Pack Animals t-7

by Peter Anghelides

  ‘No you don’t!’ snapped Jack, and began to hurl Disney characters at the creature. It swooped down at him, slashing at his arm with a razor-edged leg.

  ‘That’s more like it!’ he grinned, nursing the wound with one hand while keeping the camera aimed at the insect. ‘C’mon, c’mon! You’ve got nowhere to escape to.’

  The creature reared back, ready to strike. Before vanishing in a swirling cloud of brilliant illumination.

  Gwen stepped forward hesitantly. ‘Where did it go, Jack?’

  Jack snapped the phone shut, and tossed it back to Brigstocke. ‘Before we left, Tosh set up a video phone in the Hub dungeon. That insect will materialise in secure storage down there, and we can deal with it later.’ His smile faded. ‘Assuming I dialled it right.’ He rapidly muttered a mobile phone number as though checking his memory.

  Gwen blanched. ‘That’s Rhys’s number!’

  Jack was grinning again. ‘Just kidding.’

  She slapped his arm. ‘I hope he’s safely on his way to the international, by now.’

  No such joy for the Portlands, she reflected. Just across from her, Matt was weeping over his mother’s remains. Chris stoically tried to ignore this, as though that would deny the truth of it. He carefully sprayed the area around the MonstaQuest stand with weed killer. Gwen went to him and saw the shrivelled stalks of the same alien plants that they’d seen in the shopping mall. The bizarre foliage surrounded a huge gash in the surface, so wide and deep that she could see right through to the third floor below.

  ‘Gareth was using the Visualiser to recreate an alien world for those creatures,’ said Jack from beside her.

  ‘Why did he stop?’

  ‘Not enough power.’

  Gwen studied Jack’s face in the flicker of the store’s emergency lighting. ‘Because we cut the electricity?’

  ‘No. Because the store evacuated,’ said Jack. ‘Not enough terrified witnesses to give it the emotional oomph it needs.’

  ‘Better track him down, then. He’s still got that Visualiser thing. And he can find more people just by leaving the store.’

  ‘Couple of other things too,’ said Jack. ‘Tosh, how many of the creatures got away through mobile phone calls?’

  ‘There were seventy-nine calls from those coordinates,’ Toshiko’s voice replied. ‘Only… let’s see… one of them was synchronised with a spike in Rift energy, and I got GPS coordinates for the destination phone.’

  Gwen nodded. ‘The gorilla thing we saw.’

  ‘OK, Tosh,’ said Jack briskly. ‘Send the coordinates through to Owen. Gwen, you guys know what you’re looking for. Capture or kill. You can phone it through to the Hub, if you need to.’ He turned to the others. ‘Ianto, you and the Portlands need to do some clean-up here.’

  ‘Clean-up?’ snapped Brigstocke. His composure seemed to be returning. ‘So this is how it works, is it Jack?’

  Jack ignored him, and spoke instead to Ianto. ‘Make sure the Portlands are OK,’ he murmured.

  Gwen saw that Jack passed a blister pack of Retcon pills to Ianto before he left the toy department.

  Toshiko was ready and waiting for Jack in the SUV. The window wound down, and she leaned out to talk to him as he approached.

  ‘Any easy way of tracking Gareth through town?’ Jack asked.

  She looked apologetic. ‘We took out the power for the whole block. CCTV is completely down.’

  ‘Rift traces?’

  She shook her head. ‘Place is awash with what you were dealing with on the fourth floor.’ She held up a metallic square. ‘Could try this?’

  Jack wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Toshiko using the other Vandrogonite Visualiser. ‘How difficult can it be to find a guy wandering round Cardiff in an orange T-shirt?’ He clicked his tongue as he became aware that Brigstocke had caught up with him.

  ‘You’re really not much of a football fan, are you?’ said the journalist. He beckoned for Jack to walk a short distance down the access road to the main shopping street.

  There was a guy in an orange T-shirt.

  Oh.

  There were seven more. And another group of five. And two of those were women.

  ‘Cardiff United shirts,’ Brigstocke grinned.

  Jack closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath.

  ‘But I know where he’ll be,’ said Brigstocke. When Jack opened his eyes again, the journalist was standing very close to him. ‘Take me with you, and I’ll show you.’

  He refused to say more until he was sitting in the passenger seat of the SUV. Toshiko sat in the rear, fiddling with her Visualiser.

  ‘OK, where?’ asked Jack.

  ‘You’re really not a football fan, are you?’ said Brigstocke. ‘He’s got tickets for the international. He looked really pleased to get them. So, he’s headed for the Millennium Stadium. That’s where Cardiff United play their home fixtures. I’ve covered loads of events,’ he added quickly. ‘I have Press accreditation, and I know my way around the place.’

  Jack wasn’t convinced. ‘I think Gareth has other things on his mind right now. All he has to do is use that Visualiser in the middle of some crowd of terrified late-night shoppers.’

  ‘How about a capacity crowd at the Millennium Stadium?’ asked Brigstocke. ‘That’s over 70,000 highly emotional spectators. And did you say these things can be transmitted through visuals?’

  Jack nodded.

  ‘Better get a move on, then.’ Brigstocke started to buckle his seat belt. ‘They have a live international television feed.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Getting out of the loading area and past the crashed bus proved to be the easiest part of their journey.

  The closer they got to their destination, the slower their progress became. The Stadium loomed in the distance, the support towers around it looking like the crooked legs of an enormous grasshopper. Jack tried not to think what sort of monstrous insect life Gareth Portland might conjure up inside it.

  Spectators flooded the streets on their way to the match. They were indifferent to the SUV’s display of blue lights, and slapped the side of the vehicle as it attempted to pass through them.

  In the passenger seat, Brigstocke flicked through a MonstaQuest pack that Jack had snatched from the stand at Wendleby’s. He spread them out over his knees, and considered their contents. ‘Some gruesome sorts here, Jack. Are they all real?’

  Toshiko peered through from the rear of the SUV. ‘Many of them are. But a handful of them were just made up by Gareth when he created the game. The weather cards, for instance.’ She held up a MonstaQuest Whirlwind card. ‘They’re all based on Earth meteorology. And those guerrilla gorillas? They’re more of a pun. Something Gareth added in as a joke.’

  ‘The people they killed in Wendleby’s weren’t laughing,’ Jack observed.

  ‘No, that’s my point, really,’ Toshiko continued. ‘I don’t think that the Visualiser is bringing them through the Rift. I think it’s creating them from scratch. Basing them on its own catalogue and Gareth’s powerful imagination.’

  In the rear-view mirror, Jack saw her flourish her version of the Visualiser.

  ‘This must be the pair of Gareth’s device. If I concentrate while I’m holding it, I can sense the other one. Similar to magnets, you know? The way like poles repel and opposite poles attract.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I can sense that he’s close by.’

  Jack flicked his eyes back to the road, saw that the car they were following had stopped. He had to brake sharply. Brigstocke spilled MonstaQuest cards into the footwell, and Toshiko jerked awake from her reverie.

  The snaking trail of vehicles in front of them had completely halted. A chanting crowd of orange shirts milled along the street, completely blocking further progress. Three cars ahead, the driver was getting out and abandoning his vehicle.

  ‘We’re gonna have to walk,’ Jack decided. ‘Though we’re never gonna beat these crowds.’

  ‘Kick-off’s not for another two hours,’ Brigsto
cke said. ‘If we cut down that alleyway over there, on foot, we can get in through the Press entrance.’

  Jack unbuckled his seat belt. ‘Let’s do it. And Tosh, can you delay the entry of the crowds into the Stadium? A bomb threat with a known code word?’

  Brigstocke stared, appalled. ‘Another pack of lies, Jack?’

  Jack snorted. ‘You think the truth is gonna help them?’

  ‘If you keep this lot outside for too long, there’ll be a riot!’ snapped Brigstocke. ‘And a bomb threat means the Press won’t get in either.’

  ‘We need the delay.’

  Toshiko called from the back: ‘I’ve put a spanner in the ticketing system. It’ll read all valid tickets as forgeries, and jam the turnstiles. That should stall them. And it’s early enough that they’ll try and fix it before letting people in.’ She started to switch off the computer. ‘Oh, and I’ve put a judder in the Stadium’s retractable roof, so now it can’t decide whether it wants to open or close.’

  ‘Attagirl.’

  Jack put the SUV into lockdown, and the three of them squeezed out into the river of orange shirts. Almost at once, Toshiko was swept away from Jack and Brigstocke. They struggled against the tide of bodies, cutting across to try and rescue her. She was forced into the alleyway, but Jack and Brigstocke found they were dragged past it. Even above the excited babble of the crowd, Jack could hear Toshiko’s scream for assistance.

  ‘Gotta get back and help her!’ Jack yelled. No way of reasoning with the surging stream of people, they were like a pack of animals herding down the roadway. The more he and Brigstocke struggled, the more the crowd surged, increasingly angry at their resistance. They managed to press themselves against the wall of a building, and edge back towards the alleyway.

  Another scream from Toshiko cut off abruptly. There was coarse laughter from the alley.

  And then a blast of air that powered its way from the narrow entrance. Three orange-shirted bodies were flung above head height, out into the main street, accompanied by a shower of dirt and old newspapers. They fell onto the crowd, and rapidly dropped out of sight. A ripple of movement in the group where they’d landed suggested they were now receiving a kicking.

  Jack got around the corner of the building as the gust of air died down again.

  In the centre of the alleyway, all on her own, stood Toshiko. Jack ran to her. Her eyes were closed in concentration. In one hand she held the Visualiser, and in the other a MonstaQuest card. Jack touched her arm gently, and she opened her eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked her.

  ‘They were attacking me.’

  ‘Looks like you handled it,’ Jack said with an admiring tone.

  ‘The Visualiser,’ she explained. She revealed the face of her MonstaQuest card. It showed the roof lifting off a house, with the stark description: Gale. Toshiko looked uncertainly at Jack. ‘I don’t know whether I was controlling it, or it was controlling me. I just wanted them gone, and this huge squall picked them up and flung them aside.’

  Brigstocke joined them, looking dishevelled. One pocket of his sports jacket was flapping and torn. ‘We can get through this way to the Stadium,’ he said. ‘Look, you can see it straight ahead.’ The skeletal towers loomed large in the distance. ‘You know, I remember when they knocked down part of the old Cardiff Arms Park to build the Millennium Stadium.’

  Jack chuckled. ‘And I remember when they knocked down all of the Cardiff Arms Hotel to build Cardiff Arms Park.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Brigstocke, ‘that was in the nineteenth century.’

  Jack indicated the Visualiser. ‘Tosh, can you use it to tell us where Gareth is now?’

  She closed her eyes to concentrate.

  ‘Actually,’ said Brigstocke, ‘I don’t think you need to bother.’

  He was pointing down the alley towards the Millennium Stadium. Pouring through its roof into the dark evening sky was a dazzling column of green light.

  TWENTY-THREE

  A powerful transformation had overtaken the Millennium Stadium. Jack paused at the end of the players tunnel, and looked out onto the pitch.

  Brigstocke was babbling next to him, to cover his nerves probably. ‘I used to dream about walking down here. Running out on the pitch in front of a capacity crowd.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want a crowd here at the moment,’ Toshiko told him. She stared anxiously into the ground. ‘Are we too late, Jack?’

  Gareth Portland stood in the centre circle, his head thrown back and his arms raised. A spiralling column of lime green light whirled like an inverted cone above him and up into the darkening sky. The roof was half-open, juddering backwards and forwards, undecided whether to enclose or release the force beneath. On the pitch, a bizarre assortment of MonstaQuest creatures capered around Gareth, churning up the turf with claws and hooves.

  ‘I shoulda guessed he’d come here, Tosh,’ murmured Jack. ‘We’ve known since this place was constructed that it was aligned with the Rift.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Brigstocke.

  Jack looked at the journalist’s baffled face, illuminated by the eerie green light. ‘The playing surface was rotated through ninety degrees when they built the new Stadium.’

  ‘How is this helping?’ snarled Brigstocke, the fear starting to get to him. ‘What are you suggesting we do to Gareth? Give him a feng shui blessing? Ring a bell and throw some sea salt and wave an incense stick around?’

  Jack sighed. ‘It’s at times like this that I wish I could use one of those warheads we rescued from the Wanarian battle cruiser.’

  Brigstocke gave him a sharp look. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘There’s an intergalactic treaty that strongly discourages it,’ said Jack.

  ‘Plus,’ Toshiko explained, ‘it would reduce Cardiff to a desert of polished glass.’

  Brigstocke considered this for a second. ‘That would be a bad thing?’

  ‘You sound like you’re not sure,’ Toshiko told him.

  Jack laughed. ‘That’s because he’s from Swansea.’ He took a few steps further into the Stadium, and the movement of air began to tug at his hair and coat. ‘Hey, wait a minute…’

  On the other side of the Stadium, three stewards in luminous jackets were moving from the North Stand and across the pitch. One shouted into his radio handset, while the other two ran ahead, gesturing and waving at Gareth.

  ‘We gotta stop them,’ snapped Jack, and raced out onto the grass. Toshiko and Brigstocke trailed behind.

  Gareth tilted his head in the direction of the stewards. He lowered his left hand and, seconds later, a dazzling creature of fire and flame burst into life beside him. It scorched a burnt route across the turf.

  ‘No!’ yelled Jack to the gesticulating stewards as he pounded over the grass. ‘Stay back!’

  The fire creature fell upon the nearest two stewards. They barely had time to scream before they were consumed, their bodies flaring and vanishing in an instant. The fire exhausted itself, leaving two incinerated, smoking lumps on the blackened turf.

  The third steward staggered to a halt, gaping in incredulity. Jack got to him, and dragged him, unprotesting, back to the touchline. Jack clutched the shocked man by the shoulders. ‘You have to keep people away. Tell the police that Torchwood are handling this. You got that? Torchwood.’

  The steward nodded dumbly.

  ‘Don’t let anyone out into the Stadium, because they’ll die just like those first two. Stewards, police, staff, players – they all stay inside, understand?’ Jack pushed the steward towards the exit tunnel. ‘Especially Baldachi.’

  The steward stumbled off, breaking into a run.

  ‘Why Baldachi? Because he’s key to this?’ asked Brigstocke. ‘Or because he’s worth thirty million euro?’

  ‘Because he’s the cutest,’ replied Jack. ‘Have you seen him in those underwear advertisements?’ He watched to see Brigstocke’s reaction. It was important that the guy didn’t zone out now, because that could p
ut him and Torchwood in danger.

  Brigstocke shook his head. ‘You really know nothing about football, do you?’

  ‘I have pockets of expertise,’ said Jack defensively.

  From the sideline they could see the vortex around Gareth was moving faster. A stiff breeze swirled around the Stadium. ‘Where is Gareth getting the power from?’ Brigstocke asked. ‘You said he needed people’s emotions, but there’s no crowd.’

  ‘Not yet.’ Jack considered the steep rows of empty seats all around them. ‘But boy, when they get here, it’ll blow the roof off.’

  ‘It’s the Stadium’s power!’ said Toshiko. ‘Look at those rows of floodlights in the roof. See how they’re flickering? Gareth’s drawing energy straight from the local grid. Like priming the pump, waiting for the crowds to arrive.’

  Jack grinned at her, delighted. ‘You’re right! OK, Tosh, you need to get the satellite link disconnected and switch off the power.’

  Toshiko was struggling with her PDA in one hand and the Visualiser device in the other. ‘I need a schematic of the Stadium to locate the Press area. But I can’t get a proper connection with all this background Rift activity.’

  ‘I can show you!’ Brigstocke’s face was eager, excited.

  ‘All right!’ shouted Jack. ‘I’ll stay down here and keep Gareth’s attention while you do that.’

  As Toshiko and Brigstocke hurried back into the building, Jack began to pick his way cautiously over the springy turf. A motley collection of bizarre creatures danced attendance on Gareth. A scorpion creature arched its fat sting overhead, and snapped its enormous claws spasmodically. A couple of tall antelopes strutted back and forth, their snarling mouths full of drooling teeth. A broad-backed armadillo with a club tail scuttled in a short, angry circle.

  Jack drew his revolver, wondering how close he’d need to be for a killing shot. His repaired ankle still throbbed as he stalked closer to the centre circle. It reminded him that he had to stay clear of anything that might completely devour him – even if that was survivable, it would take too long to recover.