Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By: Coralie Olivier

We found her seated on the beach. We had been fortifying the nearby inn when our commander sent our little team of five to check the perimeter. That was where we found her in the morning dew, seated with her knees close to her chest on the flat stone shore. The sun would rise over the ocean soon. The first rays of daylight already waned the night. The waves were that same diluted shade of gray as they had been for months now.

We had not seen anyone alone in the wild in weeks. The danger of being overrun by those creatures was too great. There were no bodies around the woman. She was completely alone, except for a pair of red shoes she was holding. At first, we thought she might have been one of them, one of those creatures in an early stage of possession. Turner wanted to shoot her from a distance, but I convinced him to approach instead. As we neared, she heard our footsteps unsettling the stones. She turned her head away from the ocean for the first time since we had spotted her. It did not last long. Once she had assessed our presence, her gaze returned to the ocean.

The others grew weary of her stillness. I, alone, dared to approach. As I did, I noticed she may have been alone, but she wasn’t unarmed. A lever-action rifle sat beside her in the stones. She made no move to grab it as I walked up to her. She continued to clutch the muddy trainers in her hands. I took it as a sign that she would not attack me should I come to speak with her. I kept my rifle on my shoulder and my hands in front of me.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

She did not answer, nor did she look at me. I took a tentative step closer. She could not be under the gripe of possession, I figured. I was too close now, she would have attacked me if she had been.

“Are you alone?” I tried.

“I am now.”

Salted wind came from the ocean, whipping her long dark brown hair away from her face. Her hair was tied into a ponytail, though a few strands had slipped out. Her evergreen eyes remained on the ocean even as she answered.

“It’s dangerous to be alone around here, even more so close to the ocean. I don’t know if you know, but these things come out of the water,” I warned her, as I jerked my chin to the ocean.

We had many names for them. Fish men. Crab men. Goldfish when we wanted to joke. Fish sticks. Mirelurks. There was no agreement on their name. The world had fallen into chaos before anyone could agree on a proper name.

“Come with us,” I offered, as had become the practice with every survivor we met. “We have a base not far from here. We have food and weapons. There are other survivors.”

“Not yet,” she said.

I frowned. I felt the chill of the ocean air creep through my jacket. I turned to overlook the ocean. I thought she might be seeing something I wasn’t. All I could see were the waves, rising and falling like the crest of mountains, crashing onto the shore four feet away from us, leaving sticky white foam on the stones.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked her.

“Have you ever taken the time to observe them?” she countered, as if she hadn’t heard me.

“Of course.”

Most of the creatures looked like bloated corpses, their skin slick and purple like an octopus’. They were quick on their feet, aggressive and relentless. Some had spent more time underwater than others, so that barnacles clung to their skin. Some, inexplicably, had developed fish scales or crustacean’s shells. I killed one, once; it had a lobster pincer instead of a hand.

“Then you know what I’m waiting for,” she told me.

Try as I might, I could not figure out what she was waiting for. Behind me, my team was growing impatient. Turner rested his arms on his assault rifle, while Marquez was shifting from foot to foot. I looked at Singer and she averted her eyes. I understood that this was my decision to make.

The tide was low. We had not spotted a single monster on our walk so far. I was armed, and so was the young woman. The base wasn’t too far. I would not leave her behind.

“I’ll stay with her,” I shouted at my team. “I’ll try to convince her to come. I’ll meet you back at the inn.”

Turner scoffed. “Your funeral.”

They walked past us on the beach to continue their sweep. The rocks made a grinding sound under their feet, like gnashing teeth. Away they went, disappearing behind the ridge, while I remained with the young woman.

“You don’t have to stay,” she told me, her eyes ever fixed on the ocean. I sat beside her and crossed my legs.
“I want to. I won’t leave you behind.”

Too many had been left behind already, on our way north. We had thought these things only sprouted out of the ocean, that inland was safe. But like one drop of irradiated water soured the whole pond, the contagion had crept up every river, every lake, every water source. Worse still, all the packaged water was contaminated too. Only rain water, as if cleansed by the Heavens themselves, was still uncontaminated.

“Why did you come here?” she asked me. “Have you seen the hordes wandering?” She nodded.

“We followed a horde here. We’ve picked up more incoming. They go into the water and then, sometime later, they swim back out. My commander thinks if we can kill them as they come out, we might allow some other people further inland to make it another day.”

It was a noble idea, the reason why I had agreed to go on what anyone in their right mind would consider a suicide mission. I couldn’t help but think, still, that if this was happening all over the coast, on every continent, that our little effort was a pebble in the ocean. But what else could we do but try?

“It calls to them,” the young woman said.
I looked at her once more.
“The ocean?”
“My brother called it Qothos, the King Tide.”

I had never heard that name before, nor could I figure out what she was referring to. I couldn’t help but think of some big monster living underwater, some creature with tentacles that would surface and cause the end of the world, only to be stopped by a team of cadets who had never piloted a Mech suit before.

“What happened to your brother?” I asked tentatively.

It was a dangerous question to ask these days. The young woman did not look like she would collapse with grief, however. She did not look at me. Her eyes drank in the ocean, which now burned with sunlight. If only it would burn all those monsters out of the ocean too.

“Ben was my twin. We’re not from here, we’re from Portland, but our parents have a vacation home here. We were in college when it happened. They turned the university into a fortress, as best as they could. With that many students, though, we ran out of supplies quickly. The teachers organized a supplies run. I volunteered. Ben would have never called himself brave, but I thought he was brave to volunteer too. On our third supply run, I think, we ran into a pack making their way to the coast. We were not as prepared as we had hoped to be. Half of us were contaminated. Ben nearly was. The thing had him pinned to the ground, mouth wide open above him, ready to spew out that water, but I shot it right on time. We made it back to the university, but Ben was… off. He was twitchier than usual. I figured it

was the anxiety of having been so close to whatever the hell these things are. Are they dead? I don’t know.”

I could only shrug in response. I hoped they were.

“I was still shaken, too, but not like Ben was. No, he was muttering to himself, like I’d never seen him do. He told me that he was contaminated. I told him no, he wasn’t, I killed the thing before it could, if he would just wash the blood off his face, but he was adamant that he was contaminated. I didn’t believe him. But some of the other students heard, and they believed him. It’s crazy how fast a fortress can fall because of a bunch of idiots. They dragged him out at gunpoint in the middle of the night. The creatures snuck on them and overwhelmed them. While the others panicked, Ben crawled away. I found him hiding in an empty room, under one of the desks. In the chaos I grabbed what I could and we ran. I figured there was bound to be another place in the city where we could hide. Ben insisted we come here. We hadn’t heard from our parents since… and I figured trading one ocean town for another wasn’t the smartest decision. I decided we would head inland. That was a week ago.”

“You’re not the only one who tried,” I told her.
I figured the story was over. Her brother had died on the way inland.
“You don’t have to tell me…”
The young woman shook her head.
“I think I need to. Other people need to know.”
She paused. Her fingers pinched the plastic aglet of one of the shoes in a nervous tic.

“We saw plenty of these creatures in the wild, but the days weren’t too cold yet so I figured if we walked enough, day by day, we’d make it far enough from the coast that eventually, we wouldn’t see them anymore. We never even made it out of the state. Ben kept saying he heard a voice calling him to the shore. Qothos. The King Tide. Free once more to spread his control over the world. I thought he had fully cracked, that the pressure had gotten to him for good. But then…”

The aglet snapped against her nail. As if she didn’t want to be distracted anymore, she set the shoes on the stones between us. The shoelaces had been neatly untied, as if taken off before going for a swim.

“Some time after Augusta, we were captured by a group of survivors. If Ben was cracked, they were broken, completely shattered. I understood quickly what was wrong with them. They ate those creatures. They must have been desperate, and probably thought it would be like eating fish. They brought us to the gym they had taken over. It smelled like a fish market in there. If you thought those creatures smelled bad, it’s nothing compared to what they smell like when they’re cooked.”

She let out a little chuckle, then pursed her lips as if she had not meant to laugh. Her eyes left the ocean a second to look at her fingers. She was pressing her thumb over the other as if it would contain her anxiety. Her eyes snapped back to the waves. She scanned the horizon. I scanned it too, but we had not missed anything. Once she seemed sure that nothing would sneak up on us, she continued.

“They put me in a cage but they pulled Ben aside. They made him a guest of honor, and called him a messenger from Qothos. I don’t know how they knew that name, if they were just buying into Ben’s psychosis. They had a drawing of him on the wall of the gym, made in dry eraser. It looked like a huge whale with sharp teeth and tentacles coming out of

the depth. The good news is they were too busy worshipping Ben to notice I had escaped. I got him out of there before they made him eat those things too. Only, they chased us down. They wanted Ben back. We had to run and then walk all through the night. By morning, we were so tired but coming close to Bar Harbor, so I figured we could always hide in our parents’ vacation house. It’s on the road, up there. Those cannibals did not give up until we crossed the bridge to the island. I don’t understand why. They won’t come anywhere near it. They stopped at the very edge of the road and just stared at us. I don’t know if they’re still there.”

I shook my head.

“We didn’t see anyone when we crossed the bridge yesterday. We also missed your cannibal friends. We avoided Augusta completely.”

“Good for you,” she sighed. “Good for us, too, I guess. The vacation house would have been impossible to defend, with all the windows, but at the time, I figured if we gave it a few days, the cannibals would give up and we would be able to cross back to the mainland. That was the plan. Ben was spiraling. Half of the time he sounded like a mad man, telling me that he needed to get to the shore, that Qothos knew he was close, and he needed to go to him. But the other half… it’s like he could feel the call but he was resisting it. He made me promise not to let him go near the water, to not let him turn into one of them. Last night I tied him up to a chair. I tried staying awake, but… I failed.”

Her voice broke. Her hand twitched. She lifted it to her face as if to brush unshed tears from her eyes. Instead, she brought it back down to rest on her rifle.

“He’s on his way.”

The waves bulged in the wrong place. After staring at the ocean for so long, I noticed it right away. Something was emerging out of the water. I jumped to my feet and grabbed my rifle. Just as swiftly, the young woman had stood up and armed herself. She motioned for me to lower my weapon. I did not.

The shape stepping out of the water was human. The skin had that slickness of the newly transformed creature, still wet with sea water. Silver fish scales punctured the skin of its arms. Its tee-shirt and pants were water-logged, and it stumbled as it stepped out of the water. Its bare feet now sported webbing between the toes. It had gills on its neck, and a sea star had come to colonize its face, clinging to one eye, eating it, I assumed. Its short dark brown hair was tousled by the waves as it stumbled onto the stoned beach. One evergreen eye landed on the young woman beside me.

I hesitated. The woman did not. The shot rang out around the beach. The bullet broke through the creature’s chest. It collapsed back into the ocean. The waves pushed the body onto the stones. She turned away from the ocean and let out a long, shaky breath. I snapped out of my stupor. My eyes swept over the shore for more creatures, but the waves did not part again. I turned to the young woman. She was shaking. I placed a hand on her shoulder. My grasp seemed to steady her.

“He’s only a messenger,” she said. “More will come. We should go to your base, warn them.”

“This way,” I said.

She picked up the shoes on the stones and threw them, one after the other, as far as they would go into the water. I saw them bobbing above the waves, two cherry red spots in the gray ocean, until they were swallowed. The body in front of us swayed under the tide as it

tried, desperately, to push the creature onto the shore. After a few failed attempts to force the body to stand out of the water, the ocean pulled it back to itself.