It had been six months since the dead walked out of the sea. Benjamin sat atop the rounded bluffs, made pitiful by time and the saline air. The beach, an inconsequential strip of sand not long before, was now ghostly silent. Only fading tracks and worn trails hinted at the commotion which had come and gone. Benjamin was here the day they first rose from the water, and every day since.

He, his sister Samantha, and her daughter Molly had taken a trip to the shore to shed terrible memories. He picked them up in the early morning and drove three hours to the secluded stretch of shore, shielded on both sides by yellowing limestone cliffs.

“It’s perfect!” Molly shouted when she had climbed the bluff, squealing as she ran to meet the waves, kicking up sand as she went. Following her as best they could came Benjamin and Samantha, smiling back at Molly each time she looked back. The three of them picked their way along the coast. Molly stopped now and then to lift shells out of the surf, letting the water droplets become diamonds in the sun before stowing each in her wicker basket.

In the bleakness of autumn, the shells were gone. They had been ground to dust by millions of feet that had marched out of the abyss. Benjamin closed his eyes, recalling how Molly’s laugh bounced off the cliffs, the beach ranging with the child’s joy.

“It’s good for her to laugh again.” Samantha had said, picking a red shell for herself, “The beach always makes her happy. Thank you for taking us.”

“Of course. It’s the least I could do.” He grimaced, stepping on every shell underfoot. “She needs someone besides her mother, after all. Lord knows we did.”

Samantha nodded, fixing her gaze on her daughter. “Who’s that?” she squinted, her hand blocking out the sun. Amid the crashing waves, a man stumbled out of the water the way someone ascends a flight of stairs. “Molly!” Samantha called out. “Hold on, honey!”

Molly stood at the edge of the surf.

“Molly!” Samantha called again, quickening her pace.

“Wait!” Benjamin tripped on a shell. “What’s wrong?”

Molly’s basket dropped to the sand. The ocean drawing them back from where they had come.

The man in the water hesitated, his body heaving breaths deeper than the sea. Molly shrieked. Without warning, she threw herself into the water, gasping in the wake of tumbling waves.

Samantha ran after her daughter, followed by a stunned Benjamin. “Molly!” She screamed, the wind pushing the words into her throat.

“Daddy!” Molly shrieked! She threw her arms around the man’s waist. “My little girl!” he gasped, dropping to his knees and pressing her head against his neck.

Samantha’s blood drained from her body. Falling to the sand, she stared ahead, mouth open, and her eyes brimming with tears.

Benjamin stopped behind her. “David?” He whispered. Wiping his face; he looked at the ocean without understanding.

With a hollow voice, Samantha shuddered, her lips moving, afraid to say his name too loud.

Molly screamed and jumped as her father’s great laugh boomed across the beach.

He lifted her high above his head, just as he’d done long ago. “My dear!” He wept. Holding her in his arms and breathing for the first time in years. “My honeybee.”

Samantha clutched her brother’s arm. Pulling herself from the sand, she rocked back and forth, disbelief pushing her away, but love drawing her forward.

“Samantha!” her husband cried out, pressing Molly once more to his chest. His voice broke the last of her doubt.

“David!” she screamed, descended into their arms. All words failed as mother, daughter, and father all gripped one another, sobs mixing with laughter.

Benjamin remained fixed in place by the miracle which he had witnessed. To his right, another figure stumbled out from the ocean, followed by two more on his left. Another beachgoer screamed, dropping her bag and turning the color of the surf. Zombie movies had made the populous paranoid, and without delay, the bluffs were a buzz with flashing lights. Benjamin had gone back from where they had come, holding Molly by the hand.

Samantha clutched at her husband as officers tried to separate them. As more police arrived, not believing the dispatch they had received, they all froze.

Among the growing crowd of people behind the yellow tape came their former chief, laughing at them with eyes alive and well. They holstered their weapons and cut the barrier, embraced their comrade, happy tears mixed with prayers.

In the coming days, the oceans continued to purge themselves of all the dead there had ever been. Religious authority praised their respective doctrines and promptly closed their gates and retired. In endless streams, they marched out of the sea smiling, laughing, singing, and crying for joy. People from all over the world traveled to the little beach. In nervous anticipation, they waited in lines miles and miles long for their returning loved ones, and, despite the odds, they always found them. Happiness and joy become mixed with terror and hate, for, among the lost brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, friends, husbands, wives, daughters, and sons, came the bad too. Murderers, war criminals, rapists, abusers, slave owners, cannibals, dictators and worse, came out of the ocean.

Without delay, the religious leaders throw open their doors with renewed faith. With blazing conviction, they denounced the miracle as the work of someone else’s god. For a while, in the search for justice, impromptu killing squads roamed the beach, shooting the evil and the wicked as they rose from the water. However, they came back day after day refreshed, revived, and repentant, hand in hand with their victims. Eventually, even the most hardened soul melted, and the militias disbanded, each going home arm in arm with former enemies.

Death had made no distinction between men, taking all in their own time. So too, did life anew; kings walked out of the surf side by side with beggars, men with women, old with young, saints with killers, the recently deceased and the first to die. They all emerged from the ocean as equals. For months, the dead kept coming, leaving natural death behind as a distant memory.

Benjamin picked at the dried tufts of dune grass at his feet. The wind was stiff and the air wet with autumn mists.

“You havn’t left yet.” Samantha stood behind him, the rose color on her cheeks fading as her brother sat alone on the bluff.

“Nowhere else to be,” Benjamin watched the water, avoiding his sister’s eyes.

Samantha sat next to him, burying her toes into the sand. “It’s incredible.” She whispered, brushing hair out of her mouth.

“Yes.” He said flatly. “It’s a miracle; you don’t have to keep repeating it.”

“No, no. I mean, it’s incredible how the beach is just a beach again.”

“Oh.” Benjamin’s eyes tracked the shoreline. “Yeah, it’s a beach.”

Samantha stayed quiet, pulling her wool sweater tight around her shoulders as the wind whipped across the top of the bluff. Benjamin brushed the sand off his ankles.

“I guess Dad isn’t dead after all.” He said.

“Maybe there is more to come?” Samantha rested her hand on Benjamin’s shoulder. “Maybe he’s next.”

“No. It’s over.” Benjamin shifted onto his knees and sank further into the sand. “The last one a came out two days ago over there.” He pointed with a blade of grass to his right, where five rocks stood firm against the waves. “He was a Serbian or something. His mother–this little, little woman–she sat over there waiting for him after coming out herself. They hugged for a long time, then left. She kept pinching his cheek no matter how much he asked her to stop.” Benjamin watched the sky; behind the gray mist, the sun reached for the horizon, its orange rays peeping out through thick folds of cloud.

“I liked believing he was dead.” Benjamin glanced at his sister; “I guess we know for sure now. He doesn’t love us.”

“Remember how we’d play hide-and-seek in the grass when Mom and Dad took us here last?” She asked. “That’s the best memory I have of us all together.”

“Leave it to him to not show up. I want—” Benjamin hesitated, rubbing his hands together, pushing his words out through clenched teeth. I want to find him and kill him. That way, he’d show up for once when he was supposed to.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Do you remember what happened after we came back from the beach? Mom found dad’s secret phone. They got into it and he left us. You woke me up, and we listened to them scream at each other until she slammed the door behind him.”

“I thought the beach house would break it was so hard,” Samantha muttered.

“Somehow it didn’t. Our family did, though. He ruined it.”

Samantha pushed a stray lock behind her ear. The wind teased the tops of the grass. “Molly’s too big for hid-and-seek now.”

“There isn’t any grass left, anyway.” Benjamin gestured in a wide arc at the trampled dunes. Where once thick bushes had swayed, now stood short, squat patches with broken, yellowing shoots.

“It will grow back next year.”

Benjamin shook his head. “It wouldn’t even matter if it did. This isn’t the same place anymore. It’s always going to be Resurrection Cove, or whatever people call it now.”

“It won’t be exactly the same as before.” Samantha agreed, “But neither are we. No one is. The entire world isn’t the same.”

“I’m the same.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’d think I’d know.”

Samantha pursed her lips but said nothing.

“You know who else is the same?”

“Who?”

“Dad. He’s the same, too. Wherever he is, he hasn’t changed. I mean, you and Molly, you both got David back. That little Serb got her son back. Everyone got someone back, and now nothing is the same, not even this beach. Except for me. I feel exactly the same. I bet dad does too.”

“You’re not like him, you know.”

“Of course I’m not. I’ve never doubted that.” Benjamin shifted to the side and hugged his sandy knee. He turned his head to face Samantha. “I feel less alive than ever. Why do you think that is?”

“Maybe it’s because since David and the rest came back, you’ve sat in this exact spot watching the beach?” Samantha studied her brother. “For the rest of us, life has started over. But for you, Ben, it’s completely stopped.”

“No,” Benjamin wanted to argue, but Samantha continued.

“Yes, Dad isn’t dead, and now he never will be. I hoped he was, too. I even prayed for it once, because it meant that at least there was a force greater than me, you, or mom, greater than love itself, that kept us all from being happy.

“After David got sick and died, I hoped Dad was dead because it wasn’t fair for him to be alive and David not. And as Molly grew up without him, I wished Dad was dead because I didn’t want Dad to find me and be there for Molly the way he never was for us.”

With stubborn eyes, Benjamin wished the waves would swallow him.

“But now,” Samantha continued, “after all that has happened, I’m happy he isn’t. I’m glad that there is no time limit for him to find us again–when he’s ready.”

Benjamin said nothing as he sifted sand through his fingers. Samantha slid next to him and wrapped one arm around her brother, resting her head on his shoulder.

“Let him go, please. And come back with me?”

The wind blew Benjamin’s hair, pushing it into ever-changing piles. “One more hour,” he whispered. They sat in silence together, watching the waves eat the shore until there was nothing left.

Editor: Michelle Naragon