by Dan Dillard
***
In town, trees rocked, toppled, and then slid into a swirl of sand and salt water from the Intracoastal Waterway. Buildings crushed in on themselves. Roads rippled like the ribbons on a department store Christmas present and then cracked into chunks that could be swallowed. Birds continued their departure from the lowlands and the treetops in vast black clouds. Jack Everett and his small congregation that was praying were folded up inside their church, crushed and lowered into the ground. Praise Jesus. Cars bent in half as if they’d been made of paper. The skeletons that had just crawled from their graves were replaced into the ground.
Death for all, little bro. No more quarters. Dead was dead again.
As the ferry chugged along, much faster than the ferries Robyn remembered as a kid, waves began to smack against its side and the rear as the ocean attempted to fill the void. It rocked and took on water. The motor strained against the unnatural tide.
Robyn was glad for the darkness. Glad because she didn’t know if she could watch the destruction she was picturing in her mind. So much death.
The eel wriggled from her mother’s mouth again. Thomas—grinning—beat Shrimp to death. The man on the pier shot his family. Watermelon face. Skeletons. The hatred in Greg Stafford’s face. Rusty. So much. She prayed it would end there in Smithville, that it wouldn’t reach beyond. Whatever it was. She prayed and the others prayed with her.
The ferry leveled out in deeper waters and before long, they were far enough away that they could no longer hear the splintering, screaming sounds of total devastation. The trip was only six miles, only forty-five minutes from one terminal to the next, but it seemed like a lifetime. Behind them, something inexplicable was ending. Ahead of them, the unknown.