I spent all my free time on a gangplank under the pier, especially in the off-season when our coastal town became a ghost town. Without summer's warmth we were just another lifeless husk of a dying community where the only way to make something of yourself was to leave as soon as you could.
Not everyone left, not the older folk who swore they'd live and die here and not the ones like me who just want to exist in peace and not dash about trying to Have A Career. I preferred staring into the water, watching the seals chasing each other about.
It's the main reason I survived the initial attack. You can't be killed if nobody can find you and nobody ever thought to look beneath the pier. Sure I heard stumbling footsteps above me and saw something dark leaking down but I just assumed it was one of the drunkards spilling his beer.
Nothing could have prepared me to face that carnage when I climbed back up the pier. My first thought was that everyone I knew was dead or dying in that moment. My next was to be thankful that we weren't in-season and so few of us actually lived here.
I don't think anyone expected to find a survivor - let alone be greeted by someone totally unharmed. I mean everywhere I looked I saw bits and pieces of the people I'd grown up with and I didn't have so much as a scratch on me.
Not a day goes by that I don't miss them and their noise. It's quiet everywhere now, even with all the newcomers flocking here from collapsed shelters in the cities. Our coastal shit-pit is becoming a proper town again but they're still all scared of their own shadows.
I can't say I blame them though, not with what they told me about the attacks and how the electricity came to life and jumped from the overhead wires, billboard lighting and even their phones. All at once the world was lit up like a candle and dark again in a matter of seconds.
Not everyone left, not the older folk who swore they'd live and die here and not the ones like me who just want to exist in peace and not dash about trying to Have A Career. I preferred staring into the water, watching the seals chasing each other about.
It's the main reason I survived the initial attack. You can't be killed if nobody can find you and nobody ever thought to look beneath the pier. Sure I heard stumbling footsteps above me and saw something dark leaking down but I just assumed it was one of the drunkards spilling his beer.
Nothing could have prepared me to face that carnage when I climbed back up the pier. My first thought was that everyone I knew was dead or dying in that moment. My next was to be thankful that we weren't in-season and so few of us actually lived here.
I don't think anyone expected to find a survivor - let alone be greeted by someone totally unharmed. I mean everywhere I looked I saw bits and pieces of the people I'd grown up with and I didn't have so much as a scratch on me.
Not a day goes by that I don't miss them and their noise. It's quiet everywhere now, even with all the newcomers flocking here from collapsed shelters in the cities. Our coastal shit-pit is becoming a proper town again but they're still all scared of their own shadows.
I can't say I blame them though, not with what they told me about the attacks and how the electricity came to life and jumped from the overhead wires, billboard lighting and even their phones. All at once the world was lit up like a candle and dark again in a matter of seconds.
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