William Meikle - The Creeping Kelp

Mitchell called out.

“To me. Fall back.”

Noble didn’t have to be told twice. He followed as Mitchell led the team away from the chopper and the opening mouths . The Shoggoths wasted no time in slithering over the chopper. In seconds, it had disappeared under a mound of kelp.

Noble saw Mitchell look back and caught the brief, but obvious, despair that showed on his face. Just as obvious, was the way the young officer pushed it away to focus on the survival of his team.

“In here,” the Lieutenant said and stood to one side, motioning at a semicircular opening in one of the buildings . Noble and Suzie held back, at first, but the marines, used to obeying first and asking questions later, showed no hesitation, filing through and taking positions so that each man was covered by another. Noble was last in.

By the time he turned and looked outside, he could no longer even see where the chopper had been. Several Shoggoths crawled lazily over what was once again a smooth, even surface. They seemed to have lost all interest in the occupants of the craft and were now dispersing to different parts of the city.

Noble turned to Mitchell and motioned at the backpack he carried.

“Tell me we’ve got a radio?”

Mitchell shook his head.

“I’m carrying enough C4 to blow a hole in the planet. But the only radio with the range needed to get a message to the mainland was on the chopper. We’re on our own.”

“What about a rescue?”

Mitchell looked Noble in the eye and said nothing. He didn’t have to.

Looks like this was a one way trip.

He looked around the room . They seemed to have come in the only thing that might resemble an entrance or exit. In fact, Noble thought the whole chamber might be no more than an artefact of the way the structure had been built by the Shoggoths, rather than any attempt to make a room, as such. The place was built out of more of the recycled plastics, the walls looking like a patchwork of stained glass windows of different coloured materials and papers, with thin sunlight and scudding clouds laying multi-fractal patterns all around them. It was strangely beautiful, but at the same time terrifying in its sheer strangeness.

Suzie seemed rapt and had turned on her full-on science geek mode. The eight marines, on the other hand, were all business.

“What’s the plan, Lieutenant?” Noble asked, as one of the marines helped him out of the harness and took the tank from him.

Mitchell was still looking out over where the chopper –and the dead marine—had disappeared from view.

“We came here to do a job. That hasn’t changed.”

He turned to Noble.

“How’s your sense of direction? You said the boat was on the edge of a large park?”

Noble nodded and pointed to where he hoped was West.

“That way. But it’s a bit of a walk, if I’m right. At least a mile.”

Mitchell grinned.

“This team walked more than that through hostile territory in Tehran. I think we can handle it.”

As one, the marines replied.

“Yes sir!”

Noble looked out over the street . A single Shoggoth slumped along on the far side, carrying a lump of black plastic almost as big as itself. There was no other sign of movement.

“It’s as if they don’t see us as a threat,” Suzie said at his side.

Mitchell came to stand beside them.

“Let’s see if we can do something about that,” he said, then called to his team. “Okay lads. Saddle up. We’re moving out.”

Noble and Suzie fell into the middle of a line of Marines and Noble’s grip on Suzie’s hand tightened as they walked into the street.

The city could almost have passed for any on the mainland on a quiet Sunday morning.

Almost .

It was only when Dave looked closer that he could see the mosaic of recycled material, or a piece of plastic from something he nearly recognised. At some points, he was able to make out a roiling, seething sea beneath, but the ground , such as it was, felt firm enough underfoot. No matter how normal it all seemed, this was far from a Sunday stroll. The men around were tense and sullen, ready to avenge their dead. A piece of plastic crackled on their left-hand side and before Mitchell could stop him, one of the marines hosed the whole area with acid.

Everything went quiet for the space of several seconds. A thin column of acrid smoke wafted above them before being dispersed in a light breeze. And on the same breeze, came a response, a high keening sound that Noble was coming to know—fear.

Tekeli Li. Tekeli Li.

“Run,” he shouted to Mitchell. “We need to get out of here. Right now.”

To his credit, the Lieutenant did not hesitate.

“Move out. And heads up. We’ve got incoming.”

The small squad broke into a run. Noble and Suzie kept pace in the middle of the team, hard pressed to maintain their positions as they ran through streets that suddenly seemed even less inviting than previously.

“Where are we going?” Suzie shouted, but Noble had no answers. Nor, it seemed, did the Lieutenant. It all became moot seconds later. Noble looked up and saw two hulking black shapes block the road ahead. The squad turned back. Three more Shoggoths blocked their retreat.

“Looks like they’ve woken up. We’re a threat now, right enough,” Noble said.

The Lieutenant wasn’t listening. He was making a visual sweep of the area.

“Over here,” he shouted. “Follow me.”

He led them to a squat structure to their left, one that had a small opening, big enough for the squad to pass through, and too small for any of the beasts to enter. The Lieutenant herded them all inside and put a man with an acid tank at the door. The Shoggoths slumped forward, but stopped in front of the structure’s entrance, showing no sign of any attack, no will to come any closer.

But it doesn’t look like they’re going to let us go anywhere soon.

The Lieutenant was in no mood to be caught in a trap. “Enough of this,” he said. “Let’s hit them and see what they’ve got. I won’t die hiding in a hole.”

Noble felt a tickle in his mind and immediately knew what it was and where it was coming from.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. He pointed at the far wall. “Can we go through there?”

It turned out they could. It took a wash of acid and it sent out fumes that nearly choked them. But minutes later, they had made a hole in the wall. It opened out into a larger open area beyond, a long cavernous space that stretched away from them into the darkness. Noble, Suzie, and the Lieutenant hung back as the eight marines went through, but Noble already knew that it was safe.

It wants us to come. It’s waiting for us.

He didn ’ t know how he knew, he just knew. Just as he knew exactly which direction to head for.

The city seemed to have been built purely to accommodate this high vaulting space. They walked through it in silence, each of them unwilling to break the almost church-like silence. Dim light, multi-coloured and always shifting, came through from high above, as if filtered through stained glass. It only further reinforced the almost religious nature of the space.

Noble ’ s eyes adjusted to the light, enough that he started to see that the space was not empty. The Shoggoths had built more than just buildings. Tall shapes littered the floor nearby, shapes that looked like sculpture, but not of anything of this world. One shape above all dominated the space, a stocky barrel with a five-pointed appendage on top. There were hundreds of them, all in various stages of development. Some had what looked like wings attached, long wide expanses of gossamer thin plastic that seemed to move in the shifting light.