The Tide_Dead Ashore

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  The Tide:

  Dead Ashore

  (The Tide Series Volume 6)

  Anthony J Melchiorri

  October, 2017

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

  -Prologue-

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  -12-

  -13-

  -14-

  -15-

  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  -21-

  -22-

  -23-

  -24-

  -25-

  -26-

  -27-

  -28-

  -29-

  -30-

  -31-

  -32-

  -33-

  -34-

  -35-

  -36-

  -37-

  -38-

  -39-

  -40-

  -41-

  -42-

  -43-

  -Epilogue-

  Also by Anthony J Melchiorri

  About the Author

  Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

  The Tide Series

  The Tide (Book 1)

  Breakwater (Book 2)

  Salvage (Book 3)

  Deadrise (Book 4)

  Iron Wind (Book 5)

  The Eternal Frontier

  Eternal Frontier (Book 1)

  Edge of War (Book 2)

  Shattered Dawn (Book 3)

  Rebel World (Book 4)

  Black Market DNA

  Enhancement (Book 1)

  Malignant (Book 2)

  Variant (Book 3)

  Fatal Injection

  Other Books

  The God Organ

  The Human Forged

  Darkness Evolved

  The Tide: Dead Ashore

  Copyright © 2017 by Anthony J. Melchiorri. All rights reserved.

  First Edition: October 2017

  http://AnthonyJMelchiorri.com

  Cover Design: Eloise Knapp Design

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  -Prologue-

  Tangier, Morocco

  Sunlight glinted off a glass shard jutting from the orange dirt. Hamid El Omari followed a trail of similar shards, each sparkling in the midday sun. The fragments glowed in an array of colors, from oceanic blues to fiery reds and lush greens. He knew all too well where that glass had come from. The metal frame of a lantern, half-rusted and crumpled as though someone had stepped on it, lay against a flaking plastered wall.

  “Come, Adil,” he whispered to his younger brother.

  Adil was trying to pick up the lantern. “It’s like Father’s.”

  “Adil!” Hamid said again, more forcefully. He yanked his brother’s arm. Adil pulled back. He succeeded only in cutting a finger on the broken lantern.

  “Ow!” Adil stuck his finger in his mouth.

  “Quiet,” Hamid admonished. “They’ll hear you.”

  At this, Adil went quiet and pale. Hamid led Adil through the medina. Where once the narrow, winding passages had been filled with people browsing fruit stands and teahouses and shops full of gleaming trinkets, now they were alone.

  At least, it looked as if they were alone.

  If Hamid lingered too long in any corner of the brick-lined streets, he felt the burn of eyes on him like the unforgiving heat of the sun. He wasn’t sure if the sensation was imagined or real. Most days, he and Adil crept through the abandoned city without seeing anyone. Many people had left the city at the first sign of the collapse. Those that remained had bunkered down in their riads or apartments. His parents had been among those too stubborn to leave.

  “We cannot leave the shop untended,” his father had said. “Thieves will take everything we own, and then what will we be left with?”

  We would be left with our lives. Yours. Mother’s. Hamid felt guilty thinking it. But his guilt didn’t make the leaden thoughts any less true.

  Heavy footsteps sounded down an alley.

  Hamid froze. He willed his heart to still and prayed that the creature those footsteps belonged to wouldn’t hear his pounding pulse.

  They weren’t far from his father’s shop, and Hamid dashed inside with Adil. More lanterns hung inside, empty and covered in dust. Shadows muted their colors. Before, when the tourists would visit his father’s store, Hamid had been responsible for ensuring a candle was lit in every single one of the lanterns. A thousand little suns glowing like the souls of rainbows. His father had told him to be proud of the shop, since it would be Hamid’s someday, but he’d taken its beauty for granted. Now all lay in ruins, and there were no more lights anywhere in Tangier.

  It was here he had watched his father struggle with one of the monsters. Watched as his father was torn apart. His mother had tried to stop the beast. She had been scratched but escaped with Hamid and Adil to their apartment above the store. All that night, they listened to the monster devour their father’s flesh and gnaw on his bones.

  But more terrifying had been his mother’s descent into madness. He had watched helplessly as the Jnun took over her body.

  All his life, he had heard the ghost stories meant to scare naughty little boys. Never had he thought they were true. According to those stories, the Jnun were invisible spirits capable of possessing humans. They transformed their victims mentally and physically, expelling the soul that had once been in control of the body.

  Once their mother had grown scaly nails and yellowed eyes, Hamid had known his mother’s soul was gone. And it was only with that knowledge that he had been able to drive the knife through her chest, over and over, until she stopped trying to maul Adil.

  He had wept that night. Cried himself to sleep like a child. But when he had woken up the next morning, blood still on his hands, he had vowed he would never cry again. His parents were dead, but Adil would be too if he did not step up and become the man of the household.

  His mother’s last coherent words had been about the afterlife. She had been muttering about escaping Earth, about how their father had already escaped. They were in paradise now. Hamid believed he and Adil would end up there, too. He wanted more than anything to see them again.

  Despite that desire, he wouldn’t let himself succumb to death. Despite the hell around them, life was still worth living. When he looked at his younger brother, he amended that thought.

  Life wasn’t just worth living. It was worth saving.

  “Be very still,” Hamid said. He crouched behind a massive lantern beside Adil. Through the glass, he saw it. Even distorted by the colors of the lantern’s panels, he could make out the horns hooking from the creature’s head. Drool roped from the overgrown teeth lining its maw, and long, flat bones protruded from its back.

  Adil whimpered. An icy chill raced through Hamid
’s vessels, and he clamped his hand over Adil’s mouth.

  “Quiet, little brother,” Hamid said. “We will be okay.”

  The monster paused. Its muscles quivered. All sinew and bone, the thing was a walking weapon. Hamid wrapped his fingers around the large knife in a sheath slung about his waist. It felt horribly inadequate compared to the creature’s scything claws.

  Seconds stretched to eternity as he waited for the battle to begin. He was ready to sacrifice himself for his brother if it came to that.

  The clatter of metal against metal sounded down another alley. The monster let out a gut-wrenching howl and chased after the noise. Hamid figured it must’ve been one of the feral cats or stray dogs still scavenging the ravaged city. There were no humans living here anymore, not that Hamid had seen. He felt a pang of pity for the poor creature even as he mouthed a silent prayer for its sacrifice.

  Maybe this was Allah looking out for him. Maybe it was blind luck. Either way, he wouldn’t let the moment go to waste.

  “Come!” Hamid said to his brother. They sprinted out the storefront and down a different alley. A skeleton picked clean of meat sat before a shop filled with rugs. Another stand had once sold loose spices, but the wind had mixed the turmeric, cumin, and cinnamon with dirt from the deserted streets. Hamid remembered the scent of shops like those. The welcoming aroma of home cooking mingled with the heavy tang of hot oil in the air. Wafts of simmering tajine would hit his nose, and the taste of fresh vegetables and meat would dance on his tongue. His stomach rumbled at the memories.

  Now only the smell of death drifted on the winds through Tangier.

  “There!” Hamid pointed to another storefront. He knew the man who once ran it. The owner had always bragged of having the freshest fruits in all the medina. Now what lay in his storefront was nothing but piles of brown-and-black sludge swarming with flies.

  Hamid ignored the overwhelming stench of the place, focusing on the promise of something edible. Something to fill his stomach besides fetid water. He shoveled through the sludge, looking for something that he could salvage.

  His hands came away covered in goo. Nothing. A voice in his mind told him to try the rotted fruit. It couldn’t be so bad. The flies lived off it, so maybe he could, too. He was about to stick a finger in his mouth, to try it, the pangs of hunger so loud as to overcome caution and logic.

  “Hamid!” Adil called. He held up a plastic bag. “Food!”

  Hamid rushed to his brother’s side. Beside the boy was a carton filled with vacuum-sealed plastic bags. Dried fruit! He grabbed a handful of prunes from the bag Adil had opened and shoved it in his mouth. The sweetness momentarily washed away the nightmares outside the open-air shop. A crunch of something hard over glass brought him back to reality just as quickly.

  “Let’s go inside,” Hamid said. The apartment above them had already been broken into, so opening the door was easy. Together, they crept through the mess of soiled carpets. The odor of rotting meat wafted from one of the rooms. Hamid tried to ignore it and left that door closed, but the stench stole his appetite.

  “Outside?” Hamid asked after a moment.

  Adil nodded. His face was turning slightly green.

  Following a staircase, they emerged onto the dusty, plaster-covered roof with its encircling wall. Together they nestled into a corner and munched dried fruit. The food they’d found would give them the strength to find another apartment, riad, or storefront with a stash of dry goods.

  When his belly was full, Hamid leaned against the wall under the shadow of a satellite TV dish. Towering minarets stuck up around the city. It had taken him weeks to become accustomed to the silence during adhan. He’d grown up hearing the calls of the muezzin from the city’s many mosques. Their voices praised Allah in beautiful prayers, signaling other faithful to join in the worship. When the calls stopped, the city became a silent shadow of its former self.

  Sometimes he wondered if he would ever hear the call to prayer again. But he knew better by now. The only sounds he heard were the shuffling and moaning of the Jnun wandering the streets and the squawk of gulls overhead. One gull circled above him now.

  “Do you think it wants to feed on us or the fruit?” Adil asked, squinting at it.

  “Don’t be silly,” Hamid replied. But it was a good question. He just didn’t want his little brother to know.

  The thrum of another sound burst over the city. Toward the ocean, a helicopter hovered above the tangle of cranes. Hamid had once thought the helicopters were a sign of hope. Sometimes they were even followed by convoys of trucks. Before the city collapsed, every TV showed the same video of the king and the prime minister promising that the people would be saved. Hamid had thought the helicopters and activity at the port meant there were rescue operations underway. But no matter how many times he and his brother tried to flag down a helicopter or intercept a truck, they were left disappointed. They had given up trying, and neither he nor his brother did anything more than lazily watch the helicopter as it dipped below the sprawl of buildings.

  “Why don’t those people ever help us?” Adil asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hamid said.

  “They are not from Morocco, are they? If they were, they would have saved us. I am sure of it!”

  Hamid said nothing. The writing on the side of the choppers was most certainly not Arabic. He spoke and read English pretty well and knew a bit more French. Had to, working with tourists. But the words on the choppers and even the huge boats he saw arrive and leave the port were not any language he could read.

  “Why don’t we go see them?” Adil said. His fingers were curled around the lip of the roof. With wide eyes, he peered toward the port.

  Hamid pulled him back from the edge. “Don’t let the Jnun see you!”

  Adil shot him a pouting look. “I’m not a baby, Hamid. We can’t stay here forever. We should leave.”

  “It is too dangerous,” Hamid said. “We’ve tried. But the monsters are all around the port. We couldn’t get in without getting eaten.”

  “We should try again. Back through the tunnels.”

  “We tried for weeks! We looked everywhere. But there are too many Jnun.” Hamid held his hands wide in a gesture of disbelief. He had had this conversation far too many times with his brother. “I had to kill so many of those creatures last time, and we barely escaped. Do you want us to end up like Father? Like Mother?”

  Adil’s bottom lip trembled. He looked as if he was trying to hold back the tears. Hamid knew he had gone too far.

  “I’m sorry,” Hamid said.

  Adil turned his back to him. His shoulders shook as if he was sobbing.

  “Little brother, I’m sorry.”

  Adil shot up and ran back down the stairs into the apartment. Maybe it was better to give him time. Hamid sighed. Adil was only a boy; he couldn’t leave his brother alone. Not now. Not ever. Not so long as the Jnun wandered the Earth. He trudged down the stairs.

  “Adil,” he called tentatively. “Adil, I’m—”

  His breath caught in his throat. The pungent odor of rot and death slammed into him, stronger than when he had first entered the apartment.

  Adil was whimpering. But it was no longer because of something so trite as hurt feelings. He crab-crawled backward over an end table that he must have knocked over. The door that had been locked earlier now lay open, revealing what had been behind it.

  “M-M-Monster,” Adil stuttered.

  The thing came at the boy, snarling and biting. Half of its bottom jaw was gone, and some kind of brown liquid oozed from the cavity. A bend in one of its legs existed where no normal joint should be. One of the creature’s bone-plated arms hung loose at its side, barely attached by a few red sinews. The other arm had been shorn off. Overgrown ribs bulwarked the creature’s chest as if its body had turned inside out and its bones had kept blooming. The Jnun were usually skinny, but this one was especially thin. Its nose had turned into nothing but a pair of holes dripping mucus. />
  The monster limped closer.

  “Adil!” Hamid said. His fingers slipped instinctively around his knife.

  Adil turned toward him. So did the creature. The monster growled. The noise came out with a belching gurgle. It sounded as if something were boiling in the monster’s belly. He had thought that the creature was relatively harmless, but now he was not so sure. It was unlike the ones he usually saw prowling the streets. The bubbling and gargling intensified as if it were clearing its throat.

  A pit formed in Hamid’s stomach. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  “Adil! Move now!”

  Hearing his name again jolted the boy out of his stupor. He started to run toward Hamid. Then the monster opened its jaws. A ripping belch escaped it. Brown liquid exploded from its mouth, spraying the room. Wherever the liquid touched, tendrils of smoke floated up, as if the spray were releasing spirits trapped within the room.

  Adil wasn’t moving fast enough. Heart thrashing in his ribcage, Hamid sprang toward his brother and grabbed his arm. The monster pivoted. Everything seemed to slow as they tried to outrun the spray. He dragged his brother backward. The stream of acid continued to drench the wooden furniture and handmade rugs, burning all that it touched.

  Hamid wanted to take them down the stairs, retreat to the safety of the shop. But the thing was standing right in front of the steps. There was only one way to escape—back to the roof.

  “Let’s go!” Hamid yelled. He started up the stairs, still dragging his brother.

  The shriveled, drooling monster tried to follow. It tripped and sprawled on the bottom step, its mangled arm flopping by its side. But that didn’t stop the acid spewing from its devastated mouth.

  Adil shrieked as liquid splashed against his back and arm.

  A few droplets landed on Hamid, but his brother had blocked most of the spray. Those drops that did hit him felt as if someone had jabbed a hot knife into his flesh. He nearly fell to his knees from the pain. His brother had already curled up, screaming and flailing.

  The monster started to pick itself up. Its stomach gurgled anew as if charging another blast. Then the remnants of its jaw opened.

  A fresh surge of chilling adrenaline bolted through Hamid. It drowned the pain burning through his nerves. He scooped up his brother with newfound strength and ran.