It took hours before the shaking stopped. After it did, I got some slurree for my grandmother and me and we drank it. It was the government-issued kind, the kind that would do the bare minimum to keep us alive, and even then, not for long. Then I went down to the fire escape and tried to flag down a boat. I didn’t get one that day, and when night started making the sky pastel, I went back inside. I slept on my grandmother’s couch and went back to finding a boat early in the morning. I was able to flag one down around noon. There were more of them out here near the coast than there were inland where I’d been. I made sure, this time, that there were more people in it, that I found one piloted by people in uniforms. Not that I was sure any of it would help. In this new terrain, anyone could be the enemy.

They took us back to the emergency shelter where Jaden and the boy were. Jaden was furious with me. He had searched the entire shelter, sure I’d checked, waiting to find my body in a corner or down a hallway. Finally he had found someone who thought they’d seen me looking for a boat out to Gravesend. Then Jaden had known where I’d gone, but still not what had become of me. He didn’t know until I came back into the room we’d been holed up in. I threw my arms around him. I don’t think he’d ever looked more dap even though it must have been days then since any of us had done anything to look okay. He looked like home. I squeezed him and thought I would never stop.

We hid out in the small room for days, drinking slurree, trying to stay out of fights and away from trouble. Then the water went down and we were able to walk out into the streets. The whole city seemed like it was covered in mud. I wondered, like I’d wondered about the water, where it had all come from. Our shoes squished through it, making noise as we went. The sky above us was clear and beautiful, with pigeons flying through it as if everything below them was just the same as it had always been.

All around us, the city was a wasteland. Nearby was a burnt, blackened building. In the buildings beyond that one, a row of doors gaped open, and above them were smashed windows. As we walked, we passed a car that had been flipped over on its roof. The roof had crumpled from the weight of the car, and the windshields imploded. Downed power lines curled through the mud like snakes.