Disclaimer: DAT (Day After Tomorrow) not mine. Sam, Laura, & JD not mine. Sarah and Jason are mine.

Cold

Ch. 2

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I completely froze, right there on the library steps and watched a giant wave crash right toward me. Like, the kind you see on the beach, only it was beating a path through the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan. The only thing I could think of was, "Bet that would make for great surfing."

Dumb, I know. Hey, try to think of something profound when you're staring your death in the face.

I felt hands yanking me backwards up the steps. "Come on, we have to find higher ground. NOW!" I took one last glance at the wave and made up my mind that I was not going to die today. Not yet, anyway. I sprinted up the steps, Jason pushing me from behind. I could hear people screaming, as the roar of the water got louder.

That meant it was getting closer.

I was almost at the revolving door of the library. I could hear loud bangs and crashes as cars and trucks and other vehicles were swept away by the great wall of water. I thought wildly, What the hell is all this? What's going on?

Then suddenly, I was inside. I paused momentarily and Jason gave me another shove. "Sarah! Up the stairs! Go!"

I blindly clambered up the stairs, as fast as my boots would let me. For the first time in my entire life, I actually wished I was a prep and wearing designer brand tennis shoes. I had just gotten to the top of the second flight of stairs when the water hit the library. Hard. I could hear glass shattering and metal clanging, as the water swept through the lower floors of the library, and as I watched, began to climb the stairs rapidly. The water was ice-cold, and we got royally drenched as the water splashed through the revolving door and the windows of the building.

Some of the people behind us weren't as lucky as us. They were either caught in the revolving door by the water, or were being carried away in the water's quick current, and I tried to muffle their screaming with my hands over my ears, as I watched them, open-mouthed in shock and fear.

"Keep going! We have to get as high as we can!" Jason took my right hand away and yelled in my ear, and I turned and kept climbing. Finally the water seemed to level off while we were on the second from the top floor of the building, and we joined the others craning to look out of the windows at the flood.

It was amazing. All you could see were the tops of the buildings. It was hard to believe that there was no traffic in Manhattan. Just…water.

I could not begin to imagine what had just taken place. I knew we had had a lot of rain in the past week, but there was nothing I had ever heard of that could cause a tidal wave in the middle of Manhattan.

Jason looked just as bewildered as I did, and a little sick. "Hun, what is it?" I asked him, placing my hand on his arm, soaked through under his leather jacket. "Are you all right?"

Jas looked at me with those gorgeous blue eyes of his, and I saw that they were clouded over with worry. "My Mom was out getting lunch with a client."

I started to crack a joke about how I hoped they liked soggy food, when I was hit with the realization of what Jason meant. "Oh my god," I said, sinking to the floor next to a cart full of books with shiny green spines. "Your Mom. My Dad! My Dad goes out for lunch everyday! Oh no!" I started to look wildly around me, almost as if I expected the other people huddled together, soggy and frightened, to tell me where they were. "Jason, you don't suppose they – I mean, that they might have – "

Jason put his finger on my lips. "Shhh." He took off his jacket and shivered, then draped it over my shoulders. "We don't know anything. We don't even know what the hell happened out there. All we know is that now we have to stay here until help arrives."

A woman who was sitting nearby, soaked to the bone and shivering, spoke up staunchly, "There will be no help."

"Excuse me?" a man next to her on the other side of the bookrack asked. His glasses had water droplets all over the lenses. I thought, he probably doesn't have anything dry to wipe them off.

The woman coughed hoarsely and replied, "Did I stutter? There. Will. Be. No. Help."

The man gulped and replied, "You don't know that for sure. Any minute now, the…"

She gave him a withering look as she cut him off. "Did you see the size of that tidal wave? Who the hell do you think is going to be able to help us? The Coast Guard?"

The man gave her a dark look over the top of his glasses, and opened his mouth, as if to reply. Apparently he thought better of it, because he closed his mouth, sniffed at her, and moved on to sit somewhere else.

"Heh." The woman spat in the direction of his retreating form. "Some people think they know it all."

She was getting on my nerves. Bad. I glanced at Jason, and noticed he was still shivering. "Here," I shrugged out of his jacket. "I have my own jacket; keep yours."

"No." He placed it back on my shoulders.

"Jas! You're shivering! Put it back on." I shoved it at him.

He sighed and kissed me on the forehead. "I'm just trying to look out for you."

Aww, I thought. I kissed him back on the cheek. "Well, if you die of pneumonia, who'll look out for me?"

"Oh please!" snorted the lady I didn't like. "You're going to give me cavities over here."

I glared at her. "Let's go someplace else, Jason."

"Like where?" Jason nudged me. "Look around, this place is full to over-flowing."

He was right, the top two floors of the library were teeming with shaken, shivering, dripping survivors. I saw the girl who had been trying to get the French-speaking family out of the flooded taxicab. She was with the same two boys as earlier; all of them looked to be around my age or older. The family was over in another corner, huddling and speaking together. The kid was still crying loudly. They had been very lucky to get out of that car when they did.

I shuddered, remembering the people dying and dead, sweeping past in those cold floodwaters. Jason put his arms tighter around me, and I was grateful for the slight warmth.

The lady snorted again. "If you ask me, this place looks like a homeless shelter. Hmmph! This used to be a classy place, for a library."

I ignored her, and leaned back into my boyfriend. For the moment, we sat and shivered together, wondering what would become of us all.