She opened the door, was met with nothing but cooler air, a metallic smell, the sound of wind shuddering the eaves. “Marianne?” she called. Looking down, Janine saw the source of the knocking sound: a garden statue, tipped over on her side, had washed up against the sill. Upright, her arms were outstretched in a fleeing posture, but lying on her side she appeared to be swimming, her face contorted in an expression somewhere between delight and fear. Janine crouched down to move her from the doorway and was surprised that she was not made of stone at all, but of some cheap composite material that had been painted to look like stone. She was easy to lift with one hand.

The parking lot coursed with water, the edge of a flood lapping the concrete walkway outside the door. Peering through the rain, Janine could make out the shapes of other statues floating along, headed down the sloping lawn toward the beach. The entire campus appeared to be in the midst of a large, ever-expanding lake, with a current that ran to the gulf.

“Oh no,” said Janine. “Oh no.”

The weight of her voice was enough to summon Lilian and Donald, who now stood next to her in the doorway.

“My car,” Lilian said. “I should have parked up the hill. But see, the water isn’t over the walkway, it isn’t above my tires.”

“But what if it rises?” Donald asked. “What if it comes up from the beach? What if it floods us?”

“It won’t,” Lilian insisted. “It never has.”

“But Marianne—if she went to find Eric and Tom, she’s out in the storm now.” The thought of her out there, unsaved and drowning, gave Janine a pain in her chest. No one deserved to die alone in a storm.

Donald grabbed her arm. “Janine, don’t you go too.”

She stepped out onto the walkway, without even a jacket, and immediately felt the wind pulling her, wrapping around her legs and arms and torso like a living thing. She pictured herself toppled into the flood with the statues, floating out to sea, and flattened her back against the wall. She inched along, the plywood over the window rough against her T-shirt, rain splashing water onto her feet and her shins, until she reached the end of the walkway.

“Janine!”

She turned slightly at the sound of her name, afraid to step away from the wall, and saw her friend behind her. “Donald!” she yelled back, but her voice was small compared to the wind.

“I’m coming with you,” he said. He grabbed her hand, and she clutched his tightly.