Two Degrees

Daniel and Sue do not want to leave the car, but Lars insists. The men exit first, and Sue has to be pulled from the vehicle. Outside, the air is boiling hot, and smoke fills their lungs. Akira realizes that Sue is hurt: One of her arms is limp and she is clearly in pain. Lars and Daniel run to the other car to rescue the occupants. A burning tree falls between them, separating Akira and Sue from their fathers.

The dads yell for their daughters to run away as they help an elderly couple out of the other car. Akira and Sue are hesitant because they don’t know how they will survive the fire by themselves. More trees begin to fall, and the girls begin running through the smoke. They reach a clearing, but the fire follows close behind. Sue, in pain, hesitates to continue, but Akira encourages her on.

The girls reach another open area and sit down, desperate for a rest and hoping to get their bearings. Sue panics, crying that they will die, but Akira insists they will make it out. She tries calling her parents and eventually connects with her mom who looks at the fire online and tries to help the girls find an escape route. Before Akira can hear her suggestion, the call disconnects.

With phone service gone, Akira realizes they are truly alone. She looks at Sue’s hurt arm and realizes her shoulder is probably dislocated from the seatbelt. She remembers a first aid tip from her dad and helps Sue trap her arm inside her shirt to keep it from moving. The fire arrives at the clearing and the girls continue moving, slowed by Sue’s pain. Akira hopes to get to the top of the mountain so they can see a break in the fire and make it to her house. She starts feeling small rocks hitting them from above, and panics that in addition to a fire they are now trapped in a rockslide.

When they hear thunder, Akira realizes that it is not a rockslide, it is a hailstorm. She explains to Sue that dry thunderstorms are common in California, and that the lightning probably started all of the fires. They discuss the “new normal” of drought and water restrictions, but Akira explains that most wildfires are started by people, and one was started by someone boiling bear pee to drink. This causes Sue to laugh. Akira, who previously resented not being alone, begins to realize that having another person along is not so bad.

Sue and Akira begin to bond as they walk. Sue is a competitive swimmer, and they realize that Akira’s love of horses and Sue’s love of water give them something in common, as they both enjoy sports that give them time alone to think. Akira begins to hope that Sue can be her friend, the first friend she would have since her sister’s babysitter, Patience, went to college. Sue stumbles and bends over in pain, revealing her scars again. Akira realizes that they are much larger than they appeared in the car.

Akira asks Sue about the scars, but Sue says she doesn’t want to talk about them. She changes the subject, saying that she can smell charcoal and cooking meat. At first, Akira thinks this is ridiculous, it is probably the smell of the huge fire behind them. Soon, though, the shadowy shape of a house appears through the smoke. The front door is open, so they go inside.

Finding no one in the house, the girls drink sodas from the fridge and Akira makes Sue a sling out of duct tape, pillowcases, and ice from the freezer. She slowly remembers that the house belongs to a girl named Nova, and that she had been there years before for a pool party. She writes a note apologizing for stealing from the family. As they are about to leave, they hear splashing in the backyard and wonder who would be swimming in the middle of a fire. They go outside and find Dodger in the pool.

The mother bear slashes angrily at Owen’s arm, then bites down on his leg. Just as he gives up hope of surviving, George appears with the shotgun, shooting to scare the bear away. Eventually, it gathers its cub and runs into the tundra, and the boys hobble to the snowmobile, desperate to escape before the bears return.

They ride as far as they can before exhaustion takes over. George has passed out, so Owen finds the first aid kit to tend to his friend’s head wound. George slowly comes to, and when he makes a joke, Owen knows he will be okay. After George is patched up, he rolls up Owen’s pant leg to look at the polar bear bite.

George describes Owen’s leg as “Swiss cheese” and the boys both know they have to get back to the doctor in Churchill. They decide to call the Mounties, believing they can’t drive in their condition, but realize they have no idea where they are. Then, the ground begins to crack, and the snowmobile starts to slide away. They are on a frozen lake, and they immediately know they have to get to dry land before the snowmobile plunges into the water.

They gently push the snowmobile toward a hill that they assume is the edge of the lake. Both Owen and George are on edge, and they start to argue with each other, but finally, with a fist bump, they realize that they will always help each other out. Their happiness is cut short when they realize they have hit a thin patch of ice and are sinking.

They back up to go a different direction. George begins to pass out again and Owen encourages him to talk about his father, an Indigenous man who loves to teach George about how people survived in the frozen landscape before modern technology. They begin to laugh again, but soon realize that another polar bear is standing near the lake, sniffing the air.

This polar bear is an adult male, twice the size of the mother and covered in scars. It circles the boys, smelling their blood, as George slowly reloads the shotgun. They back away as the bear approaches the snowmobile and feel somewhat lucky when they realize they are on solid ground. The bear is at the snowmobile, though, and to their horror it tears into the storage compartment and pulls out the brownies that Owen’s mom packed.

The boys watch as the bear begins to tear the snowmobile apart, eating the seat and gnawing at the handlebars. Owen remembers that they are known to eat plastic and decides that they have to set off a cracker shell before the bear destroys the entire vehicle. George protests, worried that the sound will break the ice, but realizes it is their only option. The shell startles the bear, causing it to knock the snowmobile over. Both bear and snowmobile crash through the ice and sink, and the boys begin to run before the animal can climb out of the water.

Natalie is swept into the raging flood water, clutching Churro to her chest to keep him from drowning. She tries to grab everything that floats past, but she cannot keep ahold and keeps getting swept under the water. A floating stove pushes her under, and she lets go of Churro so that he won’t drown. Thinking he is lost forever; she is shocked to emerge and see him standing on top of something in the water.

She realizes it is a car and struggles to climb aboard. When she gets to Churro, he snuggles into her arm, and he is finally not barking and growling. She begins to think about Mama and Tía as she views the destruction around her. She hears a bump inside the car and in horror, realizes there is a drowned woman floating inside. She realizes she needs to get off of the car. The dead body terrifies her but even worse, the car is headed for the canal, where the water is deep and fast, and where alligators live.

Natalie spots a candle still lit in the top floor of a nearby house and fights her way toward the building. She dives down to find the front door and emerges in a downstairs room almost completely full of water. She looks around frantically, trying to find the way upstairs, and is helped by Churro who jumps into the water and begins swimming toward what looks like a staircase. They finally emerge on the dry second floor, to the shock of the family who live there.

Anne, Derek, Marcus, and Javari Evans give her dry clothes, and she sobs to Anne telling her that her mom and neighbor are still trapped in her house. Anne comforts her, but tells her there is nothing they can do because the flood water is too high. Natalie knows she is lucky to have survived, and now all she can do is wait. Suddenly, they feel the house moving beneath them and water begins to rise around their ankles. The flood has reached the second floor, and the house is being shifted off of its foundation.

Natalie and the Evans know they have to escape before the house gives way. Marcus suggests leaving through a window, but Natalie knows they will not all survive if they jump directly into the flood. She suggests the roof. Derek uses a baseball bat to break a skylight, and all five people climb up and huddle behind a solar panel, watching the lightning strike around them. The house is still shifting beneath them, and they know they are still not safe.

The group feels their prayers are answered when a small sailboat comes floating toward the house, which lies miles from the nearest harbor. They work together, bracing Marcus so he can stretch off the roof and reach the boat. At last, he grasps the railing, and they all climb aboard. They hurry into the small cabin and find that another family is already there.

Isabel and her children Valentina and Ivan greet the newcomers. Like the Evans family and Natalie, they boarded the boat from the roof of their underwater house. Isabel says she came from Cuba many years before, and remarks that she never imagined she would be a refugee on a boat ever again. She had been in Cuba for Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which destroyed the island and killed her grandmother. The group begins to think about all the hurricanes they have lived through, and how none of them seemed as bad as Reuben has become. Natalie finds herself thinking about climate change once again but chooses not to bring it up to the terrified fellow passengers. Just then, they notice that water is seeping in through the bottom of the boat.