William Meikle - The Creeping Kelp

“Remember what the priest said in his journal?” she said between mouthfuls of bread and ham. “… after I have burned away more than nine-tenths of its matter, it has weakened. If I concentrate hard, I can catch glimpses of what the beast is thinking and feel its fear. ”

“Please don’t tell me you’re planning what I think you’re planning,” Noble said.

She nodded.

“I’m going to put it to the Inquisition .”

For a time, Noble tried to pay attention to what Suzie was doing over at the table, but he slouched ever further into the chair, his head nodding to his chest. Again, he gave in and fell into a deep sleep.

He dreamed.

The winch starts to pull him back into the chopper, but he scarcely notices. The pain is throwing him into shock and he is no longer sure if what he sees is real or a dream induced by the searing heat of pain.

Right at the far point of the chopper’s turn he catches a glimpse of something glinting in the sun. Far away, almost on the horizon and shimmering in the heat, stands what looks like a city of glass… or plastic? Massive towers and turrets rise high above the sea and gargantuan black shapes slump through cavernous streets.

He hears Suzie’s voice.

The Shoggoths were made. Made as builders.

He came awake with a start. Something had him in a hold, something soft that pressed tight against him.

It’s got me.

He struggled, tearing away at his attacker … only to fully wake and realise he was trying to tear a sleeping bag. Suzie must have put it over him while he slept. He looked around, suddenly embarrassed, hoping that no one was watching.

He wasn’t alone, but Suzie hadn’t seen him. She was slumped in another chair, head drooped and breathing softly. Behind her sat the tall glass jar. The sample inside no longer looked quite so burnt. In fact, it seemed to have grown.

She’s been feeding it.

As if in response, the material surged inside the jar. Noble wasn’t in any mood for play.

Don’t you fucking dare.

He thought it rather than saying it, for fear of waking Suzie. But the kelp reacted as if struck, cowering to the far side of the glass. He remembered Suzie’s words.

“I’m going to put it to the Inquisition.”

It seemed she had done so, and with some success, for if he was not mistaken, what he was seeing now was fear. He bent forward.

“You don’t frighten me,” he whispered. “I’m wearing clean underwear.”

Something gripped his mind. He went away for a while.

He saw vast plains of snow and ice where black things slumped amid tumbled ruins of long dead cities.

Massive towers and turrets rose high above the sea and gargantuan black shapes rolled through cavernous streets.

And while his slumbering god dreamed, Noble danced in the twilight, danced to the rhythm.

He was at peace.

He might have been lost forever if Suzie had not slapped him, hard, across the cheek. Even then, he had to look away from the sample jar and blink vigorously before the miasma lifted from his mind.

“Are you okay?” Suzie asked, concerned. “I was going to tell you when you woke to be careful.”

He laughed softly.

“Thanks for the warning. But some good has come of it, I think. I’ve remembered something I saw just after collecting the sample—something the pain must have driven off at the time.”

He told her about the city of plastic and the slumping Shoggoths in the streets.

“Builders,” she whispered.

He nodded.

“But building for what? You said before that you thought there might be a controlling intelligence at work? What if the city is its home? Sitting there and sending out an army to drag the plastics back, to build ever bigger?”

Suzie was getting increasingly excited as he spoke.

“If that’s the case—we know where its brain is. We can strike at it.”

Noble laughed bitterly.

“Yes. All we have to do now is convince the powers that be that we’ve got telepathic, intelligent, killer seaweed on our hands. One that’s building a city out of recycled plastic for its god or gods and that we know where this city is, because a bit of burnt weed told us so.”

Suzie returned the laughter.

“I won’t make the same mistake I made with the Minister. I have a cunning plan.”

Noble was surprised to see thin sunlight through the windows as they made their way up through the fort.

I’ve slept all night.

Now that he considered it, he did in fact feel somewhat rested and his leg wound no longer pounded pain in time with his heartbeat. He stomped on a step. There was no answering jar of complaint, just a dull throb.

It seems I’m better.

Suzie was in a hurry and he had to up his pace to keep up, but his leg was up to the job and he wasn’t even breathing heavily when they arrived in the conference room.

Suzie strode ahead, determination showing on her face, but stopped dead in the doorway. There was a meeting in progress and the lights were dimmed, a video being shown on the big screen. From their place in the doorway, they could just about hear the commentary, but the pictures told their own story.

The first scene was an overhead tracking shot along the Thames. On either side, buildings lay in smoking ruin. Bodies, and parts of bodies, were piled high on the Embankment and military vehicles were the only traffic on roads strewn with abandoned cars, cabs and buses.

The Colonel stood at the front addressing a seated crowd of about twenty, all of whom looked military. There was no sign of any of the local politicians they’d met the last time.

“A mass evacuation of Central London is under way,” he said. “Last night our boys managed to hold this blasted weed back at the Thames Barrier, but it was a hard fight and we lost a lot of good men before the tide turned again and the threat receded. Plans are underway to nuke the Thames Estuary if it comes back. But it seems the kelp itself is not even the worst menace we face, for although it seems to stay near the water courses, the contagion it brings with it has been spreading far and wide.”

The scene on the screen changed to a street in the City of London, outside the Bank of England. The place was usually full of people in business suits going about their business industriously, oiling the wheels of the country. Not today. Today the whole street was packed from side to side with shuffling, wailing victims of what looked like a plague. Black flesh sloughed away from bone and fell steaming to the ground. Others scratched and tore at wet lesions, drawing blood, but unable to remove the traces of blackness from their skin.

Suzie whispered at his side and it took him a second or two to recognise the quote from the Inquisitor General.

“No man is to touch any part of it, under pain of himself being subjected to ordeal by fire.”

She’d been right about the fire. On screen, he saw that teams of people dressed in full HAZMAT suits were at the far end of the street, all armed with flame-throwers, all burning what looked like piles of bodies that had been hastily tossed on pyres. Smoke and small pieces of ash rose in the air and were dispersed by the wind.

Suzie whispered again.

“They’re just making it worse.”

The Colonel echoed her words.

“We discovered, too late, that these tactics were only making matters worse. It seems the best defence against this thing is concentrated Hydrochloric Acid. All stocks from all over the country are being shipped to the coast and a call has gone out world-wide for aid, but it will be some time in coming. In the meantime, we are at the whim of fate, with no way of telling where or when the next strike may come, nor indeed where it came from in the first place.”