‘Undertake?’ echoed Ianto.
And then it hit Jack like a hammer blow. ‘The Undertaker,’ he said softly. ‘Frank Morgan.’
‘And this is his gift to you,’ said the pallbearer. With that, it released its grip on Ray.
The last thing she felt was a sudden coldness as if she had been immersed in ice water.
Then nothing.
FORTY-FIVE
Ray’s blackened corpse collapsed at the feet of the pallbearer.
‘No!’ screamed Gwen, and in that instant Jack had whipped his revolver up for a snap shot, his finger yanking on the trigger in his haste to slay the pallbearer.
The shot went wide, the bullet scything past the side of the pallbearer’s head.
It missed because Jack had rushed his shot, possibly the final, most vital shot of his long life. And he had rushed it because the pallbearer had brought up its own weapon at the very same instant and fired at him. Jack saw the flechette glint in the torchlight, and it filled his vision in less than a second, aimed straight at his forehead. But he was already moving, flinching away, using reflexes that were born of a lifetime of dodging death – and sometimes failing.
The blade glanced off the side of his skull and embedded itself in the wall.
Jack spun, the Webley flying from his hand. He crashed to the floor at Gwen’s feet, where she knelt to help him up. The skin at the side of his head had been sliced open to the bone, in a long gash stretching from his right eyebrow to the back of his ear. He lay still, his eyelids fluttering.
‘Jack. . .!’ Gwen turned his face towards her, felt the hot blood running over her fingers.
A shadow fell over them.
She looked up and saw the pallbearer. Its narrow yellow eyes blazed down at her from between the bandages.
And then a deafening crash of gunfire sent the pallbearer hurtling backwards, flipped practically head over heels in a spray of black slime. It rolled to a stop next to the casket and melted slowly into the flagstones.
Ianto sat clutching the MP5, smoke curling up from the barrel. His finger was still clenched on the trigger, the magazine emptied. His face was a mask of white fury.
The other pallbearers were all sinking slowly to the ground, their mission complete. They expired with soft, liquid noises, oozing away through the cracks between the flagstones. They left nothing but piles of bandages and rags and a stench of death.
‘We’ve got to. . . stop it. . .’ Ianto croaked. ‘The Undertaker. . . got to stop it. . .’
Gwen looked back at the casket. Frank Morgan’s emaciated skull was twitching and jerking and pulses of luminescence were shooting out along the plastic tubes connected to the rest of the chamber.
‘What’s going on?’ Frank’s voice broke through the strange, heavy silence that had filled the crypt like glue. ‘Am I back in the trenches? All I can hear is shouting and gunfire. Tell me I’m not back on the front line. . . Lord, but I don’t want to die. . .’
His voice fell away to a thin whine. The tubes were beginning to glow now, flickering like fluorescent lights as the pallbearers’ unnatural device came online. The crypt was lit by an ethereal green light, and Gwen could see the tubes throbbing and pulsing like living things, see the alien juices flowing inside like blood through veins. As the light grew brighter she could see the dead things that lined the walls starting to move as well, ancient tendons and dried muscles twitching spasmodically. The entire chamber was crawling back to life. Dust began to trickle from the ceiling.
Gwen looked down at Jack, brushing grit from his forehead. He was still out cold.
‘Do something,’ Gwen told Ianto.
‘Gun’s empty,’ Ianto gasped. His face was white, his lips grey. ‘Can’t feel. . . anything. . .’
‘Ianto!’
He keeled forward, losing consciousness. His hands were shaking, and his legs began to tremble as if his whole body had entered into some kind of fit.
‘Assassin,’ croaked Jack. His eyes flickered open, sore and narrow.
‘What do you mean?’
Jack heaved himself upright, shaking his head. The right side of his face and neck was crimson. ‘It’s the assassin they sent for me,’ he said, crawling over to where Ianto lay. ‘It got Ianto by mistake.’
He rolled Ianto over onto his back and loosened his tie.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gwen. ‘What assassin?’
‘We got it wrong,’ Jack explained heavily. ‘The Hokrala didn’t send a man with a gun. They knew that wouldn’t work against me. So they sent a different kind of assassin.’
He pulled Ianto’s tie free and ripped open his shirt, pulling the material away from his chest and stomach. The rashes had turned from a livid red to black.
Black that was moving.
Gwen’s hand went to her mouth as realisation struck. Patches of Ianto’s skin were covered with tiny, glistening black insects. They were burrowing away at the flesh, eating down through the skin. Many of them were fat with blood, their segmented bodies taut and glossy.
‘Xilobytes,’ said Jack, his mouth turning down with revulsion. A sob broke through his words. ‘They must have been in the writ – just a few microscopic larvae. You couldn’t see them with the naked eye but they were there – probably hidden in the watermark. They must have got onto Ianto’s skin and got to work. They eat through human flesh, growing all the time, excreting a powerful local anaesthetic. He wouldn’t have felt anything but an itch. They’re feeding and multiplying, and if we don’t do something they’ll eat him right through to the bone.’
‘But. . . what can we do?’
Jack took in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘There’s only one way to stop them – it’s risky, though. You have to wait for them to get big enough and then pick them off with your fingers one by one and kill ’em.’ To demonstrate, he chose one of the fattest insects and pulled it out of the wound. It left a bright spot of red where it had been.
Jack threw the wriggling creature on the floor and squashed it under his boot. Then he looked up at Gwen and met her eyes. ‘Think you can do that?’
She shook her head, horrified.
‘Then I’ll do it,’ Jack said. ‘But that means you’re gonna have to deal with Frank.’
Gwen looked back up at the casket. The tubes were flexing like the legs of some giant mutant spider. Frank Morgan’s skull was still talking, but she hadn’t heard a word of it in the last few minutes.
‘Is there anybody there? I can hear voices. Where are you?’
He was growing more agitated, and his voice had descended to a deep, inhuman growl. As she watched, the dried skin that covered his eye sockets was suddenly forced apart as he opened his eyes for the first time in decades. Two darkened eyes forced their way through the dry folds of skin, swivelling madly, covered in bulging red veins. The eyes seemed to lock onto Gwen.
‘Is that you, Gwen?’
‘You gotta kill him,’ Jack told her urgently. ‘Now!’ He picked another couple of Xilobytes out of Ianto’s wounds and crushed them.
Gwen picked up Jack’s revolver and aimed the heavy gun at Frank’s open head. ‘How will that help?’ she asked. ‘He’s already dead. Half his head’s missing for God’s sake. He’s just a load of dried-up flesh and bone!’
‘He’s the Undertaker,’ Jack insisted. ‘He’s the control element of the time fissure. I know he’s already dead. He was put there by the Already Dead. There’s nothing they don’t know about that sort of thing. Kill him – now.’
‘Gwen? Is that you? Are you there?’ Frank’s reedy voice grated on her nerves. ‘You’re the only friendly voice I’ve heard in ages, Gwen. Don’t tell me you’ve gone.’
‘I’m here,’ Gwen heard herself say, still aiming the Webley.
‘And what about the yank? Captain Whatsisname? Is he here too?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do us a favour, love, and get us out of here. . .’
Jack reached up and grabbed Gwen’s hand. ‘Do it now!’<
br />
‘I can’t!’ Gwen wailed. ‘I can’t shoot him, Jack. He’s a human being, a person. It’s murder.’
‘You said yourself, he’s already dead!’
‘But he’s not, is he? Listen to him, Jack!’
Jack looked imploringly at her. ‘He’s one life, Gwen. A life that should never have lived like this. If you don’t kill him now then thousands – millions – of people are gonna die!’
‘I can’t do it, Jack.’
‘You must!’
Frank’s voice wheezed out of the darkness. ‘Gwen? Jack? What’s happening? I feel strange. . . so strange. . .’
Gwen let go of the gun with a cry.
And then, for Jack Harkness, it all seemed to fall into place. The dreams, nightmares, about Gwen – future echoes distorted by the Rift and his own subconscious: warning him that it would come to this. A choice between one life and millions, a choice Gwen Cooper could not be expected to make. The responsibility would be his, and his alone. Destruction on a scale unheard of, death upon death, millions of lives lost. A world of suffering.
Unless he did something.
Jack looked down at Ianto. He was unconscious, the alien insects chewing their way through his body with every passing second.
A choice between one life and millions.
No choice.
With a deep groan of anguish, Jack left Ianto and picked up the Webley. He straightened up and extended his arm. He narrowed one eye and lined up the V of the pistol’s rear sight with the blade on the tip of the barrel. He wasn’t going to miss this time. A .38 calibre bullet would shatter that brittle old skull like an antique vase from this range.
Carefully, deliberately, Jack gently squeezed the trigger.
And the gun clicked on empty.
LAST RITES
FORTY-SIX
For a long, disbelieving second Jack stood there, ramrod straight, gun still extended. Impotent. He realised then that the weight of the revolver was all wrong – too light for it to be loaded with anything but empty cartridges. In the excitement he had overlooked that simple fact.
Then the end of the world began.
The skull jerked and opened its jaws wide as a long, desperate shriek broke loose. The blackened tongue shrank back into the throat as Frank Morgan’s remains seemed to deflate, almost as if the final scream was all that was left inside him. The parchment skin covering his head stretched and tore open, shrivelling like paper in a fire. The stringy flesh inside withered and crumbled and the dark, bulging eyes drew back into their sockets like snails into their shells. In less than ten seconds all that remained of Frank was a wrinkled, shrunken nut of matter and the long echo of his final cries.
The ground started to shake. Dust and bricks clattered from the ceiling, exploding on the floor.
‘What’s happening?’ Gwen groaned, hanging on to Jack as the quake grew in intensity.
Tubes and wires snapped and lashed through the darkness like steel hawsers. ‘End of the world,’ Jack said. ‘Temporal fusion.’
Ianto groaned, still alive, and for that Jack was profoundly grateful. He didn’t want any of them to die down here. Not like this.
‘Help me!’ Jack bent down, slung one of Ianto’s arms over his shoulders and hoisted him up.
Limping badly, Gwen got herself under Ianto’s other arm and helped Jack manoeuvre him through the door. Bricks and mortar poured down behind them, creating a thick cloud of choking dust.
The ground was shaking so hard it was almost impossible to walk, especially supporting Ianto. They tumbled from side to side as they staggered through the passages, tripping over broken masonry and the bodies of fallen pallbearers. Gwen’s ankle couldn’t take the strain and she collapsed with an agonised, despairing yell.
‘Keep moving!’ roared Jack. He picked her up by the scruff of her jacket, grabbed her around the waist with his free arm and then carried on. He could barely walk carrying both Gwen and Ianto, but he had to get out. If he was going to face the end of the world he wanted to do it outside, where he could see it coming and meet it head on. Not trapped underground.
There was a deep, deafening noise filling the passages now, rising inexorably from what felt like the depths of the Earth. The quake grew more violent, and the brickwork over their heads began to split apart, as if struck by a giant axe from above. Bricks and soil dropped through the breach, almost burying them. With a strength lent to her by sheer terror, Gwen scrabbled through the debris and clawed her way towards the light above. Jack pushed her on, shouting at her to move, urging her upwards through the tumbling earth.
She broke free a second later, spitting soil and grit, climbing up through a river of shale. The slope levelled out and she turned, reaching back for Jack. He held Ianto up to her and she grabbed his hands, dragging him out of the chasm. Jack crawled up after them and heaved himself out onto the ground.
The earthquake rumbled on.
Jack knelt by Gwen and Ianto, his arms around them, holding them close enough to feel their hearts beating. His own heart thudded wildly against his chest as he took in their new surroundings.
‘It really is the end of the world,’ breathed Gwen. Her eyes were wide, terrified. Jack squeezed her tightly.
The church was crumbling, great chunks of brickwork collapsing as the building shook and sank into the quaking earth. The ground all around them was an uneven mass of paving flags and soil, as if the Black House had been transformed into a bomb site. Beyond that the railings and trees were twisted and broken; beyond those were the houses. Roofs buckled and collapsed, walls broke down, clouds of dust rose into the air along with screams and sobs of the people inside.
Police and ambulance sirens wailed a terrible lament as the destruction spread, accompanied by the slow, relentless rumble of the quake.
‘What have we done?’ moaned Gwen. ‘What have we done?’
‘I’ve failed,’ Jack said quietly. ‘Just like Hokrala said I would.’
FORTY-SEVEN
They crouched beneath a storm, lightning flaring and crackling with sudden fury. Jack put his arms around them and held them close as he looked up to heaven with tears in his eyes.
‘What have I done?’ he asked.
‘It was me,’ Gwen said miserably. ‘It’s all my fault. I couldn’t pull the trigger when it mattered. I let this happen.’
Jack looked down at her, squeezed her. ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I should never have asked that of you. There was nothing you could have done – this was all started by the pallbearers, remember.’
Gwen let out a sob, although the enormity of it all prevented any tears. ‘Rhys. . . Oh, Rhys. . .’
The sky above them swirled with dark, clotted clouds. Lightning flashed.
Jack opened the cover on his leather wrist-strap to check the readings. Coloured lights flashed manically and he forced himself to concentrate, to understand what was happening. It was the only way he could cope.
‘It’s a temporal fissure,’ he reported. His lips felt numb as he talked, and he had to raise his voice to be heard over the storm. ‘The Rift is being forced open, wider, much wider. It’s disintegrating the planet from here outwards.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘Can’t say.’ Jack made some adjustments to the manipulator. ‘At the moment the destruction is localised – central Cardiff only. But it’s spreading every moment. It’ll gather momentum, destroying this city first, then the coastline. Then England, Europe. . . There will be tidal waves and seismic shockwaves so massive they will break the planet into pieces.’
‘Then this is it.’ Gwen grabbed Jack’s arm. ‘This really is the end.’
Tears streamed from Jack’s eyes and he cupped one hand around her face. ‘I’m sorry.’
Ianto was stirring. ‘I take it. . . things haven’t improved. . .’
‘Easy, Ianto.’ Jack rested a hand against his forehead. ‘Easy.’
Ianto’s body was covered in dust and grime, but the wounds on his chest were
still starkly visible, still crawling with Xilobytes. Angrily, Gwen reached down and flicked one of the largest away.
‘Why is the sky green?’ Ianto asked.
They looked up. Dark clouds swirled like the eye of a storm, and a dull, angry green light shone from within.
‘Oh God,’ Gwen murmured.
Jack took another reading on his wrist device. ‘Time flux. Something’s breaking through the Rift. Something big. . .’
The sky suddenly warped and split, as if something massive had pressed against the fabric of the universe and forced it open. The green-black clouds broiled and raged, but a narrow strip of orange light had appeared in the centre. It widened, like an opening eye, and a fierce, flickering yellow light shone down.
‘What is it?’
‘I have no idea.’ Jack’s wrist strap bleeped and he checked it again. ‘Something’s wrong. . .’
‘Seriously?’ said Ianto.
‘I mean different,’ Jack said, frowning. ‘The fissure’s getting wider but this is something else.’
Slowly Jack got to his feet, looking directly up at the shimmering bulge in the sky. It was changing colour, swirling with deep blood red, then purple, green, pink, like oil spilled in water. Electric forces crackled around the edges, discharging to the crumbling earth below in bright, jagged flashes. A harsh wind blew Jack’s greatcoat and hair as he gazed up into the glowing eye of the storm. His eyes were shining with a sudden understanding.
‘I don’t want to die. . .’ Ianto said weakly.
Jack turned back to them. ‘You’re not going to,’ he said forcefully. ‘Not if I can help it.’
He started to move away, and Gwen jumped up, grabbing his arm. ‘Where are you going?’
‘There’s no time to explain!’ Jack had to shout above the sound of the quake, the sirens, and the fierce, galvanistic crackle of the lightning storm. His face was bathed in a golden glow from above, and Gwen could see that his eyes were suddenly full of purpose. ‘Stay here. Look after Ianto.’
The Undertakers Gift Page 15