Chapter 60: Flood Part 2
The air was cold and heavy and gray as the belly of a mosasaur, filled with the smell of saltwater and ordure from the refugees huddled outside the walls. The compound itself was scarcely more organized. Clearly Rinsin traveled with a small regiment of soldiers because he needed them to force his way through the crowd that roiled in the fort's cramped courtyard. Old men, young women, even children wept around them. The trickle of swimming refugees had become a flood. Now they swarmed up from the murky water faster than soldiers or sea-monsters could kill them.
Shark fins shuttled across the rain-lashed sea water, and foam exploded where they fought over swimmers. People wallowed in that bloody spume, reaching their arms toward the shore even as teeth dragged them back. The ash-and-snow scales of a mosasaur glittered where it slithered up the bank to clamp its long jaws around a man's leg. Turtle averted her eyes.