Flooded [✔️]

The Creatures of the Deep

This is it...the apocalypse...
I'm radioactive,
Radioactive
- Imagine Dragons, Radioactive

    A couple hours into rowing aimlessly, and I was ready to give up. The blazing sun pounded on my back, my muscles ached from rowing, I ate too many crackers than I could afford, and I was losing hope. No matter how much I fooled myself into thinking finding any person would suit my needs right now, my heart was set on finding Zubin. He felt like the only one who could turn things around for me. He knew exactly what would cheer me up at any given moment, and sometimes I thought he knew me better than I knew myself. God, I missed him.
Just then, I saw a movement in the water. My eyes darted around to find a thin trail of dark blue parting around the trash around me. I peered over the edge, making sure my eyes weren't tricking me. At this point, hallucinations would be likely. Sure enough, I saw a splash. Keeping my eyes trained on the spot where I saw the creature, my hand reached back for the fishing net. If there was anything edible in these waters, it was best I ate it before I starved. I crushed up a cracker, put it in my net, placed it underwater, and waited impatiently. As I was about to pick up my oars to continue on my never-ending search for more people, I felt something jostle the boat. I laid myself against the floor to avoid getting wet.
But it didn't stop.
Something rocked the boat, paused, and then rocked it again. My breath quickened. Whatever was doing this was big, and I had never, ever encountered an animal before. One of the rumors told in The Dome was that the animals became angry when the humans continued destroying the earth. Humans exploited animals for lab testing and poaching endangered species. The animals became mutated and deformed, from nuclear activity, blaming humans for everything they had done to them. I shuddered at the thought. Now that I was the first human the animals have seen since we retreated to The Dome, would the animals blame me too? Or even worse, kill me for what the human race did to them?
My boat stopped rocking, and a dark silhouette rose up from the depths of the polluted ocean. Regaining some confidence, I got on my hands and knees and grabbed the knife out of my survival compartment. Then, losing the confidence I had just regained, I dropped on the ground again. I couldn't do this. I couldn't kill this thing. I took a deep breath as I lifted myself above the edge of the rowboat.
I'll only kill if I have to, I told myself.
From the layers of trash I saw a small, wet nose with whiskers, almost like one of the cats I had seen on television.
"Awww...!" I squeaked, looking at the creature from the deep.
But I had yet to see it's face.
Slowly, it poked it's head out of the water.
I gasped, my body rigid with fear. The animal was beyond my wildest nightmares. Only patches of skin covered it, looking like someone had dumped acid on top of it. Tumors gathered around it's eye, which was morphed closed, and ran down it's neck. It's small, cat-like mouth was trapped in a plastic six-pack container.
When the thing turned around to dive back into the water, I swear I saw another face on the back of the creature's head. The second face's eyes, which were abnormally large, stared into me. The black orbs were lifeless, yet I could almost feel the years of longing within it's pupils.
Longing to kill the humans.
Dozens of deformed and abused faces rose from the water, ready to kill. And I was only armed with a knife.
    Of course you're only armed with a knife, Jade, the universe hates you right now, my conscience told me. The figures moved towards the boat, and at that second I knew what they were, Seals. I had seen them on a nature documentary. I scrambled back to the middle of my boat, looking around at all of them. I scanned the area one more time, seeing if there was any way of escaping.
There wasn't.
The radioactive seals circled my boat, surrounding me. The first seal, which I reckoned was the leader, jabbed out at my boat, tipping it over dangerously. I shifted my weight to one side, trying to keep it from completely falling over. I eventually succeeded, but I knew if one seal could almost flip the boat over, a pod of them could cause much more damage. It continued on like this for a while. Petrified, I tried to keep the boat right side up while a herd of angry seals tried to flip it upside down. I didn't even have time to think about killing the seals with the knife because there were too many of them. The knife would do nothing. That's when I got an idea.
    I fumbled with my fingertips as the seals continued to shake the boat.
    "Come on, Come on..." I mumbled. I shoved my weight over to the deformed seals to hold them off. I just needed to find my fingertip flashlight.
    "There!" I exclaimed as a bright light shone from my finger. I turned toward the seals. As soon as they saw my face, they tried to jump up and sink their teeth into me. I gasped as I leaned back, nearly dodging a bite to the nose.
    Turning my eyes away, I switched the setting from "Regular" to "EMERGENCIES ONLY!", which could burn anything you directed it at instantly. In the split second I changed the power of my fingertip flashlight, I remembered my mom instructing me on how to use it. She told me to never ever play with it and to only to put the emergency mode on when I was in trouble.
    I hope being attacked by killer seals counted as being "in trouble".
    Yelps escaped the deadly seals as I shone the flashlight directly into their eyes. They retreated back into the watery depths of trash as if nothing had happened. Exhausted, I sighed and sat down in my inflatable tube, glad to have survived my seal endeavor.
    I have to find you now Zubin. I couldn't have wasted my time fighting off those beasts just to die in this godforsaken sea of rubbish. I thought.
    The sun sent waves of light down on me. With my lifeboat drifting around in the water, nothing could be better than having nothing to do; no storm to navigate, no radioactive seals to fend off, not anything. My eyes started to flutter close in the pure bliss of...well, nothing.
    A loud thud woke me up. I sat up immediately, looking for any signs of life. I clambered over to the edge of the boat. If those seals come back, I swear... My sub-conscience thought, annoyed at the various dangers of surviving in the open waters. I squinted my eyes and enabled my enhanced eyesight, looking down at a black void through the garbage. A dark figure faded into the blackness at the bottom of the ocean.
    As soon as I saw the black eyes mockingly staring back at me, I knew it was the two-faced seal.
    The face the double-headed seal gave me sent shivers up my spine. What did it do that made it worth coming back after I nearly blinded it? Why did it's lifeless eyes show emotion? And even worse, why did it look like it was making fun of me?
    As soon as I left the side of my boat, I knew what the seal had done.

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A/N
A big thanks to my friend, who sketched a couple of the seals after reading Flooded!

Her dA is: Fabloo