Free The Creeping Kelp by William Meikle, Wayne Miller Page A

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.

July 23rd - Weymouth
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    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