The Killing Sea Read Online Free Page B

houses and trees. From its top edge rose a churning white mist. One of the thirty-foot fishing boats got caught up in the frothing lip, which sent the vessel tumbling down the face.
    The color of this sea was black.
    That broke his trance. Ruslan sprinted up the lane, dodging around slower runners. From behind him came a sound like a thousand bulldozers at full throttle, ripping through buildings and grinding them up. He glanced over his shoulder. A tremendous wall of black water had swept onto the south side of the peninsula and another onto the north, both submerging not only buildings but also coconut palms. The two walls collided with a deafening thunderclap that dwarfed the grinding roar. White spray erupted hundreds of feet high. A bicycle twirled high in the spray, blasted into the air by the force of the impact.
    This demented flood shot up the peninsula, riding over the earlier and shallower surge. It gobbled an old grandmother and a young policeman wading as fast as they could through the shallow water. Ruslan put his head down and forced his legs to sprint even faster. He turned up the road to the Old Mosque, to the boulevard that would lead awayfrom the sea. Black water poured out of alleyways in front of him, cutting off that direction. Without breaking stride, he careened into a lane that would take him the other way, toward the gas station. A thick tongue of water surged around a corner, turning down toward him.
    He spun into another lane, and then another, his path always blocked by the sudden appearance of water determined to devour him. This part of town was as familiar to him as his paint palette, but in his terror he became disoriented. He burst from a lane onto the middle of a street of two-story shop houses. The flood raced toward him from either end of the street. He ran into the first shop house on his right, pushing through the shopkeeper’s family, who’d rushed downstairs to see what was going on. “Run up! Run up!” he shouted to them, and sprinted up the stairs to the family quarters on the second floor. The response he got was an angry shout from one of the teenage sons, which turned into a panicked screech as water roared into the shop.
    Within seconds the flood poured onto the second floor. The water was thick with sand and muck, and gushed with extraordinary violence, smashing furniture into the walls. Ruslan struggled to the narrow flight of stairs that led up to the attic. The water followed him up the stairs and pouredin through the attic’s small, barred windows. Ruslan dog-paddled to stay afloat. The water lifted him higher and higher, toward the underside of the roof, which had a thick lining of insulation under the outer tiles.
    God help him, he was going to be trapped and drowned like a rat. He stood on a support beam and frantically tore at the insulation. Thick chunks came away in his hands, but the water was now up to his chin. He took a deep breath just before his head became submerged, and he banged away at the roof tiles with the flat of his hand. His lungs began to burn. Several tiles at last gave way. He gripped the edges of the hole and hoisted himself up out of the water and into blessed air, which he inhaled with ragged whoops.
    From the roof he could see a flood raging along several of the town’s streets. Upright cars and overturned boats and uprooted trees and debris from shattered houses tumbled in the current. People were also carried along, trying to stay atop the mess, their desperate silent efforts far more chilling than their previous screaming. Ibu Ramly, the fritter seller, pushed her young son onto a floating refrigerator whose door was open. He fell inside. As she tried to climb on, the door shut on her son, and she fell into the water and did not reappear.
    The roof underneath Ruslan began to quiver. The eave below him crumbled. The shop house was collapsing into the flood. Ruslan raced on his hands and knees along the cracking roofline