I felt the strange sensation that I was looking into the eyes of a ghost.

"I'm going to get you out of here," said Craig to me, only to me. He brought his lips to mine, in a vain way, thinking he was the only man I ever loved. "Don't worry," he said, lowering me down in a bed of jackets on the boat. The floor was hard and cold.

It didn't take long before the black sky turned to premature blue. The air filled with a thick, cold fog, and George and Brett who wobbled into the boat, closing the door to the second-floor living room, exuded fog from their words. . . George telling Brett a warning, "Don't look back. . . It was them or all of us."

George manned the electric motor, and the boat pushed slowly through the water. While he steered through the debris (I could hear the boat's perimeter clink against the floating objects surrounding the walls) Brett used the spare oars hanging on either side of the boat to push debris aside to clear a path. It was a slow process. Every second I stared up at the towering white wall of the bay house, and prayed that Jack and Travis would wake up, and come running to the boat.

But the tears streamed down my face, and I saw the powerful gray clouds shift like the steel armor of God across the atmosphere, and we traveled further and further from the bay house. . . until the only hope of saving Jack and Travis, was George, Craig and Brett's changes of hearts.

God, please. . . I said, numb in my flesh. . . Save Jack, and Travis, but Jack, please of anyone of all, please save him. Don't let him die.

I tried to cry through my immovable lips and face. . . but it was no use, the boat struggled onward through the floating fields of disaster's consequence. I only watched as the towering three stories above the flood level floated away.

I could hardly tell that Craig was combing his cold fingers through the wet hair on my skull. The only sensation I was truly aware of. . . was the ominous hum that rippled through the air of the wasteland.

The skies of gray, the waters of black. . . they sang in a moaning undertone, and reverberated from every surrounding direction, to shake the boat menacingly in a bass rumble.

When the bay house finally disappeared behind the closing curtains of thick ocean fog, I closed my eyes. . . tried to shut out the world. . . and wished to die.