Episode 5: Good Intentions

“This storm’s been building a long time.” - Jackson

The rain started before sunrise.

By the time Jackson stepped off his bus at work, the gutters were overflowing and a gale wind was tugging at the plastic tarp someone had stapled over the warehouse roof weeks ago — still waiting on a work order.

Nobody fixed things around here unless someone got hurt.

Inside the breakroom, the floor was slick with muddy footprints. Jackson poured coffee into a styrofoam cup and stared out the foggy glass, watching the storm roll beat down hard and his thoughts went to the dam. The dam hadn’t been reinforced in over a decade. Everyone knew it. No one talked about it.

They were too busy blaming people like Marcellus for why they made the choices they made.

On the break room TV, Councilwoman Marjorie was at it again — smiling behind a podium at some development ribbon-cutting.

“By attracting corporate partners, we create opportunity for all our citizens,” she said, while a reporter nodded helpfully.

Jackson snorted. He’d seen the budget breakdown. Those tax breaks weren’t building schools. They were building warehouses.

And even the warehouses leaked.

Across town, Asha was out in the storm.

He caught her on a livestream during his ride to work — standing on the courthouse steps, hood pulled tight, bullhorn in hand. She wasn’t calling for revolution. She was asking for repairs.

Affordable housing. Maintenance of public infrastructure. A stop to the rezoning that pushed working-class families further to the floodplains.

✦ Thomas

Beneath the courthouse awning, Thomas watched Asha’s speech blur through sheets of rain. He’d worked the river his whole life — welding and patching docks, hauling freight— and every year he saw more corners cut. There wasn’t enough of anything for hardworking people like him… and yet there Asha stood talking about giving more to outsiders. Why? This wasn’t their town.

He told himself he was done watching it fall apart.

When Marjorie’s campaign promised “revitalization,” he believed her. When she said the town needed a “reset,” he took it to heart.

Now, as thunder rolled, he saw the swollen river not as danger but as deliverance.

“Sometimes you gotta break a thing before you can fix it,” he muttered, gripping the ignition key of the service truck he’d stolen from the maintenance yard.

“If that dam goes, they’ll finally have to rebuild. Real jobs, real money — not handouts.”

He told himself it wasn’t vengeance. It was vision.

Throughout the day Jackson could hear the wind and rain beat against the roof and he noted the lights pulse repeatedly — once, twice. It was getting a bit scary and he saw more than one coworker cross themself in prayer.

Then everything went black and he heard the generator roar to life.

The lights came back on and people migrated from the warehouse floor into the break room. On the muted TV, the local news featured the riverbank: flashing lights, emergency crews.

And a crack in the dam.

Jackson pressed a hand to his head, heart pounding.

He thought of Thomas’s laugh. The sharpness behind it. The way he said someone had to do something.

The power failed again.

Only lightning lit the town now — white, then purple, then gone.

Rain rivulets ran sideways across the windows. Sirens layered over the wind.

Jackson whispered to no one,

“This storm’s been building a long time.”

The levy was holding.

But for how long?