…index finger…
“…timate that forty-seven were killed in the latest wave of terror attac…”
…index finger…
“…many Republicans are harshly criticizing the White House for what they believe to be a lack of support for the citizens of the Florida coastli…”
“TV, return to channel 115 and increase volume five levels.”
Since he was the chief of police of a cozy little suburb southeast of Houston called Santa Fe, Max instructed his TV to return to the first channel to see if he could find an updated path for Hurricane Maxine. He watched anxiously to see if the large beast of a hurricane would have any effect on him personally.
“Thank God!” Max exclaimed out loud to no one in particular. The hurricane was definitely moving east. If Maxine was a true Texas lady and minded her manners, she would make landfall at least fifty miles on the other side of the Sabine River and give some unlucky Louisianans a boot in the ass. Hurricane Maxine would be someone else’s guest, which brought Max some relief. Maxwell was not amused that the hurricane was given the female equivalent of his name. He knew that if she had courted the state of Texas, he would have been the butt of many jokes at the office.
Max had endured all he could stand of hurricanes. He grew up in South Florida and suffered the wrath of Hurricane Andrew, which demolished his residence and everything he ever knew. Absolutely nothing could be salvaged of his childhood home. It had been completely removed from the slab like it had never even been built. When Max’s family had returned, Max had hoped that he would still be able to run upstairs to his room and play with his toys. Max spent the rest of his childhood hating his home state of Florida because it had so many hurricanes. (Not the most rational of thinking, but he was only eight at the time.) Once he reached adulthood, he left Florida and the killer storms behind only to return on rare occasions to visit his parents. When he was twenty-two he moved to southeast Texas to begin work as a Texas State Trooper. Two years later, he married Darlene, and two years after that a second hurricane kicked him square in the ass.
Hurricane Ike did not destroy his home; at least he could be thankful for that much. What it did manage to do was lead him down the road to burn out. Max spent three weeks working sixteen hour shifts helping the victims of the Category 3 hurricane. Some days were long and boring, guarding impassable roads, directing traffic on nearly gridlocked highways. Some days, however, were far from boring. Max was absolutely amazed that normal, everyday citizens would ignore an evacuation order and stay behind, clearly in harm’s way. When those stubborn people managed to get trapped in their homes, they called 9-1-1. When they damned near died on their rooftops because they refused to evacuate, they called 9-1-1. One idiot even dialed 9-1-1 complaining that his favorite pizza joint was not answering the phone. The next year the state of Texas passed a law that fined citizens who ignored a mandatory evacuation order and required some sort of emergency service.
The worst part of Hurricane Ike was the first twenty-four hours after the storm passed. The exits along Interstate 10 in the Beaumont area where closed; many of the roads in the area were covered in downed trees and power lines. The only people allowed to exit off the interstate were law enforcement and first responders. Everyone else was turned away. This made for some furious citizens.
“You have no right to keep me from my home!”
“I’m a grown man! I don’t need you clowns to treat me like a baby!”
Those furious Texans thought the National Guard was a joke and ignored them. They simply jumped the curb and drove around them. The Guardsman would call Max into action, giving him the make and model, and Max would chase the people down. Most were much more intimidated by a State Trooper and cooperated. The ones that really bothered Max were the genuine, kind souls who begged and pleaded with him.
“I just need to get my dogs; they were in the backyard and I won’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to them.”
“I haven’t heard from my Dad. He refused to evacuate and I’m worried he hasn’t been taking his medicine.”
Max heard these stories all day and couldn’t do a thing to help these people. Max was one of two State Troopers assigned to protect a very long stretch of Interstate 10. The only thing they could tell people was to return to the interstate and call 9-1-1 if they had credible reason to believe an emergency was taking place. They just looked at him in shock and disgust. Max had never felt so ashamed in his life.
Max recalled how agitated he and others had been at the high price of gasoline back then. With gas being close to fifteen dollars a gallon in 2027, evacuating in the face of this latest storm threat would cost a small fortune, money that few people had during the Second Great Depression. Max wondered how residents of the Florida coastline could afford to evacuate last month during Hurricane Luther. He figured that the state of Florida must have evacuated citizens by the busload to get them safely out. Luther made Andrew look like a stiff breeze. Luther went down on record as the deadliest hurricane in the history of the world; that bastard went straight up the coastline like a wrecking ball. Luther would come ashore like Godzilla and destroy everything he saw, go back out to the ocean like he was taking a cigarette break, then travel back up the coast and start all over again. A month had passed, and most of Florida still didn’t have power. Max vaguely remembered something about a quarantine zone but couldn’t recall the details. For some reason, there seemed to be very little media coverage of the aftermath, so details were sketchy. However, even if they had electricity, there wasn’t much of anything still standing that could even do anything with the juice. Max was able to contact his father in South Miami. Luther wasn’t very strong when he came to visit him, only a Category 2. Max’s dad proudly told him when he called: “I don’t evacuate for anything less than a 5!” Most Floridians paid little attention to a hurricane until it made Category 4. Hurricane Luther left Miami and graduated up the ranks very quickly to a Category 5. Luther left all the experts puzzled. They had predicted that he would come ashore, do his damage and go back out to sea to slowly fade away. Luther did no such thing. He came back ashore a total of five times, either maintaining strength or getting a little stronger each time. After his third trip ashore, the public cursed the experts for fools and treated Luther like he was a mythical monster that had developed intelligence.
Max’s wife and children had evacuated to Oklahoma well ahead of Hurricane Ike to stay with relatives, not really because the hurricane would hit them, but rather because the electricity would probably be out and Max would be working double shifts.
Once the evacuation order had been lifted, Max wasn’t surprised that his wife decided to stay in Oklahoma for a few more weeks. The water company had shut off the water in Max’s subdivision since the bacteria counts were at toxic levels, they wouldn’t be able to wash their clothes, take showers, or flush the toilets. The water company advised residents to shut off all faucets and bathtubs so when the water did come back on, it wouldn’t cause damage. Max completely forgot to turn off the water when he left the house the morning when water service was restored. He had spent the previous evening cleaning out the freezer into the kitchen sink. The upstairs shower was also clogged and Max had left it on when he attempted to take a shower. When the water came back on, the kitchen sink and the upstairs shower quickly filled and spilled out onto the floor for the better part of forty eight hours before Max came back home.
Max’s wife returned to find her home destroyed, which confused her since the rest of the neighborhood was just as it was when she left. Max had tried to dream up some elaborate lie, but just didn’t give a damn and told her the truth. To make things worse, the insurance agent would later laugh out loud in front of Mr. and Mrs. Harris when she understood that the hurricane had nothing to do with the damage, but rather Max’s laughable mistake. Max’s marriage was already on the rocks when his wife returned home. It took over a year to repair their home and Darlene made sure that Max knew how disgusted she was with him. She was pregnant at the time and only stayed with Max because she didn’t want to raise a baby on her own. Max had never been so humiliated in his life. His home survived a hurricane and was instead destroyed by his own stupidity.