This is the last one.

I sit, despairing, and look around the room. The water in the hot tub is long gone, as is the water from the last rain. The clear panels that encase the room had once provided ambient light and warmth for lazy bathers and the roomful of tropical plants. Now they have grown foggy-looking and are beginning to crack from age and the the abuse of the relentless wind. The orchids and avocado trees have long since died, as have the pineapple plant and the grapes that had been hastily planted in pots and hurried into the house at the start of The Dry Winter.

I remember the day it started. I was home, sitting in front of the computer, reading posts on Facebook. The twins were sleeping quietly in the next room and a cake was cooling on the counter. The dog had wandered in from the backyard and stood gazing at me. I remember wondering why he looked so somber and somewhat confused, his ruff stiff over his back, his tail tucked tightly up against his belly. And then I heard the shrieking of the weather sirens and saw the streaks of light flashing orangely across the sky. The shaking was over in minutes but then the wind began to blow and the temperature began dropping. By the time my husband got home a couple of hours later the afternoons balmy 85 degrees was hovering at just over 44 or so.

My husband, with his never ending habit of listening to conspiracy theories, had narrowed his eyes as he watched the wind picking up. By the time it started tossing lawn furniture and the neighbor's trampoline around, Bob had already plucked the Koi out of my garden pond and dumped them unceremoniously into the bathtub. The grape arbors had been stripped of their vines and the vines hurriedly re-potted into the largest pots in the garage. The citrus trees, several potted miniatures, had been moved from the patio and back yard to their normal winter home in the sun-room, surrounding the hot tub. With the wind roaring around us, we all labored, carrying pot after pot of flowers and herb plants from the patio to the shelter of the sun-room.

The government spokesman repeated the same announcement every few hours for the first couple of days after the event. They didn't really seem to know much more about what was really going on than we did, but their calm demeanor reassured people that everything would return to normal soon enough. They had no explanation for why the temperature continued to drop and the winds screeched and screamed through the night. The orange lights of the previous days went unmentioned and it appeared the news anchors were reluctant to ask about them. Instead they kept glancing nervously at someone off-screen and parroting the advise given by FEMA; "Stay in your homes, stay warm, conserve your food and water. Go to the nearest emergency shelter if you became ill, run out of food or if your heat goes out."

We thought the government-declared emergency would be over in a few days. I guess most people thought the same. By the time we all realized how very wrong we were, the shelves in the grocery stores were empty more often than they were full and the taps had begun to dribble rusty, near-frozen water when they had water at all. Within a few weeks, we were allowed to use the water only a couple of hours ever three or four days. Soon after that the water stopped running all together. The electricity lasted a bit longer, but that too had stopped after a couple of months. Without electricity, we lost our links to most of the outside world. And of course with no electricity the economy and then civilization itself began slowing to a stop.

We were luckier than most though; we had the Koi from the pond (by now living in the cooled hot tub) and all the plants we had hurriedly brought in from the backyard. We had left-over seeds from last season's kitchen garden that had seemed happy growing in pots in the sun-room, sheltered from the cold temperatures and the constant wind. The water from the rain catchment system had lasted for several months and we had managed to harvest water from the occasional brutal thunderstorms. We were also far enough from the nearest large city that we had been spared the rioting that killed so many.

We made it through that first year with little more than minor discomforts. After we got used to not having the television or the internet, we began to discover the joy of visiting with each other. It was even kind of nice having Bob puttering around the house, carefully placing extra pots of vegetables all around the hot tub and setting up an aquaponics system to use the water from the fish to nourish the plants and waste from the plants to feed the fish. The children learned to entertain themselves with blocks and coloring books and seemed to love helping tend the plants that were, by then, our only source of food. I like to think we may have even been a bit healthier without the sugary drinks and constant sweets.

But then, though the punishing winds continued to blow, the rains began to fall less frequently. With less water, the plants began to die and there was less food. We all began losing weight and the children began to grow cranky and weak.

Bob has been gone now for five weeks, taking some of the last of the dried koi and chow to try and trade for water. And now I'm sitting and staring at one struggling tomato plant with a few tiny tomatoes. That and a single miniature citrus tree are all that is still growing in the sun-room.

I gaze sadly at the limp, drooping leaves and the single, shriveled fruit of the tiny tree. If I had the water to make tears I would be crying

"I'm sorry, my friend. I know you're thirsty but you just have to hold on a bit longer. Bob's going to be back with water, I know he will. He promised he'd come back. If you can just PLEASE stay alive a bit longer. You HAVE to live ... you just have to." I began to laugh hysterically. "You have to live, you stupid tree. You are quite possibly the only lemon tree left in the United States ... maybe even in the world."

I stared hard at the last small bottle of water before dividing half of it between the two plants. Then I hold the last glass of water to the pale lips of my sole surviving child.

"Please live," I say. But even I am not sure who I'm talking to.