Their plume of white smoke was a poor substitute for the missing clouds in the sky. Susie listened as Jay sang, his cheerful melody accompanying the smoke as it curled upwards like some mythical serpent beast. As the sunlight passed through the haze, she thought the ultraviolet rays were magnified ten-, a hundredfold. Her brown skin steamed reddish, burnt sienna, until she could almost imagine that the smell of cooked meat was her own. But no, it was the chicken, a pathetic carcass that Jay turned over their portable grill with wooden sticks. It was the last chicken from the three they had brought with them from home, which they had bound with ropes and hung from their backpacks as they travelled. This chicken was to be their next two meals, or perhaps three if they cut back on their portions. Inside their backpacks were an assortment of non-perishable food, which Susie reckoned could last them around a week and a half. As Jay cooked, she fished out her coin purse from her backpack and counted the money they had left.

“Sue,” Jay said, and Susie looked up from counting coins to see that their fire was getting smaller. She zipped up the wallet and put it away before getting an old magazine from her bag. Susie ripped out two pages, tore them into smaller pieces, and added them to the fire. Charcoal would have burned brighter and longer, but even that was hard to afford for the likes of them. They had to make do with scrap paper for fuel.

With the rest of the magazine, Susie fanned the flames as Jay kept turning the meat to make sure it was cooked on all sides. It was already 5:42 PM, but everything was still bright and airy. They could hear the steady crashing of the ocean against the cement border, and with the smell of freshly cooked meat and the bright blue of the sky, the two of them could pretend they were just on a beach enjoying the afternoon. What ruined the illusion was the sound of other people passing them by—those who were anxious to keep moving north to the Mountain Province while there was still daylight, and those who, like them, were preparing to camp on this deserted highway for the upcoming dusk. Groups of people crouched low on the asphalt, taking measly shelter from the sweltering heat under the shade of abandoned dilapidated cars. They talked in a gaggle of overlapping voices: some of them bartering and exchanging goods, some complaining about the heat, and some merely filling the air with idle chatter. A pair of skinny kids wearing nothing but underwear ran past Susie and Jay’s spot, laughing and chasing each other in childish glee. Susie wondered how they kept their high spirits when their stomachs bulged from malnutrition. She came to the conclusion that perhaps the kids were fuelled by goodwill and hope. She hoped that they’d keep that spark of life in them for much longer than she and Jay had.

The car that she and Jay leaned against and used as a makeshift wall seemed to be the oldest model on the highway. It had a grey steel body, with dark grey leather seats, and when it used to work, it ran on gasoline made from fossil fuels. It was a hulking beast of a vehicle compared to the other abandoned cars that were newer sleek designs. Its build and source of fuel betrayed a more uncivilised time when people weren’t so preoccupied with carbon emissions and organic materials. If Susie could guess, she estimated that this car was from the not-so-distant past of fifty years ago, but as Jay told her, so many advancements were being made that anything at least twenty years old was already primitive technology.

Jay finally finished cooking, and he took the chicken out of the fire. He placed it inside an empty plastic lunch box that he had rinsed out earlier by leaning over the highway border and dipping the lunchbox in the ocean water. As he cut the chicken into pieces, Susie held up the magazine so that they could see the cover, and she asked, “You think they have cars?”

The family on the cover of the magazine Susie held was one of those rich celebrity families. She and Jay weren’t quite sure what exactly they did. Perhaps they were actors, or models, or maybe just some random rich folk whose lavish lifestyle made them effective influencers. According to the magazine, the man was wearing a “100 per cent natural cotton” navy pinstripe suit with “ethically sourced” leather shoes. He was smiling at the camera, his white veneer teeth shining unnaturally, and his hands rested on the shoulders of a beautiful woman and a teenage boy. The wife was wearing a peach-coloured designer dress with matching pearl earrings and a brooch. It was written in the magazine that the clothing line she endorsed donated 30 per cent of all profits to nature-saving campaigns. The boy wore a white button-down shirt paired with straight black trousers, and the cover page boasted about his “influence” in encouraging the youth to recycle more.

Jay glanced at the magazine and rolled his eyes. He replied, “Maybe they do, Susie, or maybe they don’t. Maybe they have those top-of-the-line, solar-powered cars, or maybe they’re rich enough to afford tickets to the S.S. Salvation ships and have no need for cars anymore.”

Susie nodded thoughtfully. She wondered if this family was indeed rich enough for the floating communities, safe from the rising waters and constant floods. She had heard on the radio a while back a scandalous piece of news (at least, according to the lifestyle journalists): the famed Montemayor family wouldn’t have a place on the ships and instead chose to relocate to the mountain villages. They simply couldn’t afford the tickets, and their points from all their recycling and environmentally friendly shifts weren’t enough to get them on board. She and Jay had looked at each other in bewilderment when they heard the news. After all, if the rich Montemayors couldn’t afford tickets to the S.S. Salvations, then what hope did Jay and Susie have, with their attempts to earn points by merely recycling paper?

She and Jay cut the chicken into pieces. As they ate their portions, Susie asked, “You ever get angry that we’re not like them?”

Jay laughed bitterly. Susie could only watch sadly as her boyfriend’s eyebrows scrunched together in thinly-veiled resentment. She couldn’t help but think he looked more like his father when he was upset. She didn’t say this out loud, though, because Jay would be hurt at even the slightest comparison to his deadbeat dad. Jay said, “Of course, I’m angry, Sue. Everyone wants to be them. Everyone wants safety, and only money can do that. But what’s the point in constantly wishing we were born to better-off families? We just make do with what we have.”

Susie didn’t say anything anymore. She was silently berating herself for even asking a stupid, upsetting question. They dug into their early dinner, each just getting a chicken wing for this meal. As they ate, the fire started to die down. They were both relieved that at least one source of heat could be dealt with and removed. They were already sweating buckets, even with the ocean air threading through their hair, and they could only do so much water rationing without risking dehydration or overheating. Jay and Susie chewed the meat slowly, hoping to prolong the meal as much as they could. To their left, the father of the two skinny kids was slaughtering their second-to-the-last chicken. The other chicken was still tightly bound and hanging from his pack. To their right, a woman was prying open a can of corned beef to eat with a small pack of cheese crackers. As her nimble fingers worked on the can, her tongue peeked out from her mouth and her eyebrows scrunched up in concentration. Her frizzy hair was tied back with a rubber band. Susie suddenly remembered her nanay, and she felt tears prickling in her eyes. She subtly and quickly wiped them away, lest Jay see.

But Jay surprised her when he looked at the woman and said, “I wonder how our families are doing.”

It was rare for him to bring up their families, and when Susie did, he would often answer angrily or dismissively. Back in Las Piñas, Jay had left behind a drunkard father and an older and younger brother, while Susie had left behind her nanay. The night before they left, ugly words were thrown at them—some in pure disagreement at Jay and Susie’s choice to evacuate early before Las Piñas was completely flooded and underwater, while other words were below-the-belt jabs at the two young lovers’ relationship.

Susie considered Jay’s words. She wasn’t sure how to answer, because family still was a touchy subject for both of them. But when she looked at Jay, he looked uncharacteristically soft, and so she hesitantly said, “Maybe they’re on their way north, too.”

The softness on Jay’s face quickly disappeared with a scoff. Still, he looked more like a sad little boy than a hardened young man forced to grow up too quickly. Jay said, “Fat chance. They firmly believe that this rising water crisis isn’t real. ‘Pakana lang ng gobyerno para ibenta lupa natin,’ is what they always say.”

He glanced at Susie, and his face softened once more. He reached out to her and squeezed her hand comfortingly. “Pero it’s good to hope, no? Hope that they’re doing well, that they’re not dead or suffering.”

Susie could only nod sombrely. They finished the rest of their meal in silence. Then, they took turns sipping from their water jug. When they were done, Susie placed the lid over the plastic lunchbox and the chicken leftovers, while Jay took the bones and threw them into the water. The woman to their right looked at them both, shaking her head in disapproval. Jay only smiled roguishly at her. Then, he turned to Susie and said, “Good riddance, I say. If we had stayed with them, or perhaps forced them to come with us, they’d have dragged us down with them. They’re anchors, Sue. Mga pabigat. We’re better off without them.”