novelraw Chapter 115: Aquarium Of The Dead
Chapter 115: Aquarium Of The Dead
They sealed the stairwell and the penthouse went quiet.
In fact, it was so quiet the hum of emergency power sounded like a living thing. Glass walls made the world a picture, and all they could see was the drowned city framed on three sides. For a breath it felt like distance had been restored.
Then the ocean stood up.
From the forty-second floor, the first twenty-foot surge didn’t look like a wave so much as the horizon lifting a shoulder. Streetlights smeared into a single white vein, then vanished as water rose and shoved itself into the grid.
The casino tower took the hit with a low, spinal groan. Carpets trembled under their boots as the glass in front of them thrummed.
Zubair glanced at the mullions and moved closer to the glass, not to touch, just to see what was going on. "It will hold," he said. It wasn’t a guess but rather a decision he made out loud so it would become true.
The harbor swallowed the waterfront again.
Cars climbed each other and slid apart like animals in a stampede. A train car—one of the short commuter ones—came free of its track where the rail dipped toward the station and began to float, a box becoming a boat.
It turned slowly, end over end, as if remembering gravity too late, then clipped a bus and broke its windows in a rain of bright squares.
The next thing he could see was the bodies in the water.
Some were still. Some moved. Some stared off into the depths of the water. Some were clearly screaming out loud, even under the waves.
"Christ," Lachlan grunted. His voice was not too loud, nor was it too soft. He tipped his head like he was trying to shake water from his ears. "Feels wrong to be this high and still hear it."
Normally, you didn’t hear the ocean from here; the building carried the sound into their bones. The surge drew away, the city exhaled, and for a heartbeat the streets below showed black and slick and seamed with silver.
You could pretend it was over if you didn’t know the rhythm.
But the five of them were becoming accustomed to it.
The harbor inhaled again.
They watched. You had to. It wasn’t out of some type of morbid curiosity; but rather to figure out their next movement.
Something flashed in the water that wasn’t metal or glass.
Sera tracked it before she understood exactly what it was.
It was an entire horde of zombies moving on the other side of the windows. They weren’t drowning but rather swimming through the current like they owned it. Even their heads were completely different.
They didn’t have the large round head that they did on the land, instead, it was sleeked back, their skin hugging the bones of their jaws and cheekbones.
Here, they looked more like the predator that they were than when they were on land.
They didn’t kick or move their arms like swimmers did. Instead, they sculled with their hands and let the pull take them. Their heads spent most of the time submerged, sometimes lifting, mouths open as if tasting the city.
"They shouldn’t be able to swim," Elias said, reflex refusing the evidence. One of the zombie’s head snapped toward him as if they could hear his voice.
Sera, on the other hand, was just grateful that the windows were clearly made for Country N winters, because not a single drop of water was able to sneak in.
"This is where they belong," Sera replied after a while. She stared at the zombie staring back at them, her head cocked to the side. "They were designed to live in the water. The land was never meant to hold them."
The next surge rose harder, steeper.
It ran up the face of the tower in a sheet that threw daylight through green-black, turning the penthouse once again into a tank for a full, breath-held instant.
A body pinned against the glass feet-first, the soles leaving a brief, black smear before the water rolled back. Fingers splayed wide as its nails dragged down the glass.
The glass sang, a bowed note. When the water peeled back, the palms stayed. Then they slid away.
Zubair’s voice stayed level. "Back two meters from the panes. No touching."
They stepped back without arguing.
The brain wanted to lean closer, to put skin against the barrier, to prove it existed. Sera had learned to override that want years ago. The creature in her looked at the moving dark and was satisfied: the prey was outside while the predators were inside.
It didn’t care about glass.
But the human half did.
The harbor spat a boat between buildings—a pleasure craft, the kind rich men took into summer.
It rode the surge stupidly proud, then met a streetlamp and exploded into kindling. The seats bobbed and a cooler popped open and bled cans that spun and stuttered in the chop until the next pulse took them.
Under the surface, pale shapes continued to move with purpose.
A head rose and pressed against the glass at Sera’s left, leaving a halo of bubbles.
The eyes didn’t blink. The face was wrong in ways that had nothing to do with rot; water magnified the distortions, made the jaw too big, the teeth too near. It pushed with its forehead, then drew back and slammed its fist.
The safety laminate fractured into white lines from the point of impact. But it didn’t shatter, just a star that spread one more hair with the ocean’s pulse.
Lachlan’s hand found the hilt of his knife like a tick. "That’s a hell of a knock."
"Laminated curtain wall," Elias said automatically, gaze fixed. "It can take a lot more before it fails."
"It’ll fail if it’s hit enough times," Zubair replied, his eyes going over the windows as if figuring out something in his head. The words didn’t shake. He might as well have been noting the time.
Another face surfaced, then a third. They had found the movement inside and were gathering with the logic of hunger. Some beat their fists. Some simply pressed and stared, lips moving as if they were trying to pronounce the word inside.
Fingers scrabbled at the seam where the pane of the window met mullion, completely mindless and persistent. The building turned them into fish, but no one in the room mistook the aquarium for safety.