Page 2 of Citadel

I wouldn’t want to handle the bigger ones anyway.

In its former life, this was a small motorboat, but it’s been rigged now with makeshift sails and also paddles for when the breeze isn’t cooperating. This morning, after I climb in and untie the mooring line, I adjust the sail just slightly. It picks up the wind immediately, taking me out of sight of the hotel.

The former beach is completely submerged, as are all five cities in the Hampton Roads area. The top of this one hotel extends out of the ocean, surrounded by nothing but water and sky and the rising sun.

I cast out my net after a minute.

Sometimes I get lucky and hit a school of fish on the first attempt.

Today isn’t one of those days. It’s three hours before I have enough fish for a daily haul. I return to the hotel and drop them off with Fran, who’s responsible for prepping them for salting and drying, which is the only method we have to preserve food.

I don’t bother getting out of the boat today since I’ve set my mind to doing some scavenging. I head off again, sailing directly toward the new coastline, much farther in than it used to be.

It takes me more than an hour until I reach land that can be walked on. There’s no soft sand or rocky coast now. It’s mud and aged tree roots and swampy terrain that puts out a genuinely awful smell. Vaguely rotten.

But a million households in this area got washed away in the flooding. All that stuff had to go somewhere. Most of it is unusable—destroyed by years underwater—but last month I found one of those heavy-duty plastic storage bins filled with women’s clothes. That’s where I got the sweatshirt and underwear I’m wearing. I’m too scrawny to fill it out, but it’s better than nothing.

Today I wade through the swampy landscape and search through the littered debris. Disintegrated books and bedding. Useless, smashed electronics. Broken pieces of glass and plastic and metal. An occasional car. An upside-down school bus.

Eventually I find another closed plastic storage bin that hasn’t been battered by the elements. I hold my breath as I open it, pleased when I find inside a variety of kitchenware.

Some of the glasses are cracked, but there are usable plates and coffee mugs. I drag the tub back to my boat, sort out the worthless stuff, and load the rest to take back to the hotel.

I check the sun and see it’s early afternoon.

I’ve got time enough for at least another hour of scavenging.

It’s tough work. I’m covered with mud, and my skin is red from the sun. Breanna would lecture me about not getting sunburned, but it’s almost impossible for me to avoid it.

Our family heritage is Irish. I don’t have freckles like Breanna, but I have fair skin that refuses to tan. My eyes are brown, while hers are blue. My hair isn’t the same beautiful red as my sister’s either. It’s a darker auburn that only glints reddish in the sun. But it doesn’t matter because I’ve been shaving my head for the past few years. It’s simply too hard to mess with keeping my hair clean and untangled. I always wear an old stocking cap to keep my scalp from getting burned.

Breanna says it’s just as well. She wants me to look as sexless as possible—as a way to protect me—so she encourages the unflattering cap and baggy sweatshirt.

I don’t mind. I like going unnoticed.

It’s safer that way.

I discover the remains of a house, collapsed by the storms. It’s in such bad shape it’s easy to pull away the soggy wreckage and search for useful items beneath.

There’s not much.

Hardly anything that would be any use to me.

I scrape my hands up as I scrabble with the rubble, and more than once a foot sinks too far into the mud, making it difficult to yank out.

All that work and discomfort and pain. For nothing.

I’m about to give up, exhausted and disgusted, when I see another plastic tub almost completely buried in mud. Those bins are always the best bet for salvageable items.

It takes a lot of effort to clear the wreckage, but I finally uncover the tub enough to pull the lid off.

I blink down at what’s inside.

Canned food. Soup. Vegetables. Beans. Most of the cans are still intact, even the labels still readable.

Canned is the only kind of food that has a chance of surviving this long, and almost no one in the past thought to store it in plastic tubs.

There’s no way I’ll be able to dig the whole tub out enough to drag it back to the boat, so I transfer as many cans as I can fit in my bag, carrying them to the boat and then returning to get some more.

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