by Mark Morris
'No, I don't,' said Toby.
'Yeah, you do. You think we're a load of idiots, just cos we like to have a laugh.'
'I didn't say that.'
'You didn't need to. You're like an old woman, all pursed lips and hoity-toity.'
Before Toby could respond, Stan said, 'I reckon he's just scared cos he thinks he'll get in trouble.'
Then they were all making chicken noises and flapping their arms like wings, and in the end Toby found himself tagging along just to save face. He trailed miserably in their wake as they crossed the Cardiff Bay Barrage to Penarth. He watched them shoving and jostling each other, giggling like kids on a school outing, and he felt more like a pariah than ever, even though it was they who'd insisted he come along.
He half-hoped they'd get some trouble at Penarth Quay, half-hoped the security fob would not be enough to grant them access to the Marina. But Steffan simply swiped the card, tapped in his uncle's security pin and they were through. The night-shift guy manning the Marina Office even waved to them as they passed by.
'Here it is, boys,' Steffan said a couple of minutes later. 'What do you think?'
As one, they goggled in drunken disbelief at the craft bobbing sedately on the water before them. The yacht was elegant and immaculately maintained. Constructed of gleaming white fibreglass, it had a single mast, plenty of deck space and a sizeable central cabin area. Even Toby couldn't help but be impressed, though the prospect of his drunken companions taking such a beautiful — and no doubt hideously expensive — vessel out on the water filled him with dread.
'This is so sweet, man,' exclaimed Curtis, laughing and clapping his hands.
'Bleedin' amazing,' nodded Stan, awestruck.
'Do you know how to drive it?' Toby asked nervously, and again Steffan shot him a look so scathing that Toby decided that, starting tomorrow, he would find himself a new set of friends.
'Course I do. Nothing to it, is there. I mean, it's not as if we're going to encounter much traffic.'
The boys all sniggered at Toby's expense. Steffan leaped from the jetty to the deck, staggering a little.
'Well, come on then, gents. Climb aboard.'
One by one they stepped across the divide between jetty and deck. Greg, the drunkest of them, took a few tottering steps sideways and fell over. Toby laughed along with everyone else, but anxiety still gnawed away inside him. Steffan unlocked the door that led down to the living quarters.
'There's beers in the fridge, a bog at the far end, and there's even a bed for everyone, if you fancy a little lie down.'
Curtis descended the steps into the saloon, shaking his head in gleeful wonder. 'Man, I do not believe this,' he muttered. 'This is the height of luxury.'
'Only one rule,' Steffan said as Stan and Greg followed Curtis below decks. 'No throwing up down there. If you want to puke you do it over the side.'
Toby hesitated a moment, contemplating whether to join his friends. Then he turned away and walked over to lean on the metal guard rail which edged the perimeter of the deck, deciding that he couldn't stand another minute of their drunken banter. He stood on the seaward side, looking out over the black water, the chill winter wind ruffling his hair. He wondered what Lauren was doing now. She was at Durham University, and the last time he'd spoken to her, almost two weeks ago, she'd told him she was having a brilliant time.
'Feeling a bit dicky, are we?'
Steffan asked the question as though it was a failing. Toby half-turned to face him.
'No, just fancied some fresh air,' he said.
Steffan snorted, and headed towards the small wheelhouse, which contained the engine controls and navigational equipment. Toby sighed and turned back to gaze over the black water. Blades of reflected moonlight flashed and sparkled on the crests of the swells; tiny waves lapped against the hull. From the saloon floated snatches of throaty, ragged laughter. With a low rumble the engine started up, and then the yacht was moving, sliding out from its berth, heading into the Bay, like a vast and elegant marine creature released from captivity.
It cut through the water with barely a ripple, and within a few minutes they had left the lights of Cardiff Bay behind. Gradually Toby started to relax. It seemed as though Steffan knew how to handle the craft after all. Maybe this wasn't going to be the disaster he'd envisaged.
He breathed in the sharp, salty air and looked up at the moon. He wondered whether any of the guys below decks were talking about him, asking where he was. It still felt weird leaving home, cutting the apron strings. Ridiculous though it seemed, it hadn't sunk in that that was what he'd done until Mum and Dad had said goodbye after getting him settled into the poky room he shared with Curtis in one of the university's halls of residence. Oh, he would go home for Christmas, and even the odd weekend, but as far as living permanently with his parents was concerned, that part of his life was now over. He supposed when he graduated he'd find a job and get his own place somewhere. He'd been looking forward to his independence for a long time, had thought how great it would be to be answerable to nobody but himself — but he had to admit that the sudden reality of it had come as a bit of a shock.
Toby was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn't notice the bank of fog until they were almost upon it. He glanced up, then stepped back from the rail in sudden shock. For a moment he'd thought they were about to hit something solid, a grey concrete wall stretching across the ocean. Certainly the fog seemed as straight and unbroken as a wall. It was weird the way it seemed to just sit on the surface of the sea like a barrier or something.
If Steffan in the wheelhouse had noticed the fog, he didn't seem perturbed by it. The yacht surged forward without faltering, and moments later the fog had swallowed them up.
Toby shuddered. There was an acrid smell, like sour milk or bad breath, and the fog itself had an almost oily texture to it. Tendrils coiled around him like the ghosts of eels. He remembered an old movie about a guy in a boat who starts to shrink after passing through a weird kind of mist out at sea. Stupid, of course, but it made Toby hope that he wasn't inhaling anything poisonous.
He couldn't see more than a few metres in any direction. He hoped Steffan had sonar or radar or something up there in the wheelhouse. If some other vessel loomed out of the fog now, they wouldn't see it until it was too late. Toby listened, but heard nothing except an eerie silence. Rather than feeling relieved, however, he was suddenly struck by the awful notion that he was alone on the yacht, that Steffan and the others had gone, spirited away by something lurking out there in the dark depths of the ocean. He half-turned, intending to make his way to the wheelhouse, so desperate for human company that he was even prepared to put up with Steffan's contemptuous remarks. And then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the fog was gone.
Toby swayed, momentarily disorientated. What the hell was going on? A second ago he hadn't been able to see more than a metre or so in front of him, yet now the sky was clear again, the glittering stars diamond-sharp, the unveiled moon edging the curves and contours of the deck in hard white light.
He consoled himself with the thought that maybe this was normal; that maybe it was some common seafaring phenomenon; that maybe, as a sailor, you'd be used to this kind of thing happening all the time. Perhaps the best thing was simply to shrug it off, accept it as one of countless strange quirks in a world that was full of weirdness. He turned to settle himself once more against the guard rail when he heard pounding footsteps behind him. Looking round he saw Steffan approaching across the deck, a scowl on his face.
'What the hell's going on?' the Welshman demanded.
For a moment Toby thought he was being accused of something, and then he realised that it was a rhetorical question. Steffan all but threw himself against the guard rail, glaring at the sea as though issuing it a challenge.
Hesitantly Toby asked, 'How do you mean?'
Steffan glanced at him. 'Bloody navigation's gone haywire, hasn't it?' He swung round, then did an almost classic double take. 'This
is mad,' he muttered.
Toby followed his gaze. At first he wasn't sure what he was seeing, and then all at once it struck him.
The lights of Cardiff Bay, although still some distance away, were bright enough not only to delineate the shape of the shoreline, but to highlight details of many of the buildings clustered at the water's edge. The effect was undeniably attractive — the pattern of lights coalescing to bathe the land in a welcoming glow — and yet this particular view should not have been visible at all. They had left the lights of Cardiff Bay behind them some time ago. Toby himself had watched them dwindle and wink out, until all that was left was a vague orange haze, like a distant fire on the horizon.
'What do you think's happened?' he asked.
'I don't know, do I?' snapped Steffan. Then his face changed from anger to an almost boyish confusion. 'It's impossible, that's what it is.'
'We must have turned round in the fog,' said Toby.
'We haven't.'
'But we must have.'
Steffan's lips curled to deliver some harsh rejoinder, but at that moment Curtis, Stan and a dazed-looking Greg came pounding up the steps from below.
'What's that noise, man?' Curtis demanded.
Steffan turned irritably. 'What noise?'
'I think we've hit something,' Stan said.
Steffan's face flushed, the heat rising up from the collar of his pale blue polo shirt, suffusing his ears and cheeks. 'Course we haven't,' he barked. 'We're out in the middle of the Bay, you daft sod.'
'Well, something was scraping against the bottom of the boat,' said Curtis.
'We all heard it,' added Stan.
'Could've been a shipwreck or something,' Curtis suggested.
'A shipwreck?' Steffan's voice was a strangled croak. 'What do you think this is? Pirates of the bloody Caribbean?'
Curtis's brow furrowed, and he was about to respond when they heard a deep, steady pounding beneath their feet, followed by a more irregular series of thuds and bangs. They all looked at each other. Steffan's face was puce now, his eyes all but popping out of his head.
'What the hell was that?' said Toby quietly.
Stan had wandered across to the side of the boat and was peering over the guard rail. 'Er. . boys,' he said.
'What now?' barked Steffan.
'There's, er, something in the water.'
They all crowded up to the guard rail to look. Toby saw a dozen or more dark, spherical objects bobbing on the gentle black swells, which rose and fell around the yacht.
'What are they?' asked Curtis. 'Seals?'
'Maybe they're lifebuoys,' said Stan.
Toby caught a flash of movement to his left. He looked around just in time to see a grey hand reach up over the side of the deck and curl around the lowest rung of the guard rail.
He stepped back on to Greg's toe, his mouth dropping open. Stan had seen the hand now too. He let out an incoherent croak and pointed.
Toby had time to observe that the hand was wrinkled and pitted, that strips of flesh were hanging off it like rags.
Then he saw the hand tighten and haul the rest of the body into view, and suddenly it felt as though the air had been wrenched from his lungs.
The creature must once have been human, but now its face was a hollow ruin. Wriggling white eels poured from its empty eye sockets and gaping mouth, spattering on the deck in writhing clumps. The creature's clothes were nothing but colourless tatters, its ribs showing between the rents in its saturated grey flesh. It turned its head towards them, and Toby had the feeling that it could see — or at least sense — them, despite the fact that it had no eyes.
The boys clustered together instinctively, like sheep menaced by a wolf. Toby heard Stan muttering 'shit' over and over; he heard someone whimpering like a child — he thought it might be Steffan. He himself was silent, his mind numb with disbelief; he actually wondered whether he might be dreaming. He looked to his left, and saw another corpse hauling itself over the side of the boat. It was a woman this time, her face purple and bloated, her floral-patterned dress covered in slime. Then there was a noise behind them, and a child scrambled crab-like onto the deck, dripping weed tangled in its hair, the wound in its throat so severe that Toby could see its spinal column through it. Within moments the yacht was overrun, the dead swarming up out of the water from all directions.
With nowhere to run, Toby squeezed his eyes tightly shut and thought of Lauren.
TWO
Gwen was awake in an instant, her hand reaching for her gun. But her gun wasn't there; of course it wasn't. She was at home in bed, curled beneath the duvet in her jim-jams, Rhys snoring quietly beside her.
She sat up, pushing a curtain of glossy black hair out of her face. She imagined she could still hear the scream that had woken her, echoing in the silence. Could it have been a dream? It was possible. She'd had plenty of nightmares since Owen and Tosh had died on that awful day. She knew she'd been a bit clingy with Rhys since then, but he'd been brilliant. She looked down at him now, one hand tucked under his head, mouth slightly open, and she smiled. She reached out to gently stroke his hair. . and heard the clanging clatter of a dustbin lid from the back alley.
She was out of bed, across the narrow landing and wrestling with the stiff catch of the bathroom window before the edge of the duvet had even settled into place behind her. Finally winning her battle with the catch, she shoved the window open and stuck her head out.
She couldn't see much. The angles were all wrong. Just a jutting length of wall, stretching down to a sliver of ground, and the edge of a dustbin, viewed from above, peeking around the corner. All of it was soaked in the orange light of an overhead lamp, and gleamed grittily in the drizzle that Gwen could feel speckling the back of her exposed neck.
Ducking back inside, she tugged the window shut, shivering at the chill.
'What's going on?' said a voice behind her.
She spun, startled. Rhys was standing there in T-shirt and boxers, face rumpled from sleep, hair sticking up every which way.
'Rhys!' Gwen gasped and slapped him lightly on the chest. 'Don't do that to me. I nearly had a heart attack.'
He grinned boyishly. 'Oh, that's charming, that is. Frightened of me after all the horrible things you've seen.' He nodded at the now-closed window. 'What you doing anyway?'
'I heard something,' she said.
'One of those Weevil things, was it?'
'I heard a scream. Thought I heard a scream. It woke me up. Then I heard a clatter, like a dustbin lid falling off.'
'Want me to go have a look?'
She couldn't help smiling. 'Don't be daft. If anyone's going to go, it should be me.'
Rhys looked offended. 'Hey, you might be a rough, tough defender of the planet at work, Mrs Williams, but let a bloke have a bit of pride in his own home.'
Gwen chuckled and kissed him on the forehead. 'Fine. We'll go together.'
Two minutes later they had dragged on clothes and boots and were hurrying down the stairs of the apartment block. Ignoring the front door, they headed towards the heavily bolted door at the back of the building, which led out into the narrow alleyway threading between their street and the one parallel. Gwen reached the door as Rhys was still thumping down the last flight of stairs, and began drawing back the thick bolts.
'Let me go first,' Rhys panted.
Gwen used one hand to twist the catch on the door and the other to produce her Torchwood-issue semi-automatic from inside her leather jacket.
'I'm the one with the gun,' she replied, raising her eyebrows.
Rhys pulled a face. 'Come on, love, bit of an overreaction, don't you think? Not every disturbance in Cardiff is caused by psychotic aliens, you know. It's more likely to be Betty Prudom's cat.'
'I know, but still. . better safe than sorry,' Gwen said and slipped outside.
By the time Rhys had followed her into the chill drizzle of the night, Gwen was already stalking down the alley, black and silent, looking not unlike a cat hersel
f. Her shadow stretching out long and thin before her, she moved towards the brick extension jutting from the rear of the building, which narrowed the alley still further and hid the line of dustbins from view.
Rhys hurried towards her, footsteps crackling on the wet ground. She turned and placed a finger to her lips. He rolled his eyes.
'Listen,' she whispered.
He listened. Something was moving in the alley, shuffling around near the bins. Something that sounded bigger than a cat.
Left hand cupped around her right, in which she held her gun, Gwen crept forward. She reached the wall, flattened her back against it, sidled up to the edge and peered around the corner.
She went very still. Rhys was beside her now, feeling like a bit of a spare part.
'Well?' he hissed. 'What can you see?'
Her head jerked round to look at him, hair swishing across her face. Her eyes were wide, face taut with disbelief.
'What is it, Gwen? Talk to me,' he said.
Suddenly she was a blur of movement. Instead of replying, she swung out into the alley, body poised and balanced, arms extended, gun pointing at whatever was moving about by the bins.
'Get up slowly,' she barked. 'Keep your hands where I can see them.'
For a split second Rhys wondered whether he ought to stay where he was, out of sight. Then he thought, Sod that, and moved across to stand beside his wife.
He had a clear view of the alley now, all the way to the sagging chain-link fence at the far end. To their immediate right, snug against the back of the house, was a line of metal dustbins, one per flat, each with a big white number painted on its lid.
Rhys barely registered any of this. He was too busy goggling at the figure squatting on the ground no more than five metres away. He shuddered as a wave of revulsion and cold, prickling fear swept through him.
The man — a tramp, judging by the rags he was wearing — was eating a cat. Rhys thought it might be the old ginger tom which belonged to Betty, their downstairs neighbour, but it was hard to be sure. The poor animal had been ripped apart and devoured, like a roast chicken at a medieval banquet. Most of its remains were lying on the ground at the man's feet, a mangled mass of fur and gore. Even now, as if oblivious to their presence, the man was gnawing on one of the animal's detached limbs, his chin and clothes smeared liberally in blood and guts.
