SPLASH
Chapter Nine
Hi again, guys! Sorry it's been a while since the last update – I wanted to get something up for Halloween, but I've been ill with a chest and throat infection... not pleasant, believe me!
So, I'm doing two chapters at once, to try and make up for the wait.
Disclaimer: -sigh- Do I have to? –pause- Fine. I don't own Torchwood, yadda yadda yadda and all that Tosh. You get my gist.
The flames leap and spit, their orange reflections dancing over the flat dark water as they consume the boats.
Smoke billows up into the sky, swallowing the full moon in a cloud of death.
With a crack, a burning mast topples into the water, sending boiling droplets splattering onto the deck, steam hissing into the sky to merge with the smoke.
They had long stopped their shrieking now.
The boats are reduced to ravaged burnt-black hulls and slipped under the water. There is not a single cry.
A boom of thunder echoes across the empty water, heralding the coming of the soft rain that begins to fall from the smoke-stained sky, putting out the fires and leaving an acrid tang of smoke and charred flesh and wood.
-T-
Water is pouring into the cabin through the cracks in the hull.
A frightened young mother clutches her two children to her, watching wide-eyed as her husband fought to inflate the lifeboat.
The sleek dark flesh of the Giant Squid break the surface of the water as they wait for the inevitable.
They are hungry. They have been hounded across several oceans, herded by savage strangers, and now they are starving.
But it doesn't lessen their strength.
This family will be little more than a snack between them all, but it will keep them going until they can find safer hunting grounds, far from the strangers that hunt them and tear them to shreds, regardless of the fearsome beaks of the squid.
One of the children begins to cry as water washes into the cockpit, splashing over her bare feet. The dressing gown around her thin shoulders does little to keep the bone-bitingly chill air at bay.
The other child has a teddy bear in one hand, and is sucking his other thumb. He doesn't understand what is happening.
Only when the boat lurches and starts to sink from beneath their feet – leaving them floating helplessly – does he realise that it's bad.
As the Squid wrap their cold, grasping tentacles around him, he lets out a piercing shriek that rattles out in the lonely, open sea.
Short, I know, and without any Torchwood Team action – but this is only a short glimpse of what the team are going to have to combat.
Next chapter will be up in about an hour – maybe more, maybe less. We'll see.
SJA tonight! 5:15...
R&R? 'Tis easy...all you do is click that button in the corner saying 'GO' and write a couple of words. Please? Pretty please with sugar on top? Or candy?
Everybody who reviews gets a virtual cake!