Page 116 of Oceansong
The seas swirled around them and the skies darkened as Serapha’s face pinched as if struggling to hold in her rage.
“How dare you!” Serapha shouted. “You humans, all you do is take and destroy!”
The seas spun to form a vortex, sinking Angie and the mer into a shallow whirlpool. Angie pressed herself against the sentinel holding her, kicking her legs with whatever feeble strength she mustered up so she wouldn’t be dragged in the undertow.
“You think you can take our food? Our livelihood and think we would roll over and take it?” Nick yelled. “You’re wrong!” He walked closer to them, a swagger in his step. He leered at Serapha and sniggered. “We are all on this Earth to survive!”
Angie willed Bàba to speak up, but he appeared too shell-shocked.
Then Nick whispered in a dock worker’s ear, and they pulled out a revolver.
The whirlpool stopped, and Angie found herself swaying with the currents.
“Wait! No, stop!” Angie choked on her words and held up her hands, but the worker pulled the trigger, striking true at the sentinel that held Angie captive. A funnel of blood spurted out from the sentinel’s chest, and she fell limp with a quiet splash. Meanwhile, the dock worker who shot her raised his free arm in a cheer, and Nick patted him on the shoulder while Bàba looked on in horror.
“They want a fight? They will have one. Kill her! Then kill them all.”
Once Serapha gave the order, the second sentinel seizing Angie tightened his grip, making her feel as if her wrist bones were being crushed under his strength. He twisted her around to face him, and with a raging maelstrom in his bright umber eyes, he reared his arm back.
Angie gasped sharply.
His lance’s serrated tip ripped through her abdomen. Her eyes popped wide and her jaw dropped open. Pressing her hands to her stomach, she looked down. Her stomach leaked a slow trickle of blood, the saltwater in her wound rendering her speechless and dizzy with excruciating pain.
The sentinel who struck her pulled the lance out, and if the pain intensified any more, she was going to pass out. He reared back as if to strike her again, but a gunshot struck him in the head, and he fell dead before her.
“That’s it. You’re all dead, you filthy fish!” The fury in Nick’s voice rang in Angie’s ears.
Gunshots tore through the skies, striking the mer around her. Lances and tridents flew through the air, spearing the humans and bringing them to their knees. More people appeared on the beach, and more mer appeared from behind her.
Angie didn’t know where to go, trapped within the mer horde. Brine swarmed into her mouth, and she spat it out. Warm mer bodies trapped her, screams and shouts conglomerating into a dissonant melody.
Her abdominal muscles contracted over and over. With the mer occupied, she summoned what was left of her strength and dove underwater, only to become tangled in a mess of tails slapping at her.
A bullet pierced the surface, embodied in a trail of white and slowing down as it brushed the corner of her eye. She turned her face, wincing, keeping one hand pressed over the gaping wound in her gut. More blood bloomed in the water, and she let out a shocked, muffled cry.
Two dock workers’ bodies tumbled into the water and sank like they were weighed down by boulders. Beside her, another mermaid descended to her death.
Below them, gray and white shapes appeared, snatching up the dead and dying mer and humans, a veritable buffet. She knew her hand was coated in blood.
Please let the sharks stay busy, and leave her alone.
Angie swam past the feeding sharks and re-surfaced, the gunshots’ thunderous booms blasting her eardrums. The mer appeared to notice the sharks’ feeding frenzy below them, and swam closer to the shoreline.
More sentinels moved to Serapha’s side, speaking to her. Angie couldn’t make out their hushed words, except for one:tsunami.
The utterance of the word kept Angie’s body still, even as her eyes roved to absorb the sea around her. Watching for rising waves, disturbances in the water, the arrival of dark storm clouds.
Nothing.
Serapha was shaking her head no, sorrow in her eyes.
Another round of gunshots rang through the air.
The mer closest to her took the hits, their bodies jerking and warm blood splattering on Angie’s cheeks and neck. With a shaking hand, she wiped it off, numb to any revolt she would have normally felt. She put both hands to her still-bleeding stomach, pressing and pressing, numb to the pain now.
“Tian, please stop. Stop,” she choked out, her throat catching from the salt stuck in it, and she let out a dry, hacking cough. She didn’t know how many had died. How many more had to die to end this?
Serapha and her sentinels swept their tails forward, moving the tidescloser onto the surface. It reached the dock workers, gripping their knees. The water receded, pulling the workers out to sea.
