William Meikle - The Creeping Kelp

Everything will be okay if I get to the car.

Everything will be okay if I get to the car.

She repeated it to herself like a mantra as the hot sand sucked at her feet and Mary sobbed uncontrollably at her ear. At some point she became aware that the screaming had stopped and that the beach had once more fallen deathly quiet.

Is it over?

She refused to look round to check. The car was closer now. There were mere yards between her and the foot of the steps that led up to the car park.

She put a foot on the bottom step.

Should have gone to Lanzarote.

That was her last thought. By some instinct she turned, knowing something was coming. A shadow sped up the beach, a black wave several feet high. She grabbed Mary tight and threw herself backward towards the steps, towards safety.

She had time for just one scream.

Noble had spent a futile night explaining, and explaining again, the events of the previous day, first to the coastguard, then the police. He could tell by their eyes that they didn’t believe him. They thought both he and Suzie were in shock at the loss of their crewmates in an accident that had sunk the ship. The idea of some kind of creature lurking offshore, one big enough to take down the Earth Rescue , was just too large for them to comprehend.

Shit. I feel like the sheriff in Jaws.

When the questioning was finally over they were let out into a glimmering dawn. Pale sunlight shimmered in Weymouth harbour and the terrors were already beginning to fade, taking on the semblance of a nightmare.

“What can we do now?” Suzie said. “We’ve got to warn somebody. ”

That’s all we ever do, Noble thought. Warn people. People who don’t want to listen .

He didn’t say anything. He knew it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Over the past four years he’d come to know when to speak and when not to.

He’d signed up with Earth Rescue, initially, not from any great planet-saving idealism but for a need for adventure —a life at sea far from any constraints of office or train timetable. Suzie had taught him, slowly, the importance of their work and he’d seen for himself the damage that was being blithely done to the seas. Western civilization liked to bury its rubbish in shame, and the sea had, until recently, been a watery grave for all of society’s ills. Now it was disinterring itself. Suzie and Noble spent much of their time trying to convince politicians, reporters, …anybody, to listen that there was an imminent problem. And like the past night, they only heard what they wanted to hear, afraid to shatter their cosy idea of a world where garbage just went away with no consequences.

“We’ve got to warn somebody,” Suzie said again.

Noble almost laughed.

“Warn them about what? You heard them—they’ve had choppers out looking for wreckage. All they found was sea.”

Suzie started striding away.

“Well, that’s not enough.”

He walked after her, having to lengthen his stride to catch up.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he reached her side.

“To the lab. We need to prove them wrong.”

What Noble really wanted was breakfast, then a drink—a big drink. But Suzie Jukes was not a woman to be ignored lightly—not if you still wanted her talking to you afterwards. He followed her down the path, having to hurry again to keep up.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked when he got beside her for a second time.

She hooked an arm in his and gave him a smile, his reward for paying attention.

“There will be something in the documentation… somewhere,” she said “And if there is, I’ll find it, before this morning is out.”

In the end, it took longer than she’d imagined. Noble was kept busy making endless cups of coffee and sandwiches for them both in the small cupboard in the Earth Rescue office that passed for their lab’s kitchen, and by the time early afternoon came around he felt like he was running on fumes. Suzie’s yelp of triumph jerked him from the beginnings of slumber.

“I knew it. I bloody well knew it.”

He almost fell as he stood, his legs initially refusing his commands, having gone to sleep while he sat in the chair. He groaned theatrically and sat back down in a slump.

“Wake me again when it’s over,” he said.

“Stay there,” she said laughing. “I’ll read it to you. The bastards have known about it all along.”

He did as he was told and stayed in the chair. Suzie brought them both a fresh coffee and sat opposite him.

“I found this on an MOD server,” she said. “It came up on a search for Pabodie .”

Noble raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. MOD servers were most definitely off-limits to Earth Rescue personnel, but he knew already that no computer system was safe when she was around. He sipped the coffee and let her talk. She started to read and he was soon completely engrossed in Scotland, during a dark period in the country’s history.

I did not know what to expect. They called me out of a lecture on the ecology of the Firth of Clyde shoreline just as I was getting warmed up and told me I was needed for the war effort. I tried to enquire as to the nature of the need, but they refused to be drawn. All they had said was that it was a matter of National Security. Just what the RNAD wanted with a fifty-year-old doctor of Botany with a gammy leg and a drink problem, I was not told. I was given a train ticket and a contact name and was immediately sent off to Helensburgh, having been barely given enough time to pack a bag.

Once there, I was met outside the station by a Sergeant and a truck—both of who seemed well past their best. He took a succession of cigarettes from me and talked freely enough, but he knew as little about why I had been summoned as I did, myself.

“We don’t ask and they don’t tell,” was all he said, leaving me to wonder who he was talking about. We rattled along an unlit road for what seemed like hours, coming to a sudden halt at a manned checkpoint alongside a long, moonlit loch. An attendant waved a torch and a gun in my face, I showed him my paperwork and we were allowed through. The Sergeant drove up to a Nissen Hut and I was informed this was the end of the line.

“Remember,” he said to me as we parted and he took two cigarettes from my packet. “We don’t ask and they don’t tell.”

A Corporal met me at the door to the hut. I was shown inside to a bed and given an order to see the Colonel in the morning. I sat on the edge of the bed for several minutes, unsure of my next move. It felt too cold, too quiet, and I was already missing the comfortable clutter and noise of my University apartments back in Glasgow. I went outside and studied the lay of the land. There was a loch and a lot of huts. Beyond that, there was little to see but the moon on the water. It was very pretty, if a bit chilly. I watched it for a while as I tried to get used to my new situation. It took three slow cigarettes before I even felt like settling. When I finally went back inside and lay down, I soon found that my allocated bed was little more than a few sheets thrown over a stiff board.

I slept badly.

Things did not get much better when the morning started on a wrong note. I am afraid the Colonel, a stiff little man with a stiffer little moustache, did not take to me. From what I understood of my short briefing, I was to be seconded to this unit for the duration, to “do my bit against the Jerries”. But by the time he led me via a warren of corridors through and between a maze of Nissen Huts and showed me into the lab, I was still none the wiser. It was only when I was introduced to the head of the team that I began to have some inkling as to why I had been brought to this place.