The world was ending. No scratch that, the world already had ended. Jake thought, the twenty-four year old stood in the high rise penthouse and gazed out over the city, the cold wind blew in through the window carrying with it the acrid tang of smoke and the screams of the dying. Glass poured down in a glittering cascade from the skyscrapers as window after window shattered.

Far below a slick oily shadow creeped across the ground coating everthing it touched. And when the shadow receded all the was left behind were twisted hunks of rusted corroded metal. That, Jake remembered with a shudder, and bones. Human bones, because for some reason the shadow that had appeared in the North Pacific and spread across the world in a slow inexorable march only harmed humanity and the things that the race had built. Nations had tried to contain it, corral it, hell they had even tried to nuke it, all to no avail. Cats were fine touching it, dogs were fine, birds were fine. Even the stupid flies were fine.

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It was a hell of a way to go. Feeling your own body dissolve in agony. Over the course of the past six weeks the entire world took off for the mountains, hoping beyond hope that the black tide wouldn't rise so high. Not Jake though, Jake had remained behind, with his dying parents who couldn't be removed from life support. They were gone now too, once the Black Tide consumed the power station it was lights out, their was nothing left to keep them breathing. It was too late for Jake though, even now the Tide had begun to lap at the supports of the building.

"At least," Jake murmured, as he brought the gun to his head. "I won't be here to feel anything when the Tide takes me." There was a muffled thump and bits of blood, bone, and grey matter, splattered across the shining marble floors of the penthouse. Soon enough it too vanished into the black depths.