“What the fuck? What the fuck do I do now?” Donnie said.
After the initial burst of vomit inside the cabin, Donnie staggered onto the back deck, into the rain, and kept throwing up over the side of the boat. He emptied everything in his system but that horrible fishy taste lingered in his mouth. That was the least of his problems though. Staring back at the tentacled body, Donnie was wracked with fear and confusion. The boat drifted, engines purring but the craft only turning randomly through the surf. The creature’s red eyes were dull. The hilt of the shotgun Donnie found when he boarded the boat jutted out of its mouth, surrounded by hooked fangs. Some kind of brackish blood leaked out of the creature’s head and pooled on the deck.
With a bang, a wave rocked the boat against the nearest building again. Donnie jumped at the sound. At first, after throwing up, Donnie felt a kind of elation. He had overcome this monster that could have clearly overpowered him. And here was the proof, the body of the beast, maybe the world’s first proof of alien life. But then he wondered, what if there were more? Almost certainly there were, and if they were already aggressive then how were they going to react to him having the body of one of their own on board?
This was an invasion. These things hadn’t just washed up with the tsunami, they’d caused it. Somehow, they could control the water, the weather. It explained why the tsunami wasn’t draining back out to sea the way it should have, and the nonstop rain.
Donnie knelt over the monstrous corpse. He struggled to pull the shotgun out of the creature’s mouth, the barrel covered in foamy drool and gore. The gun was empty but Donnie could look around for more shells. Shaking it off, he put it back on the table. Proof of alien life and yet Donnie was almost overwhelmed by the desire to get rid of it. He tried to pick it up so he could drag it onto the back deck and roll it over the side. The body was incredibly heavy, dense with muscle tissue, as well as wet and slippery. He couldn’t grip it and he couldn’t pick it up. He wrestled with the thicker tentacles and the flippers, coating his hands in ooze.
“Fuck!” Donnie swore. “Son of a bitch, fucking octopus!”
Trying again and again, Donnie knew he wasn’t going to be able to dump it. Even if he could pull and shove the body out onto the back deck, he wouldn’t be able to lift it into the water. Donnie kicked it to one side of the cabin instead, out of the way. A fishy stink rose off the alien creature. As he was kicking it, Donnie noticed something black and artificial peeking between its tentacles. He toed some of the slippery limbs aside. Equipment belts or something similar were attached to the bases of some of the creature’s tentacles. Harpoons, like the one currently nailed into the console with some scraps of his coat, threaded through one of them. Another held weird blades, almost like Japanese shurikens, and some other bits of strange equipment. Alien tools, proof of intelligence again.
Still adrift, Donnie rummaged around the cabin and looked at the section below deck. He found some bottled water, thankfully, to wash the taste of vomit and that fishy gore out of his mouth. He also found some fishing gear, old clothes, a first aid kit, and a blue tarpaulin. No other guns were on board as far as he could see. The first aid kit had some sticky bandages. His side wasn’t bleeding too badly from the creature’s harpoon but he wiped some antiseptic over the wound, stinging, and plastered the bandages on top.
Donnie used the tarp to cover the corpse. It did little for the smell but it stopped the multitude of dim, red eyes from staring at him. He kept waiting for the creature to jump back up, tentacles thrashing, like something out of a horror movie, but thankfully it did nothing of the kind. He didn’t bother checking out the little spears, shuriken-like objects, or other esoteric tools attached to its belts. It would require getting too close.
Pulling open one of the fishing tackle boxes, Donnie found some more shotgun shells. They weren’t in a box but loose and rattling around among one of the top compartments that folded out of the box, half a dozen of them in total. Donnie loaded three of the shells into the stubby weapon. He racked the vertical grip on the pump-action. The other three shells went into one of his dry pockets. Donnie now had a weapon, and he knew where to aim. He also had the knife from the camping store although he had forgotten about it during the earlier fight. The thought of using it had never even occurred to him. He kept the knife on his belt. The shotgun went on the table, within reach.
“Okay, okay,” Donnie said. “Okay.”
The harpoon that the creature nearly nailed Donnie with stuck out of the console. It trailed threads from his torn jacket. On the other side was the hole that he recognised now had been made by another spear, surrounded by blood. He knew now the owner of the boat, whoever they were, must have been killed by one of these squidlike things. Maybe even the same one he’d killed.
One objective was still branded in Donnie’s mind, to get to Alessa. Donnie could feel his whole body shaking. The adrenaline was well and truly wearing off, leaving him feeling cold and lost. Their apartment building would be safe from the flood, he’d thought. Alessa would have been up high enough and the building far enough inland that the wave wouldn’t have reached her. But now that these creatures were a part of the situation, he couldn’t know if she would be safe from them. Donnie grabbed the wheel harder, struggling with his breathing. The disaster, the creatures, he was stuck in the middle of it all, but if he could focus on just the one thing, on Alessa, he could get through this.
~~~
At home, Alessa had no idea what was going on. Not when it came to the kind of thing her husband had discovered. She kept hoping she’d wake up and find the whole thing was an awful dream. Curtains open, the windows filled the otherwise lightless apartment with weak, grey sun. Rain fell in constant sheets. Whenever she crossed to the balcony, she still couldn’t believe it. The flood had overtaken the roads in all directions, the lower levels of their building, the gas station across from their apartment, and all the other low-lying buildings in their area. The surface of the water drummed constantly with beats from the rain. It was swamped with trash, bits of debris and parts torn from cars, and worst of course, the bodies.
Alessa’s back ached as she hauled her unwieldy, pregnant body across the apartment. She sighed, so tired of being heavy and aching, and carrying this wriggling child-sized lump that used her bladder as a kickball around in front of her. Yesterday, she’d thought the birth couldn’t come soon enough. Now, however, she was desperate to hold it inside her until the situation returned to normal. Her throat hitched. With considerable willpower and deep, steady breathing, she pushed the thought away. Every time she thought about being forced to have the baby here, in the midst of this disaster, without medical help and without Donnie, she ended up in a crying fit. The crying and needless terror she was putting herself through had to stop, she’d decided.
Another issue was her shrinking food and water supplies. Alessa had to stay fed and hydrated for the baby’s sake if nothing else. Pouring herself a glass of water, she knew there was rainwater right outside she could capture and drink, they all could, if things got desperate. A big part of her rejected the idea though. She wasn’t sure why. The rain had just started to feel so wrong and so alien to her, the way it kept falling and falling without pause, that she had grown to distrust it in some way. If she needed more food or water the nice guy she’d met that morning, Harvey, could help her out.
As if he’d preemptively read her mind, there was a knock at the door and Harvey was waiting for her when Alessa opened it. A grin split his face. Aching and exhausted, she struggled to smile back.
“How are you holding up?” Harvey asked.
“I’m-, fine, I’m alright. Hoping help will come soon,” Alessa said.
“Twenty minutes, we’re having a meeting upstairs to discuss making sure the building is safe, and to talk about what to do if help doesn’t come soon. Will you come along?”
“Yeah, yes, I guess so. I’m feeling more stuck here than ever, it’d be good to see some other faces.”
“Mind if I come inside, get a drink of water?”
Alessa let him inside and Harvey made his way to the kitchen. Picking up a glass, he poured himself some water from one of Alessa’s containers. He nodded at Alessa’s swollen stomach.
“We’ll find out if there’s someone who can help you with that, you know, if the time comes,” Harvey said.
Alessa’s smile tightened. “I hope not,” she said. “But thanks.”
“Do you mind if I-, do you mind if I touch it?”
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The request didn’t seem especially odd to Alessa, even though she hardly knew the man. Since she had gotten pregnant, she’d been asked over and over again even before she was really showing. Some total strangers hadn’t even asked, and had simply invaded her space to touch her. Alessa supposed since she was already sharing her body with one stranger others assumed it no longer belonged to her.
“Sure, if you’d like,” Alessa said.
Holding the half-empty glass in one hand, Harvey sidled over as if sneaking up on her stomach. His eyes took on a new glow. Almost reverently, he placed one big hand across the side of Alessa’s pregnant belly. Her child’s head and spine happened to be pressing against the flesh there and Harvey moulded his hand around them, fascinated. Almost certainly as a result of Alessa’s stress over everything that had been happening, her and Donnie’s unborn child had already been fitful all morning. Sensing Harvey, they started to roll away and kick.
“Oh, wow,” Harvey said.
“Yep, they’re quite the little mover and shaker in there.”
Harvey ran his hand across Alessa’s stomach questingly, as if searching for a second baby in there. Her dress skimmed under his hand. As he pressed against the flesh, Alessa felt uncomfortably aware of the pad of his thumb hovering just beneath one of her swollen breasts. Paralysed, she held her breath. Harvey glanced up and seemed to read the discomfort on her face. He gave her a smile that was half a grimace.
“Little miracle,” Harvey said as he broke away.
Draining the rest of his glass, Harvey stepped back into the kitchen and left it in the sink. Alessa remained where she was, near the front hall. Harvey had to circle past her to reach the door.
“Do you want me to come pick you up, take you to the meeting in twenty minutes?” Harvey asked.
“No, no, it’s okay,” Alessa said. “I’ll find my way.”
After Harvey left, Alessa took a few minutes to consider whether she really wanted to go to the meeting or not. She decided she did. What she had said to Harvey was true about needing to see some other faces. She put a coat over her loose pregnancy dress and managed to get some shoes on her sore and swollen feet.
“You were overreacting, for God’s sake, forget about it,” Alessa scolded herself.
Harvey making her uncomfortable was all in her head, Alessa decided. With the late stages of pregnancy, she was hyper-conscious of her body and the stress of the situation was making everything appear worse. Harvey had not done anything untoward and she doubted any man would find her all that attractive as she was now anyway. His general boldness could be put down to the fact most men had no clue at all how uncomfortable a woman could be with a strange man roaming around their apartment, no matter how friendly he was. Clueless, but not malicious, she felt her reaction, subdued as it was, was just stupid.
Dressed, Alessa took a flashlight with her into the corridor. She didn’t bother to lock her front door. The stairwell was propped open. Hearing voices, Alessa made her way up the stairs while nursing her aching back.
The apartment where the meeting was taking place, on the floor second from the top, was much, much larger than Alessa and Donnie’s apartment. The central living space could have swallowed their entire two bedroom home. The kitchen was separate, along with a bathroom and laundry room. A hallway led to the bedrooms and a second bathroom. When Alessa arrived, a couple dozen people already filled the living room. Seeing she was pregnant, someone offered her a seat on the couch. The curtains were thrown open but a few camping lanterns also helped light the room.
Harvey took control of the meeting. He was surrounded by a cadre of other men of various ages who seemed to have rallied around him. More than thirty people ended up joining the meeting. Alessa saw a mix of her neighbours, old and young, a few small families.
“Thanks for coming. Firstly, I’d like to thank Mr Timmons for the use of his apartment as a meeting place,” Harvey said.
Mr Timmons was a slim, silver-haired, little man in his late sixties. He acknowledged the thanks but didn’t look too pleased by the turnout. Adults and kids perched on every available surface and were walking all over his plush carpet.
“First things first, we’re all in this together. We don’t know much about this disaster and what’s caused it but we’ve been listening to reports on the radio. There’s some pretty crazy stuff being said out there, even some people saying this is down to little green men with tentacles from Mars, but we just don’t know. What we do know is that help could still be days away so we’re going to have to help each other.”
A few people laughed uneasily at Harvey’s men from Mars comment but grew serious again as he mentioned the possibility of help being days away. Alessa shifted uncomfortably on the couch. Her back ached in spite of the thick cushions and she already needed to pee again.
“Water and food are our first priorities,” Harvey said. “Me and the guys here, I think we’ve checked in on most of you and everyone should be right to get through the next day or two, right? If it goes on any longer, we’ve already set up a bunch of buckets and big containers on the roof and on a few balconies to capture this rain that doesn’t seem to want to stop. Whether that’s for washing, cleaning or drinking, we’ll distribute that as needed. For food, if this situation goes on, we’ll seriously need to consider breaking into some of the unoccupied apartments and checking them for food. We’ll only take canned or dried goods, easy to replace, and I’m sure all our fine neighbours wouldn’t deny us food or disparage us the cost of a new lock on their front door if they were here to have their say. If it gets to that point, we may need to pool those resources and move everyone else’s food into a central space, one apartment, so we can ration it all fairly, does that sound good?”
An older man grumbled behind Alessa although she couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “Sounds like damn communism.”
“Secondly, medicine and-, does anyone have any medical training or experience?” Harvey asked. “Thankfully, we haven’t had any injuries yet and no one has indicated they’re short on any medications or insulin, anything like that, yet. We do have one very pregnant lady though who may need some help.”
Harvey winked as Alessa. She didn’t care for the attention as many eyes turned on her but she felt more certain than ever that she’d misjudged Harvey before. A young woman standing off to Alessa’s left cleared her throat and raised her hand.
“Hey, my name is Heather Williams, I’m a nurse. I was meant to go to a shift at the hospital last night but obviously I’m stuck here, so I can help.”
“Thank you, Heather, you and Alessa should talk,” Harvey said.
One of the men standing with Harvey stepped forward and said he’d gotten some medical training while in the Army. A couple of other people around the room also knew basic first aid. Alessa smiled at the nurse, Heather. The two of them gestured to indicate they would talk after the meeting was over.
“Thirdly, and this might seem a bit funny, but I think we should set up some regular patrols to keep a lookout down on the lower levels, near the water’s edge,” Harvey said. “We might need some volunteers, some of the men, to make up numbers if we’re going to keep eyes down there around the clock.”
“Patrols? Why would we need patrols?” someone asked.
“A few reasons, someone to keep an eye on the water level and the damage to the building, make sure everything is safe. Also, help might be coming by water, and we’ll need someone to signal them if it does. If not help, well, there might be people floating by who need our help too! People floating by on debris. Also, and we can’t discount this, there may be looters or some sort of dangerous people that we’ll have to defend ourselves from.”
Most of the room had been quickly coming around in agreement as Harvey lay out his argument. As he mentioned looters and the need to defend themselves though, muttering broke out. Harvey held his hands up until the voices quietened.
“Just trying to be realistic, that’s the worst case scenario. There are some nuts out there, criminals, who might take advantage of a disaster like this to take things that don’t belong to them, or do whatever else they feel like. This apartment building is one of the biggest in the immediate area, it might make it a target.”
The muttering continued, at a lower volume. A lot of people either looked worried or were nodding in agreement. Alessa didn’t know what to think. Looters hadn’t been a fear of hers until now.
“We’ll need to break into some of the apartments near the waterline to keep an eye on things,” Harvey said. “And, again, please don’t freak out, but does anyone have any guns? This is again, just for a worst case scenario to scare any potential looters off.”
“Guns? Surely that’s taking things too far,” a young woman said. “Having a bunch of armed men patrolling the building, in the dark with no power, could get someone hurt.”
“Not just armed men, us,” Harvey said. “And just for show, unless someone attacks us first.”
“Maybe for the guys from Mars,” a teenager said.
The argument trailed on for another few minutes and then led into other things. They talked about what to do if the building did start showing damage, how to signal help, to other concerns about the patrols. Harvey seemed to enjoy hearing himself talk. Eventually, the meeting broke up and people went their separate ways.
“Hi, Alessa, right?” Heather, the nurse, came over to meet her. “How have you been dealing with all this?”
“I’m about as alright as can be expected, I guess?” Alessa said.
“When was your last checkup? Was there anything they said to watch for?”
“Only a few days ago and no, nothing special, everything was going to plan.”
“Then you should stay off your feet, take it easy, and if you need anything I’m in apartment forty-seven. Seriously, anything, day or night, if you can send someone I’ll come to you.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it, really.”
Alessa returned to her apartment, other people moving up and down the stairwell giving her plenty of space. She wished she could open the door and find Donnie waiting for her, wringing out his clothes and hair from the rain, but of course their apartment was empty. In spite of her aching back and feet, Alessa went to watch the flood for a little while. As if the rain and destruction hadn’t seemed threatening enough, now there was this talk of looters and criminals. She was pretty sure Harvey was being paranoid. Although he was almost certainly correct that some unscrupulous people would take advantage of the tsunami, or any other disaster like it, an apartment building full of people becoming a target seemed unlikely. Plenty of places would be empty and much easier to hit for any looter with half a brain. Criminals weren’t going to escalate a robbery spree into a possible string of assaults and murders in a packed building just for the hell of it. Still, she worried about Donnie running into people like that.
Over the rain, Alessa heard a steadily growing engine. She squinted into the grey. Some distance off, moving fast, she saw several dark and angular shapes thundering across the sky. Helicopters, they looked like military craft moving in formation. Alessa’s face brightened and she almost let out a cry of relief. The rescue efforts must have begun.