novelraw Chapter 119: How Do You Explain That?
Chapter 119: How Do You Explain That?
Sera and the men were absolutely mesmerized by what they were watching from the hallway window in front of them.
A gray seal torpedoed through the green-black water, sleek and curious as it leaped out of surface of the ocean. Then, it veered away when a shape bigger than it slid into view.
The knife-curve of a shark’s dorsal fin cut a line before it was gone; a second later its pale belly flashed as it rolled on some private errand of its own.
Farther out, sea lions barked—a rough, foghorn sound bouncing strangely off glass and water—and hauled themselves onto a floating plywood raft that had once been a fence. They sat like fat old men, miserable and defiant, their whiskers slicked flat.
Between them, among them, the dead moved with their wrong, patient motions. In the water, they were not clumsy. They sculled, they drifted, they found the tower and traced it with open hands.
Some pressed mouths to the glass and bit, teeth clicking dully, leaving smears that slid with a private gravity. One very much dead body bumped a pane and rotated slowly, its hair fanned like weed, and its eyes open and unfocused. It was so bloated that even the zombies around it didn’t want to eat it.
"Christ," Lachlan said, not loudly. "I always did hate aquariums."
"Don’t anthropomorphize," Elias murmured, knowing how useless the advice was even as he gave it. His face had that shut, calculating look it wore when his brain refused to stop turning the world into variables.
"They’re not people," Sera replied, almost softly. "You can’t think about them like that or you’ll go crazy."
Soon enough, garbage joined the undead and the dead. Doors, tires, the bright plastic of a child’s playhouse rolling end over end. A train car turned up at the far edge of their view again, turning and twisting on the waves.
Sera was the first to turn around and head back upstairs. She understood that for the guys, it would take them a bit of time to understand the world around them. But her mind was already moving on to the next thing.
-----
The Chinook died away the same way it had come. Completely unexpectantly.
The air in the room shifted from damp to sharp in a single, invisible breath.
The five of them were sitting in the living room when Elias exhaled and looked at the white ghost of his breath in surprise. Lachlan rubbed his hands together and blew into them on reflex, then frowned when the heat left his fingers as if the room itself had taken it.
The windows fogged from the inside as the hairline cracks from last night brightened to white before turning completely opaque.
"Temperature’s dropping fast," Elias said unnecessarily.
"Seal everything we can without trapping moisture against the glass," Zubair said, practical, already on his feet, already moving to kill drafts they hadn’t felt when the air had been soft. He stuffed a towel into the crack under a service door and wedged a length of molding against a vent that had started to whistle. "No heat sources near the panes."
"We don’t have heat," Alexei reminded him dryly, but he moved the camping lanterns deeper into the room and thumbed one to its lowest setting until it was only a dull glow.
Outside, the water reacted like a body hit with shock.
All movement slowed, the ripples smoothed out, and along the edges of buildings, in superficial eddies, a skin formed.
It spidered quickly along ledges and across small, still pockets. It wouldn’t be strong enough to hold weight yet, but it was the first idea of ice.
A sea lion tried to haul itself onto a slab of something and failed. It slid back in with an indignant splash, then barked at the physics of the world as if it could be argued with. The sound came thin through glass and distance and still made Alexei smile.
The zombies nearest the panes changed in small ways. Their movements slowed, their fingers stiffened... and then they just... stopped moving completely.
"Back from the windows," Zubair said, his tone even, but there was a hint of a snap to the order.
The men backed away from the glass, but Sera stayed where she was, fascinated with what was going on outside the windows.
The tower itself started to groan as the water outside became more and more solid.
"Has anyone seen the movie ’The Day After Tomorrow?" asked Sera suddenly as she pressed her bare hand against the glass in front of her. While the guys might be uneasy, the creature inside of her was practically purring with happiness.
"Nope," replied Alexei. "I don’t exactly like natural disaster movies."
"Too bad," chuckled Sera as the ice underneath the window practically froze in an instant. There were even slight waves that didn’t make their way back down, frozen in place. "Because you are in one now."
-----
"Bitch move Sera," grunted Lachlan, moving away from the guys and more toward her.
"Sorry," she shrugged, a slight smile on her face. The sun hadn’t even started to set yet, so it was easy to see what was happening outside of the home she had made for herself. "I’ve waited forever to say that line."
"Yeah, well," grunted Alexei, his eyes narrowing as he, too approached where she stood. "Keep it to yourself next time."
"Scaredy cat," Sera chuckled, turning her head just slightly so that she could look at Alexei.
"I’m not cat," he replied, his accent becoming intentionally thick. "I am Snowflake."
"Then you are going to just love what comes next," Sera assured him. "See? Nothing but ice as far as the eyes can see."
"Not possible," replied Elias with a shake of his head. "There is no way for the temperature to drop that much to freeze oceanic water. The salt alone would keep it in somewhat of a liquid state. The ocean has never once frozen. It’s just a trick of the mind."
"Oh yeah?" grunted Lachlan, his face twisting into a smile. "Then just how do you explain that?"
Jerking his thumb out the window, Lachlan invited Elias closer.
Elias approached the window, his eyes narrowing at the vast expanse of pure whiteness. It was like they were all of a sudden on a completely different planet. One that had never seen earth before.
"I can’t," he admitted at last. "It shouldn’t be possible."