November 20th

"Stormy!" I yelled into the pitch black, my voice wobbling as my board rolled over the bumpy road. The first signs of morning had yet to light the sky, but I didn't have to worry about waking the residents—no one had returned to the Bywater post-Storm. There was nothing to come home to. Not yet, at least.

I held up my flashlight, which at this point felt like a natural extension of my arm. I was never anywhere without it. The gas lamps on houses became fewer and farther between when you left the Quarter heading east, until there were zilch in the destitute area, where my crew was rebuilding houses in the Lower Ninth.

"Stormy!" I yelled again, my eyes flicking back and forth to the ground, looking for potholes that could send me flying into the next state.

When I got to the train tracks, I hopped off and kicked the board into my hand. I'd attempted the jump a few times before, but it never ended well after I'd been up most of the night.

"Stormmmmy!"

Movement came from the decrepit porch of an abandoned house, and Stormy sprang out of a tire. That's why she always smells like rubber.

"There you are, girl. Don't scare me like that."

She yapped, running down the stairs to me.

I bent down to pet her as she rubbed her head into my palm. "Do I have a treat for you today." I pulled a crumpled ball of tinfoil from my knapsack and removed the strip of bacon from it.

Her eyes widened, but she didn't go nuts like I expected.

"I saved this for you." I held the bacon close to her nose so she wouldn't bite my hand off when she smelled it.

But she just stared, as if confused.

"I know it's been a while since you've had table food, but really?"

I held it out for a couple more seconds, but she remained disinterested and then nudged at my other pocket.

"Fine, more for me," I said, and crammed it in my mouth. Man, you know this place is screwed up when the dogs won't take bacon.

I wondered if she was sick. I'd never be able to get her to a rescue shelter for a checkup. The last time I tried to take her somewhere was the only time she'd ever bitten me. She made it perfectly clear that she did not leave her hood.

She lit up as I pulled the old tennis ball out of my pocket. I hurled it, and she took off. I dropped my board and kicked off after her, just like every other morning on my way to work. She brought the ball back, and I threw it again, feeling the tightness in my arm after the night of flying.

I stretched my arm over my shoulder as my board bumped over the shitty road.

When I threw the ball again, an undeniable sound sent a chill ripping up my spine: a shotgun cocking. My board skidded out from under my feet, and my hands shot up. The flashlight crashed to the street.

"I'm just on my way to work!" I yelled, heart racing.

"Work?" came a voice from the house to my right. "Now, I know that's some bull."

Stormy ran back, jumping up on my legs, barking, not understanding why we stopped.

"There ain't no work around here, boy. You loot, we shoot."

"I'm not a looter!"

A beam of light shone my way, and I slowly turned toward the voice. All I could make out were two male silhouettes on the porch of a house that no longer had a front wall. One guy held a flashlight, the other a shotgun.

A breeze picked up, blowing the trash around my feet. "I'm a recovery worker! On my way to the site now."

He shined the flashlight directly at my face, and the guy next to him uncocked the gun.

Thank God. The wind around us gently subsided.

Stormy continued to yelp, but they didn't seem bothered by her. He turned the flashlight, illuminating his own face, and I got a better view of the wall-less room behind him. There were a couple of women and a bunch of kids sprawled out sleeping on the floor.

"When's someone gonna get to our street?" he asked.

"I—I don't know." I left out the part about the waiting list being epically longer than the approved funding. Instead I pulled a card out of my back pocket and approached the porch. "If you have the means, call this number and ask." I looked him straight in the eye, not wanting him to see the pity I felt for his family. My pity wasn't going to feed his kids.

"They ain't gonna tell me anything."

"Probably not. But that's the direct line to the director's office. Feel free to blow it up anyway."

There were no thank-yous and no good-byes; then again, there were no bullets fired either. I considered it a win.

And if I hustled, I wouldn't be late for work.

***

"Isaac!" a voice boomed from down the street. "You're late!" It was AJ, our crew captain.

"Sorry!" I yelled, running the last half block. I liked AJ because he didn't treat me like I was the boss's kid. "Trying not to get my head blown off. Looter-shooter!"

"Oh, good Lord, Isaac," said Betsy. "I told you Brett and I would pick you up on the way. It's dan-ger-ous around these parts. Especially before sunrise." Betsy's southern accent gave syllables so much separation they needed their own zip codes.

She was standing in the middle of the dark street with the rest of the crew, all getting their assignments. We had a system: AJ, Chase, and I ripped stuff out, and Jory, Betsy, and Brett hauled it out to the curb. There it would all sit for God only knows how long. There was no trash service up and running, because the government had yet to figure out where it would all go. Urban Crisis Management—or UCM, as my father referred to it—was on a fast track to nowhere sorting that kind of stuff out.

"Thanks, Bets, but it's fine."

"You make my prayers work in overdrive."

"And I appreciate it." I smiled. Betsy and her boyfriend, Brett, were Jesus fanatics from Florida, who proudly wore their abstinence on their fingers and liked nothing more than to preach.

"It's too early for God-squading," Jory said, stomping out a cigarette. He was a student at Tulane—at least he had been before the Storm. Philosophy major.

"He must believe and not doubt," Betsy recited, "because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."

"You know what I have faith in?" asked Chase, our resident adrenaline junkie. "I have faith in sledgehammers." He picked one up and handed it to Jory. Chase spent half the year as a smoke jumper, which meant he was partly insane. "I also have faith in crowbars," he continued, picking one up and handing it to me. "And I have faith in each and every one of you tearing the shit out of this house so we can rebuild it."

"Amen to that," I echoed, wrapping a bandana over my mouth and nose.

Everyone else did the same, and we ran to the residence. Since we were starting a new house, it was going to be a demolition kind of day. Dirty, disgusting work. I caught a glimpse of the X on the exterior as I hopped up the steps—it wasn't one of mine, although we weren't too far from the streets where my first-responder crew had worked the weeks after the Storm.

Jory and I stepped into the house at the same time—we both nearly vomited.

The running joke was, never eat breakfast before coming to work if you didn't like wasting food. There was more puking between recovery workers than sorority sisters. The Storm-stench was not something a person got used to.

My jaw clamped shut to prevent the vile smell of rot and death from rushing into my mouth, but when it hit my nostrils, I paused, bending over.

"He's going down!" Chase slapped my back as he sped past me. We had a routine whenever we started a new house. The pukers went back outside while the rest of us ran through holding our breath, opening all of the windows. If they didn't open, we broke them—anything to let the air flow in.

I choked back the vomit and pressed forward; lingering would only ensure that I wouldn't be able to suppress the next wave. I made it to a dining room window and jammed it open before vomiting up the bacon projectile-style. Effing disgusting.

I hung outside the window for a couple breaths, aggressively spitting. Shudders swept across my shoulders, and I broke a puke-sweat. Before heading back inside, I grabbed a bottle of water from my knapsack, gargled, then jammed a piece of gum in my mouth.

Headphones in, I blew through two Beastie Boys albums, ripping apart the upper level of the camelback house. Baseboards, crown molding, a wooden fireplace mantel, a bathroom floor three layers of linoleum deep. Nothing was salvageable; the house had been completely submerged all the way up to the roof. One more floorboard and this room would be done. Dirty sweat dripped off my face as I tried to yank out the board with the crowbar. It didn't want to come up.

"Chase," I yelled out the door, "I need the sledgehammer back!"

I pulled off the bandana and wiped my face. A breeze kicked in through the window. At first it felt good, but then it made me shiver beneath my sweat-soaked shirt.

Cold.

Too cold for today. Maybe even too cold for New Orleans. Debris rustled on the floor as the breeze traipsed around me and out the bedroom door. I followed it, and a sinking feeling followed me.

"Here," Chase said, meeting me in the hallway with the sledgehammer.

"Thanks." I took it and walked past him, down the stairs, not wanting to lose the breeze—the cold.

"There he goes," Betsy said, coming out of a bathroom, signing the cross as she joined us.

I entered the bedroom Jory was working in. "Oh no," he said as I walked straight past him to a door on the opposite side of the room.

When I turned the knob, it didn't open.

"It's swollen in the frame," he said. "I couldn't get it to budge."

I tried again, this time with more force, but the result wasn't any different. "Stay back," I said, and swung the blunt tool into the first hinge. The second swing smashed the next hinge, and then I jerked the door away from the frame. A black cloud whooshed out. Jory screamed louder than Betsy as we all dropped to the floor, covering our faces. Thousands of flies swarmed us, buzzing in our ears. I swatted at them with one hand, covering my nose and mouth with the other hand, and gagging as the true smell of death billowed out.

I didn't want to move forward, but I didn't dare look back; Betsy was already puking, and then someone else was too. Puking had a domino effect like that.

I crept closer to the door, holding the bandana over my face, my stomach muscles jerking uncontrollably. I peered into the dark room, which was no bigger than a walk-in closet. The walls were bright red, and a mirror hung at the rear, reflecting the light from the bedroom onto an altar below it. Mold had sprouted like mutant ferns, blanketing the scene: candles, twenty or thirty were on the table, some big, some small, all with hardened drips of wax frozen in time down the sides. Strands of beads hung on statues of the Virgin Mary next to conch shells and plastic flowers, all covered in gray, green, and black. Spots on spots on spots of mold covered the crucifixes and black-and-white photos that hung on the walls.

"What the . . . ," my voice trailed.

"A prayer room," Jory said from behind me, swatting away flies.

In the mirror's reflection, I saw the body on the floor. I tried not to imagine him kneeling at the altar, the water slowly rising around him. I tried not to think about what was going through his head when he gave up on trying to evacuate. Was he old? Injured? Maybe he just wanted to die praying rather than out there on his own? Maybe he'd already found peace.

The reflection moved. I gagged violently and kicked the door shut.

"Maggots," I said.

"The Corpse Whisperer strikes again!" Jory yelled.

"It's not funny," I choked.

"No, it's not funny. It's freakin' weird, dude. You find more dead bodies than Jessica Jones."

Behind us, AJ's two-way bleeped. "We got another floater," he said.

Someone on the other side would alert D-MORT, the FEMA-sponsored Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, which happened to be one of my pop's projects. They'd arrange the pickup. No one knew for sure—well, someone knew for sure—but it's been said that over eight thousand bodies had been processed in the facility. Of course, no one had bothered to define "processed." As far as I could tell it meant "checked in." Only a fraction of those had been identified. There was a website where people could report missing persons and answer a survey that begged for details: scars, tattoos, piercings, surgical histories. I even heard they were using facial recognition from Facebook photos. But for floaters with this level of decomposition, the only chance was dental records. Hopefully, being found inside a home would expedite his identification.

"Lord have mercy, Isaac," Betsy said. "Lord have mercy."

"You have some kind of predilection for the dead, kid?" AJ asked, pocketing the handheld radio. "What is that? Nine? Ten?"

"A baker's dozen," Jory answered.

He was right: I'd found thirteen bodies—with this crew. If you tallied all of the corpses from my first-responder days, the number was seventy-six. Seventy-six corpses. But they didn't need to know that. Holding the record for corpses recovered wasn't exactly something to brag about.

"You got some shit luck, kid," said AJ.

"Yeah . . ."

What was I supposed to tell them? That a breeze always seemed to enter the room and lead me to the dead body? Oh, I just have this special relationship with the air—you know, because I'm a witch.

What happened next always felt the weirdest: I shut the door, and we went back to work. The shock factor for everyone had worn away along with the hope that it would be the last one.

Three Wu-Tang records later, I let the crowbar drop to the ground. "Is there running water here?"

"I think so," Jory answered.

I ran upstairs to the master bathroom as we continued to yell back and forth.

"Don't drink it! Boil-water advisory!"

"I'm not an idiot!" Actually I was—I should have left an hour ago. Gone back home and showered. Now you're going to be late. And disgusting, and covered in drywall dust and mold flakes. I turned on the tub faucet. The pipes shook and sputtered until water gurgled out.

"Come on, come on," I mumbled, pulling off my shirt.

The water ran a color that wasn't brown but wasn't quite clear either.

"Good enough."

I splashed the water up my arms, carefully turning my face away, and then pulled a bar of soap from my bag and stuck my head under the faucet to rinse out my hair.

I emerged wearing a fresh set of clothes. Black clothes.

"Ya going to a funeral, boy?" AJ asked.

"I gotta leave early. See ya tomorrow."

"We're gonna pray for that floater's soul," Betsy said. "Me and Brett. Don't you worry about him, Isaac."

"Thanks, Bets!" I yelled, hopping down the porch. The sad truth was, I'd already stopped thinking about the dead body, because I was worried about someone else now. Adele.

I threw down my board but then turned back and ran up to the front door. I pulled a can of spray paint out of my knapsack, shook it quickly, and popped the cap. When the paint hissed out, I slashed out the 0 and painted a 1.

RIP, Mr. Seventy-Six.

*********

Hello Kittens! How is it reading from Isaac's POV? What are you the most curious about? <3 <3 Vote, comment, do all the things! <3