200 down, 79,800 to go.

Our declamation assignments for the past two weeks were to write the first and last 100 words of the novel we will eventually write. See if you can guess what happens in the middle of mine:

He was wet. They had heard the thunder the night before, watched the
lightning come closer and closer, and cursed their flimsy ponchos. The
deluge began before dawn. Now, staring up at the sky, he watched the clouds turning an eerie shade of mint green. It was time to get inside. He looked around. It was a grubby neighborhood, the kind that collects in big cities like dust-bunnies under the bed. The carpet of bottle-tops on the lawn proclaimed the residents' overwhelming preference for Bud Light, with a few votes for Corona. He walked up to 904 and knocked.
"Hello?"

*****

Eventually, Julia heard voices. They were distant, muffled by the rubble. Then shouting: "More . . . . here. . ." They had found Granny. What if HE was with them? The fallen rafters sagged. She twisted further under the trunk, using it as shelter from the debris. The rafters moved again, and light filtered down into the mess. That was when she saw Bill, crumpled at the base of the tree, obviously dead.

So he hadn't made it back to the house. He wasn't waiting. As the relief finally took hold of her mind, the world flickered. Before she fainted, she saw a boot and someone asked "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she said, "I am."