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The zombie invasion was over fairly quickly. The movies all made such a big deal out of it but when it finally happened, well, they were zombies. Dead bodies walking. They decomposed in the heat too fast to be any major threat. And when people worked out that the methane building up inside them made them good for exploding they didn't stand a chance. The smell was horrible (and a lot of people died on the first day when they were too shocked to know what was going on) but the zombies themselves? Not a problem.

The thing is, we thought that when the zombies died off it would all be over. We'd just need to clean up the dead bodies, get the power back up and running, and everything would be okay again. None of us bothered to wonder why exactly these zombies suddenly appeared. I blame all those movies for that as well; everybody assumed it was a government experiment gone wrong or something. All these modern explanations for zombies; people forgot the old lore behind them. The simple fact was this: somebody raised them from the dead.

I know what you're thinking and, believe me, I used to think the same way. Darren Brown, David Blaine, the great Houdini himself - they're all a bunch of fakers. It's all smoke and mirrors with them and if you'd asked me two weeks ago I would've told you that magic isn't real. Wasn't, isn't and never would be. But that was before Richard Smith.

...I know. It's not a very magical-sounding name. Or a very evil one. I assume he chose a proper supervillain name at some point but he didn't really take the time to introduce himself with it. Somebody caught a glimpse of him whilst he was 'making the rounds' and recognised him as that weird kid they went to school with, and that's all we know of him. Richard Smith, 'that weird kid', harbinger of evil. Not exactly how any of us imagined civilisation would end.

So yeah, he brought the dead back to life, and for the first couple days they did their job the way any zombie army would. Then we exploded the shit out of them and thought our problems were over. We were organising ourselves into work forces to remove all the dead bodies, feeling all smug and proud of how well we were handling the situation, when he started in with his second magic trick. We didn't see it coming at all. We're an inland city - the nearest water is the tiniest little wimp of a river - and if there was one thing none of us were prepared for it was a tidal wave. Yes, you read that right, a tidal wave. We're hundreds of miles from the sea, nowhere near any big rivers, and he called up a tidal wave on us. Fuck knows how. I never pretended to understand how his laws-of-physics-defying magic worked; I'm just telling you what happened. And what happened was a motherfucking tidal wave.

It was the shock and disbelief that got people killed. Just like when the zombies attacked; the people who questioned what their eyes saw were the first to die. Most of us didn't stop to think, though. We'd dealt with zombies, we weren't fazed by a tidal wave appearing out of thin air in a place with no nearby water source. The few who stopped and stared were left to it; nobody in their right mind wanted to stay behind a second longer than they had to. The zombies were only around for a few days but they instilled some hard lessons in us - you can't help those who won't help themselves. Trying will just get you killed right along with them.

Those of us who weren't staying to die ran for the hills. Quite literally. There's only really one hill in our city that's high enough but everyone just ran to the nearest high ground they could find. Some of them got lucky with the high-rise buildings, some of them made it to Kestrel Point where the waters never reached. I climbed the steeple of the church. I was standing just outside it when we first saw the wave coming and there was nowhere else to run. Not that people didn't try. Most ignored the steeple and ran for the hills instead. The water was faster than them.

I watched the destruction from up close with more than a touch of awe. I've heard people talk about the destructive force of nature and whilst this wasn't precisely natural I could see what they were talking about. That wave crushed everything in its path. It rolled over entire buildings and left nothing behind but rubble and corpses. I didn't think the church would hold up despite the massive stone blocks it was built out of. Right up until the moment the wave passed me by I was sure I was about to die, and I wasn't aware that I'd been holding my breath until it all came rushing out of me in relief.

That wasn't the end of it though. The wave passed by but the water remained. I jumped down from the steeple when it was calm and swam for one of the still-standing highrisers, trying to ignore the corpses floating alongside me. A bunch of us congregated up in those buildings and for a while everything was hunky-dory again. We smashed vending machines open for food and drank from the hundreds of water fountains. We figured the flood would drain away in a few days and we could get back to the clean-up operation. None of us were worried.

We should have been. That was nine and a half days ago. The water isn't going down - Richard's still defying physics. We know it's his doing because he comes to check on us. Every night he strides through the city. Yes, strides, across the water. I told you the laws of physics mean nothing to him. He peers into every window, every nook and every cranny, and laughs at what he finds there. He laughs at the destruction, chuckles at corpses, and smiles a horrible smile when he finds survivors. He's not done anything else to us yet, just watched us and held the water there. The salt water, I should probably mention. Our water fountains won't last forever and it's not rained since the flood. We weren't worried, because our problem was too much water, not too little, but some bright spark decided to give it a try the other day and then gulped down nearly a whole fountain's worth of water to rid himself of the taste of salt and the thirst that accompanied it.

I'm not sure how much longer our supplies will last, but I do know that it doesn't really matter. He's toying with us. We're only alive because he lets us be, and he could take that away whenever he wants.

And when he does decide to kill us? I don't think that'll be the end of it either. I've worked out the reason for the salt water. I've not mentioned it to anybody here yet - what they don't know won't hurt them, and I'd rather keep it from the kids as long as possible - but I've spent a lot of time staring out the windows and I've seen them already. The new zombies don't seem to decompose at all, living in water that salty is preserving them perfectly.