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Rain...
Rain, rain, rain...
Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain...
It's still raining. It's just wet everywhere and I'm wet and everyone is just plain wet. It started raining after all the weird stuff started in the oceans all over the world. Big ships and small ships started disappearing. Well, some disappeared but others would show up just floating in the water or worse, with their engines still on, crashing into the shores just wherever. I'm talking little sailing boats and big oil tankers and navy war ships and just everything that floats. All these coast guard and war ships would go searching for the lost ships, then they would disappear too. Helicopters and planes would search too and sometimes they would find these boats just drifting in the water with no people on them. It was freaky, because you could see those big oil rigs out there and you knew there wasn't anyone on them anymore. Just gone. People were getting really scared.
Then all the wires and cables under the oceans started breaking down. Good thing for satellites or all the talk between countries would be gone now.
All the big people like the cops and the President said not to panic, but they were scared too. You could see it in their faces, even on TV. There were Army and National Guard people all over, especially in the big coastal towns like New York and LA and San Francisco. Tanks and jeeps and weird cars with satellite dishes on them driving all up and down the streets. All the ports and wharves and any place like that where boats could pull in were sealed off and big iron and cement barricades were put around the places where the sewer pipes go into the sea. It looked to me like they were getting ready for an enemy to come walking out of the ocean.
Mom and Dad were on one of the little boats and I was with a babysitter. We waited for them to come back but when they never did so she took me to the cops. They tried to be nice to me but they were too busy to help me. They said for me to wait at the station for these social worker people to take me somewhere, but I ran away before they got there. That was real easy and I don't think they would have ever shown up anyhow.
That's why I'm by myself now. Mom and Dad's house is in San Francisco and I didn't want to stay there because I think the Army was right that something was going to come out of the sea and it wasn't going to be very nice when it did. So I started walking towards the Bay Bridge to get out of San Francisco and head to Kansas or Missouri. I hoped it wouldn't take too long to get there because it had started raining that day I left. And it's still raining now.
Anyway, even though you're not supposed to walk across that bridge, it was pretty easy to do with the cops being so busy with all this other stuff. It seemed like other people were doing the same thing because I didn't see any traffic going into San Francisco, but a bunch of traffic was all jammed up going east. It had been a long day with the babysitter and the cops and all this walking so I stopped at Treasure Island which is kinda midway across the bridge to see if I could find some place to get some food and maybe take a nap. I don't think there was anyone on that island but me and I broke into a house and made some sandwiches to eat and also some to take with me for later.
I turned on the TV and the news was on. It was always on now and they talked about what was happening with the oceans. They said that they didn't know yet what was going on but they were pretty sure that it wasn't natural, that there must be intelligent people making this happen. I fell asleep on the couch and had dreams that made me feel sick when I woke up. The dream was all fuzzy like when a cable channel isn't working very well, but I could see that I was underwater. There was this ugly head with tentacles and there were these big dinosaur-like wings flapping around, churning up the water and mud and the fish and other stuff. There were a lot of people down there with me. Lots of different people like sailors and army guys and people that looked like tourists with their Hawaiian shirts and Mom and Dad were there too. I wanted Mom and Dad to come over and pick me up but they just swam around with all the other people. The way they moved started to make me feel kinda funny though and I wanted to get away from them. They were really white and fat and they just flopped around like broken GI Joe dolls, their arms and legs just going floppy with the crazy waves the big dinosaur wings made.
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I woke up then. My head hurt and I went to get a drink of water. A drink of water… That's funny. Anyway, I got in the kitchen when I heard the firecrackers. It sounded like when we have Chinese New Year in our neighborhood, but really far away. I looked out the window but couldn't see anything so I went outside and climbed up a tree so I could get on the roof. It was dusk but I could see more, and now the sound was changing from the firecracker pops to big explosions. Across the bay in San Francisco I could see a bunch of smoke and flashes of light. I've seen that night time news footage of the Gulf War and this looked just like that except for one thing, the bullets that look like white streams of light were going into the water instead of into the air. It was weird looking and all of a sudden it was everywhere. Big flashes of light and explosions that were breaking my eardrums were hitting all over the bay and in the city and even in Oakland and Berkeley. I couldn't see what our guys were shooting at though, and it seemed like the army had just gone crazy all at once. The night sky became red with smoke and fire at both ends of the bridge. I was trapped on Treasure Island and I was getting really scared.
A bunch of jets flew over and went way out to sea. In a while I saw a really big white flash out on the horizon like they dropped a nuclear bomb on the ocean. Then another and another. I had to get out of here!
I got ready to walk back to the bridge when I saw one of them. One of the guys the army must be fighting. He was walking out of the water underneath the bridge so I ducked under a parked car so that he wouldn't see me. He was big and ugly and naked. He looked like a fish with legs and arms, or maybe like a frog that walked sort of like a man. He smelled bad, and I think he could smell me too because he started looking around like he had lost something and he was walking right towards me. I started to feel cold and weak in my arms and legs and I started trembling because he was definitely coming right to where I was.
I scrambled to get out from under the car and away from that ugly thing but I felt slow and tired. As I got up and started running I heard my dad calling my name. I looked around and there he was! Dad! How did he get here and how did he know I was here? I was just so happy to see him and I was so tired from being scared that I just stopped and held out my arms for him to pick me up. But why was he walking so funny and why did he smell so bad, like dead fish, and where was that frog guy at?
"Hey Dad, what's that over there?" I pointed off in the distance behind him. Sucker, he actually looked, and while he did I ran like crazy away from him and towards the bridge.
The bridge didn't have regular cars on it anymore, just tanks and cop cars and stuff like that. They were all leaving the city too. A cop saw me and yelled at me wondering where the heck I came from and to get in his car. I told him there was this frog guy chasing me. He yelled for me to forget about that and to just get in the car because everyone was leaving, we had to go before they dropped the big bomb on San Francisco.
"You're dropping a bomb on our own city?"
"It's not our city anymore kid..." and under his breath I could hear him say "It's not our world anymore."
"Can we go to Missouri? There's not an ocean there is there?" He looked at me with this really sad and kinda mean look on his face, then he looked ahead and kept on driving. "Yeah, sure. Missouri. You know anyone there?"
"No." I said.
"Hmm. Me neither."
That was a week ago and now my new friend Mark is dead. Being a cop didn't help him any. Yesterday we were in Kansas City Missouri and we stopped for gas when he saw his wife there at the station. He thought she had died back in San Francisco last week during the first attack, but here she was. It wasn't her though. I could tell by the smell and the way she was walking. I yelled for Mark to listen to me and to shoot her but he cussed at me until she was next to him. Then I could see what it was and I think Mark could too right before it got him and killed him. I screamed and ran to the car. Mark had showed me how to shoot his gun and his shotgun and how to drive in case anything happened to him. I got the shotgun and even though it hurt my shoulder each time I pulled the trigger, I shot that thing three times. It didn't die but it was hurt and it held its eyes when I shot it in the face. It was blindly grabbing for me when I grabbed the keys, gun and some ammo from Mark's belt. I shot it with the shotgun again right up against its neck and it died that time with its head blown off and just dangling down its back.
I cussed at it, then got in the car. Those things couldn't have been so fast as to beat us to Missouri. But there is the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Maybe they've come up through the rivers too. They must be everyplace where there is water. And it's been raining a really long time.
The car got stuck in deep water on a flooded part of I-70 between Kansas City and Columbia. The police radio hasn't picked up any voices for about 12 hours. I just been sitting in here thinking about what Mark had said about it not being our world anymore. I'm looking east and there's another nuclear flash. I don't think Columbia is there anymore. I don't think there's many places left for regular people. I'm glad I have the gun. Whether any of the bad guys show up or not, I think I'll be using it soon.
Copyright © 1998 Peter A. Worthy
"Attack of the Deep Ones" © 1998 by Dan Ross
Illustration, "SS Innsmouth" © 1998 by Dan Ross
