• • •
Alan ran as fast as he could through downtown. He had no idea where the hell he was going but was focused on finding one thing: dry land.
He had never been in rain this heavy. The storm drains were overflowing, water was a foot high on the sidewalks, and was sluicing into the lobbies and parking lots of buildings, but this was hardly paramount in Alan’s mind. What Alan was trying to avoid looking at, what he was trying to force from his ear, were the sights and sounds of every other human being in downtown being torn apart or inside-out.
What he had seen in the county jail was nothing compared to the madness on the streets of Houston. Thousands of torn bodies floated down the block. Buses and cars were stopped at odd angles, their drivers and passengers having been pulped against the windows and dashboards. Thunderous splashes sent up geysers of bloody water as the bodies of people who either jumped or were thrown from great heights slapped into the flood.
Alan had made the mistake of looking up at one point after noticing blood drizzling down both of his arms. Hundreds of people, far more than he imagined had struggled in to work that day at all, were being held in mid-air as the thick, black tendrils of oily liquid snaked out shattered windows, dissolved their skin, and then dumped the refuse into the streets.
“Shit!” Alan cried, leaping aside as a partial torso slammed onto the sidewalk in front of him.
Dry land.
Alan kept looking, but the more he ran, the more he feared that there was no such thing. The entire city was on the verge of flooding. If what was happening up in the buildings was any indication of this strange killing machine’s ability, dry land might not be enough.
But Alan kept running.
When he could, he launched himself off the sidewalk and ran along benches, retaining walls that circled trees or flags, or even jumped from garbage cans. If it was any other day, the leaps he was making from one ledge to the next wouldn’t have even crossed his mind. The distances were impossible and the landing area too slick. He’d obviously slip and go crashing down, breaking every bone in his body while cracking his skull.
Right now, however, he landed with supernatural authority. He was like one of those guys in the movies, a stunt man who never lost his footing.
To cross streets, he’d jump from a wall to the top of a bus shelter and onto the roof of a car, all without skipping a beat. When he landed on the other side, he just kept running. His lungs burned with the effort. His muscles strained. Like the screaming, he ignored this, too.
He’d glimpsed the tendrils of black hunting him in the floodwaters. Like eels, they cut through the streets and were sometimes only a few feet behind him. But then, somebody slower would stagger out of a building or car or just down the sidewalk, and the eels would engulf them in a shroud of black oil instead.
He saw this happen more than once. A shell-shocked soul covered in the blood of their co-workers would run out of their building, believing that they were safe. When the black tentacle torpedoed straight for them, Alan could see bewilderment, horror, disappointment, and resignation all flash across a person’s face within a single second.
Then the tentacle would expand like a hooded cobra, wrap around them, and, if Alan was close, he could just hear screams turn to gurgling panic as the liquid forced itself into every pore.
He’d come around the corner of one building and had seen a middle-aged woman, completely nude for no reason he could ascertain, standing still and watching the water race past. She had made eye contact with Alan and he detected no madness, only resolve. When a great black hand emerged from the water next to her, she turned to face it.
What haunted Alan now was that even with all of that stoicism, he could still hear her wail in agony as the dark mass enveloped her.
Alan made it another block and finally saw something akin to Shangri-La. Past the last skyscraper was the bridge over Buffalo Bayou that connected downtown Houston with Fifth Ward. He had this idea that the bridge would be safe. Water would drain off to either end, leaving the center high and dry. Though there would be water flowing under it, he imagined he’d still be high enough to avoid either whatever the black oil was that used water to travel and the invisible force that seemed to presage it. He wasn’t sure how the poltergeist effect worked, but it never seemed to trawl too far away from the physical black sludge part it ran in tandem with.
He also noted that the tendrils of sludge never had a tail. They might have looked like snakes or eels, but endless ones that seemed to be connected back to a whole. Also, the thing in the water didn’t have eyes or a mouth, absorbing its victims, not eating them. What it did have was some sort of extrasensory ability to become alerted to the presence of humans that fed its single-minded determination to then consume them. In this way, it was like a perfect, mindless predator, moving like a shark.
An animal elegance.
No mercy, no hesitation, absolute efficiency. The only time much more than clothes and bones were left behind was when the eater seemed to be called away to a greater prey.
The bridge was now only a few dozen yards ahead. Shutting out all else, Alan ran the race of his life, counting the strides.
Thirteen…still alive…fifteen…still alive…seventeen…still alive…nineteen…still alive…
• • •
Sineada.
The voice startled the old woman. She’d been in the kitchen with Mia making snacks by candlelight. Sineada hesitated, not wanting to alarm her
