I went to the window and eased the drape aside. A big square of frosted glass swung loose on oddly silent hinges, barred with a sturdy external grate. Inside that, a fine-mesh metal screen explained the unbroken glass and apparently rodent-and-pigeon-free interior. Outside, the wind was doing its on-and-off swirly thing as it prepped for a gale.

I shut and latched the glass pane. It held. I could barely believe my luck.

I’d stumbled on someone’s living space, squirreled away where no one would expect. Someone clean and tidy but not been here in a while. I could smell the emptiness. But for a thin layer of soot, concrete dust, and some dampness by the window, it felt untouched since that person had left it.

A long couch nestled against one wall, neatly made up as a bed. On the other side, lockers and a table with two battered metal chairs. A sink. A useless microwave. A lamp that might work if the power source was strong enough, but I wasn’t going to test it with the boys still rampaging around. Shelves stacked with pots and dishes and piles of old magazines whose covers suggested the occupant had been older and male. Well above the storm surge, this hidden room was certainly in use pre-Abel, maybe after as well. Whoever’d lived here had laid his tattered copy of Travel and Leisure aside one day, put his mug in the sink, and gone out, never to return. I thought of the pile outside the door, shoved aside in my frenzy. His remains? So sad, if he’d died just steps from his own door.

Opening a cabinet tucked into a recess, I found a treasure trove: candles, matches, several flashlights, batteries with chargers, bottles of various liquids, canned goods, packets of freeze-dried food, a row of canisters labeled in block lettering: coffee, sugar, tea, rice, beans. Sugar. Coffee! A whole unbroken can.

I shuddered as another volley of gunshots rang out uplevel. How long would they be at this? Didn’t they care that a hurricane was coming? Maybe not. With that car, they could be home in minutes.

To calm myself, I focused on my inventory. Not enough light to read the small print, but the place was a picker’s paradise. The sort you hightailed it home to report so a whole gang could race back to clean it out before anyone else discovered it. That is, you would if you hadn’t already been infected by . . . what? Maybe call it the freedom virus. In its early stages, no fever yet, but already taking hold in my system. Likely caught it from Rubio. Exactly what Rousseau was worried about.

While a carnivorous car raced up and down above my head, I pondered the promise I’d so recently sworn to him: I’d never hold back food!