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bake. At the same time I began to feel I was choking, that my lungs were filling – it was hysteria, pure and simple, and I suddenly realised that instead of taking shallow breaths I was hyperventilating. So I held my breath just as the world began to spin, and in a few moments the lightheadedness began to fade and I felt my equilibrium returning.
    To my right, to the east, I began to see a lightening. At first I thought it was my imagination, some lingering after-effect of my hypercapnia. I began to see shapes emerge from the smoky whorls bubbling out of the water. Docks on the opposite side of the sound. A horizon of tree tops. Directly in front of me, I could see the highway. All cars were stopped. Beyond that, oily smoke still rose into the sky where the airplane no doubt lay in a smouldering scar of debris. Other smoke plumes, all across the city, joined with the mist blowing off the water to form a hazy caul that dispersed only slowly.
    The water began to calm. Only short ribbons and hot spots continued to sizzle as they drifted serenely westward. It was if our storm, which had come in a rush of blackness and fury, pounding us violently for a time, was now dying out in grudging fizzles and spits. Eastward, straggles of mist swirled into faint, smoky vortices that were sucked into the gauzy sky. An astonishing mat of flotsam now lay on the water’s surface. I could see dead seabirds – terns, skimmers, laughing gulls – and terrestrial birds too, like bluejays and mourning doves. But mostly it was fish. Croakers, pinfish, speckled trout, mullet, channel catfish. They were floating belly up on the surface, their eyes goggling as if they too had slipped on masks but had failed to survive the exposure. A few swam in listless, inverted circles. Nothing came up to scavenge their carcasses.
    I heard Scotty saying something. I saw him start to get up. I yelled, ‘No!’ and for a moment he did as I said. There were patches of water that still burped gas, and I still didn’t have a clue as to what was happening. The island itself might be poisonous now, covered in a film of the stuff. Contact with the sand could be as fatal as if we’d stood on the beach, unmasked and uncovered, as the mist swept over us.
    Then I heard Scotty say, ‘To hell with it,’ and he crawled from the sand, shaking wet clods from his chest and his stomach, and stood up. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’ he shouted through his mask. ‘If we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die.’ He shook his arms and the dirt flew. He started brushing it off his legs, which were nearly scarlet from having been buried. I watched him for signs of … oh, I don’t know. Signs of neurological dysfunction – signs of screaming and dying, I guess.
    Nothing happened.
    Then Heather rose from the sand. I wanted to shout at her to wait, but she was up before I could act. I nearly fainted with terror, and when my heart resumed beating my fear curdled into anger, then something darker. At that moment I hated Scotty with renewed fury. I hated him as much as I’d ever hated anyone in my life. Because if the toxin were still present, Heather would die with him, thanks to his adolescent fatalism – ‘If we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die,’ and not believing for a moment that he really would die – Flavour of the Month wasn’t old enough to die.
    But nothing happened to Heather, either.
    She walked over to me, sand sprinkling her smooth, white thighs like confectioner’s sugar on an éclair, and she said through her mask, ‘C’mon, Fred. I think it’s OK now.’
    I sighed hotly. For all my caution, once again I’d come across looking overly cautious. Maybe I truly was. But I couldn’t remember ever having been as stupid as Scotty.
    I got up.
    Big clods of sand fell off me, taking away the heat. I was suddenly and deliciously cool, thank God. More sand poured