Chapter 2 - The Morning of Lies
The morning sun clawed its way over the horizon, bleeding a sickly, coppery light across the rooftops of New Orleans. There was no gentle dawn; just a sudden, oppressive blanket of heat that promised another brutal day in the delta basin.
I stood on the front porch of our house on St. Claude Avenue, my boots laced tight, my duffel bag packed with cash, title deeds, family photographs, and emergency rations sitting squarely by the screen door.
"Elijah? What on earth are you doing dressed like you're heading off to war?"
I turned around. My grandfather, Thomas, stepped out onto the porch holding a steaming mug of chicory coffee. He wore his faded denim work shirt, his white hair uncombed, a warm, indulgent smile playing across his weathered face. At seventy-two, Thomas was a man whose roots ran deeper into the Louisiana soil than the cypress trees along the bayou. He had survived hurricanes Betsy and Camille; to him, storms were just loud noises that tested the strength of a good shingled roof.
"Grandpa," I said, my voice dropping into a tone of absolute, unbreakable resolve that made him pause mid-sip. "We’re packing the truck right now. We are leaving for Jackson, Mississippi, before noon."
Thomas let out a deep, rolling chuckle, shaking his head as he leaned against the porch railing. "Now hold on just a minute, son. I heard the governor on the radio an hour ago. Mandatory evacuation hasn't been called for Orleans Parish yet, and even if it is, you know how these storms go. They blow past us, drop a few inches of rain, and leave us with a soggy lawn and a power outage. We got four days' worth of canned beans and two full tanks of propane. We ain't going nowhere."
"Grandpa, listen to me," I stepped forward, gripping his forearms with a urgency that rattled his coffee mug. "The Industrial Canal levee is compromised. The sheet piling is rusted through at the base, and when the surge hits Lake Pontchartrain, the wall is going to snap like a dry twig. The city is going to flood twenty feet deep. People are going to die in these attics."
Thomas stared at me, his smile slowly fading, replaced by a deep, furrowed frown of profound confusion. "Elijah... what kind of talk is that? You sound like you've lost your mind. A hurricane is coming, yes, but the engineers built those concrete walls specifically to protect us from the lake."
"The engineers lied!" I snapped, the frustration and terror of the past timeline boiling over in my throat. "They cut corners on the drainage canals thirty years ago. Nobody is coming to save us if the wall goes down. If we stay here today, we die here tomorrow."
"Boys, keep it down out there! You're waking the whole block!"
Maya stepped out onto the porch, wiping sleep from her eyes. She was nineteen, a sophomore at Xavier University, wearing an oversized vintage t-shirt and shorts, looking entirely too carefree for a world about to end. She took one look at my packed duffel bag, then at Thomas’s grim expression, and crossed her arms. "Okay, what did I miss? Are we evacuating or are we having another family debate about hurricane snacks?"
"Your brother thinks he's a prophet," Thomas muttered, turning back toward the kitchen, clearly dismissing my warning as a nervous pre-storm panic attack. "He wants to pack up our whole lives and go sit in gridlock on I-10 for eighteen hours over a little wind."
"It's not wind, Maya," I said, turning to my sister, grabbing her by the shoulders, looking straight into her brown eyes. "Look at me. Have you ever seen me like this? Trust me. Just for once, trust me blindly. Pack your laptop, your ID, your grandmother's jewelry box, and enough clothes for two weeks. We are leaving in thirty minutes."
Maya blinked, startled by the manic, desperate intensity burning in my gaze. She opened her mouth to argue, but the raw, unfiltered terror etched across my face cut her words short. She swallowed hard, her jaw tightening.
"Okay," Maya whispered. "I'll pack."
"Maya, don't encourage him—" Thomas began from the kitchen doorway.
May you like
"Grandpa, shut up and get your boots on!" Maya shouted back, her voice suddenly ringing with steel. "If he's wrong, we waste a tank of gas and come back in two days looking like fools. If he's right... I'd rather look like a fool in Mississippi than drown in my own bedroom."
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, a wave of profound gratitude washing over me. One down. Now I just had to convince a stubborn old man who loved his front porch more than his own life.
