the gray tide - SCP Foundation

The cities were the first to drown, clogged by a tide of bodies balanced on the very edge of essential functionality.

In the early days, men built walkways over the flood, pathways of wooden beams that took you just above the grasp of the most limber of the undying where they lay, moaning and aching, leaking and rotting in the gutters and alleys and strewn across the paths of commerce.

But the tide kept rising.

It swelled up in a gray sea that scratched at the ankles of the world, that stared you in the eye, pressed up against cellar windows, crowded in the scant shade of overflow pipes and balconies, squelching wetly beneath tires and tread.

The stink, I believe, was the final straw.

In those early days in the high summer the wet heat would sink over the cities like a shroud and the asphalt would ripple and the smell of undeath would rise in a wave almost visible, white-misted and ghostly, though no one then believed in ghosts anymore, rising from the slums and the sewers and the sub-basements hand-in-hand with the wailing (a noisome smell), to the high-rises, to the palaces and the keeps where those yet limber, yet vital, squatted in opulence.

It spoke to them of inevitability, so of course, they ordered it buried.

Came the outcry then, to carry the undying out. Snatched and piled into the backs of a fleet of white wagons, carried into the heart of the open country. Burn-pits and shallow, writhing graves, softly susurrant indentations that for a time kept the wailing, the stink away. Thousands of them across the wide country, denoted by fences and concertina wire and birds, of course, roosting in flocks a million wide, a carpet of cooing, fluttering red-flecked feathers lining the pits from end to end.

The undying were gone, for a time, and except for the routine trundle of white wagons the cities were quiet again. But we had eternity. And they had eternity.

And they came back.

Inching, squirming, end-to-end, dripping out of the ground, oozing like rancid oil, a river of gray flowing back, back up the roads towards the cities and the sun, a column of crawling billions. What was there to do, in the face of eternity? Heaven was empty, hell was barred, so where were they to go? Silence the screams, stifle the stink, keep the damned out of the sun. Eventually, we came to a solution.

Heaven was empty, hell was barred.

We made our own.

The first of the ships was named Necessity.

The dead (for now there is no distinction), are piled here, in the hold, in dripping casks five-high. The weight of the bodies keeps the most limber amongst them still, shifting softly beneath clammy, glistening gray flesh. They claw and grasp miserably at each other, limbs intertwined with surprising strength, one dead thing of many heads, of many arms. Great iron chains and leaden weights are dropped amongst them at random and the dead grip these as tightly as they hold all things. They scratch and claw and after each voyage steward-boys are sent into the hold with lanterns and cloth and buckets of water, to wash away the carpet of left-over fingernails, embedded into the rivets and seams. It does little for the smell.

When the voyage is underway the crew plugs their ears with wax to stifle the reedy moans that echo like a dirge off of the metal sides of the hold. Even then, the sound carries through the frame of the ship and you can feel it if you press your hand against the deck or the railing or the sides of the crew-quarters, overcoming the thrum of the engines. Birds flock and follow us as we set off from the dock, the strongest amongst them straining to linger with us until the end.

The voyage takes a day and a night. Some of the older crew manage sleep. The youngest huddle in the cabins, smoking and playing cards.They stare at each-other with gray-rimmed eyes and ignore inevitability as it writhes and moans scant feet below them. They comfort themselves with the immortality of purpose. So long as they are useful, they say, they will not be counted amongst the dead. Those who ferry the dead- they cannot die.

They alone escape the hold.

The hold is patient. It knows they are wrong, and it is patient in its waiting.

At the end of the journey is a pier of marble, jutting from the waves. The scant seabirds still following flock atop it, relieved at a respite for their tired wings. They wait for a feast.

The ship comes to a stop. The great engine is silenced. It does not release anchor. The gates to the hold are opened, just above the waterline. On the deck above, cauldrons of fat are rendered into water. The boil is poured down iron grates in the decking, down into the hold. The ship has a chaplain, an old drinker with liver-spotted skin and pale blue eyes half blind.

He is roused from his incensed, alcoholic stupor and drags himself in his spotted tabard to the stained lectern at the bow of the ship. He gives rites to the dead. He, alone of the crew, does not plug his ears with wax. He has deafened them. He hears their cries nonetheless.

Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per (visum, audtiotum, odorátum, gustum et locutiónem, tactum, gressum deliquisti)

The captain turns an ancient key. There is a clanking of gears, a clever mechanism. The floor of the hold tilts inexorably towards the open gates.

The dead slide softly into the black water. The birds flock and feast.

The name of the ship is Necessity. It is one of many.