“What’s going on?” Jamie asks.
“The cafeteria’s flooding,” he says. “We’re moving the non-canned supplies up to the second floor.” He continues into the gym, probably to wake people and get more bodies moving the food.
Jamie curses under his breath. “I knew it.”
We carefully splash through the floodwater to the cafeteria, where a group of people are already forming a plan. Cara joins us—silently listening. They tell us to go to the stairs and create a line to pass boxes up. Cara is heading for the stairs before we even move. Me, Jamie, and ten others form a line, each of us just an arm’s length from the next, and start passing food up the stairs, where Cara hands it off to people who run it down the upstairs hallways. More people arrive, and along with them, I see the Kid emerge from the gym door, watching us.
“Go find Ms. Daphne,” I tell him, taking a box from the guy next to me and handing it over the railing to Jamie.
But the Kid doesn’t move; instead he watches the assembly line passing box after box, then looks down at the water around his legs—now halfway up his shin.
“Kid!” I yell.
“Hey!” The guy next to me is holding a box out, so I take it and pass it to Jamie. Taylor also emerges from the gym, and as I pass another box, I glance back at her.
“Taylor, you and the Kid get upstairs.”
“What’s going—”
“Now!” It’s the most authoritative I’ve probably ever sounded. She rolls her eyes and, taking the Kid’s hand, walks up the stairs behind Jamie and the others. I’m about to open my mouth and scold her, tellher to takeotherstairs that aren’t being used, but the guy next to me seems to be getting impatient. So I pass the box he’s holding to Jamie, keeping one eye on them until they reach the top and are out of my sight.
Behind me, Liz emerges from the gym, holding hands with a group of the kids, including No-Filter Frank.
“Where’s Daphne and the others?” I ask.
“Hey!” the guy next to me says. “Focus!”
I hand the box to Jamie, ignoring him as Liz shifts her attention from the water spilling around the front door to me. “She’s getting the other kids together.”
“Upstairs” is all I have time to say. She takes a step forward but the guy beside me stops her.
“Use the other stairs!”
“Dude, chill,” I say.
“It’s okay,” Liz says. “We’ll use the ones on this side. Come on, kids.” She steers them away from us, down the hallway that Jamie and I were just talking in.
The wind outside kicks up, and there’s a loud bang and shouts from somewhere in the school.
“What the hell was that?” the guy next to me asks. I half want to yell at him to focus, just to be a dick, but I’m curious as well.
More screams, followed by another bang. The water around my shins begins to flow like a river. Behind us, Daphne emerges from the gym. She’s soaked, and so are the kids holding each other’s hands in a chain behind her.
She points into the gym. “The roof! The gymnasium—” If shehas anything else to add, I can’t hear it because something snaps, and the wind outside is suddenly inside. The roaring storm has broken our shelter.
Daphne spins as wind and rain blast her from inside the gym. I jump out of line and grab her, pulling her away from the storm, trying to get the kids somewhere safe.
The rest of the line seems to have given up on the supplies and are running for the stairs. Jamie hops over the railing to me as I scoop up one of the smaller kids who fell into the floodwater.
The people in the line are trying to squeeze onto the stairs, pushing some over the railing into the water below.
“Andrew!” Cara yells down from the top of the stairs. I look up to see her pointing the way Liz and the other kids went. That’s right, there are other stairs. I nod to her and turn back to Jamie to tell him to go the other way, where we came from. But another crash kills the words in my throat.
And a wave of water rounds the corner of the hallway we were just in—a brown, foaming wall coming right at us.
Jamison
I GRAB ONE OF THE KIDS ANDtry to get between the flood and Andrew, but the water hits me hard, sweeping us off our feet and toward the cafeteria. Salt water fills my nose and mouth, burning my senses away. I try to stand, holding tight to the little kid in my arms, but I can’t get my footing. We’re moving too fast.
