SIX
'That's interesting,' Ianto said.
He and Jack had just entered the Hub through the revolving cog-wheel door, which was now rolling back into place behind them. They were here to check data, take readings, try to find some rhyme and reason for what was happening – and thus, they hoped, formulate a strategy to combat it.
Jack was in the lead, striding along the iron walkway towards the central work area, where a bank of interlinked computers and readout screens assimilated and displayed information.
Now he glanced over his shoulder to see that Ianto had come to a halt, his attention elsewhere.
'What is?' Jack asked.
Ianto indicated a work bench tucked into an alcove close to the steps leading down to the Autopsy Room. On the bench was a shattered chunk of what looked to have once been a football-sized orb of some silvery, iridescent material. The orb fragment, which rippled gently with light, was nestled within a complex cradle of monitoring equipment, not unlike a miniature version of the work station area. Ianto's attention was snagged by a scrolling bank of data on a monitor screen.
'These enzyme readings are going through the roof,' he said.
'Meaning?'
'Meaning that the pod's rate of regeneration is increasing exponentially.'
Jack arched an eyebrow. He appreciated Ianto's efforts to step into the considerable breach left by the deaths of Owen and Tosh, but he couldn't deny that the extra workload his friend and colleague had recently taken on affected his focus on occasion. Even the normally exceptional standard of Ianto's coffee had slipped a little these past months. Not that Jack would have said anything. Ianto would have been devastated.
'Your point being?'
Ianto shrugged. 'It's just interesting, that's all. Didn't I already say that?'
'You did,' Jack acknowledged, 'and much as I admire your ability to multitask, I really think we need to focus on the matter in hand.' He smiled to show his words were not intended as a reprimand, and swept away, resuming his long-legged stride towards the Rift-monitoring equipment, which was invariably their first port of call in an emergency, and the technological heart of the Hub.
By the time Ianto had joined him, Jack was hopping from screen to screen, poring over the ever-shifting banks of figures and diagrams.
'Look at this,' he said, jabbing at a schematic of a dome-like structure looming over a gridded relief map of the city.
Ianto leaned forward, automatically smoothing down his tie with his hand. 'What is it? Some kind of energy barrier?'
'A time energy barrier,' Jack corrected. 'Highly sophisticated. This is not good.'
'So we're sealed in?'
'Like rats in a cage. Nothing can enter or leave the city. It's gonna play havoc with the gene pool.'
Ianto didn't laugh, but raised his eyebrows to acknowledge the quip. 'What about the visitors?'
Jack moved to another computer, tapped out a few directions on the keyboard, and a more detailed street map of the city flashed up on a large, free-standing flatscreen a few metres away. This map, etched in ice-blue light, was speckled with random clusters of ant-like blips. Even as Ianto watched, more blips appeared, seemingly from nowhere.
'Zombies,' Jack said. Ianto winced. 'As you can see, they're just. . . popping into existence all over.'
'They're coming through the Rift, you mean?'
'You'd think so, wouldn't you?' Jack shook his head. 'But here's the weird thing. There are no signs of recent Rift activity.'
Ianto stared at him. 'But that's impossible.'
'All the same. . .' Jack shrugged, waving a hand at the screen, as if to say: Here's the evidence. Deal with it.
Ianto crossed back to the computer readouts, stared at them, matching one to the other, trying to make sense of what they were telling him. Finally he said, 'But according to these readings, each of the visitors does possess a residual trace of Rift energy. It's almost as if. . .'
He tailed off, seeking an explanation. Jack nodded, picking up his train of thought. 'As if the zombies haven't actually come through the Rift, and yet are still linked to it in some way.'
Ianto looked bewildered. 'But that doesn't make sense. Does it?'
'Maybe not,' Jack said, and grinned suddenly. 'But when all's said and done, what the hell does make sense in this crazy universe of ours?'
Ianto looked thoughtful, and then sighed. 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?'
'Reckon I am,' Jack said, adopting a good-ole-boy accent. 'Let's you and me head on out into them there badlands and go bag us a cotton-pickin' zombie.'
'Remember what Rianne told you,' Trys said. 'Breathe through the pain.'
Sarah Thomas scowled at her husband. She was slumped in the passenger seat of their Passat, hands gently stroking her swollen belly. The contractions were more frequent now, and more acute.
'I am breathing through the pain,' she said through gritted teeth. 'You just concentrate on driving.'
She was being snappy, but Trys could hardly blame her. He said nothing, fixing his eyes back on the road. He was driving steadily now, after a panicky start. Soon after they had set off, Sarah had put a hand on his arm and said, 'Calm down, Trys. It's more important to get us there in one piece than it is to break the land-speed record.'
'Sorry,' he had replied. 'I'm not handling this very well, am I?'
'You're doing fine,' she'd told him, as if he was the one about to give birth. 'There's no one else I'd rather be with tonight.'
One thing Trys was thankful for was that at this hour the suburban roads leading to the hospital were blessedly quiet. Aside from a couple of drunks they had seen lurching along the pavement, there was no one about.
'We'll be there soon,' he told her. 'How you doing, love?'
'Doing fine,' she said, and then her weary smile turned into a look of alarm. 'Trys, watch out!'
Trys had only glanced away from the road for a split second. Now he turned back, and was astonished to see that he was bearing down on a quartet of figures crouched in the path of his headlights. Fortunately the figures were still far enough away that he had plenty of time to react. He eased his foot gently down on the brake and gave a warning bip of his horn. He expected the figures to look up, perhaps acknowledge him with a wave and move aside, but they remained where they were, as if oblivious to the car's presence. As the Passat got closer to them, slowing all the while, Trys realised that the figures were crouching over something, that a dark shape was lying in the road at their feet.
'Looks as though someone's hurt,' he said, slowing to a stop.
Even now, in the glare of the headlights, the figures did not respond. Sarah shifted in the passenger seat, one hand spread protectively over her belly.
'More likely drunk,' she said. 'Or maybe this lot have mugged the guy in the road and they're going through his pockets.'
'Always so cynical,' Trys said with a wry smile.
'No, just realistic,' replied Sarah bluntly. 'Not everyone's as nice as you, you know, Trys.'
'I'm aware of that,' he said, more sharply than he intended. 'I'm not an idiot.'
'I never said you were.' Then her voice and face softened. 'Come on, let's just get out of here. Back up and take the next road. It won't make any difference.'
'We can't leave someone lying injured in the street,' he said. 'He might need urgent medical attention.'
'I need urgent medical attention,' Sarah said. 'I'm having our baby, remember.'
'I'll just find out what's going on,' Trys said, reaching for the door handle. 'I won't be a minute.'
'No, Trys, don't.' Sarah grabbed her husband's arm.
He looked at her quizzically. 'Why not?'
'I've just got a bad feeling about this. It could be a trap.'
'I'll stay close to the car,' he assured her. 'Don't worry, I'll be fine.' He laid his hand over hers and stroked it gently. 'The sooner I find out, the sooner we can go.'
Reluctantly she let go of him. 'All right, but be careful. And we're not giving anyone a lift to the hospital.'
He raised a hand in agreement and got out of the car. The soft drizzle was like the touch of ghostly fingertips on his skin.
'Excuse me,' he said, taking a few steps forward. Even now the crouching figures failed to respond to him. He stepped closer, until he was standing parallel with the front of the Passat. Drizzle filled the white beams of the headlights like silver static. Clearing his throat and raising his voice, Trys tried again. 'Excuse me.'
This time one of the figures seemed to register his presence. It stiffened a little, hunching its shoulders. Trys took another couple of steps forward, until he was standing partially in the beam of one of the headlights, fracturing and narrowing it.
'Is everything OK?' he asked. 'Do you need help?'
On unsteady legs, the figure which had hunched its shoulders began to rise from its crouched position. Slowly it turned towards him. The instant the light fell on its face, Trys felt a jolt of shock and fear lance down through his body.
The figure had no eyes. Just black holes where its eyes had once been. Its withered skin, the colour of old leaves, clung tightly to the skull beneath. Worst of all, it had a piece of raw, ragged meat, oozing blood, dangling from its mouth.
Trys staggered backwards. All at once his limbs felt alien, unresponsive, his thoughts soft and soupy, as though he was about to faint. He blinked, trying to focus, and as the other figures began to rise he saw clearly for the first time what they had been crouching over.
It was a human body, so horribly mangled that its sex was impossible to determine. It had been gutted, the stomach ripped open, the entrails pulled out and strewn across the tarmac. Clearly the creatures, the ghouls – Trys felt his mind skidding away from the undeniable fact that the figures now closing slowly in on him were zombies – had been feasting on it. Their hands were gloved in blood, their hideous dead faces masked in offal. One of the zombies was a teenage girl in a gore-spattered Girls Aloud T-shirt, who even now was chewing on one of the victim's feet.
The backs of Trys's thighs bumped against the car. Surprised, his legs folded forward at the knees, causing him to sit on the bonnet. Even in his dreamy disbelief he was aware of how cold and wet the metal was through the seat of his jeans. He heard banging behind him and turned his head. Despite the obstruction of her belly, Sarah was leaning forwards, her face contorted with panic, her fist bashing the inside of the windscreen.
She was mouthing at him, and all at once it was as though his senses had unblocked, and suddenly he could hear her words.
'Get in!' she was screaming. 'Get in! Get in!'
It was enough to snap Trys out of his trance. He turned and slithered across and around the bonnet, the zombies just behind him. His foot skidded from under him on the slippery pavement, but he managed to regain his balance. He reached for the door handle and grabbed it.
But before he could pull it open, he heard a sighing groan behind him, and a hand came down on his shoulder. Despite the emaciated state of his pursuer, the thing's grip was fierce, immovable. Trys yelped as knife-sharp fingers dug through the fabric of his jacket and into his flesh. Then he felt something worse – a hot, searing pain just above his elbow. He glanced behind him and screamed. The teenage girl had cast aside the gnawed foot and was sinking her teeth into the meat of his arm.
Trys fought frantically, trying to struggle free, but the other zombies were on him now, one biting into his shoulder, another latching onto his back. He thought of Sarah, of his unborn baby, of how he had to somehow escape from this because he had to drive his wife to hospital, had to spend the rest of his life being a dad to his son or daughter. He looked through the car window and saw Sarah's screaming, hysterical face, and he wanted to tell her that he was sorry, that she was right, that he should never have got out of the car, that he should have listened to her. He could feel hot, hot pain spreading across the back of his body; could feel the shocking wetness of his own blood running down his back and soaking through his clothes. Fighting the threat of unconsciousness, he took a renewed grip on the handle and managed to yank the driver's door a little way open.
Like wailing banshees escaping from a box, Sarah's terrible, high-pitched screams came tearing out of the car. Instantly Trys realised his mistake, realised that all he had achieved was to deflect the zombies' attention away from him and onto his wife. Whether it was her screams or the baby inside her which attracted them, Trys had no idea, but suddenly he felt himself released, pushed aside, like a bag of rubbish.
He tried to stay on his feet, determined to defend his wife and unborn child to his last breath, but his body wouldn't respond. As consciousness slipped away, he felt his legs folding under him, felt himself sliding down the side of the car, his hands squeaking as he tried vainly to get a grip on the wet metal. Then he was lying in the gutter, the drizzle speckling his upturned face. The last thing he heard as he lay there, as the searing pain of his injuries seemed to exude a darkness which threatened to overwhelm him, was Sarah's voice, raggedly screaming his name over and over again.