Pack Animals t-7

by Peter Anghelides

  Jenny staggered into an echoing space of cold air. These were the emergency stairs. The fire doors had swung closed. She peered through their tall, narrow windows and saw the crowd was still thronged outside. No way past, so she decided to take the stairs and cut across the upper floor instead.

  On the next landing she found a torn leather coat. Further up the stairway was the slumped body of another yob, still wearing his face mask. Had he fallen? Maybe he was drunk. He smelled as though he’d shat himself. Jenny ventured closer. ‘You all right there?’

  There was so much blood. One of the figure’s arms had been torn off. The arteries had sprayed out over the stairs and up the wall. She could see that it wasn’t a person, more like a savage ape. Who would dress an animal up like that yob in the mall? She still had her phone in her hand, so she checked the picture she’d taken – the creature was unmistakably the same. In the confusion before, she must have forwarded it to her mum. Her mum was returning the call.

  Jenny whimpered as she pressed Receive. Then she shrieked as the fire alarm went off.

  The clamour disturbed something else in the stair well. Jenny hadn’t noticed it where it had spread itself on the underside of the stairs. A hellish bat-like creature dropped in front of her, the size of a large dog. It surveyed her with pitiless, pitch-black eyes.

  The phone dropped from her hands and skittered down the stairwell. Jenny’s desperate thought was: ‘If I’ve broken that phone, my mum’ll kill me.’

  But it wasn’t her mum that killed Jenny Bolton.

  Gwen couldn’t understand where the abrupt rush of air was coming from. Even if they’d opened loading doors somewhere, it shouldn’t whip up this kind of through current. She cupped her left hand awkwardly over her right ear. ‘I can barely hear you, Tosh. Get back-up to Pendefig Mall. I got two uncontained Weevils, and it’s a mess.’

  ‘I said, I thought it was your day off,’ shouted Toshiko. ‘Anyway, back-up isn’t available.’

  Gwen pursued the fleeing Weevils away from Valley Girl and through the yelling crowds, unable to take a shot for fear of hitting a terrified bystander. Most of the shoppers jumped aside, and those that didn’t were slashed by the Weevils. Gwen couldn’t remember seeing these alien creatures in crowds like this before. Maybe that was what had spooked them. The ugly brutes kept glancing over their shoulders as they tore through the mall. Eventually they must have spotted natural light from the glass entrance doors that led out into the street, and their pace increased.

  She half-considered abandoning her expensive boots, because the heels made chasing at full pelt quite difficult. But by the time she’d tugged them off her feet, the Weevils would be long gone.

  The fire alarm went off, startlingly loud. A new ripple of uncertainty ran through the crowd.

  The Weevils slammed into the glass doors on the hinge edges, and bounced off. Gwen took careful aim at the nearest one, but her target was obscured by a woman running across her line of fire. Gwen stepped calmly aside and refocused. But the Weevils had given up their brief assault on the exit. A fire door opened in the flanking wall. The Weevils leaped for the gap, knocking aside a startled janitor whose dropped bucket clattered down the steps after them.

  ‘Bloody hooligans!’ he bellowed after them. Further remonstrations died in his throat as Gwen squeezed past him, her gun ready.

  The stairs led to the service area in the basement. In the blissful absence of screaming shoppers, the loudest noises were the hum of equipment and the insistent clamour of the fire alarm. Even the sound of rushing wind was replaced with the whine of air-conditioning systems. Gwen could finally hear Toshiko yelling at her through her earpiece. ‘OK, you’re very loud and clear now, Tosh.’ Her own soft voice echoed oddly in the concrete stairwell.

  Toshiko’s voice crackled in her ear again. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘Who’s looking after the shop?’

  ‘I’ve left the pet in charge.’

  ‘Does a pterodactyl know how to answer a phone?’ hissed Gwen.

  ‘Pteranodon,’ retorted Toshiko.

  ‘Yeah, that’d make a difference. What about everyone else?’

  ‘Jack’s out in Newport with Ianto. Checking out Rift activity.’

  ‘Is that what they’re calling it now?’

  ‘Suspicious peak in the readings around a church,’ continued Toshiko. ‘And Owen’s doing that hotel investigation. So it’s just you and me. See you soon.’

  The connection dropped.

  Gwen continued down the cold, grey-painted steps. Smears of blood on the walls showed where the Weevils had pressed against them on their headlong flight down the stairs.

  The lighting in the maintenance corridor hummed overhead. One fluorescent tube with a faulty starter struggled to come on, sparking its fitful illumination. Gwen tried to get her bearings. If Toshiko had been there, she’d have called up a schematic of the mall on her PDA and picked out their precise location with GPS. Gwen didn’t have the time to get her PDA out of her handbag, never mind work out how to interface it to the mall’s wireless network. From what she remembered of the sloping ground where Pendefig was built, this maintenance corridor below the main shopping area would lead out into the rear of the mall and the loading areas.

  In a pool of light fifty metres ahead, one of the Weevils had stopped. It hunched down against a wall, quivering. Beneath it was a crumpled body. Another human victim, thought Gwen, a hot flush of anger suffusing her. Killed and eaten by the alien. No matter how many victims she’d seen since joining Torchwood – and it must have been dozens – she was determined never to get hardened to this. She’d known mates in the police who joked about the street detritus that they encountered, like they were objects and not people. They’d be shaken out of their cold indifference, she thought, if they’d seen how animals from other worlds really did treat humans like bags of meat. And then they might have a bit more respect even for Queen Street’s stinking vagrants or Friday night drunks slumped outside the Adonis Bar.

  The Weevil was shaking its head slowly over the body. It wasn’t eating, it was mourning. The body in its arms was the other Weevil. Gwen almost laughed as she trained her gun on it. The surviving Weevil was trying to make itself look small, even in plain view. Did it think she wouldn’t see it?

  It wasn’t hiding from her, though. It was now staring, terrified, at something opposite.

  Another creature squatted just inside the overlapping plastic doors of a storage area. Gwen saw its breath steaming the cloudy, scratched plastic.

  Abruptly, it lunged through the doors. The Weevil flinched, but did not flee. It was transfixed to the spot, or resigned to its fate. The attacker plunged its bestial face into the Weevil’s neck and shook it like a dog with a toy. The Weevil let out one pitiful, high-pitched squeal before sagging against the wall.

  Gwen choked in horror. And the attacking creature immediately snapped its head up in her direction. It was the size of a Labrador. Its scaly black body had strong rear limbs. When it spread its thin, powerful forearms, the attached wings spread incongruously large either side of its tiny, savage head. Coal-dark eyes glittered in the light of the corridor, and it hissed a sibilant warning breath from a mouth wide with savage teeth. With the wings extended, it looked like a bizarre bat.

  The powerful back legs shivered. Gwen had seen her mum’s cat do that as it prepared to leap at a bird in the garden.

  Gwen feinted to her right. As the bat sprang, Gwen loosed off two quick shots in succession, and fell left.

  The creature shrieked an echoing cry as both bullets tore through its wing. It continued its run, scraping past her and heading towards the exit ramp at the end of the grey corridor. Gwen launched herself after it, firing twice more at its back.

  She burst out from the top of the exit ramp, squinting into the bright morning light, nerves jangling in anticipation of the bat-creature waiting for her. Instead, it was flapping around in a circle, unable to fly off and hemmed in by parked delivery vehi
cles. Its unforgiving black eyes bored into her, but it was going nowhere.

  No more options.

  Gwen adjusted her firing stance, feet at shoulder-width, left foot advanced, leaning slightly forward, right elbow almost straight. It had become instinct now, and she rarely had the need, or the luxury of time, to think it through.

  She took a breath, and prepared to exhale half of it before she fired the round.

  A lightning flash from the middle distance dazzled her. A streak of yellow-white light spiralled around the bat-creature, enveloping it and then dissipating.

  Gwen whirled, half-fearing that the monster had got round her. But there was no noise from the ramp behind, nor any movement under the haphazardly parked transit vans nearby. High on a pole, a CCTV camera turned lazily towards her position, as though mocking her.

  There was nothing for either of them to see. The creature had vanished.

  The emergency vehicles speckled the market stalls with blue light. Traders were hurriedly bundling their goods into cardboard boxes or sheets as the crowds flooded out of the mall and into their pitches on the street. Empty plastic punnets scrunched underfoot in the spilled remnants of a fruit and veg stall, overturned in the evacuation. Gwen could hear Toshiko chattering in her right ear. Something about parking. Megan grumbled beside her into her left.

  ‘Madness it was,’ Megan babbled. ‘The air conditioning went crazy. There was clothes blowing all over the place. We got out through the emergency exit at the back of Valley Girl.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and Robert.’ She thumbed a gesture towards the pink-faced lad nearby, and lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Bit of a looker, isn’t he?’

  ‘You go for a bit of blond,’ smiled Gwen.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Megan. ‘Better not let him see that jacket. You keeping it, or what?’

  Gwen covered up the security tag in a self-conscious gesture.

  ‘Trina hadn’t heard about all this when I phoned her.’

  Gwen raised her eyebrows. ‘You called Trina before you called me? I could have been trampled to death.’

  ‘You’re used to crowd control,’ replied Megan offhandedly. It was evident she’d seen nothing of Gwen’s activities after she’d raced from the store. ‘And Trina’s on speed dial. Look at this lot. Bloody students, I told you they were trouble. Rag Week seems to go on for ever, it’s just an excuse for them to arse around. All this mad panic for nothing.’

  ‘Someone said they’d been messing with knives.’ Robert had sauntered over to join them, and placed his hand on Megan’s shoulder. ‘People got hurt.’ He eyed Gwen thoughtfully. She put her hands behind her back to hide the security tag, and smiled back at him.

  ‘It wasn’t students,’ said Toshiko Sato, who’d emerged around the leather goods stall beside them. ‘It was skinheads on the rampage. I heard it from the police back there.’

  Gwen felt herself relax a little now. ‘Megan, this is a friend of mine from work. Tosh, this is-’

  ‘Megan,’ beamed Megan. ‘I’m one of Gwen’s bridesmaids, you know.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Toshiko.

  Megan was oblivious to her reaction. ‘Me and Robert are going to grab a coffee. Laters!’ she concluded cheerfully, linked arms with the surprised but pleased shop assistant, and was off. As they went, she glanced over her shoulder and gave Gwen a big grin.

  ‘You tart,’ Gwen mouthed at her.

  ‘I know,’ Megan mouthed back, wide-eyed.

  Toshiko was fiddling about with her PDA now, sweeping it to and fro until she eventually settled on a route to the rear of the mall.

  As Gwen retraced her steps to the loading bay, she said to Toshiko: ‘They weren’t skinheads.’

  ‘Weevils,’ agreed Toshiko. ‘Yes, you said earlier. But if you seed something like skinheads in people’s minds, it’s amazing what they think they remember afterwards. I’ve already dropped some pre-written draft copy in the local press inboxes. Faked a few eyewitness accounts on their participation blogs.’

  ‘What about the CCTV footage?’ asked Gwen. They’d reached the circle of transit vans by the loading bays, and she could see the camera rotating on its pole. ‘Or is nothing beyond your talents?’

  ‘Certainly not a closed system like that. Nice jacket,’ she added. ‘Are you going to buy it?’

  Gwen smiled, embarrassed, as Toshiko tapped the security tag on the sleeve. And then gasped when whatever Toshiko did with the PDA harmlessly detached the tag. With barely a pause, Toshiko showed Gwen the display. ‘Now look at that – the Rift signature in this area has already died away almost to nothing. That’s quick.’

  ‘I haven’t seen that sort of alien before, Tosh. Nasty piece of work. Like a bat, but the size of a retriever. And it frightened the crap out of the Weevils.’

  ‘What, literally?’

  ‘It was like…’ Gwen pondered the reaction of the cornered Weevil. ‘Like they were its prey. I winged it, but it kept coming. We need back-up on this.’

  ‘Not any more.’ Toshiko closed her PDA. ‘Whatever is was, it’s long gone.’

  ‘It was right here less than half an hour ago,’ insisted Gwen.

  ‘Long gone in Rift terms.’

  Gwen sighed in exasperation. ‘So where are the others? Why is it just me whose day off gets ruined? I bet Jack and Ianto’s date won’t be interrupted, will it?’

  ‘Oh, that’s what they were talking about,’ realised Toshiko. ‘I think they were going to Ianto’s for a meal. He told Jack he was cooking up something special.’

  ‘Something to eat, but maybe not lunch.’

  Toshiko affected to look shocked. Her expression changed when she saw the smile slip off Gwen’s face. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Rhys was going to cook my lunch. And I’ll be tied up here and miss it again!’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Toshiko. She picked her way carefully down the ramp and into the mall. ‘Show me where the Weevils ended up, and I’ll arrange clean-up with Owen. You can get off home.’

  ‘That’s not fair on you. Don’t you think we’re stretching ourselves a bit far? We can cope with an alien here and a monster there. But what if there was a rush on, eh? If the Rift got its skates on. How can five of us cope against the world? Against many, many alien worlds?’

  They reached the torn remnants of the two Weevils. The animals remained locked in a ghastly final embrace. Toshiko appraised the nearby CCTV camera with an expert eye. ‘Simple enough to erase any actual photographic evidence of the Weevils from their system.’

  Gwen looked unsure. ‘Need any help?’

  ‘Can you tell the difference between UTP wire and 75 ohm coaxial cables?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll struggle on without you. Go.’ Toshiko gave her a little wave. ‘Nice boots, by the way. Belstaff?’

  Back outside in the trampled marketplace, ambulances were drawing up to collect the last victims. ‘Skinheads, out of control,’ one of the paramedics was saying.

  And beyond him, shoppers continued their calm progress towards retail outlets in the streets, unperturbed by recent events as the prosaic reality of life went on.

  FOUR

  Idelle Gethin stumbled down the bus, apologising as her bags clunked into people’s knees. The driver wasn’t waiting for her to get seated, the rotten bastard. Like another few seconds would delay him that much. The bus was gathering speed. With both hands full, Idelle had to balance as best she could without treading on the other passengers’ feet. She could see a double seat towards the back section. That would have to do. Her bad knees and bulky frame meant that standing all the way to the terminus wasn’t an option.

  She wished now she’d got on the earlier bus. But the familiar face of a middle-aged woman through the side window had put Idelle off boarding. She didn’t know that woman’s name, though Idelle sometimes saw her on this route. The woman couldn’t help it; she had the unsettling, bulging-eyes stare of hyperthyroid
ism. Idelle knew that nasty kids on the bus would tease the poor woman – mean calls of ‘pretty Polly’ – and Idelle wanted to avoid the embarrassment she herself felt when that happened, too nervous to intervene and stop them. Too worried that they’d turn their attention to mocking her for her weight.

  Cefn Welch listened to the growl of the Scania’s nine-litre engine as it jumped to second and into traffic. There was a clear stretch now before the next stop and, so long as he negotiated the road works carefully, he could make up for earlier delays and get back on schedule. In the rear-view mirror, he caught a glimpse of someone bouncing down the aisle. It was that fat woman who’d struggled to find the right change. Hurry up and find something, love, he thought. Sixty seats and room for twice that many standing, what are you waiting for?

  Unlike his mates at the depot, Cefn loved these new articulated buses. He imagined them rippling through the urban jungle of Cardiff like predators, sleek and purposeful. He loved the positions of the controls in the instrument cluster, his commanding view through the huge single-piece windscreen, the throaty roar of the nine-litre engine. And the smell of new upholstery was a definite improvement on the piss-and-dust stink of those old coaches. Gotta move with the times, he’d told Ronald when the old guy was grumbling about all the changes in the DragonLine bus fleet. And with this thought in mind, Cefn smoothly steered the sinuous creature through the traffic lights as the engine kicked into third.

  Daniel Pugh lifted his briefcase onto his lap, so that the fat woman could move down the aisle. The rear section of the bendy bus, beyond the concertina joint, was already standing-room only. Daniel pondered whether to offer up his place. Or would that imply he thought she was pregnant? She might take offence. That had happened before. He’d told Sheila about it that time, but his wife had laughed scornfully at him. ‘If you’re old enough to take early retirement, Dan, then you’re probably entitled to a seat on the bus. It’s the young kids who should be surrendering their seats. Give them a nudge.’ Like those teenagers – no, probably older than that – playing cards across the aisle. Daniel could see that it wasn’t a regular pack of diamonds and spades and whatnot, but a much larger format, more like portrait photographs. Each was garishly illustrated with ugly creatures and had complicated annotations. The backs of the cards said ‘MonstaQuest’, whatever that was.