The Flood
by Jackson Saul

1.

Thomas Noonan catches a sweet whiff of it before he goes under, and it might make him have a thought. When it’s molasses that’s sweeping people away, they have a little more time to think last thoughts than if it were water. Noonan is a longshoreman, and he is strong from lifting things up and putting them down. But now he himself is lifted up from the shoreside cobblestone, and when he goes down, he stays down. He is strong, but not strong enough for this.