Torchwood: Slow Decay

by Andy Lane

  Owen and Ianto arrived from the medical area, having presumably heard the commotion. Owen was carrying something under a blanket.

  ‘Coffee?’ Ianto asked as they all congregated in the Boardroom and sat down around the conference table.

  ‘You’re going to need it,’ Jack said. ‘We’ve got a packed programme ahead of us.’ As Ianto fiddled with the machine outside the door, Jack took up a position in front of the wide window that looked down into the Hub, legs apart and hands on hips. ‘Right, let’s clear up some loose ends. Gwen – what’s the story with Rhys and George Harrison?’

  ‘Rhys has taken the second pill, and he’s flushed the disintegrating remnants of George down the toilet in the noisiest and most unpleasant way possible. But he’s clear. Thanks.’

  ‘No problem. Ianto, where are we with young Lucy and John Lennon?’

  Ianto glanced in from the platform outside. ‘Miss Sobel is still confined in the cells. Having learned our lesson from the unfortunate Miss Till, we’ve made sure her arms and legs are firmly pinioned and she has a metal gag in her mouth – a scold’s bridle, I think it’s called. And we’re pumping a vaporised form of anaesthetic into the cell to keep her sedated.’

  ‘Yeah, and who’s idea was that?’ Owen snapped. ‘I thought I was the doctor around here?’

  ‘You went AWOL,’ Jack said calmly, ‘so we had to improvise.’ He turned back to Ianto. ‘I think we’re safe to feed her the second pill now. Put it in her food or something. Owen can clear the cell out when she’s finished clearing John Lennon out of her system.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch,’ Owen muttered.

  ‘Hey, don’t complain. You left us in a mess, so I’m leaving you with a mess. What goes around, comes around.’ Jack glanced around the faces at the table. ‘OK. George and Ringo are dead, John is on the way out and Stuart never got a look in. So where’s Paul?’

  Owen pulled the blanket from the object that he’d brought up with him. It was an old-fashioned bird-cage made of metal rods, flat on the bottom and curved on the top, but the thing inside wasn’t a canary. In fact, Gwen wasn’t sure what it was. It’s body was long and thin and winged, but it looked cowed.

  ‘This,’ Owen announced, ‘is Paul. He’s gone solo and reinvented himself.’

  ‘Seriously,’ Jack said. ‘What is that thing?’

  ‘Seriously, it’s the next stage in the life cycle of the worms.’

  ‘It’s a flying egg-layer with extreme prejudice,’ Ianto added helpfully, bringing in a tray full of coffees.

  ‘The worm lurks in the gut, absorbing nutrients, until the host dies,’ Owen explained. ‘The worm then turns into this thing, which flies around until it can bury itself in something living – probably some kind of grazing animal, but I’m sure anything would do. We’ll call that the secondary host. This thing lays eggs, and dies. The eggs are then eaten by whatever eats the secondary host, and the cycle starts all over again.’

  ‘And I’m sure that on its home planet it works out perfectly,’ Jack said, ‘but here on Earth it’s trying to impose itself on a different set of hosts, and I’m not going to let that happen. And I also want to know where Doctor Scotus fits into all this, which brings us on to what Toshiko and I did this afternoon. Using that alien tech which amplifies distant emotions, we triangulated on a place on the outskirts of Cardiff where there’s a large concentration of very hungry people. Either there’s a Weight Watchers convention going on, or Doctor Scotus’s clinic is up and running somewhere else.’

  ‘Why would he get all the people who have taken the pill already to congregate together?’ Gwen asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Remember the attempt to kidnap Lucy Sobel?’ Jack asked. ‘I think Doctor Scotus has realised his little pills are having side effects, and he’s trying to get the evidence off the streets. I think when we get there we’ll find that he’s managed to scoop up most, if not all, of the kids who bought into his little weight-loss scheme, and he’s probably wondering right now what he’s going to do with them. So get ready, boys and girls, because we’re not going to let this go on any longer. I can accept a lot in life, but preying on the helpless and the gullible is out of line. I want you armed and ready to go in ten minutes.’ He glanced over at the cage on the table, and the creature that sulked within it. ‘And bring Paul. I think I may have a use for him.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The sun was setting over towards the centre of the city, silhouetting the expensive high-rise hotels against a background of scarlet, purple and blue. From her position squashed in the back of the SUV, Gwen could see past a concrete jetty to where water roiled, thick and slow.

  ‘Where the hell are we?’ Owen asked as the SUV coasted to a halt under Ianto’s careful hands. He got out of the car and looked around, hands on hips. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever been around here before.’

  ‘You know the bit of Cardiff Docks that was redeveloped into an expensive marina where they hold dragon boat races and stuff?’ Jack asked as he too climbed out of the car.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This isn’t it.’

  Gwen slid out of the passenger side. ‘Somewhere over near Bute East Dock?’ she ventured, recognising the angle at which she was seeing some of the taller tower blocks. She reached back into the car and retrieved the bird-cage in which Owen and Ianto had imprisoned the flying thing. An improvised cover had been placed over it, shielding the creature from casual attention.

  ‘Spot on,’ said Jack. He looked around, hair ruffling in the breeze coming in off the bay. ‘Ianto – I want you here, with the engine running. We may need to get out in a hurry. Everybody else, are you tooled up?’

  Last out of the SUV, Gwen checked her Glock 17. It was big and clumsy and heavy, and every time she fired it she thought she was going to fracture her wrist, but she knew she was going to need it. That was Torchwood for you. ‘Check,’ she said.

  ‘Check,’ Owen confirmed.

  ‘Check,’ softly from Toshiko.

  ‘And that’s a big Texas check from me too,’ Jack finished. ‘Just because I’m the boss it doesn’t mean I can get out of these things.’ He indicated a low building with a much larger extension on one end over near where the water rolled back and forth like a caged animal. ‘This whole area was part of the dock operations a hundred years or so ago. That building over there was a meat-packing factory, turning imported frozen carcasses from Argentina into stuff you can put on shelves and keep for ever. The place closed down back in the 1970s, and there were so many holding companies and front companies involved that nobody can track down who owns it now, so it’s standing right in the way of redevelopment. Toshiko and I identified it as a hunger hotspot earlier on. Apt, I suppose. I’m guessing this is where Doctor Scotus is hiding out.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Gwen asked, coming alongside Jack.

  ‘We go in, we get the innocent parties out, kill any worm or flying thing we can find, destroy all the diet pills, leave, have dinner and sleep the sleep of the just. Did I leave anything out?’

  ‘That’s a strategy,’ Gwen said. ‘What about the tactics?’

  Jack stared at her. ‘We go in,’ he repeated, ‘we get the innocent parties out, kill any worm or flying thing we can find, destroy all the diet pills, leave, have dinner and sleep the sleep of the just.’

  ‘OK, just checking.’ Gwen raised her eyebrows. ‘I always like to know what’s expected of me.’

  ‘Problem is,’ Jack said, ‘we don’t know what’s going on in there. Always difficult to come up with tactics when you don’t know what you’re facing. If you try, you might end up facing a tank with a peashooter or trying to kill a mosquito with an elephant gun. Best tactic is not to have a tactic. Play it by ear.’

  ‘And what happens when it all goes wrong?’

  ‘That’s the great thing about not having tactics,’ Jack grinned. ‘Whatever happens, you can claim that’s what you intended.’

  He led the way across to the building. ‘According t
o the plans that Toshiko called up,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘there’s a side door along here. We’ll go in that way.’

  ‘Tactics?’ Gwen muttered.

  ‘Nearest door,’ Jack replied.

  The door was padlocked, but a few seconds with the Leatherman and it was open.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ Owen asked, impressed.

  ‘You pick these things up when you’re in the police.’

  The door opened inwards onto a corridor that ran left and right along the side of the building. Jack looked both ways, then pointed down to the right. ‘Owen, Tosh – you take that way. Gwen and I will head left. Scout the place out, don’t alert anyone to your presence, meet back here in ten minutes, try not to touch anything or set off any alarms.’

  ‘Tactics!’ Gwen said beneath her breath as she picked the shrouded bird-cage up from where she had left it.

  ‘Common sense,’ Jack said.

  As Owen and Toshiko went off to the right, Jack set off along the corridor to the left. The floor was dusty along the edges, but clear in the centre, Gwen could make out wheel tracks in the dust. ‘There’s been some traffic along here,’ she said, nodding towards it. ‘And recently.’

  ‘I’d feel more comfortable,’ Jack admitted, ‘if we actually knew what this Scotus guy is up to. That way we could just burst in and stop him. Trouble is, we need to find out what he’s doing first, and then stop him, which complicates things.’

  They passed a series of square metal doors with thick glass windows set at eye level and little control boxes beside them, which Gwen assumed controlled some kind of refrigeration. She glanced in through one of two of the windows, but it was dark inside and she couldn’t see anything apart from a flutter that may have been a reflection of something behind her, a moth or a fly or something. Placing her hand on one of the doors, she thought she could detect a slight tremor, but she wasn’t sure.

  She looked off to her right. Toshiko and Owen had vanished around a bend. They were on their own.

  Jack had reached the end of the corridor, where a fire extinguisher was attached to the wall, heavily coated in fluffy dust.

  A door was set into the wall. ‘Shall we see what’s inside?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Tactics?’ she smiled.

  ‘Foolhardiness,’ he grinned, and threw the door open.

  Owen and Toshiko walked cautiously along their half of the corridor. The floor was tiled in black Formica, and the walls were patchily painted. Rectangular neon lights hung from chains on the ceiling. A pair of double doors terminated the corridor: they had plastic sheets attached along their bottom edges and, judging by the curved marks they had left, would scrape along the ground when the doors were opened. Toshiko assumed that their job was to keep moisture out, which indicated that whatever was on the other side was open to the elements, at least some of the time,

  Toshiko’s foot caught on a raised floor tile, and she staggered to the wall, placing her hand against it to steady herself. A deep vibration transmitted itself from the wall to her arm. She took her hand away, but realised that she could still just about make the vibration out, transmitted through the floor and the air.

  ‘Can you hear something?’ she asked Owen.

  He cocked his head to listen. ‘Heartbeat?’ he asked uncertainly.

  ‘Generator,’ she corrected.

  Owen placed his hands in the centres of the doors and pushed them open. The noise suddenly intensified, and the two of them stepped forward, through the doorway and into a large roofed space. It probably took up a good half of the entire building, Toshiko estimated. Two-thirds of the way along, the floor dropped down five feet or so. The remaining area, running up to a series of massive doors at the far end, was paved with tarmac. The inescapable conclusion was that this was some kind of shipping area, where lorries would drive up at the end and back up to the raised area, where boxes of tinned goods would be loaded in. But that wasn’t what it was being used for now.

  The place was set up as an impromptu medical ward. It looked to Toshiko like something from the 1950s: between the doors and the line where the ground dropped down were four rows of tubular metal bedsteads with crisp white sheets. Their occupants, lying comatose and connected to drips and monitoring equipment, contrasted bizarrely with the darkness, the concrete floor and the skylights above through which rose-coloured light filtered in, making everything beneath look surreal and fantastic. Cables ran off to the edges of the room to where the generators probably sat.

  There was nobody around. No nurses, no doctors, nothing.

  Owen moved to the first bed and picked up the clipboard from the end. Toshiko walked across to join him.

  ‘Jodie Williams,’ he read. ‘Age twenty-five. Blood pressure and heart rate seem OK.’ He replaced the clipboard and went around to the side of the bed to check the monitor and the drip. ‘She’s being sedated. That’s more confirmation that the worm’s been removed from her body: we know that sedatives and anaesthetics don’t work well on people who are infected.’ He brushed the girl’s hair from her face. ‘Pretty,’ he said, and began to pull the sheet down to expose her naked body.

  ‘Owen!’ Toshiko said, shocked.

  He looked up at her. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘I’m a doctor. I’m allowed to do this kind of thing. I have a licence, and everything.’

  Pulling the sheet down to her hips, he indicated a sterile dressing on her stomach. ‘She’s had something removed,’ he said, ‘and I think we all know what it is.’ He quickly ran professional fingers up her body. Her ribs were pronounced and her stomach, at least, what could be seen of it beneath the dressing, was concave. ‘She’s almost malnourished. OK, we can assume she’s had one of these things inside her and it’s been taken out. Where is it?’

  He walked across to the next bed and pulled the sheet down. Another sterile dressing, another concave stomach. It was the same with the next girl he tried, and the next. The fourth one was a boy, a teenager.

  ‘It’s a production line,’ Toshiko breathed.

  ‘Not a production line,’ Owen replied, standing in the centre of the two rows of beds. He looked around. ‘There must be forty or fifty of them here, and they’ve all had their worms removed. It’s more like a battery farm.’

  ‘These must be the patients from the Scotus Clinic,’ Toshiko said. ‘Doctor Scotus must have had them all kidnapped when he realised that the worms were causing problems.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have had the time or the expertise to kidnap them himself,’ Owen mused. ‘So who did it for him?’

  ‘That would be us,’ a voice said in a marked Welsh accent.

  Toshiko whirled around. A man was standing just inside the doorway leading back into the building. He stepped forward. He was thick-set, with a close-shaven scalp on which Toshiko could see numerous white scars.

  ‘And who are you?’ Owen said, stepping forward, fists clenched.

  ‘Never mind that,’ the man said. ‘What makes you think you can just wander in here like you owned the place?’

  ‘And what makes you think you’ll get out alive,’ came a voice from the far side of the space. Toshiko looked over her shoulder. Another man was pulling himself up from the dropped section of floor; muscular arms pistoning his body upwards. He straightened up.

  ‘Don’t try to run,’ said the man in the doorway. He reached behind his back and brought out a gleaming brass knuckle-duster from a pocket, slipping it onto his right hand and raising it up so that the light from the skylights shone from the sharp points above each knuckle. ‘You’ll only make things worse for yourself.’

  ‘Not that it gets much worse,’ said his companion. He was holding a length of bicycle chain. It looked to Toshiko like he’d soldered nails along its length until it resembled heavy-duty barbed wire, only much more flexible and much more deadly. ‘We were told to stop anyone from interfering with this lot, but we weren’t told to do it quickly.’

  Jack breezed through the door and into the room
beyond.

  It was where the canning had taken place. The room was filled with machinery, through which Jack could just make out a ribbon-like path, a walled conveyor belt that wound around and about the various devices that would have sterilised the cans, pumping them full of whatever kind of meat slurry the factory was producing that week, sealing them, labelling them and sending them on their way.

  In the centre of the room was a cleared space and in the centre of the space a folding wooden desk had been set up with a canvas director’s chair behind it. Doctor Scotus was sitting in the chair, reading a report.

  ‘I love what you’ve done with the place,’ Jack said cheerily. ‘The whole retro-industrial thing is really big these days. Quite a change from that nice expensive office you used to have, with that big granite desk and those ergonomic chairs. Still, you go with what you’ve got, right? Like Changing Rooms.’

  ‘And who the hell are you?’ Scotus replied, standing up. His long blond hair drifted around his head as he moved.

  ‘Health and Safety,’ Jack said, feeling rather than seeing Gwen move into the room behind him, gun held high. ‘We’ve been getting reports that you’re giving women tablets that implant alien creatures in their stomachs which drive them into hunger-fuelled frenzies which lead to murder and self-mutilation. The question is, have you filled out a proper risk assessment for this activity? Because if you haven’t, we’re going to have to take action.’

  Scotus stared at Jack. His face reflected various emotions, one after the other; anger, confusion, realisation, understanding, concern and, finally, surprise. ‘Alien?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose they would have to be, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ Gwen asked, moving up beside Jack. She was still carrying the shrouded bird-cage, he was glad to see. He had plans for that.

  ‘It’s not the first explanation that comes to mind,’ Scotus said. ‘I assumed they were some newly evolved species, or something that we’d just never seen before.’