Sebastien makes it to the top of the house on the hill with relative ease, and from there finds that the stretch of river beyond the edge of the island is raging faster than it was yesterday. Sooner than later, his raft is gonna break off from its tie-off point and go washing out into the ocean, or at least what used to be the ocean back when maps still meant something, if indeed he’s as close to the coast as he believes.

Whoever lived here before the floods came must have been a hobbyist of some kind – maybe a birdwatcher, maybe just a gazer at great distances and expanses. He finds the binoculars in the third-from-the-top drawer of a tall chest of drawers, and – conveniently – it had a nice string of paracord tied round the corner, with one of those cutaways some newer tools would have for more convenient attachment to things. Sebastien mutters a few words of thanks as he strings the binoculars around his neck and steps up to the great vertical northern window.

The house on the hill overlooks a vast river, sweeping through pieces of what had once been a coastal city, if Sebastien’s memories are to be relied upon. These days, they do things to your head. He doesn’t know if he can trust his thoughts about anything before the floods.

The house is warm, though, and he knows that warmth isn’t going to last that much longer. Eventually the waters will rise and break this place to splinters and sweep them away into the distant dark.

Sooner than later – sooner than later.

If he had to guess, he’d say that the stretch of water he’s looking over now was a river before the floods even came in the first place. It’s too well-shaped, and though the water might cut through everything else it can’t completely erase the trace of land below. Under a midnight moon it’s hard enough to see the water – in fact he hears it before he sees it – but the binoculars let him get a good look. He glances to the east. And there, in the darkness, amid all the heavy rain that never stops and the pieces of old houses flying through the rapids, he sees it.

There is a great sailboat, its mast turned to the east.

“Don’t think I can delay much longer,” he says aloud, hoping the sound of his own hoarse voice will help to keep him sane when the sound of rapids and a rushing river gets too loud for him to ignore. Some people say sounds like that just fade into the background, and normally they do, but when they’re louder than a city’s traffic, they become equally as annoying. Sebastien has his eyes on the goal, but he doesn’t want to start just yet. He’s got a few more things to pick up before he leaves, and besides – there’s never going to be a better time than right now to take a moment, relax, and eat. That ship’s going as slowly as the current will allow, and he’s sure he can catch up to it soon enough.

So Sebastien lays on the couch in this abandoned old house on the hill and wonders where the real owner must have gone. Did they die in the initial floods? Go to safety? Sebastien heard a rumor once that some of the richest citizens started throwing all their savings at helicopter companies, ordering rescuers to take them to higher ground. Might buy them a good few months, Sebastien figured, and he could respect it. After all, wasn’t like a bank account was going to do anybody very much good right now. And whoever owned this place, whether they died down below or flew up to the mountains, left behind a lot of nice stuff, so it was a win-win. Sebastien lets his heavy backpack slip from his hand and rest on the floor next to him, and he eats a fresh(ish) apple while leaning back against the arm of the couch. It feels good to stretch out his back this way, and the stars are so beautiful tonight. Yesterday wasn’t nearly this pretty. If he gazes off through the vertical window, he can even imagine that the waters down below aren’t screaming at him, declaring their fury as they reach up toward the sky itself.

The water is escaping from the sky, all of it, Sebastien muses as he eats the apple bite by bite and throws the core onto the floor, lets it roll over to the stairs that lead down to the rest of the house. He takes a banana – it’s going to go bad soon anyway, isn’t it? – and looks out at those stars. For so long, that sky was greedy – it held all the water it could in its clutches, letting only a little out at a time. And now it’s all coming out. And once it’s free, once it meets its friends and family, and they get to talking, well, let’s just say the stars are going to be sorry they ever tried to keep that very large and very angry family prisoner. Water flows – follows the contours of the land, knows where it is supposed to be, can even reflect the old river deep below if you look close enough. And water also crashes – crashes through all the houses on the slopes of the hill that have already been covered by the floods, crashes against those unfortunates who don’t know how to cover themselves against it or weren’t lucky enough to have thought to bring a poncho when they fled their old homes in the lower lands.

Water might flow or crash, but it’s just as angry either way. It knows where it is supposed to be and it wants to get there.

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There’s a clock on the wall, hanging over a painting of a woman. Maybe one of the owners of this place, maybe just some random woman – Sebastien can barely remember the art museums he used to visit. He knows he liked art, once, but that feels so long ago. But he remembers how to read a clock. It’s five minutes to midnight. He sighs, letting himself lean further back against the arm of the couch. The sound of riverwater rumbles beneath him – too brackish to drink, too angry to catch. He promises himself: “Midnight. I’ll leave at midnight. Just five more minutes, alright?” And then he gets to the real prize, under the apple and the banana, a sandwich. The refrigerator wasn’t working when he got here, of course – where would the electricity come from, now? But there must have been a good amount of ice in it, because there was gross meltwater all over the bottom shelf, and – well – the sandwich doesn’t smell rotten. It’s delicious, actually, real fresh tomatoes and spinach leaves and pastrami. Sebastien savors every moment of it.

And then he lays back, and closes his eyes, except for when he lets them flutter open every minute or so, the way he has to because he knows he has to leave soon, the way he can’t help because he’s been fleeing down this infinite river long enough to know there won’t ever be a deep rest until he catches up with that cruiser. It’s huge, like the titanic must have looked back in its day, cutting through the water as though it’s used to this kind of thing. Like the apocalypse is just another Tuesday. It’s eleven fifty seven. He lets his eyes close again.

Maybe it’s an old battleship, he speculates. Would be just like the military to have forgotten about those neighborhoods at the bottom of the hill. Sebastien shrugs – actually shrugs, as though there’s someone there for him to talk to. Then he rolls over onto his side, and for a moment feels like he’s in a real bed. He could just go lay down in the bed here and stay there. There’s at least three in the house. The thought does occur to him, at two minutes to midnight.

After all, if he does catch up to that boat, what’s really going to happen? Say it is an old battleship – are they going to trust him? Are they going to shoot him for trying to trespass?

This way would be easier, he tells himself. He could just lay down in that beautiful, comfortable bed, and stay here for as long as the water lets him. It doesn’t want to hurt him, he knows that. It wants to get back at the sky for keeping it prisoner so long. It wants to dance, it wants to rage, it wants to tear down the sky itself. It doesn’t care about him – he’s just in the way. So it won’t hurt when it covers him up and fills his lungs, will it?

But Sebastien’s flights of fancy are weaker than his fear of death. It’s one minute to midnight.

He rubs his temples. This is not how he wanted to spend his time resting. The thoughts rushing through Sebastien’s head now are anything but restful. But now he’s thinking about that clock. It’s forty seconds to midnight. He promised himself. “Just a couple more minutes,” he says aloud, closes his eyes again. The screams of the water won’t get out of his ears. “Just a couple more minutes.”

Sebastien knows he isn’t going to give it to himself. He knows it as well as he knows he isn’t going to commit suicide by bed, because he’s too scared of the water to let himself do something like that. A part of him insists it would be easy, but he knows – because he never jumped from his raft before, because he didn’t dash himself against the rocks, because he never stopped in any of the other houses he’s rested in while waiting for the water to rise again – that laying down in that bed would be the hardest thing he’d do in his life.

So when midnight comes and he hears a splintering rumble below, Sebastien doesn’t just grudgingly stand up. He grabs his backpack and springs into action, even as he feels the house lurch under him. “Wow, great timing,” he mutters sardonically to the water as he dashes down the stairs, and down another flight, and another, and another, and then he gets to the bottom floor and he’s up to his knees in water, and the wood around him is starting to break down. When it breaks the whole house will collapse on top of him.

So he runs to the nearest opening, which isn’t the door, but a hole in the wall through which more water is flooding. He gets a cut on a jagged support, but he keeps going, and drags himself sopping wet up to the post where he put his raft, which is still floating, although he’s not sure the rope is salvageable. So he cuts it, most if it anyway, retrieving only about five feet worth, and pulling the hood of his second poncho up over the first, he climbs onto the raft and takes up the little oar he keeps tied to the side of his pack. He starts to paddle, with the binoculars around his neck banging against his chest, and his eyes are fixed on that dark object in the distance that he can barely see with his naked eyes but which he knows, thanks to a simple pair of binoculars left behind by some rich hobbyist, that shape is the thing he’s been following.

Five minutes past midnight, and he’s already losing count. Sebastien wishes he’d brought a watch with him when he left home, but he never really understood the value of time until he lost track of it entirely. Back home, he used to say he didn’t care what day it was, that the only reason anybody had to worry about that was because of stupid modern things like jobs and obligations and the internet. Now he just wishes he knew what day it was.

The next day, he tells himself. It’s tomorrow. The first day of the rest of my life, and it will be the rest of my life, at least until I catch up to that boat or maybe another boat, and then I’ll know. And then I can finally figure out how long I’ve been out here, because in the absence of a way to mark the days and hours…

He cares more than he’s ever cared.

Under a cold midnight sky Sebastien paddles his raft into the river-that-was-once-a-river, checks that the wound on his arm isn’t bleeding too badly, and hopes that it starts to get warmer soon, because he sure did get a lot of water in his pants.