TWENTY-SEVEN
The SUV slewed and careened on the slick motorway. By activating the blue flashing lights at the base of the windscreen, Jack could scythe down the hard shoulder, and more quickly gain the A roads into the city centre.
The direction finder was useless, unable to get a signal in the continual downpour. The radio crackled and spat. Jack could just decipher some of the police reports and avoid the very worst of the congested roads. The emergency channel was alive with horror stories about the widespread flooding of Cardiff. The walls of one church in the centre had collapsed, and corpses were washed out through and beyond the graveyard into a tangled mess of bones and rotted clothing. At least, thought Jack, the rescuers could work out whether they’d been dead beforehand.
He tried to contact the emergency services to have them cordon off the Levall-Mellon building site. But his mobile signal fluctuated between poor and non-existent. In the brief time he did get through, it was obvious that there was no point deploying officers into an area of danger. Even looters weren’t going into the city centre now, because the place was awash with storm water.
In the haze of rain and headlights straight ahead, it looked like traffic was gridlocked. Jack yanked the wheel, and the SUV swung into a residential area parallel to the main road. Halfway down this street, a shabby figure stepped out into the carriageway with barely a glance up. Jack was unable to swerve away, and hit the figure with a solid thump. He plunged his foot down on the brake, and the SUV slid to a halt twenty metres further on.
He couldn’t just leave the poor guy there. And he couldn’t risk reversing back and maybe driving over him. So Jack killed the engine, pulled his collar up, popped open the door and jogged down the street to where the guy was splayed across the road.
He could see the body more clearly now amid the dancing splashes of the hammering rainfall. A hunched, ugly humanoid peered back at him with deep-set angry eyes, and scowled through a ragged mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. It was a Weevil, dressed in the curious half-clothing that characterised the creatures when they had only recently come through the Rift. The creature lay, shivering uncontrollably in the roadway, its arms and legs spread clumsy and wide, jerking spasmodically beneath a weak streetlight.
There was no sign of movement from the nearest houses, and no pedestrians had been foolish enough to brave the storm. Should he put it out of its misery by reversing over it like road-kill? A bullet through its head? Or could it recover and be taken into custody?
As he watched, the Weevil gave one last heaving shudder, and then expired. The rattling sound of its final breath was audible even over the continuous battering of the rain on the asphalt.
At the far end of the road, a police vehicle had paused across the junction. Jack groaned. He’d not extinguished the flashing lights in the SUV. He hared back to his vehicle, switched them off and reversed swiftly back towards the Weevil. Wouldn’t do to be caught reversing over it. Couldn’t let the cops see the creature. The police car started to reverse back so that it could turn down the roadway. Jack popped the trunk of the SUV, and cursed. The two dead policemen were still in the back, and there was no more space for a third corpse. He slammed the trunk shut and opened the rear passenger door. By hunkering down in the street, he could get his arms under the Weevil’s armpits, heft it up, and dump it in the rear passenger seat. It had a messy open wound that still leaked copiously from its forehead.
The police car drew up on the opposite side of the street. Jack fastened the safety belt across the dead Weevil’s lap and chest, and shut the door before the young police officer could get her cap on and cross the road to see what was going on.
‘He’s overdone things,’ Jack told her, ‘I’ll get him home.’ He showed her his ID, and slid into the driver’s seat to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over. He watched the policewoman look through the darkened glass of the Torchwood car. Not too close, not pressed up close to it, because she didn’t need to check, she’d seen his ID. Plus, it was raining so heavily that she obviously wanted to get back to the warm shelter of her own car.
Jack steered away down the street. Before turning the next corner, he checked the rear-view mirror. The policewoman was not following, having chosen instead to execute a clumsy three-point turn in a huge puddle. Jack glimpsed the Weevil in the back seat, where it slumped backwards against the headrest with blood still seeping from its head wound.
‘Ianto will be pissed,’ Jack told the Weevil. ‘That’s never gonna come out of the upholstery.’
Ianto was not pleased. Not that he’d do anything so presumptuous as to say anything, Gwen knew. It was the absence of his usual cheery demeanour when she and Toshiko got him to carry Sandra Applegate’s corpse into the Hub. She wondered if she’d disturbed him in the middle of something important, especially when he denied it with the same convincing tone that she recognised from when Rhys said he hadn’t had more than a pint with Dutch Arthur at Dempsey’s.
In any other weather, they’d have needed some extensive subterfuge to get an unconscious man and a dead woman across Roald Dahl Plass and into the Hub. This afternoon, though, the place was abandoned to the furious storm that continued to lash across the city centre. The Bay had already risen astonishingly high, flooding over the railings. The Oval Basin was starting to live up to its name as the Bay water began to lap over the wooden boardwalk and around the base of the first tall lamp towers. Ianto warned Gwen and Toshiko that they’d have to use the platform entrance, because the reception door was already underwater. Maybe that’s why he was so tense – he was worried about his stock of tourist guides.
Ianto deposited Sandra Applegate’s corpse in the pathology room, while Gwen helped Toshiko to carry Owen to the medical area. They so rarely needed to use it, and the last time Gwen had been in here had been when Owen was showing her around and showing off. The suite contained an examination room and three bedrooms, each an incongruous mix of stark medical white and Victorian brickwork.
Owen remained profoundly unconscious. As Gwen made him comfortable, she reflected that this was probably not how Owen would have imagined her helping him into bed. Toshiko switched on a dusty computer by the bedside, and connected up several monitors to Owen’s body. Gwen had no idea what went where, and from Toshiko’s look of concentration it seemed clear that it wasn’t something she had done recently.
Ianto knocked politely at the door, and she beckoned him in. ‘Have you been able to reach Jack?’
He looked apologetic, almost forlorn. ‘No connection at all. The storm has wiped everything out.’ He went over to the computer terminal by the bed. ‘Meanwhile, I’ve done a quick scan of the corpse you brought back. It does appear to contain one of those spinal attachments. But it’s completely burned out.’ He tapped at the keyboard to call up the scan results.
Toshiko took the mouse, and arranged the computer image so that it showed a split screen. One half showed Ianto’s scanned image. In the other, Toshiko displayed a second scan of Owen. Clearly visible below his neck was the stark outline of a new spinal attachment.
‘He’s alive,’ Ianto said simply. It sounded like a plea.
Toshiko sat down on a chair, suddenly weary. ‘He needs a doctor.’
‘But he is our doctor.’ Gwen folded her arms, unable to think what to do. ‘We’ve heard him tell us often enough. Born a doctor, lives every day a doctor.’
‘And he’ll die a doctor,’ concluded Toshiko. Her voice was hard now, more certain. ‘But not today.’