Soul Resin - Excerpt

November 23. Like Farragut's gunboats and Hurricane Betsy, it came up the river. Still miles away, the approaching trident blasts woke people all over the city. They rushed out of their homes, some still in bedclothes, some dressed and armed. Irrational behavior set in. People began shooting at each other, then wildly in all directions, only finally to turn the gun on themselves. Out of some buried instinct from a former era, thousands flocked to the levee. There they saw the Mississippi rising, rising, then overflowing: as if a single bather were joined by too many guests, the river's trough had no more room for water. It began in snaking little rivulets, then lunged over in great messy splashes.

But the flooding was the least of it. Well before the river reached its boiling point, onlookers saw the ominous shapes floating round the bend at what used to be called Slaughterhouse Point. Great black clouds like great black ships, the palpable warp in the air oozed itself into the harbor and then began reaching out in all directions. Like a great neighing black horse's head it came down out of the sky as quickly as it had dug itself out of the earth.

Some dead came back for revenge. Other dead cast their lot with the living, out of principle. Many of the living volunteered for the opposition, suicide was their badge of honor. The dead fared the worst. Countless ranks of them ended up in eternity's tarpit, what we now know to call Soul Resin.