The Creeping Kelp (8 page)

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 only 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.

The bay is full of the stuff.

As far as the lights would allow him to see, the water was a thrashing mass of the mobile kelp. Where it had managed to come ashore it seethed and roiled... and ate. Everything in its path was overcome and either came out whole or appeared stripped and bare. It wasn’t long before Noble saw the purpose of the attack. Even from his high vantage he could see the pieces of material being passed through the fronds; plastics, cottons and flesh. Anything organic was being taken; anything else was discarded, dropped, and overrun as the kelp searched.