Zac, Zara and Zombies

Part 1

John

“Lie down!” Rina commanded as another earthquake shook the wharf.

I threw myself down and felt my body shake along with the hard surface beneath me.

Rina was already down, of course. For someone so heavily pregnant, she moved really quickly.

The shaking stopped. Rina’s shadow on me was a brief respite from the hot sun as she jumped to her feet.

“Up! Right on the edge.” Rina shaded her eyes, scanning the sea. She pointed. “There!”

I saw the ridge on the sea surface, but I didn’t know what it was. “It just looks like a wave, Sis.”

“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” Rina said grimly. Her eyes didn’t leave the approaching wave, even as birds came winging past us as in the strangest, mismatched flock I’d ever seen. Their screeching was so loud it hurt my ears.

The water started to ebb away from the jetty. “Wow, the tide’s changing fast,” I remarked.

“It’s not the tide. When the wave hits the wharf, we dive over it.” She looked at me, the way Mum would when she was worried. “When I say go, you dive as far and fast as you can. I only hope it doesn’t reach too high.”

I laughed. “We’re twenty metres up from the water here. No wave will reach the top of the wharf.”

“This tsunami will,” Rina said. The approaching wave was huge. It was almost as high as the wharf already and coming fast. I could see the seabed beneath us.

I started to panic. “Tsunami? What about Rick?”

She shook her head. “He’s at work. He should be far enough inland to miss out on the fate of the other humans.”

I laughed. “Rina, what are you talking about? We’re human, too.”

Rina shook her head. “There’s no time to explain.” She planted her feet, ready to spring. “Ready? Right, NOW!”

The wave hit and I dived over it with her. She swam straight out to sea, her strokes strong and sure. I followed as fast as I could, panting to keep up. I wondered how she’d gotten so good at swimming. I’d never seen her in the water.

The next wave seemed smaller as it approached and we floated over it. I heard the splintering of the wharf behind us as it hit and tried to swim faster. Still I couldn’t catch Rina.

“Hurry up!” she called, in the language of Mum’s people and not English.

“I can’t catch my breath,” I panted, kicking as hard as I could toward her. My leg muscles burned.

“Then change,” she replied. She started pulling her clothes off, leaving them to drift in the waves. “We are swimming out to sea if we wish to survive. I HATE it when Mother is right!”

I laughed again and got a mouthful of water as a wave hit my face. Choking, I tried to reply. “What, you want to swim to Indonesia? Are you insane?”

She launched herself at me, pushing me under the surface. “Change, you little bastard! I know you can. I am not towing you to the Nursery Grounds. We are going to Mother’s people, stupid."

I heard the words clearly, even though she spoke them underwater.

“I do not understand,” I replied, a little rusty in Mum’s language, before my air ran out.

“Change, stupid!” Rina hit me with her tail.

Fuck. A tail?

Rina was silver with gills and a tail, but still her. The huge pregnant belly was hard to miss, a distended silver globe under the water.

I couldn’t breathe. She hit me again.

“Pretend you are doing butterfly in the pool. Feel the water coursing over your skin and imagine your own tail. Or I will leave you here to drown!”

My lungs burned and my bitch of a sister hit me for the third time. I snapped my heels together and extended my arms. Butterfly at its best. The water flowed over me as I swam away from her. I felt fine.

“Yes!”

The burning faded and I felt cool air, no, water, rush into me, yet I could breathe. I looked down and my body matched the silver of my sister’s. I stared at the tail that was where my legs should be.

Oh, shit. I’ve turned into a mermaid Ken doll. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I don’t feel fine. I looked at Rina in horror.

“Do not worry, it is inside your tail somewhere. It did not fall off,” she said in exasperation. “Now, swim. We have to find Mother’s people. Our people, now, too. Our time is coming, for the humans’ time is ending.”