William Meikle - The Creeping Kelp

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.

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.