The Creeping Kelp Page 5

  The avenue was narrowing all the time as more tentacles rose to join the forest.

  We’re not going to make it.

  From the corner of his eye he saw that the whole expanse of the bay to his left seethed, a black carpet of fronds and tendrils, creeping up the beach and approaching the promenade.

  An elderly tourist stumbled just ahead of Jim, but he never even slowed. Somewhere behind him he heard a pitiful scream, but he steeled himself against it, keeping his gaze on the end of the pier and the open streets of the town beyond.

  More screams rent the air. A woman was plucked from the path just ahead of him and he had to swerve, like a football player avoiding a tackle, as she was lifted away out of sight. As he neared the end of the pier, the knot of people packed tighter together and started to dance and pick their way past the swaying fronds. More screams could be heard all along the promenade. A police siren started up a nee-naw wail that echoed around them. Jim pushed himself through the other people. One stockily built man refused to budge. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jim kicked him behind the right knee. As the man buckled, Jim pushed him away... straight into a nest of writhing tentacles that took him away with a crack like a whip. Finally, Jim reached the end of the pier and ran out onto the promenade, screaming with joy.

  His relief turned to despair as soon as he looked round.

  The whole seafront was a crawling carpet of greenish black weed, with tentacles, some as thick as tree trunks, rising up out of it. At the leading edge of the mass, round pustules developed and rolled away like self-propelled beach balls, heading deeper into the streets. All along the promenade, the kelp attached itself to cars, lampposts, and bus stops, and crawled over and through anything in its path. One bus-stop, the long, large shelter nearest the shore, was pulled apart with no apparent effort and the sheets of Perspex were carried aloft on the tendrils, taken rapidly away out to sea and out of sight. A thick black plastic bumper was similarly torn from a car and carried off.

  More screams came from the Main Street, from the direction where some of the beach balls had travelled.

  Jim turned and ran, heading for the main car park where he had left his car.

  He nearly made it. He reached the car, shoved a hand frantically in his pocket to look for his keys... and heard a squelch from behind him. The air was suddenly full of the taste of iodine. He turned to see one of the dark balls open out, like a cape opening.

  There are eyes inside.

  He turned back to the car, scrambling for the keyhole. He got as far as starting to open the door when it was torn from his hands and thrown aside like a Frisbee. Something grabbed him round the waist and squeezed.

  Blood filled his throat and pain flared like a lightning strike.

  He was dead a second later.

  July 22nd - Weymouth

  * * *

  Noble woke to a grey haze that took long seconds to clear. He soon wished it hadn’t, as a dull throb from his leg reminded him of what had happened.

  He looked around, realising that he was in some kind of medical facility.... not a hospital, it was too basic for that, but the fact that he was hooked up to several monitors and machines that went ping gave the game away, somewhat.

  He called out, but no one came. He made to swing a leg out of bed and realised he was tied up tight. His left leg was bandaged from foot to knee and suspended from the ceiling by what, at first glance, looked like a medieval torture rack. He leaned forward, intent on freeing himself, but a wave of nausea washed through him. He was forced to sit back and keep still until his body returned to an even keel and no longer felt like floating towards the ceiling.

  He called out again.

  “Anybody there?”

  His voice echoed, as if there was a larger, empty area outside the room where he was lying. He waited. Still, no one responded. He looked around, hoping to find a bell or buzzer he could use to attract attention. Instead, he found a pile of papers on the bedside table. He recognised them straight away—it was the material Suzie had been reading on the chopper. There was a note on the top.

  “There’s a bit of a flap on. I’ll be back when I can. In the meantime, you need to read the rest of this. I think we’re in trouble.”

  Noble laughed, but with little humour.

  Tell me something I don’t know.

  But it seemed he had nothing better to be getting on with. He picked up the papers and once more lost himself in the words of Ballantine, in a Nissen Hut, on the shores of Loch Long.

  On the night before his big demonstration, Rankin sought me out in the mess. At first, I did not even know he had entered. I was intent on getting as much ale inside me as possible, in a search for oblivion – but I wasn’t to be allowed that small comfort. The mess fell quiet as he entered.

  “Come with me, Ballantine,” he said. “You are the only one who will understand the import.”

  I put my beer down, reluctantly. I was on my fifth and already looking forward to the sixth. But I could not refuse him. Technically, he was my Commanding Officer. And, despite my civilian status, I had, in effect, been drafted and as such, I was not exempt from military justice. With a heavy heart I followed him down to the lab.

  The place had changed since my last visit. The heavy glass tank had been removed. But the network of piping was still in place overhead and the metal box still sat in the middle of the floor, its walls etched and pitted by the acid.

  He saw me looking.

  “I have another small demonstration for you, Ballantine,” he said. “And I hope this one will finally convince you of the import of our experiments.”

  “If you’re going to be slaughtering some poor animal, I want nothing to do with it,” I said.

  He smiled grimly.

  “Not this time. Come. You need to see this.”

  He led me to the long trestle. A thick forest of kelp and tentacles completely filled a glass jar some three feet high and over a foot in diameter. The whole column vibrated as the thing inside thrashed angrily.

  “For pity’s sake, Rankin… how much of this thing did you make?” I asked.

  “Enough,” he whispered. “But that is not why I brought you here. Watch.”

  He walked away to our left. The kelp seemed to follow him, the thrashing fronds and tentacles now concentrated on that side of the glass. Rankin turned and came back towards me. The kelp tracked his movement, the thrashing becoming ever more insistent as Rankin got ever closer to the glass jar.

  “For pity’s sake, Rankin—what kind of thing is this?”

  “It knows me,” Rankin whispered in reply. “And I think I’ve made it angry.”

  “That’s not possible,” I started.

  “Neither is this,” he said and walked forward until his nose was almost pressed against the glass. The kelp thrashed, slapping moist tentacles against the surface, leaving streaks of yellow viscous fluid behind.

  “Be careful, man,” I said. I had seen what those tentacles had done to a pony—I had no wish to see what they could do to a man.

  Rankin waved at me to be quiet. He stared at the kelp and spoke in a loud voice, as if ordering a disobedient dog to heel.

  “Quiet!”

  The kelp stilled and the big jar stopped vibrating. Now it just looked like a glass filled with regular seaweed. Rankin motioned me forward. He had to do it twice before my legs would obey my order to move and even then, I sidled up to the trestle cautiously, ready to flee at any sign of trouble.

  “Come closer,” Rankin said. “This is what I brought you to see.”

  “I can see all I need to from here,” I replied, maintaining a distance of three feet between me and the thin sheet of glass that separated me from the kelp.

  “Just look,” he said. There was wonder and awe in his voice. I saw why, seconds later.

  I looked at the kelp.

  And the kelp looked back. A single, lidless eye, pale green and milky, stared out from the fronds. Even as I watched, it changed, being sucked
back into a new fold. A wet gash opened, like a thin-lipped mouth. It stretched wide and a high ululation filled the Nissen Hut, like a seagull on a storm wind.

  Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.

  “What the hell is this shite?” I said softly.

  Rankin laughed. The kelp squirmed, almost as if it was enjoying the experience.

  “It knows me,” he said again. “It is as if our minds have become attuned.”

  “Our minds? You are crediting this…thing, with intelligence? With rational thought?”

  “Why not?” Rankin said. “After all, if it looks like a duck…”

  It was my turn to laugh. When I did so, the kelp stayed still.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, now that you’ve made it, would you care to tell me exactly what it is we have done here?”

  Rankin dragged me away. Three new-formed eyes watched us intently.

  “In all truth, I have no idea,” he said. “But I have sent a sample back to the Yanks. They’ve got more sophisticated equipment than we have. Maybe they can make something of it, where I cannot. But I do know something… I know that the top Brass will not be able to ignore me. Not this time.”

  From inside the glass, the noise grew louder.

  Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.

  The field test was scheduled for noon the next day. I spent most of the morning trying to convince the Colonel to postpone it, but a combination of the smell of beer on my breath and a fear of disappointing his superiors, led him to dismiss me out of hand. I watched the preparations in the harbour with a terrible, sinking feeling in my gut that had nothing to do with the booze from the night before.

  Rankin was back into his full-blown show-off strut, with no sign of the confusion he had shown earlier in the laboratory. He marched around the harbour barking orders, a conductor marshalling his orchestra. By the time the Brass arrived at quarter to the hour, everything was in place. A fine drizzle started to fall and a chill settled in my spine. Suddenly, I wanted to be somewhere else—for I knew one thing for sure. This was not going to end well.

  But it was too late. Everything was ready, and Rankin’s demonstration was imminent.

  We stood in a rough semi-circle just above the shoreline. Several yards beneath us sat the now-familiar metal box. From where I stood, I could hear the thing thrash against the inside walls, like a manic drummer in some free-form jazz band.

  A chain led from the top of the box along the shingle to lie at Rankin’s feet. The harbour wall stretched away to our left and ahead of us in the water, a small flotilla of boats made another rough semi-circle encasing a drift-net full of mackerel bought just that morning from some very grateful fishermen down in Helensburgh.

  The fish was our bait. Rankin had wanted to use a couple of convicted murderers from Barlinnie, but even the Colonel had drawn the line at that. Rankin had also suggested using sheep, but those of us who had seen the test on the pony balked at that. I wasn’t the only one who did not need to see that depravity again.

  The men on the boats were equipped with flame units and each boat contained several bottles filled with acid. I hoped it would be enough.

  Rankin stood, centre-stage, and waited for the Brass to move into their place along the harbour wall looking down on the metal box. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice honed by many years of addressing large lecture theatres. His words carried, loud and strong, in the still air.

  “I have called you here to witness the future of naval warfare. With this new weapon, German harbours will be rendered unusable for years, maybe even decades, and all at minimal cost. You previously complained that energetic seaweed wasn’t good enough, wasn’t flamboyant enough.” He paused for effect before continuing. “You wanted flamboyance? Here it is.”

  He dragged on the chain. The lid of the metal box started to open, slowly at first.

  Then things went bad very quickly.

  A handful of tentacles found the edges of the box and tore at it, ripping it like so much tissue paper. A chunk of metal flew like a discus, passing less than three feet over the head of the Secretary of State on the harbour wall. The kelp came out of the box like a greyhound from a trap, expanding as it came in a roiling mass eight feet wide and near again as thick. It completely ignored the net full of fish. Instead, it threw out a writhing forest of tentacles… straight towards Rankin.

  He had to step back sharply and even then the leading tentacle caught him around the left foot and tugged, hard. He fell, slightly off balance, and a second tendril reached for him. He just had time to kick off his shoe and scuttle, crab-like back up the shingle beach. The tentacle dragged the shoe back to a maw in the kelp where it disappeared with a moist suck. The moving carpet of fronds came up out of the water, still focussed on Rankin, who was still trying to get to his feet on the loose shingle.

  The air was full of the high ululation.

  Tekeli Li.

  A gull flew down, attracted by the noise. Two tentacles plucked it out of the air. A new maw opened and took it as fast as a blink. The body of kelp did not slow. It came up the beach, shingle rattling like gunfire beneath it.

  It was then that I saw the fatal flaw in Rankin’s planning. All of the men with the flame units and acid had been placed out on the boats in expectation that the fish would be the target. They were now frantically trying to reach shore, to get at the creeping creature, but they were still too far out to be of any help.

  Up on the harbour wall, security guards ushered the Brass to safety, but down on the shore, we were in disarray. A fresh-faced young squaddie stepped between Rankin and the creature. He raised a rifle and took aim, pumping three quick shots into the main body. The bullets had no effect. The tendrils wrapped themselves around the lad and dragged him off his feet. He scrambled, screaming amid the shingle, as he was pulled backwards. Three more soldiers started to fire shots into the thrashing fronds, but to no effect. The young squaddie’s screams turned frantic. The carpet of kelp surged and fell on him like a wet blanket. His screams cut off mercifully quickly, but the kelp continued to buck and thrash around his body, giving it a grotesque semblance of life long after it was obvious that he was gone.

  All along the back of the kelp, moist mouths opened and squealed, the sound keening and echoing around the rapidly emptying harbour.

  Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.

  Those of us who had not yet fled turned and ran.

  The kelp followed us up the jetty, gaining with every second. We ran, a ragged, disorganised mob, into the warren of Nissen Huts. Several men tried to set up a rear-guard action, blocking one of the alleys between the huts with volleys of gunfire. The kelp swarmed over them without a pause. Man-shaped forms squirmed and writhed within the kelp, then went still.

  I ran faster.

  When I turned to look again, the kelp had more than doubled in size.

  I saw Rankin’s white mop of hair among the people just ahead of me. The kelp saw him too. Tentacles raised in the air, thrashing wildly and the keening squeal rose to a frenzied howl.

  “Rankin,” I called. “It’s only angry at you. Nobody else has to get hurt here.”

  I wasn’t sure that he’d heard me until I saw him duck inside the lab. Soldiers ran past the open door, heading for the road out of the Base and I was sorely tempted to go with them. But despite his faults, Rankin had believed in me, and I owed him for that. I threw myself towards the lab, just ahead of a nest of tentacles. Behind it, I could see that the soldiers with the acid tanks and flame-throwers were only now making their way onto the jetty—too far behind to be of any help.

  Rankin stood near the door, staring at a point over my shoulder.

  “Get into the corner,” he shouted at me. “Pull the left hand chain.”

  That was all he had time for. The kelp flowed through the doorway, blocking all escape. I pushed myself as far into the corner as I could and grabbed at the chain.

  “Not yet!” Rankin shouted. He danced aside, avoiding thrashing tentacles, until he stood on the spot where
the metal cage had sat during the earlier experiment. “Wait until it is all inside.”

  He swerved again, just avoiding a long tentacle. But that only served to put him inside the reach of several more.

  “Rankin!” I called out. “Look out!”

  But I was too late with my warning. The first tentacle took him around the waist. He screamed as it started to tug at him, but he held his ground, forcing the main body of the kelp to come to him. More tentacles struck at his chest and his ankles. He struggled to stay upright. By now, most of the kelp was inside the room.

  Once more, I reached for the chain.

  “Not yet!” Rankin screamed. “None of it can escape.”

  The kelp rolled over the lab floor. It opened out like a huge umbrella towering over Rankin, then fell on him, his white hair being the last thing to disappear from view.

  “None of it can escape,” he called at the end.“Do you understand?”

  I understood, all too well.

  “Goodbye, Rankin,” I whispered and pulled the chain. I turned away, unable to watch as the screams, both from the kelp and the dying man, filled the lab. But the acid rain did its job. In five minutes, all that was left of Rankin and his creation was a pool of oily goop on the lab floor.

  It was only later, as I downed the first of many drinks I have had since that day, that I remembered his words.

  “I have sent a sample back to the Yanks."

  I spent weeks after that checking. I found the shipping order and the name of the boat, the Haven Home. Records show it was sunk by a U-Boat somewhere off the Scilly Isles. In my dreams I see a glass container, lying in a flooded cargo hold. Inside, the creeping kelp sits, dormant, waiting.

  And I worry.

  I worry about breakages.

  I think we’re in trouble.