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Inland Sea

 Sheriff Warren stares at the ocean. 


It’s beautiful. Warm. Crystalline blue water laps up on rock and sand, and a fresh salty scent that feels almost welcoming. 


Warren squints, looking left, then right. The same in both directions. Virgin, untouched shoreline. Spires of rock jut up from the water in places, eerie and alien, lined by ancient strata down their flanks. The Sheriff checks his watch. It’s noon. 


He fishes for a cigarette, pulling it from a pocket— and fumbles. A light breeze throws it from sand to the water, and Warren watches it float away almost dumbly. He’s shaking a bit. The cigarette drifts merrily, passing through a sunny patch of ocean. 


There’s something down there. 


A truck. 


Submerged. It looks like it’s been placed there, gently. The driver side door is the only thing ajar. Warren cranes his neck, looking hard through sunglasses and ocean and fear. But all he sees in the cab is blackness, shadow. 


Twenty four hours ago, Sheriff Zachariah Warren was the premier law official of Sunshine: a quiet, small place in Montana that the words “town” were beyond generous to describe, even during the summer when it’s tourists (or more rather, passing motorists), swelled the population from two hundred and thirty to a staggering three hundred(!). 


An ocean.


He looked again. 


Left.


Right.


Front.


Blueness everywhere. At his feet was all that remained of Highway Eight, the main section of road that connected Sunshine to the rest of human existence beyond badlands and rugged foothills and empty big sky nothing. The concrete looked sheered perfectly, like God had cut it with His very own pair of divine scissors. 


There was motion. Something in the water, something that flickered ancient instincts back into primary thinking. Warren looked out only a few yards. He felt his heart race. Somewhere down inside him came primeval, ethereal memories of crocodiles snatching ancestors from African river banks into muddy, tearing fates. The Sheriff didn’t even realize he was backpedaling until he came down hard in the sand, and scrambled to half stand back up again, peering hard. 


A huge, long shadow cruised in the gloom. It’s enormous form dwarfed the sunken eighteen wheeler. 


A Leviathan in his midst. 


Sheriff Zachariah Warren was on his feet and running, ocean to his back.

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