by Mark Morris
Ignoring the alien's question, Jack said, 'So tell me, Leet, how do we get rid of these units of yours? How do we get things back to normal?'
The Dellacoi said, 'The units are no longer mine. They belong to the Oscarphillips. Only the Oscarphillips can contain them.'
Before Jack could respond, there was a bang as the double doors leading into the Intensive Care Unit were flung open. Gwen and Jack drew their guns.
'Time out!' Jack shouted. 'Arm yourselves, people!'
Rhys had left his golf club behind in the mad scramble up to the Samuels's attic, so he picked up the metal IV stand. Ianto looked around frantically, then ran across to a metal-framed chair next to the room's tall window and snatched it up, holding it in front of him like a lion tamer.
There was a blundering rush of movement in the corridor, and suddenly zombies were crowding against the observation windows of the IC unit, their ravaged faces savage now, eyes glaring, driven by the primitive urge to protect their creator.
Snarling and groaning, the creatures threw themselves against the door and windows, all of which cracked and then burst inwards in a shower of glass.
The walking dead flooded into the room, and as Jack and Gwen began firing, and Rhys and Ianto fended off attackers with their makeshift weapons, the Dellacoi pod rose from Oscar's forehead, flared and vanished. Instantly Oscar's eyes slid closed and he collapsed to the floor with a sleepy groan.
Gwen roared through her bared teeth as she pumped bullet after bullet into the advancing army of living dead. However, it quickly became obvious that she was fighting a losing battle. Despite the ever-growing pile of rotting corpses, the creatures just kept on coming, a seemingly endless stream of them, intent on tearing her apart.
She fired again, and another zombie fell, the bullet ripping half of its head away, then spun to her left to take out a bloated teenager in a supermarket tabard. As she did, a boy no older than four, his mouth and hands a mess of gore, threw himself at her leg like a pit bull terrier. Caught by surprise, Gwen stumbled and fell heavily, cracking her shoulder on the metal frame of the bed with enough force to jar the gun out of her hand. She had no time to see where it went because the boy was on her in an instant, his bloody hands climbing her body, his teeth gnashing as he homed in on her throat.
She held him off as best she could, but he was like an eel – slippery, vicious and immensely strong. She was vaguely aware of other zombies crowding around her, reaching down with their clawed and rotting hands.
In rage and terror, Gwen screamed. . .
SIXTEEN
Deep down, in the dark and the quiet, Oscar and his friend Leet were talking. Leet had confessed how he had borrowed and moulded Oscar's memories without his permission, and how those memories had subsequently escaped, replicating and mutating like a virus, turning bad.
'Oscar,' Leet said to him – and to Oscar he seemed to speak in thought bubbles, like in a comic book – 'only you can save the world. It's up to you to put it right.'
Oscar nodded slowly, his face grim and determined. 'Leave it to me, Leet,' he said authoritatively. And then he rather spoiled it by asking, 'What do I do?'
So Leet told him, and now Oscar was rushing up towards the light, rushing and rushing, faster and faster. The light was getting bigger. First, it was the size of a pinprick; then an eye; then a football; and then suddenly it was the size of an entire planet.
Oscar burst back into the world with a sound like a thunderclap. He opened his eyes and there on the floor, just a few inches from his outstretched hand, was the gun, exactly where Leet had told him it would be. He curled his hand around it, and it felt good, it felt right. And then, with one bound, he was on his feet and looking around him, taking in everything in an instant with his super-sight.
Everything Leet had told him was true. His memories were out of his head, and out of control. He raised his hands and shouted, 'Stop!'
And the memories did stop. They stopped and they looked at him, as if waiting to be told what to do next. And the four people – the four real people – looked at him as well: the smart man with the chair; the chubby man with the metal stand; the handsome man in the long coat; the black-haired girl on the floor, who immediately scrambled to her feet and shouldered her way out of the memories which were crowding around her.
'Sorry,' Oscar said to them, and then he turned and pointed the gun at the tall window opposite the door. He pulled the trigger, and the window, blind and curtains and all, exploded outwards into the night.
A voice roared, 'Stop!' and, incredibly, the zombies obeyed. The ferocious child pushed itself away from Gwen and stood beside her, almost to attention. The zombies which had been reaching down to tear her apart straightened up. Eerily, they all turned their heads towards the source of the sound. Exhausted, bedraggled and covered in bloody handprints, Gwen turned her head too.
She saw Oscar Phillips standing in the middle of the room, amid the chaos, with a gun – her gun – in his hand. His eyes were shining and his face was serene. When his gaze passed briefly over her she shivered, and then she scrambled to her feet.
'Sorry,' Oscar said, and then he turned and pointed the gun at the window. He pulled the trigger and the glass shattered, the impact causing the blind and the curtains to go flailing out into the darkness in the wake of the falling glass.
Gwen's attention was still focused on the jagged remains of the window when Oscar started to run towards it. He ran fast, with no trace of post-coma lethargy or muscle wastage, zombies stepping aside to allow him passage. Realising what he was doing, Gwen yelled, 'No!' and leaped forward to stop him. But Jack leaped at the same moment, grabbing her arm and hauling her back. She could only watch in horror as Oscar dived head first out of the window, his thin, pyjama-clad body sailing into the night.
For a moment, like the Darling children from Peter Pan, he looked as though he might fly. And then his body twisted and he plummeted towards the earth.
Angrily, Gwen tore herself free of Jack, ran to the window and looked down. Oscar's twisted, broken body lay in a spreading pool of blood on the concrete far below. She heard gasps of shock and surprise behind her, and turned round.
Only Jack, Ianto and Rhys stood there on the blood-smeared floor, amid the broken glass and overturned furniture. All that was left of the zombies were a few spirals of glittering light, which rose into the air and disappeared.
Rhys dropped the metal IV stand, which clattered to the floor. Ianto put down the chair he was holding and sank shakily into it.
'They just. . . melted away,' said Rhys. 'Into, like. . . twinkly little balls of light.'
'Stardust,' muttered Ianto.
Jack reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and withdrew a creased and crumpled handbill, which he held out for them all to see.
'I think the All-Night Zombie Horror Show is officially over,' he said.
SEVENTEEN
'Help!' came the shout from the bedroom.
Andy jerked awake, and realised that he was slumped on the settee with his arm around the shoulders of a sleeping Sophie. His hand was numb and his back was aching. He tried to sit up without disturbing her, but she stirred anyway.
'Wazzit?' she mumbled.
'Did you hear someone shouting just now?' asked Andy. 'Or did I dream it?'
As if in response, the shout came again. 'Help! Is anybody there? Can anyone hear me?'
'That's Dawn,' Andy said, detaching himself from Sophie and rising to his feet.
Sophie used an arm to push her blonde hair out of her face. 'What do you mean?'
'That's Dawn shouting. She sounds normal.' He ran out of the room and down the corridor to the bedroom.
'Dawn,' he shouted, tugging at the flex he had tied around the door handle. 'Dawn, it's Andy. Are you OK?'
'Andy,' she said, sounding half-relieved and half-angry. 'Where am I? What the hell's going on? Why am I tied up?'
Andy turned to grin at Sophie, who was padding along the corridor, yawning and wi
ping sleep out of her eyes.
'It's a bit of a long story,' he said.
Trys Thomas woke up shouting and thrashing. He had had the most terrible dreams. He sat up and looked around him, bewildered and terrified.
Where was he? In some kind of dungeon? Three of the four walls of the room – the cell – in which he was lying were made of rough, dank stone. The fourth wall appeared to be some kind of thick transparent plastic with neat air-holes drilled into it. Beyond the plastic was what looked like part of a corridor or walkway with another stone wall beyond that. The entire area was soaked in dim reddish lighting, and there were. . . sounds coming from somewhere nearby. Horrible, animal-like sounds. Grunting and shuffling. Trys's heart started to race and he felt panic building inside him.
That was when he noticed the mobile phone. It was propped up against the bottom-left corner of the transparent plastic wall. Stuck on the wall beside the phone was a post-it note on which someone had written: Press 1. Licking his lips, Trys scurried across to the phone and snatched it up. He pressed 1.
Almost immediately a voice said, 'Hello? Is that Trys?'
Trys's voice was little more than a croak. 'Who's this?'
'My name's Ianto Jones,' said the voice. 'How are you feeling?'
'Where the bloody hell am I?' Trys demanded.
The man who had called himself Ianto Jones sighed. 'Listen, I know you're confused and probably a bit scared, but trust me, you're perfectly safe and we'll be coming to let you out in. . . oh, about twenty minutes. So just sit tight, OK? I'll explain everything when I get there.'
'Where's my wife?' asked Trys. 'Where's Sarah?'
'She's fine. She's healthy.'
'And the baby? Has she—'
'He's fine too.'
'He?' said Trys in a kind of wonder.
'Yes. You're a dad, Mr Thomas. Congratulations. See you soon.'
Nobby groaned. As if things weren't bad enough, that bloody Samuels woman was doing his head in. Her husband was nice, but she was like sodding whiplash. Moaning and complaining. Constantly demanding to know what was going on, and what would happen to them. Why couldn't she just accept that Nobby was as much in the dark as they were?
First he'd heard of all this zombie nonsense was when Rhys had called him up at piss-off o'clock and told him he needed serious payback for that little slip-up with the cocktail waitress. Well, fair enough. But if anyone found out Nobby had taken the chopper without proper authorisation he'd be in the brown stuff up to his neck, valiant rescue or not. Rhys was a good mate and all, but this was taking friendship a bit too far.
In the end what it came down to for Nobby was a choice between his job and his marriage. And what had finally swung it was Rhys's dead serious insistence that for him and Gwen (ah, gorgeous Gwen) Nobby's involvement might literally be a matter of life and death. But if Rhys had warned him one of the people he'd be rescuing was Cruella De Vil's more obnoxious sister, he might have thought again.
She was giving him earache again now, demanding to know how long they were going to be stuck up here on this roof. Nobby held up a hand to quieten her as his mobile went, playing the theme tune from The A-Team. He saw Rhys's name flash up.
'Yeah?' he said gruffly.
'It's over, mate,' said Rhys. 'We've sorted it.'
'Good for you,' said Nobby sarcastically.
'You can head off if you want,' Rhys told him. 'Drop your passengers off on the way. I'll find my own way home from here.'
'That's big of you,' muttered Nobby.
'Oh, and mate?' Rhys said.
'Yeah?'
'You won't get in bother for this. Trust me. I've got a bloke here, Gwen's boss, who'll sort it. In fact, he says if anything you'll get a commendation.'
'Gwen's boss?' said Nobby. 'That flash bloke with the disco ball under his coat? Who's he, then?'
'It's. . . classified,' Rhys said, evidently feeling foolish for saying so.
'Your Gwen's in special ops, isn't she? All hush-hush and top secret?'
'Something like that,' said Rhys vaguely.
'You lucky bugger,' said Nobby. 'I bet it's all handcuffs and truncheons in your house.'
'Nobby,' said Rhys.
'Yeah?'
'Get yourself home, mate, and have a cold shower.'
Nobby laughed, considerably cheerier now. 'Will do, mate. See you soon.'
For a full minute after the shooting stopped, Rianne and Nina continued to cling to each other. At last Nina tentatively raised her head.
'It's gone quiet,' she said.
Carefully the two women extricated themselves from one another's embrace, as if fearful that any sudden moves might start things off all over again.
'What does that mean, do you think?' whispered Rianne.
Nina limped across to the door. 'Let's find out, shall we?'
Rianne half-held up a hand. 'Do you think that's a good idea? What if those things are still out there?'
'We'll just have a peep,' said Nina. 'After all, we can't stay here for ever, can we?'
Rianne drew a long, shuddering breath. 'No,' she said. 'I suppose we can't.'
The two women crept to the door of the empty ward and pushed it open. Nina listened for a moment, and then stuck her head out. The corridor stretching from here to the double doors at the far end was empty and silent. It was almost as if the hospital was stunned, as if it was holding its breath, ready for the next onslaught.
'See anything?' whispered Rianne.
'No,' murmured Nina. 'Come on.'
The two of them tiptoed along the corridor to the double doors. They jumped as a baby cried in one of the connecting wards, and grinned sheepishly at each other. There was no sign of Sister Felicity Andrews and her staff. Rianne hoped that they were with the new mothers, spreading calm and reassurance, damping down the panic.
When they reached the double doors, Nina put her ear to one and listened.
'Anything?' whispered Rianne.
Nina shook her head. 'I'm going to have a look.'
Rianne clenched her fists and drew them almost unconsciously up to her breasts as Nina eased the right-hand door open.
The instant she had done so there was a thump of feet on the open stairwell beyond the lifts and a quartet of people appeared. In the lead was a handsome man in a long coat, who swept past, heading downwards without a glance.
Nina stepped out. 'Hey!' she called.
The man bringing up the rear of the group – chubby, bedraggled, friendly looking – glanced across at her.
'What's happening?' she asked.
The man smiled wryly. 'Take me about three hours to answer that one, sweetheart.'
'OK, just answer me this then – is it safe to come out?'
The man halted, hesitated briefly, then shrugged. 'Is it ever safe round here?' he said. Then he nodded. 'But as far as it goes. . . yeah. The zombies are dead. Again.'
By the time Jack, Gwen, Ianto and Rhys reached the ground floor, people were beginning to emerge from hiding. They reminded Jack of how people had looked after an air raid during the war – pale with trauma, blinking in the light, fearful of who might have been lost in the night's barrage but warily gleeful that they themselves had survived.
He and the rest of the Torchwood team moved through the huddled groups of bewildered humanity with a sense of determination, of purpose, speaking to no one. The immediate threat might have been over, but the mopping-up operation was going to take them the rest of the day.
Hearing raised voices over to his left, Jack glanced around. An elderly man in a wheelchair was ranting at a poor nurse, who looked as though she'd been through quite enough for one night. For a moment, Jack contemplated heading over, telling him to leave the poor girl alone. Then he heard the man snarl, 'Alexander Martin. Mr Martin to you. And don't you forget it!'
All at once Jack came to a halt, grinning in recognition. How many years had it been since he'd last seen Alexander Martin? My, but time had not been kind to the old curmudgeon.
'You coming, Jack?' Gwen called, looking quizzically back over her shoulder.
'Coming,' Jack confirmed, and hurried to join her.
Five days later, Jack and Gwen were standing in the shadows of a yew tree in the drizzle of a cold Cardiff morning, watching as a pitiful straggle of mourners trudged away from a freshly dug grave with a black marble headstone.
'Didn't have many friends, did he?' Gwen said sadly.
'At least his mom loved him,' said Jack, indicating a sobbing woman being comforted by a grey-bearded man in a black coat.
When the mourners had departed, Jack and Gwen emerged and walked slowly across to the grave. The ground squelched beneath Gwen's feet. The sky overhead was a sinewy tangle of black and grey.
She knelt to place a posy of snowdrops against the headstone, and paused for a moment to contemplate the simple inscription beneath the name and dates: My Beloved Son. Taken Too Soon.
'The man who saved Cardiff,' Gwen murmured, straightening up. 'And no one will ever know.'
'Though if it hadn't been for Oscar, Cardiff wouldn't have needed saving in the first place,' Jack pointed out bluntly.
Gwen scowled. 'That was hardly his fault.'
'No,' said Jack. 'I guess not.'
They were silent for a moment. The chill breeze rippled through Gwen's hair and snatched at the tails of Jack's greatcoat.
'Wonder where the Dellacoi is now,' Gwen said eventually.
Jack shrugged. 'Found a way home, I hope. We're monitoring for energy readings, but. . . zilch.'
Gwen sighed. 'I really hope it doesn't turn up again.'
'Me too,' said Jack. 'That kind of virtual reality I can do without.'
Gwen smiled and took his hand. 'Come on, let's go.'
Together they trudged down the gentle incline towards the cemetery gates. Behind them the rising breeze plucked at the flowers on Oscar's grave, snatching up delicate white petals, which swirled away on the wind.