Pack Animals

by Anghelides, Peter

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m just in—’ The line abruptly clicked off.

  ‘OK,’ Toshiko said to dead air. She was about to click the phone shut when the speaker crackled and a mechanical voice said: ‘Achenbrite apologise for the interruption in service. Please stand by.’ The message repeated. Toshiko pocketed the mobile, and tapped the connector point by her right ear that activated her Torchwood comms. The same message was repeating: ‘Achenbrite apologise…’ She tapped it off again.

  That couldn’t happen. The Torchwood system was a dedicated network. The screen of her PDA flickered with interference patterns, too. Maybe she could check with Ianto, he might have some idea what—

  She realised she’d instinctively tapped her earpiece again. Easy to get into that habit. Easy to get over-reliant on the technology, she of all people should know that.

  Back up by the library, she found Maddock frowning at his mobile phone. She could hear the same message playing out of it. ‘Thought I told you not to use that thing,’ she rebuked him, and made for the U-shaped stairway. ‘I’m going to make that CCTV check now. You said it was Mr Belden in charge?’ He hadn’t; her PDA had told her that earlier, but the question helped focus the frightened general manager.

  The U-shaped stairs up to the security suite revealed further clues. Close up, the handrail wasn’t just scratched, it was raked along most of its length. Toshiko considered the angle of the freshly gouged grooves and the spatter-pattern of blood on the wall. So the creature had come down this way, leaned against the library window on the lower level, and found an exit in the emergency stairwell. Some unfortunate shopper had bumped into it there and got torn to pieces. The creature had made its way across the upper floor, and then back up these stairs. Toshiko gripped the butt of her handgun, and guardedly negotiated the remaining stairs to the top-most floor.

  The door of the security room had been wrenched out of place. A chunk of plaster beside the hinges was missing. The cracked door lay on the floor. A severed human arm, still incongruously clad in the pale blue sleeve of a mall uniform, stretched across it at an angle, its stiff fingers never to reach the handle.

  The PDA screen continued to fizz unhelpfully. No way of telling if there was recent Rift activity up here. No way of tracing the creature.

  The door would have opened inwards, but the lintel had splintered out into the corridor, shards of wood spiking in Toshiko’s direction as she approached. Whatever had smashed down the door had done so from within the security room.

  And inside was a slaughterhouse.

  Toshiko had attended murder scenes, and been in abattoirs, yet this made her stomach heave. She knew from the records that the place was designed for two people; it was still hard at first glance to count the bodies. Shreds of pinkish flesh and pale blue cloth were strewn over the floor, chairs, and equipment. A deep slick of blood pooled on the carpet tiles, so much that a raised patch had congealed. What equipment had not been smashed flickered and clicked, unobserved by the butchered guards.

  Toshiko tried to concentrate on something else, to stay calm. She studied the multiplexor that showed quad images – a trade-off between getting greater coverage versus the complexity of post-editing. That looked like a matrix switcher. The images on this monitor here were lo-def colour, but those were black and white. Better for low light. An IR camera covered the loading dock, where she and Gwen had encountered the Weevils earlier. It used a motion detector, so that it could record frames of video only when there was movement and thus reduce the subsequent need to review large chunks of nothing.

  But her eyes were inevitably drawn to the ravaged bodies of the dead men in the room. One of them lay half-covered by some odd foliage that was growing in the corner. Variegated leaves with a serrated edge. Not a good place to keep plants, she thought. Anything that needs watering shouldn’t be that close to expensive electrical equipment.

  A rattle made her spin abruptly. Her heart hammered, and her breath caught in her throat. Her handgun was level and ready, aimed at the doorframe.

  ‘There’s someone up on the roof,’ said Maddock. He broke off as he saw her gun. And then he saw the carnage in the room. ‘Oh God,’ he managed before his eyes rolled back in his head and he tumbled back into the corridor.

  Toshiko stepped carefully over to him. Maddock was unconscious, but apparently unharmed. She put him in the recovery position. At least she wouldn’t have to explain to him why Head Office staff were armed these days.

  A scratching noise came from the flight of nearby stairs that led up to the roof. Fresh blood trailed up the concrete steps.

  Her PDA was still out of action. No way of telling what was up there. It could be the creature that had butchered the security guards, or it could be one of its would-be victims who’d escaped. She needed to find out.

  Toshiko angled her gun up the short stairwell and kept close to the outer wall. The handrail and the concrete paint were smeared red where something had hurried up ahead of her, but this was no time to be fastidious about getting in on her clothes. She remembered Jack warning her about this during basic training: ‘Better red than dead,’ he’d joked. Except that staying alive wasn’t a joke. Her dry cleaner had seen worse than this and not asked any questions. But then again, her dry cleaner was Ianto.

  She pushed at the crash bar and the fire door swung open with a squeal of unoiled hinges. She moved swiftly through the frame and out, and pressed her back against the adjacent wall. She narrowed her eyes until they adjusted to the sudden brightness.

  The roof was laid out as a series of metal walkways. The blockish square shapes of air conditioning vents and lift mechanisms stood out starkly against the clear morning sky. A light wind carried the sounds of traffic and industry up to her. Cardiff sparkled off into the distance on three sides of the roof.

  And a dark silhouette stared down over the edge.

  The creature was the size of a large dog. It squatted like a dark gargoyle at the far edge of the roof, facing away from her. Its tall pointed ears swivelled, scanning ahead. What at first appeared to be a broad humped back was actually a pair of folded wings. They flexed as though the thing was about to fly off the roof. The head moved side-to-side, like a cat judging the position of its prey.

  With no connection on her PDA, Toshiko tried to remember the layout of the building she’d seen earlier. Maybe the images were still in the PDA’s memory, but there was probably only time to rely on her own. This side of the mall overlooked the multi-storey car park. So, the creature was sizing up people as they parked their vehicles.

  The wings unfurled. Thin layers of veined black skin stretched over a frame of thin bones, with a small tear in one wing. Short clawed hands flexed at the ends, long talons visible against the sky. It was like an enormous predatory bat.

  A bat the size of a retriever. Wasn’t that what Gwen had seen?

  And it was preparing to fly.

  Toshiko squared her feet, bracing herself to fire. The walkway beneath her clanked as the metal moved. At the sound, the dark creature immediately twisted to face her. Beneath those tall ears was a small, savage face, half-filled by a mouth that bristled with razor-sharp, foam-flecked teeth. It quickly repositioned its legs, swirled its wings into position, and prepared to launch itself at her.

  She squirted off a couple of panicky shots. One flew wide, but the other tore through the leathery membrane of skin in the creature’s right wing. It howled a scream of rage, and sprang towards her.

  Toshiko dropped to one side, rolling off the metal walkway. The gravel-covered surface of the roof sagged under her weight, and she struggled to recover her position.

  The bat-creature was on her with frightening speed. Toshiko’s head thumped against metal. Lights sparkled dizzily, and a nauseous wave threatened to engulf her. Claws raked her jacket. She threw one arm over her face as she tried to get the other, gun-hand between herself and her attacker. But the creature smacked out dismissively with one of its rear feet, a
nd the gun clattered away into the distance and over the edge of the roof.

  The edges of Toshiko’s vision clouded into darkness.

  The monster pressed its weight on her chest. The tiny, savage head pushed close to hers, its mouth wide, its scream filling her ears.

  Toshiko thought of the torn remains in the security room, and wondered what would be left of her to identify the body.

  There was a hard push on her torso. The creature jumped off her and towards the edge of the roof.

  Toshiko hadn’t even noticed that she had forgotten to breathe. She started to suck in air again, greedily, desperately. Why had the creature stopped? She wanted to look where the thing had gone, but her body felt too heavy to move, and her eyes just wanted to close.

  A static crackle hissed in the air nearby. The bat-creature howled again, though the sound seemed to fade and die in the air. Toshiko forced herself to look. Two men in grey boiler suits were stalking across the roof. Were those rifles they carried? They had shoulder-stocks and scopes, and the men carried them like weapons; but the barrel fanned out into a bulbous end, incongruously like a garden hose. These devices spat out a cloudy spray that fizzed and coiled towards the cowering creature.

  The two men stepped past Toshiko, ignoring her. She tried to call out, but her voice failed. They couldn’t have missed her; they were simply ignoring her.

  The bat-like creature was a long way off now. It must be a hundred metres away.

  But that wasn’t possible, because the roof wasn’t that wide. The bat-like monster was shrinking, diminishing, struggling within the fizzing cloud of particles sprayed from the rifles. One of the men produced a small container, no bigger than a shoebox. He tugged on a pair of thick gloves before he scooped the helpless creature into the box.

  Toshiko felt unconsciousness overwhelming her. The last thing she noticed before she closed her eyes was the insignia on the men’s boiler suits. A stylised device of crossed keys, and a single word: Achenbrite.

  EIGHT

  The Withington Hotel was not infested with alien bedbugs. Which wasn’t to say that it didn’t have unpleasant biting insect life in its five-star bedrooms, reflected Owen Harper.

  Jack had asked him to pursue this investigation. ‘A safe pair of hands,’ Jack had called him. Yeah, right. What Jack meant was that it would be a safe assignment for him in his condition. Nothing would get broken, particularly Owen.

  Dead Man Walking. What was the point in coming back to life if Torchwood wouldn’t find him any death-defying assignments?

  One of Toshiko’s monitoring software programs had identified an unexpected peak in GP records about urticaria, with a statistically significant increase in patients with red, itchy weals on their skin. Cross-checking credit card details suggested a further statistically significant link to the Withington Hotel, a Rift hotspot some three months previously.

  At least Jack now allowed Owen to carry his handgun again. ‘Not that it’ll be much good for picking off alien insects,’ Ianto had explained when he’d delivered the weapon from the Armoury that morning. ‘You’re not that good a shot.’

  ‘Well, how could I defend myself again alien bedbugs?’ pondered Owen.

  ‘Tuck your trousers into your socks,’ Ianto had suggested, with no indication that he was joking.

  Owen arrived at the Withington shortly before 10 a.m. and spent less than an hour masquerading as a hotel inspector. Enough time to send the hotel management into a minor panic, and also sufficient for Owen to access all necessary areas. He swiftly identified the reason for so many bitten guests as cimex lectularis – the common bedbug. Even the honeymoon suite had evidence of eggs, faecal spots, and a lively collection of first-instar nymphs.

  So, the outbreak had not come through the Rift. However, Owen had identified a missing Vredosian who was working as a chambermaid on the fifth floor. The plaid polyester of the staff uniform anonymised the staff of most large hotels, and yet Owen found it hard to understand how she’d gone unrecognised with her triangular teeth and pale grey skin. Hedgehog spines poked through her mop cap, like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. He studied his captive as they both waited for the lift to arrive. ‘How did no one notice you?’

  The Vredosian wriggled uncomfortably beside him, her thumbs cuffed together. ‘The staff captain thought I was from Eastern Europe,’ she rasped. ‘Sometimes the obvious stares him in the face.’

  Owen laughed. ‘I’ve got a Captain like that.’

  The lift pinged. He was about to give the Vredosian an encouraging push into the lift when he remembered that she was the source of the bedbug outbreak. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get that close to her in the lift, but what was the alternative? He needed to get her back to the Hub. And then what – a bowl of bread and milk? He supposed Jack would know. ‘So, you’ve travelled millions of miles to find the job of your dreams,’ he said, and indicated she should board the lift. ‘Working for the minimum wage in a South Wales Hotel. Doesn’t get better than that, eh?’

  The Vredosian lowered her spiny eyelashes and ignored him. She wasn’t dangerous; just another bloody nuisance in a city that already had enough of them to worry about without a flea-carrying extraterrestrial working illegally in the Welsh service industry. God, just imagine the Daily Mail headline.

  Owen studied his own reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift. Is this what he’d become – a nursemaid to vagrant aliens? He put his left hand up to his face experimentally, aware again that he could feel nothing. The glove covered his permanently broken left finger. It also enclosed the tatty crepe bandage that held the splint in place, in turn concealing the scalpel cut across his palm that would never heal and that required re-stitching each week. He stroked one finger down a sideburn. The first day home after his return from the dead, he’d had a careful shave – his final shave, as it happened. He’d never have five o’clock shadow again. The beard would never grow back. On the bright side, he’d never get hair in his ears like his dad. And he’d had to decide, right then in front of the bathroom mirror in his apartment, whether he wanted to lose those sideburns for the rest of his life. No, not life – his existence.

  Owen was still contemplating this when the lift pinged for the ground floor, the mirrored doors slid open, and his reflection disappeared.

  The pair stepped into the lobby area. Bright morning sunshine spilled through the revolving doors and sparkled on the brass fittings. Orange pumpkin decorations glowed as though they had internal illumination. A couple of kids bounced on the leather couches while their parents waited in the check-out line.

  Should have taken the service lift to the basement, thought Owen. He had to get the Vredosian across town to the Hub. What was he gonna do, order a taxi? He hadn’t brought his car, but he was damned if he was going to call Ianto to get assistance. And Toshiko would be so solicitous, so eager, so nice about everything that he didn’t think he could bear it.

  He didn’t have to think about it for long. From beyond the revolving door came the sound of car horns, angry shouting, and a tremendous crash of metal and glass. There was a flurry of movement in the lobby as guests and staff hurried to look out of the windows. From the first shocked comments he overheard, Owen knew there’d been a serious traffic accident.

  Quite how serious he didn’t know until he and the Vredosian got out into the street. The sound of pedestrians screaming was brutally loud once he’d got through the revolving door. Further along the street one of those jointed single-deck buses lay cracked and helpless, partly embedded in a glass shopfront. The DragonLine bus had evidently mounted the angled earthworks by the road repairs, twisting as it went, and then slid helplessly along the road until it mounted the opposite pavement. The concertinaed front of a white van showed where it had careered into oncoming traffic before finally coming to rest with its roof jammed into Wendleby’s department store. Jagged panes from what remained of the store’s plate-glass window rained down like murderous icicles. The rear of a big display poster flapped into the s
treet. He could just read the remains of the shredded banner: ‘MonstaQuest Demonstration Today!’ it declared.

  Owen fully expected that he was the first medic on the scene. Beside him in the shadow of the Withington Hotel’s Edwardian portico, the Vredosian flicked surreptitious glances to either side, judging whether she could make a break for freedom. Owen considered the yells of the pedestrians and the roar of the felled bus’s engine. He tutted at the Vredosian and tossed over the key to the thumb-cuffs. ‘Your lucky day,’ he told her. He jogged over to the crash scene, muttering: ‘Some of these won’t have been so fortunate.’

  He pushed past the early rubberneckers. ‘Stay back,’ he snapped at them. A peroxide blonde gave him a surly look. ‘You got a mobile?’ he asked her

  ‘Yeah,’ she said.

  Owen stared straight at her. ‘Phone 999.’ The blonde looked surprised. ‘Do it now,’ he told her. She was so shocked that she did so straight away.

  The filthy underside of the bus growled angrily nearby, mud and water dripping from its grimy surfaces. The engine was still churning and the transmission whirled. Owen ran round to the back of the bus and slammed his glove on the emergency stop. The engine chattered into silence, which made the hiss of leaking air and the screams of the passengers more audible.

  A black and white cab was squished up onto the pavement between Wendleby’s and the overturned rear section of the bus. Owen jumped on the bonnet, then over its cracked ‘For Hire’ sign and up onto the side of the bus. He traversed the length of the coachwork, sensing the metal panels give beneath his weight as he approached the front. The DragonLine emblem, a stylised motif in red and green, twisted its way down the painted body, as though marking out a path for him. At the snarling head of the painted dragon, the orange lights of the destination board in its jaws flashed intermittently, unable to decide where the bus was headed; 207 Lisvane via Llanishen stuttered into 102 Victoria Park and back again.