“I was re-reading Ballantine’s journal, about when they were shouting at the lab specimen.”
Noble laughed softly.
“You’ve been shouting at it?”
Suzie blushed.
“Just a little,” she said. She went over to the specimen jar to cover her embarrassment. As she walked, the kelp seemed to track her movement, sidling across inside the jar.
“It knows you,” Noble whispered.
Suzie nodded.
“And watch this.”
She walked up to the jar, so close her nose touched the glass.
“Be careful,” Noble shouted.
She took no heed. She shouted at the kelp.
“Down, boy.”
It retreated across the jar, pressing against the far side from her and didn’t move until she stood away.
“That’s all we need,” Noble said sarcastically. “A new household pet.”
“I haven’t tried being nice to it yet,” Suzie said. She was still blushing. “It didn’t feel right.”
The thought was so incongruous, Noble couldn’t help but laugh again. Suzie looked at him as if he were mad.
I might well be.
He went back to the coffee. He finished the cup and put it down on the desk beside him. At the same moment, the kelp inside the jar went into a frenzy of thrashing, so violent that the jar started to walk across the table.
Suzie stood back, a hand at her mouth.
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “I think something’s happening.”
A second later, an alarm went off and an accompanying blast of gunfire echoed around Nothe Fort.
July 22nd/23rd - Weymouth
Derek Gelwyn revved his souped-up Escort, pumping the pedal for all he was worth. Not that he could hear the effect much—that was drowned out by the stereo system. It was turned up to ten and if there had been an eleven, it would be turned up to that. Parallel parked beside him, Jake Brown put the pedal to the metal in his Nova. They smiled like sharks at each other through the open windows.
You’re going down, Brown.
It was near midnight and the drag contest on Weymouth promenade was reaching its climax. Both lads knew that they’d made enough noise in the past ten minutes to wake up half the town and that the police would be here any minute now. But there was time for one last race—the one that would assign bragging rights, for this week at least.
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.