Oh, great city, distorted in the wake of a mountainous tide. Awash in decaying salt. Thine people’s arms stretched above them, thine whispered prayers and homeless writhing in the alleys as the great shadow passes. It is upon them in the span of seconds, a force that cracks their fragile bones and pulls at their aching forms. Hell is brought by the quiet ocean.
Oh, great city, watch thine masses be carried by the river of the streets. The poor and the wealthy, the children and the dogs. Corpses weakened by the waters, in days the skins are cracked and bloated insides vomit out into the depths. The rats creeping in the subway are swept away and bound to the walls by current in the dark. The waters of the sewer and the sea mingle evenly.
There are those above it. They at the tips of buildings that call at the sky, but even they are not saved. For the wave brings the towers down. There are those outside its path, but neither are they saved. For the stink of humanity in the waters spreads sickness among them. And the pockets of life that cling at the edges of this place become ruined by desperation.
See, oh city, what has become of a survivor. She shall swim in the waters of the flood, she shall bathe herself gently in the squalor of the earth. The urban river rushes like the waters of the forests do but is clouded instead with the stink of death and the fluid twist of venomous snakes. She sees their bodies shine in the overcast, and tells herself they are only branches. The outcropping she stands on, some remnant of a skyscraper, is jagged to her bare feet and set low in the murky rush. A crying child and the bark of a stray and the wail of alarm bells are the siren’s song calling her, come deeper. Be at peace.
Her feet enter the flooded street first, and brush something momentarily beneath the surface. Her body is cold and clammy and shivering, the water takes her head down and the current whips her back feet-first into the void. Her hair is spread on the surface of the water like a lily pad. Already the brush of deathly slickness touches at her side and cold spreads slow in her limbs. Her breath sits locked in her chest but she pushes herself to let it escape. To gasp as desperately at the water as she has at the air.
One step beyond the city. A bare footstep has escaped the water-saturated muck and is planted firmly in the grass. He staggers forward, naked and dripping and cut deeply along his arm. The cut is long and pus-ridden and the steam of his body heat rises away. I have eaten her, he cries, I have eaten her like the rats. The city is silent but shifting and the sounds of crumbling buildings and subways can be heard through the spaces of the ruins like dust is seen in stripes of sunlight. He kneels in the grasses and rubs his withered, bearded face upon it and breathes deeply. Weeping upon it. His tear drops pull at the blades. God, he whispers, God help me. God help me.
Some thing of the sea glides in the darkness. Its pale form delivered to sunlight for the first time. Light has not touched it, and it seeks the darkness. It feels with inhuman tendrils for the beauty of comforting black. And suddenly it is struck by a pillar of flesh from above the plain of murk and cold ink erupts from its innards. O’er the forests of twisted metal that cloud wanders, washing the deadlands before diffusing completely. Finally, there is release from the day, the thing slips into the sewer like a ghost and devours the dead things keeping there. The filth of that place is dispersed evenly in the city. Its soft limbs play weakly across algae-ridden walls.
Under the waterline the displaced elements of an apartment float. The alarms have faded in the distance, the lights are dark. Warped tables and chairs rock in place. A picture of a man on the wall watches serene o’er the quiet, a crust of dry salt has been left on the edges. A mother and child float face-up by the window as if trying to see. A soft ripple of current released by a building’s collapse buffets them slightly and the tops of their heads brush against each other in rhythmic reunion.
The outside cannot reach what the waters have claimed, cannot pull its captives away, and the flying hands of the outside can only drop containers into the fray. The count of bodies is unreachable as the survivors. How, oh city, how shall thee shine again? How, belabored so with waking horror, shall any love thee? Lo, this place is given up to the ocean. Weakened through by salt.