The Conqueror Worms

“Ugh.” Sarah wrinkled her nose. “I’ve had enough of water for right now, but thanks anyway. Maybe later.”

Kevin asked, “So where are we supposed to go to the bathroom?”

“Good question,” I said. “To be honest—and my apologies to Sarah—but I’ve just been going out on the back porch when I had to go number one, and down to the outhouse for number two.”

Carl shivered. “You ain’t getting me back in that outhouse again.”

“No,” I agreed, “I don’t think any of us will be venturing back out there anytime soon. I reckon we’ll use a bucket, and then dump it outside when we’re done.”

Kevin sighed. “Boy, there’s nothing like roughing it. This reminds me of summer camp back when I was a kid.”

Carl crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, eyeing them. “So are you two…together?”

“Us?” Sarah threw her head back and laughed.

Kevin joined her a second later.

Carl’s ears turned red. “I reckon that’s a ‘no.’ ”

“Sorry,” Sarah giggled. “You just have to know us. I’m gay, and Kevin, well…”

A shadow passed over Kevin’s face and Sarah trailed off, her grin fading. I could tell they didn’t want to talk about whatever it was, so I tried to change the subject.

“By any chance, would either of you happen to have some cigarettes?”

“Sorry,” Sarah apologized. “I don’t smoke.”

“And I was getting ready to ask you and Carl the same thing,” Kevin said.

“You a smoker?” I asked, hoping he’d say yes. Then at least I’d have someone to commiserate with. My misery needed some company.

“I wasn’t,” Kevin replied. “But after what we’ve been through today, I’m tempted to start.”

Chuckling, I dumped the uneaten stew back into the pot and put the crackers in the pantry. Then I poured myself some hot water and instant coffee into a mug, and pulled up a seat at the kitchen table.

Sarah gestured to the pictures in the living room. “Those pictures—are they your family?”

“They were. I don’t reckon my daughter or my grandkids…Well, they lived closer to the ocean. And Rose, that’s my wife, she passed away of pneumonia three years ago. I figure I’ll see them all sooner rather than later.”

Carl nodded and sipped his coffee. Kevin didn’t reply. Sarah stared out the window, then turned and looked at the hutch, where Darla, my granddaughter, stared back at us from a silver frame.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You remind me of her, actually. You’ve got her strength.”

Sarah smiled, and yes, she did remind me of Darla at that moment.

Carl sat his mug down on the table. “So what did you folks do before—all of this?”

Kevin brightened for a moment. “I worked in a video store.”

“I worked for McCormick,” Sarah added. “The spice manufacturer.”

“Sure.” I nodded. “So you’re both from Baltimore?”

“We are,” Kevin said. “Or were. What’s left of it, at least.”

He let his gaze roam around the kitchen. It lingered on my three houseplants, and I wondered if he was some sort of amateur gardener. When he spotted my framed picture of Johnny Cash hanging on the wall, he turned to me.

“You’re a fan of the Man in Black, huh? I saw him in concert when I was younger. Great show.”

“You like country music?” Carl asked.

“Some—but not all of it,” Kevin replied. “I guess I’m pretty eclectic. Mostly rock, metal, and hip-hop. But I liked Johnny Cash. And Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks are pretty cool. Or were. I bet you guys like them, right?”

“No sir,” Carl said. “Don’t care much for that new country at all. We like the classics. Folks like Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Porter Wagoner, and Patsy Cline.”

“And Jerry Reed,” I added. “Can’t forget about some of those seventies trucking songs.”

With a grin, Carl started humming the theme song from Smokey and the Bandit.

“East bound and down,” I chuckled.

“We’re gonna do what they say can’t be done,” he answered.

Kevin looked stunned. “No Dixie Chicks or Shania?”

“The Dixie Chicks make me break out in hives,” Carl said. “And Shania Twain is about as country as that rock and roll band, Metalli-something.”

Kevin grinned. “Metallica.”

We all laughed then, except for Sarah, who stood up and moved to the kitchen window. She looked out the rain-streaked pane, but her eyes weren’t fixed on anything. I could tell her thoughts were far away.

“What is it?” Kevin asked her softly.

“There are no more Dixie Chicks,” she said. “There’s no more Shania Twain or Metallica, and no more radio and Baltimore and—and I saw Cornwell after the crash, and he’d been sliced into three—” She stopped, unable to continue, and shut her eyes. “And poor, poor Salty.”

“Baltimore’s flooded?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“Are you kidding?” Kevin snorted. “Baltimore’s fucking gone, man. Just like everything else.”

“What happened out there,” Carl whispered, more to himself than to anybody. “What the hell happened?”

“God broke His promise,” Sarah said from the window. “Decided He was tired of us messing up this nice planet He gave us and flooded it again.”

“Can’t say as I blame Him,” Carl muttered.

“I’m serious,” Sarah continued. “How else do you explain it? One morning, kiddie porn is a multibillion dollar industry, the President is pardoning drug dealers in exchange for campaign contributions and declaring war on any country he feels like, teens are shooting each other in school, and terrorists are blowing up places of worship. The next day, we wake up, and Pennsylvania’s Amish country is beachfront property and the survivors are making a pilgrimage to the Rocky fucking Mountains in Colorado!”

“And Leviathan and Behemoth are loosed upon the earth,” I added.

Kevin and Sarah both jumped, and Kevin’s coffee mug crashed to the floor.

Carl rose to his feet. “You okay? What’s wrong? Did you see something outside?”

The two young people shot wary glances at each other.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. My Rose taught Sunday School for thirty-some years. Behemoth and Leviathan were both biblical creatures. The book of Job, if I remember correctly.”

“Rose always did know her Bible,” Carl said.

Suddenly, bursting into tears, Sarah ran out of the kitchen and down the hallway. We heard the spare bedroom door slam shut.

“What is it?” I asked Kevin. “Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry if I offended her.”

He shook his head. “No, you didn’t. The word Leviathan…”

He grabbed a towel and mopped up his coffee. Then he sat back down, folded his hands, and looked at Carl and me. His face was grave.

“Maybe I’d better tell you guys our story. Then you’ll understand. You see, those worms aren’t the only things out there.”

“There’s other things?” Carl asked. “Worse than the worms?”

“Oh, yes.” Kevin’s voice was barely a whisper.

I refilled Kevin’s mug. He stirred the crystals, watching them dissolve in the hot water. None of us said anything. Carl got up and stood at the window, keeping watch.

After a bit, Kevin took a deep breath. His hands were shaking.

This is what he told us…

PART II

UPON US ALL A LITTLE RAIN MUST FALL

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout

The death-fires danced at night;

The water, like a witch’s oils,

Burnt green, and blue and white.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Satanists were surfing down Pratt Street when I found Jimmy’s head floating outside the fifteenth floor of the Chesapeake Apartments.

Earlier that day, a jellyfish almost stung me while I was paddling off the roof of the Globe Capital building. It was a good place for scavenging since the top floors were still above water. I went in from the roof, looking for guns, food, cigarettes, disposable lighters—anything that might be useful. While untying the raft from the roof, I was busy wishing the National Guard Armory wasn’t at the bottom of the ocean, and didn’t notice the jellyfish until it was almost too late.

All in all, between the rain, the Satanists, and the jellyfish, it was a bad day to be outside.

I’d always hated rainy days. They brought me down.

I hadn’t been happy in a long, long while.

Finding Jimmy’s head did nothing to improve my mood. I barely managed to keep from screaming. I bit through my lip, tasting blood and stifling a yell, while the Satanists whooped and shouted to each other in the distance. Their surfboards were painted black.

I turned back to Jimmy.

There he was. My best friend. The guy I’d grown up with, reduced now to a severed head floating on the crests of the misplaced Atlantic Ocean.

“Shit, Jimmy. What the fuck did they do to you?”

I grabbed him by the hair before the tide could take him.

His pallid skin felt like cottage cheese and his mouth was frozen in an expression of surprise, as if he’d died saying, “Oh!” But it was his eyes that really got to me. I shut mine, but I could still see that death stare, floating in the darkness.

I opened my eyes and closed his.

Blood and water dripped from his neck, pooling around my rubber boots. It didn’t matter. I was wet anyway. I hadn’t been dry in so long that I’d forgotten what being dry actually felt like. Most of us had developed rashes, and we’d lost about two-dozen people to pneumonia and colds. My uncle used to talk about jungle rot, something they got in Vietnam from having damp feet. We had a new type of fungus, a version that covered your entire body in white fuzz. In fact, that’s what we called it: the White Fuzz. It ate at you until there was nothing left—a horrible way to die.

Choking off my emotions and trying to be clinical about things, I turned over Jimmy’s head in my hands. It didn’t appear severed. Rather, the windpipe and neck were pinched and flattened like the end of a toothpaste tube. It looked like his attacker had squeezed the head off his body. I couldn’t be sure, of course. I’m not a medical examiner or crime scene investigator or anything like that. I’m just a guy who worked at a video store—until the rain started.

The thing on his cheek was the worst, a reddishpurplish sore, open and leaking. It looked like Jimmy’s killer had given him a hickey and gnawed through his face at the same time.

I knew who’d done it. The Satanists. Who else?

My mind flashed back to fourth grade. Spending the night at Jimmy’s house, reading comic books until his parents went to sleep, and then sneaking a peek at his father’s porno magazines, staring at the pictures of naked women and reading the letters, and trying to figure out what it meant when a woman said “eat me.” Summers spent inner-tubing down the Codorus Creek, and buying more comic books at the flea market, and camping out in my backyard, and riding bikes all over town.

We got our driver’s licenses at sixteen, and our bikes were replaced with muscle cars. About the same time, the girls from the magazines were replaced by flesh and blood, and we learned exactly what a woman meant when she said “eat me.”

We’d planned on joining the Marines together, but then Jimmy got his DUI after a car wreck just over the border in York, Pennsylvania, and I got Becky pregnant. For our nineteenth birthdays, Jimmy went to jail for manslaughter (his girlfriend hadn’t survived the crash) and I got a job at Crown Video & DVD in Cockeysville, just outside of Baltimore. I’ve often thought that life is like a Bruce Springsteen song, and looking back on those days always reinforces that in my mind.

Jimmy did three years at Cresson State up in Pennsylvania. Thanks to overcrowding, they let him out on parole. While he was gone, Becky and the baby ran off with some Lexus-driving yo-boy she met at a club. Secretly, I was relieved. But it still hurts sometimes, knowing there’s a kid out there somewhere who looks like me.

Well—probably not anymore.

We had a welcome-home party, and Jimmy readjusted to civilian life. He landed a job at the casket factory. Things were good. We chilled, marveling over the fact that our five-year high school reunion was coming up.

Then the rain started, washing it all away.

I wouldn’t cry. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. There were many times since the rain started that I’d wanted to cry, especially now. I felt like screaming, ranting at the gray haze that had replaced the once blue sky. I wanted to collapse, cradling my best friend’s head, and just stay there, not moving or thinking ever again.

I couldn’t cry because I’m incapable of it. Sure, when I was a little kid, I cried when I skinned my knee or didn’t get my way. But I’ve never been able to do it over death. I used to think there was something wrong with me. When I was twelve, my grandmother died. At the funeral, I couldn’t cry, and I felt like a complete dick. My parents were crying, my sister, my aunts and uncles—but not me. I just stood there with a stupid look on my face. Sure, I was sad. I grieved. I loved my grandma. But when the time came, the tears were absent and I couldn’t summon them, no matter how hard I tried.

I looked up at the sky, letting the rain beat against my face and pretended the drops of water were tears. They were phony tears, but it was the best that I could do.

Voices carried over the roaring waves. Ducking down so the Satanists wouldn’t see me, I quickly took stock. The Globe Capital building had been a complete bust (except for the jellyfish), but the Chesapeake Apartments had yielded a dozen bottles of spring water. It seemed obscene that with so much water falling from the sky, fresh water was like gold. But the rain had a high salt content, at least in our area. I’m not sure why. Don’t know if it was some freak ecological occurrence or what. We’d heard from passersby that it was better in other places. I’d also found some canned goods, a flashlight that still worked, a fifth of Jim Beam, a half empty bottle of vodka, two dry cartons of smokes (almost as valuable as the bottled water), a few paperbacks and magazines that hadn’t begun to mold yet, a box of crayons, and most importantly, a houseplant, a bag of potting soil, and three little envelopes of seeds—carrots, marigolds, and sunflowers.

And Jimmy’s head.

Sighing, I placed the loot inside one of the nylon backpacks I carried with me, so that it would all stay dry during the trip back home. Then I dropped the backpack into a garbage bag for extra insulation. Finally, I wrapped Jimmy’s head in a plastic bag and stuffed it inside the backpack as well. The pockets of my raincoat bulged with smaller items: cigarette lighters, waterproof matches, vitamins, silverware, toothpaste, aspirin and other medicines, pens, batteries, candles—anything I thought our group could use. The only thing I left behind was cash. That was good for starting fires, and then only if the bills were dry.

After I finished, I waited for the Satanists to leave. Starting the boat motor would have been like shouting, “Hey guys, here I am!” Paddling off the rooftop without the motor running would be futile because of the waves. They’d push me right back onto it.

I waited about an hour and eventually they moved on. I guess the surfing was better in another part of the city. When I was sure it was safe, I untied the boat from the flagpole and started home.

The blue-green ocean seemed huge and endless and lonely, and it was pretty quiet, except for the waves, the seagulls, and the rain hitting the water. I kept glancing around for signs of pursuit, but I was alone.

“Raindrops keep falling on my head,” I sang. “But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red. Crying’s not for me, cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining, because—”

My voice bounced back to me off the remains of a skyscraper, and I stopped singing. The echoes gave me goose bumps.

Debris floated by: wooden crates, aluminum lawn furniture, bodies and pieces of bodies. I tried to snag a few of the crates so that I could examine the contents, but the tide carried them out of my reach. We didn’t need the lawn furniture, and I already had Jimmy’s head, so I left the other body parts alone.

Water dripped from the oars, oily and slimy. I shuddered to think what was in it, all of the chemicals and pollution from the flooded buildings and industrial sites, and the bodies of the dead, of course.

To pass the time, I wondered about what the rest of the world was like now, if it was raining and flooded there, too. Occasionally, people sailed through Baltimore and stopped at our building, wanting to trade with us, or just looking for a dry place to dock and rest. When this happened, we’d hear news. Most of it concerned pockets of survivors like us, scattered across the country; but some of the things we heard were just plain weird.

The crew of a Coast Guard cutter reported that the population of Estes Park, Colorado, had resorted to cannibalism and human sacrifice. Some yuppie investment banker who had sailed all the way from Philadelphia swore he’d seen mermaids and that his friend made love to one and was never seen again. We traded him two cases of bottled water and some batteries for fishing tackle and a handgun with extra ammunition, and then quickly sent him on his way. Dude was obviously crazy.

Two folks named Ralph and Holly arrived in a traffic chopper, and stayed with us for a week, while we treated Holly for an infected dog bite on her leg. They said that giant carnivorous earthworms were rampaging through most of the Appalachians. Supposedly, the creatures killed some friends of theirs in North Carolina. At the time, I didn’t believe them. But the kids believed them, and after they left, we went through a week of little Danielle waking up every night screaming about giant worms coming to eat her. Old Salty believed them, too, but Salty believed in everything.

I’d seen Salty around before the rains came. I don’t know what he did before he was homeless, but at one time in his life he’d been a sailor. When I first encountered him, he was a regular fixture at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, telling sea stories for pocket change and watching the boats sail in and out. We used to give him money on Friday nights while barhopping in Fell’s Point.

Salty was a walking encyclopedia of nautical myths and superstitions and he never missed a chance to warn you of them. Bananas onboard a boat guaranteed you’d catch no fish. If you overturned a basin of water at home, disaster would follow at sea. It was unlucky for fishermen to count the contents of the first net hauled up for the day. When you stepped onboard a ship, you should always go with your right foot first. If the ship’s captain tripped while coming down a ladder, it was some bad mojo. Stuff like that. When one of the other girls offered to trim Sarah’s hair for her, Salty begged them not to. According to him, cutting your hair while the sea was calm would raise a storm. We pointed out that the sea hadn’t been calm for months and that it didn’t look like the storm would stop anytime soon.

So we had Salty, Sarah, and little Danielle (who we found clinging to the roof of a car, her family dead and bloated inside, gnawed on by the fish). There were two other kids—ten-year-old James and eight-year-old Malik. There was also Lee, a paunchy, balding schoolteacher from Texas. He’d been in Baltimore for his mother’s funeral and got stranded when the government halted all airline and rail service. The same thing happened to Mike, a middle-aged nuclear engineer from Idaho visiting Baltimore for a convention. Anna was a widow in her late-sixties, plump and matronly. Louis was sort of a beatnik. Always wore a beret. He’d owned a music store down in Fells Point, and his life partner, Christian, ran some kind of investment Web site. Nate was an architect, pompous and arrogant. Thought he was better than the rest of us. Juan was a Baltimore city cop. Hard as nails, but a nice enough guy. And smart. Then we had Taz, Ducky, and Lashawn. Taz had been a drug dealer and so was Ducky (I often wondered if those were their real names or just their street names, but I never found out). Taz was a big, hulking guy, built like a linebacker. Ducky was the exact opposite, thin and scrawny. Lashawn was Taz’s girlfriend, and while I don’t think he knew that she was also sleeping with Ducky, the rest of us did. We had two other women. Mindy had worked for an office supply company. She was smart and funny. Lori was about my age, and had gone to Johns Hopkins University. I’d had a crush on her and Mindy both—and Sarah, too, until I found out that she only dug other women. Finally, there’d been Jimmy and myself, the two amigos, reduced now to just one.

That was our group—all eighteen of us. There’d been more at one time. Some people left, sailing off in search of dryer pastures, and we never heard from them again. Cholera and typhoid were bad in the early days, before the dead were all washed out to sea. Two people died of heart attacks, and another from what we think was probably diabetes. One guy named Hector died from an impacted wisdom tooth infection. Amazing how something so minor can have such dire consequences without access to even basic medicine. A simple wisdom tooth cost Hector his life. The others who died succumbed to pneumonia, the White Fuzz, or else they drowned or simply vanished. We suspected that a few of these last ones probably fell victim to the Satanists.

Our neighbors weren’t real Satanists, of course. Real Satanists didn’t kill people or have orgies and black masses. I once dated a girl who was into Satanism, and I knew that real Satanism was a philosophy that was atheistic in nature. Satanists believed they were their own gods and that they controlled their own destiny. They didn’t actually believe in the Devil, but used Satan symbolically, to represent the opposite of Christ. Cool concept, but it wasn’t for me. I’d had a strict Methodist upbringing, and though I considered myself an agnostic, there were still enough of the oldschool teachings ingrained in me. I dumped both the girl and her philosophy after two weeks.

Anyway, our neighbors weren’t real Satanists, but that’s what Juan started calling them. Then Taz and Ducky started using it. After a while, the name stuck.

Like I said, real Satanists didn’t kill people, or have orgies and black masses—but these fuckers did just about every night. In the beginning, Juan and a few of the others suggested we take them out—do unto them before they could do unto us. But they had the numbers and an attack would have been suicide. They were bad news, so we just tried to avoid them as much as possible.

We had set up shop in the ruins of the big Marriott Hotel in what used to be the Inner Harbor district. Many upper floors of the city’s skyscrapers were still above water, but most of the buildings were flooded inside. Miraculously, ours wasn’t one of them. Somehow, the hotel had escaped any broken windows or cracks in the walls. The bottom floors were underwater, but from fifteen to twenty, everything was relatively dry. We lived on the top two floors.

The Satanists lived downtown in what was left of the Baltimore Trade Center. I’m guessing that, like our building, it had escaped major damage. I don’t know how many of them there were, but while our numbers were shrinking, theirs seemed to be growing. They had enough people that they could afford to sacrifice someone every evening, at least.

We’d watched them from the rooftop a few times, through a telescope that Lee found in one of the hotel rooms, but none of us had the stomach to keep spying for long.

Not after what we saw.

The fire was the first indication that something wasn’t right with our neighbors. With no streetlights or electricity, the Trade Center was barely noticeable at night. Until they lit the bonfire, that is.

The rain never stops. Sure, it changes. It has patterns. Mist to downpour, gentle breeze to gale force winds. But it never stops. Still, every night, despite the rain and the winds, the Satanists lit a huge bonfire on their roof, right in the middle of the helicopter pad. You could see it with the naked eye, a small, orange pinprick in the dark. But when we looked through the telescope…

It was bad. Water-soaked wood that shouldn’t have been able to burn did so anyway. The rain didn’t put the fire out. Once it was going, they tied people to posts and roasted them alive. Others had their throats cut or were weighted down with cement blocks and then tossed over the side—sacrifices to whatever deepsea denizens the Satanists worshipped.

One night, Juan, Christian, Jimmy, and I took a boat out to investigate. It was against my better judgment and in hindsight a really stupid thing to do, but we had to know more. We got close enough to hear them chanting. The words weren’t English. Hell, I’m not even sure they were in a language. It was like something out of a cheesy horror movie and it freaked us out pretty bad, so we left.

The Satanists weren’t our only neighbors. There were other survivors scattered throughout the city, but they were loners or madmen and kept mostly to themselves. I’m sure some of them ended up captured and sacrificed in the rituals.

Early on, the Satanists tried to raid our building twice, but we’d repelled both attacks, and they took some heavy casualties. Since then, they’d left us alone, but we still kept a guard posted on the roof twenty-four hours a day. We weren’t stupid enough to believe they wouldn’t eventually return.

I kept a wary eye out for them while I paddled over the submerged highrises and office buildings, but the Satanists had vanished. The only living creatures I saw were a school of dolphins frolicking over the space where Camden Yards used to be, and flocks of seabirds soaring far overhead.

When I returned to the hotel, Jimmy’s head still securely tucked away in the backpack, it was Lee and Mike’s turn on watch. I saw them through the downpour, water dripping from their plastic-covered rifle barrels. I tossed them the rope and Lee tied me off.

“Jimmy’s not back yet,” he said, sounding scared. “And it’s getting late.”

I took a deep breath.

“What’s wrong, Kevin?” Mike asked.

I exhaled. “He’s not coming back.”

“What do you mean? What the hell happened out there?”

“Get everybody together and I’ll tell you. I don’t want to rehash it over and over. It…it hurts too bad.”

Like a Viking returning home, I grabbed the plunder and walked inside.

Mike and Lee called after me, but I couldn’t hear what they said. Their words were lost in the rain.

I still wanted to cry. I still couldn’t.

So I let the sky do it for me instead.

Each floor of the hotel had a small lobby located next to the elevator doors. We’d turned the lobby on nineteen into a common area. While I hung up my wet clothing and toweled off, Mike and Lee gathered the others together. When I came out, they were all waiting for me, lounging on the couches and chairs.

“Bring us back anything good?” Mindy asked.

I nodded. “Always do, don’t I?”

I gave the paperbacks to Lee, Christian, Mindy, Sarah, and Lori, since they were the readers in the group. Louis, Taz, Ducky, Lashawn, Juan, and Salty divided up the cigarettes. Nate got the flashlight since he didn’t have one in his room and had been relying on candles. The Jim Beam and vodka were passed around and practically everybody took a swig except for the kids and Mike. He said that he’d managed to stay sober and on the wagon for ten years, and would be damned if the weather was going to make him start again. Sarah and Anna did most of our cooking, so the food went to them for safekeeping. Finally, I gave the crayons to the kids, and the grins on their faces cheered me up momentarily—until I felt the bulge of Jimmy’s head, still inside the bag.

“I wish you could find some jazz or blues discs, Kevin,” Louis said. “All we’ve got around here is hiphop and classic rock.”

“That reminds me,” Lee chimed in, “we need more D batteries, too, if you find any. The boom box runs on them.”

“I could use some more vitamins,” Christian said.

“Fuck that, playa.” Ducky grinned. “What we need is some chronic.”

“Chronic?” Nate looked puzzled. “What’s that?”

“It’s street slang for weed,” Juan said, “and under the circumstances, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. Can’t believe I’m saying that.” He shook his head wistfully.

“All of you can fill out a shopping list,” I muttered, and sat down. “I’ll pick it up on my next trip outside.”

Lori handed me a warm can of soda and I sipped it gratefully. The carbonation soothed my upset stomach.

“So where’s Jimmy?” Mike asked.

I glanced at the kids.

Anna took the hint and herded them out of the lobby. “Come on, children. Let’s go color some pictures for everybody with those new crayons!” Anna had lost her family, including two grandchildren, and Danielle, James, and Malik had adopted her as their grandmother.

After they were gone, I cleared my throat. Everyone looked at me, waiting patiently. I guess they already suspected what I was going to say.

“Jimmy’s dead. I found him while I was on the supply run.”

They were silent, and then Juan spoke, saying aloud what they were all thinking. “The fucking Satanists.”

“I guess so. Who else could it be?”

“Where is he now?”

“In my bag. There’s not much left. He was…decapitated.”

They stirred.

“Show us.” Again, he wasn’t asking.

“I don’t want to see that,” Sarah protested. “Isn’t it bad enough—”

“Show us, Kevin.”

I paused, choosing my words carefully. I felt tired, and all I wanted to do was sleep. “Juan, where’s the sense in doing that? I mean, what, you don’t fucking believe me?”

Juan held out his hands. “Calm down, man. Of course I believe you.”

“Then why do you need to see his head?”

“Because I want to remember it for every one of those cultist motherfuckers that I put a bullet through. I want the image burned into all of our brains.”

“Word,” Taz seconded, and then turned to me. “You don’t seem that upset, dawg. I thought you two was homeboys and shit.”

“We are—were. For fuck’s sake, man, he was my best friend! I knew him since we were little kids! I just…fuck it.”

I unwrapped Jimmy’s head and hoisted it by the hair, holding him up in the glow of the lanterns. Several of them gasped, and a few turned away—but not as many as I would have expected.

There was silence for a few seconds while they all got a good look.

“Doesn’t look like it was cut off.” Juan stroked his goatee. “It looks squeezed or something.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I noticed that, too.”

“What would do that?” Nate asked. “What kind of weapon could squeeze his head off? And what’s that weird bruise on his cheek?”

“A jellyfish sting, maybe?” Mike offered.

“Maybe it wasn’t the Satanists,” Taz said, cracking his knuckles. “Could have been a shark or some shit. Bit his head off and swallowed the rest.”

He started humming the Jaws theme, and Ducky and Lashawn broke into wild laughter. For a second, I seriously considered killing all three of them. Juan and Sarah both shot them a dirty look and they shut up.

“Weren’t no shark.”

Salty hovered in the rear, his back to the elevator doors. He lit a cigarette.

“Weren’t no shark,” he repeated. “ ’Twas a Kraken.”

Ducky giggled. “A crackhead?”

“A Kraken,” Salty corrected him, and then grew quiet again.

Mindy looked at Lori and Sarah and rolled her eyes. A few of the others were grinning. But for a moment, Salty reminded me of Quint, from Jaws. I halfexpected him to start showing us his scars.

Juan stared at him. “What the fuck is a Kraken?”

“A mythological beast,” Lee spoke up. “It’s like a giant squid or octopus, except bigger. Much bigger. They show up pretty frequently in the old sea stories. I once had my ninth-graders do a paper on them and other Old World myths.”

“Ain’t no myth, either.” Salty inhaled cigarette smoke, coughed, and then focused on us with his bloodshot eyes. “You’re a smart man, teacher. I’m sure you know all about grammar and famous people and splitting the atom, but you don’t know shit about the sea. There’s been whales that have sucker scars on them the size of truck tires.”

Lee shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well yes, marine researchers have reported that from time to time, but a Kraken? Those were just a legend, based on mariner sightings of the giant squid. There’s nothing in the ocean big enough to pull an entire ship down!”

“Tell that to the crew of the Alecton,” the old man snorted. “Eighteen sixty-one it was, when the Alecton sailed from France to the island of Madeira. Crew saw something round and flat and full of arms. Looked like a tree pulled up by the roots. They decided to catch it. Harpooned the thing and slipped a rope around its tail. Tried hauling it back to port, but it began to rot and they had to let it go. Nobody believed them. Said they were crazy.”

He lit a cigarette, hacked up a wad of phlegm, swallowed it back down, and continued.

“Another washed up on the beach in Dingle-Cosh, Ireland, back in sixteen seventy-three. Had a long body, two huge eyes, and ten tentacles. They say it measured over forty feet long. Carnival owner by the name of James Steward came to see the monster. He cut off two eight-foot sections of tentacle and put ’em on display in his carnival. The rest of the carcass washed out to sea. Nobody believed him, either—said he made it up.”

Everybody sat still, transfixed by the story. Even Taz and Ducky, who could usually be counted on to make a mockery of anything, were quiet.

“During the winter, I used to sit in the library on cold days. I’d read a lot. Wasn’t much else to do. Nobody ever believed them folks, but today, the giant squid is recognized as an animal. Scientists say they live way deep down in the ocean. Biggest one accepted by science was found on November second, eighteen seventy-eight. A fisherman named Sperring and two of his buddies were fishing off the coast of Newfoundland. Spotted something big in the water, bigger than a whale. Thinking it was part of a wrecked ship, they rowed toward it. But when they got closer, they found out the damned thing was alive.”

I drained my can of warm soda, listening.

“It got stranded in the shallows,” Salty continued, “and it was beating at the water with its tail and arms, trying to get back out. Must have been an awful sight. Sperring was spooked by its eyes. He said the eyes looked human, but they were more than a foot and a half across.

“They watched it for a while and saw that it was wounded and weak. Then, just like the crew of the Alecton, they slipped a rope around its tail, and when the tide went out, that thing was high and dry. They cut it up for dog food, but not before a scientist come along and took some measurements. It was at least fifty-seven feet long, from the tip of its tail to the tentacles.”

“That’s a lot of fucking dog food,” Taz snickered.

Salty glowered at him.

Lee cleared his throat. “Those are indeed some fascinating stories, Salty. But that’s all ancient history.”

“Wrong. There were reports of one coming up out of the Chagos Trench in nineteen eighty-five. People stationed at the Navy base in Diego Garcia saw it. Over twenty-five witnesses, and the government had pictures, too. And another one washed up on the beach in St. Augustine in nineteen twenty-seven, and there’re samples of its flesh preserved at the Smithsonian and Yale. I’m sure you’d believe them, teacher.”

Lee shrugged. “I’m familiar with those, but they were simply giant squid. That’s all. As I said, the Kraken myth was based on ancient sightings of those creatures.”

“No, it wasn’t. And they weren’t just giant squid. Those things were the Kraken’s babies.”

“If you guys don’t mind,” I interrupted, “I’d like to go bury my friend now. You can all stay here and play Jacques Cousteau if you want.”

I stalked out of the lobby with Jimmy’s head cradled under my arm. Behind me, Lee and Salty continued to debate nautical myths. I heard some of the others get up, starting to drift away as well.

Lori ran after me. “Kevin?”

“Yeah?” I stopped and turned.

“Are you all right?” She touched my shoulder, and her fingers felt warm. The moment was brief, fleeting, but I relished the sensation. There’s so little warmth these days.

“Sure, I’ll be okay.” I tried a weak smile, and almost managed it.

“I’m here if you need me.”

“I know. I appreciate that. Thanks.”

I left her standing there. Any other time, I would have welcomed her presence. But not then. Not at that moment. I pushed the stairwell door open and walked up one flight to the twentieth floor, listening to my footsteps echo in the shadows. Even in there, the air was damp. Water stains were starting to appear on the ceiling, and black mold grew in patches along the walls. We were going to be in trouble if that continued. But I was too exhausted to worry anymore about it just then.

I exited the stairwell and went to the room at the end of the hall. My room.

My garden.

Originally, it had been a king-sized business suite; the conference room type, with a television built into the wall and lots of space for meetings and parties. The TV didn’t work anymore, and neither did the minifridge behind the bar. But that was okay since I didn’t plan on throwing a party anytime soon.

The room’s best feature was the large skylight in the center of the ceiling. It measured ten feet across, facing out into the gray sky. At night, I’d lie in bed and listen to the rain beat against it. The sound of the rain was always there, day and night, no matter where you went. Eventually, you got used to it and it became nothing but background noise. At night, though, it got pervasive again.

I wasn’t a gardener, but I’d started a garden anyway, directly beneath the skylight. It didn’t matter that there was no sunshine peeking through the clouds. I still wanted to try it. Maybe it was hopeless or perhaps I just wanted to break the monotony. Maybe I thought some ultraviolet rays would creep through and photosynthesis would magically happen. I was also just fucking tired of eating fish, seabirds, and kelp, along with the occasional scavenged bag of potato chips or a can of corn from an abandoned building.

Jimmy and a few of the others had helped me bring some pool tables up from the sixteenth floor. They were the heavy, slate-bottom type, and it had been a full day’s work. We’d placed them beneath the skylight, and then used plywood to shore up their sides. I filled them with what little dirt we could find at the time and added to it when I found more. Now there was a foot of soil layered evenly on top of the tables. We used fish bones, bird feathers, and other organic waste from our catches for fertilizer. The smell was bad, but I’d grown used to it. At one point, Lee suggested we use our own excrement for fertilizer, but I’d balked. I still had to sleep there and wasn’t thrilled at the idea of smelling and tilling through my fellow castaways’ shit.

So far, nothing was growing, except for some potatoes and a few baby pine trees and spider plants that Jimmy and I had scavenged from other buildings. Anna and Sarah used the potatoes sparingly, careful not to deplete them all until we were sure they’d continue growing. On the rare occasions when they did cook with them, they made a wonderful addition to our seafood diet. Desperate for some greens, we’d even debated eating the pine trees and spider plants, but decided we couldn’t. Not yet, at least.

I pulled out the houseplant, the bag of potting soil, and the seed packets that I’d found earlier that day, and then I unwrapped Jimmy’s head. For a moment, I saw him standing there, not so long ago.

He had stooped over a baby pine tree, inhaling the fresh scent.

“Damn, that smells good, dude! I forgot how pine trees smelled.”

“Yeah.” I sipped instant coffee, brewed with saltwater to avoid depleting the fresh water supplies. It tasted like shit, but it was still better than eating the instant coffee with a spoon. “I’d give my left nut to be standing in a pine forest right now, feeling the needle carpet beneath my feet and breathing that in.”

“Hell,” Jimmy had laughed, “while we’re at it, I’d give both nuts to be in bed with Hillary Duff and Britney Spears, and have a nice, rare sirloin steak to go with them. One that’s cold and red in the middle. And maybe a baked potato, too, with butter and sour cream, and an ice-cold beer. God damn, that would hit the spot, wouldn’t it?”

“Fucking aye, brother,” I’d agreed.

“Fucking aye.”

How long ago had that been? It was hard to tell these days. Calendars and holidays seem to have been washed away with the rest of civilization. No one even looks at their watches anymore. At least, I don’t. What does it matter what time it is?

I held up Jimmy’s head and looked him in the eyes.

“Well bro,” I said, “I couldn’t get you the girls or the steak or the beer, but you liked the pine tree, so I guess this will have to do. Sorry, man.”

I dug a hole near one of the baby pine trees and then placed Jimmy’s head in it, covering him up with the potting soil. When I was done, I planted the seeds and moved the houseplant from its tiny pot into the garden. I placed it directly over his head, so that it could feed as it grew.

While I did this, I thought about when we were kids.

I tried really hard to cry, but it didn’t happen.

Across the room, Jimmy’s bed sat empty, the sheets still rumpled from the night before. His things sat nearby, odds and ends he’d gathered during various scavenger trips: automobile and nudie magazines, cigarettes, a boombox and a half-dozen compact discs, toiletries, a half bottle of Jim Beam, and a Rolex that had taken a licking but was no longer ticking.

The room seemed quiet without him. I made sure there were batteries in the boom box and then put in a disc by Pantera. I played “Cemetery Gates,” which had always been Jimmy’s favorite song.

I said good-bye to my friend.

When it was over, I took out Pantera and played some Lewis and Walker. The acoustic guitar melodies washed over me and I closed my eyes, thinking about life before the rains came. It seemed like it had all happened a long time ago, and to someone else, as if I’d seen it in a movie or read it in a book.

I couldn’t remember being dry. Or warm. Or safe.

Later in the night, Lori slipped into my room. I heard the door creak open, and when I rolled over in bed, she stood beside me, wearing a flimsy nylon nightgown. She smiled, and I smiled back. I opened my mouth to speak, but she put a finger to my lips, looking at me with those sad brown eyes in the soft glow of the lantern. She held out her arms and we melted together. Silently, we undressed each other and then, without a word, we made love. Even our orgasms were quiet, despite their intensity. When it was over, I trembled in her arms, but still, I did not cry.

After the tremors subsided, I snuffed out the lantern and we lay there in the dark, in a room smelling faintly of rotting fish and pine trees, until the rain lulled us both to sleep.

For the first time since the rains started, I didn’t have any nightmares.

My dreams were as dry as my eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lori was still sleeping beside me when I woke up. Her honey-brown hair spilled across her face, and I don’t remember ever seeing anything quite so beautiful in my life. She looked so peaceful—but troubled at the same time. Her brow was furrowed, and her eyes darted beneath the lids. I wondered what she was dreaming about. The whole thing seemed unreal. I’d forgotten how good it felt to be with someone. Not just the sex, but to actually have someone there with you, to hear them breathe, feel them move, watch them sleep. I snuggled close to her, shut my eyes, and sniffed her scent. Our musk from the previous night still clung to the bed and I savored it.

So this was love. Or the start of it, at least.

I liked it.

She felt warm—and dry. Dryness had never been erotic before the rains came, but now I couldn’t think of anything more pleasurable.

I wasn’t sure what would happen with us next. I’d been lonely. Sarah was off limits, Mindy had hooked up with Mike, and Anna was out of my age range. I’d been interested in Lori all this time, but so had Jimmy. Because of that, I’d never made a move. Now, Jimmy wasn’t even twenty-four hours in the ground and here was Lori, sleeping next to me.

She stirred, then opened an eye and stretched like a cat.

“Morning.” She smiled, flashing white teeth. Looking back on it now, that was the exact moment I fell in love with her. God, she had a beautiful smile.

Yep. This was love.

And I liked it more and more with each passing moment.

“Morning yourself,” I smiled back. “How’d you sleep?”

“Better than I have in a long time,” she yawned. “You?”

“Amazingly. Especially after—well, you know.” It wasn’t in my nature to play coy, but Lori had a weird effect on me. I glanced at the garden and then back to her. My ears felt hot.

Smiling, Lori nodded in understanding.

We both blushed. Neither of us spoke for a minute.

“You know what’s weird?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“Hmm?”

“Every morning, I still wake up and look at the alarm clock. But, of course, it doesn’t work. I should just throw it out.”

I laughed. “I do that too, sometimes. A few days ago, I was dreaming about life before the rain. When I woke up, I thought I was late for work. Jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and shoes, and then it hit me. There is no more work. The video store is gone. It really bummed me out. Never thought I’d say this, but I actually miss work.”

“I don’t. College maybe, but not work. I miss television—and music, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a lot of good movies they were in the process of making that we’ll never get to see. The third Star Wars, and the remake of High Plains Drifter. It’s just so weird that they’ll never be seen by anyone.”

“I know what you mean.” She snuggled closer. Her breasts brushed against my forearm. Her nipples were erect and I felt myself harden in response.

We grew quiet again, lost in our own thoughts. She felt so warm beside me. I could have happily stayed there all day.

“You know what else I miss?” She said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her.

“What’s that?”

“The sun. I miss waking up and feeling it on my face when it comes through the window, and hearing birds singing outside. The only birds I ever hear now are those damn seagulls.”

“Yeah. Sometimes I can’t remember what the sun felt like. You know what I mean?”

“Mm-hmm.” She stretched again, and as she yawned, the sheet slid down an inch, revealing the dark triangle between her legs. I stiffened even more.

“Lori, about last night…” My voice was thick.

She pressed a finger against my lips. “Don’t say it, Kevin. Don’t say anything. You needed someone. I wanted to be that someone. Neither of us has to explain it or make excuses for it. What happened is what happened.”

I grinned. “Does that mean it can’t happen again?”

Giggling, we disappeared beneath the covers.

Later, I figured we’d go to breakfast together, but Lori went back to her room instead, saying that she wanted to fix herself up. I accepted with a smile and a kiss, but after she left, I wondered if she didn’t want the others to see us together.

Even in a post-apocalyptic world, women were still women, and I still didn’t fucking understand them. Some things don’t change, despite the weather.

The hotel’s restaurant and kitchen on the lower floors were both underwater, so we’d converted one room on the twentieth floor into a galley. When I walked in, Anna and Sarah were hard at work making breakfast, and Juan, Nate, Lee, Mike, and Mindy were already eating. I pulled up a chair and joined them.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Anna said. “Late night?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Juan, Nate, and Lee chuckled. Lee elbowed Juan in the ribs and shoved some bacon into his mouth.

I wondered where the bacon had come from, but before I could ask, Mike interrupted.

“I know so.” He grinned. “Mindy and I heard you guys all night. Hard to sleep with all that racket.”

“Mike! Stop it.” Mindy elbowed him in the ribs, making him wince. She turned to me and said, “My apologies, Kevin. Mike’s being an asshole this morning.”

I felt my ears turning red.

“Sorry,” Mike chuckled, glancing warily at her elbow, poised for another jab. “It’s cool, Kevin. We’re happy for you guys. About time, too. Nice to see that Louis and Christian and the two of us aren’t the only couples.”

Lee sipped his coffee. “Don’t forget the Taz-Ducky-Lashawn triangle.”

“That whole thing’s messed up,” Mindy snorted. “One of these days, Taz is going to figure it out, and Ducky and Lashawn are going to have some serious explaining to do.”

Sarah stirred a pot on the stove. “It’s like a postapocalyptic soap opera.”

“I hope not,” Lee groaned. “It takes a year to resolve the plotlines on those things.”

“If you hadn’t made a play for Lori,” Nate told me, “I would have. Was getting ready to, in fact. You beat me to it.”

“Shit,” Juan muttered. He sipped weak green tea from a recycled and reused tea bag. “I think you’re a little older than what Lori’s looking for, Nate.”

“I’m sorry about Jimmy.” Sarah sat a bowl down in front of me, along with a chipped ceramic mug of instant coffee. “He was a good guy. We’re all going to miss him. He made me laugh.”

“Thanks,” I said simply. I didn’t know what else to say. The lump was back in my throat again. It felt strange not having Jimmy sitting there with us. By now, he’d have been razzing Nate and flirting with Sarah.

I stared at my breakfast—fish stew with a few sparse chunks of potato, one strip of bacon, and some of the canned corn that I’d brought back the day before.

“Where did the bacon come from?” I asked.

Sarah sat down at the table. “Louis hooked a Styrofoam cooler yesterday while he was fishing. Inside was some bacon packed in dry ice and a few cans of soda. The bacon was still good, so enjoy it.”

Lee smirked. “If it really is bacon.”

“Well what else would it be?” Anna asked.

“Maybe you and Sarah are feeding us long pig.”

Anna frowned. “Long pig?”

“That’s what the cannibals used to call the white settlers that they ate.”

Anna made a disgusted face. “That’s sick.”

The others laughed.

I glanced around. “Where are Christian and Louis?”

“I sent them out for salvage duty,” Juan said, mopping up his broth with a cracker. “I figured you might want to take a break today. I hate to ask, but I don’t guess you saw Jimmy’s boat yesterday, did you?”

“Nope, just his—well, you know. His head.”

He chewed his lip. “That’s what I was afraid of. Now we’re down to one boat. We’ll have to see what we can put together.”

Lee stood up. “Well, I’ve got to get started with the kids. You ready, Mindy?”

“Yep!” She stood up and gave Mike a quick peck on the cheek. Then she and Lee left in search of Danielle, James, and Malik. Poor kids. I felt sorry for them. End of the world, and they still had to go to school every day. Lee had set up a classroom in one of the hotel suites and Mindy helped him out. When Anna wasn’t cooking, she’d join them as well.

Nate pushed his bowl away and turned to Juan. “Where do you want me today?”

“I want you on watch duty, actually.”

“Watch? Come on, man. We’ve got Taz, Ducky, Lashawn, and Salty on the roof already, hunting and fishing. Do we really need someone else up there on guard duty?”

Juan took his time finishing his coffee before he answered. He sat the mug back down and gazed into it. “After what happened to Jimmy? Yes, I think we do.”

Nate stared at him for a moment. Then, without a word, he left the room and headed for the roof.

“Prick,” Juan muttered.

I cleared my throat. “What would you like me to do, since Louis and Christian went salvaging?”

“Take the day off. Relax. Don’t do anything at all. Shit, Kevin, your best friend was killed yesterday and you’re the one who found him. I think everybody will understand if you need some time off for a few days.”

“No offense, Juan, but that’s the last thing I want to do. I need something to keep my mind off of it.”

He shrugged. “Okay, if you’re sure. Why don’t you give them a hand up top for now? Mike and I are going to inspect the building for any recent leaks or damage we might not know about. When we’re done, you can help us look below for material to make a new boat or raft. Cool?”

It was. I told them about the water damage I’d noticed in the stairwell the night before, thanked Sarah and Anna for breakfast, and then grabbed my raincoat and went up to the roof.

I don’t remember how or when Juan became the leader of the group. It just sort of happened. Maybe it was because he’d been a Baltimore city cop, or just the way he carried himself, his calm air of self-assuredness. But he was smart, fair, and we rarely argued with him. Occasionally, Taz, Ducky, and Lashawn gave him a hard time, or Nate would get a little haughty, but that was it. I’d always gotten the impression there might be a history between Juan, Taz, Ducky, and Lashawn predating the rain, but I’d never had the nerve to ask. Maybe Juan had busted them at one time for drug dealing or something. Jimmy had suggested that one time and Louis had given him shit about thinking all black people were drug dealers simply because of the color of their skin, but that was bullshit. Taz and Ducky proudly bragged about their street cred all the time. They were proud of dealing drugs.

Anyway, they had new jobs now. We all did. Lee and Mindy taught the kids in the makeshift school. Anna helped them out and gave Sarah a hand preparing our meals. Jimmy and I usually had salvage duty, switching off with Mike and Nate when the need arose. Salty was in charge of fishing, helped by Louis and Christian. Taz, Ducky, Lashawn, and Lori did odd chores where needed. And of course, we all took turns on guard duty.

I walked out onto the roof, blinking as a gust of cold rain blew into my face. Salty and Nate stood at opposite sides of the roof, holding deep sea rods and carefully watching their lines for a bite.

Taz and Ducky were feeding the birds.

The Alka-Seltzer had been Salty’s idea, one he’d suggested when Juan stressed that we needed to save ammunition to defend ourselves from the Satanists and couldn’t use it all up shooting seagulls. Our initial skepticism at Salty’s solution vanished when we saw the results.

Taz and Ducky stood in the middle of the roof, the rain beating down on their heads, while a large flock of seagulls circled above. Their slim white and gray bodies glided gracefully out over the water and then back to where the two men stood.

The guys threw a mixture of fish guts and other food scraps into the air, and the shrieking gulls darted forward, snatching the morsels before they came back down. Once they had the birds’ attention, they tossed up a handful of Alka-Seltzer tablets. The birds lunged for these, too, gobbling them up as quickly as Taz and Ducky could throw them.

Then they let nature take its course.

“Rats wit’ fucking wings, yo!” Ducky said to me as I walked toward them. “What’s up, playa?”

“Figured I’d give you guys a hand,” I said. “How’s it going?”

Ducky threw another handful of tablets into the air.

“Here comes the boom.” Taz leered, watching intently. “Ka-blam!”

According to Salty, a bird’s digestive system was different than a human being’s. Since it couldn’t burp or fart, the Alka-Seltzer sat in its stomach, fizzing away, until the gas and foam built up to the point where it had nowhere to go. The bird’s stomach would then expand beyond its limits and pop.

There was no explosion of blood and feathers, nothing so gruesome. The seagulls faltered, becoming so bloated that they could no longer fly, and then plummeted to the roof, foaming at the beak and making a horrible sound. At this point, Taz and Ducky stomped on their heads with their boots, ending the creatures’ struggles.

It was quick and easy, and it was much easier to find Alka-Seltzer in the ruins than it was bullets (one of the buildings still above water had a pharmacy inside) and simpler to kill the birds by feeding them the stuff than trying to get a bead on a moving target. We’d tried Salty’s method on the occasional duck and goose as well, when we saw them passing through, and it worked just the same.

When it was over, nine carcasses lay on the wet roof.

“Nice shooting,” I said. “Look’s like we got enough for a couple days.”

“Yeah,” Taz pulled out his pocketknife and began gutting the kills. “Gonna get these things cleaned up, then take ’em down to Anna and Sarah. Now if you could find some motherfucking barbecue sauce or some hot sauce while you’re out scavenging shit, we could have ourselves a real dinner!”

The rest of the gulls had flown away, screeching their displeasure. I knew from experience that they’d be back within minutes.

Hands shoved into his pockets, Ducky moved towards the door.

“Yo, Ducky,” Taz called. “Where you going, playa?”

The smaller man jumped, his shoulders jerking. He turned and smiled, but his eyes were nervous.

“Just figured I’d go see what Lashawn and Lori are up to. See if they need some help.”

“Man, fuck that. They’re okay. You need to help me clean these seagulls, dog.”

“I’m getting wet, Taz!”

“You ain’t been dry since this shit started. Go on, with your punk ass self. Kevin can help me instead.”

Ducky vanished down the stairwell. The wind slammed the door shut behind him. I wondered how many minutes it would be before he and Lashawn were engaged in a quickie, frantically screwing before Taz finished his task and came to look for them. For a moment, I considered going to find Lori and engaging in a quickie ourselves, but I decided against it. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her off.

Instead, I helped Taz field dress the birds, slicing them open and pulling out their insides. Steam billowed from the wounds. We dropped the guts into a slop bucket, already half full with rainwater in the brief time we’d been outside. They would be recycled, either as fish bait or fertilizer for my garden. Later on, Sarah and Ann would remove the feathers and finish the preparations. Salty was an expert at fly-tying, so the feathers would then be recycled into fishing lures.

“Nasty job,” I commented, wiping the sticky blood from my hands. Steam rose from the gutted carcass at my feet.

Taz shrugged and slid his knife through a bird’s belly. “I don’t mind. The blood keeps my hands warm.”

“I never thought of it that way,” I admitted. “But it makes sense.”

“I hate the cold. Never did like it. Winter always sucked ass. But you notice something?”

“What?”

“It’s like, August and shit, at least according to my calendar. But it’s fucking cold. Colder than it should be in the summer, you know? Why you think that is?”

I shrugged. “I guess the clouds are blocking out the sun.”

“Gonna be a rough fucking winter, if that’s the case, yo. We need to start thinking about ways to keep warm. Course, now that you and Lori are knocking boots, you shouldn’t have any problems.”

“Jesus Christ! You know about that too?”

He laughed. “Shit, dude, the whole damn building knows about it. Ya’ll made enough noise last night. Sounded like a porno movie.”

I sighed and shook my head. My ears burned.

Still chuckling, Taz took the gutbucket and the cleaned birds inside. After he was gone, I crossed over to Salty’s side of the roof. The end of his fishing rod drooped sullenly over the railing, droplets of water rolling off it. I noticed he wasn’t watching the line. Instead, he stared out to sea. His eyes had a lost, faraway look, and he was standing in a puddle. Water seeped over the tops of his boots, but he didn’t seem to care.

“Any bites?” I asked.

He shrugged. “A few nibbles. Got one sea bass, but it had the White Fuzz growing on it, so I had to cut the line. Later in the day, it’ll be better. Fish aren’t hungry right now.”

“That’s no good.”

“At least we haven’t hooked another dead baby.”

I nodded. Early on, after we’d just set up shop inside the hotel, Jimmy had accidentally hooked a dead infant with his fishing rod. It must have been in the ocean for quite some time, because it fell apart as he reeled it up onto the roof. I can still see it in my mind—one tiny arm hanging by a thin shred of muscle or tendon, fish bites pocking the white, bloated flesh. That had left all of us shaken, even the hard cases like Taz, Ducky, and Juan.

The old man sniffed the salty breeze. “Listen, Kevin, I’m sorry about your mate. He was a good lad, Jimmy was.”

“Yeah, he was. Thanks, Salty.”

“It’s a real shame what happened to him.”

I was quiet for a moment, considering my words carefully. “Salty, I like you. And more importantly, I respect you. But do you really believe that was what got him? A fucking Kraken?”

“Of course I do, boy. Saw the proof with my own eyes, same as you did.”

“Granted, it looked weird, but I still don’t see how a tentacle could have done that.”

“Hurricane Agnes, nineteen seventy-two.”

“Huh?”

“Hurricane Agnes,” he repeated, and then spit over the side. “It come roaring up the East Coast, raising hell in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland—even as far inland as central Pennsylvania. I was still in the Navy then. At the time, I was assigned to an LPD, the U.S.S. Miller, out of Pier Six in Norfolk. I was too smart to be a bosun’s mate, and too dumb to be a radioman, so they put me on the signal bridge.”

He gazed out over the waves as he talked. I followed his glance in time to see a school of dolphins frolicking over what had once been an on-ramp to Interstate 83. I’d driven over that ramp many times, before the rains.

“The hurricane, she come out of nowhere and headed up the coast like a banshee. They put all of us that wasn’t in dry dock out to sea, double-time. I’d drawn the unlucky watch, while my mates stayed below. I was huddled up in the signal bridge, cold and wet and miserable and thinking about home.

“We were off the coast, somewhere near Little Creek, trying to outrace the storm. I was out of cigarettes, but a friend of mine, Danny Ward, who worked down in CIC, dipped Copenhagen, and the CIC center was on the deck below me. Figured I’d nip below, bum a pinch from Danny and be back up topside before anybody was the wiser. I stepped out, struggled in the wind, and the ship rolled on me. Thank God there was a rail or I’d have gone over the side, into the drink. Instead of falling into the ocean, I slid into the rail and held on for dear life while the ship rolled with the wave. That was when I saw it.”

Something silver flashed in the water in front of the dolphins. A school of fish. I tore my eyes away and focused on Salty.

“I didn’t see all of it—don’t think I could have. It was that big. I was clutching that rail, waiting for the deck to hold still, when I spied a huge form—gray and pale and slick. It wasn’t a whale, which is what I thought at first. The thing rocketed up out of the water and I stumbled back. It just kept going up and up—a tentacle the size of an oak tree. It waved in the air, and then darted towards where I was standing. I crawled back as far as I could go, and it crashed into the rail a second later. The rail bent under its weight. The thing wriggled around, feeling the deck, searching for me like a big old rubbery worm. I screamed, but nobody heard me. It crawled closer. Then the ship rolled again, and it was gone, disappearing back into the spray. I’d never been more scared in my life.

“I learned later, from another mate of mine, Greg Blumenthal, that they’d picked up a large object coming toward the ship. But nothing else ever came of it. Nobody mentioned it again and I never told anyone, either. Not even Greg or Danny. Never breathed a word, until now.”

I was quiet, not knowing what to say or how to respond. Salty slicked his wet, thinning hair back across his scalp and smiled at me. The rain ran down his face in rivulets.

“You understand why I’m telling you this, Kevin?”

“I’m not sure, but I have a good idea.”

“Guess you think I’m senile, huh?”

“No.” I shook my head. “To be honest, Salty, I don’t know what to think. But I don’t think you’re crazy, if that helps.”

“Well,” he shrugged, and turned away. “There it is. That’s my tale. Do with it what you want. I’ve got to get some more tackle and bait.”

Another bird landed on the roof, just a few feet away from us, begging for fish guts. I stomped my boot to scare it away, but Salty stopped me.

“Don’t. It’s an albatross.”

“So?”

“You need to respect it, lad. Bad luck if you harm it, or scare it away.”

I smiled. “Why is that, Salty?”

“The poem. The one by that Coleridge fella. An albatross is good to have when you’re at sea.”

“True.” Then I surprised him with my own knowledge of nautical legend. “But did you know that the assistant navigator on the Titanic was named Albert Ross?”

Salty grunted. “Is that a fact?”

“It is indeed. Guess he wasn’t so lucky to have around.”

“I don’t get it.” He frowned.

“Albert Ross,” I repeated, slowly. “Albatross. Get it now?”

Salty laughed, loud and boisterously. Then he walked away, splashing through the puddles and was almost across the roof when he turned and called to me again.

“One other thing, Kevin. That tentacle I told you about…”

“Yeah?”

“The suckers had teeth in ’em. Sharp little teeth. They weren’t suckers at all.”

“What were they?”

“Mouths. The suckers were little mouths.”

He disappeared through the door.

Nate sidled up beside me. He’d been quiet until now, keeping his distance and eavesdropping on us.

“You believe that shit?” he asked. “The old man has clearly lost his mind. Don’t tell me you buy into that fish story?”

I shrugged. I didn’t care much for Nate. He was pompous and arrogant, and even after all this time, still carried himself as if he were better than most of us. Somehow, the fact that his fully tricked-out Audi, brand new condo, and enormous expense account were gone hadn’t fully settled on him yet.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not, but then again, I never believed the story of Noah, either, and now look around us.”

His laughter was sharp and brittle.

“I’m guessing you don’t believe him?” I asked.

“Of course not,” he said. “For Christ’s sake, Kevin! A giant tentacle with mouths for suckers? The rain is one thing, but that? It’s crazy.” He shook his head.

“Stranger things have happened, man. And you heard what Lee said yesterday. There are such things as giant squid. This could be some sort of genetic mutation or something.”

“Maybe. But it’s more likely that old man is just nuts. Alzheimer’s, I’m guessing. And if he is, then what’s to stop him from hurting himself—or one of us? Are you willing to take that chance? What if he snaps and goes after one of the kids?”

“Oh, come on!” Anger welled up inside of me. “Senility doesn’t make somebody fucking homicidal.”

“He’s talking crazy, Kevin!” He snorted, clearing his sinuses, and then spit out over the roof. We watched the falling wad of phlegm as it dropped toward the water below.

“So,” he said, changing the subject, “let’s get back to you and Lori. Tell me this—is she any good in the sack?”

“What the fuck? Does everybody need to know every minute detail between the two of us? Are you people that starved for gossip?”

“Chill out. I was just wondering, man.”

“It’s none of your fucking business, dude.”

“She’s a cute one,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard me. “Like I said, I was going to make a play for her myself, but—”

Suddenly, Nate cocked his head sideways and jumped as if startled. He dropped the fishing rod and picked up the rifle. “Did you see that?”

He stared out at the water, craning his head back and forth. The tide tugged on his fishing line.

“What was it?” I asked.

“Nothing.” He sounded embarrassed.

“Dude, what the hell did you see?”

“It’s nothing! I thought for a second that I saw a woman out there. It—it sounded like she was singing.”

It actually wasn’t that farfetched. There could have been somebody out there. Another castaway, stranded when her vessel overturned or her dry patch got flooded out. I scanned the ocean but saw nothing. Even the dolphins and the seagulls had mysteriously disappeared.

“A singing woman? You sure she wasn’t shouting for help instead?”

“No,” His eyes seemed troubled, his voice barely a whisper. “She was singing, man. I’m sure of it. It was—beautiful. Very soft…”

“Well, she’s not there now.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “She was naked. She had long blond hair, like Sarah’s, and a huge pair of…” He held his cupped hands out in front of his chest, then stopped.

“A naked, singing blonde with big tits.” I giggled, unable to help myself. “Was it midnight on the water? Did you see the ocean’s daughter?”

He stared at me, uncomprehending.

“ELO, man! Electric Light Orchestra? Didn’t you ever hear that oldie, ’Can’t Get It Out of My Head’? Midnight on the water. I saw the ocean’s daughter?” I sang a few more lines, but he turned back to the ocean.

“Fuck you, Kevin.” He put down the rifle and picked up his fishing rod, reeled in the line, and walked farther along the rooftop.

“Hey,” I called after him. “Now you’re the one that’s talking crazy!”

“I know what I saw,” he said over his shoulder. “So knock your shit off.”

He stalked to the other side and cast the line out again. His shoulders were tense, his jaw clenched.

I stared back out at the water again, but all I saw were the raindrops coming down and the waves rising up to greet them.

I went back inside and looked for Lori, but she was busy doing laundry with Lashawn and Sarah, and I didn’t want to intrude on them. Even now, I still wasn’t sure how to act around her—especially since it appeared that everybody knew about us. I wondered if Sarah and Lashawn were giving her a hard time, the way the guys had given me.

Later in the day, Mike, Juan, and I went down to the lower levels, searching for materials to build another boat. The lower levels always gave me the creeps. If you stood still, you could feel the ocean pressing against the sides of the building. It was eerily quiet. The only good thing about the stillness was that since we were below the surface, the constant sound of the rain was noticeably absent.

We’d found a round, wooden coffee table that looked promising, and Mike and I were lifting it when he suddenly stopped.

“Too heavy?” I asked.

He didn’t reply.

“Mike?”

He sat his end of the table down. “Did you guys hear something?”

Juan shrugged. “Not me. Why, what did you hear?”

“Voices,” Mike whispered. “Or a voice.”

“Down here?” I asked, sitting my end down as well.

“I’m not sure.”

All three of us listened, but heard nothing.

We picked the table back up, struggling to move it. Damn thing was heavy. Mike started humming “Riders On The Storm” by The Doors.

Juan opened his mouth to speak and then froze.

Somebody else was singing, too.

The voice was beautiful. Melodious and faint and definitely female, that much was certain. I couldn’t understand the words, but I felt them. As I listened, my grief for Jimmy disappeared, along with everything else. I forgot about Lori and the rain and our predicament. The voice made me feel good. Alive. It had a calming, hypnotic effect. I wanted to get closer, so I could understand what was being said. Mesmerized, I shuffled forward.

“What the fuck is that?” Juan whispered.

“One of the girls,” Mike guessed, “playing a joke on us? Sarah, maybe?”

I shook my head. “That’s not Sarah. Whatever it is, it’s coming from the other side of that wall.”

“What’s on the other side?” Mike asked.

Juan and I looked at each other.

“The ocean,” I said.

“Bullshit.” Mike shook his head.

“He’s right,” Juan insisted. “Think about it. We’re at least fifteen feet below the surface right now.”

The singing grew louder.

“So then what the fuck is that?”

“Somebody’s in the water!” Mike shouted. “It’s a chick’s voice. There’s a woman out there.”

“A castaway?” Juan asked. “How’s she singing underwater?”

Mike stepped around the table. “I don’t fucking know, man! But you heard her, too.”

“Maybe we’d better go see,” I suggested.

“Good idea,” Juan agreed.

I remembered what Nate thought he’d seen—a naked blond woman, singing in the water. I started to tell Juan, but he was already running for the stairs. Mike and I dashed after him.

The others came out when they heard us thundering up the stairwell and we told them what was going on. They all followed us up to the roof. We ran through the door and into the rain. We startled Salty and he almost dropped his fishing rod.

Nate whirled around, his rifle at the ready. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Have you seen anything?” Juan asked.

“It’s been raining,” Salty chuckled. “Oh, and some birds flew overhead, looking for Alka-Seltzer. But other than that, no.”

“What’s going on?” Nate asked again.

Juan and Mike ran to the edge of the roof and looked out over the water.

Salty frowned. “What are you lads doing?”

“We were down below,” Juan said, “and we heard a woman. Sounded like she was outside, in the water.” He turned back to the group. “Were any of you down on the lower levels?”

They shook their heads.

“I knew it!” Nate stomped his feet. “I told you I saw something out there, Kevin!”

Juan glanced at me. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

“Earlier today,” Nate told him, “when Kevin was out here, I thought I saw a woman in the water. She was singing. And she was nude.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Lee scoffed. “First Salty with his mother of all squids and now this?”

Nate’s ears turned red. “Listen asshole, I know what I saw!”

Lee refused to back down. “Be rational, man. Even if there were somebody out there, how long would she last? Do you have any idea how cold that water is or how rough those seas are?”

“You calling me a liar?” Nate stepped towards him, his fists clenched.

“Back off, man,” Lee warned him.

“Or what?”

“Keep it up and you’ll find out.”

Juan stepped between them. “That’s enough, both of you. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want the watch doubled. Taz and Ducky, you guys relieve Salty and Nate. Sarah, I want you and Lashawn out here with them.”

Little Malik stepped forward, clutching Anna’s hand. “It’s the fish lady.”

“What?” Juan asked.

“The fish lady,” the boy repeated. “I see her sometimes at night when I sleep. She sings to me.”

“Me too,” James echoed. “She makes me miss my mommy. She used to sing to me at night, too.”

Juan took a deep breath. “Okay. Taz, Ducky, Lashawn, and Sarah, you guys are on watch. Everybody else, head down to the common area. We need to talk about this in detail.”

“Yo,” Taz called, “what do we do if we see this naked bitch?”

“I know what I’m gonna do.” Ducky grinned, rubbing his crotch. “I’m gonna get me some pussy.”

“Great,” Sarah muttered under her breath. “Juan, why did you stick me with these assholes?”

“Hey!” Taz protested.

“Because Christian and Louis aren’t back yet,” Juan told her. “If they don’t get back soon, I’ll send Kevin or Mike up.”

Dripping, we followed him downstairs, shrugged out of our rain gear, and took our seats.

“Okay,” Juan said, shaking the water from his hair, “anybody else hear or see this mysterious woman?”

Nobody spoke.

“All right. Nate, give me a rehash. Tell us exactly what you saw.”

“Kevin and I were out on the roof, talking about what Salty said last night, and I heard somebody singing. When I glanced out at the ocean, just for a second, I saw a woman.”

He paused, lost in thought, and then continued.

“She was beautiful. She had long, blond hair, and even though she was far away, I could see her eyes very clearly. It was weird. Felt like her eyes were looking right through me.”

“And she was singing?” Juan asked.

“She was singing. Then she vanished beneath the waves.”

“And that’s all?”

“That’s it.” Nate glanced at Lee, but Lee didn’t challenge him this time.

“Kevin,” Juan said, turning to me, “did you see this woman, too?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything. To be honest, I thought Nate was full of shit. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“Apology accepted,” Nate grumbled.

Juan knelt down and looked at the kids.

“James. Malik. What did you guys mean up on the roof, when you said you’d heard a lady singing to you?”

They stared at the floor and shuffled their feet nervously.

“Go on, boys,” Anna urged, “it’s okay. Tell us.”

“The fish lady,” Malik began, not looking up. “I dream about her every night. She sings outside my window, and tells me to jump in the water. I…I tried, but I’m not strong enough to get the window open. I’m too little.”

The regret in his voice was almost heartbreaking. The windows weren’t designed to open, so that Baltimore’s elite wouldn’t take a swan dive after a bad day on the stock market. But a kid like Malik wouldn’t have known that.

“Malik,” Juan prodded gently, “why does she want you to jump in the water?”

“She said that she would teach me how to swim. And when she talks, I can’t help it. I have to do what she says.”

A shadow crossed his face. When he spoke again, his voice was choked. “She’s a nice lady—but scary, too.”

Juan turned to James. “You’ve seen her as well?”

He nodded. “Yes sir. At night. I heard Malik talking to her through the window. That’s when I first saw her. She said if we came down, she’d give me a big hug like my mom used to.”

“We tried to—” Malik began, but the older boy shot him a warning glance.

“Tried to what?”

Malik was silent.

“Boys,” Juan sighed, “you’re not in trouble, okay? But I need you to tell us the truth. What did you try to do? Open the window?”

Malik shook his head. “No. When we couldn’t get the window open, we tried to sneak out onto the roof one night. She said she’d be waiting for us, down in the water. We didn’t want to go, but we couldn’t help it. So we snuck out of our room while everybody was sleeping. But when we got up to the roof, Taz and Ducky were standing guard and they told us to go back to bed.”

“And those idiots never thought to mention it to the rest of us,” Juan muttered. “Boys, when did you first start seeing this lady?”

“Just a few nights ago,” James whispered. “Malik’s seen her four times, and me only two.”

“Danielle,” Sarah interrupted, “have you seen this lady too?”

“No,” Danielle picked up her doll and began combing its hair. “Girls can’t hear the fish lady. Just boys.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what she told Malik and James. They told me, and I thought they were making it up to play a trick on me. So they asked her and the fish lady told them I couldn’t see her.”

Lori spoke up. “So why do you guys call her the fish lady?”

Malik said, “Because she doesn’t have any legs. Just a tail like a fish.”

None of us knew what to make of their story. It was impossible to tell where the truth ended and childhood imagination began. But Juan, Mike, and I had all heard something, and Nate had seen a figure in the water.

After dinner, Lori and I went back to my room. I checked the garden while she lounged on the bed, reading an out of date issue of Cosmopolitan.

“So what do you think, Kevin?” she asked.

“I think this houseplant is going to do fine,” I said, gently fingering the leaves, checking for brown patches. “I just wish I knew what it actually is. I’d love to find a book that identifies plants. We’ll have to wait a few more days to see what happens with the seeds I planted.”

She rolled up the magazine and swatted at me. I grabbed her arm, pulled her off the bed and we collapsed to the floor, wrestling with one another. Our laughter turned into a kiss—long, soft, and lingering.

“I’m not talking about the garden,” she said with a smile, lying on top of me. “I’m talking about this ’fishlady.’ What do you think?”

“Well, if it was just Nate, I’d say he’s cracking under the strain, and if it were just the kids, I’d say they were having bad dreams. But all of them together, plus what happened with…” I glanced at the mound of dirt covering Jimmy’s head. “With what happened yesterday—I don’t know anymore. It’s like reality and fantasy are blending, you know? I can accept the rain, and I can accept the Satanists. I can even consider the possibility of Salty’s giant sea monster. But mermaids? That’s pretty fucking hard to swallow.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, her breath tickling my ear. “It does seem a little far-fetched. But these days, I’m willing to believe just about anything.”

She pointed to the skylight. The rain drummed against it, obscuring the sky.

“A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed that it would just start raining one day and never stop.”

I looked into her eyes. “A year ago, I wouldn’t have believed I could be with a girl as beautiful as you.”

She sat up on top of me, her pelvis cradling mine. She grinned, gave me a playful squeeze, and then got to her feet. “So you really think stuff’s going to grow in here without direct sunlight?”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “It’s worked pretty good so far.”

“Yeah, I’ve got to admit, it has.”

She flopped back down on the bed and opened up the magazine. I turned back to the plants.

“When were you born, Kevin?”

“September twenty-second. Why?”

“I’m reading the horoscopes.” She scanned a few pages and then smiled. “Hey, you’re a water sign. That’s pretty appropriate, isn’t it?”

“I guess so. A little fucking dark though, don’t you think?”

She giggled.

I tilled the surface soil with my fingers, carefully avoiding Jimmy’s resting place.

Lori was quiet for a moment, and then she made a small sound in her throat.

I turned. She was frowning.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.” She snapped the magazine shut.

“Come on, Lori. What is it?”

“The magazine. It—it said that we’re destined for a doomed relationship.”

“Really? It says that?”

She nodded, chewing her lip.

“Who the fuck writes those things? Jesus—I thought they were just supposed to tell you good stuff.”

She gave me a weak half-smile, and I pressed on.

“Come on. Who cares what a year-old magazine says anyway? I don’t think we’re doomed. Do you?”

She hesitated before she answered. “No.”

Brushing the dirt from my hands, I lay down next to her, stroking her hair and gazing into her troubled eyes.

“Lori, when this started, I wondered what the sense was in staying alive. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about just ending it all. I mean, what’s the point? The fucking world is flooding and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop. I felt that way again yesterday, when I found Jimmy. He was my best friend, my last link to my old life. With him gone, there just didn’t seem to be a point to life anymore.”

She started to speak, but I pressed a finger to her lips.

“But you make me want to stay alive, Lori. You are the point. You’re my reason now.”

I kissed her again.

“Kevin,” she breathed. Her body was trembling, her eyes filled with emotion. “You haven’t said much about what happened with Jimmy. If you want to talk, I’m here for you. Or if you want to cry.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. Right now, it still hurts too much to talk about it. As for crying, well, I don’t cry. You might as well know that now.”

“I’m serious.” She frowned. “You don’t need to impress me, so stop with the macho stuff already. If you need to cry, it’s okay. I’m here.”

“Lori, I’m serious, too. I don’t cry. I’ve never been able to.” I told her about my grandma’s funeral and everything, and she said that was sad, but that she understood.

But despite the emotional pain, I did open up and talk about Jimmy. I told her about the first time Jimmy and I met (playing with Hot Wheels together in the dirt lot between our houses), and what it was like growing up together, fights we had with our parents, the crazy shit we did in high school, those sort of things. Then she told me about her best friend and her parents and her brothers and sisters, and the guy she’d been dating when the rain started.

When we were finished, we made love again. It was better this time, perfect in fact. It was everything I’d ever seen in movies and read about in books—love-making on an epic scale. Maybe that sounds corny to you, but that’s what it was. I’d never felt this way with anyone else. Our relationship was less than twenty-four hours old, but we were already learning our way around each other’s bodies. We both lasted a long time, and when it was over, we lay there, holding each other and listening to the rain beat against the skylight.

I almost fell out of bed when the pounding started. Somebody was at the door.

“Kevin? Lori? Open up.”

Juan. The door shook in its frame as he hammered at it again.

“Kevin! Wake up, man. We’ve got trouble! Are you in there?”

“Yeah! Hang on a second!” I struggled into my boxer shorts and jeans, and Lori pulled the sheets up around her, concealing her nakedness.

I opened the door. Juan stood there, his eyes wide and frantic. He grabbed my shoulder and the strength and urgency in his grip made me cringe.

“What’s up? What’s going on?” I asked.

He took a deep breath. “It’s Louis and Christian.”

“Yeah? Are they finally back?”

“No.”

I frowned.

Juan’s face had grown pale. “The Satanists have them.”

CHAPTER NINE

Anna kept the kids inside, despite their protests and insistence that they should be allowed to go outside and see what was going on. The rest of us ran out onto the roof. I think that most of us didn’t want to see, but at the same time, we were unable to help ourselves. Christian and Louis were our friends, and in some strange, fucked up way, we owed it to them. We were obligated to bear witness.

The group crowded around the edge and took turns with the telescope. Lee accepted it from Mike, put his eye to it, and the color instantly drained from his face. Without uttering a word, he handed it to me.

I looked and felt my stomach fall out from under me. A dozen Satanists milled around on the Trade Center’s roof, waiting for darkness to fall. Some of them carried wet kindling in preparation for the bonfire to come. Others were securing the evening’s sacrifices.

The evening’s sacrifices being Louis and Christian.

I recognized them even from a distance, through the blurry, raindrop-distorted image in the telescope. Their hands and legs were bound with heavy chains, the ends of which were secured to cinder blocks. In addition to Louis and Christian, there was a young woman with a baby, not more than a few weeks old. I watched as the baby began to cry, squirming helplessly in its captor’s grasp, and then I could watch no more. The look of terror etched on both the baby and the mother’s faces made me sick to my stomach. I closed my eyes and handed the telescope off to Sarah.

She pursed her lips. “Oh my God…”

“Those motherfuckers,” Taz growled. “Those dirty, evil motherfuckers!”

“What are we going to do?” Mindy whimpered.

As usual, we all turned to Juan for guidance. He was trying to light a cigarette, but the rain kept putting it out. Giving up, he flung the soggy butt into the wind. A seagull darted for it. He watched the shrieking bird snatch the cigarette and wheel away, and then he met our eyes.

“Do? We’re going to go get them back.”

“Word!” Ducky pounded his fist into his palm. “That’s what I’m talking about. Put a hurtin’ on their ass.”

“Some Rambo-style shit,” Taz agreed. “Bust in, break some off, and bring them home.”

“I’m up for it,” Sarah said.

Mike stepped forward. “Count me in, too.”

“Are you crazy?” Mindy shouted. “That’s suicide! How many of them are over there?”

Mike took her hand in his. “It doesn’t matter, honey. Juan’s right. We’ve got to try. This is Louis and Christian we’re talking about.”

“You’ll be slaughtered! Then what will I—the rest of us—do?”

“Goddamn it, Mindy.” Mike’s face turned red. “Those are our friends over there! What do you want me to do? Stand here and watch while they get butchered? I’m going along to help!”

“No, you’re not,” Juan told him. “And neither are you, Sarah. But me, Kevin, Taz, and Ducky are going to.”

I jumped when I heard my name. “Me?”

“Why not?” Mike asked. “You can’t just expect me to stand here while Christian and Louis are their captives.”

“I can and I do,” Juan said. “You’ve got a woman here that loves you, Mike. And more importantly, I trust you. Let’s be honest here. Chances are I’m not going to make it back, and if that happens, I need you to take over here. Somebody needs to lead and my choice is you.”

“Well then why the hell do Taz and Ducky have to go?” Lashawn angrily jabbed a finger at Lee. “Send Mr. Science here instead.”

“Hey,” Lee shouted back, “don’t call me Mr. Science, bitch!”

Taz took a step towards him. “Don’t call her bitch, motherfucker.”

Lee refused to back down. “Or what, you two-bit thug? Tell me! What are you going to do about it?”

“You best get the fuck out of my mug,” Taz warned him. “Unless you want to get your fucking face split. You ain’t messing with Nate now.”

Juan sighed. “Both of you knock it off.”

Sarah frowned at him. “I still don’t see why I can’t go. I’m just as capable as the rest of you. Is this because of some bullshit macho creed or something? Because if that’s what it is, Juan, then—”

I could see the anger building in Juan seconds before he snapped.

“All of you shut the hell up, right fucking now!”

Shocked into silence, they waited for him to speak. He stood there on the roof, his chest heaving, rain dripping from his face, fists balled in rage. Slowly, he unclenched them and his voice returned to a normal tone.

“Now that I have your attention, here’s how we are going to play it. Despite what you might think, this is not a democracy and it is not open for debate. Those things died with the rest of our civilization. Welcome to Juan’s world.”

Sarah opened her mouth, but he cut her off again.

“You’ve all trusted me up to this point and you’ll have to trust me now. Sarah, Mike, and Lee have talents that are irreplaceable to the group. I need them here in case something happens to us. Taz and Ducky are used to guns and violence. I need them with me, for what we are about to do. We’re not going over there to sell Girl Scout cookies, people.”

“But why does Kevin have to go?” Lori whispered, so softly that we almost didn’t hear her above the rain.

Juan grinned. “Because I like him. And because I think he might like to pay those sick fuckers back for what happened to Jimmy.”

I tried to smile back, but my mouth didn’t want to work. I felt sick inside. My stomach was a ball of lead.

Salty, who’d been hiding in the back of the crowd and standing under some ductwork to block the rain, stepped forward. “Wasn’t the Satanists that did that to Jimmy.”

“Not now, Salty,” Anna whispered.

“You’re forgetting something,” Sarah pointed out to Juan. “Louis and Christian took the last boat, and now the Satanists have that, too. So how will you get over to the Trade Center?”

Juan’s shoulders sank.

“Shit!” Mike threw his hands up in frustration. “God damn it, she’s right, Juan! What the hell do we do now? You can’t swim over there.”

“Why don’t you use those washtubs?” Salty suggested.

“What?” Juan blinked at him.

“Those plastic washtubs downstairs,” Salty said. “They float. Just strap ‘em together with rope.”

Juan glanced at Mike. “Would they hold us?”

“I think so. We haven’t exactly been eating well.” He sized up Juan, Taz, Ducky, and me. “None of you are small guys, but you’ve all lost weight. I think it would work.”

“No,” Lee said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. What happens if you guys start sinking halfway there? All it would take is one big wave to flood those things. Then you’d be stranded in the water—or worse.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Juan asked.

“We build a raft, and quickly. It doesn’t have to be anything permanent. Just enough to get you guys there and back again.”

“Do we have time to build something like that?”

Lee glanced at the sky. “I think so. It’s hard to tell exactly when sunrise and sunset occur, but I’ve noticed that they don’t start their ceremonies until well after dark. We’ve got at least an hour. Maybe even an hour and a half.”

“All right,” Juan barked. “Taz, Ducky, Kevin—you guys come with me. The rest of you help Lee out and give him a hand putting the raft together. Lee, you’re in charge. Nate, you stay up here and keep an eye on the Trade Center. Holler quick if it looks like they’re starting without us.”

Nate didn’t reply.

“Nate?” Juan stepped towards him. “You hear me?”

Distracted, Nate stared out over the water.

Juan put a hand on his shoulder. “Nate? You okay?”

“Yeah,” Nate shook his head as if trying to clear it. “Just tired is all.”

Juan studied him a second longer, then took me by the arm and led Taz, Ducky, and me back inside. Taz and Ducky ran off to their room to fetch their guns. I followed Juan to his suite. It looked like a tornado had hit it. Dirty clothing and bed linens lay tossed about and food wrappers, empty beer bottles, and other debris littered the floor. There was an overflowing trash can in the corner.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, embarrassed. “Housekeeping hasn’t been by lately.”

“I think you should complain to the front desk.” I grinned, but he must have seen the fear in my eyes.

“Kevin, look—you’ll be okay. The truth is, I need you along on this. I don’t trust Taz and Ducky one hundred percent, and I need somebody to watch my back in case they try to smoke some pork along with the bad guys. I know how it is now, but I also know that back in the day, I was a cop and they were gangbangers. Old loyalties die hard and I’m still not sure where they stand. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.” I felt like puking, and the blood drained from my face.

Juan noticed it. “Seriously, man. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine.”

He pulled open the closet door and brought out a very mean-looking rifle.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This is an M-16 assault rifle. I actually prefer the M-1 Garand. It’s a lot more reliable, especially in rapid-fire situations. But this is all I brought with me, and beggars can’t be choosers. I’ve kept it cleaned and serviced, so hopefully it won’t jam on me. These are my extra magazines. They hold the bullets.”

“I knew that. I’ve seen movies.”

“Okay then,” he chuckled and pulled out another piece of equipment. “Know what this is?”

“An elephant gun?”

He laughed. “Not quite. This beauty is an M-203 grenade-launcher. I can install it on the M-16. And these little babies here are antipersonnel ammunition for it.”

“Antipersonnel ammunition?”

“Grenades.”

“Christ, Juan. We should change your name to Rambo.”

He winked at me and then fished around in the dresser drawers.

“Do I get one, too?”

“No. But you do get this.”

He handed me a pistol. I’d held pistols before, during guard duty and when Jimmy and I found them while scavenging, but it felt different this time. It was heavy. Cold. I admired the weapon, curled my fingers around it. It felt good in my hand.

“That’s a Sig P245,” Juan told me. “It’s a .45 caliber, holds six rounds in the magazine and one in the pipe. As with all Sigs, there is no manual safety. It’s a double-action pistol, single after the first shot, with a de-cocker.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted.

“I don’t have time to give you the schematics or read you the sales brochure. What you need to know is this—the trigger is here. We’ve only got the one clip for it, so try to make your shots count. You’ve got seven. When you run out of bullets, that’s all we have. Hopefully, by then I’ll have done some damage to the Satanists and we’ll have rescued our friends and be on our way home.”

“Juan, I’ve never fired a gun before in my life.”

“It’s easy, Kevin. Just point and shoot. That’s all you have to do. Point. Shoot. Repeat as necessary.”

Before I could reply, there was a knock at the door. Juan opened it and Taz and Ducky bustled in, acting like excited little kids around the tree on Christmas morning. This was the happiest I’d seen them since they’d joined our group.

“Yo, check it out.” Ducky nudged Taz. “Kevin’s got a Sig.”

“Nice one,” Taz said in appreciation. “You know how to use it?”

“I’m a fast learner.”

Taz laughed. “You go, playa.”

Ducky flashed a smile. “I got me an MP-5.”

Juan whistled in obvious admiration. “Heckler Koch, right?”

“You know what time it is. The mini-uzi is dead, but this motherfucker here,” he lifted the gun with pride, “is alive and well. There’s no kick at all. It shoots exactly where you point it. You got to be retarded to miss with this thing.”

“Keep that in mind when we’re over at the Trade Center,” Juan said.

“See this?” Taz showed me his machine gun. “This is an AK-47—when you absolutely, positively want to eradicate every motherfucker in the fucking room. Accept no substitutes.”

“It’s big,” I said.

“Big dick, big gun.”

They both giggled uncontrollably and I caught a hint of weed wafting off of them.

“Are you guys stoned?” Juan asked.

They shrugged.

“We can still do our job if that’s what you’re thinking,” Ducky said, leaning against the dresser.

“Why?” Taz sat down on the bed, the mattress springs creaking under his weight. “You gonna arrest us, Officer?”

Juan shook his head. “No. Actually, I was going to ask if you had any more. I could use a hit right about now, and I bet Kevin could, too.”

I nodded. A nice buzz would have taken the edge off of me right about then.

Taz’s expression was one of surprise, and then regret.

“Shit, I wish we did have more. This was the last of the stash. We been saving it for a special occasion, but we figured this might be the last chance, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Juan said. “I’ve got something that I’ve been saving for a special occasion, too.”

He pulled open another drawer and held them up. All three of us gasped.

“Are those—more grenades?” I stuttered. They looked huge.

“White phosphorous grenades, a kind that was only used by the Special Forces and Black-Ops units. But I managed to get some from a friend of mine, right before everything collapsed. There’s one for each of us, so use them only as a last resort, okay?”

Taz and Ducky started laughing again. I took mine warily. It was heavier than I would have thought, even heavier than the gun. Holding it in my hand scared me, but I felt a little better after they explained how to use it.

“So what’s the plan?” Ducky asked.

“I don’t know,” Juan admitted. “I’m making this shit up as I go along. We don’t know enough about them, where they post guards, if there are any entrances at water level, what kind of weaponry they have. All we know is what we’ve seen from the roof. When we get there, we’re going to have to think quickly and play it by ear. Taz, you and I have the heavy shit. I figure we’ll open up, and keep those fuckers busy, while Ducky and Kevin try to free Louis and Christian.”

“What about the girl and the baby?” I reminded him.

“Sure, them too. And any other prisoners we find. We’ll keep the cultists pinned down while you rescue the captives.”

Taz stood up and scratched his groin. “Be straight with us. You really think we can pull this shit off?”

“I don’t know.” Juan shrugged. “Worst case scenario, we take as many with us as we can, so that the rest of our group doesn’t have to worry about them. It just pisses me off. We should have done this a long time ago, but we didn’t. And now Christian and Louis might pay the price.”

We fell silent then, each lost in our own thoughts. Finally, Juan stirred. His joints popped as he stood up, and they sounded loud in the silence.

“Okay, you guys get your shit together. I’ll meet you on the roof in five minutes. Hopefully, Lee and the others have got that raft ready.”

I sought out Lori and found her hurrying up the stairs with an armload of rope. I called her name and she turned. She started to speak, but I quieted her with my mouth, pressing my lips to hers as I pulled her tight against me. Her hair and clothes were wet, but her body was warm. Then I pushed away and looked into her eyes.

“I love you. I need you to know that before I leave. Maybe it’s too soon to say it out loud. It’s only been a few days—what we have—but I’m in love with you.”

A tear ran down her face. I watched it, mesmerized.

“I love you too,” she whispered. “Be careful.”

Swallowing, I assured her that I would and wiped her tears away with my finger.

“I wish I could cry,” I told her. “I wish I could show you how much—”

Lori silenced me with another kiss, then let go and turned away.

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

She disappeared up the stairs.

After a moment, I followed her out into the rain. On the roof, the rest of the group was clustered around the raft. Tabletops and plywood had been lashed to seven big metal drums. The raft was rectangular and pointed at one end. It looked ready to fall apart.

Ducky pointed at the makeshift craft. “We’re gonna go over there in that?”

“Trust me,” Lee said, “it will work. A raft floating on two ten-gallon drums will support approximately one hundred and eighty pounds of weight. Like we said before, none of us have been eating well, so we’re all safely under that. According to my calculations, this should support the four of you, plus Louis, Christian, and the other captives. We added some buckets and Salty’s tubs for extra buoyancy.”

“But why is it pointy?” I asked. “Rafts are supposed to be square, aren’t they?”

“Pointed rafts are easier to propel, especially if they’re rectangular, rather than square. We fashioned you some crude oars using push brooms and mops from the janitor’s closet. Hopefully, they’ll work.”

“They’ll have to,” Ducky said.

“You did good.” Juan shook Lee’s hand. “Thanks, man.”

Taz pointed at a rusty, multipronged piece of metal with a length of rope attached to it, lying in the raft. “What’s that shift?”

“A grappling hook,” Lee said. “Improvised at the last minute, of course, but it should suffice. It always seemed to work for the pirates.”

Juan and Lee laughed, and seconds later the rest of us joined in. It felt good—good but surreal, as if the laughter could take away the gravity of what we were about to do.

Ducky picked up the grappling hook and squinted at the rest of us. “Ahoy bitches! I’m the dread pirate Ducky.”

It was stupid and silly, but we laughed harder. I got a stitch in my side, and tears ran down Juan’s face.

That was when the singing started.

We all heard it this time. Well, at least the men heard it; a beautiful, clear melody that carried over the roar of the waves and the sound of the rain. We stopped and cocked our heads, entranced. The women stared at us like we’d lost our minds. We turned just as Nate jumped off the roof and plunged into the water.

“Shit!” Sarah shouted.

The spell was broken. We raced to the edge, staring in disbelief. Nate was entwined in the arms of the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Long blond hair, glistening with droplets of water, cascaded over her milky skin and breasts. Their mouths met hungrily, their tongues seeking each other. Nate went limp, surrendering himself to her embrace, locked in her arms. The woman in the water wrapped herself tighter around him, twisting her body. Her lower half crested a wave.

From our vantage point on the ledge, Sarah, Mindy, and I gasped in unison. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Instead of legs, the woman in the water had a fishlike tail, grayish-silver and covered with scales. She flicked it back and forth, as if she was waving at us with it, and then both she and Nate vanished below the surface.

“Nate!” Sarah shrieked.

Mike stepped out of his shoes and balanced on the ledge, preparing to jump.

Mindy grabbed him, “What are you doing?”

“We’ve got to get Nate! She’s drowning him!”

The water churned and then the mermaid’s head broke the surface again. Nate was no longer with her. The mermaid stared at us and I lost myself in her eyes. Then she opened her mouth and began to sing.

“Listen,” Lee breathed. “It’s beautiful.” As if asleep, he shuffled toward the edge of the roof.

Mike nodded his head in agreement. “It sure is. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve got to get closer.”

“I don’t hear nothing,” Lashawn said.

Lori shook her head. “Me either.”

“Women can’t hear it,” Anna gasped. “Remember? That’s what the kids said.”

I tore my gaze away from the mermaid, but her voice filled my head.

Mike struggled with Mindy as she fought to pull him back. Anna jumped in front of Lee and shook him. He stared at her blankly; then she pinched him.

Taz and Ducky headed for the edge, too. I noticed that both of them had an obvious hard-on jutting from their wet pants. My own penis was stirring as well. Still, I tried to fight. Then my feet betrayed me and I joined the procession, stepping up onto the ledge. My erection strained against my zipper, throbbing.

Lori grabbed my arm. “Kevin, what are you doing?”

“Stop me, Lori,” I whimpered. “It’s too strong. I can’t fight it.”

“You have to!”

Salty stuffed his fingers in his ears and the veins stuck out in his neck as he tried to fight the siren’s call. “Shoot her, Juan! It’s a sea-witch! A harpie! Shoot her!”

Juan ignored him, slack-jawed and mesmerized by the song. Sarah slapped him and he shook his head, glaring at her.

“Don’t listen to her!” Sarah snapped.

“Get away from me.” Juan shoved her backward.

Sarah stepped toward him again and Juan slapped her hard across the mouth. Reeling, she brought her hand to her lips. Her fingers came away bloody. Juan pushed past her, toward the edge of the roof.

“Fuck this,” Sarah growled. She reared back and then lunged for him. One hand darted between his legs, grabbed his balls, and squeezed. Howling, Juan collapsed to his knees, dropping the rifle. Sarah picked it up.

“Everybody get back,” she yelled. She stepped to the edge and swung the rifle downward. The thing in the water directed her song towards Sarah, and her aim wavered. Then, slowly, she started to swivel the weapon back around towards us.

“What’s wrong with Sarah?” Anna moaned. “It’s not supposed to work on women. That’s what you guys said!”

“Don’t listen to it, Kevin,” Lori urged me.

Hands over my ears, I stepped off the ledge and back onto the roof and ran towards Sarah. She’s gay, I thought. She prefers other women. Maybe that’s why it’s working on her.

The M-16 continued its turn towards us. Sarah’s eyes were vacant.

I grabbed her wrist. “Block it out, Sarah, and shoot the bitch!”

Gritting her teeth, Sarah shook her head, focused, and then squeezed the trigger. She missed—on purpose or not I’ll never know.

“Somebody stop me,” she pleaded.

Her face grew clouded again and she turned back towards us. Before she could aim, Lashawn and Lori jumped on her, wrestling Sarah to the ground. Lee, Mike, Juan, Taz, Ducky, and Salty all moved towards the edge, and Malik and James were following close behind.

The mermaid’s voice crept into my head again and I could feel her picking through my brain—invisible fingers that poked and prodded, trying to control me. Mentally shrugging her off, I pulled my pistol, aimed as best I could, and fired. The first two bullets missed. The third, fourth and fifth didn’t, immediately silencing her song and obliterating one bobbing breast and most of her head. She sank beneath the waves in a crimson froth.

Nate never resurfaced.

“You killed her,” Lee rasped, holding his head.

I nodded, unable to speak.

Lashawn and Lori let Sarah up. Panting, she rose to her feet, slammed a fresh clip into place and stepped away from the edge.

“Can I have my gun back?” Juan asked her.

She handed it to him without a word, blood trickling from her split lip.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized.

“Don’t sweat it,” Sarah said. “She was in my head, too.”

Juan pointed at the still smoking Sig in my hand. “How many shots did you fire?”

I shrugged. “Five, I think.”

“That means you’ve got two left. Keep that in mind when we go next door.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what I’d do once the gun was empty. Throw it at the Satanists, maybe, and hope I knocked one out?

Wincing, Taz pressed his fingertips into his forehead. “Damn, yo. My fucking head hurts.”

“Mine too,” I sympathized. “It’s like she was inside my brain.”

“Poor Nate.” Anna shook her head sadly.

“Shouldn’t we look for him?” Lori asked.

Nobody answered her.

Juan tilted his head from side to side, cracking the joints, and then turned to me. “All right, let’s go. The darkness is coming quick.”

Using the telescope, Lee checked on the Satanists and reported that they were still making preparations. He, Mike, Sarah, and Salty dropped the raft into the water, and we all held our breath. It started to sink, and then bobbed back up again, floating aloft on the waves. Mike untied the rope, securing it to the roof.

We said our good-byes. I noticed that while Lashawn hugged Taz, she was simultaneously staring at Ducky over his shoulder. Moving away from the others, Lori and I embraced, and she started to cry again.

“I’ll come back,” I whispered to her, and didn’t believe a word of it.

“You better,” she whispered back, and I could tell that she didn’t believe it, either.

We clambered out onto the raft. It rocked under our weight, but stayed afloat. Ducky and I each grabbed an oar and began paddling, while Juan and Taz positioned themselves at opposite ends, their weapons at the ready. We pushed off from the building and struggled against the current. For one harrowing moment, I was convinced the waves would smash us against the side, but then we were free and it became almost easy.

The sun’s gray silhouette vanished in the sky and the water turned black.

Ducky shifted his weight and the raft rolled. “So, what the hell was that thing back there?”

“You saw what it was,” Juan said.

“A bitch with a fish tail. A mermaid.”

“Yep.”

“That’s fucked up, dawg. That’s really fucked up.”

“Lori and I were talking about that earlier,” I said. “It’s like fantasy and reality are blending now. The rain, I could accept. But a mermaid?”

“Yeah,” Ducky repeated, “that’s fucked up. Some goddamn Walt Disney shit.”

Thunder rolled across the sky and the rain fell harder.

“Ya know what’s fucked up?” Taz said. “Back in the day, when I was dealing, at the same time, I was part of the neighborhood watch. Even got a commendation for it. How fucked up is that?”

“That’s pretty fucked up,” Juan admitted. “What are you now?”

Taz grinned in the darkness, raindrops running down his face. “Shit, dawg. I’m still the neighborhood watch. We all are.”

Juan laughed. He looked out at the choppy ocean and said, “This is our hood now.”

Cloaked by the rain and the darkness, we drifted towards the Trade Center and the confrontation that awaited us there. My breath hitched in my throat and the others heard it.

“It’ll be cool, Kevin,” Taz assured me. “You ain’t gonna cry or nothing, are you?”

“I can’t cry,” I said. “I don’t know how.”

“That’s pretty fucked up, too.”

The rain beat against the raft and we drifted on in silence. It took us about twenty minutes to reach the Trade Center, each second seeming like an hour. A heavy fog rose from the water, obscuring everything, and we fretted that we’d miss the building completely or worse, drift past it and out into the open sea. Just as we were about to admit defeat, the bonfire erupted to our left. It was close. Closer than we’d realized. We still couldn’t see the building, but the bright orange flames were hard to miss, impossibly shooting sparks up into the heavy downpour.

“I’d still like to know how the fuck they get that shit to burn in the rain,” Taz commented.

We drifted closer.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Juan hissed. “Everybody knows the plan, right? Taz and I lay down a distraction while you guys rescue the others.”

Taz and Ducky nodded. I smiled, trying to look self-assured but feeling scared and foolish and very small. My sphincter muscles contracted and my balls shriveled up to the size of raisins. I flipped the wet hair out of my eyes, took a deep breath, and tightened my fingers around the pistol.

Then, suddenly, directly in front of us, the building emerged from the fog like some island cliff face. Upraised voices drifted through the mist, echoing around us. Chanting words that I’m sure weren’t part of any language spoken on Earth. I shivered; wet and cold and miserable.

Juan leaned forward, peering through the rain. “Anybody see Louis and Christian’s boat?”

Silently, we shook our heads.

“Maybe the Satanists took it inside,” Ducky suggested. “Put it with their surfboards and shit?”

“Could be,” Juan agreed. “Keep an eye out for it. We might need it to get everybody back home, if there’s a lot of prisoners.”

We pulled alongside the building, next to an office window. Ducky and I struggled to hold the raft in place while Juan stood up, peered through the window, and investigated.

“I don’t think there’s anybody inside the room,” he said.

“Want to go in that way?” Taz asked.

Juan nodded. “It beats the hell out of using that grappling hook.”

“Word,” Taz agreed. “I’m not up for that Pirates of the Caribbean shit, anyway.”

Juan tried opening the window.

“It’s locked,” he whispered, “but I’ve got a key.”

He smashed in the glass with the butt of his rifle. I held my breath, waiting for sounds of discovery or alarm, but the chanting continued. I noticed that Ducky was holding his breath as well.

Juan looked back at us. “Let’s do it.”

He gripped the sides and climbed through the hole. Taz and I followed after him. Ducky tossed us the rope, and I tied the end to a desk leg, securing the raft against the tide. Then he clambered through as well.

It was dark inside the office. What little light there was came from two fluorescent green glow sticks hanging from a nail in the wall. The damp, rotting carpet felt like a sponge under our boots. The musty air clogged our lungs; the furnishings were covered with mildew.

Juan clicked on his flashlight.

Somebody had spray-painted graffiti on the wall and the cubicle partitions. I recognized some of it—the obligatory pentagram and 666, snakes, demonic faces, and symbols from albums by Iron Maiden and Blue Oyster Cult—all standard high-school amateur devil worship crap. But there were other things, too, figures that I’d never seen before, figures that made me shiver just looking at them. There was writing:KANDARA RULZ! IA DE MEEBLE UNT PURTURABO! THERE IS NO GOD BUT OB! KAT SHTARI! LEVIATHAN DESTRATO UR BEHEMOTH!

“Yo, what the hell is that shit?” Taz whispered. “Who the fuck is Kandara and Ob?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Could it be a gang thing?”

Taz shrugged. “I never knew a brother named Ob. And there ain’t no crews in Baltimore named Kandara. Must be from out of town. Probably New York or something.”

Another drawing showed a circular maze spiraling in on itself. In the center of the spiral, there was a squiggly blob with half-moon-shaped eyes and tentacles. It was cartoonish and crude, like something from a kid’s doodle pad—but unsettling, too. The eyes seemed to be staring at us. Below the image was scrawled,HE WAITS AT THE HEART OF THE LABYRINTH!

“The fuck does that mean?” Ducky asked. “What’s a labyrinth?”

“It’s another word for a maze,” I explained.

“Maybe they was into Pac-Man and shit,” Taz joked, but his smile flickered, and there was no laughter in his voice.

Juan hesitated, then reached out and touched the graffiti. His fingertips came away red. He sniffed them.

“It’s blood,” he hissed. “Fresh fucking blood!” With a look of disgust, he wiped his fingers on his pants.

“This is bad,” Ducky whispered. “This is really fucking bad. Maybe we should just go, ya’ll?”

“Man, screw that!” Taz punched his shoulder. “You fucking scared, man?”

“Hell yes, I’m scared! You are too, motherfucker!”

“I ain’t scared, bitch! I ain’t scared of nothing. I’m ready to smoke these fuckers.”

“Both of you shut up,” I said. “You’re going to give us away.”

Taz scowled at me, but kept quiet. Ducky skulked away.

I picked up a wet book. The cover had some kind of Arabic writing. I opened it up, but the pages were like wads of cottage cheese. I dropped it. My fingers felt greasy.

Ducky noticed my discomfort. “That book didn’t have that White Fuzz shit on it, did it?”

“No,” I said. “Just felt nasty. Oily.”

Juan crept toward the open door. We tiptoed along behind him. The hallway was empty and lit with more hanging glow sticks. The air reeked, so I breathed through my mouth. Rotten food and other refuse littered the floor. A pile of feces with flies crawling over it. Empty beer cans and wine bottles. A moldy porno magazine. A withered head of lettuce covered with maggots. Several used condoms. A severed human hand, also swarming with maggots. An eyeball with a strand of gristle or muscle still attached to it. Ducky and I both recoiled in disgust when we saw it.

Taz kicked a round object with the toe of his boot. The object skittered across the floor towards me.

It was a human heart. Worms crawled through the meat.

I turned away, gagging. Bile crept up my throat.

“You okay?” Juan asked.

I nodded, unable to speak.

We came to the end of the hallway, and Juan pointed to a closed door marked exit. As we approached it, my breath caught in my throat. I imagined a dozen blackrobed Satanists on the other side, their daggers held high, just waiting to jump us.

Taz nudged the door open with the barrel of his gun, and the hinges squeaked. Flakes of rust and chipped paint showered us from above. The stairwell was pitch black and quiet. After a moment, we slowly started up toward the roof, with Taz now in the lead. The darkness seemed almost palpable, like a living thing, pressing against me. My faltering hand found the cold handrail, and I felt like screaming. I gripped my pistol tighter.

Carefully, we continued upward, one floor, then two. We could hear the chanting clearly now, along with the crackle of the flames and the frightened cries of the captives.

“This is the top floor,” Juan breathed in my ear. “The roof is on the other side of the door. Be ready and be quick. Don’t freak out on us, Kevin.”

I felt him leave my side, and I started to hyperventilate. I tried to swallow and found that I couldn’t. There was a slight scuffling sound as Juan and Taz moved towards the door. Standing next to me, Ducky mouthed a Hail Mary.

I had time to wonder if there really was a heaven, and if so, would I be welcome there.

Then Taz kicked the door open and all hell broke loose.

“Neighborhood watch!” He opened fire. “You motherfuckers are bringing the property values down! Consider yourselves evicted!”

Everything happened very quickly after that. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I guess I thought that everything would happen in slow motion, like in a movie. But it didn’t. Juan followed Taz through the doorway and began shooting as well. I heard gunshots and an explosion, unintelligible shouts and then more gunfire. My ears were ringing and the gunshots reverberated in my chest.

Juan and Taz were both screaming, and I was surprised to find myself screaming, too, as I burst out the door behind them. The rain lashed at my face. The bonfire had turned night into day, and the flickering flames cast weird shadows around us.

About three dozen Satanists were gathered on the roof. None of them had weapons, except for the ones guarding the prisoners and a guy who must have been the leader or high priest. He clutched a long, curved dagger and held an old, leather-bound book in his other hand. The only part I could make out was the title, illuminated in the flashes of light from Juan’s M-16. It was in Latin or something—Daemonolateria. The leader recited from it, shouting over the roar of the machine guns, seemingly oblivious to the hail of lead around him.

“Ia verminus Leviathan! Ia destrato Leviathan! Leviathan!”

Christian and Louis were lying at the far edge of the roof, still chained to the cinder blocks. The woman and her baby cowered next to them. The two cultists standing guard over them ducked behind an air-conditioning vent for cover and returned fire. Juan unleashed a barrage in their direction. As Ducky opened fire next to me, I watched in horror as one of the men darted forward, picked up the baby and flung it into the water without hesitation. There was a splash and the mother shrieked.

“Oh my God—” My mouth went dry.

“God does not live here,” a voice hissed into my ear. Something heavy slammed into my back and I fell to the roof. Rolling, I managed to get a knee up just as the attacker leapt for me. My knee sank into his abdomen, and the air whooshed out of his lungs. His sour breath reeked, and I turned my head to cough. He punched me in the face and my teeth rattled. Blood filled my mouth, warm and salty. My stomach churned, and I felt nauseous. His weight crushed me.

“You have interrupted the ceremony,” he growled. “Leviathan will not be pleased. He’s waiting to meet you, under the sea. I will take you to him, after I wring your scrawny neck!”

His meaty hands closed around my throat. I swung the pistol, knocking him in the temple with the butt, and he rolled off of me, groaning as the blood began to flow from his scalp. Several more Satanists closed in on my position. A second later, something that sounded like a swarm of angry bees ripped through the air, dropping them where they stood. Gunfire.

“Go,” Juan shouted at me. “Get them untied, and hurry!”

Ducky was already halfway across the roof. The Satanist who had thrown the baby into the water picked up the cinder block attached to the screaming mother and tossed it over the side as well. She had time to let out one terrified shriek as the chain trailed along behind it and then she was gone, jerked over the side.

“Motherfucker!” Ducky aimed, fired, and the man’s kneecap disintegrated. He fired again, and kept firing, finally severing both of the man’s legs. Then Ducky rushed forward, pointing the smoking gun at the other guard. The second man scurried away in fear, then grabbed Louis and used him as a human shield.

“Don’t come any closer! Shoot me and you shoot him too!”

“Shit…” Ducky froze.

Louis met our eyes and then suddenly rammed his head backward, smashing into his captor’s nose. Blood gushed down the Satanist’s face and chest. Louis wrenched away and fell forward onto his stomach.

He looked up at Ducky. “Shoot him!”

Ducky did. His gun sang out and the Satanist toppled over the side of the building, his hands clawing at the edge for purchase. His fingers closed around Louis’s ankle, and Louis began to slide with him. I ran forward, but both men went into the water before I could reach them. I saw Louis’s head disappear beneath the waves.

“Get Christian untied,” I yelled to Ducky, and then I tossed my gun aside and jumped in after them.

The surface of the ocean was hard and sharp. It felt like I’d dived into a sheet of ice. My skin stung as the cold water closed over me. It was dark at first, but then I noticed a strange, green glow coming from the depths below me. It was bright enough that I could make out Louis, sinking like a stone. There was no sign of the woman or her baby. Kicking with all of my strength, I swam after Louis. His terrified eyes pleaded with me. It sounds impossible. There’s no way I could have seen it underwater, and yet, I did. The green light illuminated everything. Louis opened his mouth to scream and black water rushed in. I reached out my hand—and that was when it happened.

Something long and thick uncoiled from the center of the green light, spiraled towards us, and wrapped itself around Louis’s feet. A tentacle. It flexed and then he was gone, pulled into the light.

He vanished inside the glow, and the last thing I saw were his eyes, wide and terrified and still very much alive. I think that image will stay with me till the day I die.

Another tentacle rose toward me and dozens more followed in its wake. Frantic, I kicked for the surface. One of the tendrils brushed against my foot and I opened my mouth to scream, forgetting that I was underwater. Frigid salt water rushed into my lungs. The tentacle caressed my ankle. I lashed out with my foot, knocking it away.

My head broke the surface. Gagging, I clutched a drainpipe and hauled myself upward. The metal surface was slick, and I started to slide back down toward the water. Something splashed below me and I struggled back up again, afraid to look behind. Finally, I rolled onto the roof and coughed up water. I shrank away from the edge, watching for more of the tentacles, and retrieved my Sig, remembering that I still only had two shots left in it.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the shooting was over. Black robed bodies littered the roof, their blood already being washed away by the rain. Ducky had untied Christian and was checking him for injuries, while Taz kept guard at the stairway door. Juan stood over the cult leader’s supine form. The dagger and the leather spell book lay next to him. The book was open in the middle, the pages drenched, red ink running and blurring together. Juan pressed the smoking barrel of the M-16 against the Satanist’s heaving chest.

“You-you don’t know what you’ve done,” the leader squealed. “The Rain Gods will be angered now. You have deprived them of their bounty. They will destroy us all in retaliation! We summoned them—brought them all back with the rains.”

“Rain Gods,” Juan snorted. “You mean like the fucking mermaid we killed earlier?”

The man’s eyes grew alarmed. “You killed the siren? You fool! Don’t you realize the consequences?”

Juan spat in his face. “She killed one of our people.”

The leader snarled as Juan’s spittle ran down his face. “Leviathan is coming now! He wants revenge. You have killed his beloved and halted his sacrifices. You will pay dearly for these transgressions. Leviathan is slow to rise, but when he does, you shall know his anger. It is written in the Daemonolateria. Leviathan is coming. He of a thousand tentacles!”

The wounded man began to laugh and turned his face toward the sea. Blood poured from his mouth and nose.

“You worship this thing?” Juan asked. “This Leviathan?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s coming here?”

“Oh yes. Very soon.”

“Well then, I guess you won’t be around to meet him.”

With the barrel still pressed against the leader’s chest, Juan squeezed the trigger.

I flinched and looked away. When I turned back to them, Juan had rolled the corpse over with his foot. The man’s back was a gaping ruin.

Juan ejected his magazine and slid a fresh one into place. “How’s it look, Taz?”

“Quiet. I think they must have all been up here.”

“Christian, can you walk?”

He nodded weakly and then struggled to his feet. He stumbled towards me, but Ducky caught him.

“Easy, dawg. I got you.”

“K-Kevin,” Christian stammered, “where’s Louis?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and shook my head. Christian began to sob.

“Let’s get out of here,” Juan said quietly.

I pulled him aside while Ducky helped Christian limp towards the stairs.

“What’s up?” Juan asked.

“I figured you should know. There was—something in the water.”

“What kind of a something? Another mermaid?”

“No. I’m not sure what it was. All I saw was a weird green light. And tentacles. Big fucking tentacles. Some of them were the size of tree trunks.”

He stared at me and I knew he believed me. At that same moment, the blazing fire suddenly went out. The roof was pitched into darkness.

“Shit,” he said. “We’d better get going.”

I stumbled as we walked towards the door. I glanced down and saw that I had tripped over the book. Pausing, I knelt down to examine it. The soggy pages were ruined now, unreadable. I wondered if that had something to do with the fire going out.

We entered the dark stairwell.

“What was the priest babbling about?” I asked as we ran down the stairs. “He said they started the rains?”

Taz swept the hallway with his rifle, but it was clear. “They said all kinds of shit. Talking loud and saying nothing.”

“Keep moving,” Juan said.

Instead of continuing the discussion, I concentrated on conserving my breath.

We made it back to the raft, and untied it as quickly as we could. We pushed off, with Ducky and I rowing again. The night was strangely quiet, except for Christian’s stifled cries.

I reached out and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry about Louis.”

“Thanks, Kevin. I mean that. Did he—did he suffer? Was it over quick?”

I thought about Louis’s eyes as the tentacle pulled him down into that weird ball of light.

“No,” I lied. “It was over quick. He never felt a thing.”

Christian smiled sadly. “After all we’ve been through together, I just can’t believe—”

Something jumped out of the water in front of us. A dolphin. It chattered in alarm and then plunged back into the water.

Taz leaned forward. “What the hell was that all about? I thought they were supposed to be friendly and shit.”

The ocean suddenly came to life around us. Massive schools of fish plowed through the waves. More frenzied dolphins leapt from the water. In the distance, I spied the black hump of a whale. A flock of seagulls wheeled overhead, screeching in what sounded like fear.

All of them were hurrying away from the area.

“What the fuck’s this shit?” Ducky shouted. “The fucking fish gonna attack us now?”

“Something’s spooked them.” Juan pointed his rifle at the surface. “They’re fleeing from something. Row faster!”

We did. He didn’t need to tell me. I thrust that makeshift paddle into the water like a knife through butter. My heart raced in my chest.

“Animals can predict earthquakes,” Christian pointed out. “Does the same go for fish?”

A triangular fin broke the surface just a few feet away, and I saw the gray, sleek body of a shark beneath it. Taz drew a bead on the shark, but Juan pushed the rifle barrel down.

“Don’t shoot.”

“It’s a fucking shark, Juan! You seen Jaws?”

“It’s not after us. See? It’s swimming away, too. Leaving the area.”

We were about halfway back when we heard a great, sonorous bellow—part whale, part subway train—deep and powerful and extremely pissed off, by the sound.

Ducky jumped, and almost dropped his oar. “What the fuck was that?”

“Look!” Christian pointed back the way we’d come.

At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at. The Trade Center building was barely visible, its walls engulfed in a quivering, snaking mass of shadows. Then I realized that the shadows were tentacles. There were hundreds of them, covering the walls and the roof. I followed them down to the ocean’s surface, and I screamed.

A great, bulbous head emerged from the water, the size of a hot air balloon. In fact, that’s what it reminded me of—a rubber, obsidian balloon—like what you’d see in a Halloween parade. Even from a distance, I could see its huge, teardrop-shaped eyes, glaring at us with a clearly malevolent intelligence.

“Row!” Juan shouted again. It sounded like something inside his throat ripped.

A loud, explosive crash rumbled behind us as the creature began to tear the building apart. Powerful limbs squeezed, cracking the concrete. They coiled around the steel girders, twisting and bending them with monstrous strength.

A corner edge of the building splashed into the water, sending a massive wave surging towards us. It rocked our makeshift raft, threatening to capsize us. We held on, clinging for support. Wave after wave crashed into us, and then the waters subsided again.

Ducky and I rowed as fast as we could. My arms ached by the time we arrived back at our building. The rest of the group stood on the roof, watching in horror as the entire Trade Center crashed into the ocean. Lee tied us off securely and we scrambled off the raft.

We quickly filled the others in on everything that had transpired over at the Trade Center—the graffiti, the Satanists and that weird spell book, the fight, and Louis’s death. They’d been watching through the telescope, but the thickening fog obscured much of the battle and they still had questions.

“What the hell is that thing?” Mike shouted.

“Apparently,” Juan gasped, trying to catch his breath, “according to the cultists, it’s the husband of that mermaid we killed earlier.”

“They called it Leviathan,” I said.

“Leviathan?” Anna asked. “You mean like in the Bible? The thing that swallowed Jonah?”

“It’s a Kraken,” Salty said. “I tried to tell you, but nobody believed me.”

“Don’t start with that shit again,” Sarah snapped. “Not now. That’s the last thing we need.”

Lashawn hugged Ducky and Taz both. Sarah draped a blanket over Christian’s shoulders, but it was as wet as everything else, and I doubt it provided him much comfort. Lori ran to me and I hugged her tight, our wet bodies shivering against each other as we watched the destruction. Danielle, James, and Malik cowered against Anna. Danielle began to cry, and a moment later, the boys joined her.

The squid creature’s rage echoed across the ocean like thunder. It heaved itself forward and then sank beneath the waves, sending a plume of water thirty feet into the air.

“What’s it doing now?” Lashawn asked.

“I think,” Juan said, “that it’s coming for us.”

He was right.

CHAPTER TEN

Believe it or not, for some strange reason, we didn’t run or panic. Maybe we couldn’t. It was as if we were all suddenly paralyzed. We stood transfixed, fear rooting our feet to the roof as the creature approached our building. Its sleek, black body surfaced again, cutting through the waves, and then submerged. Part of it looked like a squid and part of it looked like a giant snake. I caught a glimpse of an appendage resembling a big, membranous wing, but the spray concealed it before I could verify that’s what it was.

The storm intensified. The raindrops stung our exposed flesh, splattering against our faces like bugs on a windshield. Thunder grumbled overhead and blue flashes of lightning seared the weeping sky, turning night to day. The waves crashed against the building, their size and intensity increasing the closer the monster came.

“It’s a Kraken,” Salty said again. “Just like what I saw before.”

“Shut up, old man,” Sarah snapped.

Lee sank to his knees in a puddle and began to laugh.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Taz growled.

“It’s fucking Cthulhu, man,” Lee cackled. “Just like in the role playing game!”

“What are you talking about?” Juan asked.

“Cthulhu! H. P. Lovecraft’s big, ugly squid god? Lives under the sea? Has a head like an octopus? That is not dead which can eternal lie, et cetera, et fucking cetera? Any of that ring a bell with you?”

“Motherfucker done lost it,” Taz said. “Ya’ll better lock him up somewhere before he hurts somebody.”

“What is he talking about?” Mike asked. “Who the hell is Lovecraft?”

“Horror stories,” I said. “Lovecraft was a horror writer.”

I’d tried reading H. P. Lovecraft once, after watching the movie Re-Animator, which was based on one of his stories. I was disappointed to find that the book wasn’t nearly as cool as the movie.

Lee continued babbling. “My students studied Lovecraft every October, along with Poe and Bierce and Hawthorne’s supernatural stuff. Did you guys know that some people actually believe Lovecraft based his Cthulhu mythos on a real-life entity?”

Sarah raised her hand, as if she were a student in Lee’s class. “Can I ask why we’re standing out here on the fucking roof discussing early twentieth century pulp fiction while that thing is heading towards us? Shouldn’t we be doing something?”

Her question seemed to galvanize us, snapping our indecision.

“Good question,” Juan said. “Anna, get the kids downstairs. Lock yourselves in a room and stay there. No matter what you hear, don’t come out. Find something to defend yourselves with, just in case. Sarah, Lori, Lashawn, and Mindy—get the rest of the guns and bring them up here, on the double. The rest of you take positions all around this fucking roof. He’s sure as hell not getting us without a fight!”

Taz ejected his clip and slid a fresh one into place, then noticed that Lee was still kneeling in the puddle. “The fuck you doing, Lee? Get your ass up! That thing is gonna be on us any minute now.”

“It’s Cthulhu!” Lee shouted. A droplet of water dripped from his nose. “I’m telling you guys, it’s fucking Cthulhu, man! We are so screwed.”

“It’s not Cthulhu!” I grabbed Lee’s shirt and yanked him to his feet. “Cthulhu is a fictional character! Lovecraft made him up!”

“Just like the mermaid, right, Kevin? Was she made up too?”

I shook him hard.

“Lee, listen to me. You’re scared. That’s understandable, man, because I’m scared too. But you’ve got to get a grip, dude. That thing is not Cthulhu!”

“Well it sure as hell isn’t Flipper, now is it?”

Another wave crashed into the building, the crest lapping over the edge of the roof. The creature’s head emerged from the surf, and when it roared, I felt the roof shake beneath my feet.

Juan braced his legs against the edge, and raised his rifle. “Kevin, take Lee downstairs. With the state he’s in, he’s not going to be any help. Give his gun to Christian, get him to his room and then get back up here!”

“Give me your gun, Lee.” I held out my hand.

He met my eyes. His voice was barely a whisper. “It’s not going to do you any good. Not against that.”

“Maybe not. But give it to me anyway.”

He surrendered the weapon and I handed it to Christian, who checked to make sure that it was loaded. Then I helped Lee to his feet and guided him towards the stairwell. He babbled the entire time about squid gods and lost cities. We were halfway through the door when the shooting started. The screaming followed a second later. I led Lee to the bottom of the stairs, and then ran back up. The rain was falling like gravel, thick and hard, but I barely noticed.

Leviathan was upon us.

Dozens of thick tentacles whipped through the fog. Everybody opened fire, but the appendages were hard to hit, moving as fast as they did. Taz blasted a hole in one of them and it retreated, only to have three more immediately take its place. One of them slapped the pistol from Christian’s hands, and a third wrenched a radio antenna from its mooring on the roof.

I fumbled for my pistol, but it slipped from my wet hands and skittered across the roof. Scrambling to retrieve it, I ducked just as a muscular tendril slashed through the air above me.

One of the tentacles coiled around Christian’s midsection and squeezed. He fired a shot into the appendage, but the creature refused to let go. Christian wailed, his eyes bulging in their sockets as his face turned red, then purple, then black. Dark blood exploded from his nose and mouth, and ran from his ears in thick rivulets, then finally burst from his pores. Mike ran to help him, but three more tentacles seized him, too, wrapping themselves around his legs and waist. He squirmed, clubbing at the appendages with his empty rifle.

Then he began to scream.

The tentacles were lined with rows of suckers—except that they weren’t suckers. They were mouths. Tiny little circular mouths, lined with sharp, needlelike teeth.

And they began to feed…

The tentacles were eating Mike alive. He shrieked as they gnawed through his wet clothing and burrowed into his flesh. Blood welled out from between the rubbery coils. I remembered the purplish mark on Jimmy’s head, the blemish that had looked like a raw hickey, and finally I understood what had happened to my friend. I raced toward Mike, but the tendrils snaked out over the water, taking him with them. The creature waved him about like a rag doll before dropping him into the ocean.

Leviathan’s head emerged from the water, dripping seaweed and slime. Up close, those baleful eyes were as big as taxicabs. It roared again and I felt a blast of hot air rush over me. It stank of rotten fish and brine. Salty ran past me and dived into the stairwell. Juan shouted at him to help, clicked empty, and glanced around for assistance. But there was none to be found. Taz and Ducky were involved in their own struggles with the creature, and piles of brass casings littered the roof at their feet.

Then Sarah emerged from the stairwell, armed with two rifles. Seeing Juan’s plight, she ran toward him, but Leviathan was quicker.

Juan yanked a white phosphorous grenade from his belt and pulled the pin. At the same instant, another serpentine appendage seized him. The tentacle slithered around his chest, pinning his arms to his side. He was still clutching the grenade. I’ve thought about it many times, and I’m still not sure if he held on to it out of some suicidal notion, or if he was just so scared that he forgot he was holding it. The tentacle lifted him skyward, and he screamed, his legs kicking helplessly. The mouths began to feed on him, chewing at his flesh and clothing. Then there was a bright flash as the grenade exploded, showering us all with gore—Juan’s and the creature’s. The stump of the tentacle sank below the waves, spraying ichor in its wake. There was nothing left of Juan, not even enough for the seagulls.

Taz and Ducky’s resolve shattered then, and they broke for the stairs.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here, yo!” Ducky shouted.

“Word,” Taz said. “Come on, Kevin! Sarah! Let’s haul ass!”

“We’ve got to stop it,” Sarah insisted.

“We can’t,” I said. “It’s useless. Just run!”

A dozen more tentacles slapped down onto the roof, cracking the surface, and I turned and ran. Sarah fired off a few random shots, and then fled with me. We darted through the doorway and met Lashawn and Mindy halfway down the stairs.

“We’ve got more guns,” Mindy said.

“Forget about the fucking guns,” Taz hollered, brushing past them. “Bullets ain’t doing shit to that thing! Get the fuck out of my way.”

Mindy didn’t move. She glanced beyond us, up the stairwell. Her eyes were wide and teary.

“Where’s Mike?” she asked.

Before I could answer, she pushed past me. I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away and ran out into the rain. I heard her scream—followed by the terrible sounds of tentacles slithering across the roof. Another appendage wound through the doorway and groped its way down the stairs. The mouths inside the suckers worked silently.

“Let’s go!” I shoved them forward. We raced down the steps and regrouped in the lobby. The tentacle didn’t follow us.

“I don’t think it can reach us here,” Sarah panted, breathing heavily. “We should be safe.”

Ducky wiped the water from his brow. “Yeah, until it rips the motherfucking roof off this place.”

“Which should be any minute now,” I said. “Shit. I don’t know what else to do, you guys.”

“So we just give up?” Sarah asked.

I sighed. “You’ve seen the size of that thing. How the hell are we supposed to fight it? There’s no other way out of the hotel. And we can’t swim for it or take the boat. Not with that monster outside. So if you have any bright ideas, now would be a good time.”

She didn’t answer me, so I continued.

“Listen. Maybe it sounds weird, but I’d like to go find Lori. If we’re going to die anyway, I’d like to be with her when it happens.”

“I can’t believe this.” Sarah shook her head. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I hear you, playa,” Taz said. “Kevin’s right. We might as well go out with a bang.”

Sarah continued shaking her head.

Taz grabbed Lashawn’s arm. “Come on, baby. Lets go.”

She took two steps with him, then turned and looked at Ducky over her shoulder.

“Lashawn…” His voice cracked.

She broke free of Taz’s grip. “Wait. What about Ducky?”

Taz whirled around. “Ducky? What the fuck? He’s my homey, yeah. But shit—we all gonna be dead in ten minutes. I want to spend it with you, baby, not Ducky! You cool with that, right, Ducky?”

“Yeah, dawg,” Ducky sighed. “I’m cool with that.”

I could hear his heart breaking, and apparently Lashawn could, too. She walked toward him.

“Where the fuck you going, Lashawn?” Taz’s face was a mask of confusion.

She flipped her wet hair from her face. “I’m staying here with Ducky.”

“Why?” Taz took a step toward her.

“Because I love him, you asshole!”

Taz gaped at them both. Slowly, he raised the assault rifle. His hands were shaking.

Ducky took a step backward, distancing himself from Lashawn.

Taz’s voice was ice cold. “You what?”

“I love him. We’ve been knocking boots behind your back for months. I’m sorry that you found out like this, but it’s true. If I’m gonna die, I want to be with both of you.”

“This is not good,” Sarah whispered in my ear. “Do something.”

The hotel shook as Leviathan continued his assault.

Ducky held up his hands, feigning ignorance. “Yo, Taz, listen. That bitch is crazy! Come on, man. We boys. How long we been boys? We rolling with the same crew and shit. Druid Hill for life. Remember?”

Taz shook his head. “Druid Hill crew my ass, you low motherfucker. You were sleeping with her this whole time. You were knocking boots with my girl!”

Sarah intervened, placing herself between them. She held up a hand. “Think about what you’re doing, Taz. This isn’t the time. We need to work together right—”

“Get the fuck away from me, bitch.” Taz brushed past her.

I grabbed Sarah’s arm and pulled her away.

“Come on, baby,” Lashawn begged Taz. “Calm down. It don’t have to be like—”

He shot her in midsentence. It happened quickly, and for a second, I didn’t understand what had just occurred. The rounds punched through her breasts and abdomen, and lodged in the wall behind her. The white plaster turned red. Lashawn looked surprised as she slipped to the floor. Ducky screamed and Taz whirled around, aiming the rifle at his friend.

I stepped in front of Sarah and called Taz’s name. My ears were ringing.

“Stay the fuck out of this, Kevin.”

“Come on, man,” Ducky pleaded, hands held out in front of him. “Don’t do this. The bitch ain’t worth it, Taz.”

“You fucked my girl, punk! Did you think I would just let that shit slide? You were supposed to be my boy.”

A tear slid down Taz’s face as he squeezed the trigger. Ducky jittered like a marionette as the bullets struck home. He fell to the floor, glassy eyes staring at nothing. I squeezed my trigger a second later, aiming at the center of Taz’s shaved head. It blew apart like a rotten pumpkin, splattering the wall with brains and shards of bone.

“Oh God…” Sarah gasped.

I pried the assault rifle from Taz’s fingers, took a step backward, and then collapsed to my knees. My stomach heaved, and the bile burned my throat as it rose. I crouched there, vomiting until there was nothing left inside of me. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You okay?” Sarah asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so. I—I’ve never killed somebody before.”

“What now, Kevin? What are we going to do?”

I slowly rose to my feet. “I’ve got to find Lori.”

“But she could be anywhere.”

“I know. That’s why I have to find her.”

“But what about—”

Above us, the roof shook as the thing outside slammed against it. Cracks spider-webbed across the ceiling. My feet sloshed as I took another step and I looked down to find myself standing in a puddle. Water was beginning to trickle down the stairs from the roof.

“Shit.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. In less than an hour, our ranks had dwindled from eighteen to eight. I figured the rest of us would take about half that time.

It turned out that I was right.

I ran, determined to spend my last moments with the woman I loved.

“Kevin,” Sarah called after me.

Not stopping, I shouted over my shoulder, “If you’re coming, then move your ass.”

She glanced back at the stairway. The trickle had turned into a torrent and the cracks in the wall were widening.

“Wait for me,” she said and then followed.

We found Lori in the lobby on the nineteenth floor, cradling Anna’s head in her lap. Lee, Danielle, James, and Malik lay nearby. There was blood everywhere—on the walls and the carpet and even the ceiling. A kitchen knife jutted from Lee’s throat and his eyes stared sightlessly. None of the kids were moving. They’d been stabbed. As I followed the trail of blood, I noticed that the walls and ceiling on this floor were beginning to crack, too. The building shook beneath our feet as we ran towards them. Plaster fell from the ceiling.

Sarah knelt beside Anna. “Anna? Can you hear me?”

Anna turned her head and coughed; blood leaked out of the corner of her mouth.

I crouched down beside Lori. “Hey, you okay?”

She looked up at me, her face glistening with tears. “Kevin…”

I took her hand. “What happened? Who did this?”

“Lee—he found Anna and the kids here in the lobby, while I was looking for more weapons. When I showed up, he was acting crazy, talking about sacrifices and how the Satanists had the right idea. He-he said we had to sacrifice one of the kids. That if we did, that thing outside would let the rest of us live.”

Anna coughed again, spraying us with blood.

“Jesus Christ,” Sarah said. “He completely lost it.”

“What happened next?” I prodded Lori gently.

She wiped her running nose with the back of her hand. “He must have gone to the kitchen first, because he had a knife. Before Anna or I could stop him, he…”

She broke off, sobbing. I placed my hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“He got James and Malik right away. Anna tried to stop him and he stabbed her and then Danielle. I was so scared. I had the guns in my hands and I didn’t even think to use them. I guess there wasn’t time, anyway. He was stabbing Anna again, so I dropped the guns and jumped on his back. We wrestled, and I got the knife away from him and I-I stabbed him. I stabbed him in the neck. It got stuck and I couldn’t pull it back out. But there’s so much blood. Why is there so much blood?”

“Sarah, check the kids.” I kissed Lori’s forehead and brushed the hair from her eyes. I soothed her with assurances that it would all be okay, even though I knew it wouldn’t.

I examined Anna while Sarah bent over the kids’ bodies. It didn’t look good. Anna’s insides peeked at me through the wound, pink and glistening.

“How are the kids?” I asked Sarah.

She shook her head, turned away, and began to weep.

Anna smiled at me and tried to speak.

“We’ve got to put pressure on this,” I told her. “You just hang in there, Anna.”

“No,” she rasped, “that won’t do any good. It’s too late, Kevin. Too late for us all.”

“Bullshit.” I tried to smile, but it felt phony. “We’ll have you fixed up in a jiffy.”

“He killed my babies.” She raised one trembling hand and pointed at Lee. “He killed my babies. Why? He seemed like such a nice man…”

“I don’t know.”

Her eyes suddenly seemed far away.

“Look,” she sounded surprised. “Is that the sun? It’s so bright.”

She exhaled, her chest collapsing. She did not breathe in again.

I reached out and closed her eyes with two fingers. Then I bent over and kissed her on the head. Her skin was wet.

“Good-bye, Anna.”

After endless days of rain, she’d seen the sun again. I figured we’d see it, too, before the night was done.

Taking Lori by the hand, I pulled her to her feet. The building trembled again and there was a loud crash on the floor below us. The hallway swayed under our feet. Lori grabbed onto me to keep from toppling over.

“What’s happening?” she screamed.

“It’s that thing. Leviathan. It’s destroying the building. Water’s coming in from the top.”

“The lower levels are flooding, too,” Lori said. “Mindy and I saw it when were looking for guns. Where is she, anyway?”

I shook my head. “It got her. And the others, too.”

“All of them?” she gasped.

“Except for me, you, Sarah, and maybe Salty. Have you seen him anywhere?”

“Salty? No. Just…” She pointed back to the bodies in the lobby.

Sarah got to her feet. “I’m going to find him. He might be hurt.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to stay here with Lori. Be careful.”

“Good luck.” She started down the hall.

“You too,” I called after her. Then she was gone.

Another tremor struck, bouncing me off the wall. Chunks of plaster rained down on us. Deep inside the walls, something groaned.

Lori wiped her eyes. “Kevin, will you hold me?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I’d like that very much.”

“We’re not going to make it, are we?”

I started to lie to her, but I couldn’t. Not anymore.

“No,” I said, “we’re not going to make it, Lori. Not with that thing outside. It would kill us as soon as we tried to escape. We’re trapped.”

“Let’s go to your room, then. I want to smell the pine tree in your garden while you hold me, and I want to fall asleep before it happens. I can fall asleep in your arms and not wake up.”

“Okay. That sounds good.” Personally, I wondered how the hell we’d be able to fall asleep while a monster ripped the roof off the building, but I didn’t ask.

We made it back to my room while the creature tore the building apart around us. We lay down on the bed, not bothering to remove our wet clothes and boots, and our bodies entwined. Legs, groins, chests, and arms—we were as close to each other as two human beings could be. The rain hammered at the skylight, rattling it in its frame, but I ignored the noise, concentrating solely on Lori. I wondered how we’d go. I hoped that the water would flood our level and engulf us. Drowning was better than being crushed under the wreckage—or suffering the same fate as those on the roof. I thought about Mike being eaten alive by the tentacles and silently vowed that Lori wouldn’t meet the same fate. I’d kill her myself, if I had to, before I’d let that happen.

“Can you smell the pine?” she murmured.

“Yes. It smells good. Not much else grew in that garden, but the tree did okay. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad gardener after all.”

She nodded against my chest and closed her eyes.

I closed mine as well. It wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. It felt good. Right. Leviathan’s rage was nothing more than background noise, faint and distant.

“I love you, Lori.”

“I love you, too.”

This was a good way to die, surrounded by the warmth of someone you loved.

So when there was a knock at the door, you can understand why I was pissed. Lori gasped in surprise and I jumped as well. Something heavy crashed into the ocean with a loud splash as the second knock came.

“A tentacle?” Lori asked.

“Can’t be,” I whispered. “I don’t think they can reach that far, and I don’t think it knows how to knock.”

“Salty? Or Sarah, maybe?”

“It has to be. Who else?”

A third knock, more insistent.

Lori sat up. “We can’t just leave them out there, Kevin.”

“No, I guess we can’t.”

I got up, sloshed to the door, and opened it on the fourth knock. Salty grinned at me, appearing embarrassed. Sarah stood behind him. Both of them looked small and afraid.

“We’re sorry, Kevin,” Salty said. “But we just didn’t want to be alone.”

“It’s okay,” I told them. “Come on—”

Behind me, the skylight exploded, showering the bed and the garden with shards of broken glass and rain. Lori screamed. I turned in time to see the tentacle lift her from the bed and yank her through the hole.

“Lori!”

I ran towards her, and jumped up on the garden table. I reached for her, and she reached back, but it was too late. The image is burned into my mind, her arms outstretched, her face frozen in terror. With a final scream—a scream cut short by the creature’s squeeze—she was gone. Leviathan pulled her out into the night. Rain poured through the gaping hole where the skylight had been. I collapsed underneath it, sinking to the floor, shrieking and clenching sods of dirt from the garden in my fists. Broken glass cut my hands and my blood mixed with the mud.

Then, the hole in the ceiling grew dark again. I sensed it even before Salty and Sarah cried out in alarm. I looked up and stared straight into that huge, malevolent, yellow eye. Leviathan stared back at me.

I shook my bloody fists. “Give her back!”

“Kevin,” Sarah shouted. “Get away from there!”

I stayed where I was, rooted to the garden, staring into Leviathan’s eye.

It blinked once, and then, with one last fading cry, it was gone, vanishing into the rainy night.

Revenge. During the raid, the Satanists told us that the mermaid was Leviathan’s bride. I’d killed its lover, so now it had killed mine in return. Call it the laws of nature or the circle of fucking life.

Blood streamed from my clenched fists. I lifted my face to the skies and the rain showered me. The droplets rolled off my cheeks and into the garden. They were seeds. Rain seeds. My own tears joined them, and I wept like the sky. I had finally learned how to cry.

Kneeling there in my garden, I rained.

PART III

THE WORM TURNS

Upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, every beast and every man. And every creeping thing…

—Genesis

Chapter 7, Verses 20 and 21

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I’m back again. That took a lot out of me, writing down Kevin’s story exactly the way he told it to us. Reminds me of the character in H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. Halfway through the book, the protagonist told his brother’s story—about what happened to him in London and what the Martians did there. Of course, that was fiction and this isn’t. But the reader got a glimpse of what was happening elsewhere from it.

I reckon you’ve gotten a glimpse of what was happening up north. Now you know everything that I know.

So there’s that.

I drifted off for a while after I’d finished relating Kevin’s tale, and I just woke up again. My hand hurts worse than ever. My fingers are swollen and there’s pain shooting up my wrist. Everything below my waist is still numb, though, and that’s a blessing.

My broken leg is swollen up to about three times its normal size. It’s black-gray and greasy looking, like a sausage that’s been left out in the sun too long. It stinks, too. I can’t feel it, and I reckon that’s good, because it sure looks painful.

Despite the pain, I’m hungry. Hungry and thirsty. And the nicotine cravings are still there, too.

Something’s poking me on the inside, and I think it might be a rib. The purple bruise on my stomach is getting darker and I’m still spitting up blood. There seems to be more of it now. I woke up in a pool of it.

Not good. Not at all.

I’ve got to finish this. Finish before it’s too late. I’m in the home stretch now. The last part. Once I’m done, I’ll put this notebook up somewhere safe. Hopefully, it will stay dry. If I had a bottle that was big enough, I’d roll the notebook up and stick it inside. That would be funny. Just like the note in a bottle that a shipwrecked man tosses out into the sea.

S.O.S.!!! Save me!!!

Actually, now that I think about it, that’s not funny at all. Because I don’t think anyone is going to save me. There’s no cavalry riding to my rescue. There’s no ship on my horizon.

God, I need a dip.

And I’m rambling again. Ain’t gonna finish this at all if I keep that up.

So…

Carl and I were silent for a long time after Kevin finished telling us his story. Our coffee had grown cold and so had the house. I shivered and rolled the sleeves of my flannel shirt down to stay warm. Daylight, or the gray light that passed for it, was fading fast, and the fog grew thicker, pressing against the kitchen windows like a solid white wall. Sarah had joined us in the kitchen halfway through the story and she was quiet as well.

Finally, I stirred. I reached for both of their hands, took them in my own, and said softly, “I’m very sorry for what both of you have lost.”

“Thanks,” Kevin said. “That means a lot. It’s hard thinking about it.”

Sarah gave my hand a gentle squeeze and said nothing.

Carl cleared his throat, scooted his chair back, and returned to his post at the window in the kitchen door—the door that led out onto the earthworm covered carport.

“How about some more coffee?” I offered.

“Awesome.” Kevin sat back and cracked his neck joints. “A cup of coffee would really hit the spot.”

Sarah nodded. “Yeah, I could use some, too. Want me to get it?”

“No,” I said. “You sit right back in that chair. I’m not so old that I can’t fix a cup of coffee for my guests.”

With his index finger, Carl drew a smiley face in the condensation on the window. Then he added two little antennae.

“Anything moving out there?” Kevin asked him.

“Nope, but I can’t see more than a few feet on account of this fog. Can’t even make out the carport. It’s as thick as Rose’s potato soup out there.”

The thought of Rose’s potato soup made my stomach grumble. I filled the kettle with bottled water and then put it on top of the kerosene heater to boil. I had decided long ago to dispense with my resolve to conserve kerosene. The way things were going, we probably wouldn’t be around much longer anyway and the conservation wouldn’t matter. While we waited for the kettle to whistle, I got out a bag of potato chips, some beef jerky, and what was left of the stew, and served them up.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s not exactly a meal fit for a king.”

“It’s better than anything we’ve had in a long while,” Sarah said around a mouthful of cold stew. “These vegetables are great. I wasn’t hungry earlier when we ate, but now I’m starved.”

I scratched my whiskered throat and watched them eat. “Earlier, you mentioned something you called ‘the White Fuzz.’ You said it grew on people?”

Kevin nodded. “That’s right. Horrible stuff. Completely consumes you until there’s nothing left.”

“I think I saw something like that down yonder in the hollow.” I pointed out the window. “Yesterday morning, when I was out looking for teaberry leaves. A pale white fungus. Never saw anything like it before.”

Sarah’s tone was one of concern. “You didn’t touch it, did you?”

“No. I didn’t like the looks of it, so I left it alone. But I saw it growing on a deer, too, and he looked sickly. It was growing up his legs and hindquarters. Kind of like mold or moss.”

Kevin wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “That’s the White Fuzz, alright. Good thing you didn’t touch it, or you’d be covered by now. The stuff works fast. Consumes its host.”

Carl turned away from the window. “Do you know what it is? Where it came from?”

The two young people shook their heads.

“It’s just one more consequence of the rain,” Sarah said. “Like the worms and everything else.”

The kettle started to whistle, and I pulled it off the heater and filled their mugs. Kevin took a sip and smacked his lips in satisfaction. I got up and fetched the sugar. Then I turned on some music. The soft sounds of Ferlin Husky’s “Wings of a Dove” filled the house.

“So what happened next?” Carl asked. “Did Leviathan come back? And how did you folks get from Baltimore to here?”

“Carl,” I said, “maybe they’re tired of talking about it. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“Well, I reckon.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but satisfaction brought him back.”

“We can tell you the rest,” Kevin said. “That’s okay. It happened, you know? As incredible as it all sounds, it really happened. Not talking about it won’t make that any less so. It’s like they say in that old Led Zepplin song. ‘Upon us all a little rain must fall.’ But I would like to wash up first, if that’s okay?”

“Sure.” I blew on my coffee to cool it. “I laid a towel and washcloth out for you in the bathroom. You’ll find them next to the sink. The washbasin is full of clean water, and there’s a bar of soap next to it.”

“But I want to know what happened,” Carl said. “Listen, you can’t wash up now. This is like a Saturday matinee cliffhanger!”

“For crying out loud, Carl,” I spat, disgusted with him. “You’re worse than a little kid.”

“Sarah, you want to take over?” Kevin asked.

She brushed her long, blond hair from her eyes. “Yeah. I’m okay to talk about it now. Those worms outside just brought it all back for a while.”

I showed Kevin to the bathroom and when I came back, Ferlin Husky had been replaced with B. J. Thomas’s “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” B. J. wailed that he missed his baby. I missed mine, too, and I was starting to crave a dip again as well.

Sarah hummed along with the tune. “My mother used to listen to this when I was little.”

“Was she a country music fan?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t remember much about her, really. She died when I was eight years old.”

She pushed her empty bowl away, drained her mug of coffee, and relieved Carl at the window. Carl sat down at the table.

Sarah stared out into the fog for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then she began.

“After the creature, Leviathan, as Kevin insists on calling it, took Lori, it disappeared. We didn’t see it again. But we were still in trouble. Leviathan had destroyed most of the hotel during its assault, and the upper levels were flooding fast. The water was rising, and within a few hours, the nineteenth floor was underwater, and it was spilling into the twentieth. Plus, it was still trickling down from the roof, through the cracks in the ceiling and the walls. We could feel the building shake every time a strong wave hit it. We had to get out. It was either that or stay there and let the whole thing fall down around us.

“Kevin was in bad shape. He just sat there in the garden, and we couldn’t get him to move. He just kept humming ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.’ When he talked, all he’d say was that he was waiting for Lori to come back, over and over. He’d really cut his hands up bad on the glass, and he was losing blood. But eventually we got him to understand the situation and he snapped out of it. The monster had destroyed the raft, but since Salty and I had watched Lee build it, we had a pretty good idea of how to make another one. I guess we could have swam for it, found another building that was safe, but after what we’d just been through, none of us wanted to swim in that water, not knowing what was lurking beneath the surface.

“For the next hour, Salty and I gathered materials and put another raft together while Kevin bandaged his hands and half-heartedly salvaged supplies. By the time we cast off from the roof, the water had flooded the twentieth floor and was rising to the top of the hotel. We weren’t even a mile away when one entire corner of the building sheered off and collapsed into the ocean.”

“It’s a good thing you made it out,” Carl said. “Sounds like it was just in the nick of time, too.”

“Yeah, it was. But we weren’t out of the woods. Not by a long shot. The current pulled us out to sea, away from the city. We drifted for two days and we didn’t have paddles or a sail or anything to guide us. We couldn’t even be sure of which direction the raft was drifting. The rain blotted out the sun and moon and the stars, so we couldn’t navigate using those. I think we drifted southeast and then farther south, before coming back in over where land used to be. The tides tossed us around. The whole time, we worried about running into more mermaids, or what we’d do if Leviathan decided it was still hungry and came back for more. Luckily, we didn’t see anything other than seagulls and a few schools of fish. A shark passed pretty close at one point, but we scared it away by shouting at it. And we saw an albatross, which Salty said was a good omen.”

Carl interrupted her. “Do you really think that squid thing was Leviathan from the Bible?”

“Kevin sure did,” Sarah said, shrugging. “It’s as good a name as any, I guess. To be honest, Mr. Seaton, I never really believed in God or the Bible. I’m still not sure I do, completely. Despite what I said earlier, about God breaking His promise, I don’t believe that what’s happening outside is some sort of divine judgment. The rains are just the consequences of an environmental collapse; an apocalypse that we put into motion with the start of the industrial revolution. We’re humans. We fuck things up. That’s what we do, and that’s all we ever did.”

“And that’s where we disagree,” said Kevin, stepping back into the kitchen. He smelled like soap, and his skin was red from scrubbing. His hair was still damp, but he looked like he felt better. “Sarah and I have argued about this at length. The greenhouse effect doesn’t explain what’s happening, and scientists had pretty much said so before the news stations stopped broadcasting. It doesn’t explain things like the White Fuzz or these creatures, either.”

Carl leaned back in his chair. “So what does explain it?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Kevin thinks this whole situation, everything that’s happening, was caused by black magic.”

“Well think about it,” he insisted. “During the raid, the Satanists had a spell book, the Daemonolateria—whatever the hell that means—and supposedly they used it to summon up that squid thing. If they could do that, then doesn’t it make sense that they cast other spells too? It makes sense that they cast some sort of spell to cause all of this. Their leader told us as much, during the raid. How else do you explain the weather? One day, it starts raining all over the world, all at the same time. The Sahara, the Alps, London, Paris, New York, Baghdad—even in fucking Antarctica. That’s just not natural. Almost overnight, the entire world starts flooding. Storm surges stronger than anything a normal hurricane could generate wipe out most of the world’s coastal cities. Tsunamis eradicate entire islands—millions and millions of people dead in a matter of days. Not weeks, but days. Does that seem scientifically plausible to you? And what about the mermaid?”

“We still don’t know that’s what it really was,” Sarah said. “They say that manatees look like—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sarah! A fucking manatee? Come on. You saw it just like I did. You were there. It controlled you for a second, too, the same as the rest of us. Pull your head out of your ass! If it wasn’t a mermaid that killed Nate, then what was it?”

She didn’t have an answer for him. Instead, she turned away and stared out into the mist.

“Forget about the mermaid for a minute,” Kevin continued. “What about everything else we’ve seen? What about those worms outside? You believe in those, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid to believe,” Sarah whispered. “Because I’m afraid of what that will mean.”

Now, it was Kevin’s turn to stay silent.

“Well,” I said, trying to ease the tension, “I do believe in the good book, and I’ve let the Lord guide me all of my life—especially now. But I don’t think the rain or those worms out there or anything else that’s happened is a form of divine judgment. God just doesn’t work that way.”

Kevin scoffed, his laughter short and sharp. “Hello? Sodom and Gomorrah? The great flood? Any of that ring a bell with you, man?”

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe He did in the Old Testament, but not anymore. That’s why He gave the world His son. But look, I don’t want to preach or get into a theological discussion here. This ain’t the time or place for that, and we’re all pretty tired.”

“Sorry.” Kevin held up his hands in apology. “You’re right. But if this isn’t a manmade ecological disaster, God’s final judgment, or some form of black magic holocaust, then what is it?”

“I don’t know about the rain,” I said. “But I do think that those worms are natural.”

Kevin sighed. “Then where did they come from, Teddy? Why haven’t we encountered them before?”

I took a sip of coffee and fought back another nicotine craving. “I’m no expert, but I’ve read about scientists finding worms in some awfully strange places. At the bottom of the Marianas Trench, feeding on whale bones, and even inside of volcanoes. Who knows what lies at the center of our planet? They discover new species every year. Maybe we didn’t know about them before, but these particular worms have probably been around for a lot longer than we have. Maybe they’ve been hiding deep below the surface. Now, conditions have finally forced our two species to encounter each other for the first time.”

“But there would have been some kind of fossil record,” Sarah said. “Something to let us know they were here.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But they’re here now. And I don’t even reckon we’ve seen the really big ones yet.”

Carl stiffened, his soup spoon hovering halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean, Teddy? That thing at the crash site was big as a bus.”

“You saw that mess out there on my carport. All those night crawlers? At first, I assumed the rain had driven them to the surface like that. Now, I think it might have been their big brothers that forced them topside instead. Animals behave strangely before an earthquake or a tsunami. Maybe this is something like that. Maybe they were fleeing the larger ones. And if those big worms we encountered today pushed the little worms above ground, then what do you suppose is forcing the bigger ones up now?”

“Something like Leviathan?” Kevin asked.

I nodded. “Exactly. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Sarah looked surprised. “I didn’t take you for a Shakespeare fan, Teddy. You’ve read Hamlet?”

“Only three times. I prefer The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, myself. I was always partial to Puck. He was a funny one.”

“Damn nonsense,” Carl said. He sat his spoon down and stared at his half-full bowl of stew. “So, if you’re right, Teddy, and there’s an even bigger worm somewhere out there, then how do we fight it?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I reckon we ought to start planning for it now. The Bible says Leviathan was big enough to swallow Jonah whole, and from what you’ve told us, I’d say that’s so. Just like the worm that swallowed Salty and Earl today. But as huge as that thing was, there’s bound to be something bigger on the way. And I don’t want to be here when it shows up. The problem is, I don’t know where we can go. We’re on top of the mountain. Everything below us is flooded. Only place higher than here is the ranger station up on Bald Knob, and we don’t know what the situation is there. It could be worse than here. Those worms could be all over the place—or worse than the ones here.”

The others didn’t have any ideas, either. Carl picked his teeth, Sarah looked at her broken nails, and Kevin stared at the coffee mug in his hands, the one with world’s greatest grandpa emblazoned on it, that the kids had gotten me for Father’s Day five years ago.

After a moment, I asked Sarah to continue with her story, if only to take our minds off the present situation for a little while.

“Well, like I said, we drifted on the raft for two days. None of us slept very much, and the salt in the air started to blister our skin and lips. We were cold and wet and miserable, and we didn’t have anything to keep the rain off of us except for our raincoats, and all three of us got sick. Salty developed a really nasty cough, deep down inside his chest. Kevin and I started to worry that it might be pneumonia. He started running a fever. Became delirious, babbling about Krakens and sea gods and something he called the soul cages. He said they existed at the bottom of the sea, and held the souls of sailors who’d died. He begged us not to let him end up in one. Then, on the third day, Cornwell found us.”

“That’s the fella who was piloting the chopper?” I asked, remembering how the seatbelt had cut him into three pieces.

“Yeah. He was a traffic reporter for a television station in Pittsburgh. He’d been flying from place to place, wherever he could find fuel and dry land, mostly. Most helicopters need to refuel every two hours, but his was specially equipped to stay in the air during media emergencies. It held enough fuel for a five-hour flight, and he had maps of every fueling station along the East Coast.”

“Is there much dry land left?” Carl asked.

“Mountaintop islands like this,” Sarah said. “But that’s about it.”

I tried picturing our mountain as an island, seen from above, and found that I couldn’t.

Sarah continued. “Cornwell’s brother, Simon, was with him. They were looking for fuel when they spotted us in the water. By then, we’d drifted far from any recognizable landmark, but there were still occasional rooftops or antennae sticking up from the ocean. We paddled over to a water tower and climbed on top, and they managed to get the helicopter in close enough to pick us up.”

Kevin grinned. “Remember how Salty was scared of the rotors? He thought they’d cut our heads off.”

“He crouched down as low as he could go,” Sarah smiled, remembering, “and scrambled onboard. Turns out he was afraid of flying. I think he would have been happier to stay on the raft. But him and Cornwell hit it off, and pretty soon he got over it. We wasted a lot of fuel, just flying around and looking for survivors, but Cornwell had the luck of the devil, because he kept finding refueling stations that were still above water. Eventually, we decided to try for Norfolk, Virginia. Obviously, the city wasn’t there anymore. It’s gone, along with the rest of the coastline. But Salty figured that all of those ships docked in Norfolk and Little Creek and Yorktown would have to go out to sea when the water started rising. Otherwise, they’d have been bashed against the piers. Now that the wave threat was over, he thought they’d still be in the area. Salty said that if we could find an LPD or an LPH that was still seaworthy, we could land on their flight deck. Maybe even a big carrier, like the Coral Sea or the Ronald Reagan. I guess Cornwell wasn’t the best navigator, because we ended up way off course. Instead of being over Maryland and Virginia, we ended up in West Virginia. We were almost out of fuel and supplies when we found a dry spot on top of Cass Mountain.”

“That’s where the Greenbank Observatory is,” Carl said. “We’ve gone hunting up there a few times. Teddy’s from there, originally.”

Sarah arched her eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

“I was born in Greenbank,” I told them. “Lived there all my childhood, in a little Jenny Lynd type house with a lean-to kitchen. Of course, it’s not there anymore. The old home place burned down years ago, and Greenbank’s a lot bigger place these days. But it’s nice to know that the town survived the flood and is still there.”

Sarah scowled. “No offense to your birthplace, but I wish it wasn’t there. We got stuck at the observatory for two weeks. There’s this weird cult that has taken over there. They call themselves the B’nai Elohim. I think that means ‘divine beings’ in Hebrew. At least, that’s what their leader said. I thought we’d left the crazies behind us, but I was wrong. They’re everywhere these days. The B’nai Elohim weren’t like the Satanists back in Baltimore. They didn’t worship sea monsters. But they were just as crazy.”

“How so?” Carl asked.

“They believed that an alien race of superintelligent geneticists from outer space created humans by fooling around with primate DNA. And they insisted that flying saucers were going to land at Greenbank and rescue them and that we could go along for the ride. They said that this had happened on earth once before and that an alien named Noah rescued everybody in his spaceship.”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“They didn’t try to hurt us,” Sarah continued. “Not at first, anyway. We knew they were whacked, crazy I mean, but we needed food and fuel and they had it and were willing to share. There was awful stuff going on. Incest and possibly child abuse, though we couldn’t confirm it. But we stayed, desperate circumstances and all that. Then three of the men tried to…”

She sighed, clasping Rose’s sweater around her.

I tried to soothe her. “Listen, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s okay.” She took a deep breath. “Three of them tried to rape me. They came into my room in the middle of the night, and when I woke up, they were leaning over me. They had my arms and legs pinned to the bed and all three of them were naked. I don’t remember their faces, but I can still hear their voices.” She paused. “Their voices are burned into my mind. One of them had a really hairy back and he had a tattoo of a snake. A king cobra. Isn’t it weird? I don’t remember what they looked like, but I remember that. I managed to get loose and I broke one of their noses and fractured the arm of another. But they had guns and mine was sitting in the corner of the room, out of reach. It might as well have been back in Baltimore. And I screamed for help. Simon and Kevin came to help me.”

“Simon?” Carl asked.

“Cornwell’s brother,” she reminded him. “They busted into the room, and the men shot Simon while Kevin got me away from them. There was nothing we could do. They shot him in the stomach, and the blood was pouring out. He put his hands over the wound, and the blood started bubbling between the cracks of his fingers.”

She shuddered with the memory.

“Simon told us to go on—that he’d hold them off. But then he was dead, just like that, and the men were jumping over his body. Kevin killed all three of them as they were chasing us. We found Salty and Cornwell, and made it to the chopper, but just barely. Salty shot one of the guards, and we took off.”