“LM-80 Cormorant. Long-range enough for a medevac from the middle of the ocean. This thing’s designed for anti-submarine, anti-ship, search and rescue, cargo lift, special ops, you name it.”
Reeves was wondering whether said special ops included him when he noticed the group of people gathered in the harbour.
They were pointing at something in the distance, which he at first took to be a huge pod of orcas. Several people were taking pictures.
He rolled to a stop in an empty intersection and squinted through the sun’s glare.
His mouth slowly fell open. Not whales.
The vast shape in the water rose and fell through the surface in a connected wave, bigger than his mind could comprehend.
Sitting in the idling truck, Reeves scrambled to regain his slipping hold on reality. He clung to one certainty like a buoy: this thing, whatever it was, was heading for shore.
He shut off the truck so he could listen. People were beginning to panic. He could hear them shouting. He wrenched his seatbelt off and flung open the truck door.
By the time his feet hit the pavement, the thing was already in the harbour. Reeves cursed as a shower of seawater erupted like a mine.
Several people screamed. Dogs pulled at their leashes, barking frantically. The crowd began to sprint away from the shore as the mammoth creature crested the waves.
On the passenger’s seat, Reeves’ phone rang. He stood in the intersection, frozen by what he was seeing, when the scream of a child cut through the noise.
Propelled into action, he dove across the seat for his phone and then sprinted towards the shore with trained agility, phone at his ear.
The voice on the other end was frantic. “Reeves, I need you to get to the harbour—” It was his superior, Officer Miller.
The screaming girl’s mother scooped her up. She took off towards the parking lot.
“I’m here, sir.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
“All I know is we got a distress call from the coast guard, and then we lost contact.”
The tsunami siren erupted, an unceasing wail from the top of several masts along the shoreline. At this, people burst out of nearby homes and shops.
“Sir, it’s unclear what—”
At the end of the docks, something rose out of the water that made Reeves stop in his tracks. It was a black serpent’s head, as large as the moored speedboats, a flare of horns at the back of its skull. A blast of seawater rained from nostrils the size of basketballs. The serpent tasted the air.
“Reeves, you there?”
The serpent closed in, crushing the sailboats in its path and sending swells of water high enough to capsize the rest. Several people on the docks vanished beneath the waves.
Reeves lowered the phone and raced closer to the beach.
“Get out of the water!” he bellowed.
The dock shattered beneath the serpent’s weight. It did not seem to feel the shards of wood and fibreglass dragging under its scales.
People on the shore were running and screaming. Reeves stopped briefly to usher an elderly couple up the steps leading to the parking lot, then turned back in time to see the creature reach land, not a hundred feet away. The scrape of its scales across the pavement rose above the wailing siren and the noise of the crowd.
He pulled civilians back from the shore, shouting at them to get to their vehicles and to pile in as many people as they could.
A series of shrill barks rent the air and Reeves looked around, eyes landing on a border collie that had been left tied to a bike rack. He pelted across the beach and ducked next to the dog, its breath hot and fast on his neck as he freed its collar from the leash. The border collie fled without looking back, nails skittering across the pavement.
There was a deafening boom.
