Echoes of the Empty Earth
Copyright© 2025 by Art Samms
Chapter 7
Day 103: Aftermath
We’d cleared enough of the debris to see the shape of our home again.
The garden was still a ruin in most places—broken stalks, exposed roots, soggy soil—but a few stubborn plants had survived the wind and water, clinging to life like they had something to prove. The pineapples were undefeated, because of course they were. I never trusted a fruit that grew like a landmine.
Amara was kneeling by the fence line, coaxing a battered hibiscus bush back into place. She’d tied up one of the branches with a salvaged shoelace. I wasn’t sure if it would make it, but it wasn’t about that.
It was about doing something. About having a thing we could fix.
I sat on the porch steps, a warm breeze skimming through the humid air, not quite enough to cool me down but just enough to make it bearable. I sipped from a bottle of lukewarm filtered rainwater, watching the light shimmer over the flooded lake beyond the yard. A dragonfly buzzed past my ear, unconcerned with our struggle.
Amara stood up, wiped her hands on the legs of her shorts, and walked over.
“You look philosophical,” she said, dropping down beside me. Her shoulder brushed mine.
“I’ve been thinking,” I replied. “Which, statistically, never ends well.”
She smirked, then leaned her head against my arm. “And?”
“And I keep coming back to this weird sense of ... calm. Like we rode out the storm, and now everything’s just ... different.”
“Different how?”
I thought about it. “Before the hurricane, I always had this feeling that we were just temporary squatters in someone else’s world. Like we were playing house with borrowed time. But now...” I looked out over the damaged yard. “Now it feels like it’s ours. Like we paid for it somehow.”
Amara was quiet for a moment. “I know what you mean,” she said softly. “When the wind was at its worst, I kept thinking—this might be it. I might die in a concrete bunker in a borrowed hoodie, next to a guy who still thinks canned ravioli is a complete meal.”
“It’s called gourmet simplicity.”
She nudged me with her elbow, smiling. “But really—when we came out and the house was still standing, and we were still standing ... something clicked. We’re not just surviving anymore.”
“We’re building something,” I said. “Even if it’s just a garden with pineapple booby traps and a pair of unlucky flamingos.”
“Poor flamingos,” she murmured.
We sat there in silence for a bit, watching the clouds drift lazily overhead.
“You ever think about what this place will look like in ten years?” she asked eventually. “If it’s still just us?”
“All the time.”
“And?”
“I think there’s a good chance we’ll go completely feral. You’ll be wearing banana leaves like haute couture, and I’ll have a beard that frightens small animals.”
She laughed, loud and bright. “Nah, I’d tame you long before that.”
“Oh really?”
“You’re already tamed, Charlie. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
I turned to look at her. Her expression had softened, eyes on mine.
“You’ve changed me,” I said, voice quieter than I meant it. “For the better.”
“You’ve changed me too.”
She reached out and took my hand. Just a simple link of fingers, a shared warmth. It meant more than anything we could’ve said.
We didn’t need to fix everything. We didn’t need to rebuild the world overnight. We just needed to be here—present, steady, together.
Day 124: Rebuilding
It had been three long weeks of roof patches, garden salvage, and the slow, back-breaking work of trying to coax life back into our little post-storm world. The Home Depot store became our best friend. Besides materials for roof repair, we were able to bring back a few scraggly-looking fruit trees. Maybe, with care, we’d be able to nurse them back to fruit-bearing status. We also found a few overgrown tomato and pepper plants. Luckily, we had saved seeds, and we started all over again. In the meantime, canned foods, still obtainable and still well ahead of their expiration dates, became our main source of food once again.
Now, my muscles ached in places I didn’t even know I had, and every time I looked out at the orchard, now a fraction of what it had been, I felt that particular kind of tired that starts in the chest and radiates outward.
But we were standing. And the house was standing. That counted for something.
Today, we rode west.
We’d never gone that way before, not more than a few blocks. The map showed the Everglades not too far off, and neither of us was exactly eager to cross paths with a hungry gator or a misplaced python. But the hurricane had changed the calculus. We needed options—new water sources, maybe even new scavenging spots.
We dodged fallen limbs, puddles with oily sheens, and one ominous patch of feathers that I hoped hadn’t belonged to anything bigger than a hawk. About a mile out, the suburban sprawl started to thin. That’s when we saw it—a weathered, hand-pump well in the backyard of what had once been a house buried under creeper vines and half a fallen tree.
Amara was the one who tried the pump. “You think it’ll even—?”
The handle squealed in protest, but then water began to gush out, clear and fast.
We just stared at it.
“No way,” I breathed. I stepped forward, cupped my hands, and tasted. Cold, clean, earthy. And most of all—real.
Amara looked at me, her eyes wide. “That’s huge.”
“We’ll come back with the big containers,” I said, still a little stunned. “This could be a backup for everything.”
We lingered a few minutes longer, then started the ride back, pedaling slowly under a sky streaked with the pink-gold edges of approaching dusk.
Somewhere along the way, Amara said, “You think the boat survived?”
I didn’t answer right away. Part of me didn’t want to say it out loud.
“Hard to say,” I finally replied. “The dock might’ve gotten ripped out. Hell, the whole thing could be sitting upside-down in someone’s backyard by now.”
“Still,” she said, her voice hopeful, “maybe it’s just waterlogged. Maybe it’s still there.”
“We’ll check. Hopefully, the roads out that way are clear enough to drive on.”
She nodded, but neither of us sounded too confident. Even so, the thought of the boat was enough to light that little spark again—the same one that had kept us going when the roof caved and the wind sounded like the end of the world. Just the idea of something waiting for us, even a maybe, was sometimes enough.
Day 125: Lawn Decor
The morning was already warming up by the time we rolled the wagon out of the garage, loaded with empty containers and our two big blue jugs. Even a few weeks afterward, the air still carried that faint earthy tang left behind by the hurricane—wet soil, decaying leaves, the scent of things that had been broken and were now trying to knit themselves back together.
We didn’t talk much on the way to the well. Just the soft hum of bike tires on cracked pavement, the occasional call of a bird we hadn’t identified yet. Peaceful. Strange how quickly peace starts to feel normal again.
The pump squealed like it had the first time, and soon we were filling containers with cold, clear water. It felt good—efficient. Capable. Like we were managing, maybe even thriving.
Back at home, we stacked the jugs in the kitchen corner, beside the shelf of emergency supplies that had grown over the months. Then I went to work on the flamingos.
They’d been lying on their sides like wounded soldiers ever since we found them three weeks ago, partially decapitated, their legs bent and one missing half a beak. I’d been tinkering when I could, cutting new wire for the legs, glueing the beak back together from the pieces I’d scavenged from the sidewalk. Today I touched up the faded paint with some pink we’d mixed from leftover craft supplies. When I was done, they looked a little ridiculous—still a bit uneven, a little battered—but proud, defiant.
I planted them in the front yard like a flag.
When I called Amara out to look, she laughed. “We’re really doing this, huh?”
“Post-apocalypse lawn decor,” I said, standing beside her. “Very exclusive.”
She shook her head, still grinning. “They’re perfect.”
Later, with the worst of the heat behind us, we sat on the back patio, Amara curled up in her usual chair, barefoot, wearing one of my old t-shirts like it had always belonged to her. I cracked open a can of peaches—our running joke at this point—and fed her slices one by one. She didn’t protest, just raised an eyebrow and played along.
“This is ridiculous,” she said between bites. “We’re becoming one of those couples.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that feeds each other fruit and finishes each other’s sentences. We’re like ... early retirees. In Boca.”
I chuckled. “Speak for yourself. I’m still holding out hope for some mystery and edge.”
“Oh yeah?” she said, smirking. “How’s that working out for you?”
I didn’t answer. Just smiled and nudged another peach slice toward her lips.
Afterward, we went upstairs and finished rearranging the bedroom—the one we’d silently started referring to as “ours” recently, though neither of us had said it out loud. We moved the bed to the opposite wall for better light, cleared out a pile of boxes, and opened the windows to let in the night air.
It wasn’t much. Just a room. But with the flamingos outside, and the peaches, and her toothbrush next to mine, it felt like we’d claimed it. Like we’d made something permanent in a world where everything else had vanished.
And later that evening, we crawled under the covers, together, in “our” bed.
Day 130: If She Made It
After three straight days of rain, we were itching to get out. The sky finally broke open with a dull silver glow, and Amara looked at me over her coffee and said, “Let’s go see if she made it.” We didn’t have to clarify. We both knew “she” meant the boat.
We loaded up the van with a few essentials—water, some food, a couple tools just in case—and headed east. The freeway was quiet, like always, but not bad. A few branches here and there, leaves plastered like confetti across the asphalt. It felt weirdly calm, the sun slanting low and golden through the clouds, like the storm had never happened. But the closer we got to the beach, the more the illusion started to crack.
About a mile from the coast, we hit the first real obstacle—a massive tree sprawled across the road like it had collapsed mid-sprint. The roots were upended, tall as the van. No way around. We killed the engine and sat in silence for a second before Amara nodded at the GPS.
“Back roads?”
“Back roads.”
We wove our way through side streets and alleyways, zigzagging around wreckage and flood-soaked debris. It was slow going, but we finally pulled up near our beach house just as the sky started to take on that long, late-afternoon hue.
I couldn’t believe it. The house—our house—had weathered it. Shingles missing, sure, and the fence was down, but the structure held. The windows hadn’t even blown out.
“Well,” I said, stepping out and looking up at the place, “she’s tougher than she looks.”
“So are we,” Amara said, touching my arm lightly as she passed by.
We didn’t linger. We were both thinking the same thing: the other house. The one where we’d stored the rods and tackle and cooler and all the gear we’d slowly scavenged and called our fishing kit.
It was gone. Not just wrecked—gone.
That whole row of houses along the edge of the beach had been hammered into something unrecognizable. Rooftops lay flat on the ground, walls torn open like dollhouses in a child’s tantrum. Ours wasn’t even distinguishable anymore, just a tangle of lumber and wet, sagging drywall.
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