Beginning

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1

THE FIRST YEAR
that the hurricanes tunneled through the Gulf Coast it was assumed that the string of storms was little more than a historical anomaly. A series of natural disasters like the world had not seen in thousands of years. A fluke. The perfect combination of elements that caused twelve months of almost ceaseless devastation. Nothing to do with anything else.

When the storms finally broke and the water receded, the rebuilding began, the aid arrived, most returned, insurance paid up, the officials said the right things and signed the right documents, and the region vowed that it would be better than it had ever been before. A hard-willed people gathered themselves to do what they had always done in the wake of Mother Nature.

Months of normality passed. The casinos appeared almost overnight, money-making anthills that opened the gaming floors before the restaurants and hotel rooms were completed. Around-the-clock opportunity for those who had already lost everything to continue to lose everything. The Beau Rivage offered a free lunch on weekdays. Treasure Bay rolled a mobile Laundromat into its parking lot and provided free washing and drying. The Grand Casino gave away a $100 chip to any person who walked in with a valid Mississippi driver's license, and the offer was good for however many days in a row you could stroll through the automatic doors. From the outside it was charity. From the inside it was simply pulling them in a little closer. In the night sky the casinos' lights shined like purple and red neon beacons, and the grand structures stood along the broken-down Biloxi and Gulfport coastlines like ancient lookouts for a coming invasion.

The FEMA trailers stretched for miles north of Gulfport along Highway 49, along strips of Highway 90 between Ocean Springs and Gautier, and dotted between D'Iberville and Biloxi. White, boxlike communities of the downtrodden, of those struggling to maintain a Gulf Coast home or business, of those who had nowhere else to go. But it gave the region a population and a work force and an opportunity to return to its former self. Buses arrived each morning and carried workers to construction sites, carried children to makeshift schools under tents, carried the sick to the Red Cross. The coast had been crippled more severely than it had ever been, but there was life and hope, and as the weeks stretched out a resurrection seemed possible.

And then they came again. Four more hurricanes. All in succession. Only a month separating one storm from another, as if they had gathered out across the ocean and decided on a schedule of wreckage. All four were plodders, sitting on top of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines and pounding and pounding. The water rose in south Louisiana and chunks of the bayous and bays simply disappeared. Lake Pontchartrain swallowed Mandeville, Metarie, Kenner. Severe wind damage occurred in Mississippi as far north as Columbus and Oxford, several hundred miles from the coast. The torrential rain caused rivers and lakes to rise and create muddywater flooding that carried away communities and reshaped the geography of the Delta and the Tombigbee Waterways of northeast Mississippi. Along the Mississippi River the water rose and swept away vast chunks of earth and buckled bridges and carried trade and cargo ships out into the Gulf without their consent. Oil rigs gave and crumbled like shaky stacks of children's blocks and pieces of steel and iron and then men washed onto the shore in the brief time between storms.

Whatever had been built in hopes of restoring the region went down again. But even after the four storms were over, the proclamations returned of standing strong, meeting the force of destruction with gusto, we will build it back again, better than before. But fewer proclaimed, and fewer believed.

Weather forecasters now examined the patterns and declared that the fluke was over and the trend had begun. The Gulf Coast had become a wind tunnel for tropical storms and hurricanes, and they formed more quickly and more frequently than ever before. Climate shift was the phrase and now people believed in it. Climate shift was on the lips of the anchors on the evening news, it was across the headlines of newspapers from the east to the west, it littered the Internet, it gratified thousands upon thousands of preppers who now had something legitimate to prep for.

Services returned after the four storms. Electricity. Law enforcement. Local government. Hospitals. But fewer businesses returned. Fewer residents returned, even if their houses were still standing. Those who came back believed they had damn good reasons. There were few churches, few places to send your children to school, few restaurants to eat in, and few places to buy groceries and gasoline. If you wanted to gamble, the casinos had once again risen. If you wanted to drink, the amount of liquor stores doubled. If you wanted a dirty magazine or video, adult stores appeared next to the liquor stores. Vice was not concerned with the storms. And law enforcement was not concerned with vice as it faced so much else.

Less than six months after the four storms, there came another three, only days separating this string of hurricanes. The meteorologists referred to them as the Triplets and named them Lazarus, Mary, and Noah. All violent. The middle of the Triplets broke records for wind speeds. The last of the Triplets dropped two feet of rain. Soon after the Triplets made their way into the Midwest and finally dissipated somewhere close to Canada, rumors of abandoning the region began. The flooding was out of control. The cost of reconstruction and aid had reached far into the billions. And the consensus among forecasters was that the storms had settled into a pattern that appeared to have no end. The future promised to be as wet and windy and dangerous as the present. And no one was certain how far ahead that future might stretch.

They would call it the Line, the rumors said. A geographical boundary that the government will draw somewhere. They are not going to govern this godforsaken wasteland anymore. If you decide to stay below, you are going to be on your own. There will be no civil services. No law. No consequence other than the consequence of man and nature. Coast dwellers and those who owned land and property wondered if this were possible. Could a country abandon part of its own? Can they let us go?

The first sign that the Line was coming was the evacuation of the casinos. When the big trucks pulled in and began to salvage whatever they could from the tumbled and toppled casinos, it became apparent that abandonment was no joke. And as the rumors swirled, it didn't take long for residents and vagabonds and criminals and card dealers and preachers and teachers and all those determined to make a life in the region to realize one very important thing—if the Line comes to fruition and you decide to remain, you will most certainly fall into one of two categories.

Predator or prey.

2

AGGIE WAS ON
his knees with his chest lying across the seat of the metal foldout chair, his head down and his arms covering the back of his head. Above him the ceiling was molded with water, tiles warped and damp, greenish-black. Drips fell from the ceiling, water trickled down the walls in crooked streams, the fluorescent lights flickered and somehow held on and spoke in a buzzing, staticky voice.

Across the floor more chairs were scattered and the one that had been used across the back of his head lay bent next to him. The glass door of the strip mall sanctuary was open and the wind pushed in and torn pages from hymnals swirled around him as if sustained by the printed lyrics of praise and love. The wood-paneled walls were bent and damp. Aggie was bent and damp. The world outside was bent and damp.

The podium was busted and splintered. The same podium that he had stood behind and delivered wild-eyed messages of wrath and deliverance. The same podium that he had banged on and leaned on and sweated over in the hot nights of repentance. The same podium that the snakes crawled over and around as he admonished his followers to embrace the serpent in order to wholly reject the serpent and believe me when I tell you that there is power in the blood. Give it to me, oh yes, give it all to me.

Now the podium had been destroyed. It had all been destroyed. The remaining trustful few of the congregation turned violent and vanished.

He raised his head. A streak of dried blood decorated his forehead and ran along the corner of his wrinkled eye. A throbbing at the crest of his head from the wound. A wandering vision. Pain and hunger and defeat swirling through him as he lifted himself from the floor and sat in the chair. The wind died and the hymnal pages twisted and fell. Outside the lightning danced and celebrated the coming of another storm.

Aggie wore a filthy T-shirt, ripped in half but hanging on his body like a ragged towel. Claw marks across his chest and down his back. Across the grimy linoleum were more chairs and empty whiskey bottles and cigarette butts. Sleeping bags and potato chip bags and a lidless cooler. The busted stock of the shotgun that had been hammered against the floor as if trying to break open the earth. His weathered black Bible lay open and facedown, its pages wavy from the humidity. He lifted his arm and rubbed at his shoulder, bruised from being slammed against the wall. His back the same. His head the same. The water dripped and tapped on his ear and he looked up, leaned back his head and opened his mouth and wet his dry lips with the fragments from the ceaseless rain.

They had been gathered here for weeks. And they had come and gone as they pleased until they began to leave and not return. The Line was coming, less than a month away now. Some of them had come to their senses and gotten into their cars and taken what they could and driven north. Others without vehicles, with nothing more than a bag over their shoulders and a bag over their heads had simply summoned all courage and hope and begun to walk with their backs to the restless ocean. The living things had been slowly disappearing from the coast as the clock ticked and the storms beat and the hungry grew hungrier and more willing. His congregation was down to a dozen, and he had decided that this was where they would stay whether they wanted to or not. He only locked the doors and let that speak for itself.

But then the dozen began to ask him questions. What are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? What if the wind takes the top off this place? What if the windows are smashed? Why is the door locked?

Because I have prayed and this is the answer. Because you have been given unto me, and how many times do I have to prove my love for you? How many times do I have to prove that I will protect you? How many do I have to kill? How many do I have to save? The Line is their definition of what will be, not the declaration of the Lord but of man and we will stay here and serve. As he answered them the rain came in horizontal crashes against the windows and a car hood smashed against the side of the building and the lights flashed and blue smoke from the generator filled the strip mall sanctuary and they coughed and raised their hands in prayer and he lifted the shotgun to them with one hand and shook the Bible at them with the other. Some fell to their knees and pleaded for mercy and others fell to their knees and thanked Him for the violent sky but others only wanted out and they knew that the shotgun was without shells and that there were none to be found. Those who wanted out got out of their chairs and picked them up and went for Aggie and the brawl began, the metal chairs whacking against him and Aggie swinging the shotgun and some came to his defense and others joined the revolution and the room was alive with fists and chairs and shouts and wrenching arms and necks and then there came the blood from mouths and foreheads.

And when it was over, the door had been opened and they exited into the storm-filled world. All of them. Even the few who still loved and believed in him.

He crawled across the floor to a whiskey bottle. He opened his mouth and tipped the bottle but nothing came so he licked the rim and then dropped the bottle onto the floor with a clang. His body was old and beaten and his head hurt so bad that blinking was painful so he lay back flat and stared at the ceiling.