No one knows what punctured the rubber, but we all hear it, the unmistakable hiss of salvation seeping into the water: dark water: encompassing water: water of birth and of death, and for us our final hope for a better life.
There are seven of us on the small inflatable boat.
Overloaded.
Huddling together, men and women; children; some of us not even speaking the same language—
Hiss
—but we all know what that means.
The end.
Above, the sun is just beginning its descent, and we need to be across before sunfall.
Hiss
We can feel the boat shrinking beneath us.
No one dares stir.
It’s impossible to tell how much distance we’ve already covered. The water surrounds us. But it’s clear some of us won’t make it by swimming.
The old man.
The two children. Siblings maybe.
Hiss
The old man sticks a pill between his teeth and takes out a gun. He’s prepared. “Jebać mokrych zmartwychwstańców,” he says, before pushing off the boat, into the black water.
We watch him: floating through the murk.
A few shots—
Then the myriad hands of the waterrisen overpower him; pull him under.
One of the women covers the children’s eyes.
They’ll likely be next.
The waterrisen prowl the sea: reanimated corpse-agglomerations of ones like us: people who hoped to get across but failed. Some are individuals, or parts of individuals, while others have fused together into fleshy globes of once-human matter and tentacles.
Hiss
Not long now.
The boat is almost deflated. We wait until the last possible moment—
And slide into dark water.
The surface is deceptively calm. The sun sinks ever lower.
I swim.
Behind me I hear splashing, followed by screaming, but I don’t look back.
I kick my legs.
Something grabs my foot.
“Please.”
Such tiny hands.
I force myself to believe that it’s a waterrisen. I must. “Please—” it repeats, but gargled now.
I kick until I don’t feel anything anymore.
There are no more voices.
Just breathing.
Heartbeat.
One of the women swims alongside me, and together we flail our arms toward freedom, trying to catch a rhythm that will propel us forward.
We should be taking turns swimming in each other’s wake, but neither of us wants to trail behind. In the boat, we were together; here, we are competitors. I close my eyes and pray that in her death she will distract the waterrisen.
I imagine our deflated boat floating peacefully on the surface.
I imagine the waterrisen ripping still-living, drowning people to shreds in underwater clouds of blood.
I kick.
When finally I open my eyes—
The woman is gone.
The sun is almost touching the horizon.
The horizon:
I see it bobbing before me:
A silhouette of trees and small buildings, almost within reach.
Almost—
Feeling sand underneath my feet—
Half-running now—
Body emerging into a gradient of dry air—
Salvation—
I turn. And as the sun begins to melt into the horizon, it sets the sea afire.