Night.
The East Coast.
If a moon could ever be described as cold and pitiless, it was the moon that hung over Vera Reed as she walked the midnight leg of her patrol northward along the shale saw-blade of Kilmarnock Sound’s least scenic stretch. Volley after volley of bone chilling winds gusted in from the bay, prompting her to draw the zipper of her heavy Techcorp Security parka all the way up, closing the high collar snug over her mouth. Surf occasionally pounded against the breakers hard enough to shower the asphalt footpaths under a mist that flash-froze into a hail of minuscule ice-chips as it glided over the several dozen yards between the breakwaters and the coastal proper. Vera thanked the stars she couldn’t see, that her shift was nearly over and, for the fifth or sixth time in the last several minutes, ran a gloved finger over the volume dial of her transceiver to make sure it was on full, lest she miss the duty officer’s call to order her in from the monochromatic hell for shift change.
As she reached the outer banks, she noted a faint wheeze disharmonizing her breaths. She paused for a moment, walking in place, and looked out over the bay. She’d not been with Techcorp long, but in the few months since she’d started, it had proven itself a decent enough gig. It allowed her to keep Ramen noodles, tuna fish and the occasional Chipotle burrito on the table while she worked on her doctoral thesis. Her stint in the Provost’s office at Yale had earned her enough respect with the right people to land her a job that both required and rewarded discretion. Full-time pay, a respectable margin above what was typical for the area, with part-time, third-shift hours to boot, had conspired to make the situation seem too good to be true, especially considering that the job consisted mostly of walking back and forth along the coast... something she was likely to have been doing in her free-time anyway. The sudden cruelty of tonight's nor'easter, however, was proving itself to be the insidious fine-print footing the Faustian contract.
“So little to do, so little to see,” she muttered. While bittersweet and a little snide, it hadn’t been a negative observation, per se. This was one of her favorite spots to stop and think… in weather that didn't frost the synapses at one's temples anyway. Tonight, she’d just have to cope. The outcropping was at the furthest reach of the outer bank of the compound. It curved eastward before hooking south, back toward shore, creating a little cape that almost closed itself off completely. Had it done so, it'd have been a tide-pool. A stone’s throw across, it yet left a stretch, several yards in width, open to the Atlantic. Vera left the path to pick her way across the rocks of the inlet, her arms crossed over her stomach, a disinterested gaze cast out over the black-and-gray expanse between herself and the horizon.
For the briefest of moments, a portion of the water’s surface, theretofore glassy and slowly undulating, stirred and frothed in wild abandon as a cluster of heavy, whip-like appendages lashed upward from out of the crawling shadows in the depths. Vera’s screams were muffled behind the vinyl warmth of her zippered collar as her body spun and tumbled head-over-heels. Her death, a dancing riot of horrors, reflected itself back up at her upon black waters. The sudden, wrenching of her torso, effortless as the turn of a radio dial, was the last sight she ever beheld. With a splash rendered almost inaudible by the concert of blizzard and crashing surf, three powerful tentacles yanked her broken and mangled corpse down into the sea.
To the west, beyond the calm swells of the inlet-come-watery-grave and the rhythmic thundering of the rocky coast, three nuclear cooling stacks reached toward heaven, glowing in the sickly ambiance of yellow security-lighting through the whirling, windblown rushes of snow.
"Of Decay and Rejuvenation"
Chapter One
Saturday, November 3 2012
*****
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