The Creeping Kelp

by William Meikle

  That’s what Suzie had said. After reading the papers, Noble had to agree. He’d been lost in the story, but now that he was finished, he became all too aware of the aches and pains that racked his body.

  But it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.

  He put the papers down on the small table beside the bed and lay back, staring at the ceiling. He was aware that, as yet, no one had come to check on him, despite the fact that he had been awake for at least an hour now. He considered calling out, but there was something about the deep silence that made it seem like sacrilege to break it.

  Besides, I shouldn’t complain about getting some rest.

  His thoughts kept returning to the last phrase in Ballantine’s journal. Suzie had it underlined in thick black pencil strokes. I worry about breakages. There was no doubt in Noble’s mind that the things that had overrun the Earth Rescue were indeed the self-same creatures that Ballantine described so vividly.

  It seems he was right to worry.

  He lay there for a while trying to sleep but his brain refused to slow. Eventually he gave into the inevitable and picked up Ballantine’s journal again. He was half way through his second read when someone finally came to check on him.

  The male nurse who entered looked just as tired as Noble felt.

  “So what’s the story?” Noble asked. “What’s such a big deal that I get left here to rot for hours?”

  The nurse smiled.

  “I looked in less than two hours ago and you were fast asleep.”

  “That’s not the point,” Noble replied. “Come on, spill it. I know there’s something going on and I need to know what it is.”

  “What you need to do is rest,” the nurse replied.

  He refused to be drawn into conversation as he slowly and methodically freed Noble’s leg from the tackle that constrained it.

  “Okay. If you won’t tell me what’s going on, can you at least tell me where I am?” Noble asked.

  “That’s classified, sir,” the man said and kept at his task.

  Noble laughed.

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  But the nurse wouldn’t be drawn. He only spoke again as he left.

  “Stay off your feet for a while,” he said. “There’s nothing broken and you didn’t need stitches, but the surface abrasions are pretty bad and you’ll be stiff for a while.”

  “Thanks,” Noble said. “But I knew that already.” He was talking to an empty room. The nurse had already gone.

  Stay off your feet? My arse.

  This time when he swung his feet out of bed he didn’t feel like throwing up. He took that as a good sign and was about to head from the door when he realised he was only wearing a hospital gown, with nothing underneath. Another quick look around showed him his clothes in a small pile on a chair at the other side of the room. He headed that way, but soon realised the futility of the attempt—the floor bucked and swayed like a boat in a heavy sea and his wounded leg felt like a lump of cold wood grafted at his knee. He fell back in the bed, a cold sweat at his brow and a pounding heart in his chest. The room started to spin and once more, in his mind he was back, dangling at the end of a tether, the black tendrils reaching for him. He screamed, loud and long until his throat was raw and sore.

  No one came.

  Finally, he lay back exhausted and fell into a feverish sleep.

  Once again he came to his senses slowly. He was sitting up in the bed and a warm body was pressed up against his good side. He turned and looked into Suzie’s concerned face.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked. She had been crying again, but he knew better than to draw attention to it.

  “I’ve been better,” he said. “How long have I been out?”

  “Just a few hours,” she said.

  He saw in her eyes there was more to be said.

  “But?” he asked.

  It came out of her in a rush, as if she’d been keeping it bottled up. He sat in stunned silence as she told him of the attack on Lyme Regis. He hadn’t seen the video footage that she had sat through, but her voice carried the whole horror of it and his own experiences filled in the blanks.

  “How many dead?” he whispered during a pause.

  “Over a hundred. But it’s hard to be sure yet, as the town is being evacuated and many fled by car and by foot during the attack itself. The army has cordoned off the whole seafront—I’ve told them it’s near impossible to police the coastline, but you know how these guys think.”

  Noble nodded.

  “They’ll find that this enemy doesn’t follow any rules of engagement. It’s working on some primal instinct. I doubt it has a plan.”

  Suzie suddenly had a far away look in her eyes.

  “I’m not too sure of that... I’ve been running some tests on the sample. I believe there’s something more than just instinct at work.”

  He remembered something from the journal.

  “Didn’t Rankin think the same thing? He postulated some rudimentary intelligence, didn’t he?”

  He saw fear in Suzie’s eyes.

  “I think it’s more than rudimentary,” she said. “I think it has problem solving and cognitive skills. I’m been running some tests and…”

  Noble started to sit up.

  “Don’t tell me. Show me,” he said.

  She tried to push him back.

  “You need to rest.”

  “No,” he said. “I need to work. Fetch my clothes, would you?”

  While Suzie got the clothes Noble gingerly swung his legs out of bed and put some weight on the bad ankle. It felt better than before, the pain having deadened to a dull ache.

  And the floor isn’t moving, so that’s a result right there.

  He wasn’t going to be running anytime soon, but he felt he could at least manage a slow walk, as long as he didn’t have to go too far.

  He made Suzie turn her back as he dressed, which amused her greatly.

  “Who do you think undressed you in the first place?” she asked, smiling as she turned away.

  “I like to be awake when I’m getting molested,” Noble replied.

  She was still laughing at that as she led him out of the room.

  Once he got out into the corridor and looked around, he knew immediately that he was somewhere in the depths of the fort—nowhere else he’d ever been had that distinctive paint job on the walls.

  “This place has become the centre of operations for the outbreak. That’s what they’re calling it, for want of a better term. The whole upstairs is crawling with soldiers, but they gave me a quiet room down here to set up a temporary lab and I had some stuff brought over.”

  She looked Noble in the eye and obviously saw something she didn’t like.

  “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

  She made to turn him back to the room and the bed, but he stood his ground.

  “No. I’ve been lying down long enough. And it sounds like you think you’re on to something. Show me.”

  They walked through empty corridors, the only sound, Noble’s increasingly heavy breathing. By the time they reached the office where Suzie had her makeshift lab set up, he was leaning heavily on her shoulder and the cold sweat was back.

  He slumped into a chair beside her laptop.

  “I told you to stay in bed,” she said. The concerned look was back, but he waved her away.

  “I’ll be fine after a coffee... you do have coffee, don’t you?”

  She moved to a trestle and showed him a glass jar perched on a Bunsen burner.

  “It’ll be a lab special... and instant.”

  “It’ll do,” he said, but his gaze had already been caught by a taller jar on the edge of the trestle. It was nearly a foot tall, solidly sealed at the top... and completely full of thrashing, wriggling kelp.

  “Did you get a new sample?” he asked.

  She saw where he was looking.

  “Nope. This is the one that you collected.”

  I o
nly collected a fraction of this thing.

  “What have you been feeding it... rats?”

  She came over and handed him a steaming mug of coffee. He took to it like a drowning man to a life belt.

  “Not rats... plastic.”

  As he drank and let the warmth creep through him, she told him about what else had been found in Lyme Regis, about the total lack of plastic anywhere the kelp had passed and of eye-witness accounts of Perspex sheets being carried away over the horizon. Something stirred in the back of Noble’s mind, something he should be remembering, but it wouldn’t come—the memory was too raw, too tender to yet be touched. And he was too tired to attempt to bring it forward. Instead, he reminded Suzie why they had come to the lab.

  “You said it showed something more than instinct?”

  She nodded.

  “I was re-reading Ballantine’s journal, about when they were shouting at the lab specimen.”

  Noble laughed softly.

  “You’ve been shouting at it?”

  Suzie blushed.

  “Just a little,” she said. She went over to the specimen jar to cover her embarrassment. As she walked, the kelp seemed to track her movement, sidling across inside the jar.

  “It knows you,” Noble whispered.

  Suzie nodded.

  “And watch this.”

  She walked up to the jar, so close her nose touched the glass.

  “Be careful,” Noble shouted.

  She took no heed. She shouted at the kelp.

  “Down, boy.”

  It retreated across the jar, pressing against the far side from her and didn’t move until she stood away.

  “That’s all we need,” Noble said sarcastically. “A new household pet.”

  “I haven’t tried being nice to it yet,” Suzie said. She was still blushing. “It didn’t feel right.”

  The thought was so incongruous, Noble couldn’t help but laugh again. Suzie looked at him as if he were mad.

  I might well be.

  He went back to the coffee. He finished the cup and put it down on the desk beside him. At the same moment, the kelp inside the jar went into a frenzy of thrashing, so violent that the jar started to walk across the table.

  Suzie stood back, a hand at her mouth.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I think something’s happening.”

  A second later, an alarm went off and an accompanying blast of gunfire echoed around Nothe Fort.

  July 22nd/23rd - Weymouth

  * * *

  Derek Gelwyn revved his souped-up Escort, pumping the pedal for all he was worth. Not that he could hear the effect much—that was drowned out by the stereo system. It was turned up to ten and if there had been an eleven, it would be turned up to that. Parallel parked beside him, Jake Brown put the pedal to the metal in his Nova. They smiled like sharks at each other through the open windows.

  You’re going down, Brown.

  It was near midnight and the drag contest on Weymouth promenade was reaching its climax. Both lads knew that they’d made enough noise in the past ten minutes to wake up half the town and that the police would be here any minute now. But there was time for one last race—the one that would assign bragging rights, for this week at least.

  He kept his eye on Jake, waiting for the slightest twitch, like a gunslinger waiting to draw. Jake winked... and popped the clutch, gaining a vital few yards before Derek reacted. Derek pushed the pedal to the floor and the Escort leapt after its quarry.

  No way he beats me…no way in hell.

  Derek lived for these nights. Long working days spent loading and unloading crates for the County Council were ameliorated by nights spent in his Dad’s garage, tinkering with the innards of the Escort, buffing up the paint work and ensuring that the stereo was the loudest it could possibly be. Later in those evenings, he would sit behind the wheel and dream, about the last race of the night, flying straight in the dark towards glory at full volume.

  He put his foot down full and felt the engine kick under him.

  By the time they were half way along the run, Derek knew he was going to win.

  Nobody beats this car on the run in from here. Nobody.

  He looked over as he drew level with Jake and gave him the finger. Jake screamed something at him that couldn’t be heard above the pounding bass from the stereo, but Derek didn’t need to hear it. He knew he had Jake beat and Jake knew it too. He tried to push the accelerator all the way down to the floor and they hit a hundred and thirty on the long straight.

  They were bearing fast down on the end of the promenade when Derek saw that there was something wrong. Normally, there was a row of lights where the other cars waited at the line to hail the victorious driver with a cacophony of horns and squeals. But tonight, that end of the track looked dark and quiet. Even the light from the lampposts overhead seemed to be dim, as if a heavy fog was, even now, advancing in from the bay.

  Derek didn’t slow. The race was the thing and Jenna Smythe—with a y—was waiting at the finish line, promising kisses and other exciting tokens of love to the victor.

  But worry started to gnaw at him. The darkness ahead was starting to look like a cave.

  Blackout? Have the cops got there already?

  Jake Brown pulled up first with a screech of brakes. Derek gave his best victory yell and floored it hard, barrelling straight into the blackness. He peered through the windscreen, trying to see the finish line. If it was the cops, they were being sneaky and that wasn’t like them. Usually they just turned up, shouted a lot, and left again. This quiet dark wasn’t their style.

  If it’s the rest of them playing a trick, I’ll give them something to think about.

  He kept his foot down and turned into the slight curve that marked the end of the promenade. If they were waiting for him in the dark, he would scatter them like ninepins as they would be expecting him to slow.

  What do you think about that?

  He hit a wall of kelp at nearly ninety miles an hour, ploughing inside a squirming mass of fronds and tendrils that smacked and slithered again the windshield. He just had the presence of mind to push the button for the side windows as the first tendril tried to snake inside.

  What the hell?

  The sound of the winding motor seemed to confuse the attackers and the window closed with a satisfying thunk, leaving the tendril on the other side to slither wetly against the glass. Only then, did he have time to look forward.

  His headlights showed a scene from a nightmare. Dark fronds thrashed in frenzy. There was another car, not too far ahead of him, but it was hardly recognisable as such. Tentacles and tendrils writhed in and around a mangled mess of metal, fabric... and flesh. Nothing remained that might be called a person, but Derek saw with disgust that several body parts were even now in the process of being digested.

  Fuck this for a game of soldiers.

  He slammed the Escort into reverse. Wheels squealed and tugged on unyielding kelp. He slammed a foot on the accelerator and inch by inch, the car started to ease backward.

  Come on you bastard! No fucking seaweed is going to eat MY car.

  His tyres screeched and finally gripped, hard, on the soft surface below.

  He screamed in triumph as the Escort pulled free and reversed at speed back along the promenade. The kelp came after him in a surging wave, a black wall that seemed to cover this whole end of the road. Every so often he’d see something almost recognisable moving in the fronds; a piece of tyre, a scrap of metal that might have been a bumper and, worst of all, more body parts, still red and dripping.

  What the hell happened here?

  He spun the Escort into a handbrake turn to get the vehicle pointing in the right direction, floored the accelerator again, and sped back towards town, screaming his joy above the still-pounding dance beat that filled the car.

  His joy at escape was short lived. Where mere minutes ago there had been a throng of cars and youths all cheering and shouting back at the start-line, now
there was only more of the deep blackness, a cave mouth that seemed to swell and grow around Derek’s Escort.

  No way out that way.

  His rear-view mirror was also full of the rushing dark, washing towards him from behind. He spun the steering wheel, his only chance seeming to be to get off the road completely.

  If I can just get away from the shore…

  But it was too late. A tentacle nearly three feet thick plucked the car from the road and started to squeeze. The Escort squealed as metal was crushed and glass cracked.

  No… not the car.

  Derek tore at his seat belt but there was to be no escape. The black maw surrounded and engulfed him. Tendrils started to push through the windows. The windscreen collapsed and was torn away, out of sight in an instant. His view was filled with thrashing fronds.

  He opened his mouth.

  The kelp filled it.

  July 23rd - Weymouth

  * * *

  Suzie Jukes clutched at Noble’s hand as they stood on the battlements of Nothe Fort and looked down at the growing chaos in Weymouth Harbour. The kelp seemed to crawl everywhere, a deeper black carpet across both sea and shore.

  The military had set up a chain of defensive positions all along the promenade, but mere minutes into the attack, they were already struggling to maintain control of any of them. Sporadic gunfire echoed in the night air, punctuated by screams. To Noble’s eyes, there seemed to be no co-ordinated defence, no policy for dealing with the attack.

  Then again, it’s not as if there’s a precedent.

  Behind them the Colonel barked orders and officers ran to obey, but to Noble, it all seemed like too little too late. Screams echoed in the night. Car horns and ambulance sirens rose to join the clamour. Finally, they could see the headlights of a fleet of army vehicles moving to set up a cordon between the shore and the town beyond.

  Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

  One of the Colonel’s orders was finally executed. The floodlights were turned away from the walls of the fort itself to point down at the harbour. Suzie drew a sharp intake of breath beside him as the full extent of the attack was revealed.