in all directions at once, so much like a trapped animal.

“Always some fucked up shit gotta happen to me. Always me.” The closet smelled of cleaning supplies and old age. There were some towels on the top shelf, not full-size ones, mostly for cleaning, but he fetched them anyway. Fenks was trying to remember how much food they’d brought—he supposed he should offer the woman and the kid something—when he heard the guitar.

“Fuckin Peterson, gotta be kidding me.”

He was turning, angry, when he realized he recognized the song. Heart-Shaped Box. One of his favorites. The opening chords repeated. It wasn’t Peterson. Couldn’t be. He had worse taste than a gas station sandwich, only played that new-age country bullshit.

Fenks loved Nirvana, but coming from that old acoustic guitar the notes sounded lonely, achingly lonely. And ominous.

“Miss, are you okay?”

She was sitting in Peterson’s chair, soaking it through. The boy sat at her feet, still sucking his thumb and staring blankly.

“Miss?”

She didn’t speak, just strummed and strummed, the same opening notes to that old song he knew so well. Eventually Fenks sat on the ground with the kid and listened. No one spoke. All three of their faces registered the same blank expectation.

They were waiting. For what, he didn’t know, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.