Canines, Reptiles and Other Biological Anomalies
by Gareth D Jones
Gareth D Jones is unofficially the second most widely translated science fiction short story author in the world, having been published in 35 languages. He’s a father of five, two of whom are also published authors, and lives in the UK where he writes science fiction, fuelled by copious amounts of tea.
Author Website: www.garethdjones.co.uk
More TTTV stories by Gareth D Jones: https://talltaletv.com/?s=gareth+d+jones
As a child, Yorick had been on a boating holiday with his family on the Norfolk Broads and he had fond memories of chugging through the waterways, watching the wildlife from the deck and falling asleep at night to the gentle lapping of waves against the bow.
His feelings about Norfolk had changed somewhat in the past twenty-four hours. As the brilliant white moonlight emerged from the slowly-moving cloud mass, it glistened on the waterlogged fields and, under some circumstances, may have looked magical. His present circumstances were not conducive to such whimsy, however. He squelched through soggy fields, attempting to run as fast as he could. Water had long since splashed into his boots, which was now quite irrelevant after he had twice fallen headlong over unseen roots and been soaked through.
It couldn’t possibly be far to the big four-wheel-drive. It was definitely parked on a lane close by. The howl of wolves sounded much closer still. It was difficult to tell how close, on the flat open expanse of the fenland. There was limited opportunity to analyse acoustics when running for one’s life.
*
It was two days since his arrival in Norfolk with Dr Ellen West, two months since she had finally convinced him to call her Ellen rather than Dr West. Two years since her laboratory facilities had been reduced to flaming ruins. The incident had answered the question as to whether an artificial bioform in the shape of a wyvern could breathe flame, though that was small comfort afterwards. The wyvern had last been seen by the Coast Guard off the coast of the Isle of Lewis, flapping its way towards Iceland.
He drove into Norfolk, which the signposts proclaimed to be ‘Nelson’s County’, on a pleasant spring day. The road, built on a raised bank some two centuries earlier, before the land had been drained, was still dry. The surrounding fields glistened in the sunlight, submerged under maybe an inch or maybe a foot of water. A dull red tractor sat abandoned in the neighbouring field, its rear wheels sunk so far into the mud that water lapped at its door. Greenery poked above the water, but whether it was a hardy crop or water-friendly weeds Yorick did not know.
“Probably worse by the coast,” he said.
Ellen stared intently out of the front window, her gaze scanning the fields ahead to either side, occasionally checking the sky. It was impossible to know nowadays what creature they might encounter, what threat it might pose, and where it might appear from. She gripped a blue notebook tightly and muttered agreement. Norfolk was not the very edge of civilisation, but it had been hit harder than a lot of other parts of Britain. Proliferating wildlife of all kinds – much of it formerly considered mythical – had caused all kinds of havoc with the nation’s infrastructure. The Land Drainage Boards – venerable institutes that had kept the pumps running to maintain the reclaimed land and former marshes that made up much of Norfolk – had been severely disrupted. Once farmland began to disappear, villages started flooding and roads became submerged, the threads that bound civilisation together quickly started to unravel.
Yorick and Ellen were one of several specialist teams who had been dispatched into the county by the England Biological Anomaly Commission. At first sight there appeared to be nothing but waders and waterfowl inhabiting the flooded fields, but looks could be deceiving.
He pulled to a stop at a crossroads where their relatively straight road was crossed by a narrower, more winding lane.
“Could go either way,” Yorick said. The narrower lane had a weight restriction and was more likely to be blocked or flooded, but the satnav didn’t show whether the main road dipped down and could therefore be flooded too.
“Straight on, I’d say,” Yorick answered himself.
Ellen said nothing.
He slipped the Range Rover into gear and followed the main road towards St.John’s-on-the Marsh. The little hamlet had reported several instances of attacks by creatures unknown, missing pets, missing farmers, and a mysterious stench emanating from the surrounding fens.
“I wonder where Sandy is?” Yorick mused as he drove. They had gone their separate ways two months previously when Sandy had accepted an assignment that he said was far too dangerous for the likes of Yorick. Typically for Sandy, he had not said what was involved, though he had hinted at matters of national security and other such pompous waffle. He had departed with Lucja and Arkady and an air of secrecy.
“Stop here,” Ellen said suddenly as they approached a tiny, whitewashed cottage, set back from the road on its own little plateau.
Yorick brought them to a halt smoothly and Ellen stepped out before he had applied the handbrake.
“Look,” she said, pointing, as Yorick joined her at the garden gate. Like the gate, the front door was mostly blue, the paint peeling disconsolately. It was half open. There was no sound nor sight of habitation. This was not unusual for places like Norfolk that had been badly affected by what some called the creature catastrophe. People generally closed their doors and windows when they left though. Even if they had no intention of returning, some vestigial sense of propriety obliged them to lock up on departure.
Ellen squeaked the gate open and entered the neat, only slightly overgrown, gardens. She approached the door, called a loud ‘Hello’ to the insides, didn’t wait for a reply, and began a clockwise circumambulation of the premises.
“Look,” she said again, pointing at a vegetable patch that had been trashed, the vegetables uprooted and squished, the soil disturbed in long gouges.
Close to the water’s edge, on what had once been a field of crops but was now a shallow lake that spread as far the eye could see, were more signs of a struggle. Dark stains; blood perhaps. A shoe, pressed into the mud, half full of water.
Ellen stooped close to have a look.
“Do you think you should,” Yorick said, “stay, you know, further back?” A vertiginous feeling made him take a step away from the water’s edge. His fingers clenched in an abortive attempt to grab Ellen by the collar and yank her out of harm’s way. He couldn’t make himself get close enough though. Tiny waves lapped against the muddy shore.
“Something aquatic,” Ellen said. “Crocodilian, most likely.”
“Not a fish?” Yorick asked, his eyes darting hither and thither over the unbroken surface.
“Fish?” Ellen stood abruptly.
“Yes. You know: giant man-eating catfish.”
“Or woman-eating.” She pointed with her foot at what was clearly a woman’s shoe. “Anyway,” she turned and continued her patrol of the water’s edge. “Not deep enough for a fish big enough.”
There were no other signs of disturbance in the garden.
Yorick ducked inside the house and made a perfunctory search. It was clearly not abandoned. Food in the fridge, slippers by the front door, house plants on the window ledge still in good health.
“Unfortunate, really,” Ellen said when he emerged. She was absently plucking flowers from a bush by the door.
“Of course,” Yorick said. “We should report the death to the police.”
“Well yes, naturally.” She dropped a handful of petals and brushed her palms together. “I mean, unfortunate because it’s too cold for reptiles really. They’ll be pretty sluggish in this weather.”
“Not sluggish enough.” Yorick led the way out of the gate and waited impatiently for Ellen to pass through so he could lock it behind them. He wasn’t really sure if that would stop a crocodile.
“I did hear rumours,” she said as they got back in the car, “that somebody had brought back sarcosuchus.”
“An extinct crocodile?”
“Precisely.” She plugged in her seat belt. “The biggest. Thirty feet long. Weighed four tonnes.”
Yorick decided the gate probably wouldn’t hold such a beast. He accelerated swiftly down the road.
*
It was a further two miles to St. John’s-in-the-Marsh, a collection of a dozen weather-boarded cottages and a windmill that no longer bore sails. Several of the old structures had been refurbished elsewhere in the county, connected to dynamos to supply electricity in places where the local distribution network had been severed. This one had scaffolding partly erected on one side as if they might be planning the same thing here. Across the lane from the windmill was a narrow green, and most of the cottages were clustered around this. Yorick pulled up, two wheels on the grass, and the two of them climbed out.
It was a perfectly still day and the calls of various birds was the only sound that broke the silence. The air was infused with a mulchy, marshy smell of rotting vegetation.
“Help you?” called a balding man, appearing from behind a hedge. His face was freckled, and he wore half-moon spectacles.
“Good morning,” said Ellen and strode over to him. Yorick trailed behind, looking around for signs of large crocodiles. The man met them at his garden gate, removing a pair of gardening gloves as he watched them approach.
“Dr Ellen West, EBAC,” she declared.
“Yorick,” said Yorick.
“Saunders,” said the man. “You’re the biological people?”
As far as Yorick knew, there were no non-biological people yet, but nothing would have surprised him by this point.
“Correct,” said Ellen. “We’re investigating biological anomalies.”
“Hmph.” Saunders tucked his gloves into his belt. “Seems there’s plenty of them about.”
Yorick turned slowly on the spot and stared at a portion of hedge that he was sure had moved. A cat slinked out of hiding, stared at him insolently, and strolled away.
Saunders emerged from his garden. “Follow me,” he said.
They didn’t have to follow him far. The entire hamlet was no more than a stone’s throw in length or breadth. A wide drive led into the grounds of the windmill. Not far beyond its bulk was the familiar site of a flooded farm field. The ground where the waves lapped was churned up and gouged with what appeared to be further signs of some kind of crocodile.
“This ‘appened last night,” Saunders said. “Dog was barking like crazy, wouldn’t stop even when Mrs Cray shouted at it.” He nodded across a hedge at the neighbouring cottage. “I came over and so did a couple of the others.” He paced slowly towards the water’s edge as though re-enacting the scene for them. “Dog yelped before we got here. Then it went quiet.” He pointed at the disturbed earth. “Heard splashing. Saw a long tail vanishing into the water.”
Ellen took out a notebook and questioned him further, asking for details of size and colour and what else had happened in recent days.
Yorick paced the edge of the grounds as they talked, listening to tales of aurochs grazing the flooded fields, possible wolf attacks, the almost-definite sarcosuchus attack and an overwhelming stench of decay that rolled across the hamlet every evening.
The sun was beginning to warm the day up nicely. A pair of herons, plumage gleaming white, stood out in the water, occasionally plucking something to eat from beneath the surface. A rippling V moved across the surface towards them.
“Ellen,” he called.
One if the herons, perhaps sensing something amiss, took to flight in its ungainly, abortive way. The second was somewhat slower.
“Ellen!”
A huge pair of jaws emerged from beneath the water, snatching the second heron from the air before its claws had cleared the surface. Huge crocodilian jaws and tiny, white-feathered head splashed down simultaneously. The wave from the attacker washed over the prey and it vanished from sight.
Yorick almost jumped when he realised that Ellen and Saunders were at his shoulder.
“That were it,” Saunders affirmed.
“I’m quite confident,” Ellen said, “that we do indeed have a sarcosuchus present in Norfolk.”
The waters had gone curiously placid.
“Crocodile, I’d say,” Saunders said.
“I’ll have to call this in,” Ellen said. “We’ll need to get a capture team out here.” She wandered off, trying to get a signal, which was becoming increasingly difficult in rural areas where phone masts had been lost to a variety of wildlife incidents.
Yorick felt cheered. A capture team could well consist of Sandy, Lucja and Arkady.
“Wasn’t my dog,” Saunders said.
“What?” Yorick turned to look at him.
“Thought you might wonder why I wasn’t upset.” He scratched an eyebrow and staring out into the field. “Wasn’t my dog.”
“I see,” said Yorick. He turned back around slowly to see what Saunders was staring at.
A rippling V was heading towards the shore. Was very close to the shore. Very close to the spot on the shore where they were standing.
“Is that…?” Saunders tailed off as a vast, scaly back broke the surface.
“Yep,” said Yorick. He turned and ran, dragging Saunders with him. “Ellen!”
Ellen was out on the road, waving her phone around hopefully.
A rushing, splashing noise from behind made Yorick look round. The huge – unbelievably huge – crocodile was out of the water and racing towards them on short powerful legs. It seemed inconceivable that anything so large could run so fast. It would be on them before they got to the car.
“The scaffolding!” Yorick puffed.
He grabbed the nearest pole, swung and pulled himself up, surprising himself with acrobatic skills he had not had cause to use since he was twelve.
Saunders shimmied up the wooden ladder that was lashed to the end of the scaffolding.
The huge beast barrelled into the ladder, shattering it into pieces. Saunders rolled onto the scaffolding platform and stared up at Yorick who was clinging to the pole above.
The scaffolding shook and clanged as the creature flicked its tail in frustration and barged through to the other side. Unsatisfied at the wood and metal on offer, it uttered a bone-shaking snarl and slinked away to the water’s edge.
Yorick watched it disappear before risking a descent. He hurried over to the Range Rover, where Ellen was sitting on the roof.
“Definitely sarcosuchus,” she said.
“Cup of tea,” said Saunders, and ambled on shaking legs into his cottage.
*
They spent the remainder of the afternoon talking to the other locals, gathering their accounts of the strange sights and sounds that had afflicted their lives of late. Fortified by strong cups of tea from Saunders, Yorick made notes, showed images of various possible species in the hopes that they could identify what was loose in this part of the world, and kept an eye on the surrounding fields.
Ellen took saliva samples from the crunched wooden ladder, hoping to analyse the DNA and identify which lab or which geneticist had produced it. Parliament were still debating whether to outlaw the re-creation of extinct animals or the creation of novel bioforms. Some argued that all such creatures were dangerous and should be banned. Others argued that increasing biodiversity was a good thing. Rewilding and re-introductions had been popular for several years before things turned bizarre. As far as Yorick could determine, the debate was academic. Nobody knew where most of the creatures were coming from.
As evening arrived, so did the overwhelming stench of decay. Maybe dying vegetation from flooded fields; maybe some creature’s larder of dead prey; maybe an unknown odoriferous beast.
“They have the Skunk Ape in the Everglades in Florida,” Ellen said as they braced themselves against the smell.
“Does it smell like this?”
“I don’t know. But the name suggests it’s quite bad.”
There wasn’t an effective way to capture the scent. It was in the air, but capturing a jar of air did not result in a jar of noticeably smelly air. They retreated to the sanctuary of the Range Rover and its pine tree air freshener.
“Let’s go and find our hotel,” Yorick suggested.
The following two days passed in similar fashion, travelling from hamlet to village to farm, collecting testimonies, video and photographic evidence and biological samples. Fur caught in barbed wire, blood from a wounded creature hit by a farmer’s shotgun, a dead python that had likely escaped from a zoo at some point. There were accounts of lynx, wolves, crocodiles, mermaids – from a highly dubious and foul-mouthed drunk – and bats. Nothing special about the bats, but the woman who told them in great detail of her encounter with bats evidently suffered from chiroptophobia and in her mind they were huge and terrifying.
Evening fell on the second day as they were wrapping up in the small village of St.Peter-Pole. There were around fifty houses here, an oversize church and a farm shop that had provided the two of them with cups of dark, strong tea. Water that lapped at the village’s edge and an intermittent electricity supply had already driven several inhabitants away. The abandoned gardens were immaculately neat, though, tended by the remaining retirees.
“Can’t let the village down,” one silver-haired old lady said, trimming a hedge with shears. “We won Norfolk’s Neatest Village three years running, you know?”
Yorick offered his congratulations and went back to the Range Rover to tidy away the samples and equipment in the boot.
“That odour is here too,” Ellen said, carrying an empty teacup loosely in one hand. “Not so strong though.” She strode off towards the nearest edge of waterlogged land.
Yorick slammed the boot and followed her to the water’s edge, scanning the near distance for signs of movement.
Ellen stooped and scooped up a cup full of murky water, sniffed it carefully and tipped it out slowly. She poked the toe of her boot into the mud, stirring up sediment in the shallows. “I need more samples,” she decided.
They collected another water sample before leaving St.Peter-Pole, then Ellen insisted on stopping every quarter mile and collecting more water samples from the roadside. Sometimes the water didn’t reach the road’s edge and Yorick was obliged to trudge a few yards into the straggly vegetation to scoop up a vial of water. Ellen’s idea was to map the levels of supposed contamination and narrow down the origin.
The sun was very low on the horizon by this time, the hedgerows casting long shadows across the fields. The sky was a deep, deep blue, split halfway across by a sheet of grey cloud.
“Follow the water’s edge across the field!” Ellen called. “I’ll meet you the other side!”
Yorick stood from taking his latest sample and looked round. The Range Rover was hidden behind the hedge and the shadow.
“No, I don’t think…”
He was cut off by the sound of the engine starting and the car rumbling away.
“Drat.” He pocketed the vial and trudged in the same direction, angling across the field towards the next hedgerow. It was a particularly dense hedgerow, impossible to push through. He sloshed several yards into the water to where there was a gap, pushed through and found himself in another field, rather than on the road that he had been expecting. He turned round, looking for a glimpse of headlights, listening for the rumble of the engine.
Nothing.
He sloshed several yards into the new field, angled back towards the line of where the road had been running. The water didn’t recede as it had done in the previous field; the ground was laying at a different angle.
He stopped and took another sample, just to make a point that he had been fulfilling his part of the job, then made a beeline for the field’s edge. He squeezed through a scratchy gap, got snagged on a branch, stumbled through and sank up to his ankles in squelchy mud. There was no road here either. He scratched his head and pulled his feet free, began trudging along the hedgerow, retracing his steps.
Twenty minutes later, he was totally disoriented. Not only had he not found the road, but now he couldn’t work out which way he had come from. Stupidly, his phone was back in the car; though even if it wasn’t, the signal was exceedingly poor out in the fens. The sun disappeared below the horizon finally and Yorick found himself navigating uneven, water-logged fields by a sliver of moonlight.
A wolf howled and Yorick froze. It sounded far away. Probably. He quickened his pace, lifting his feet high to clear the water and heading for the next hedgerow. Another howl sounded, somewhere across the fields.
He trudged on.
Then he started to run.
To describe his movements as running was probably generous. The sticky mud and the ankle-deep water made it more of a heaving slosh than a run. The only consolation was that it was too shallow for large crocodilians to be lurking below the surface.
The darkness grew more intense as the moon vanished behind a cloud. The howls of wolves grew closer. Yorick’s legs grew more tired. He fell and get far wetter.
“Where,” he yelled breathlessly, “is the road?”
A few seconds later, his foot sank into a particularly sticky patch of mud and he pulled his foot free minus his boot. He stopped and scrabbled about for it, splashing foul-smelling water on his face and into his gasping mouth.
“Where is my boot?” he groaned. Abandoning it, he hobbled on.
He heard an engine, idling gently. Suddenly, he was running face first into a hedge. He could see the bright glow of headlights beyond, hear the howl of wolves and the splash of something behind. He was almost sobbing by the time he pushed through the clinging branches and fell across the bonnet of the Range River.
Ellen blinked at him through the windscreen.
Yorick dragged himself around to the passenger side and climbed in soggily.
“Where did you get to?” she asked, and then, “You stink!”
“Where did I get to?” Yorick wiped his sleeve over his face, which only made him wetter and muddier.
“Did you get any more samples?”
Yorick glowered at her. “How about we go back to the hotel?”
They drove in silence for twenty minutes until they arrived at their hotel, The Jenny Greenteeth. The sign bore an image of a hideous, green-skinned hag of a legendary swamp creature. Yorick sincerely hoped this one stayed firmly in legend.
“Hold on,” Ellen said as he stepped onto the floodlit porch. “You’re covered in algae and slime.”
“Yes,” he said. “Thanks for pointing that out.”
“Probably several decent samples right here on your clothing.”
Yorick stood stoically while Ellen scraped mud, algae, slime and weed from him and sealed them in containers.
“You should probably get cleaned up,” she said as she finished.
“Thanks,” he said, dripping sarcasm as well as mud. “I will.”
*
He breakfasted alone the next morning and was finishing his second cup of tea before Ellen appeared.
“It’s definitely that algae that’s emitting the odour,” she said as she assessed the overly-complex coffee machine.
“I noticed.”
“We’ve got enough samples to take back to the lab.” She chose a button and pressed it hopefully.
“Excellent.” Yorick had had quite enough of wetlands.
They packed up and left by mid-morning.
*
The England Biological Anomaly Commission had its headquarters at a research park outside Cambridge. Yorick lived in an apartment block nearby, as many of the staff did. After breakfast he sauntered over to the office to see what Ellen had discovered. At least, he opened his front door intending to saunter over to the office.
There was a plastic sheet across the lobby and several shadowy figures behind it were taping it to the walls and ceiling.
“Are you the decorators?” Yorick asked, stepping out of his door.
“Step back into your apartment!” an unnecessarily loud voice yelled through a loudspeaker.
Yorick stumbled backwards into his hallway and the door swung closed behind him. He could hear the sound of sticky tape being pulled off a roll outside his kitchen window. Two figures in biohazard suits were taping a polythene sheet over the window, giving him a flashback to ET.
“Yorick?” a familiar voice called over the loudspeaker. “Yorick, it’s Sandy.”
Yorick ran to the bedroom window, where his view was also obscured by polythene sheets.
“Yorick, I’m calling your phone.”
The phone rang a second later.
“Hello?” Yorick sat on his settee.
“Yorick,” said Sandy, “the good news is Ellen has analysed the algae you collected.”
“Great.”
“It’s a self-mutating species, engineered to boost novel speciation, we presume.”
Yorick nodded wordlessly.
“We don’t think it was intended to be released into the wild,” Sandy said. “The thing is, we know you’ve come into contact with it, probably ingested it.”
“Erm…” Yorick couldn’t think of any reply.
“We don’t know what it might do to you.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m afraid, old chum, we have to treat you as a biological anomaly.”
“You’re going to analyse me?”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.” Sandy chuckled. “Think of it as a holiday at home.”
“But…”
“Relax,” said Sandy.
Yorick could picture his re-assuring, used-car-salesman smile.
“What about Ellen?”
“She’s in isolation too.”
“How long?” Yorick asked.
“Well…” Sandy spoke for a while more, but Yorick wasn’t listening. He looked around at the cosy confines of his living room. He had finally become the subject of his own work: a specimen on display. He suspected that, from now on, things would only get weirder.
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