Owen looked up at him. ‘Who, me?’ he said sarcastically. He straightened up and shrugged, fiddling with the badges which speckled the lapels of his white coat. ‘All right: at a very rough guess, I’d say he was aged between twenty and a hundred.’
‘You’re uncanny, Owen. Narrow it down.’
‘Your age,’ Owen said, without missing a beat.
Jack smiled but said nothing.
‘Is there no way of telling who he was?’ Gwen asked.
‘I checked the missing persons records from the late seventies to the early eighties,’ Ianto said. ‘There are plenty of candidates, obviously. We need more data from the body before we can start sifting.’
‘What if it was a tramp?’ asked Gwen. ‘They wouldn’t necessarily be reported as missing, would they?’
‘I hate the thought of someone never being missed,’ said Ianto sadly. ‘It’s the ultimate humiliation, surely. So unimportant in life that no one even notices when you die.’
‘Theories, anyone?’ prompted Jack. He looked impatient.
‘Your old mate Professor Len was telling Tosh and me about a local witch who used to drag unlucky suitors down into the bog,’ said Gwen. ‘According to him, the last reported victim of Sally Blackteeth went missing on Greendown Moss in 1974.’
‘You think this could be him?’
‘It’s possible.’
Jack nodded. ‘Find out. Get in touch with Professor Len.’ He turned to Owen. ‘Can you tell how he died?’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ Owen said. ‘Initial observations: there’s no obvious sign of violence or mutilation. No broken bones that I can detect thus far. There appears to be some swelling of the neck and throat, but it’s not consistent with strangling. Probably the result of drowning.’
‘He was in the middle of the marsh.’
Owen smiled humourlessly. ‘Wandered off the path, got stuck in the mud. No Professor Len around to help him when he got that sinking feeling. Glug, glug, glug …’
‘That could have been me,’ said Toshiko quietly. She had just appeared on the steps besides Jack, having showered and changed. All Torchwood personnel routinely kept a change of clothes in the Hub in case of emergencies.
‘My, doesn’t she scrub up well?’ said Owen.
‘Leave it out, Owen,’ snapped Gwen. ‘She’s had a bad fright.’
‘Not as big a fright as this guy had,’ Owen gestured at the corpse. ‘The thing is, and call me Mr Boring if you must, but I don’t see what’s so extraordinary about this corpse. He drowned in the marsh. It’s a police matter.’
‘No,’ said Jack firmly. ‘It’s a Torchwood matter. Tosh?’
Toshiko held up a hand scanner. ‘Residual temporal energy all over it. If he didn’t actually come through the Rift, then he was touched by something that did. That makes it our business.’
‘All right,’ Owen said. ‘Let’s have a closer look, then.’ He picked up a large scalpel from the instrument trolley at his side and brandished it dramatically over the corpse like a sacrificial dagger.
‘God, I bet you were unbearable at med school,’ said Gwen.
‘He’s unbearable now,’ said Toshiko, but there was the beginning of a tiny smile on her lips.
‘About to make the first incision,’ Owen announced, suddenly professional. It was almost as if, with the banter and playing around over, he was ready to get on with the job he loved most of all.
He approached the cadaver from the right, leaning over the chest, resting the tip of the scalpel blade against the leathery skin at the bottom of the throat in preparation for the long Y-shaped cut from sternum to navel.
At which point the corpse suddenly convulsed and screamed out loud.
Owen sprang backwards with a yell of surprise, genuinely shocked, as the corpse arched its back on the autopsy table and screamed again. It was a terrible sound: dry, parched, the result of old, decayed lungs forcing air through a withered thorax. The sound of someone jumping on a pair of old, dusty bellows. The head tilted right back, the vertebrae clicking audibly as the mouth stretched open, tearing the stiff skin which covered its cheeks. A shrivelled, blackened tongue quivered between the widening jaws as another rasping cry escaped.
Toshiko had staggered backwards at the first scream, grabbing hold of Gwen instinctively. Gwen stared at the corpse, eyes wide, utterly transfixed. Jack vaulted the chain-link rail and landed next to the autopsy table as the corpse struggled to sit upright.
‘Easy, fella!’ Jack shouted, holding out his hands towards the body to show he meant no harm. But it was doubtful that the thing could see at all. The eyes looked like prunes sunk inside folds of dried skin. The skull was twisting from side to side as if looking around in panic but unable to see a thing. Its mouth kept moving, trying to form words with no lips or proper tongue, leaving nothing but a series of heaving gags to emerge.
‘What’s it trying to say?’ Toshiko asked. ‘It’s trying to say something!’
After a few more seconds, the corpse coughed up a mouthful of thick mud and spat it across the room, spattering the white tiles which lined the walls.
Owen climbed back to his feet, still clutching the scalpel in his white fingers. He watched in shocked fascination as the corpse tried to climb off the examination table, making incoherent shouts and cries, holding out one stiff arm as if feeling for something — anything — to touch.
Jack circled it warily, careful not to get in the way of the shower of brown spittle which burst from the thing’s grinning mouth every time it tried to speak.
The skeletal fingers closed around Gwen’s ankle. She was standing on the walkway, level with the corpse’s head and shoulders.
‘Let her go,’ ordered Jack, moving closer.
But the corpse was in a rage. With an angry cry, it wrenched Gwen off her feet and she tumbled into the autopsy well, scraping her back on the edge of the steps.
Owen stepped forward and rammed the scalpel into the corpse’s neck, just where the jugular vein should be. The blade struck with a dull thud but had no discernible effect. The cadaver grabbed Gwen by the throat and pulled her upright, bringing her close enough for her to feel the gusts of fetid air blowing out of the remains of its nose and mouth.
It held her for a moment, leaning in, almost as if it was intending to kiss her. But then it became obvious that it was simply trying to look at her, to see her more closely. But its desiccated eyes were useless.
‘I said let her go,’ repeated Jack loudly, and this time he had his service revolver out and aimed at the corpse’s head.
‘Jack, it’s already dead!’ Owen warned.
‘Maybe it needs reminding.’ Jack pulled the trigger, the gun roared and a large hole appeared in the corpse’s skull, exploding fragments of bone across the far wall. The corpse staggered, and, reacting instinctively, Gwen used the moment to give it a huge shove with both hands, propelling it backwards until it crashed into Owen’s instrument trolley. The corpse spun around, sending the trolley flying and scattering instruments across the floor of the room.
‘Told you it wouldn’t work,’ said Owen as the corpse continued to struggle. It had regained its feet, turning to face Jack as he walked purposefully towards it, gun arm extended.
‘Wanna bet?’ Jack fired again, blowing the top off the skull at point-blank range. The corpse jerked backwards, lumps of rotted brain matter dangling from the gaping hole in its cranium.
The sounds of the shots had reverberated around the hard surfaces of the Autopsy Room, leaving everyone’s ears ringing. Gwen was yelling at the top of her voice, hands to her face, trying to wipe away the stinking mess from the impact of the first shot. Owen and Jack advanced on the shuddering corpse. Owen looked shocked and ashen-faced, but Jack’s features were set in a mask of determination. His revolver was still aimed straight at the corpse, utterly unwavering.
But the corpse seemed to accept, finally, that enough was enough. It sank to its knees with a series of dry cracks, shaking and
twitching.
‘It’s over,’ said Jack, although he kept the gun trained on the shattered remains of the skull as the cadaver started to waver.
Then, with a last, dry rasp of dead breath, the corpse collapsed. It lay on its back, cold and stiff once again, its face turned sightlessly up towards the glaring lights.
For a second everyone held their positions: Jack with his gun trained on the body, Owen standing by him, Gwen with her hands to her face. Above them, looking down in disbelieving horror, Toshiko and Ianto.
Sticky lumps of black blood dribbled down the tiles and, beneath the shattered skull, a huge mess of brain and bone sat in a thick puddle of blood.
‘I’d just got this place spotless, too,’ said Ianto.
TEN
‘So what the hell happened there?’ demanded Jack. He was circling the desk in his office, arms folded. ‘I thought you said you were bringing a dead body in for examination. Didn’t you think to check he actually was dead first?’
Gwen knew he was being sarcastic, but the tone still stung.
‘Be fair, Jack,’ said Owen from the doorway. ‘Y’know, the guy had done a lot to make himself look dead: lain in a bog for forty years, decayed himself, let the worms in, shrivelled up a bit, stopped breathing, no circulation, all major organs dried up and inactive. Could’ve fooled anyone.’
‘Thanks, Owen,’ said Gwen acidly.
‘OK, so he was dead,’ Jack admitted, stalking past Owen. He looked down into the Autopsy Room. The corpse, now returned to the examination table, had been strapped down. ‘It raises the question, though: why didn’t he stay dead?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Gwen said. ‘We know the corpse shows traces of Rift energy. It has a connection with the weak spot in time here.’ She looked up and met Jack’s gaze. ‘Could it have anything to do with you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Being this close to the actual Rift.’ Gwen flicked her gaze at the chromium pillar running through the centre of the Hub. ‘Being this close to you — someone who cannot die.’
Jack held her gaze. ‘Not buying it.’
‘Why not? It only came back to life when it was here with you and the Rift! It showed nothing of that beforehand — not when we found it, not when we put it in the boot of my car, not when it was brought down here.’
Jack frowned. ‘So why isn’t it still alive now? Same Rift, same me.’
‘Could be something to do with you blowing what was left of its brains all over the walls,’ suggested Owen, and then he held up a hand. ‘No, wait, sorry — that would still only be a clinical definition of something that had to be dead. It may not agree.’
‘So what are we looking at here?’ Jack wanted to know. ‘A zombie?’
‘Or a vampire?’ Gwen said.
Owen sighed and dragged a hand down his face. He needed a shave. ‘We can’t rule anything out at this stage. Tosh is running some tests right now. Maybe she can come up with something.’
Jack turned back to look at the corpse on the table as Gwen joined him. ‘It hasn’t moved again,’ she said. ‘It looks exactly like what it is — a body that’s lain dead in a bog for forty years.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jack with a cold smile, ‘which is exactly what it looked like an hour ago, before it decided to make a bigger comeback than Frank Sinatra.’ He watched Ianto moving around the Autopsy Room, carefully and methodically cleaning the place up, but making sure he kept well out of the corpse’s reach.
‘You’d better come and see this.’ Toshiko was sitting at her workstation, her smooth features lit by the glare from the bank of computer screens mounted above the desk. Her fingers were already rattling across a number of keyboards, and various images flickered over the monitors in response.
‘What you got for us, Tosh?’ Jack leant over her desk and studied the screens. A couple of them showed images relayed from the Autopsy Room: the corpse strapped to the table, and an X-ray of the body. Others showed spectrographic analyses of various factors, and another was showing a digital recording of the moment when the corpse first moved.
On the screen, Owen leant over the body to make the first incision, and then suddenly reeled back as the corpse jerked into life.
‘What’s this then,’ asked Owen, peering at the images, ‘Dawn of the Dead re-run?’
‘Keep watching,’ said Tosh.
They all watched the recording as the corpse climbed off the table, dragged Gwen down, and then took the first bullet from Jack’s gun.
Gwen flinched as she watched, remembering the cold wetness speckling her face as the corpse lurched away from her.
On the screen, the dead body continued to struggle, knocking over the trolley and finally getting a sizeable part of the remains of its head removed by Jack’s second shot. It sank to its knees and collapsed, dead, again.
‘I’ve seen this before,’ Jack said.
‘Didn’t like it much the first time,’ said Gwen.
‘Me neither,’ Owen agreed. ‘I hate repeats.’
‘Wait,’ said Toshiko, touching a control so that the image reversed rapidly to the moment when the corpse started moving. ‘Listen carefully.’
‘If you’re saying someone farted,’ said Owen, ‘then I’m afraid it was me. Understandable, I think, in the circumstances.’
‘No, listen,’ said Toshiko, in no mood for jokes. ‘You can only just hear it …’
She replayed the scene again, tweaking the volume. This time they could clearly hear the scrape of the corpse’s movement, the startled yelp from Gwen as it grabbed her ankle and pulled. They watched as it drew her closer, Gwen recoiling, heard the sharp hiss of breath.
‘It’s saying something,’ Jack realised.
‘Probably couldn’t speak very clearly anyway,’ said Owen. ‘No lips, jaws all stiff, tongue and larynx shrivelled up like leaves. Even if it was trying to say something, it wouldn’t be able to articulate the words properly.’
‘Something about rags?’ suggested Gwen.
‘Maybe we should ask him,’ said Owen. ‘Excuse me, but would you mind coming back to life again just one more time, we didn’t quite catch what you said before.’
‘Play it again,’ said Jack.
They listened.
‘Definitely “rags” or “rag”,’ said Gwen. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘The “s” sound may not be correct,’ Toshiko advised them. ‘There are no lips or tongue to control the speech. It’s trying to say something, but it hasn’t got the means to do it properly.’
‘Might as well be “gottle o’ gear”,’ said Owen.
‘Wait — the computer’s found a match,’ said Toshiko. She touched a control and the sound was replayed again, cleaned and stripped of all extraneous white noise. ‘What if we play that back alongside the visual image?’ She grabbed a keyboard and started typing. Within a few seconds, she had the original video image running again, this time with the enhanced audio.
The corpse slid off the autopsy table, grabbed Gwen, pulled her close. It looked at her, or tried to, and said, ‘Water hag! Water hag!’
And then there was a series of distorted, muffled noises as Owen and Jack spoke on the tape and Jack’s revolver had the last word.
ELEVEN
Bob Strong woke up with a coughing fit. He had fallen asleep on the sofa again, but he couldn’t manage more than a few minutes dozing before the next spasm came. If he had the flu, then he was going to go through hell, he knew that. So many people called a bad cold ‘flu’, but as a doctor he knew there was a vast difference between the common cold and influenza. He knew he could look forward to severe headaches, body cramps, fever, even delirium.
He popped some heavy-duty painkillers down and a decongestant, although they didn’t seem to be having much of an effect. Every time he coughed, he felt as if his chest and throat were on fire as he brought up more burning phlegm, and the reverberations sent shockwaves through his brain.
He lay on the sofa and sweated
his way through Richard amp; Judy. It crossed his mind to get a flu jab — it might just hold off the worst of it, he thought. But in truth he felt too ill to move and there was no way he could get to the surgery. He tried to phone Iuean Evans, but each time he dialled the surgery the line was busy. Then he tried Iuean’s mobile, but that was either switched off or on silent, because he wasn’t answering. Eventually the phone slipped out of Bob’s fingers because they were so sweaty, and he couldn’t be bothered leaning down to pick it up off the floor.
He watched all of Scrum V through a daze, coughing and retching painfully. In one particularly bad fit, he found his tissue speckled with red and green matter. He was coughing so hard his throat was raw. He slumped back into the cushions with a groan. His head was pounding. The rumble of traffic outside his window seemed to shake the entire house as if an express train was running past continuously.
Eventually, he heard his mobile phone ringing. He fumbled around with one hand beneath the sofa, picked up the phone and flipped it open. ‘Iuean?’
‘Bob, how’s it going?’ boomed the familiar voice.
‘Bloody awful. I feel like hell.’ He broke off to cough again, bringing up more phlegm striped with red. ‘Oh, God, sorry … I don’t think I’m gonna be in for the rest of the week, Iuean.’
‘Bob, we need you here,’ said Iuean. His voice sounded strained. ‘It’s absolute bedlam! They’ve been coming in bloody droves. Chest infections, coughs, flu, whatever you want to call it. Nothing adds up, but they just keep coming. We’ve had to turn some away. We’ve redirected them to Blackweir. One or two I sent direct to St Helen’s.’
Bob struggled to sit up. ‘Hell, Iuean, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was that bad. Sounds like they’ve got what I’ve got.’
‘So what are we looking at here? An epidemic?’
‘Have you checked with the surrounding practices?’
‘I wanted to talk to you first. I’ve already had someone from the local press sniffing round.’
‘OK.’ Bob paused to cough again. ‘You’ll have to keep accurate records of how many patients come in with flu symptoms.’
Something in the Water t-4 Page 7
