Bay of the Dead (18 page)

Instinctively Gwen stepped forward and enfolded the other woman in a hug, the way that Rhys did to her when she'd had a bad day.

'Hey, come on,' she said gently. 'Everything'll be all right. But we've got to pull together on this. OK?'

Huddled against Gwen like a child seeking comfort, Naomi nodded.

Sarah Thomas and her baby son were sleeping. Watching them, Jack smiled, but he couldn't help feeling a pang of sadness at the knowledge that, unless his circumstances changed drastically over the next half-century or so, he would outlive this boy. As the years slipped past, he himself would remain unchanged, while this tiny human being, less than an hour old, grew and blossomed, withered and died. Jack had lost so many friends over the years. He had been to so many funerals and cried so many tears that he was now all but cried out. That still didn't stop him feeling each new death as keenly as the last, however. Blowing a kiss to the sleeping mother and child, he turned and slipped silently away.

Upstairs, Ianto was fussing round the 'pod', which had become something of a pet project of his. In light of their recent discovery, he and Jack had earlier spent twenty minutes discussing strategy over mugs of excellent Java Santos, but the only conclusion they had come to was that their new information didn't really add much in a practical sense to what they already knew. OK, so the zombies were not
actually
the newly risen dead of Cardiff, but how did that usefully change things? It still didn't give them any insight into who or what might be responsible for the 'invasion' – and, more especially, why it was taking place. Was the outbreak a random occurrence, perhaps some freakish quirk of the Rift, or was it part of the sinister agenda of an evil mastermind, or even a race of aliens, who were currently lurking somewhere in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to emerge?

In the end, Jack had called a halt to the discussion, saying that they both needed to go away and indulge in a little private 'thinking time'. Now, however, he was back, having thought himself to a standstill.

'Any ideas?' he asked, his voice ringing around the Hub.

Ianto, who had changed into a blue suit, pink shirt and blue flowery tie, straightened from his examination of the pod and shook his head. 'Not a sausage. You?'

'Nada,' Jack admitted. 'What say we just go tearing round the streets, kicking asses and looking for clues?'

'I don't think that's—' Ianto began, and then he looked up, to a point above Jack's head. 'Oh.'

Jack turned, following his gaze. A man was standing on the walkway of the level above them, looking down, swaying slightly from side to side. It was Trys Thomas, and he looked ghastly. His face was fish-belly white, his eyes flecks of grey flint in sunken hollows. He wore a slack expression, as if he was drugged or sleepwalking.

'Hey there!' Jack said, raising a hand. 'How you doin'?'

Trys did not reply. Instead his head swung drunkenly from side to side, as if he was looking for an access point to the floor below. Sure enough, he shuffled to the metal steps like an old man and began to clang down them. Jack moved forward to greet him, but Ianto said, 'Careful, Jack.'

'I'm always careful,' Jack said out of the corner of his mouth. 'Just be ready with the handcuffs.'

'If I had a penny for every time you've used that line,' Ianto deadpanned.

Jack shot him a look, then strolled across to the bottom of the metal stairs, like a one-man welcoming committee for a visiting dignitary.

'Good to see you up and about, Trys,' he said. 'It
is
Trys, isn't it? Guess you're wondering where the hell you are, huh?'

The blankness of Trys's eyes, and the way he moved his head, made Jack think of a blind man fixing someone's position by the sound of their voice.

'Sure you are,' Jack continued breezily, studying Trys's face for any kind of reaction, any flicker of humanity. 'Well, this is the Hub, I'm Captain Jack Harkness and that there is Ianto Jones. And guess what? Your wife Sarah's downstairs, safe and well. Remember Sarah? Remember how she was all big and fat the last time you saw her? Well, I bet you're just dying to know what's been happening while you've been asleep, huh? Want me to tell you?'

Trys was only a few steps from the bottom of the stairs now. His dead eyes were still fixed on Jack, but it was clear that he had no interest in, or understanding of, Jack's words.

All at once he raised his hands and lunged forward. Ianto shouted a warning, but Jack was ready.

'Oh no, you don't!' he cried, grabbing Trys's hands and stepping back. 'You don't catch me out a second time.'

He continued to move backwards at speed, like a ballroom dancer, swinging his partner after him. Trys was shorter than Jack, and his feet barely touched the floor, the toes of his shoes scuffing the metal. Restrained by Jack's grip, he tried to crane his neck forward, to snap at Jack's face, but Jack evaded him easily.

'Never on a first date,' he said with a good-natured grin, and swept Trys around and across the floor, bypassing the workstations and the zombie he had nicknamed Mildred, which was still strapped in the interrogation chair. Mildred watched them pass with the flat eyes of a snake alert for prey. Jack winked at her and swept Trys across to where Ianto was now waiting, beside a rusty but torso-thick support stanchion, handcuffs at the ready.

The two of them were used to subduing strong and vicious Weevils, and it took them no more than a few seconds to drag Trys's arms behind his back and cuff him to the stanchion. When he was secure, Jack and Ianto stepped away, out of range of his snapping teeth. Trys kept trying to walk towards them, and couldn't seem to work out why he was unable to do so. His constant, frustrated efforts were rather pathetic to see.

'What are we going to tell Sarah?' Ianto said sadly.

Jack looked grim. 'Maybe we won't have to tell her anything.'

Ianto frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'Hey, don't look at me like that! What do you take me for? What I
mean
is that Trys and Mildred are different. She's not a real zombie, so maybe he's not one too.'

'His condition could be psychosomatic, you mean?'

Jack shrugged. 'Let's find out, shall we?'

It was decided, for the sake of convenience, to cuff Mildred to a stanchion on the far side of the Hub for now, and to transfer Trys to the interrogation chair in order to run some tests on him. Jack managed to seal Mildred's mouth with a strip of duct tape without getting his fingers bitten off, and Ianto slipped a choke-loop attached to a metre-long metal pole over her head. Jack then undid the leather straps securing her to the chair and Ianto directed her across the metal floor of the Hub to another support stanchion on the far side of the vast room.

The sound began as a gentle, almost musical warbling. Jack, who was walking beside Ianto with a second set of handcuffs, came to a halt, a puzzled expression on his face.

'You hear that?'

Ianto nodded. 'What is it?'

'I don't know. It's kinda hard to pin down.'

'It seems to be coming from. . . everywhere,' Ianto said, looking around. 'It sounds like a song.'

Jack frowned. 'Let's worry about one thing at a time. Her first;
then
we'll work out where the music's coming from.'

They started walking again, Ianto using the metal pole to urge the zombie onwards. The warbling sound grew louder. Jack and Ianto looked at each other. Another few steps, and it was becoming less like a song and more like the howling shriek of an alarm.

They halted again, almost in unison. The sound was unearthly, alien. It filled the Hub with echoes, which resounded and clashed, feeding off one another.

Jack looked up into the vast vault of shadows above him, where the pteranodon could sometimes be seen, swooping and circling.

'What the hell
is
that?' he demanded, hands over his ears.

Ianto cast about, looking for an answer. His gaze fell on a nearby workbench.

'Look,' he breathed.

Jack looked. 'My God.'

The partially reconstituted pod was going crazy. Coloured lights were flickering across its surface in rapid, but seemingly haphazard patterns. From deep within it emanated a kind of glow, a pulse, like something alive. Now that Ianto had identified it, it was clear that this was the source of the peculiar alien ululation, the heart-rending sound that was somewhere between symphony, siren and scream.

Ianto looked at Mildred and saw the flickering lights of the pod reflected in her dull, silvery eyes.

'It's her,' he said. 'Jack, it's reacting to her.'

Jack nodded. It was true. Unless it was an almighty coincidence, the pod was responding to the proximity of the false zombie, the ersatz meat.

'
Now
we're getting somewhere,' he muttered.

TWELVE

The ceaseless thumping was setting them all on edge. It was a constant barrage on every wall, door and boarded-up window, a mindless tattoo of heavy-handed thuds, underpinned with the wordless, idiot groaning of the undead.

Naomi was twitchy, clearly close to the end of her tether. All five of them were sitting in the front room, Gwen, Rhys and Keith gamely trying to make conversation, when she suddenly slammed down her coffee mug and shrieked, 'Why don't they just
stop?
' Jasmine, clutching a yellow rabbit and seeming much younger than her eleven years, abruptly burst into tears.

Gwen and Rhys looked meaningfully at each other, knowing how much more volatile an already terrifying situation could become if panic set in.

Keith said, 'Hey, come on, love,' and tried to put his arms round his wife, only for her to flinch away from him as if he was a stranger.

Gwen leaned forward. 'Naomi,' she said gently, 'Naomi, listen to me. I know how scared you are, and that's understandable. But we have got to stay calm and focused. For the time being, we've just got to sit this out.'

Naomi homed in on her. It was evident she was looking for a target on which to vent her spleen. '
Why?
' she said acidly. '
Why
do we have to stay calm?'

'Because if we start to panic, we lose control. And if we lose control, we make mistakes. And if we make mistakes, then those creatures out there will get us. Believe me, I know.'

Naomi sneered. 'How could you
know?
'

'She's a secret agent or something,' Keith told his wife, a note of admiration in his voice. 'She's got a gun and everything.'

Gwen winced. Jasmine looked at her wide-eyed, as if she expected Gwen to shoot her through the head at any moment. Standing up with a sigh, Gwen said, 'I'll make us all some more coffee.'

She went through to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and – because all the chairs had been used in the barricade – sat on the floor. She rested her forehead on her knees and let out a big sigh, attempting to block out the thuds and thumps around her, to find a quiet, still place into which she could retreat, if only for a few moments.

Suddenly she heard the scuff of a footstep, and her head snapped up. For a split second she thought the zombies had broken in; she expected to see some rotting monstrosity looming over her. Instinctively she reached for her gun – but her hand froze when she saw that it was only Jasmine who had entered the kitchen. The little girl looked down at her curiously.

'Why are you sitting on the floor?'

Gwen smiled. 'Because there aren't any chairs.'

Jasmine accepted the explanation without comment. 'Dad says I can have some milk.'

'OK,' said Gwen. 'Would you like me to warm it up for you?'

Jasmine pulled a face. 'I hate warm milk.'

'Me too,' Gwen said. 'Hot chocolate's nice, though. Warm milk with a couple of spoonfuls of chocolate powder. Lovely.'

Jasmine almost smiled. Nodding at the floppy yellow rabbit, which the girl was still cradling in the crook of her arm, Gwen asked, 'What's his name then?'

'It's a her,' said Jasmine.

'Oh, I
do
beg your pardon,' said Gwen, rolling her eyes and making Jasmine giggle. 'Of course, I should have realised. What's
her
name?'

'Sunny,' said Jasmine. 'Cos she's yellow.'

Gwen nodded. 'Good name.'

She watched Jasmine open the fridge and take out the milk carton, the rabbit still tucked under her arm.

'When I was your age,' Gwen said, 'I had a toy monkey. Still got her, actually. My gran gave her to me. Her name's Bonzo. The monkey's name, that is, not my gran's.'

Jasmine giggled again. 'Bonzo's a funny name for a girl.'

'Suppose it is, really,' said Gwen. 'But there was a famous gorilla called Bonzo, so I called my monkey after him. Do you want a hand with that?'