When we head into the neighborhood -- a middle-class area of one-story single-family homes with little yards set off by chain-link fences -- we find many of the same things we'd seen the day before. The authorities have clearly decided not to pick up the bodies: At one intersection, a man who had handcuffed himself to the top of a Stop sign, apparently with the aim of not sinking below the water, hangs upside down, his eyes popping out of his head like baseballs.

And once again there are plenty of residents who don't want to leave their homes -- only in this case, the reasons are different.

"I'd rather be a refugee here than sit with my thumb in my ass in Houston or wherever," says Steve Smith, a fifty-four-year-old white man who is sitting in an abandoned bar, drinking homemade whiskey. Like most of the people we come across, Steve has heard horror stories of people being evacuated to distant cities against their will, or of families being separated, or of the government otherwise fucking things up.