SHIP OF FOOLS

The vast container ship Eighth Wonder had never registered its voyage. Chartered by the Hong Kong triads it had been fictitiously logged in Africa as carrying tonnes of Halloween costumes, harlequin hats and animal dummies under the owner name of Mr. Tom Foolery.

However, having left the port of Casablanca in fine conditions it had met with a rare typhoon and was blown terribly off-course. 

On the third night it was now hopelessly lost and listing badly in the mounting waves. Despite its massive size the tidal waves teetered over its cargo like the hands of God.

Then the hands struck. Colourful containers began to fall into the North Sea. First one, then dozens, all colliding with each other in the gigantic metal fury of the storm in the pitch blackness of night.

Locks popped, latches blew and doors released their true contents into the sea.

Apes.

Hundreds of live apes destined for the illicit and cruel practises of Triad medicine men and dealers. 

No more.

These apes were destined for Runswick Bay a nautical mile away, which lay asleep on the misty Yorkshire coast.

Shaking off sedatives given in port, they now swam. 

A thousand apes swam through the surge like the dawn of sentience. On and on they swam; gorillas, mandrills and chimpanzees desperate to reach the lights glimpsed through the angry water. They swam without making any noise. Many unwittingly wore fools' caps and jesters' curled slippers.

Bedraggled, scared, starving and lethal, they dragged themselves up onto the beach. Some had been sadly lost to the depths but most succeeded.

Far away on the churning waves the Far Eastern vessel sailed on without its load, the corrupt Captain forced into maydaying the local Coast Guard but the radio appeared dead, the bitter irony not lost on him in his hour of greatest need.

The apes themselves assembled on the sand and took one last look out to sea at their former prison. Then they turned towards the dim lights of the village swaying in the strong cyclonic winds.

It was three in the morning and nothing so much as breathed in the bay battened down for the night's fretful tempest.

The gorillas lead, followed by the mandrills and the chimps. They ran across the beach, up the harbour rampway and into the village, where they spread out in search of food and water.

A huge gorilla broke into the kitchen of the Royal Hotel, where a young man, Maitland, was on a writer's retreat for the summer attempting to pen a horror novel.

He was the first person to see an ape that night, the massive Silverback raiding the Hotel's fruit store. Maitland had needed a late night coffee from the maker to keep him awake during a fertile run of typing.

"OH MY GOD!" he shrieked as he confronted the massive primate, who was startled as he was. The ape crashed through the front double-doors into the night clutching bananas and sweetcorns.

Maitland was stunned and after drinking a whisky from the bar he went to wake the manager.

The second and last person to see an ape was Mrs. Darrow as she was peeling potatoes for the early shift of Darrow's Chippy. She screamed to high heaven when the Mandrill stared at her through the pantry window. At first she thought it was someone in fancy dress with a painted face but then she realised it was an ape she'd seen on Life on Earth on the telly. She screamed anyway and shifted it up a gear when the creature walked in and grasped her sack of spuds before shambling off up the cliff steps.

Every house and store were burgled that night but only fruit and veg were taken. Only two people had seen the primate burglars but nobody believed them. Yes, some things had been meddled with like a human skull in the schoolroom cabinet and the holy water in the Church font had been drunk and other things ripped up like a Steiff monkey in the giftshop window, but beyond these and a few random fruit skins the majority of Runswick Bay woke up none the wiser.

As the apes gathered above the bay to eat in peace a sudden noise could be heard in the far distance. It was a strange sound and only audible to the apes. A few dogs in moorland farms yelped but it was the apes who heard it fully.

Having eaten they raised their heads in the direction of the sound and began to follow it over the moors and valleys, a caravan of refugees drawn to its irresistible promise.

At last they reached the source of the drone.

The animals gathered around three towering white balls standing erect on the bleak moor. They encircled the structures, craning their necks to see the origin of the summons at the peaks of the spheres. 

Some chimpanzees became agitated and tried to climb the balls' slick surfaces but to no avail. They slid off and landed on their compatriots. The company became restless until a single Silverback showed them how to grasp the steel webbing crisscrossing the massive orbs. Once at the summit the rest followed and clasped the big pinions circling the tops, waving their arms and bellowing loudly into the night from the roof of the world on what was the Fylingdales RAF Radar Station.

Suddenly the incredible scene was brightly floodlit and gargantuan netting was thrown over the apes, pinning them to the dome. Countless hypodermic darts were fired and the throng were quickly sedated and lowered into immense trucks.

By the morning the assembly were safely stowed with official passages to Africa in a huge operation to return them to the wild, much to the irritation of the Hong Kong Triads.

The classified report into the incident, codenamed DENHAM, included reference to a mayday call getting through and an elite unnamed squad being sent in to rescue the apes under the cover of darkness. The report made it clear that the villagers of Runswick Bay, North Yorkshire, must remain unaware of the events of that night, a matter of National Security. 

The two residents who had had confirmed encounters with the subjects were 'rectified' with a story of a stag 'jesters' party gone awry, but after some hostility they were sworn to silence under the Official Secrets Act.

But Maitland and Darrow knew what they'd seen and can still be found secretly leaving fruit and veg out on dark stormy nights in the hope that the mysterious apes might return.