They Rise: Science Fiction

The sea woke them. That's the best idea we've been able to figure out, in the hasty months since we fled our coastal villages and retreated farther away. The trick was retreating upland and away from the sea while at the same time staying away from the kind of stone formation that was linked with the earliest outbreaks. All I can say is: thank God for overzealous paleontologists clearing some coasts of anything that looked like it might be a fossil, from the smallest shells to the eggs to what looked like broken eggshells found alongside them. I suppose I needn't add that natural history museums all over the world, even those in what we think are safe zones, closed in an awful hurry with military guards keeping safe zones outside of them until a specialist could get flown in to examine the collection and mark potentials for removal and study. I’m not an expert, thank goodness, I just work for one. My particular charge is subject to all the stereotypical absent-minded professor traits that you've ever seen in a movie: her hair looks like something nested in it, she tends to forget that her glasses are on top of her head until she needs them, and left to her own devices when she's wrapped up in something that interests her she would neither eat nor sleep. Me? I'm the bodyguard, the "termination specialist"--I guess I am something of a specialist after all--assigned to her just in case. She knows what she's doing. I'm the muscle to keep her alive long enough to get some useful data out of it.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastef/9260844125/
Story potential: High.
Notes: And both of them are female and not romantically interested in each other. This story would pass the Bechdel test, damn it! This story bit here isn't enough, of course, but it's really the relationship between these two that makes me interested in it.