Torchwood Long Time Dead

Long Time D e a d

T O R C H W O O D

Long Time Dead

Sarah Pinborough

For Kelly and Noah

John Blackman cursed quietly as he crouched to
get past a fallen concrete strut and some dangling
wires hanging from the collapsed ceiling. Then he
cursed again - internally this time - for getting
his visor more steamed up than it was already.

He hated the suit. It was claustrophobic and, no
matter how cold the actual temperature, there was
something about the rubbery fabric that always
left his skin and clothes underneath soaking in
sweat. That's what he told the rest of the team
as he stripped off at the end of the shift. When he
was having a quiet, honest-with-him self moment,
he knew it was more likely to just be good old-fashioned fear that left him dripping unpleasantly
and adding hugely to his washing pile.

He hated being part of the recovery team. He
was a scientist. He'd always worked in labs, and
had been very pleased with that arrangement.

Finding himself assigned to the Department and
suddenly in the field wasn't his idea of fun. It
wasn't as if he could analyse how anything worked
from within the stupid suit and clumsy gloves, so
why didn't they just set him up in a nice mobile
unit on the surface and he could work there? Most
of the equipment and other strange items they'd
found had been shattered or broken or apparently
useless anyway.

The whole project seemed like a waste of time,
but no one argued with the Department. Especially
not a science nerd seconded from the laboratories.

He'd thought about it once or twice -
more
than once
or twice - about going straight up to Commander
Jackson and telling him exactly what he thought
about this assignment. He'd practised the speech
every time he pulled the suit on and made another
treacherous journey underground, but somehow
the words just couldn't get out of his head. Every
time he'd seen the Commander's hulking figure,
he'd found that his feet just scurried him on past
and his head stayed down. Confrontation had
never been one of his strong points. He waved his
heavy-duty torch this way and that to check his
footing and then edged cautiously onwards into
the bowels of the ruined building.

He'd been dreading this part of the job. A lot of
the debris on the surface had been carefully cleared
away, but the further down they excavated, the
more perilous the job became. He could almost feel
the weight of the broken building above him, each
piece held up precariously by the one next to it, a
house of heavy cards ready to crash down on him
should he trip and knock one out of alignment. He
tried not to think about it. He tried to focus on the
job at hand like the Department men did, but it
was bloody difficult.

His shirt was already sticking to his skin, and
the side of his head itched where his dandruff had
come back. So much for not thinking that the place
could collapse at any moment. Somewhere over to
his left he could hear someone carefully sifting
through the rubble, and it calmed him slightly to
be reminded that he wasn't alone down here with
only the sound of his own breathing being amplified
in his helmet. His feet felt firmer on the slightly
cleared route down towards the lower level, and
he tried to feel more confident. The sooner he got
down there and looked around, the sooner he could
get out. He'd said he'd take Lucy Waters from the
admin section out for a drink tonight. That wasn't
helping his sweating situation either.

When she'd asked him if he'd like to go out - two
whole days ago now - he'd at first thought it was
something of a joke. It wasn't as if Lucy Waters
was some kind of Angelina Jolie or anything (he'd
probably die if he ever found himself in the same
room as a woman like that), but she was well out
of his league. A little mousy perhaps, but she
had a nice figure and although she always wore
prim blouses it was very difficult to not notice her
breasts. They were very much in the room, as he'd
heard people say.

He, however, was a self-confessed geek through
and through. A dislike of vegetables mixed with
spending most of his waking hours indoors and
away from fresh air had made his skin pasty and
slightly flaky, and his thin body never quite sat
right in clothes that were always too big or too
small. When not in his lab coat, the shoulders
of his jackets and shirts carried a dusting of
dandruff, and his teeth were slightly yellowed
by a dependence on coffee. He'd looked worse as
a teenager thanks to several unfortunate bouts
of what the doctor described as 'nervous acne'.

John had thought the spots were more angry
than nervous, and they had left their battle scars
around his chin.

All of this, and his primary interests of
astronomy, mathematics and video games, meant
that John Blackman had reached the ripe old age
of 28 without ever having had a proper girlfriend.

In fact, John Blackman hadn't even been kissed or
grabbed a feel of anyone's tit. But now, he thought,
as the air cooled around him and he climbed
carefully down into the newly opened up area, all
that might change.

Lucy Waters had actually blushed when she'd
asked him about the excavation work and how
potentially dangerous it was. She'd wanted to
know
all
the details, and she'd leaned in close
enough that he could smell her perfume on her
skin. Excited as he'd been at the time - and
had been for the two days since as the number
of tissues now littering the space under his bed
could testify - he was now absolutely terrified. If
he'd had to choose between this strange building
collapsing on him or making conversation with
Lucy over a glass of wine, he'd have said the two
were equally unappealing. But still, he thought,
frowning slightly as he dropped through a narrow
gap and into the heart of the lower level, if the suit
made Lucy Waters horny for him, then maybe he
should wear it on the date. At least she wouldn't
see how petrified he was then.

He paused as silence closed in around him
again, the rest of the men working too far away
to hear. As the cold stench hit him, all thoughts
of Lucy Waters and her breasts evaporated. What
was that? Something foetid; damp and rotting.

What had been kept this far down in the earth
beneath the thriving social hubbub of Cardiff
Bay? He was working here - in fact, risking his
life here no matter how much the Department
operatives laughed at that suggestion - and all
he knew was that it had been some kind of secret
government research centre. Even crumbled and
wrecked as it was, John knew it had been way
more sophisticated than his lab was. It was like a
contradiction.

They'd pulled bits of equipment out of here
that were made out of metals that were entirely
unidentifiable, along with several battered pizza
boxes and an old Rubik's cube. The people that
had worked here, whoever they were, might have
been scientists like him, but he figured they were
definitely the trendy variety. They got laid. For
a brief second he felt a moment of jealousy and
then it was gone. Had they been inside when the
building collapsed? They might have been cool,
but they were very likely to be dead.

He breathed in short shallow bursts, doing his
best to avoid the awful stench, and as he crept
forward his foot banged into something hard in
the darkness. The metal thump sang out, and he
shone the light downwards. He stumbled back
slightly. It was some kind of steel drawer and he
crouched beside it, stumbling backwards when he
saw a human hand. So this was where the stench
was coming from. The drawer was open on its side,
other pieces of debris littered on it. He swung the
torch upwards. What had once been a bank of some
kind of steel lockers was now squashed to half its
height with the weight from above, and where it
had bowed in the middle all its secure contents
had shot outwards. For the first time, he realised
that perhaps there were worse ways to go than
being crushed to death. What else had been stored
here with so much security? Chemical weapons?

Viruses? The Department had been very quiet on
those subjects when he'd asked about the dangers
of this job.

He looked down again. What kind of deaths
meant people couldn't be buried by their families?

He didn't want to be here. Not at all. Not even a
feel of Lucy Waters' breasts - any breasts for that
matter - was worth it.

He almost shrieked when a low moan

interrupted his thoughts. He spun around,
waving his torch madly. The noise had come from
somewhere to his right. He took a deep breath to
calm his racing heart, and listened again. For ten
seconds there was nothing, and then there it was:
a soft, wet sound. Feminine. Debris shifted and
the moan came again.

'Hello?' he said, softly. The word was deadened
by the cold and concrete. Is someone there?'

The moan came again. Slightly confused, John
picked his way towards the source. It couldn't be
a survivor. Unless there was a supply of food and
water down here, they'd have been dead long ago.

Could one of the team have come down here ahead
of him and injured themselves?

He raised his hand and clicked the radio button
in the side of his head. 'Um, this is Blackman?

Down in the vault? I think I've found something?'

Static fired back at him. Great. Just what he
needed. This was government equipment. How
could the radio stop working? It didn't fill him
with the greatest confidence. There had been men
working at the next level up and he almost called
out to them, but the fear of bringing the whole
place down on his head kept him quiet. He'd check
out whoever was down here, and then go for help.

Simple as that. And on the upside, it might get his
shift over more quickly.

The moaning sounded stronger, as if perhaps
whoever was there was slowly coming round after
being knocked unconscious. It was definitely a
woman too, which was odd, because he hadn't
noticed any in the morning's team. He must have
missed someone during his daily battle with his
nerves as he got his suit on.

'I'm here,' he said, peering into the darkness
and trying to make out where she lay. The torch
finally found her, a few metres ahead of him,
the bottom half of her body obscured by the top
of another of the broken steel drawers. The way
she was lying made it look as if she'd crawled as
far out of it as she could before losing her energy.

That was ridiculous, of course. It must have fallen
on her. She couldn't have come out of it. Could
she? His mouth dried slightly, and then, as he got
closer, she came fully into view.

The first thing he noticed was that she was
beautiful. Even covered in dust and with the white
smock she was wearing tugged this way and that
and her thick, dark hair a messy fan beneath her
head, she was absolutely stunning. She sighed
again and, as he crouched beside her, he glimpsed
the tops of her smooth brown thighs. He licked
his lips slightly. That was when the second thing
dawned on him. She wasn't wearing a suit. If she
was part of the team, she'd be wearing a suit.

Where was her suit?

He didn't have time to consider an answer
for that before he noticed something strange
under the smock, just about where her stomach
was. Something was glowing. There was a circle
of red pulsing light showing through the fabric.