She heard the things in the dark before she saw them. They hissed, one on either side of her, also circling the car. She could only make out bent forms, walking somewhat upright, but mostly on all fours. One hissed again, closer this time, so close that a cold sweat broke down her back. To her left, the other one panted eagerly.
Her mouth went dry. She realized that the things had gotten between her and the car. She wondered how long they’d been out there while she slept, planning their attack. With such thick cloud cover, she couldn’t make out anything around her, just the vague form of the car in the gloom. She’d never known pure darkness like this in the city. She started circling back toward the car, making it harder for them to close in on a moving target. As she stepped to the side she heard one hiss and saw a jet-black shape lunge just to the left of her. Fighting the urge to bolt, she kept a slow pace. She couldn’t make out any shapes, just pieces of shadow come to life. The other one hissed, feet crunching on gravel. She leaped to the side as something caught in her shirt, tearing the fabric. Cold and clammy skin met her bare flesh. She wrenched the shirt out of its grasp.
The hiss became a strange, keening wail, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. The other one made a grunting noise, then joined in the howl. She pinpointed its location in the dark, then dashed between it and the car. She ran with outstretched hands, slamming into the cold metal door. Yanking it open, she jumped into the driver’s seat and tried to slam the door shut. Something held it fast, so she reached up along the doorframe. Her fingers came into contact with a leathery cold, and she pounded her fist against it until it retracted. Slamming the door shut, she turned the key in the ignition. A grating scratch ran down the glass, and she gritted her teeth. Then she was roaring out of the parking space, spraying dirt behind her. She switched on her headlights, and the right beam caught something on the side of the road, a dark, rain-soaked form, hunched over, eyes reflecting back green. It flashed by so fast she couldn’t tell if it was human or some other kind of animal, but it was at least six feet tall.
She hadn’t expected these things out here. When she didn’t run into them on the first two nights driving, she’d thought they didn’t like going near the car. Once she’d hit this interstate, she’d hoped that maybe they only hunted in the heart of the cities. From now on, she’d have to be careful when she stopped. Sleep only during the day. Maybe now that she’d found this relatively unobstructed road, she could travel more at night.
She drove on for the rest of the evening, eyes burning with exhaustion. At last, with the heavy clouds showing the glow of dawn, she pulled over and crawled into the back seat once more. But she couldn’t fall asleep. She stared out of the window at the sky, waiting for it to brighten.
She pulled out Raven’s old PRD and powered it up. She selected another entry. Raven appeared, this time sitting at the edge of a vast ocean. As before, she could make out the tops of buildings submerged some distance offshore. Raven pointed at them. “This was once a densely populated city. They built it right at the ocean’s edge. Why is it underwater now, you might ask?” He tucked his hair behind his ear.
“As the earth continued to heat up, the loss of sea ice was staggering. Not only did ice cover hit record lows, but it melted much faster than anyone had anticipated. Huge shelves broke off and melted in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The sea level rose drastically as less of the earth’s water was locked up in ice. Coastal cities like this one tried to fight back by raising levees and sandbagging, but it was a losing battle. Once thriving hubs of trade and commerce, these areas were quickly abandoned as floodwaters moved in with unexpected speed. The sea took them, forcing people to move farther inland. The cities were lost beneath the waves.”
He pointed at the bizarre structures sticking up above the whitecaps. “I often wonder what it must have been like to live back then, to be in a city that wasn’t atmospherically shielded, to have no idea of the doom that was about to befall you. The crazy thing is, they had advance warning. The climatologists told people that they’d experience unprecedented flooding. But instead of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, they used stopgap measures, like raising levees. It wasn’t enough. It was too little too late, and these people paid for it with their homes and lives.”
When the recording ended, it was still too dark to fall asleep, so she watched another entry.
Raven wasn’t his usual cheery self in this one. His jaw was clenched, his eyes heavy with bags. Behind him she saw an unbroken vista of cement and toppled buildings. He centered the camera on himself. “Okay.
