by Mark Morris
When they were a couple of metres from the arch in the high brick wall which led into the café's backyard, Gwen halted and raised a hand.
'What is it?' hissed Rhys.
'I thought I saw something move.'
'What sort of something?'
'I don't know. A shadow.' She smiled nervously. 'Course, I may have imagined it.'
Pumpkin-orange light bathed the wall, but this only made the darkness beyond the arch all the more impenetrable. Indeed, the blackness was so dense that it seemed almost solid. Gwen and Rhys stood motionless on the far side of the alley for a good thirty seconds, both of them holding their breath, their eyes trained on the narrow black entrance. They half-expected something to emerge from it, but nothing did. At last Gwen gestured with her gun and whispered, 'I'm going in.'
She crossed the alley, flattened her back against the wall and edged towards the arch, leading with her gun. Rhys watched, licking his dry lips to moisten them. Gwen was almost at the gap when a white hand snaked over the wall above her and grabbed a fistful of her thick black hair.
She yelled in pain, involuntarily rising onto her toes as the hand tightened into a fist and yanked upwards. Rhys ran across the alley, raised the club and brought it smashing down on the bony wrist. To his surprise there was a howl of pain from the other side of the wall and the hand loosened its grip, allowing Gwen to tear herself free. Without thinking, Rhys ran through the gap in the wall, and into the darkness of the café's backyard, drawing back the golf club for another blow.
The instant he moved out of the light, he knew he'd made a mistake. He blinked wildly, his head jerking as he looked around, but he might as well have been wearing a blindfold. He didn't need to hear Gwen hissing his name in fear and exasperation to know how stupid he'd been. He decided to focus on the patch of blackness where he guessed the owner of the hand must be, and eventually his vision cleared enough for him to be able to make out the long white face of a man cowering in the corner of the yard.
The man was keening like an animal, cradling his injured wrist. In the darkness he resembled a giant spindly insect, all bony knees and elbows. Rhys could smell rotting food from the bins, and now that he was in the yard he realised that someone was banging frantically on what sounded like a metal door over to his left. He sensed movement behind him, and whirled round, heart racing. But it was only Gwen, running across to the place where the thumping was coming from.
'Rhys,' she shouted, 'help me move these bins.'
Rhys peered across the yard at her shadowy figure, and saw what she was doing. She was struggling to move one of two stainless-steel bins, both of which were taller than she was, from in front of a metal fire door. He ran across to help, but as soon as he put his weight behind the bin and started to push, the spindly man struggled to his feet. 'No!' he cried. 'You mustn't!'
Gwen glanced over at the man. 'There's people trapped in there,' she said. 'Can't you hear them? We've got to get them out.'
Upright now, the man stumbled towards them, stretching out his uninjured hand. With his long black coat and thin white face, he looked like a phantom, Rhys thought; like Jacob Marley or something.
'If you let them out, they'll get us,' the spindly man wailed. 'Those dead things. They'll find out we're here.'
Teeth clenched, still struggling with the bin, Gwen muttered, 'If we don't get these people out, those dead things will get them.'
The man was shaking his head in frustration. Long stringy hair flapped around his face like rat's tails. 'But don't you see?' he whined in frustration. 'That's what's meant to happen. If the dead things get them, they won't get us. That's my plan.'
Rhys scowled, suddenly realising what the man was saying. 'You mean you put these bins here? To stop these people getting out?'
The man tilted his head to one side. Rhys wasn't sure in the gloom, but he thought the man was baring his teeth in a wheedling smile.
'Survival of the fittest,' he whined. 'Law of the jungle. Dog eat dog.'
Gwen's voice was low and dangerous. Rhys glanced at her and realised she was pointing her gun at the man. 'You sit down and shut up,' she muttered, 'or I swear to God I'll shoot you here and now.'
For a moment the man remained where he was, hand still outstretched, as though stunned into immobility. Then his arm dropped limply to his side and he crawled away into the corner, curling himself into a ball like a wounded animal.
Panting and sweating, Gwen and Rhys renewed their struggle with the bins. To Rhys it seemed to take an eternity to shift each one even a few centimetres. Throughout that time the pounding on the blocked door became increasingly frantic. A girl, clearly close to hysteria, screamed, 'Oh my God, Martin, get it open! Get it open!'
They heard a man snap back at her, his own fear making him angry. 'I'm bloody trying, aren't I? It's locked or jammed or something.'
Still heaving at the bins, Gwen glanced at Rhys, anguish in her eyes, and paused just long enough to shout, 'You in there, listen to me. There's something blocking the door, but we'll have you out in a minute. Try and stay calm.'
'We haven't got a minute,' the man yelled back, as if it was Gwen's fault.
'Oh God, hurry up, hurry up!' the girl screamed.
Gwen and Rhys attacked the bins with fresh impetus, Gwen's own yells of frustration and rage mingling with the terrified pleas of the girl. Agonisingly slowly, they managed to shift one of the bins far enough away from the door and turned their attention to the second. They had moved it no more than a couple of centimetres, their hands slithering and squeaking on the cold, wet metal, when the girl suddenly screeched, 'Oh God, they're here!'
'Let us out! Let us out!' bellowed the man. His voice was raw and ragged, an animal-like scream of absolute, primal terror. There was a new and frenzied flurry of blows and kicks to the door as sheer panic overwhelmed the couple trapped inside the building. The door banged open, forcing Gwen to jump back. But it opened only a couple of centimetres before hitting the side of the second bin with a resounding clang.
Gwen looked down and saw fingers curling around the door frame as if in the desperate hope of dragging the rest of the body through the impossibly narrow gap. She hurled herself at the bin again, sobbing and swearing with frustration, straining every sinew, willing the damn thing to move. But, even with Rhys's help, the bin seemed to be stuck, its castors embedded in the muddy, cracked concrete of the yard.
And then in a broken, tearful voice, a voice too full of terror to raise itself to little more than a wheezing croak, they heard the girl say, 'Oh God, no. . . please, no. . .'
Next moment the real screaming began. High and terrible. Screams of unimaginable, unendurable agony. Rhys reeled away, eyes squeezed shut, hands clamped to his ears, his only instinct being to blot out the unbearable sounds from the other side of the door.
Gwen roared, 'No!' and flew at the bin as if it was an opponent, punching and pounding, tears streaming down her face, teeth bared and eyes wild. When she felt a hand on her arm, she lashed out, missing Rhys's nose by a whisker. His face was bleach-white and slack with shock, his eyes haunted.
'Come on, love,' he said softly. 'Come on, it's over.'
She gaped at him in disbelief and despair, and then she fell into his arms, sobbing and shaking. She had seen death before, of course, many times, but this was so visceral and immediate, so full of terror and agony, that it made her think of Tosh and Owen all over again, made her think of Tosh's life ebbing away right in front of her, and of how utterly useless she had felt, unable to do a thing to prevent it happening.
The screaming finally stopped, and all Gwen and Rhys could hear from inside the building now were the sounds of feeding and the idiot moans of the zombies.
The door banged open and shut, open and shut against the bin. Rotting, worm-like fingers wriggled and writhed in the gap. Seeing them, Gwen bared her teeth in a snarl, broke away from Rhys's embrace and hurled herself at the door. It slammed into place like a guillotine, severing a dozen or so zombi
e fingers, which pattered to the ground like Saturday night chips dropped by a drunk.
It was a hollow victory. The creatures in there felt no pain, no fear. She whirled away – and her eyes fell on the spindly old man squatting in the corner of the yard, trying to melt into the shadows. Sudden rage overwhelmed her, and she stalked across the yard, drawing her gun, deaf to Rhys's attempts to placate her.
She walked right up to the man and pointed the gun at his face. He whimpered, raising his arms as a flimsy shield.
'You murdered those people,' she muttered, her voice low and wavering, full of revulsion. 'They died in agony because of you. I ought to blow your brains out.'
'Please,' the man whispered, 'please.'
'Gwen,' said Rhys calmly, 'put the gun away. You don't really want to do this. You'd never live with yourself if you pulled that trigger.'
'Oh, I do want to do it,' Gwen said. 'Believe me, I do.' Five seconds passed. Then she put the gun away. 'But I'm not going to,' she said. 'Because you're not worth the anguish that Rhys will go through, trying to come to terms with a wife who can shoot someone in cold blood.'
She shuddered, as though shaking off something cold and clammy, and then she said, 'Let's go, Rhys.'
He nodded, slipping an arm around her shoulder as they walked towards the gap in the wall.
Behind them the old man wailed, 'What about me?'
Gwen looked about to retort, but Rhys held up a hand. He walked back to the old man.
'If I were you, mate,' he said acidly, 'I'd find somewhere to hide, and I'd pray that lot in there don't sniff you out. I won't say good luck because I don't wish you any.'
Without another word he turned and walked away.
TEN
Jack sat up with a cry on his lips, and immediately began gulping at the air, with the intention of filling his lungs, re-oxygenating his blood.
He still didn't really understand the physical mechanics of his condition. What seemed to happen was that his just-deceased body was held in stasis while time ran backwards over it, repairing wounds and mending broken bones.
Then he became aware that his throat was hurting – really stinging, in fact – and that he had the mother of all headaches. That wasn't supposed to happen. He brought a hand up to his throat, and found some partly scabbed-over gouges there, and some very painful bruising. He cried out as his fingers prodded the tender areas, then sank back onto the bed, feeling dizzy. He realised straight away what had happened. He hadn't died. That zombie kid had opened his throat, and he had lost some blood, but the injuries hadn't been fatal. The long and the short of it was, Jack had simply slipped and knocked himself out.
How embarrassing, Jack thought. And how inconvenient. Sometimes it was better to die than not. At least when he died, the time-forces did their stuff, making him good as new, leaving him with no wounds, no scars, no pain. But injuries were merely injuries. They took time to heal. And what was more they bloody hurt.
Suddenly aware that he was wet and sticky, Jack looked down to see that the front of his shirt was soaked in congealing blood. He grimaced. 'Oh, gross,' he said.
He looked around, wincing at the throbbing pain in his head. He was back in the Hub, lying on the table in the Autopsy Room. Home sweet home. He wondered how long he'd been out for.
Next second he scrambled to his feet, hand moving instinctively to his gun, as someone screamed.
It was a woman. Gwen? Rising above the pain of his injuries, as he had had to do on so many previous occasions, he ran up the steps and into the main Hub area, his eyes sweeping across the gantries and walkways, the workstations with their glowing computer screens and cluttered glass table tops, the metal tower in the centre constantly streaming with water. There was no one. Or at least no one that he could see. The scream had been brief, but ratcheting, full of pain.
'Gwen?' he shouted, his voice echoing back off the brick walls. 'Ianto?'
'In here, Jack,' Ianto shouted from somewhere below him. He sounded stressed.
'Where's here?' Jack called back.
'Boardroom.'
The Boardroom was in the depths of the Hub, at the end of a corridor that had been converted from a vast pipe, which Jack suspected, from the faint but lingering odour, might once have been one of Cardiff's major sewer outlets. He ran down there, feet clanging on the metal walkways, his speed increasing as another scream came tearing up from below. What the hell was Ianto doing down there? Torturing someone?
It was only when he burst into the room, gun at the ready, that his still somewhat fractured memories snapped back into place. Ianto, in his shirtsleeves, hands encased in blood-smeared surgical gloves, eyed the Webley disapprovingly.
'I don't think you're going to need that,' he said.
Sarah Thomas, the pregnant woman they had rescued earlier, was lying on a mattress which had been placed on the long, glass-topped table in the Boardroom. Pillows had been bunched behind her back and head, allowing her to half sit up. Her hair was drenched in sweat and her red face was contorted in pain. Jack looked down and saw that she was in the latter stages of giving birth. The mattress was covered in blood and he could see the top of the baby's head.
'My, you have been busy,' he remarked, putting his gun away. Then he realised what Sarah was lying on. 'Hey, is that my mattress?'
Ianto scowled at him. 'Shut up, Jack, and give me a hand here.'
Jack grinned and said to Sarah, 'I love it when he's masterful.'
Sarah just rolled her eyes, clearly not in the mood for frivolity.
Abruptly becoming serious, Jack said, 'You look as though you're doing a brilliant job here. Both of you.'
Ianto flashed him a brief smile and said, 'You ready for another push, Sarah?'
Sarah inhaled and exhaled rapidly through her mouth, and nodded.
'Whenever you're ready,' Ianto said.
Sarah opened her mouth, screamed and pushed. The baby's head, dark hair plastered to its scalp, bulged between her legs and then slipped back again.
'Again,' Ianto said gently. 'Come on, Sarah, you're nearly there.'
She tried again. And again. Finally, after ten minutes of exhausting effort, the little body, purpley-blue and smeared in blood and vernix, suddenly slithered out from between her legs, trailing the thick blue rope of its umbilical cord. Jack caught the baby as it emerged, gently cradling its tiny head. Ianto, clutching Sarah's hand, laughed with sheer joy. Sarah slumped back onto the pillows in relief and exhaustion.
'It's a boy,' Jack said softly, and grinned. 'Well done.'
He leaned forward and kissed Sarah's cheek. Ianto kissed the other.
Sarah lifted her head. She looked utterly drained, yet suddenly radiant. 'Is he all right?' she asked.
'He's beautiful,' said Jack, 'just like his mother.'
'Can I hold him?'
Jack wrapped the baby in one of the clean towels which Ianto had thought to bring down from upstairs and handed the baby to Sarah. His eyes sparkled as he watched mother and baby together for the first time.
'See?' he said to Ianto. 'This is what it's all about. The miracle of life amidst all this death.'
Ianto looked anything but his usual immaculate self, but he was grinning. All at once he noticed the wounds to Jack's throat and said, 'I thought when you died, it was supposed to—' 'I didn't die,' Jack interrupted curtly.
'You didn't? I thought you had. I told Gwen you had. When she phoned.'
'Yeah, well. I didn't.'
There was an almost embarrassed silence, and then Ianto murmured, 'What about the umbilical cord? The baby's, I mean. And the placenta?'
Jack held up his hands. 'I'll handle it. I've delivered babies before.'
'Have you?' said Ianto surprised. 'When?'
'Long story,' said Jack. 'Why don't you put some coffee on? I think we could all do with some.'
'Good idea,' Ianto said and started to trudge away. Sarah called his name and he turned back.
'Thanks,' she said. 'For everything. For bein
g here with me.'
He nodded, and though he remained composed he looked absurdly touched. 'You're welcome,' he said, a little choked.
Ten minutes later, Jack, cleaned up and wearing a fresh shirt, joined Ianto as he was pouring the coffee.
'That smells good,' he said.
'How is she?' Ianto asked.
'Mother and baby are doing just fine. You did a great job back there.'
Ianto nodded briefly. He hesitated a second, and then said, 'I was scared though, Jack. What if something had gone wrong?'
'It didn't,' Jack said reassuringly.
'No, but what if it had? I wouldn't have known what to do. As it was, Sarah delivered her baby with no pain relief. I wasn't sure what to give her. I didn't know what was safe in her condition.'
Another pause.
'We need a proper medic, Jack. Someone to replace Owen. We need—'
'I'm working on it,' Jack said curtly, and looked around. 'Hey, where's the zombie? And Sarah's husband? What's his name?'
'Trys,' said Ianto. 'I made up a bed for him in the Hothouse. It's nice and quiet in there. I think he'll be OK. His life signs are good.'
'And let me guess – the zombie's in the cells.'
Ianto nodded. 'I've put her next door to Janet. They'll be making friends by now.'
'Bitching about us, no doubt. You know how girls are when they get together.' He grinned at his own joke, but Ianto still looked sombre.
'Jack,' he said, 'what would have happened out there tonight if I hadn't been there to save you? What if that zombie and its mates had torn you apart and eaten you? How would you have come back from that? How would you come back if your body was totally destroyed?'
For a moment, Jack looked haunted, as if he had often wondered the same thing. Then the familiar grin – the grin that Ianto knew Jack sometimes wore like a mask – appeared, and he shrugged.
