Chapter 26 #2
Callan released the dolly. “No. They weren’t.”
The nearest corpse slammed into the fence, fingers clawing through the links, its mouth working open and shut.
The rattle of chain link carried across the water, sharp and metallic, and more joined it.
The sound multiplied—a chorus of scraping and banging that raised every hair on the back of my neck.
Ethan stepped closer to his father. “Why are they coming this way?”
Callan’s jaw tightened. “They see movement, probably heard the cart.”
One of them shoved hard enough against the fence to bow the metal inward.
Its face pressed through the wire mesh—gray skin splitting against the links, teeth snapping at empty air, dead eyes locked on us with something that shouldn’t have been recognition but looked close enough to make my blood run cold.
Jeff grabbed Ethan’s shoulder and pulled him back. “Inside. Now.”
More appeared from between the marina buildings. Twenty or thirty; it was hard to count when they kept emerging from shadows and doorways as if the buildings themselves were producing them.
They moved slowly, but every single one oriented toward us—a slow, inevitable tide of rotting flesh and hunger.
Callan grabbed the dolly and shoved it hard toward the service door. “Move!”
We ran.
The four of us crossed the concrete in a tight knot, the awful percussion of bodies hitting chain-link chasing us across the pool bottom. Another violent slam—loud enough that I heard the fence post groan in its concrete footing.
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “Holy shit—”
Jeff shoved him forward. “Don’t stop!”
We reached the door, and Callan wrenched it open. We piled through—Ethan first, then me, Jeff, and Callan came last, yanking the heavy steel door shut behind him and driving the bolt home with a sound that echoed down the corridor.
For a moment, we just stood there, chests heaving. The fluorescent lights overhead cast everything in that sickly pale green.
Outside, faint but unmistakable through the thick walls, they continued.
Scratching, banging. Gathering.
The sound of dozens of dead hands testing every surface they could reach.
Jeff looked at Callan; his face had gone pale, the easy humor from earlier stripped clean away.
“How many do you think are out there?”
Callan didn’t answer right away. He stood with one hand still on the bolt, head tilted slightly, listening to the muffled chorus beyond the steel.
When he spoke, his voice carried an edge that settled over all of us.
“More than yesterday.”
* * *
The next morning, I stood alone on the walkway, leaning against the cool metal railing, watching the slow movement inside the massive tank.
Frank glided past the glass; after all the years I’d worked here, the sight of him still made me stop and just watch.
The old sea turtle moved with the calm confidence of something that had outlived so many.
His massive shell, scarred and worn, dark green mottled with patches dull with age.
One front flipper bore an old notch from some long-ago injury—probably a boat strike, years before he’d ever come to the aquarium.
But he moved through the water as if it belonged to him, slow and methodical, unhurried by anything.
Since we’d moved him into the main tank a few days ago, something in him had shifted—more space to circle, more fish around him, more currents to ride. If a turtle could look content, Frank looked content.
A small school of silverfish darted past as he turned; they split around his shell and reformed on the other side, completely unconcerned by his presence.
Frank didn’t chase them; he just drifted through them, eyes half-lidded, ancient and calm.
I rested my forearms on the railing and let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“I always loved watching him, too.”
Callan’s voice came from behind me.
I hadn’t heard him walk up.
I didn’t turn right away, didn’t need to. His presence had become something I recognized before I saw it—the weight of him in a room.
“He’s older than everyone on this planet,” I said softly.
Callan stepped up beside me and looked down into the tank, his forearms settling on the railing next to mine, close enough that our elbows nearly touched.
“Older than most buildings, honestly.”
Frank circled the center of the tank again, rising slowly toward the light near the surface.
“There’s something about him,” I said.
Callan glanced at me. “What do you mean?”
I watched the turtle for a long moment, trying to find the right words for something I’d carried quietly for years.
“He’s been alive for over a hundred years.”
Callan nodded. “Roughly.”
“He lived through two world wars,” I continued, my voice dropping. “The Great Depression. The Cold War. Pandemics. Everything humans have done to themselves and each other for a century.”
Frank broke the surface and took a slow breath. The faint sound echoed through the water and up through the glass, reaching us on the walkway like a whisper from somewhere very far away.
“Everyone who walked the earth when he hatched is gone now,” I said. “Every single one of them.”
Callan leaned into the railing beside me. “And he’s still here.”
“Yeah.”
A small smile pulled at my mouth. I couldn’t help it.
“He just keeps swimming.”
Frank dipped back beneath the surface, turning in a slow, graceful arc, his scarred shell catching the light as he descended.
“I guess I always loved that about him,” I admitted. “Even before all this, before any of it mattered the way it matters now.”
Callan watched the turtle glide through the blue for a quiet moment.
“Symbolism?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
I shrugged, the smile still there.
“Or maybe I just like stubborn survivors.”
Callan chuckled—low and warm, the sound settled into the space between us.
“Well, then,” he said, “you’re going to love the rest of us.”
That earned a real laugh.
Below us, Frank continued his slow, endless circuit of the tank, completely unaware that the world outside the glass had collapsed, or perhaps creatures that old understood something the rest of us spent our whole lives trying to.
The water shifted around him, light rippling across the old scars on his shell as he turned again—patient, enduring, unbothered by the darkness.
Still swimming.
Still breathing.
After a century of storms, still here.