The Undertakers Gift

by Trevor Baxendale

  ‘If I didn’t feel ill before, then I do now,’ said Ianto weakly.

  ‘Poor creature,’ whispered Jack. ‘What kind of life could a thing like this lead? A rotting, humanoid effigy, held together by filthy bandages. Doomed to an existence of pain and suffering.’

  ‘So we’re putting them out of their misery?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Jack stood up slowly. ‘They’ll really be coming for us now, though, Ianto. And they’ll have nothing to lose.’

  Ianto leant against the wall and took a couple of deep breaths. The sweat was running down his face now. ‘You realise that Gwen is probably dead.’

  ‘I know.’ Jack’s lips had compressed into a thin line. ‘But until I see her with my own eyes, Ianto, I won’t accept it. And if I have to fight my way through an army of these pallbearer guys to do it, I will. Are you with me?’

  ‘All the way.’

  There was a noise like a cough from the darkness and something metallic clanged against the stonework by Ianto’s head. He ducked, and another steel bolt ricocheted away into the shadows. Jack swung his torch around, illuminating a pallbearer at the far end of the passage holding a long spear. It was pointed directly at him. With a sharp grunt of compressed gas, the flechette at its tip was suddenly launched towards Jack’s face.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  It was spread across the crypt like a giant spider’s web, a complex network of wires and tubes radiating from the central casket and disappearing into the darkness.

  At the centre was a container of some kind, shaped like a coffin but more like a fish tank. The glass was murky and stained with green algae, as if whatever was kept inside had been organic and rotten.

  But since that time, the container had been expanded, reconstructed, to accommodate what lay within.

  The creature inside was clearly dead. The movement she had seen earlier had been nothing more than the reflection of her torchlight in the dimmed glass. At first, all she saw was the body – a withered, grey ribcage mottled with dark sores. The blood was so old it had turned into a black crust surrounding the damaged areas. The head, little more than a bulbous skull, was covered by skin so shrunken to the bone that what remained of the lips was pulled right back from two rows of uneven, grey teeth. The nose had gone, eaten away by parasites, leaving a ragged hole beneath the eye sockets, where creased, long-dead lids were fused shut over sunken eyes.

  So far, just another corpse – ancient, dried up matter, the leathery effigy of an unknown man.

  But someone, or something, had been working on this corpse. Both the head and torso were held in place by a series of metal rods and pins, skewering the body and bolted into place. The metal was dull and rusted, and the flesh was fused to the pins wherever they entered.

  There were no arms or legs. The trunk tailed off to an abdomen which consisted of shrivelled organs hanging like stuffing from the rags of torn skin. The lower part of the spine was visible at the base, trailing off to a series of broken, age-browned vertebrae that just managed to glint with a touch of ivory in the light of Gwen’s torch. Leading into the desiccated remains of the intestine were old rubber tubes, like the kind found trailing from gas taps in laboratories, cracked and perished and snaking away to a series of bottles and stands beneath the casket. There were some wires, too, thick with insulation, but in places Gwen could see that the copper wiring had come adrift where the flesh had dried and withdrawn.

  She stared at the mess, frowning, trying to work out what could possibly have happened but failing. It looked like it was all that was left of some kind of dreadful Victorian experiment, and it made her shudder with revulsion.

  But not as much as what had been done to the head.

  The top of the skull had been cut away and removed, like the top of a boiled egg. Stealing herself, Gwen aimed the light into the cranium, where a dried-up brain, like a giant walnut, rested in a web of rotten flesh. Wires had been fed into the brain matter, inserted through the folds in its surface. They emerged from the skull like a fright wig, leading up and away into the shadows. Some were as thick as mains flex; others were thin, but grouped together and tangled like spaghetti.

  Troubled, revolted, frightened – but unable to stop searching for some reason or clue as to who or what had done all this and why – Gwen narrowed her gaze. She directed the torchlight into the skull, inspecting the grizzled contents. She felt her stomach turn as she became aware of tiny things moving in the flesh, little white grubs slowly feeding on the old meat, their bodies pulsing with life in the sudden, harsh light of her torch. She felt herself starting to retch and pulled back, turning the light away, returning them to the privacy of their midnight feast.

  Gwen took a moment to gather her wits. What had happened here? Who had done this? Why were the pallbearers protecting this ancient, abominated corpse? The questions whirled around in her head, but there were no answers.

  Something clicked in the casket.

  Steeling herself, Gwen pointed her torch at the skull. It remained unmoving, unflinching. Dead, except for the maggots at work inside. Gwen watched in revulsion as a millipede emerged from the dry cave of the mouth. It ran down the chin like a stray morsel of food and disappeared into the thin, stringy remains of the neck.

  She’d seen enough. It was time to leave. Whatever the pallbearers were doing in the catacombs behind her, it had to be better to take her chances with them rather than stay a second longer in the company of this foul, forgotten experiment.

  ‘Heh. . .’

  It was little more than a gasp, a breath, a single word half-formed in the shrivelled remains of its throat. But Gwen knew it had spoken because she saw the exposed Adam’s apple move and a puff of dust escape through the holes in its neck. The teeth parted slightly as the jaw trembled in its attempt to work.

  ‘Hello. . .?’ it repeated in a slow, dry wheeze. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

  The mouth cracked open a little wider, disgorging shreds of a blackened tongue and more millipedes.

  ‘I know you’re there!’ it said. ‘I know you’re there!’

  THIRTY-NINE

  The flechette glittered in the torch beam and Jack, with lightning reflexes, batted it away. It clattered loudly against a wall, showering him with brick dust.

  He aimed the Sten one-handed and sent a burst of machine-gun fire in the direction of the pallbearer. There was nothing but shadow at the far end of the tunnel now, and the bullets kicked up a storm of chipped stone and metal in the blackness.

  ‘This way,’ Ianto said, pulling Jack away.

  The passage branched left and right a little further on. There was not a sound to be heard anywhere, and nothing to see in the darkness. Rats hurried past their feet, but they ignored them.

  ‘No more sentries?’ Jack wondered quietly. ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘I know. It feels like we’re being watched.’

  They shone their torches down the passage but there was nothing to be seen. The light played along the rough walls, picking out bits of weed growing thinly between the cracks, and lumps of damp moss speckling the brickwork.

  Something reached down from above, two skeletal arms swathed in rags. Long, curled fingers clamped around Ianto’s shoulders and he gasped in pain, automatically lifting his torch to shine it upwards. The light found the hissing, spitting face of one of the pallbearers, hanging from the ceiling. Others were crawling along behind it, like giant, ragged spiders, their long claws gripping the brickwork upside down.

  Jack whirled, opened fire, spraying the creature and the ceiling beyond it. The pallbearer released its grip on Ianto with a breathless squeal and withdrew, clawing its way swiftly back towards the shadows with the others, but Jack kept his finger on the trigger, firing along the ceiling. Splinters of bricks and mortar filled the passageway but eventually the bullets found their home in the back of the retreating pallbearer, shredding the material of his cloak and thudding through the flesh beneath. It hissed furiously and disappeared into the darkness b
eyond the reach of his torchlight.

  The Sten magazine had clicked on empty. Jack hurled it away and snapped another into place, cocking the weapon in one smooth, easy motion.

  ‘You’ve done this kind of thing before,’ remarked Ianto.

  ‘Helped clear the Nazis out of Berlin at the end of the war,’ Jack explained. ‘I fell in with a platoon of Commandos. We had to clear some parts of the city house by house. The Nazis were hiding like rats, and when they were cornered they fought. Although they didn’t crawl along the ceilings.’

  He started along the left-hand passage, the way the pallbearers had come. He kept the flashlight roving ahead, including up the walls and ceiling.

  Ianto waited a second or two, trying to get his breathing and heart rate under control. He could feel the thud of blood in his ears, sense the rash on his chest burning. But Jack needed him so he had to push on. He swallowed back the hot reflux that kept bubbling up his gullet and pushed away from the wall. Tightening his grip on the MP5, he staggered after Jack.

  FORTY

  ‘What was that?’ the voice rasped. The skull jerked a little as the wiry, shrunken tendons in its neck tried to move. ‘I thought I heard something. . .’

  Gwen stared, wide-eyed, at the head. Just a head, with a body. No arms, legs, and a tangle of wires and tubes rising from its exposed brain and guts. Impossible, obscene.

  Alive.

  ‘It sounds like gunfire,’ Gwen heard herself saying. Her voice sounded small and scared.

  ‘Speak up!’ ordered the corpse. ‘I can’t hear you!’

  Gwen seriously didn’t know whether to scream or laugh now. This was both horrific and ridiculous at the same time. She just didn’t feel capable of entering into a conversation with a corpse. And yet. . .

  ‘You’re. . . alive?’

  ‘What was that? I told you to speak up!’

  ‘How can you be alive?’ Gwen asked. There was a tremor in her voice, but she was determined to ask the question. ‘I mean, how can you. . .?’

  ‘Did you say gunfire?’

  ‘Yes, yes I did. It sounded like that to me. There must be something going on in the crypt. . .’ Gwen shook her head, ran a hand through her hair. A part of her thought the gunfire meant that help had arrived, possibly even Jack and Ianto. But she couldn’t afford to hope, and neither could she afford to let this opportunity slip by.

  Gwen took a tentative step forward. She had inspected the body in great detail originally, but now that she knew it was still alive she felt intrusive getting too close. The thing was clearly blind, and there were still insects crawling in and out of the body, but somehow she felt that this wasn’t just a rotten cadaver.

  It was a person.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, speaking a little more loudly this time.

  ‘Frank,’ said the corpse. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name. . . is Gwen.’

  ‘Are you new here? I don’t recognise your voice. I can’t see a damned thing any more.’

  Gwen opened her mouth to reply but then closed it again.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ said Frank. ‘They don’t look after you properly. And the nurses never speak to me.’

  ‘Nurses?’

  ‘You’d think they’d look after me better,’ Frank continued. ‘Considering.’

  ‘Considering. . .?’

  ‘What I went through – what we all went through. War is hell, love. War is hell.’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Gwen suddenly made the connection, like a light flickering on inside her head. ‘Are you Francis Morgan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Gwen blinked. ‘You were injured in the First World War.’

  ‘First? What are you talking about?’

  ‘That was over ninety years ago. . .’

  ‘I know I’ve been here ages, love, but it’s not that long. . .’ A low chuckle escaped the dried lips. ‘Though you can lose track of time when you can’t see any more.’ He started to cough, a pathetic, wheezing hack that produced nothing but dust and insects. ‘Say. . . you couldn’t get me a glass of water, could you, love? I’m parched.’

  FORTY-ONE

  The passageway split again. Jack and Ianto covered both with their guns, but the mouths of the tunnels yawned back at them in dark contempt.

  ‘Which way now?’ wondered Jack.

  They stood still for a few seconds, straining to listen.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ Ianto said.

  He slung his MP5 and checked the readout on his PDA. The screen lit his face up bright blue in the darkness.

  ‘There’s more chronon activity that way,’ he said, nodding left. ‘And that antilositic energy trace is getting stronger too. That’s got to be it.’

  Jack looked at him, saw the dark circles under his eyes in the light of the PDA. ‘You OK to carry on?’

  ‘Of course.’ Ianto was leaning against the wall, his breathing shallow. ‘Just needed a moment to get my breath back, that’s all.’

  ‘Easy,’ said Jack, as Ianto’s eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped down the wall. Jack caught him, lowered him as gently as he could.

  ‘Got a rash,’ murmured Ianto. ‘It hurts, Jack.’

  Jack licked his lips. ‘Ianto, I need you. It’s not over yet. You gotta get up.’

  ‘Give me a minute.’

  Jack thought for a second and then, quickly as he could, he unfastened the buttons on Ianto’s waistcoat.

  ‘You pick your moments,’ Ianto said.

  ‘Hush. I’m checking something.’ Jack lifted Ianto’s shirt and examined his chest in the light of his torch. A look of surprise, and then revulsion, crossed his features. Both were quickly replaced by a look of cold anger.

  ‘What is it?’ Ianto asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Never you mind.’ Jack quickly tucked the shirt back down and forced a smile. He patted Ianto on the leg. ‘We’ll deal with it later. Right now I need you on your feet.’ He hooked an arm under Ianto’s shoulder and pulled him upright.

  Ianto groaned. ‘It hurts.’

  ‘No pain, no gain.’

  ‘How much further?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I really need your help, buddy. Those creeps will be back any second, and I’m not leaving until we find Gwen.’

  Ianto nodded and gripped his MP5. ‘OK.’

  Jack nodded once and they continued down the left-hand passage. Here the darkness was cold and complete, swallowing the light from his torch in one easy gulp. Suddenly a stark, ragged figure lunged out of the shadows and he opened fire with a yell of surprise. The bullets threw the pallbearer backwards, blood spraying briefly in the torchlight before the creature disappeared into the gloom.

  Another took its place, and Jack dropped to one knee, firing again. The pallbearer staggered forward, absorbing the hail of gunshots, reaching out for Jack with clawed hands. The fingers scrabbled against the barrel of the Sten, but another burst of fire chopped the hands into lumps of torn meat and bone and the creature screeched in pain.

  The Sten’s magazine had emptied. Jack smashed the metal butt into the pallbearer’s face, catching the bandages and ripping them open. Insane yellow eyes flared in a face of congealed black slime, until a barrage of fire from Ianto’s MP5 turned the head into paste. The pallbearer slumped on top of its mate, but there were more behind it.

  Jack was changing magazines when he heard – dimly, because his ears were still ringing from the close-quarter shooting in such a confined place – Ianto cry out. Twisting around he saw a pair of bandaged hands gripping Ianto by the throat. There was a pallbearer behind him, on top of him, trying to break his neck. The curled fingers dug deep into the white flesh of Ianto’s neck and his face was creased in pain.

  Jack hurled his fist past Ianto’s own head and straight into the face of the pallbearer, connecting with a wet crunch. The pallbearer shuddered, and Jack punched it again, harder this time, squaring his shoulders for maximum follow-through. The fingers loosened their grip just
enough for Ianto to fall free, gasping and choking.

  Jack used the Sten as a club once more, jabbing the stock into the face and neck of the creature until it hissed and tried to swipe it aside. Its hands were scrabbling for Jack’s throat as he turned the Sten back around and tried to pull the trigger, but he hadn’t been able to cock the mechanism and it didn’t fire. For a second or two Jack and the pallbearer were locked together, Jack searching with his free hand for a grip on the thing’s face. His fingers found the eyes and dug in hard, slime bubbling out from between the bandages. It let out a harsh, silent squeal and backed off.

  ‘Pincer movement,’ Jack gasped. ‘They’ve caught us in a goddamn pincer movement!’

  ‘They’re getting smart,’ Ianto warned.

  ‘We’re gonna be surrounded—’

  ‘Look out!’ growled Ianto, shooting back the way they had been facing. Another pallbearer fell into the darkness, stung by the MP5.

  Jack’s own pallbearer was coming back, dark tears staining its face. The bandages parted to reveal a wide, gaping slit of a mouth. Jack pulled his Webley from its holster and put three bullets through the mouth and out the back of its head in a cloud of blood and torn material. It collapsed as the booming roar of the pistol echoed down the passage like thunder in the night.

  FORTY-TWO

  ‘That’s gunfire all right,’ said Francis Morgan. ‘I’d recognise it anywhere.’

  ‘And I’d recognise the sound of that revolver anywhere,’ Gwen said, a sudden wave of relief flooding through her. ‘It’s Jack!’

  She limped painfully back to the doorway and called down the passage: ‘Jack! Down here! It’s Gwen! This way!’