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in Gainesville. The filters were good for a three-hour stint. I handed Heather a mask and told her to put it on. I shouted to Scotty, who’d already cleared out a sizeable groove in the sand, and tossed him a mask.
    â€˜Now! The two of you lie down in that hole.’
    Heather paused. ‘Who’s going to cover you?’ I sensed authentic worry in her voice, and for a moment I was touched. She might not be attracted to me, but at least in some capacity she cared. That was something, I told myself. I hurried her over to the hole Scotty was frantically widening and motioned for her to lie down in it.
    â€˜Didn’t you ever bury yourself at the beach when you were a kid?’ I asked her, holding her shoulders as she lay back. She pulled the mask over her head and it instantly transformed her face into some kind of googly-eyed monster. I managed a small, hysterical giggle as I took in the incongruency of weird mask versus otherwise near-perfectly sculpted female figure. ‘I may be old,’ I went on, making sure she had the straps cinched up around her head, ‘but I’m not that old. I still retain some of my boyhood beach skills.’
    I could see by her eyes that she was trying gamely to smile. But she was very frightened, and I took comfort that at least a dollop of her fear had been reserved for me. I began heaping sand on her feet and legs. Scotty lay down beside her. He’d gotten his mask on too, but I didn’t bother checking the strap – he was such a know-it-all. I’m sure the mask was on tight. Besides, it didn’t seem he’d appreciate the gesture.
    As I scooped sand over the both of them, I stole a surreptitious glance over my shoulder. What I saw nearly caused my breath to freeze in my chest.
    The mist was rolling down the sound in towering, striated lobes that seemed to rotate around one another as they lifted into the stifling afternoon sky. It reminded me of dust storms I’d seen in television documentaries about the Sahara, the cloud representing a line that separated quiet tranquillity from screaming turmoil – except in this case the screaming was not caused by the wind. It was no more than half a mile from the island and would smother us in minutes. The sight filled me with a kind of primeval horror, and the muscles around my windpipe tightened like constrictors. I redoubled my burying as the sound of damnation crept closer, then closer.
    I packed in the last bit of dirt around Scotty’s forehead and, resisting the urge to cover his face entirely, began digging my own trench. The first two or three inches of sand were loosely packed and came up easily under the scraping lip of the Frisbee. More quickly than I would have thought possible I had a hole for myself carved out. I lay down and began pulling the sand back over me. I got my mask on and sucked in rubbery-scented gasps of superheated air as I covered my chest and packed sand around the sides of my head. I couldn’t see my arms but managed to wriggle them beneath loose heaps of sand to either side, so that they felt covered.
    Then I lay still.
    The sand was cool at first. It trickled into my ears, where it itched. I peeked from the corner of the mask’s faceplate. I could see Scotty’s and Heather’s masks staring straight up, out of the sand, as though the three of us had become works of modern art. Heather was saying something to Scotty. I couldn’t hear with the damn sand in my ears. Her voice was made hollow and plastic by the mask. I heard him grunt an answer, and then I heard him say, ‘It’s coming. I see it.’
    The sky straight ahead of us was still sunnily clear, the water perfectly calm. A flock of black skimmers rowed through the soupy air, heading west, not trolling for baitfish but flying resolutely down the sound. A traffic jam had formed on the tiny swatch of highway I could see through the trees on the opposite shore. Car windshields baked