Something in the Water

by Trevor Baxendale

  ‘The “s” sound may not be correct,’ Toshiko advised them. ‘There are no lips or tongue to control the speech. It’s trying to say something, but it hasn’t got the means to do it properly.’

  ‘Might as well be “gottle o’ gear”,’ said Owen.

  ‘Wait – the computer’s found a match,’ said Toshiko. She touched a control and the sound was replayed again, cleaned and stripped of all extraneous white noise. ‘What if we play that back alongside the visual image?’ She grabbed a keyboard and started typing. Within a few seconds, she had the original video image running again, this time with the enhanced audio.

  The corpse slid off the autopsy table, grabbed Gwen, pulled her close. It looked at her, or tried to, and said, ‘Water hag! Water hag!’

  And then there was a series of distorted, muffled noises as Owen and Jack spoke on the tape and Jack’s revolver had the last word.

  ELEVEN

  Bob Strong woke up with a coughing fit. He had fallen asleep on the sofa again, but he couldn’t manage more than a few minutes dozing before the next spasm came. If he had the flu, then he was going to go through hell, he knew that. So many people called a bad cold ‘flu’, but as a doctor he knew there was a vast difference between the common cold and influenza. He knew he could look forward to severe headaches, body cramps, fever, even delirium.

  He popped some heavy-duty painkillers down and a decongestant, although they didn’t seem to be having much of an effect. Every time he coughed, he felt as if his chest and throat were on fire as he brought up more burning phlegm, and the reverberations sent shockwaves through his brain.

  He lay on the sofa and sweated his way through Richard & Judy. It crossed his mind to get a flu jab – it might just hold off the worst of it, he thought. But in truth he felt too ill to move and there was no way he could get to the surgery. He tried to phone Iuean Evans, but each time he dialled the surgery the line was busy. Then he tried Iuean’s mobile, but that was either switched off or on silent, because he wasn’t answering. Eventually the phone slipped out of Bob’s fingers because they were so sweaty, and he couldn’t be bothered leaning down to pick it up off the floor.

  He watched all of Scrum V through a daze, coughing and retching painfully. In one particularly bad fit, he found his tissue speckled with red and green matter. He was coughing so hard his throat was raw. He slumped back into the cushions with a groan. His head was pounding. The rumble of traffic outside his window seemed to shake the entire house as if an express train was running past continuously.

  Eventually, he heard his mobile phone ringing. He fumbled around with one hand beneath the sofa, picked up the phone and flipped it open. ‘Iuean?’

  ‘Bob, how’s it going?’ boomed the familiar voice.

  ‘Bloody awful. I feel like hell.’ He broke off to cough again, bringing up more phlegm striped with red. ‘Oh, God, sorry … I don’t think I’m gonna be in for the rest of the week, Iuean.’

  ‘Bob, we need you here,’ said Iuean. His voice sounded strained. ‘It’s absolute bedlam! They’ve been coming in bloody droves. Chest infections, coughs, flu, whatever you want to call it. Nothing adds up, but they just keep coming. We’ve had to turn some away. We’ve redirected them to Blackweir. One or two I sent direct to St Helen’s.’

  Bob struggled to sit up. ‘Hell, Iuean, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was that bad. Sounds like they’ve got what I’ve got.’

  ‘So what are we looking at here? An epidemic?’

  ‘Have you checked with the surrounding practices?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you first. I’ve already had someone from the local press sniffing round.’

  ‘OK.’ Bob paused to cough again. ‘You’ll have to keep accurate records of how many patients come in with flu symptoms.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. I’ve already got Letty on it. We can only declare it an epidemic if 400 people per 100,000 of the population are diagnosed.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll get that far,’ Bob assured him.

  ‘So what do you think it is?’

  ‘Iuean, I haven’t the foggiest!’ Bob thought for a moment about telling Iuean about his visit from Owen Harper. But Iuean sounded genuinely worried, and Bob feared that the involvement of a government official taking blood samples would only alarm him further. Harper had said it was only precautionary, but it was still confidential. And, at the end of the day, it could all just be a local phenomenon. ‘It’s probably a virus or something, anyway,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Well, that is what we tell people when we don’t know what’s bloody wrong with them.’

  ‘Look, give me tonight. Let’s see how I am in the morning. If I can, I’ll come in.’

  ‘No, stay where you are. You sound rough. You need to get better. We can manage. If necessary I’ll bring a locum in and we’ll get by. I just hope this was the worst of it today.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’ Bob dissolved into more coughs and closed the phone. He felt sorry for Iuean, but he really was in too bad a way to go into work again. He fell back on the sofa, eyes squeezed shut, coughing and holding his chest as if it was about to crack open.

  ‘What if it wasn’t attacking us?’ said Toshiko.

  ‘Mr Dead down there was trying to strangle Gwen, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ responded Owen. ‘In my book, that constitutes an attack.’

  ‘But was he?’ asked Toshiko. She looked at each of them in turn. ‘Attacking her, I mean. You’ve all seen the footage. He grabbed her, certainly. Pulled her down from the steps. But what then?’

  ‘I thought he was gonna kiss her,’ said Jack. He shrugged. ‘Well, I would’ve.’

  ‘I’m not that kind of girl,’ said Gwen with a weak smile. ‘I mean, I don’t date corpses as a rule.’

  ‘What about Rhys?’ asked Owen.

  Gwen gave him two fingers without even looking.

  ‘I thought it was trying to see her,’ continued Toshiko. ‘Its eyes were all shrivelled up and gone, but it was going through the motions, almost trying to peer at her …’

  Jack clicked his fingers. ‘And then it says “water hag”, right?’

  ‘Twice, so far as we can tell. Or something very like it.’

  Jack leant against Toshiko’s workstation with a frown, lips pursed, considering.

  ‘Maybe he mistook Gwen for some old hag,’ Owen suggested. When Gwen narrowed her eyes at him, he added, ‘No, seriously … the first thing he does when he wakes up after forty years dead is roll off the autopsy table and see Gwen. Or, at least, a blurred version of Gwen. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to see her clearly. But maybe he could tell she was a woman – small, long hair. That would be enough.’

  ‘But a hag?’ Gwen repeated. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘We don’t know what the last thing he saw before he died was, do we?’ Owen said. ‘Maybe it was some evil old witch with a knife.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Or maybe,’ said Toshiko, ‘he was trying to warn us about Sally Blackteeth.’

  Owen frowned. ‘Who?’

  ‘Professor Len used the term “water hag”, I’m sure of it,’ Toshiko said. ‘He was telling us about the local legends surrounding Greendown Moss. Evil spirits who live in stagnant water.’

  ‘It’s worth checking,’ Gwen said. ‘I’ll contact the professor and see what he says.’

  ‘It still won’t tell us what brought the corpse back to life, though,’ Toshiko said.

  ‘That’s assuming he was really dead,’ said Jack.

  ‘As opposed to just pretending for forty years.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Owen raised a hand. ‘When did “it” become “he”, please?’

  ‘Well, you did say the body was male,’ Toshiko said.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And we don’t have a name, do we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it doesn’t seem fair to carry on referring to him as an “it”.’ Toshiko stared at them. ‘In my opinion.’

  ‘That’s all right fo
r you to say,’ Gwen replied. ‘It wasn’t you he was leering at.’ She shuddered and reached for her coffee. ‘I can still smell that thing’s breath.’

  ‘I’m just saying, that’s all,’ Toshiko protested. ‘We can’t be certain of anything, can we?’

  ‘We can’t even be certain it’s properly dead this time,’ Owen agreed. ‘I’d have placed bets on it before. Now, I’m not so sure. Anyone want to give me odds?’

  ‘Owen, half its head’s missing now.’

  ‘Lengthens the odds a bit, I’ll agree, but …’

  ‘We need to know exactly what reanimated that body,’ announced Jack, standing up. ‘Any ideas before I let Owen loose on it again?’

  ‘I don’t mind going in with the knife, so long as someone else holds it down,’ Owen said.

  ‘Won’t be necessary. Ianto’s strapped it down. It’s secure.’

  ‘All right, but just for the record I think I should tell you I’m not happy carrying out an autopsy on a patient that needs restraining while I do it.’

  ‘Everyone!’ Ianto’s voice came up from the Autopsy Room, sounding urgent. ‘You’d better get down here quick!’

  Owen dodged past Jack and took the stairs three at a time. Jack clattered after him, with Toshiko and Gwen on his heels. ‘It better not be coming back to life again,’ Jack warned. ‘It’s getting kinda personal now!’

  Ianto, a bucket by his feet and a pair of rubber gloves on, was pointing at the corpse.

  The body was still on the table, securely strapped down. It wasn’t going anywhere, and neither did it appear to be moving.

  ‘What’s up, Ianto?’ asked Jack, loosening the flap on his holster.

  Gwen circled the table warily, not wanting to look too closely at the gaping hole in the top of the brown skull. One glance was enough to tell her that it was only half-full of dried brain matter.

  ‘I saw it move,’ said Ianto.

  ‘Again?’ said Jack.

  ‘Looks OK to me,’ Owen remarked. ‘I mean, for a guy who’s died twice already. How much deader can he get?’

  ‘So it’s a “he” now, is it?’ queried Ianto.

  ‘Look!’ Toshiko said, pointing.

  They looked. The body twitched.

  ‘There you are,’ said Ianto with a nod of satisfaction. ‘I said I saw it move.’

  Jack drew his revolver, and this time Gwen had her automatic in both hands as well.

  The corpse twitched and shuddered again, as if a tremor was running through its emaciated torso.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jack demanded. ‘Some kind of nerve impulse?’

  ‘Death throes?’ Owen shook his head. ‘Bit late for that.’

  Toshiko, scientific curiosity overcoming her instinctive fear, leant in for a closer look, running one of her hand-held scanners over the body.

  ‘Careful, Tosh,’ Gwen warned, moving into a slightly better line of sight.

  ‘It’s not the corpse moving,’ Toshiko said quietly. ‘I mean, it’s only moving because something else is moving it … Something inside.’

  Suddenly there was a muffled crack from the corpse’s chest area, and Toshiko jerked backwards. Jack raised his pistol and aimed, Gwen mirroring the movement next to him.

  The corpse wriggled again and now, after what Toshiko had said, they could see that it was being moved by something else.

  ‘There is something inside it,’ realised Owen. ‘Something moving …’

  Gwen tightened her grip on the automatic. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Giant maggot?’ Owen wondered.

  Then the corpse’s throat bulged and its mouth opened. The shattered skull began to shake as something forced its way out between the bared teeth like a giant tongue.

  It was dark and glistening, coated in thick, congealed blood like a piece of raw liver. The jaws opened wider, accompanied by the dull crack of snapping bone and stiffened ligaments, as the thing extruded itself like a huge slug.

  The skull finally cracked wide open then, revealing a foetal shape nestling in the remains of the jaws and throat, covered by a web of sticky mucous. The shape moved, flexing, opening like a moth emerging from its chrysalis, stretching out spindly, insect-like limbs.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Gwen, her voice quavering. ‘It’s … human.’

  A tiny head turned to look at her. Beneath the clotted slime of blood, two eyes glared out and a vicious slit of a mouth opened in a mewling hiss.

  Then a gunshot boomed out, heavy and final, and the newborn creature exploded into bloody fragments.

  Jack and Gwen turned to look at Owen, who had his own gun out, the barrel smoking. He was still aiming at the remains, his face twisted into a mask of utter revulsion.

  ‘What did you shoot it for?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Didn’t you see it?’ asked Owen, half-choking. ‘Did you see what it looked like? It was …’

  ‘Human?’ Gwen repeated.

  ‘No.’ Owen shook his head. ‘No, no, no. It was not human.’

  ‘Alien, then,’ said Jack, firmly. ‘Do we shoot aliens on sight now, Owen?’

  Slowly Owen lowered the gun and looked at the ground, He wouldn’t meet the gaze of his colleagues. ‘It wasn’t right. It was … it wasn’t right.’ And then, without another word, he turned and left the room.

  Toshiko was already investigating the remains of the creature. ‘It must have been alive in there all the time,’ she said, indicating the corpse. ‘Incubated, perhaps …’

  ‘By a corpse?’

  ‘Why not? Flies are.’

  ‘That thing wasn’t a fly,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Whatever it was, I want to know,’ Jack told Toshiko. ‘Piece it back together if you have to, we need to find out exactly what it was. Work with Owen.’

  ‘Owen?’

  Jack nodded, heading for the exit. ‘I’ll sort him out now.’

  ‘No, let me,’ said Gwen, putting a hand on his arm. ‘I’ll see him.’

  TWELVE

  Bob was struggling to breathe. He felt as if his throat had swollen so much it was closing off his larynx. He jerked awake from his half-sleep, caught in a panic because he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe. Every basic instinct to inhale had somehow been forgotten.

  He catapulted himself off the sofa and landed awkwardly on the floor, half-kneeling, retching and gagging. Eventually, he managed to suck in a lungful of air and then blow it back out. He could feel his heart hammering in the chest as he did so, straining to carry enough oxygen around his body. He wheezed and groaned for two more minutes until he felt able to sit back and congratulate himself on still being alive.

  He’d treated people before with sleep-related breathing disorders – a strange condition where the body simply stopped breathing, usually when asleep, in the middle of the night. Often the condition was relieved by simply turning over, or waking up, and breathing resumed as normal. In research, some patients had been recorded as having stopped breathing for a full thirty to sixty seconds before recommencing.

  He’d never experienced it himself, and it was terrifying. More terrifying than the sore throat and agonising cough that had accompanied his day so far. The basic need to breathe, to oxygenate the body and the brain, was at the core of every living being. Denied that ability, panic set in with astonishing speed. You could go without food or drink for days. Without oxygen you wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes.

  Bob picked himself up off the floor and headed for the bathroom, coughing and retching. He felt sick and exhausted. As he climbed the stairs, he found bright spots of light flaring in his vision. When he reached the bathroom, he looked in the mirror and nearly collapsed there and then.

  The man in the glass didn’t look anything like Bob Strong. He was gaunt, grey-skinned, dark circles under red-rimmed eyes. There was still a trace of cyanosis around his lips. He really had been asleep without breathing, and for some time. He rubbed the cold skin of his face, trying to bring a bit of colour – the right colour – back to his comp
lexion.

  He coughed again, speckling the white sink with red and green blobs.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he groaned. ‘When is this going to stop …?’

  He walked slowly back downstairs to the living room. The traffic went by outside his window, people walking past on their way, oblivious to the plight he was in. In times gone by, his wife would have been there for him. She’d have fetched him blankets, tea, all that. She would have moaned about it, and complained that all men were such babies when it came to being ill, but she had been good at caring for people. Right now, Bob had never felt so alone, and he desperately wanted to speak to her again. And she would have found that so typical – that he only thought to contact her again when he was sick.

  He picked up the phone and then sank down into the sofa, hunched over as he coughed again. Her mobile number was on speed dial, but what would be the point of phoning her now? She wouldn’t come round to see him. She might catch whatever he had, anyway. But maybe it would be nice just to hear her voice. Anyone’s voice.

  He physically jumped when the telephone rang in his hand.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Bob, how are you, dear?’

  Bob gripped the phone tighter. ‘Mum? What are you doing ringing now?’

  ‘Well, I wanted to know if you were coming up for your Dad’s birthday or not. He’s eighty next month, remember, and we’re planning a party. Everyone will be there. I rang you at the surgery but they said you’d gone home poorly. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bob said. ‘Some sort of throat infection I think. I’m not sure.’

  ‘It’s not anything to do with what’s been on the news, is it? That sounds awful.’

  ‘What’s been on the news?’

  ‘The flu epidemic in Wales. It’s in your region, dear.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard,’ Bob said. He felt a surge of anxiety and fumbled for the TV remote as his mother continued to talk.

  ‘Have you taken anything for it? Have you made yourself a hot drink? I always used to make you a lemon and honey drink, do you remember?’ She spoke so warmly; she had never stopped thinking of Bob as her youngest boy and, whenever he was ill or unhappy, she adopted the same tone she had used when treating a grazed knee or a nosebleed when he had been little. ‘Are you eating properly? Would you like me to come over? Perhaps I could help …’