Minna
They said some asteroid had changed the orbit of the moon. We just didn’t notice at first. Sometimes it was closer and sometimes it was further away. Tides changed and the tectonic plates went swimming like congealed fat on a roasting pan from the night before. The earthquakes were the first sign we saw and by then it was too late.
Reports came in of whole cities shaken to pieces by earthquakes, rifts opening up in the polar ice as the penguins fled into the water. Empty ice with no one to be seen.
The first tsunami were in the Atlantic and the Pacific, higher and harder than any we had known. Historians said there had been worse in the past, but it was too distant to remember unless you were a rock. Those rocks were thrown around like pebbles in a stream as all came crashing down. Coastlines shifted as inland seas were created once more where farmland and cities had been. Now these were no more.
We were not immune. Changing tides, moving earth and we all knew what we had to do. The tsunami warning came in and we drove to the port to head offshore. Even now, the salt scent of the sea is the smell of fear to me. Fear that we wouldn't survive, that we would not make it offshore in time. Fear that we would survive and come home to nothing, lives lingering a little before we died of starvation and disease.
We had a lead time that others did not. We were saved by distance, is all.
We boarded the ships and they powered out of the port, a great mismatched fleet heading past Rottnest to the end of the continental shelf. The acrid diesel fumes were the smell of hope. We hoped it would save us from the tsunami, but the wave was only the beginning. It was the asteroid’s aftermath that meant the world’s end.
How would we survive?
YOU ARE READING
Zac, Zara and Zombies
ParanormalThe moon moved. The Earth is dying. Humans struggle to survive. Well, some do. Some have a little help from the sea. Mythical creatures menace those who remain but there is always love. Except, perhaps, when there are children present.
