The storm had howled through the night, shaking the house on stilts like it was a toy. Now, in the heavy, eerie stillness that follows a hurricane—where the sky hangs low and bruised, and even the birds are quiet—John B stirred awake, disoriented and stiff from a night of shallow sleep.

The house was hot. Stuffy. The kind of heat that makes the sheets stick to your back. He blinked against the dull gray light filtering through salt-streaked windows, sat up, and reached for the switch by the door.

Click. Nothing.

Of course. No power.

He reached instinctively for his phone on the nightstand, the screen lighting up for a brief second before displaying “No Service.”

John B sighed, rubbed his face with both hands, and stepped out into the hallway. The air felt heavier than it should. Like the pressure hadn’t lifted yet.

As he padded barefoot down the creaking wooden floorboards, the house was strangely silent. The kind of silence that made your ears ring.

He turned into the living room—and froze.

JJ was passed out—half-draped, half-sunken—on the weather-worn couch like a shipwreck victim, shirt twisted, one foot dangling off the edge. His blond hair was soaked and wild, and his back rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths.

Kneeling beside him John B’s younger sister had both hands on JJ’s back, gently moving in small, soothing circles. She looked up at her brother for a split second, face pale, freckles more pronounced under the gray light. Her lips were pressed into a firm line.

John B blinked, still not fully awake. Something about this picture—this moment—rubbed him raw.

He’d known JJ since they were kids, since they were barefoot little monsters biking across the island, chasing storms and trouble. But her? She was his sister. His baby sister. The idea of them together—like, together together—made something twist in his stomach. He wasn’t sure if it was anger, protectiveness, or just the uncomfortable truth that time was moving way too fast.

“…You been outside?” John B asked, voice gravelly from sleep as he stepped toward them.

She shook her head, eyes still on JJ. “No.”

JJ groaned and mumbled into the cushion without lifting his head. “I have polio, dude. I can’t walk.”

John B stared.

She rolled her eyes. “He’s being dramatic. He threw out his back trying to carry a propane tank during the storm.”

JJ didn’t move. “Tell my spine that.”

John B didn’t answer. He walked past them and pushed open the front door, stepping out onto the porch barefoot.

The first thing that hit him was the smell—salt, wet earth, mud, and broken wood. The second was the silence, thick and uncanny. No birds. No distant motorboats. Just the distant drip of water and the faint creak of something metal shifting in the wind.

Their lot—normally a maritime junkyard full of old hulls, tangled fishing nets, and rusting trailers—looked like a war zone.

The palm trees were stripped bare, trunks slick and naked like bones. A few were snapped clean in half. One of the fishing skiffs was upside down, jammed halfway into a dune. The old Airstream that had sat in the far corner was on its side, its door ripped off and flapping loosely. A power line lay across the sand like a dead snake.

John B swallowed hard, taking it all in. The damage was real. Worse than he expected.

Behind him, JJ groaned again. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” John B said flatly.