“It’s going to be fine,” said Moniza, hugging her, rubbing her back. “Just a little hop up on the window, and then Daddy’s going to pull you up—no worries at all, love.”
Mom went up, lifted by a man she’d met in the UNC library nearly fifty-one years ago, who had badgered her into a date despite the fact that she’d had a boyfriend back home. Moniza went next, kissing me on the mouth and saying, “My hair’s going to be a frizzy mess in this.” Her belly snagged momentarily, but she was able to pull herself up with very little help from me and my dad. “I’m small but mighty!” I heard her cry into the wind. Finally, I shouldered the backpack with Lila inside and crawled up the rope just as the water began rushing through the open window, swallowing the top floor of our home.
Dad and Moniza each grabbed my belt and helped hoist me up onto the shingles. I could barely open my eyes, the rain was coming down so hard. My teeth had been chattering since dunking my head for the kibble, and now the cold drilled to my bones. Mom huddled with Dizzy in a safe wedge created by the solar panels, and I realized there was a spotlight on her. I hadn’t heard the blades at first because of the rain, but there was a Coast Guard helicopter hovering over us, its light beaming down like a path into heaven. I would have cried with relief if I hadn’t been so cold. Though it seemed to take an eternity, a rescue basket attached to a crane came winding down. My dad and I finally reached up and caught the heavy white metal. “Women and children first,” shouted my dad, putting Moniza in the basket along with Dizzy. Mo kissed him on the cheek before ascending into the chopper’s spotlight. Ten minutes later, the basket returned, and my mom and Lila went next.
When they were safely in the helicopter and the basket was descending again, I shouted, “You’re next, Dad.” We still had to scream to be heard above the roar of chopper, wind, and water, which was lapping up the pitch of the roof.
“Nope, son. You are.” The Meyer, Gunther couch had crashed through the bay window in the hallway and lodged itself in the frame. The force of the rotors sent the water rippling outward in heavy waves. We were both shivering, and I could hear my voice quaking with the cold.
“C’mon, Dad, no debate. You’re going next.” The basket swayed in the wind on its way to us. My dad reached up and caught it by the edge.
“Sorry, Matt, but either you’re getting in or we both drown.” Then he slapped my back like I’d hit an incredible shot off the tee. “You’re my boy, kiddo. Trust me, in about five months you’re going to totally understand.”
Huddled in the basket, listening to the whir of the motor as I was lifted skyward, soaked so thoroughly that I couldn’t imagine being warm or dry ever again, I looked down and saw my dad in the glare of the searchlight, gazing up at me, shielding his eyes from the rain.
After Hurricane Kate made landfall, I saw a headline that simply said: THIS IS WAR. Which is what it looked like. The devastation wrought comparisons to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scoring a direct hit on the upper Carolina, my Carolina, but severely impacting twenty-one states, Kate had leveled nearly every structure from Norfolk to Myrtle Beach, as far as twenty miles inland. The coast was kindling and rubble. Amid the flood, fire-scorched divots smoldered for days, boats and houses and churches and cars washed miles from the shore and deposited in trees, in drifts of sand, hurled into other structures. Homes like my parents’ were swept off their foundations. Trailer parks had been reduced to disjecta piled on the sides of the highway. The floodwaters, which did not recede for a month, wreaked havoc on electrical wiring and corroded sewer lines. In one iconic image from the Norfolk navy base, a destroyer had been torn from its anchors and run aground. It lay on its side in the middle of the city, its stern wiping out a strip mall. Even the attack on Pearl Harbor hadn’t been able to sink or destroy as many ships. Despite evacuations, at least eight thousand people were dead or missing. It would be the first trillion-dollar storm, sending a twelve-foot surge sweeping across the beaches and dropping seventy-nine inches of rain in some regions during the five days it took to dissipate. Power was out for months; food, water, fuel, and electricity hard to come by. There were stories of looting, robbery, and violence as desperate people vied for a bottle of water. People less advantaged and lucky than us died in their attics or stranded on their roofs waiting for rescue.
With many rural roads impassable, the highways clogged with cars run dry of gas or charge, families set out on foot. Exhausted and dizzy in the sweltering humidity, they carried what they could on their backs, pedaled bikes, pushed shopping carts, held signs to the sky begging for help. They camped on the sides of roads, squatted in abandoned homes and office parks. Shoulder to shoulder, tent-to-tent, everyone arguing, angry, upset. Everyone with a gun. They were met by FEMA trucks dispersing bottled water, palettes of MREs, and hustled to the enormous camps in Greensboro, Charlotte, and Atlanta. FEMA, the Red Cross, and mutual aid organizations descended. And in some of the dry cities there was a local border patrol, telling refugees there was no safe harbor for them there. Frail and exhausted from nearly three years in office, it was said Warren Hamby did not want to mimic his predecessor with declarations of martial law, but martial law arrived anyway. So did disease. Dysentery and cholera outbreaks in Jacksonville and Charleston. Once extinct in North America, these waterborne menaces had been creeping back to life in the heating coastal region. People’s intestines cramped, they shat bloody diarrhea, at least a few hundred died from shivering fevers.
My family spent one night in a temporary shelter before making our way to Cara and Habswam’s place in Charlotte. My parents stayed with them, while Moniza and I found a hotel, a rental car, and despite my misgivings, spent our days making trips to various parts of the state so she could report the story. It was in our hotel that we watched through VR as Tracy Aamanzaihou stood in the rubble of Charleston, South Carolina, and delivered a 2040 stump speech.
“We cannot continue to endure storms like this. Though the destruction was on a scale we haven’t seen before, there will be more to come. Now I could stand here and lie to you that we can properly prepare for these events, but the truth is we cannot. We must reverse the heating of the planet, and we must do so faster than we are doing now. The ray of light in all this darkness is that three days after Hurricane Kate made landfall, a UN report announced that the world’s carbon emissions have fallen from twenty-eight billion tons to twenty-one billion since 2037. Yes, the recession played a role, but this was also because of our work. That’s an unprecedented decline of twenty-five percent in two years. The measures we and other countries are taking—despite the interference by the Supreme Court, despite the advocacy of a still-powerful fossil-fuel lobby—our plan is working. It is a long road ahead to be sure, and there will be many more setbacks, but my message to you, my fellow Americans, is that we can do this.”
Next up, The Pastor announced his intent to run again, money from the Carbon Majors already bursting his coffers. The business community was lining up behind him. Images of the Carolina coast played over our faces, and it made me feel like I was living in a hallucination. Or witnessing a premonition.