ELEVEN
'Now, now, Mildred,' Jack said as the zombie snapped at him, missing his fingers by inches, 'don't be rude.'
Ianto, who was standing behind the chair into which the creature had been secured, raised an eyebrow. 'Mildred?'
Jack removed the last of the sensor pads attached to the zombie's forehead, and straightened up. 'Don't you think she looks like a Mildred?'
Deadpan, Ianto said, 'I'd say she's more of a Kylie.'
'In those shoes? No way!'
The girl might have been small, but she'd been as lively as a Weevil when they had hauled her up from the cells. Between them, Jack and Ianto had eventually managed to strap her into what Jack – and therefore the rest of them – always referred to as the 'interrogation chair'. It had been part of the fixtures and fittings at Torchwood since Emily Holroyd's era in the 1890s, though the thick leather wrist, ankle and neck restraints had been replaced several times in the intervening years.
Jack and Ianto had attached sensor pads to the girl's head to monitor brain activity – if any – and had taken samples of her blood, skin and hair. Finally they had subjected her to a comprehensive body scan, using the Bekaran deep-tissue scanner, a natty little hand-held X-ray device which Owen had been particularly fond of.
Now the results were scrolling across various computer screens arrayed around the girl's snarling, tethered form – and they were making mighty interesting reading.
Jack raised his eyebrows as he scanned the latest findings.
'Well, that decides it,' he said.
'She isn't human?'
'She never was. In fact, she was never anything. She's a construct. She's made of some kind of alien substance which our equipment can't identify. She's ersatz meat.'
'Like Quorn, you mean?' said Ianto.
Jack laughed. 'Zombie flesh as a vegetarian option. Now there's a novel idea.'
Ianto frowned. 'So basically what you're saying is, she's a special effect?'
'But one with substance,' said Jack. 'One that can maim and kill.'
Ianto and Jack looked down thoughtfully at the gnashing, snarling creature in its blood-spattered Girls Aloud T-shirt, straining against its bonds in front of them.
'But where do these things come from?' asked Ianto. 'Who's creating them?'
'That,' said Jack, 'is the question.'
'That's the best I can do,' Andy said, 'though ideally she probably needs a few stitches. Course of antibiotics too, I shouldn't wonder.'
He straightened up, looking down at Dawn, who was lying unconscious on the settee. He had cleaned, disinfected and bandaged her hand, and now all he could do was hope that the infection raging through her system didn't get any worse.
Given tonight's track record, he had half-expected his street to be crawling with zombies when he had turned into it fifteen minutes earlier. But in fact Canton as a whole had been relatively quiet, compared to other parts of the city. The closest zombie to Andy's flat had been an all-but-skeletal old woman with wispy white hair, who had been dragging herself along the pavement on her stomach three streets away.
Even so, Andy had been nervous as he had fumbled for his keys on the drizzle-slick pavement once he and Sophie had carried Dawn the few metres from the car to the mostly lightless apartment block. Even after they had made it inside and shut the door behind them, he had been wary, half-expecting zombies to lurch out at them from every turn of the stairs.
Now, though, finally, he felt able to relax, at least a little. Of course, he was still anxious about Dawn – she looked like death warmed up – but at least, for the time being, they were safe from the marauding undead.
Despite her swollen knee and lacerated feet, Sophie had been a trooper, helping Andy as much as she could, but now she sank into the armchair next to the settee with a groan.
Andy looked at her, and immediately felt guilty for not noticing before how pasty her mascara-streaked face had become. 'You look as though you could do with a cup of tea and some painkillers,' he said.
The trace of a smile flickered on her face. 'I'd rather have a Harvey Wallbanger. But I suppose I'd better keep my wits about me. Just in case. . .'
Her words hung in the air between them. Andy knew exactly what she was thinking, for the simple reason that he was thinking precisely the same thing. He knew that neither of them wanted to voice the possibility that there might yet be further horrors in store, and that secretly they were both wondering how and when this terrible nightmare would end.
He wondered whether he ought to say something optimistic, reassuring, but nothing that came to mind struck him as anything but hollow. In the end he simply muttered, 'I'll stick the kettle on,' and sloped out of the room, feeling that somehow he had let the side down.
He was using a spoon to alternately prod the teabags in two mugs, watching the boiling water darken to the colour of chestnuts, when Sophie appeared in the kitchen behind him.
'Don't s'pose there's any chance of a hot bath?' she asked.
'Sure, help yourself,' said Andy. 'First door on the left. You'll find clean towels in the airing cupboard. Oh, and you might as well take these with you as you go.' He handed her a pack of Ibuprofen and hastily scooped the tea bag out of her mug before splashing milk into it. 'Sugar?'
'I'm sweet enough, thanks,' she said with weary humour, and limped out of the room.
Andy heard her enter the bathroom and close the door. A moment later came the soft, somehow comforting spatter of water on plastic. He took a long sip of his tea and closed his eyes, relishing the momentary stillness. He felt utterly exhausted, and yet at the same time he couldn't imagine sleeping ever again – not while zombies were still roaming the streets of Cardiff, at any rate.
When he'd finished his tea, he plodded through to the hallway and tapped on the bathroom door. 'Would you like me to find you some clean clothes to change into?' he asked.
He heard the gentle lap of water. 'Don't suppose you've got a nice cocktail dress I can wear?' she replied.
Andy surprised himself by laughing. 'Mine's in the wash, sorry. T-shirt and jeans do you?'
'Guess it'll have to,' she replied. He could tell from her voice that she was smiling.
He selected a red T-shirt and his tightest black jeans from the drawers in his bedroom, and knocked on the bathroom door again. 'I'll leave the clothes outside,' he told her. 'You might have to roll the jeans up a bit.'
She didn't reply. And then he heard a small sound – something like a sob.
'Sophie?' he said. 'You OK?'
Another pause. Then in a cracked voice she said, 'Yeah.'
'You sure?'
This time her response was more decisive, as if she was really making an effort. 'Yeah, I'm fine. Honestly. I'm. . . I'll be OK.'
'Right,' he said. 'Well, listen, you just. . . just relax, all right? Take your time. And when you're ready I'll make us a bite to eat. Cheese on toast or something. Sound OK?'
'Sounds great,' she said.
'Right then,' said Andy. He started to move away.
'Andy?' she said.
He paused. 'Yeah.'
'Thanks. For everything, I mean. For saving my life.'
'You're welcome,' he said.
He went into the kitchen and busied himself slicing cheese and tomatoes for their post-midnight snack. He was lifting a couple of plates down from the overhead cupboard when he heard padding footsteps behind him.
'Hope you don't mind your cheddar extra mature,' he said, glancing over his shoulder.
But it wasn't Sophie who had entered the kitchen; it was Dawn.
She was glaring at him, though her eyes were glazed and dead. A string of drool was hanging from her lips, which were curled back from her teeth. She raised her hands – one bandaged, one not – and hooked her fingers into claws, like a child playing at witches. Then, from down in her throat, she began to growl, low and threatening, like a dog.
I really don't need this, Andy thought with a kind of weary irritability, and snatched the cheese knife from the counter beside him. Holding it up, he warned, 'Keep back.' Then he realised what he was doing and decided to try a different tack. 'Dawn!' he said firmly. 'Dawn, can you hear me?'
She shuffled towards him, still snarling and drooling. Andy took another step back, the base of his spine nudging the handle of the cutlery drawer.
'Dawn!' he shouted again. 'Listen to me. It's Andy! We're partners, remember? We're mates.'
There was no recognition in her eyes, nothing but a flat, dull hunger.
Maybe he could knock her out, Andy thought, or disable her in some way. Without taking his eyes off her, he put the knife on the counter behind him and reached for the handcuffs on his belt. But then he remembered he had used the cuffs to restrain the zombie at the party earlier that evening. He took a quick glance over his shoulder, looking for something else he could use.
As soon as he broke eye contact with her, she leaped at him.
Unlike most of the other zombies he had encountered, she was fast. Fast and ferocious. Maybe it was because she wasn't actually dead – or was only just dead, he couldn't help thinking – but she had crossed the room and was at his throat almost before Andy could react. At the last possible instant he threw up his arms and managed to deflect her clawing hands. She went for him again, but this time he managed to grab her wrists, her forward momentum forcing him back against the kitchen units with enough force to rattle the cutlery in the drawers.
'Dawn!' he shouted again, but she just dipped her head and snapped at his face. Her teeth clacked together, mere millimetres from the tip of his nose. He tried to wrestle her off him, to use his superior height and strength to subdue her, but it was as though her muscles were locked, immovable.
Her feral, chalk-white face filled his vision. Clots of her spittle flecked his face and he could smell her hot, sour breath.
Then Andy glimpsed something above her head, something white, bird-like, swooping down on her. He realised it was a towel only when it settled over her head and was pulled tight across her face, yanking her backwards.
Immediately he realised what had happened. Sophie had entered the kitchen behind Dawn and had thrown a towel – maybe the one she had been using to contain her damp hair – over the other girl's head. She was gripping the towel in both fists now, tugging back on it, trying to pull Dawn off balance.
Andy helped her, hooking his foot around Dawn's ankles and whipping her feet from under her. Towel still wrapped around her face, Dawn fell, Sophie jumping back as quickly as her injured leg would allow as the WPC thumped heavily to the tiled floor.
Like a wrestler going for the fall, Andy dropped unceremoniously onto his partner's body, covering her limbs with his own, using his weight to immobilise her. She bucked and thrashed beneath him, but he held on, pressing her to the ground.
Glancing up at Sophie, he shouted, 'Get me two more towels, quick!' Sophie limped away, and returned less than a minute later with a couple of fluffy white towels from the airing cupboard in the bathroom.
'Twist them into ropes!' Andy gasped. 'We need to. . . tie her up.'
Sophie did as he asked, and then dropped to Andy's side, wincing at the flare of pain in her knee. Together the two of them wrapped and tied the towels first around Dawn's hands, and then her feet.
By the time they had done, they were both sweating, Sophie's damp blonde hair sticking to her flushed cheeks.
'What do we. . . do with her. . . now?' she panted, looking down at Dawn's writhing form.
'Suppose we'll have to stick her in the bedroom,' Andy said. 'I'll tie something round the handle to stop her getting out.'
He sat back on his haunches and let out a long, heartfelt breath. Then he looked at Sophie and gave her a shaky smile.
'By the way,' he said, 'those jeans really suit you.'
'The windows are the most vulnerable points,' said Gwen. 'Have you got any wood we can cover them with?'
Rhys and the owner of the house, whose name was Keith Samuels, were struggling out of the front room and into the hallway with a heavy sideboard to shove up against the front door. A constant backdrop of dull, meaty thuds accompanied their attempts to make the building secure, and occasionally a window would rattle, causing Gwen's stomach to flip over. So far, though, the zombies didn't seem to have worked out that the windows were the house's weak points.
'Don't think so,' Keith panted.
'It's only in movies where people have window-sized sheets of wood lying about,' said Rhys. 'But then the things they're trying to keep out always seem to come down the chimney anyway.'
'We haven't got a chimney,' Keith said.
'Well, that's something at any rate,' Rhys replied.
Frustrated, Gwen said, 'Haven't you got anything we can use?'
Keith thought about it. 'There's a chalkboard in the kitchen. And Jaz has got a big cork noticeboard on her wall. She sticks photos and things on it.'
'Well, that's a start,' said Gwen, and called down the hallway. 'Jaz, will you get your noticeboard for me?'
Jasmine, aged eleven, a pretty little slip of a thing, had been helping her mum, Naomi, wedge small but heavy items – the toaster, the microwave – into the barricade of furniture against the back door. She looked at Naomi with wide, scared eyes, as if for approval.
Naomi – short and bespectacled, with black spiky hair – pursed her lips but gave a curt nod, and the little girl scampered upstairs.
'What about the kitchen table?' Gwen said. 'That's nice and big. We could break that up.'
'You're not breaking up my kitchen table,' Naomi bridled, overhearing her. Ever since being roused from her bed she had been acting as if Gwen and Rhys were responsible for the chaos that had befallen her family, as if the two of them had deliberately brought it along in their wake. 'That was a wedding present from Mam and Dad.'
Gwen took a deep breath and counted to five as she walked the short distance along the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house. She entered the room, flashing Naomi one of her warmest smiles.
'Well, it's like this, see,' she said sweetly. 'If we don't barricade the house, those things out there – those dead things – will get in. And if they get in, they'll rip us apart with their bare hands and they'll eat us. But if you think it's worth risking that happening to your daughter for the sake of an old table. . .'
She broke off. Tears were sparkling in Naomi's eyes, and suddenly Gwen realised where the woman's hostility was coming from. It was fear. Plain and simple. Naomi Samuels was terrified.
Instinctively Gwen stepped forward and enfolded the other woman in a hug, the way that Rhys did to her when she'd had a bad day.
'Hey, come on,' she said gently. 'Everything'll be all right. But we've got to pull together on this. OK?'
Huddled against Gwen like a child seeking comfort, Naomi nodded.
Sarah Thomas and her baby son were sleeping. Watching them, Jack smiled, but he couldn't help feeling a pang of sadness at the knowledge that, unless his circumstances changed drastically over the next half-century or so, he would outlive this boy. As the years slipped past, he himself would remain unchanged, while this tiny human being, less than an hour old, grew and blossomed, withered and died. Jack had lost so many friends over the years. He had been to so many funerals and cried so many tears that he was now all but cried out. That still didn't stop him feeling each new death as keenly as the last, however. Blowing a kiss to the sleeping mother and child, he turned and slipped silently away.
Upstairs, Ianto was fussing round the 'pod', which had become something of a pet project of his. In light of their recent discovery, he and Jack had earlier spent twenty minutes discussing strategy over mugs of excellent Java Santos, but the only conclusion they had come to was that their new information didn't really add much in a practical sense to what they already knew. OK, so the zombies were not actually the newly risen dead of Cardiff, but how did that usefully change things? It still didn't give them any insight into who or what might be responsible for the 'invasion' – and, more especially, why it was taking place. Was the outbreak a random occurrence, perhaps some freakish quirk of the Rift, or was it part of the sinister agenda of an evil mastermind, or even a race of aliens, who were currently lurking somewhere in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to emerge?
In the end, Jack had called a halt to the discussion, saying that they both needed to go away and indulge in a little private 'thinking time'. Now, however, he was back, having thought himself to a standstill.
'Any ideas?' he asked, his voice ringing around the Hub.
Ianto, who had changed into a blue suit, pink shirt and blue flowery tie, straightened from his examination of the pod and shook his head. 'Not a sausage. You?'
'Nada,' Jack admitted. 'What say we just go tearing round the streets, kicking asses and looking for clues?'
'I don't think that's—' Ianto began, and then he looked up, to a point above Jack's head. 'Oh.'
Jack turned, following his gaze. A man was standing on the walkway of the level above them, looking down, swaying slightly from side to side. It was Trys Thomas, and he looked ghastly. His face was fish-belly white, his eyes flecks of grey flint in sunken hollows. He wore a slack expression, as if he was drugged or sleepwalking.
'Hey there!' Jack said, raising a hand. 'How you doin'?'
Trys did not reply. Instead his head swung drunkenly from side to side, as if he was looking for an access point to the floor below. Sure enough, he shuffled to the metal steps like an old man and began to clang down them. Jack moved forward to greet him, but Ianto said, 'Careful, Jack.'
'I'm always careful,' Jack said out of the corner of his mouth. 'Just be ready with the handcuffs.'
'If I had a penny for every time you've used that line,' Ianto deadpanned.
Jack shot him a look, then strolled across to the bottom of the metal stairs, like a one-man welcoming committee for a visiting dignitary.
'Good to see you up and about, Trys,' he said. 'It is Trys, isn't it? Guess you're wondering where the hell you are, huh?'
The blankness of Trys's eyes, and the way he moved his head, made Jack think of a blind man fixing someone's position by the sound of their voice.
'Sure you are,' Jack continued breezily, studying Trys's face for any kind of reaction, any flicker of humanity. 'Well, this is the Hub, I'm Captain Jack Harkness and that there is Ianto Jones. And guess what? Your wife Sarah's downstairs, safe and well. Remember Sarah? Remember how she was all big and fat the last time you saw her? Well, I bet you're just dying to know what's been happening while you've been asleep, huh? Want me to tell you?'
Trys was only a few steps from the bottom of the stairs now. His dead eyes were still fixed on Jack, but it was clear that he had no interest in, or understanding of, Jack's words.
All at once he raised his hands and lunged forward. Ianto shouted a warning, but Jack was ready.
'Oh no, you don't!' he cried, grabbing Trys's hands and stepping back. 'You don't catch me out a second time.'
He continued to move backwards at speed, like a ballroom dancer, swinging his partner after him. Trys was shorter than Jack, and his feet barely touched the floor, the toes of his shoes scuffing the metal. Restrained by Jack's grip, he tried to crane his neck forward, to snap at Jack's face, but Jack evaded him easily.
'Never on a first date,' he said with a good-natured grin, and swept Trys around and across the floor, bypassing the workstations and the zombie he had nicknamed Mildred, which was still strapped in the interrogation chair. Mildred watched them pass with the flat eyes of a snake alert for prey. Jack winked at her and swept Trys across to where Ianto was now waiting, beside a rusty but torso-thick support stanchion, handcuffs at the ready.
The two of them were used to subduing strong and vicious Weevils, and it took them no more than a few seconds to drag Trys's arms behind his back and cuff him to the stanchion. When he was secure, Jack and Ianto stepped away, out of range of his snapping teeth. Trys kept trying to walk towards them, and couldn't seem to work out why he was unable to do so. His constant, frustrated efforts were rather pathetic to see.
'What are we going to tell Sarah?' Ianto said sadly.
Jack looked grim. 'Maybe we won't have to tell her anything.'
Ianto frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'Hey, don't look at me like that! What do you take me for? What I mean is that Trys and Mildred are different. She's not a real zombie, so maybe he's not one too.'
'His condition could be psychosomatic, you mean?'
Jack shrugged. 'Let's find out, shall we?'
It was decided, for the sake of convenience, to cuff Mildred to a stanchion on the far side of the Hub for now, and to transfer Trys to the interrogation chair in order to run some tests on him. Jack managed to seal Mildred's mouth with a strip of duct tape without getting his fingers bitten off, and Ianto slipped a choke-loop attached to a metre-long metal pole over her head. Jack then undid the leather straps securing her to the chair and Ianto directed her across the metal floor of the Hub to another support stanchion on the far side of the vast room.
The sound began as a gentle, almost musical warbling. Jack, who was walking beside Ianto with a second set of handcuffs, came to a halt, a puzzled expression on his face.
'You hear that?'
Ianto nodded. 'What is it?'
'I don't know. It's kinda hard to pin down.'
'It seems to be coming from. . . everywhere,' Ianto said, looking around. 'It sounds like a song.'
Jack frowned. 'Let's worry about one thing at a time. Her first; then we'll work out where the music's coming from.'
They started walking again, Ianto using the metal pole to urge the zombie onwards. The warbling sound grew louder. Jack and Ianto looked at each other. Another few steps, and it was becoming less like a song and more like the howling shriek of an alarm.
They halted again, almost in unison. The sound was unearthly, alien. It filled the Hub with echoes, which resounded and clashed, feeding off one another.
Jack looked up into the vast vault of shadows above him, where the pteranodon could sometimes be seen, swooping and circling.
'What the hell is that?' he demanded, hands over his ears.
Ianto cast about, looking for an answer. His gaze fell on a nearby workbench.
'Look,' he breathed.
Jack looked. 'My God.'
The partially reconstituted pod was going crazy. Coloured lights were flickering across its surface in rapid, but seemingly haphazard patterns. From deep within it emanated a kind of glow, a pulse, like something alive. Now that Ianto had identified it, it was clear that this was the source of the peculiar alien ululation, the heart-rending sound that was somewhere between symphony, siren and scream.
Ianto looked at Mildred and saw the flickering lights of the pod reflected in her dull, silvery eyes.
'It's her,' he said. 'Jack, it's reacting to her.'
Jack nodded. It was true. Unless it was an almighty coincidence, the pod was responding to the proximity of the false zombie, the ersatz meat.
'Now we're getting somewhere,' he muttered.