The concessionaire repeated it. "The flood's over?" demanded Dave Wax. "The roads are dry?" He staggered over to the window to see the miracle for himself.
Semmel let himself in. "They came in a boat."
"Oh." But it was no surprise. It was still raining. "All right. I'll come down."
He found himself hurrying in spite of himself. It was only a couple of minutes before he was hurrying through the lobby. He saw with a shock that the sofas and chairs in the lobby were occupied—guests too panicky to sleep in their rooms, too exhausted to stay awake; they were sprawled and snoring.
The men from the boat were in the kitchen drinking coffee that the cooks had somehow contrived to make. "I'm Brayer—Hebertown police chief. You people all right here?"
"All right?" You call a hundred and sixty scared, sore guests all right? You call wondering if the whole damn place is going to float away all right? "I guess so," Dave Wax said slowly. He was almost afraid to ask: "How—how is it outside?"
The man rubbed at his mustache. "It's a flood," he said succinctly. "Ask me in the morning. Anyway, we're beginning to get a little organized." His voice took on a mechanical, rehearsed quality. "Don't let anybody drink water unless it's been boiled for ten minutes. Use up everything you can that's in the refrigerators tomorrow morning. What's in the freezers ought to be good till tomorrow night, if you don't open them too often. What you don't eat by then, don't eat. Throw it away. You probably don't have any water pressure, do you? Your own electric pump, I guess? All right; you'll have to set up latrines—use chamber pots if you have to. Dump them in the river to empty them—you're far enough away from everything here."
"Wait a minute." Dave was a little slow to grasp the implications of it. "You mean even by tomorrow night we won't have the power back?"
"I'll consider us very lucky," the police chief said heavily, "if Hebertown ever has power again."
He got up. "They say that by daybreak the weather will be clear enough for helicopters. If you need anything—a doctor if there's an emergency, anything like that—hang a white sheet out of a window and keep somebody standing by. When a helicopter or boat patrol comes by they'll see it and investigate; then you wave another sheet at them and they'll see that somebody gets here."