I showed Kevin to the bathroom and when I came back, Ferlin Husky had been replaced with B. J. Thomas’s “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song.” B. J. wailed that he missed his baby. I missed mine, too, and I was starting to crave a dip again as well.
Sarah hummed along with the tune. “My mother used to listen to this when I was little.”
“Was she a country music fan?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t remember much about her, really. She died when I was eight years old.”
She pushed her empty bowl away, drained her mug of coffee, and relieved Carl at the window. Carl sat down at the table.
Sarah stared out into the fog for a moment, gathering her thoughts, and then she began.
“After the creature, Leviathan, as Kevin insists on calling it, took Lori, it disappeared. We didn’t see it again. But we were still in trouble. Leviathan had destroyed most of the hotel during its assault, and the upper levels were flooding fast. The water was rising, and within a few hours, the nineteenth floor was underwater, and it was spilling into the twentieth. Plus, it was still trickling down from the roof, through the cracks in the ceiling and the walls. We could feel the building shake every time a strong wave hit it. We had to get out. It was either that or stay there and let the whole thing fall down around us.
“Kevin was in bad shape. He just sat there in the garden, and we couldn’t get him to move. He just kept humming ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.’ When he talked, all he’d say was that he was waiting for Lori to come back, over and over. He’d really cut his hands up bad on the glass, and he was losing blood. But eventually we got him to understand the situation and he snapped out of it. The monster had destroyed the raft, but since Salty and I had watched Lee build it, we had a pretty good idea of how to make another one. I guess we could have swam for it, found another building that was safe, but after what we’d just been through, none of us wanted to swim in that water, not knowing what was lurking beneath the surface.
“For the next hour, Salty and I gathered materials and put another raft together while Kevin bandaged his hands and half-heartedly salvaged supplies. By the time we cast off from the roof, the water had flooded the twentieth floor and was rising to the top of the hotel. We weren’t even a mile away when one entire corner of the building sheered off and collapsed into the ocean.”
“It’s a good thing you made it out,” Carl said. “Sounds like it was just in the nick of time, too.”
“Yeah, it was. But we weren’t out of the woods. Not by a long shot. The current pulled us out to sea, away from the city. We drifted for two days and we didn’t have paddles or a sail or anything to guide us. We couldn’t even be sure of which direction the raft was drifting. The rain blotted out the sun and moon and the stars, so we couldn’t navigate using those. I think we drifted southeast and then farther south, before coming back in over where land used to be. The tides tossed us around. The whole time, we worried about running into more mermaids, or what we’d do if Leviathan decided it was still hungry and came back for more. Luckily, we didn’t see anything other than seagulls and a few schools of fish. A shark passed pretty close at one point, but we scared it away by shouting at it. And we saw an albatross, which Salty said was a good omen.”
Carl interrupted her. “Do you really think that squid thing was Leviathan from the Bible?”
“Kevin sure did,” Sarah said, shrugging. “It’s as good a name as any, I guess. To be honest, Mr. Seaton, I never really believed in God or the Bible. I’m still not sure I do, completely. Despite what I said earlier, about God breaking His promise, I don’t believe that what’s happening outside is some sort of divine judgment. The rains are just the consequences of an environmental collapse; an apocalypse that we put into motion with the start of the industrial revolution. We’re humans. We fuck things up. That’s what we do, and that’s all we ever did.”
“And that’s where we disagree,” said Kevin, stepping back into the kitchen. He smelled like soap, and his skin was red from scrubbing. His hair was still damp, but he looked like he felt better. “Sarah and I have argued about this at length. The greenhouse effect doesn’t explain what’s happening, and scientists had pretty much said so before the news stations stopped broadcasting. It doesn’t explain things like the White Fuzz or these creatures, either.”
Carl leaned back in his chair. “So what does explain it?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Kevin thinks this whole situation, everything that’s happening, was caused by black magic.”
“Well think about it,” he insisted. “During the raid, the Satanists had a spell book, the Daemonolateria—whatever the hell that means—and supposedly they used it to summon up that squid thing. If they could do that, then doesn’t it make sense that they cast other spells too? It makes sense that they cast some sort of spell to cause all of this. Their leader told us as much, during the raid. How else do you explain the weather? One day, it starts raining all over the world, all at the same time. The Sahara, the Alps, London, Paris, New York, Baghdad—even in fucking Antarctica. That’s just not natural. Almost overnight, the entire world starts flooding. Storm surges stronger than anything a normal hurricane could generate wipe out most of the world’s coastal cities. Tsunamis eradicate entire islands—millions and millions of people dead in a matter of days. Not weeks, but days. Does that seem scientifically plausible to you? And what about the mermaid?”
“We still don’t know that’s what it really was,” Sarah said. “They say that manatees look like—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sarah! A fucking manatee? Come on. You saw it just like I did. You were there. It controlled you for a second, too, the same as the rest of us. Pull your head out of your ass! If it wasn’t a mermaid that killed Nate, then what was it?”
She didn’t have an answer for him. Instead, she turned away and stared out into the mist.
“Forget about the mermaid for a minute,” Kevin continued. “What about everything else we’ve seen? What about those worms outside? You believe in those, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid to believe,” Sarah whispered. “Because I’m afraid of what that will mean.”
Now, it was Kevin’s turn to stay silent.
“Well,” I said, trying to ease the tension, “I do believe in the good book, and I’ve let the Lord guide me all of my life—especially now. But I don’t think the rain or those worms out there or anything else that’s happened is a form of divine judgment. God just doesn’t work that way.”
Kevin scoffed, his laughter short and sharp. “Hello? Sodom and Gomorrah? The great flood? Any of that ring a bell with you, man?”
“Sure,” I said. “Maybe He did in the Old Testament, but not anymore. That’s why He gave the world His son. But look, I don’t want to preach or get into a theological discussion here. This ain’t the time or place for that, and we’re all pretty tired.”
“Sorry.” Kevin held up his hands in apology. “You’re right. But if this isn’t a manmade ecological disaster, God’s final judgment, or some form of black magic holocaust, then what is it?”
“I don’t know about the rain,” I said. “But I do think that those worms are natural.”
Kevin sighed. “Then where did they come from, Teddy? Why haven’t we encountered them before?”
I took a sip of coffee and fought back another nicotine craving. “I’m no expert, but I’ve read about scientists finding worms in some awfully strange places. At the bottom of the Marianas Trench, feeding on whale bones, and even inside of volcanoes. Who knows what lies at the center of our planet? They discover new species every year. Maybe we didn’t know about them before, but these particular worms have probably been around for a lot longer than we have. Maybe they’ve been hiding deep below the surface. Now, conditions have finally forced our two species to encounter each other for the first time.”