Home From the Sea

by William Meikle

  I found three long brands just by turning my head; I knew from experience that a supply was often kept near the entrance to the hold in whaling vessels. I passed one to Gallagher, and we lit up from the one in Robert's hand.

  Now we had enough light, we were able to see that we hadn't just found Irish Frank; we had found most of his crew. They'd tried to make a stand, here in the hold. It hadn't mattered; the creatures had found them, and to a man, fed on them. They lay, piled on top of each other, or attempting to hide underneath barrels and crates or at the foot of another set of stairs where there had obviously been a fight among themselves in their rush to flee. And everywhere were the bloody trails that showed where the creatures had departed after feeding.

  The boat lurched again, threatening to throw us off our feet. In a corner of the hold something scurried away.

  We were not alone.

  I expected Roberts to move, to head for the stern, but he and Gallagher had eyes only for the cargo. I saw that the hold was almost full; the whaler had made a profitable trip. The barrels sloshed as the boat rolled. They were full of oil.

  "There's a King's ransom here," Gallagher whispered. "We've got to try to salvage what we can."

  Roberts laughed bitterly.

  "What we need to salvage is our lives."

  Gallagher wasn't convinced, but he followed as we made our way quickly through the hold. There was no repetition of the scurrying sound, but I knew that I had heard it, and I jumped at every shadow, every creak of warping wood as we went forward.

  When the attack came it was from two directions. A fresh scurrying alerted me first. I turned towards it, just as the thing launched itself at me, tentacles reaching for my face. I got the brand between us, and hit the head square on. Something hissed, and the air filled with a stench that made me gag; hot spew filling my throat. I was aware of a commotion behind me; Gallagher and Roberts had troubles of their own, but I was too busy to pay attention to them.

  The thing came at me again. I could just see that it was burned badly; one of the black eyes had popped and dribbled noxious fluid on the deck even as it threw itself at me again. I poked it, twice, with the brand, and the flames took at the second attempt. The head went first. Tentacles writhed and thrashed in frenzy. It was only stilled when I brought my boot down, hard, squishing the burnt remains underfoot.

  I turned back to my crewmates, looking for congratulation. There would be none forthcoming. They had not had my good fortune of hearing the attack coming. There was indeed a second burning beast on the deck at their feet; but it had done its own damage before succumbing. Roberts was still on his feet, but he was white as a sheet, apart from where a wash of blood ran down his chest, a gaping wound at his neck evidence of where the thing had penetrated his jugular.

  "I'll be fine," he whispered, then his legs gave way despite Gallagher trying to hold him up. He fell at my feet; dead eyes stared up at me.

  Gallagher took one look at the body, let out a wail, and headed forward at a flat run. There were more scurrying sounds in the darker shadows and, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, I too headed forward, as fast as I was able to while still ensuring I was safe from another attack.

  *

  I got to the stairs that led up to the stern just in time to see Gallagher step up onto deck some twelve feet above me. I flinched, expecting him to be immediately attacked, but all I heard was the whistle of the wind and the roar of water on rocks. The vessel struck something, hard enough to make me lose my footing and drop the brand. It hit the deck, snuffed out, and rolled away into darkness.

  Something moved and skittered in the shadows.

  I fled up the steps, expecting at any second to be hauled backwards down into the dark. I was quite out of breath when I reached the deck.

  Gallagher took no notice of me. He stood, staring, not towards the lifeboat at the stern, but forward. The lights of Trinity twinkled some quarter of a mile distant. By some miracle we had made it unscathed through the narrows and were even now being propelled ever closer to the main harbor.

  *

  "We can bring her in," Gallagher said. "Salvage the oil. We could be rich men by the morning."

  I cannot say I wasn't tempted, if only for a second. Then I saw it in my mind's eye; the taverns and whorehouses overrun by tentacled beasts, burrowing into drunken flesh, feeding on babes and the old alike, taking the town by storm even before it knew what had happened. I knew in that instant I could never allow it.

  But I could see by the look in Gallagher's face that he was lost in greed with no thought for the consequences. I did the only thing I could think of. I smacked him in the jaw, twice, as hard as I was able before he saw the punches coming. To my relief he fell, out cold. He was a big lad, but I was able to manhandle him onto the rowboat easily enough.

  I left him there, took up his firebrand and, although every fiber of my being was telling me to flee, made my way back down into the hold to do what needed to be done.

  *

  It was dark down there. And once again every sound, every shadow, made me jump. But the fear of what might happen to my town was even stronger, and drove me forward. I kicked over the nearest barrel, then another, and two more before one finally obliged me and split open, spilling oil through the hold, a river running between the rest of the barrels.

  The skittering sounds got louder, but did not approach any closer, and I actually managed a grim smile as I put brand to oil and the deck blazed in flame.

  Once more I fled upward, fire nipping at my heels. A creature threw itself down at me from above but I was in no mood for pleasantries. I caught it by the tentacles, slung it around my head, and tossed it straight down into the flame. It took some layers of skin from my hand as it left, but that was a small price to pay to see it hit the fire and burst in flame.

  The first barrel blew as I reached the main deck, the concussion almost blowing me off my feet. The whole vessel shook and lurched sharply to port. I had a bad couple of seconds when I couldn't find the winch for the lifeboat, and I only released it just as a second explosion almost tore the whaler in half. We fell, my stomach in my mouth, hitting the water hard and almost overturning before I was able to get an oar in my hand and start to put some distance between us and the now burning whaler.

  Gallagher woke, groggily, and had anger in his eyes as he saw what I had done. That anger quickly turned to terror as the sea between us and the rapidly sinking vessel started to seethe and roil. A mass of tentacles rose up, as if tasting the air, seeking us out. Scores of the creatures had escaped from the sinking ship. . . and they were making straight for us.

  *

  "Row you bugger," I shouted, and Gallagher thankfully did not argue.

  Two more explosions racked the stricken whaler, then a third, huge blast that filled the air with smoke and splinters and ash. When I could see clearly again there was no sign that the boat had ever been there save for a mass of wreckage bobbing on the waters.

  But we were far from clear of danger. The tentacled beasts swam faster than we could row, and were now mere yards from overrunning us. I gripped the oar, meaning to use it as a club, ready to take some of them to hell with me.

  And that's when the sound came from out beyond the narrows, a high wail, like the one we had heard from the creatures earlier, but deeper, resonant, like a great church organ being readied for play, high and clear even above the roar of the wind. The swimming beasts stopped in their tracks, their interest in us gone. Scores of mouths opened, the feeding tubes raised high out of the water. As one they too wailed, answering some distant call. The noise from beyond the narrows grew louder, more insistent.

  The swimming beasts started to move again, not towards us, but off towards the narrows.

  I turned back to get our bearings, intending to head at all speed for the safety of the harbor, so I didn't see what Gallagher saw, but I recognized the shock in his face right enough.

  "Oh my God, it's huge," he said.

>   *

  He wouldn't speak of it again, not until later, in the warmth and comfort of the tavern.

  "It filled the whole of the narrows," he said.

  "What did?" I asked, but I was very much afraid that I already knew the answer.

  He replied in a whisper so none but I could hear, chilling me once more to the bone.

  "Their mother called them home."

  Amoeboid

  The trouble started at 6:00pm on a quiet Thursday afternoon, and at first it was so small that it was hardly noticed. The summer of '56 had been a hot one so far, and was showing no signs of relenting, and I had gone in search of some escape from the overpowering sense of being slowly boiled in my tin-roofed office. I tried standing under one of the few trees in the shade while smoking down one of my Capstan's but what little wind there was felt too dry, too hot, and the thought of returning to the oven that enclosed my desk was too much to bear. I took a slow, laborious walk over to the only place I know might give me some respite.

  The Rocket Research Group's main laboratory was usually the coolest place in the facility, having the benefit of some new-fangled air conditioning from our American chums. I had sought some solace there just the previous day, so knew a couple of minutes there would rejuvenate me, for a time at least. When I entered I saw that young George Thornton was the only other member of staff present, and his whole attention was on something under his microscope lens.

  "What have you got there, lad?" I asked.

  "I don't rightly know, Prof," he said. "I was just about to come and fetch you to have a look. It's a sample we got from the high altitude balloon flight, some top layer stratospheric stuff. I know there's not supposed to be anything alive up there, but this sure looks like life to me."

  He motioned me over to take a look.

  "Just five minutes ago it was only a spore, I took it for a pollen grain at first. But either the heat or from the water on the slide have woken it up, and I've no idea what it is."

  I bent over the scope and looked down, it certainly had been a spore at one point, one with a rough, almost hairy outer coat, long fine tendrils that wafted to and fro on the tiny currents caused by the light stage's heat on the fluid under the slide. But now the spore had split, and it had a long swollen finger of protoplasm escaping from the right hand edge at about three o'clock as I looked at it. Even as I watched it swelled, and oozed further across the field of view. It was full of livid colors, greens and blues and gold, and it almost seemed to twinkle in the harsh light. It was escaping from the spore so fast that it filled my field of view completely in a matter of seconds and I had to reduce the magnification twice to keep track of the growth.

  "It's certainly making itself at home," I said. "Is there just the one of these spores or are there more?"

  George shrugged.

  "It came from a scraping I took from the bottom of the sample jar, there was a coating, like a hard crust on the outside of the jar it when we brought the balloon down."

  "And where's the jar now?"

  George stood and bent under the desk.

  "Down here in the refrigerator, I thought it best, what with the heat and all."

  He opened the fridge door, and the contents, what was left of them, spilled, or rather, oozed out at his feet. There were Petri dishes, glass sample jars, distilled water bottles and what looked like the remains of a jam sandwich, all partially melted, digested, inside what looked like a clear, almost transparent, gelatinous ooze. More of it was already dripping down onto the wooden floor, sending long fat fingers creeping toward George's toes. I saw with some dismay that door of the fridge itself had also been partially dissolved, whatever this was, it was voracious.

  And it was clearly growing.

  Suddenly I was thinking of infection and contagion.

  "Don't think, just go. Get out," I said to George. "Now. Hit the sprinklers and flush the system, while we still can."

  I followed the lad out of the lab and we both hit the sprinkler button at the same time. A wash of dilute hydrochloric acid came from the showerhead in the ceiling, sending a fine spray through the whole room. We watched the gelatinous ooze as pustules bubbled and popped across its surface. It pulled itself into a tighter clump, almost the size of a football, obviously a defensive maneuver, but not enough to save it as the acid fell and, slowly but surely, dissolved it until it was little more than a puddle on the floor by the fridge. A haze rose over the remains, an oily residue that danced in rainbow colors before falling back into the spilled ooze. Beyond the window the laboratory fell quiet.

  "That was too close," I said once I was sure it was dead. I turned to George, he looked pale, almost ashen. "What's the matter lad, did you get any of that stuff on you."

  "No, Professor," he said. "It's not that, it's just that, when I got the sample jar from the balloon this morning I saw there was more of that crusty stuff on the surface of the balloon itself, a lot more.

  The balloon was one of the focal points of our research, our main tool for investigating the realms into which we intended at some point to launch our first test rocket. Anything that might cause a problem for the balloon was going to cause problems, big ones, for the whole unit. George knew that as well as I did, and was out of the door first and beat me to the shed where we kept the kit. He stopped and stood at the door until I approached.

  "What do we do if. . . ?" he started, but didn't finish, for neither of us had a ready answer at hand. I stepped past him and opened the door.

  This time it was me who had to step back quickly, there was more of the ooze here, much more of it, covering the whole floor of the large storage shed. All that remained of our massive high altitude balloon, so big it normally took six of us to get it out of the shed to prepare it for flight, were a few fragments, already dissolving in a mass of seething protoplasm.

  "Fetch some acid, lad," I shouted. The ooze somehow seemed to sense an escape route, and surged toward me, forcing me to slam the door hard on it. I remembered the fridge, and I wondered how long it would be before it melted its way through the wood itself.

  George hadn't moved. He was staring at the door. I took him by the shoulders and shook him, hard.

  "Acid, Thornton. We need it now."

  The lad finally came to his senses.

  "How much should I get."

  "All of it," I replied, rather too sharply, and then had to stand back. The bottom of the door had gone soft and saggy, threatening to drip. "And best be quick about it. It looks like we don't have much time here."

  George left at a run. Other members of our team were, by now, beginning to become aware that something was going on and came out of their huts to investigate. It started to get crowded around the shed door. I sent a couple of the faster lads after George with orders to help him out, but I was beginning to wonder whether they'd be on time, or whether we even had enough acid on the facility to cope with what was clearly a rather large menace.

  We could all hear groaning and screeching from inside the shed. The structure lurched heavily to one side, and the roof fell in with a crash, the door falling inward to join it. A mass of ooze slumped over the rubble then seemed to fall in on itself with a moist slither, then disappear from view.

  I saw the reason as I stepped gingerly forward, the floor, the roof, the door, the balloon and the slime itself, everything had all fallen through the floor of the shed. I had to step closer still to look down into the resulting hole, and my sense of foreboding got stronger still, there had been a drain in the center of the shed, which was what had collapsed.

  Somewhere, far below, I heard a deep, moist gurgling.

  Whatever the stuff was, it was now in the sewer system under our base.

  *

  George and the other two lads returned a minute or two later, wheeling a wonky barrow that had been rather precariously stacked with jars of acid. I had them dump the whole bally lot down the drain in the shed before they caused another accident, but I feared it was far too little,
far too late.

  I knew we needed to get down there after it, but before I could organize a proper hunt I had to spend minutes I could ill afford bringing the rest of the team up to date with the matter at hand.

  "So exactly what is it?" Jennings, our administrator, accountant and all round worrier asked. He liked to be precise and clear on every matter, but I had no answer that would satisfy him, and young George's reply was as good as any I could have managed.

  "Clearly it's some kind of space poo," he said. "Shed eating space poo. There, does naming it make it any better, any more understandable?"

  After everyone had a laugh at Jennings' expense I was able to start managing the situation. Jennings provided some answers to my many questions. The first, and most important, was as to the extent and nature of our sewage system, I'd never given it a moment's thought but our administrator seemed intimately familiar with it.

  "We're on a main county system," he explained when I asked him. "Something my predecessor insisted on after the war when they were building the site. There's a new sewer right under our feet, an eight foot diameter brick channel that feeds directly into a main drain that goes through Anchester and down the valley before heading down toward Oxford for processing."

  I could see the bally stuff in my mind's eye, slithering down there in the dark, heading for town and something to eat.

  "Then we'd best get down there and stop this thing before it gets to that main drain," I said. I split the men up into four three-man teams, each with respirators and bottles of acid, and sent them down the valley to take up watching briefs in case our quarry got that far down the sewer.

  Young George outdid himself by knocking up, in the five minutes it took me to find a flashlight, a small knapsack affair that, when squeezed under the arm like a bagpipe sac, fed acid down a metal tube to a pistol-grip nozzle that could be fired from my hand. I noted that he had even had time to make one for himself as he and I, with Jennings close behind, went down into the main drain under the shed, picking our way gingerly through the rubble.