Bay of the Dead t-11

by Mark Morris

  Finally, on the other side of the road, the imposing façade of Police Headquarters came into view, its myriad windows staring down at them.

  'No,' Andy breathed.

  Sophie leaned forward, between the seats. 'What is it?'

  'We'll never get in. Look.'

  Sophie looked. The police station was under siege. Zombies were massing around it, stumbling up the steps that led to the main entrance, battering against the building with their hands, or their bodies.

  As Andy edged closer, he saw that the building had battened down its hatches. All its doors were firmly closed, and the faces of those who had taken refuge inside were peering out of lighted windows. Looking closer, he saw that a number of bodies were strewn on the ground, though whether they were the bodies of the undead or their victims he couldn't be sure. Certainly one car was simply stationary in the opposite lane, its lights on and doors open, as if the occupants had left in a hurry. Another car — a police car like Andy's own, the word 'Heddlu' clearly visible on the side — had mounted the pavement and destroyed a sapling. This car had dark smears on the mostly white bodywork, but its erstwhile occupants were nowhere in sight.

  Sophie made a sudden sound, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. 'They've seen us,' she squeaked, and then her voice suddenly escalated into panic. 'Get us out of here! Get us out!'

  Andy didn't argue. It was clear that the station would not be the safe haven he had been hoping for. With no clear thought as to where he was heading, except away from the dead eyes and grasping hands of the dozens of zombies which were now turning towards them, he put his foot down and sped away.

  Gwen suddenly stopped and slumped against a wall, as if her legs had given out on her. She covered her face with hands that Rhys saw were shaking badly.

  'You all right, love?' he asked. He himself felt scooped-out, empty, after the death of the couple in the café.

  Gwen's voice, muffled beneath her hands, was trembling with anger. 'That man, that. . that. .'

  Words failed her then, and when her hands dropped Rhys saw that her face was twisted in abhorrence and rage.

  Abruptly she shrieked, a savage war-cry of a sound, and began to kick and pummel the wall, yelling until her voice gave out.

  Rhys looked around anxiously, terrified she would attract undue attention, but he didn't try to stop her. She needed to let it out. Gwen was not the sort of person who could bottle things up.

  Eventually she slumped again, her fury spent. Rhys opened his arms.

  'Come here,' he said softly.

  She tumbled into his embrace, and for a minute or more they just stood there in the drizzle, locked together in misery and anguish and fear and mutual comfort.

  At last she took a deep breath and broke away. 'I'm OK now,' she said. 'We should be getting on.'

  Her phone rang. She scooped it from her pocket. 'Jack? Oh, Andy. . hi.'

  She listened for a moment, and then said, 'Why, what's happened?'

  Rhys saw her face change. She breathed out a long, 'Ohh. .' of weary despair. Eventually she said, 'Just go home, Andy. Barricade yourself in. There's nothing else you can do.'

  She paused, listening to his response, and the grimace she flashed at Rhys spoke volumes. He knew from her expression that Andy was nearing the end of his tether, bending Gwen's ear, probably demanding to know why Torchwood weren't doing anything about the situation. He felt a flash of anger and held out his hand for the phone, but Gwen shook her head.

  'You'll just have to look after her the best you can,' she said. 'You know the score. I can't work miracles, Andy.'

  She half-smiled at his response. When she next spoke her voice was softer. 'That's OK. . We all are. Look, just get home and keep yourself safe, all right?'

  She put the phone back in her pocket.

  'Lovelorn Andy giving you a hard time, is he?' said Rhys.

  Gwen cocked a reproving eyebrow. 'He's up against it, just like us. But he gave me some useful information, as it happens. Police HQ is overrun with zombies. Sorry, Rhys, but we'll have to change our plans again.'

  Rhys groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. 'You mean we've come all this way for nothing? So what do we do now?'

  Gwen's expression suggested they were running out of options, but she tried to sound purposeful. 'We'll revert to our original plan — go back to the Hub.'

  'And do what? Hide underground and hope it all goes away?'

  'What other choice do we have?' she snapped suddenly, and then immediately she raised both hands. 'Sorry, sorry.'

  Rhys blew out a long breath.

  'No, love, it's me who should be apologising. You've got equipment at the Hub. Computers and that. You might be able to come up with something. It's just the thought of having to retrace our steps through that. . that war zone back there.'

  'We'll go down Lloyd George Avenue,' Gwen said. 'It's not far.'

  'Far enough,' Rhys replied. 'It's a long, straight road without much cover, that is.' He smiled without humour. 'Valley of death.'

  'We'll get transport,' Gwen said. 'Something big and solid.'

  'From where?' said Rhys.

  'Wherever we can find it.'

  'Oh, so we're common car thieves, are we now?'

  She shrugged. 'Needs must when the devil drives, Rhys.'

  Rhys nodded at the pocket where she kept her phone. 'Why don't you try Jack again, see if he can come and pick us up?'

  Gwen had called a flustered Ianto twenty minutes earlier, only to be told that he was in the middle of delivering a baby and that Jack was dead again. It had not been a long conversation.

  'Jack and Ianto have enough on their hands,' she said. 'Besides, I'm not using them as a taxi service. I do have my pride, you know.'

  'Bloody stubborn is what you are,' Rhys said, albeit with the trace of a smile.

  'I think you mean independent, don't you?' said Gwen, smiling back at him.

  They set off, emerging from the back alleys along which they had been skulking, and starting down the wide, straight expanse of Lloyd George Avenue, which ran parallel with Bute Street, and stretched all the way from Cardiff city centre to Roald Dahl Plass. The modest houses lining both sides of the road, fronted by grass verges, were dark and quiet, and there appeared to be no sign of zombie activity in the immediate vicinity.

  Even so, they felt nervous and exposed, and moved as swiftly and silently as they could, their eyes darting everywhere, their hands tightly clutching their respective weapons. The wet road stretching before them was a rusty, glittering brown under the light from the street lamps. To Rhys, their footsteps sounded like little crackling detonations, which he couldn't believe weren't audible for miles around.

  They had been walking for only a couple of minutes when Gwen hissed, 'Rhys, over there.'

  At first he thought she had spotted a zombie, and tensed, but then realised she was referring to a silver Mitsubishi Shogun parked in front of a house to their left.

  They ran across to it. Gwen tried the doors.

  'You didn't honestly expect it to be open, did you?' Rhys whispered.

  She shrugged. 'You never know.'

  She produced something from the pocket of her jacket, a stubby black circular device, like a miniature hubcap. When she placed it on the door of the car it remained there, clinging like a limpet. Lights with no discernible source rippled across its surface.

  'What's that, then? One of your alien doodahs?' said Rhys.

  'Sort of. It's something Tosh came up with. But it's derived from alien technology, yes.'

  There was the sudden chunky sound of locks disengaging.

  'Et voilà!' exclaimed Gwen, grinning.

  'What the hell do you think you're doing?'

  They spun round to see the Shogun's owner framed in the open doorway of the house behind them. He was in his mid-thirties, hair tousled, face unshaven and rumpled with sleep. He was wearing a grey T-shirt stretched over a burgeoning beer belly and baggy black boxer shorts. In his hands he was
brandishing a red squeegee mop.

  He's just like me, Rhys thought with a horribly embarrassed sense of shame, and here we are about to nick his pride and joy.

  He held up his hands, though tried not to make it look as though he was wielding his golf club like a weapon, and flashed his teeth in a contrite grin.

  'Hello, mate,' he said. 'Listen, this isn't what it looks like.'

  'What were you doing with my-' the man said, and then the expression on his face changed from outraged indignation to an open-mouthed, almost comical, gape.

  Rhys realised that the car owner was no longer looking at him. He turned his head, stomach clenching with an even more acute sense of embarrassment when he saw that Gwen was pointing her gun at the man.

  'Come on, love, there's no need for that,' he said light-heartedly, trying to flash the man a reassuring smile.

  'I'm really sorry,' Gwen said, looking as though she meant it, 'but we need your car. It's a matter of life and death.'

  'We'll bring it back when we've finished with it,' Rhys promised.

  'So if you could just get us the keys,' Gwen said.

  The man looked bewildered and scared. Holding up his hands, as though aping Rhys's actions of a few moments before, he nodded mutely and backed stumblingly into his house. Then his eyes widened further and his head jerked to look at something over Gwen's shoulder.

  Rhys followed his gaze. 'Oh, crap,' he said.

  Eight zombies had appeared from the shadows of the house opposite and were shambling across the road towards them. One was dressed as a clown, its face a repulsive blend of dark rot and white greasepaint; another was an air hostess, her cap perched at a jaunty angle on her wizened, almost hairless head.

  Gwen turned and took a shot at one of the zombies, hitting it in the throat. It rocked back on its heels, and then resumed its advance, thin blood streaming from the wound. Turning back to the man she said urgently, 'Go back into your house and lock yourself in.'

  'Gwen, we can't leave him,' said Rhys, 'not now the zombies have seen him. You know what they were like at the café when they knew someone was inside. He'll have to come with us.'

  Gwen paused and thought for a moment, then said, 'OK. Run inside and get the keys to the car. Be as quick as you can. I'll hold them off till you get back.'

  The man hesitated.

  'What are you waiting for?' Gwen snapped.

  'I've got a wife and daughter,' said the man. 'They're asleep upstairs. I'm not leaving them.'

  Gwen swore. The zombies were moving slowly, and it was a wide road, but there would be nowhere near enough time for the man to wake his family and bring them out to the car before the creatures were upon them. Maybe she and Rhys could take them all out, she thought; there were only eight of them, after all.

  At that moment at least a dozen more zombies appeared from between two houses on her left and started moving in their direction.

  'What's this?' Rhys shouted, head swivelling from one group of zombies to the other. 'Zombie tactics? They've got us in a pincer movement!'

  Gwen took another shot at the zombies, hitting one of them in the shoulder, but it was no more than a token gesture. She knew that, no matter how slow the undead were, there was no way she and Rhys would be able to put them all down before they overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. If she and Rhys had been on their own, she would have suggested beating a hasty retreat, but she couldn't face the thought of leaving a young family to the mercy of the creatures, not after what had happened at the café.

  And so she did the only thing she could — she grabbed Rhys and propelled him towards the house.

  'Inside!' she shouted. 'We'll fight them from there.'

  'Not sure that's a good idea,' he panted, running along beside her. 'Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?'

  She scowled. 'Have you got any better ideas?'

  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 abo
ut 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.'