6:00 Hours: A Dystopian Novel Read online

  Tim absentmindedly adjusted Rachel’s blanket as it slipped from her shoulder. His eyes looked distant, like he was thinking of something far away. Rachel suddenly missed her brother.

  I hope he’s ok. All the crazy stuff going on.

  “Even when storms and disasters happen all the time, it still doesn’t seem real until it happens to you,” Tim said, his eyes clearing. “I guess that’s ‘cause people are really selfish. Assholes. All of us. We don’t take stuff seriously until it affects us.”

  Tim and Rachel didn’t say anything else for a few minutes, both just looking at the water below them and listening to the rain. It had been four hours since the earthquake when Tim asked Rachel if it looked like the water was rising. It was.

  “We should go on the roof,” Tim suggested. “If there are rescue choppers around, they’ll see us.”

  The two of them shoved the kayak out the biggest window they could find and followed it to the roof. Luckily it wasn’t too slanted, so they could sit comfortably with the kayak between them. It was still raining hard - of course - and Rachel wondered how long it would be until they both got sick. Which was worse: sitting out in the rain or waiting till the water rose to their knees to go and sit out in the rain?

  “I bet the levees broke,” Tim said darkly. “The water just keeps rising. I know it’s raining, but seriously. It’s rising so fast.”

  Rachel got out her phone to check for the time and reception. Her battery was already running low, and she didn’t have any bars. The towers might have been taken down. Tim looked over at her, his hood pulled low over his eyes.

  “Nothing?”

  Rachel shook her head.

  “We’re cut off,” Tim stated. “All alone.”

  His tone was almost mocking, as if he was laughing bitterly at their situation. He still held Rachel’s trail mix and he looked very bedraggled and sad sitting there on the roof, dripping wet, with a plastic bag of crackers and M&M’s clutched in his hands. Below them, cars and pieces of houses and other debris floated by, like a parade of chaos. Tim began to count how many cars he saw and if he could tell what the make was. Rachel listened, Tim’s voice cutting through the rushing current and rolls of thunder. She half-heartedly wondered if they were at risk for getting struck by lightning, sitting there exposed. And the water rose.

  “Hey, the rain is stopping!”

  Rachel was startled by Tim shouting. She hadn’t exactly been sleeping - that would have been impossible - but she had unconsciously entered a sort of trance-like state in an effort to forget where she was and that she couldn’t do anything to change it. She was also getting so cold. All the rain and ocean water transformed the usually steamy heat into a wet, freezing cold that soaked its way through Rachel’s summer clothes deep into her bones. Was it possible to get hypothermia in paradise?

  “The rain is stopping!” Tim repeated.

  Rachel tilted her face upwards. It was true. The rain had lessened to an occasional drip and the clouds changed from a black hue to a softer gray. The sun was still nowhere to be seen.

  “I can’t stand sitting here anymore,” Tim complained, gingerly standing. “Let’s go look for help in the kayak.”

  “What if it starts up again?” Rachel asked. “I think we should stay here and keep waiting.”

  “You said we should keep heading inland,” Tim reminded her. “There will be other places if we need to stop.”

  “True.”

  By now, the water was high enough for Tim to push the kayak right off the roof and carefully sit himself down. He held unto the gutter to stabilize the kayak while Rachel got in. She still had her backpack in front. It had blocked some of the rain. Tim let the current take the kayak, using his paddle to avoid running into uprooted trees or cars. He kept looking up as if expecting an angelic army of choppers to swoop down and rescue them. Rachel was not so optimistic. She knew enough about disasters to know help was never there when you wanted them and rarely there when you needed them. So often the waiting lasted much longer than the actual disaster itself. Rachel and Tim followed the trail of debris for at least a half hour. As they passed a series of houses, Rachel thought she heard a sound.

  “Wait!” she cried, grabbing Tim’s arm from behind. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Shh!”

  They sat as still as possible. Through the sound of water and occasional bump of debris against debris, it started up again. A weak cry for help.

  “There!”

  Tim paddled in the direction of the cry.

  “Over here!” Rachel said.

  Tim grabbed hold of the porch railing and pulled the kayak closer to the house. The water had buried the stairs, hiding the door knob. The door was slightly ajar.

  “Hello?” he called. “Is someone there?”

  “Help!” the voice cried.

  Tim pushed the door further open, moving a piece of furniture that had fallen against the door. The water was up so high that Tim and Rachel had to lower their heads to avoid striking the top of the door. Inside, there were only a few feet of space above the water before the ceiling. Empty jars and cans floated around. The water was murky, but Rachel could make out some dark outlines of furniture below the surface. There was no one in sight.

  “Where are you?” Tim called.

  “Kitchen!”

  Tim paddled forward, hunched over the kayak. They drifted into the room that had once been the kitchen to see a middle-aged woman in the water, clinging to the top of the refrigerator. She had bruises on her face and mascara streaming down. She began to cry when she saw the kayak.

  “Thank God,” she sobbed. “I’ve been calling and no one would come.”

  “How long have you been here? Are you hurt?”

  “My leg,” the woman said. “I think it’s broken.”

  Tim and Rachel looked at each other. There wasn’t space in the kayak for more than two people.

  “Here, put her up between us, on this divider,” Rachel said.

  Tim and Rachel each took an arm, pulling her up so her legs dangled in the water. Rachel held on to her while Tim examined her legs. The woman wore a loose T-shirt and khakis, now dark from the water. She winced as she shifted her weight on the kayak.

  “How long have you been here like this?” Rachel asked.

  “I don’t know,” the woman replied. “I came down after it flooded to try and get something, and slipped. I thought I might drown, I couldn’t get up the stairs, so I just held on here.”

  “Why didn’t you leave after the earthquake? Didn’t you hear the warnings?”

  “I’ve lived through other storms,” the woman said, her tone slightly annoyed.

  Tim glanced up at Rachel with a meaningful look, but said nothing. He rolled up the woman’s pant leg to look at the break. It was bad. The bone was almost poking through the skin right under her knee, and her skin was a troublingly pale-green color. Staying in the filthy water could not be good. It could be infected.

  “I’ve got some basic first aid,” Rachel said, unzipping her backpack.

  She gave the woman an antibiotic pill and Tim’s water.

  “Thank you,” the woman said.

  “Keep the water.”

  She drank the rest of it eagerly. It must have been a while since she had a drink.

  “What’s your name?” Tim asked.

  “Mary. Mary Pile.”

  “I’m Tim. That’s Rachel.”

  “Thank you so much,” Mary repeated, blinking rapidly. “I don’t know how long I would have lasted.”

  “You need a hospital,” Rachel said. “Professional help.”

  Tim and Rachel tried to maneuver the kayak so they could all fit in it, but it became too tippy to paddle. The kayak dipped too far and water spilled into the seats.

  “Whoa!” Tim whaled, touching his hands to the ceiling to steady himself. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “We can’t all go,” Rachel said, stating the obvious. “Tim
, do you know this area at all?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Do you know where a hospital is?”

  Tim nodded.

  “That’s as good a place as any to go look for help. If the water is high there, it can’t be higher than the first floor.”

  Rachel unconsciously hugged her backpack. The woman, now straddling the kayak divider, turned her head to look back at Rachel.

  “I’ll stay here,” Rachel said. “You take her to the hospital.”

  “...Are you sure?” Tim asked.

  “What are our other options? We can’t wait. Her leg…” Rachel’s voice drifted off.

  Everyone knew Rachel was right. She would have to get out on the roof. They carefully made their way out the front door, holding on to the ceiling and the wall to balance. Outside, Rachel pulled herself up to the roof, grateful for the painful hours she had put in at the gym.

  “Take your trail mix,” Tim said.

  He took it out of his bag and handed it back to her. Their fingers brushed during the exchange and Tim smiled. He hadn’t smiled since they met; Rachel probably hadn’t either. She smiled back.

  “I’ll come back for you,” Tim assured her. “I’ll bring help.”

  “Ok,” Rachel said. “Thanks.”

  She sat with her knees to her chin as Tim paddled away with Mary. The neighborhood looked like Venice and Tim was a gondolier. He had just turned a corner and out of Rachel’s site when it began to rain harder yet again.

  Of course, Rachel thought bitterly. Because why the hell not.

  She rocked back and forth, alone again.

  Later, Rachel would guess that it was about a half hour between Tim leaving and when she started feeling the second earthquake. It came in short, smaller bursts, like the footsteps of a giant. At first, Rachel wasn’t sure what she was experiencing and just stared at the quavering surface of the water.

  What the…

  Then the roof began to shake. Rachel pressed her hands against the shingles to steady herself, but it hardly helped. She had never heard or seen footage of a earthquake in a flooded area. It was strange. The shaking stopped and Rachel relaxed. She shouldn’t have. It started again and Rachel lost her balance. She rattled off the roof like a book from a bookcase and rolled, crashing into the water. Her backpack was still on her chest and as she twisted in the water, the strap caught on something submerged. She couldn’t get to the surface. Where was it caught? Frantically, Rachel pawed through the water. It was so dark and gritty with filth. As she felt the strap and unhooked it, her palm racked across something metal and sharp. Panicked, Rachel fought to the surface, screaming into the air.

  “Damn it!” she shouted, choking and coughing up flood water.

  She raised her hand above the surface and saw blood running down her wrist and arm. The sharp thing had cut a long, jagged line in her skin. Rachel imagined she could feel all kinds of bacteria swimming through her veins, infecting all her cells. Nearly crying from fear, Rachel tried to get back onto the roof. To her dismay, she found she couldn’t pull herself up from her low position in the water, and her cut hand was beginning to throb. She had to stop the bleeding. She had to get out of the water. Nothing was dry. Rachel swung her head around, searching for a car roof, a floating piece of a boat, anything. There was a tree still hanging on by its roots, its thick trunk bending over the water. Rachel kicked her way over to it and hugged it like a monkey. Her backpack was in the way. Angry, Rachel pulled the straps off and turned it around so it was on her back. She shimmied as far up the trunk as she could. Her heart pounded through her shirt. She rested her cheek against the trunk’s rough surface.

  Have to stop the bleeding, Rachel thought. Stop infection.

  Reaching her backpack without falling was difficult. Rachel pressed her thighs against the tree like she was riding a horse and pulled her bag up in front of her. She found a Zip-loc bag of kerchiefs she had packed before her plane ride. Unfolding one, she tied it around her palm tightly. It stung. Blood quickly soaked through the blue-and-white cloth. Rachel wrapped another kerchief around her hand. She unscrewed the cap for the antibiotics, but her thigh strength gave way and she dropped her bag to grab the tree. To her horror, the bag fell, spilling its contents into the water. Most of the supplies were still in bags and floated, but the pills and cans of juice sunk, disappearing into the black. Rachel sat frozen for a moment, as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. Perhaps she imagined it. A bad daydream. Perhaps she had imagined all of this and she would wake sunburned on a beach, with a waiter bending over to see if she wanted a daiquiri. Rachel came back to harsh reality when the bags began to drift away. Leaning down, she grabbed as many as she could and crumpled them in her good hand, breathing hard. She scanned the streets for Tim. For anyone. There were only half-submerged houses, floating cars, and ripped-up trees. And still it rained. Like God’s wife was weeping.

  Part II

  Danny

  1.

  It felt good to be prepared. It was a unique kind of “good,” too; not the kind of feeling that came with anything else. At least that’s what Danny thought. He liked to come in the storeroom sometimes after the kids had gone to bed. Seeing the rows of cans all lined up according to color - fruit, beans, vegetables, meat, juice - satisfied him. Beneath the shelves, he had wooden bins filled with bags of rice, flour, and white sugar. There were other bins, too, with big canisters of olive and coconut oil. The other side of the storeroom was more eclectic and colorful. The spices lined the wall in homemade racks. There was cracked black pepper, cumin, dried mustard, dried oregano, and so on. Miranda was an experimental cook and could transform rice into a vast variety of flavors just by adding different spices. She had extracts there, as well, like vanilla, almond, and peppermint. Danny’s storehouse measured 10x10 and was packed with all the essentials Danny had read about online and had heard about for years in school and from his parents.

  “Always know what the expiration dates of foods are.”

  “Keep rice and sugar in cool, dry places.”

  “Only store food you know your family enjoys.”

  These words were what the voices in Danny’s head always said. In the past, they might have said things like, “Don’t have a weak handshake,” or “If you hear a siren while you’re driving, pull over to the side,” but now Danny’s brain (and the brains of many others) were occupied by new social wisdoms. As soon as Danny had dropped out of med school to get married and pursue web design, he began stockpiling. When they were first married and lived in a tiny apartment, Danny reserved his side of the closet for emergency supplies and stored his clothes in plastic bins he pushed up against the wall. When they were looking for their first house, Danny made it very clear to the realtor that storage space was a big concern. He also emphasized that he didn’t want to be in or even near a large city. Miranda never begrudged Danny his commitment, but it wasn’t until that first big storm that she became truly grateful she had married a prepper.

  The power was out for two weeks. Danny and Miranda had enough supplies to last them a month and hardly suffered in their daily routines. They used their solar-powered stove top to cook food and had enough candles to light the house at night. Other people around them had prepared, but not as thoroughly or for as long. When the power came back on, Danny’s neighbors came to him for advice and he came to be known as an unofficial expert and consultant. In addition to his work as a website designer, he started teaching classes for a $25 fee at the community college. He could have easily charged more, but Danny was adamant that prepping knowledge be available to everyone.

  “Survival shouldn’t be dependent on wealth,” he said. “And neither should surviving-well be.”

  The year the twins turned six, Danny had been teaching for five years and expecting a big year for weather. A lot of blogs were reporting on dangerous signs from the oceans and volcanoes. Animals were behaving strangely. No one knew for sure what to expect, but it was going to be big.


  “Think hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, hard winters, hot summers, all that,” the blogs said. “Depending on where you are, you have to prepare for massive rain or no rain. Areas that haven’t historically seen tornadoes will welcome their first ones. Just be ready for anything.”

  That was the kind of statement that irritated Danny. It was essentially meaningless and didn’t give people a good idea at all about what to do.

  “Be ready for whatever you can think of,” Danny said. “Within reason.”

  In his class, he had people write down everything they were worried about, no matter how absurd, and then he gathered their lists. Answers ranged from hurricanes to a zombie apocalypse to freezing temperatures with no power.

  “What possibilities are literally impossible?” Danny would ask.

  People would call out answers.

  “Hurricanes!”

  They didn’t live near water.

  “Zombies!”

  That always got some debate, but Danny usually ended up adapting that answer to a pandemic as the preparation would be about the same. Pandemics were a real possibility. After crossing out all the impossible options, Danny would continue to narrow down the list to what people believed were realistic dangers, like earthquakes or losing power and water.

  “By naming the risks, you can have more control over your fear,” Danny explained. “You have a better idea of how to prepare, what specific supplies to stock up on. Saying vague buzz phrases like “be prepared for anything” just overwhelms everyone and doesn’t take into account the more pressing dangers for people depending on their location and individual needs. Take ownership of your survival. Focus on surviving well.”

  What Danny loved most - before teaching or web design - was his family. He was outside playing with his twin sons Jesse and Hunter the day hell took up residence on earth for six hours.

  The day was humid, nearly unbearably so. Sweat ran down in lines down Danny’s back as he tossed softballs for Jesse and Hunter, who took turns trying to hit it with their baseball bats. Their swings were improving. They scrunched up their identical faces in concentration each time the ball flew towards them. When the bat made contact with the ball, their eyes lit up and they looked to their father for praise.