Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  “Nobody’s listening to me!” The door flapped open in the breeze, then came back and smacked me hard on the rear end. “Out! Now!”

  Radar whined, and Hawkeye turned his face away with a look that was disquieting. It wasn’t like him to act this way. He never disobeyed an order.

  Piling everything on the porch, I headed back into the apartment, grabbed both dogs, and dragged them across the floor, thirty-two toenails (not including mine) plowing furrows in Don’s ugly green linoleum, until we made it across the threshold and I deposited the dogs on the deck outside. Radar tried to crawl back in through the screen door, and Hawkeye checked the boarded-up windows for another point of entry.

  “What’s the matter with you two?” I muttered, but the question quickly became rhetorical. I could feel the answer as I kneed Radar out of the way, pulled the door shut, and locked it. Something was wrong with this day. On the horizon, clouds were closing in. The surf was rough, the tide higher than normal, the water brown and churning with sediment and depositing tangled mounds of seaweed on the beach. Along the walkway, the palms bowed to the west, their fronds waving like the streamers on a giant wind sock.

  Glorietta was closer than she was supposed to be.

  As I started across the deck, the dogs whined, their eyes framed by worried furrows of fur. They followed a few steps, then retreated and continued pacing the deck near my front door. Their toenails clicked on the hollow wood as I left Don a note downstairs, telling him I was too late to catch the shuttle and he could pick up my vehicle at port parking. Tossing everything into the Microbus, I gave the dogs one last apologetic look as they watched from the top of the stairs.

  Before I was halfway to the port, I knew why Radar and Hawkeye hadn’t descended to the yard. They were looking for higher ground, and the dogs weren’t the only ones. Perdida, normally just waking and dragging out the beach gear at nine in the morning, was in a state of pandemonium, people everywhere loading cars, securing shutters, and tying up patio furniture. The highway leading down the coast was already clogged with traffic, and at the gas stations, the lines stretched down the curb. For the past few days, cautious residents had been filling vehicles and gas cans, just in case. Those who hadn’t were now stuck in a frustrating tangle, sweltering in the heat.

  While I was sleeping, then oversleeping, everything had changed.

  Absently counting the cars in a gas line, I pulled out my cell phone, flipped past the list of missed calls from Don and the bonfire crowd, and dialed the cruise terminal. The call failed. All circuits busy. As the drive to the port slowly ticked by, I scrolled down my phone list, tried members of the Liberation staff. Every attempt ended in a circuits busy message or a roll to voicemail. A check of the missed calls showed that no one from the ship had phoned me during the night, but along with the wild bunch from Blowfish, Maggie and Meredith had been trying to contact me since the early hours of the morning. The M&Ms wouldn’t have been calling unless something was very wrong.

  By the time I reached the port, I already knew what a frantic trip across the park-and-pay lot quickly confirmed. The ship wasn’t there. A shuttle driver grimly informed me that the Liberation had left in the middle of the night, right after Glorietta hooked north, picked up steam, and headed our way. “She’s coming in faster than anybody thought.” He gave the water a nervous glance. “Port closes to all traffic at one. Mandatory evacuation order’s coming anytime now. If you’ve got a way out of town, you’d better take it. Now. If not, there’ll be buses leaving from the strand as soon as they can set it up.”

  “I have my van,” I muttered, staring numbly toward the harbor, where my ship should have been. How could this be happening?

  “If it’s not fueled up, you’d better get in line before the stations run out.” He pointed across the highway at a Shamrock, its sign a wavy green blur in the heat waves rising off cars. “Not much left on this side of town.”

  I vacillated in place, weighed down by luggage, jewelry-making supplies, crashing expectations, and a rising sense of panic. Glancing over my shoulder, I checked the harbor again. No ship. Why hadn’t anyone called me from the Liberation? “When do they expect the storm to make landfall?”

  “Eleven tonight, but that could change.” Surveying the traffic on the highway, he frowned. “Hard predicting this one since she’s turned. They’ve got everyone from New Orleans to Corpus heading inland. Get in your car and move out. If it comes to Perdida, you don’t want to be here.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, hiking a duffle bag higher onto my shoulder and watching a freighter leave port. What did I do now? Get in line at a gas station? Hit the road? Go back home?

  I couldn’t just drive off and leave Don. Where was he right now? Did he know an evacuation was being ordered?

  Dragging my luggage and the jewelry crate, I hurried across the parking lot and threw everything into the van. The cell phone rang as I was weaving through traffic on the way back to the surf shop. Maggie was on the other end.

  “Where are you? Are you on the ship?” The words rushed one on top of the other, hard to make out. “Meredith just checked the website and saw they moved the Liberation out of port early.”

  “I’m not on the ship. I missed it.”

  “You’re not …” Maggie drifted into an uncharacteristic silence. When she came back, her voice was two octaves lower. Grim. “Listen, sweetie, you need to get out of there now. The evacuation’s already a mess. It’s all over the news. As soon as they make it mandatory, it’ll be insane.”

  My stomach slowly sank, the banana suddenly a molten mass of acidic heat in my belly. My mind raced ahead. I passed a gas station, considered pulling in, checked the fuel gauge. I have a quarter tank. I could wait… . “I am. I will.” What if there’s no gas later? Pulling into the right lane, I slid into line behind at least twenty cars. “I have to get gas and find Don. He went down to Blowfish Billy’s last night.”

  Maggie scoffed. “You just head out of there. Don’s a big boy. He knows what to do. We’ll keep calling him from here. Wait … hang on a sec.” She paused to talk to Meredith, covering the phone so that she sounded like the teacher on Charlie Brown. “Listen, Meredith wants me to tell you to gas up at Cap’s Store, you know, out by the crossroads at Kaskokee Lake? Don’t waste time sitting in the line around Perdida. We made that mistake last time, and they were out of gas before we even got to the pump.”

  “All right. Thanks.” Turning on my blinker, I squeezed into traffic again.

  “Don’t worry about Don. You just get on the road.”

  “I have to go back to the apartment.” In front of me, cars crawled bumper to bumper. The trip to the surf shop suddenly seemed an impossible distance. “The dogs are there, and I have to pick up some food and water.” Even I, who had so far managed to be absent for every evacuation, knew better than to take to the road without supplies. “Listen, the traffic’s crazy. I’d better sign off.”

  When I finally pulled into the surf shop, the place was quiet. No sign of Don’s Harley. No lights on, no air-conditioner humming. The dogs ran to me as I checked around the shop and knocked on Don’s apartment door. I called Blowfish Billy’s, but no one answered. Standing on the deck with Radar and Hawkeye underfoot, I searched across the string of condos, vacation homes, and stores, looked up and down the highway and then up and down the beach. No sign of Don, anywhere. The beach was empty, except for a reporter filming near the surf.

  With the traffic, there was no telling how much gas and time a trip to Blowfish Billy’s would eat up. There was no point in driving down there anyway. If stragglers from last night’s bonfire were still hanging around, someone would be answering the phone. When the fun ran out at Billy’s last night, Don and the party must have migrated somewhere else. No telling where that might be.

  Gathering food and bottled water, I dialed the number a second time, and a third, then tried Don’s cell number. Each time, the response was either no answer or all circuits busy.

 
Finally, there was no more time to waste.

  The dogs followed me to the yard gate, whined and scratched at the fence as I finished packing supplies into the Microbus. What now? Did I take the dogs along? Leave them where they were? What if Don couldn’t make it back to the shop? Even if he could, all he had was his Harley… .

  Jogging to the curb, I looked up and down the line of cars crawling along the coast toward the highways leading inland. I couldn’t leave Radar and Hawkeye behind, trapped in the yard, helpless, unable to escape when the storm came in. There was nothing to do but leave a note for Don and take his dogs with me.

  After scratching another message on the chalkboard by the shop door, I hurried back to the yard gate. “Let’s go, guys.”

  The dogs were through the opening and into the Microbus before I could finish closing the latch. Looking up at my apartment one last time, I got in the van, started the engine, crossed the parking lot, and officially became part of the evacuation.

  Progress on the coast highway was stop and go, as Maggie had predicted. The back road to Kaskokee Lake was slightly better, but by the time Cap’s Station came into view, my gas gauge was down below an eighth. Rolling into line behind three cars at the single set of pumps, I turned off the engine and got out, stretching the stress knots from my back. Any minute now, I’ll wake up. I’ll wake up and walk onto the Liberation, and everything will be fine.

  Everything will be fine.

  This isn’t real. It can’t be.

  But the situation felt real, and anything but fine. The roads were in chaos, I had three hundred dollars in my pocket, and sometime soon Don would probably come back to the shop and find out I’d hijacked his dogs. He’d think I was out of my mind.

  Maybe I am. Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I should have stayed in Perdida. I let my gaze drift to the road, my mind traveling with it. The way home was completely clear… .

  Hawkeye climbed into the driver’s seat, stuck his head out the window and sniffed the air, then sat panting heavily, his eyes anxious, the dusting of gray on his muzzle making him look like a wise old man, a thinker.

  He knows it’s coming. He can feel it.

  “Hey, buddy.” I scratched his ears. “Hang on. We’ll be out of here soon.” But doubt was creeping over me like a tide, slowly rising. At the head of the line, a man in a four-wheel-drive pickup was filling gas can after gas can, then loading them in the back of his truck. Behind him, the driver of a minivan grew aggravated, got out, and started yelling. The confrontation looked as though it was about to turn violent.

  Hawkeye tuned in as the gas station owner, Cap, exited the store. Raising a baseball bat like an extension of his arm, Cap pointed at the pickup driver, then motioned the owner of the van back to his own vehicle.

  The pickup driver lurched forward and shoved Cap with so much force that Cap landed in a heap against the trash can. I took a step toward them, then stopped, fear tugging me, holding me in place. Wasn’t anyone going to do anything? Wasn’t I?

  A dark blur caught the corner of my vision. I heard the screech of claws on metal, and suddenly Hawkeye launched himself toward the pumps, running with his ears flattened and his teeth bared.

  “Hawkeye, no! No!” I cried, bolting after him. “Hawkeye!”

  Cap and the customer reacted in unison, Cap staggering to his feet and the pickup driver scrambling into his truck and closing the door. Hawkeye slid to a stop, jumped against the truck, and tried to rip a hole in the glass. The engine roared to life, and the driver ground it into gear, depositing Hawkeye on the pavement as the truck sped away.

  Cap chased after the gas thief, moving in a bow-legged run and swinging the baseball bat, but the truck, and the gas, quickly disappeared, driving the wrong way in the empty southbound lane. By the time Cap came back, I’d grabbed Hawkeye’s collar and checked him over.

  Cap held out his hand to test the dog’s mood.

  “He doesn’t bite.”

  “Coulda fooled me, he don’t bite. Reckon that man’ll think twice before he comes here to grab gas again.”

  The minivan owner, next in line, tore a piece of paper from his pocket calendar and handed it to Cap. “Here’s his license number.”

  Tucking the note into his pocket, Cap motioned wearily to the pump. “You can bring your van on in now. Keep the line movin’.”

  With a nod of satisfaction and an angry chin jerk toward the road, the minivan driver returned to his vehicle and pulled up. Behind him, a Cadillac SUV moved forward, stopping just a few inches short of causing a collision. The driver stared straight ahead, pretending not to have noticed everything that had just happened.

  Patting Hawkeye on the head, Cap gave the gas line a concerned look. Two more cars had pulled in, so that the backup stretched almost to the highway now. “Better move your vehicle on up before someone cuts in front.” His grip tightened on the bat. “Some folks lose their minds durin’ these things. You’d best get gassed up and hit the road. If we didn’t still have fuel and food to sell, we’d be headed that way for sure. National Guard and Highway Patrol are movin’ in to help keep things sane.”

  The minivan driver motioned to a gas can next to the pump. “The guy with the pickup leave that?” Eyeing the container with interest, he reached for his wallet.

  Cap hobbled forward and picked up the can. “Guess I better hang on to it as evidence.” He lugged the can to the store entrance, and the minivan guy looked disappointed.

  After returning Hawkeye to the Microbus, I pulled forward behind the SUV, then tried to call Perdida. All circuits busy. Again.

  In front of me, the gas line proceeded slowly. There were cans in the back of the minivan, which seemed ironic. Time ticked by while I waited for both the minivan owner and then the driver of the SUV to fill tanks and cans. By the time I reached the pump, people farther back were honking and yelling, afraid the supply would run out. The guy behind me watched impatiently as I filled my main tank and then 46 j Li s a Wi n g a t e the auxiliary. One great thing about my Microbus was that, if you could ever afford to fill it, it held quite a bit of gas at once.

  By the time I was finished, the next customer had rolled to my back bumper, the language of road rage indicating that if I didn’t move soon, he would push me out of the way. His engine revved, and he rocketed into position at the pump as I moved the Microbus to a parking space near the store entrance, cracked the windows, and went inside. In the store, Cap was pulling six-packs of Coke and packages of doughnuts forward on a nearly empty shelf while his wife, Rhea, stood behind the counter, her attention riveted to a small TV.

  “I need to pay for the gas,” I said, glancing around the store as Cap moved to the counter. The shelves, usually full when I came to the lake with Maggie and Meredith, looked like they’d been through a looting. “Do you have any dog food?” Mentally, I counted my money, subtracting the chunk I’d spent on gas. When I’d left Don’s, I hadn’t even thought about bringing supplies for Radar and Hawkeye. They’d need water, too.

  Cap shook his head. “All outta dog food. I can give you some deli meat. Power goes down, all this meat’ll spoil anyway. You got a cooler?”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t planning on evacuating.”

  “Heard that story before.” Cap grabbed a slab of roast beef and put it on the slicer. “I got some foam minnow buckets. That’ll work.”

  I did another mental money count. “How much are they?”

  Cap shrugged. “You can bring it back next time you’re out to the lake with the M&Ms.” He meant Maggie and Meredith. Cap’s store was our regular stop on the way to the cabins at Kaskokee. “Don’t worry about the meat, either. Better your dog have it than Glorietta. Reckon I owe him a favor anyhow. How’s your dog like his beef sliced?”

  “I don’t think he has a preference.”

  Cap chuckled under his breath. “We’ll just do it medium. There’s some bread on the shelf. Little bit of bottled water left. Better grab it if you need it.”

  I brie
fly considered the funding issue. If I spent much here, there wouldn’t be anything left for a hotel, meals, or supplies down the road. “I think I’m good. I’m not planning to go too far—just up a couple hours inland.”

  Cap continued with the slicer. “Better go farther than that. You taken a look at this monster lately?” He shrugged toward the television. “She’s hookin’ it north and they say she’ll make category four. Just go ahead and get what you need, all right? You can settle up for it later.”

  A familiar feeling swept over me, twisting my stomach and causing my cheeks to sting with a hot rush of blood. Growing up, my brother and I were always being sent out to mooch something off someone. Even as a kid, I hated the way it felt. “Really, I’m fine.”

  “Just take it.” Cap packaged the roast beef, tucked it into a Styrofoam minnow bucket with some ice, and moved down the counter. “Take a block of this cheese, too. It’ll keep if your cooler don’t hold out.”

  “I’m not …” The TV grabbed my attention. The storm had intensified into a giant swirling mass of clouds covering almost the entire gulf. “Whoa …”

  “Somethin’, ain’t she?” Cap and I watched with morbid fascination as I sidestepped to the counter to pay. Rhea slipped from her stool and backed toward the cash register, her eyes welded to the screen.

  “I got it.” Sliding in front of Rhea, Cap took charge of my bill, the end result being at least thirty dollars less than it should have been. He leaned close as he divulged the final amount. “I ask you a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  His fingers swept my palm as he dropped in my change. “Take Rhea with you. She don’t drive, and I can’t lock up the store while I got gas people need. Looks like I might be ridin’ this thing out. The roads are bumper to bumper already, and it’s only gonna get worse. I want Rhea to go before it’s too late. In case somethin’ happens.”

  I blinked, surprised, the distance between us suddenly seeming uncomfortably intimate. “You think it’ll be that bad?”

  Cap winced, sucking air through one side of his mouth, as if he were reluctant to answer the question. “I just want Rhea to get out, you know?”