Skip to main content

[FICTION] Tales from Port Astor | The Sea Wall of Port Astor

                 In 1930, a mysterious disease overtook the western city of Port Astor, in the state of Jefferson. During its run, it killed one in five; nearly one-hundred thousand. Where it came from and how it started are hotly debated topics by local historians, but the official story is that it came via ship from the Far East. During that time, however, there were no similar outbreaks in the ports of East Asia. The situation garnered national attention when federal forces, sent to the city to enforce a quarantine, opened fire, and shelled the John Astor Bridge, killing dozens and maiming hundreds, when they tried to flee the city.

                The most affected area was the neighborhood of John’s Landing. One of the oldest parts of the city, it featured tight, narrow and twisting streets. After the plague, much of the neighborhood was abandoned, and buildings condemned due to damage, or fear of the disease that might linger; a haunting warren of brick and cobblestone.

                With much of the district empty, the city seized many of the properties to build works to help with the regular tidal flooding that had wreaked havoc in the area for generations, along the Athapaskan Channel. Though, rather than the proposed series of levies that similar cities had done for similar problems, the city build an enormous fortress-like structure; The Port Astor Sea Wall. It encompasses nearly all of the southeastern shore of the island, and houses a great number of city utilities; water treatment plants, it’s desalinization project, substations, and more. Even the top of the structure is used as the southeast part of the Island Loop Freeway that circles all of Port Astor.

                It is said, however, that there is more. Below the freeway, below the water treatment and utilities, below it all still lays the old narrow pathways of John’s Landing; the structure above acting as mausoleum for tens of thousands dead. The city denies this, of course. But every year, dozens of would-be explorers go missing trying to find the lost district, to see if the legend of the Port Astor Plague Tunnels are real. To date, none have returned.



_____________________________________________________________________________________

From the author: Thank you for catching the first part of a three part series! Make sure to check back in next Saturday for part two!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[FICTION] Tales From Port Astor | Return To Rest

This is the third part and finale of this year's October series! Please go read part two if you have not already!       The golden light of morning shone through to paned window, and in front of you a fine breakfast. Your wife, a reporter for a local newspaper. You look upon your love, and she begins to speak, but her words are a mumble, almost underwater. You look into her eyes, the green eyes you loved so much, searching for her light, but... nothing. Then, like knives through a curtain, words.     " How long did you wait? "     " How long did you really feel that way about me? "     " How long did you pretend to miss me? "     " How long did you pretend to love me? "     You reel, your wife just sits there, beaming the same brilliant smile that she always had, looking up at you, eyes that devoured the light.     It comes back to you now. She disappeared last year, you remember the biting, haunting sorrow for h...
Post a Comment
Read more

[Guest Writer] Gemini by Brian Rydquist

Editor's Note: This is a content warning for those sensitive to certain topics; self-harm, child loss, graphic descriptions of violence.            Sylvia bent over the lifeless bodies of the newborn infants she had just spent six hellish hours delivering. Screams of anguish poured from her diaphragm, blood soaked her nightgown from the waist down. Her husband William knelt beside her, stroking her shoulder in a futile attempt at comfort. The midwife, an elderly Inuit woman, knelt on her otherside. “Please miss,  you must lay down. Your body has suffered incredible stress, the birth was not a good one.” “My babies, my babies, this can’t be!” Sylvia shrieked, deaf to the woman’s words. “Shh, shh,” William was muttering as he rubbed her shoulders. “Maybe it won’t be, I have already sent for the spirit leader of my tribe. He should arrive any moment.” “Don’t be a fool! How dare you give my wife this false hope! You can clearly see the babie...
4 comments
Read more

[Guest Writer] Rain, Again by Charlena Kea

  Uncle, it is happening again. The rain has come. I have spent thousands of nights praying that the world would realize something when they pulled your small body from the river. How delicate life is. How precious. How it floats and swells and then vanishes in even the gentlest currents. I prayed you would be more than a forgotten proverb. In a story about big men in faraway places. Their empty fists and uncalloused fingertips meeting tabletops unscathed. And the rain falling faithfully in turn. They say they are here to protect us. That we are safe behind a blinding cloud of rubble and the dust of month-old bones. But I always wonder why they did not protect you; my most precious kin. I wonder what it is that must be offered to deserve their protection. Because your fluttering pulse and brand new eyes for an old and broken world were not enough. A child’s body and a child’s heart is not enough. They didn’t protect you when the squall of fire and metal touched down on the land...
2 comments
Read more