Something in the Water t-4

by Trevor Baxendale

  ‘Gwen? It’s Owen. I’m on my way to the park. ETA five minutes. Ianto says the cops are heading your way too.’

  ‘Then bloody well step on it, Owen!’ Gwen ran around the lakeside after Jack. ‘We’re chasing a water hag!’

  The thing floated no more than ten feet off the ground, trailing weeds and water through the small copse of trees which edged the lake. Jack flew after it, leaping into the air and grabbing hold of the dangling rags. He brought it crashing down into a pile of rotting leaves and mud.

  ‘Gotcha!’ he roared, only to receive a teeth-rattling blow to the side of his head which sent him reeling. He smashed into a tree, shook his head and then hurled himself on top of the thing again before it could properly regain its feet.

  They rolled through the leaves, crashing into a patch of moonlight. Jack sat on top of it and saw a dark, twisted face the colour of mud staring up at him with insane, dirty yellow eyes. A thin mouth broke open to reveal dark, needle-like teeth in pale gums. The creature let out a foul hiss of rage and threw him off with phenomenal strength. Jack whirled, hit the dirt, and then looked up to find the thing pouncing on him. Yellow eyes glared and spit drooled from the dark fangs.

  ‘Naughty Jack!’ it screeched at him. She cuffed him across the face, drawing blood. Then she licked his face with a long, cold tongue. ‘You taste all wrong!’ she said, and spat it back at him. ‘You’re all messed up, Torchwood boy!’

  ‘OK, now I’m not just intrigued,’ said Jack. ‘I’m annoyed. Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m Sally Blackteeth!’

  ‘Lovely name. Got a boyfriend?’

  She leaned down over him and smiled wickedly. ‘Professor Len. Did you know him?’

  ‘Bitch,’ said Jack.

  ‘Dead meat,’ said Sally Blackteeth.

  ‘Him or me?’

  ‘Both.’

  She swung at him again, but he was ready for it this time, blocking with his left forearm, letting the wrist-strap take the brunt. She snarled and lashed out again, and this time he used the momentum to roll her off him so that he could swing himself up on top of her. It proved to be a bad move; by some strange anatomical contortion she managed to knee him in the groin. He curled up with a hard grunt of pain but now he could hear that the police sirens were getting much closer. Blue light flickered through the trees.

  Sally Blackteeth twisted around, swiping Jack away with the back of one hand as he climbed to his knees. He looked back up just in time to see her disappearing into the glistening darkness and flashing lights.

  Jack got back to his feet with a groan just as Gwen came running up. ‘It’s gone that way,’ she panted, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him after her.

  ‘She knew who I was,’ Jack said.

  They stumbled through the trees and emerged by the lakeside, just as the water hag rose swiftly into the air. Jack pulled his gun and fired, sending two rounds after the fleeing shape.

  ‘Missed her,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Shine the light on it!’ he yelled, running down into the water, gun arm extended, taking his time now, sighting carefully.

  Gwen had automatically counted his shots — three before and a double-tap just now. That left one more bullet in the gun. She waved the torch beam frantically until the light caught something glistening high in the air above.

  Jack adjusted his aim, narrowed one eye, squeezed the trigger. The revolver boomed, its final word echoing over the lake before being drowned out by the noise of approaching policemen.

  ‘Armed police! Drop your weapon!’ shouted the first man on the scene, dropping to one knee and taking aim at Jack with a steady, two-handed grip on his automatic. ‘I said drop your weapon! Now!’

  Jack turned around, eyebrow raised.

  ‘This is your final warning,’ bellowed the marksman. ‘Lower the gun to the ground or I will shoot.’

  ‘Back off,’ said Jack. ‘It’s Torchwood.’

  The officer pulled the trigger as the last word left Jack’s lips. At this range, the first round was powerful enough to lift him right off his feet, and the second, catching him in the shoulder, spun him right around so that he hit the ground face down in the mud.

  The marksman blinked, as if surprised by what he had just done. ‘Did he say Torchwood?’

  ‘Hold your fire!’ A voice echoed across the park, and Owen Harper strode out of the dark mist. ‘Lower your weapons. This entire area is now contained under a Torchwood restriction.’

  The police officers were staring in dumb bewilderment at the scene in front of them: a headless dog lying in the mud, an eviscerated human corpse stretched out on the bank, Jack Harkness face down in the water, Gwen standing a little way off looking completely shocked. And Owen striding through them all, right up to the officer in charge until they were nose-to-nose.

  ‘You in charge here?’

  ‘I’m SOCO, yes,’ replied the officer stiffly. ‘Sergeant Kilshaw.’

  ‘Piss off, then,’ said Owen.

  ‘OK, Owen,’ Gwen said, walking over. ‘I’ll handle this now.’

  The SOCO turned gratefully towards her. ‘Is this true? This is Torchwood business?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ Gwen said, mustering a smile from somewhere. She put on her official voice and said, ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you and your men to leave the area. Thanks for responding, but we’ll take over now.’

  ‘Uh … yeah. OK.’

  The SOCO looked utterly bewildered, and Gwen softened her tone slightly. ‘You could set up a cordon around the park, though. We don’t want any innocent nosy parkers getting involved, do we?’

  Sergeant Kilshaw nodded, as if only too glad to be given an excuse to withdraw. Then he hesitated, looking down at the gutted corpse dumped on the grass nearby. ‘Miss, we have a dead body here. I understand what you’re saying, and I know Torchwood has absolute priority, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving it like this.’

  Gwen held his gaze, steady but not combative. ‘I’m sorry, but you said it yourself — absolute priority.’

  ‘I need to find out who he is. We have to inform his family. Can I do that?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll liaise with you and get the details sorted out as soon as.’

  Sergeant Kilshaw still wasn’t happy, but he knew there was nothing he could do. Yet he paused again, unwilling to leave without claiming some sort of concession. ‘What about my man?’ He indicated the officer who had shot Jack. Already another member of the firearms team was relieving the marksman of his weapon, and dropping it into a plastic evidence bag for the routine forensic tests that would follow. ‘There’ll be an enquiry. It’s the law.’

  ‘No need,’ drawled a voice from the lakeside. Jack was getting slowly to his feet, his face and coat soaked with muddy water and streaked with his own blood. He walked slowly across to the SOCO and smiled. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘What?’ Kilshaw looked down at the deep red stain spreading across Jack’s shirt.

  ‘He missed,’ Jack said simply.

  The policeman frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Cap’n Jack Harkness,’ said Jack warmly. He shook the SOCO’s hand and flashed him another bright smile. ‘Like I said, no harm done. Get your men together and go, Sergeant. We’ll handle things from here.’

  ‘He missed?’ repeated Kilshaw, still staring at the blood seeping through Jack’s blue shirt.

  ‘Yeah. In fact, I’d reprimand him if I were you. Looks like he needs a bit more practice on the shooting range, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘So where’d it go?’ Owen asked a little while later. The three of them were standing by the lake. It was still and deathly quiet. The surface was placid, mirror-smooth under the black night sky.

  ‘Up there, I think.’ Jack was looking up at the sky, searching the low clouds tinged with orange from the sodium lights of Cardiff. Spots of rain began to hit his face, making the blood and dirt run.

  ‘You mean she can fly?’

  ‘Crocodile with a jet-pack
. She rose up out of the water, and then we lost her in the dark.’ Jack looked back down at his revolver, which had its cylinder out so that he could reload. ‘Think I winged her, though.’

  ‘It got away again, then.’ Owen kicked at the grass in disgust.

  ‘You reckon it’s the same thing we saw in the fish farm?’

  ‘Look at the body.’ Owen crouched down next to the dog-walker. He used a pencil to indicate the gaping wound, teasing at the torn cloth and flesh. ‘This is just like the security guard and Big Guy; practically split him in half.’

  Gwen, who had been standing a little apart while she reported back to the Hub, called over. ‘I’ve given Tosh the details. She’s going to sort out removal of the body and a suitable story for the cops.’

  ‘What about the press?’ asked Jack. ‘They’ll be all over this place soon.’

  ‘She’s on it. She says the press and TV are the easiest to sort out, because brutal murders in local parks are just what they like to hear about and they’ll believe anything.’ Gwen suppressed a shiver at the thought of Torchwood’s cover-up expert going through the routine of disguising their involvement and ‘normalising’ the incident. It was something Gwen almost took for granted now. Almost. Just like the violent, terrible deaths she had witnessed with incredible regularity since joining Torchwood. She had made a promise to herself, early on and with Jack’s encouragement, that she would never become desensitised to it. And yet here she was, staring dispassionately at the eviscerated body at their feet with the same sort of cool, professional detachment that she had seen displayed by the other, experienced members of Torchwood when she first joined the team.

  Jack, as ever, seemed to read her thoughts. ‘You OK?’ he asked softly.

  Gwen shrugged and blew out a long, slow breath of mist into the cold night air. ‘I dunno, Jack. I don’t feel anything. Just a bit sick — but that’s the adrenalin climb-down, I think. You get used to it after a while, I suppose.’

  Jack pointed a finger straight down at the corpse. ‘Take a good look at him, Gwen. That’s a real guy. He was just out walking his dog. He’s — what? — around twenty-five, twenty-six. There’s a mother somewhere who doesn’t even know she’s lost him yet. Imagine how she’s gonna feel when a cop turns up at her door with the news. Won’t matter if her boy was the victim of a gun crime, a backstreet fight, an RTA or an alien psychopath — he’s still gone.’

  Gwen dragged her eyes off the corpse and looked at Jack. ‘Your point being?’

  ‘You’ve got to care, Gwen. You’ve told me that often enough — you have to remember to care. He’s been murdered by something we just don’t understand and we can’t find. And it’ll do it again unless we do find it, and stop it. That’s our job. That’s why you have to care.’

  She nodded, biting her lip, and turned away.

  It was a long walk back to the SUV.

  ‘So, what now?’ asked Owen as he and Jack began the trudge up towards the gates after Gwen.

  ‘How’d you get on with the doctor?’ Jack asked.

  ‘He’s still sick — really sick. He should be quarantined.’

  ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Symptoms indicate some kind of respiratory infection, but it’s the worst I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Worst as in The Lancet worst, or Torchwood worst?’

  ‘Torchwood.’ Owen described the strange, subcutaneous movement he had observed at the back of Strong’s throat. ‘It’s nothing that originates on Earth, at any rate. That’s why I didn’t send him to hospital — it’s too risky. Maybe we should bring him back to the Hub.’

  ‘Not if it’s contagious,’ warned Jack.

  ‘Well I don’t know about that.’ Owen rubbed his throat and coughed. ‘But I think I’ve caught it.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Ianto placed the coffee cup carefully next to the Rubik’s cube on Toshiko’s desk. She was slumped across the workstation, head buried in her folded arms. The various displays on her monitor screens were reflected as blue highlights in her glossy black hair. There were some grapes in a dish buried beneath piles of paperwork and notes, a half-eaten apple and a number of screwed up tissues.

  ‘Tosh?’

  She stirred and then, realising that she had fallen asleep at her desk, jerked awake. ‘Ianto! Gosh, I must have dropped off …’

  ‘Fresh coffee,’ he said smoothly. ‘Thought you could do with it.’

  She stretched, but not hugely, trying to contain her embarrassment. ‘I’m more tired than I thought.’

  ‘Good job Jack didn’t catch you sleeping on the job,’ Ianto said with a smile. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Rough.’ The word turned into a series of coughs and Toshiko reached for her tissues again. ‘Oh, I feel so awful. What a time to catch a cold …’ She coughed again, more forcefully this time, and tossed the tissue at the waste basket.

  It missed and, when Ianto automatically bent down to retrieve the discarded tissue, he could not fail to notice that it contained a small number of red specks. He paused momentarily, wondering if Toshiko knew. She was already back at her keyboard, tapping hurriedly, looking up to see the screens flickering with data.

  ‘There’s still nothing here regarding Saskia Harden,’ she reported. ‘I’ve double-checked the police criminal records, the national DNA database, Revenue amp; Customs, Social Services, the lot. I’ve even tried MI5, Interpol and UNIT. But there’s nothing. She just doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I thought Owen went to see her GP?’

  ‘The address on their records is false.’

  ‘So who is she?’

  Toshiko took off her glasses and chewed the arm thoughtfully. ‘Good question. A ghost. A phantom. Or just a figment of someone’s imagination?’

  ‘But one who needs a GP.’

  ‘Yes. I wonder why?’

  ‘It’s only a guess, but people usually go to the doctor when they’re ill.’

  Toshiko pointed the arm of her glasses at him and smiled indulgently. ‘Hey, you’re right. You know, with a brain like that you’ll go far, Ianto.’

  He smiled. ‘Oh, I’m really a genius in disguise. Haven’t you worked that out yet?’

  ‘Well, it’s a very good disguise.’

  ‘It takes a genius to make a disguise this effective.’

  Toshiko laughed, and it turned into another cough. She grimaced as the fit passed, rubbing at her neck. ‘I’ve got a sore throat too. Is there anything in the medical stores I could take, Ianto?’

  ‘Basic analgesics is all you’re allowed, I’m afraid. There are some alien remedies in the safe, I believe, but they are all strictly out of bounds. Besides which, you are only human. Painkillers designed for Arcateenians, for instance, might not work on you — in fact, quite the reverse: they could be deadly.’

  Toshiko shrugged and turned back to her work with a sniff. ‘Just my luck.’

  ‘I’ve checked the TV news,’ Ianto told her. ‘You may like to know that you’re not the only one feeling a bit poorly. There’s been a surge of respiratory problems right across South Wales and parts of South West England. They say it’s the start of a flu epidemic.’

  ‘It would explain why I feel so lousy.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry too much about it. You’re probably just run down, and your experience at Greendown Moss won’t have helped.’

  Toshiko coughed and groaned again. ‘Don’t remind me. I don’t think I’ll ever get the mud out of my hair. But you’re probably right. Thanks for the coffee, anyway.’

  Ianto deftly removed the cup as soon as she put it down, being very careful not to touch the rim as he did so.

  EIGHTEEN

  Bob Strong was slowly coming to the conclusion that he was dying. He thought he should call his mother, but he was almost too weak to move.

  He was coughing up more blood — thick, dark clots of it mixed with a pungent mucus that made him retch and gag with the effort. He was on his hands and knees, shaking like a frighte
ned dog, spitting out more strings of red slime onto the living room floor, when the doorbell rang.

  It was such a stupidly ordinary sound that he almost laughed. Ding dong! Then he was coughing again, and, by the time the convulsions had gone and he was wiping his trembling lips with the remains of a ragged, disintegrating paper towel, he knew there was no way he could get to the door to answer it, let alone care who it was.

  The bell sounded again. For a full minute he lay on the cold laminate floor, surrounded by gobbets of blood-streaked phlegm and old tissues, utterly exhausted. When the doorbell sounded for the third and fourth time, each a little more urgently, a part of his semi-conscious brain began to concentrate, analysing the situation, in an almost dreamlike state.

  Maybe it was Owen Harper, the man from the Government.

  It could be him at the door. With the cure, or some kind of vaccine. Or a team of paramedics in decontamination suits, ready to whisk him into biohazard quarantine. Bob guessed there were procedures, protocols for this sort of thing.

  Somehow he dredged up the energy to crawl towards the front door. In the hallway, he had to wait for a minute for another coughing fit to pass, and then, with a mighty effort, pull himself upright using the doorframe as support. Finally, he was on his feet, feeling sick and dizzy, the world spinning around him and an ache in his chest and throat that threatened to stop him breathing. Only then did he think that if it was the authorities, intent on either rescue or internment, they would have probably broken the door down by now and come in for him.

  He focused on the front door. There was a shape on the other side of the frosted glass — female.

  It took a couple of attempts to open the door because his fingers were half-numb and slippery with perspiration. He couldn’t get a good grip on the latch. Eventually he managed to unlock it and the door opened to reveal a young, rather striking blonde in a raincoat. She had strange, haunting green eyes that, even in his current state of mind, he recognised immediately.

  ‘Saskia?’

  ‘Hello, Dr Strong.’