Seals

It’d started as a joke. A bad pun. And now it was going to destroy human civilisation.
Harry was so tired of running. His legs felt like weights as he climbed the stairs to his safe room. The corridors on the stairway here were narrow; too narrow for them to fit. He’d be safe up here. But for how long? And what use is it being safe in one when the supplies run out?
###
“If you can have navy seals, why not a seal navy?” He’d laughed about it, but a germ of an idea had stuck with Harry. He’d been working with the seals for months now, trying to figure out how their sense of location worked. It was fascinating. A seal could be at sea for five years, travelling the ocean, and still return to the exact spot where they were born (give or take a few feet, but what’s that between mammals?). How they did it was baffling. He’d resorted to an experimental computer simulation program. He tried multiple mutations and alterations of their DNA in there, to see if anything affected this ability, but nothing did. Some of the other things he’d come up with were pretty interesting, though…
###
The generals had been impressed. The bulletproof skin had been a particularly strong selling point for them. Harry knew the increased intelligence was the really important part though; and if he was honest with himself, that was also the scariest.
They still just looked like seals. But they were seals who could beat every unit the military threw at them, in every scenario. They’d killed that poor boy from Omaha in the last one, but the generals didn’t care. If anything, that just made them more excited.
Harry still didn’t know how their brains worked, not really. But they were going to make him a very rich man.
###
They’d gone rogue almost immediately after deployment. Within a month humankind was no longer welcome at sea. The coastline soon followed.
The bodycount was staggering. Humanity huddled in landlocked cities trying to find a way to fight this honking, clapping horde.
###
Harry was the only one left here now. The sea was over a hundred miles away, and yet somehow here they were, bellyflopping down the street in vicious packs. He didn’t know when they’d find him but he knew they would. For now all he could do was sit here and wait for the monster he had created to destroy him.

David Wynne

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