‘We should leave,’ Jack said. He had covered over his wrist monitor again, and was ready to go.
Ianto studied him curiously. ‘Can’t we help?’
‘Not our job,’ snapped Jack immediately. ‘We catch aliens, not escaped zoo animals.’
Ianto wasn’t in such a rush to depart. ‘See there? To the left?’ He pointed to a line that ran parallel to the transparent wall of glass.
‘A crack in the brickwork?’ ventured Jack. He looked more closely. ‘It’s too clean to be a crack in the mortar.’
Ianto nodded. ‘You heard what that woman was blubbering about. Someone removed that wall, let the tiger out, and then replaced the wall. She didn’t imagine it. But they didn’t get the alignment perfect, and you can still see the join.’
He was about to say more when a commotion beyond the large glass wall caught his attention. Whatever it was, the armed zoo staff immediately swung around, pointing their rifles cautiously. One of them waved frantically at the other nearby staff to get them to move back and away, while he began to move cautiously forward.
‘We need to get a closer look at that wall,’ Jack said to Ianto. ‘This moat’s too wide. Need to get around the other side.’
‘No ice cream then,’ sighed Ianto.
‘What can I say?’ replied Jack. ‘I’m a cheap date.’
The pair of them ducked back through the double-gated exit from the tiger compound. Ianto kicked sand and straw and tiger shit off his boots on the second gate, and hurried around to inspect the wall beside the huge glass observation window. The last of the zoo visitors were meandering away from it, shooed off by blue-and-yellow zoo staff like so many straggling geese.
Ianto dismissed an aggressive zookeeper with merely a stern look. ‘Where d’you think those riflemen were going?’ he asked Jack.
‘Tiger hunting,’ replied Jack. ‘Better watch out, Mr “Safety First”.’
Ianto rolled his eyes. He and Jack were unarmed, because Ianto had made them leave their handguns securely locked in the SUV, and the SUV securely immobilised in parking section ‘Rhino 6’. Instead of arguing, he studied the wall. The artificially straight vertical line through the brickwork was even clearer on this side. And half-buried in the dried mud at the foot of the wall was an irregular-shaped device of unfamiliar metal. ‘Alien tech,’ grinned Ianto, and began to speculate on what he might christen it.
‘Wait,’ Jack warned him, ‘we’re being watched. They’d drawn the attention of a small group that stood at a closed fast-food concession, next to the zebra enclosure. Ianto recognised the big ginger wardrobe who’d blanked Jack earlier. The guy was talking to three other big blokes, all of them in non-standard grey boiler suits. You could make out the crossed-keys motif even from this distance. Ianto turned his head to catch what one of them was shouting.
‘… still unsecured! Never mind the damned tiger, get it. D’you hear me? Get it, collect the equipment, and get out.’
And that was the point at which the tiger ran past. It charged around the corner of the chain-link fence that surrounded the large zebra enclosure, hugging the lower rail like a racehorse entering the final few furlongs. It was an orange-brown blur, barrelling at them, running for its life. Or for theirs.
Ianto instinctively flattened himself against the wall. Jack interposed himself between the animal and Ianto. The tiger charged towards them, past them, and struck the plate-glass window of its former enclosure. The animal’s beautiful head connected with a sickening crunch, and it reeled back and slumped down almost at once.
The four men in grey boiler suits watched dispassionately. That was strange. Another odd thing was that they each carried a small suitcase.
Armed zoo staff emerged from the other side of the zebra enclosure, and raced over to the stunned, bewildered big cat.
‘The tiger’s never been up close to the glass,’ Ianto breathed. ‘So it thought it could get through. Running for home. They must have spooked it.’
‘They didn’t spook it,’ said Jack darkly. He had snapped open his wrist device again. ‘There’s more Rift activity.’
Ianto nodded. ‘It’ll be this alien tech here that—’
With a whistle of air and a whump of displaced grit, the bloodied carcass of a zebra slammed down onto the ground right beside them. Ianto jumped back to avoid getting sprayed. The animal’s head had been ripped off, and blood continued to gout from the neck, staining the black and white coat with vivid new red stripes.
‘That’s a more likely explanation,’ said Jack slowly, and pointed.
The chain-link around the field opposite quivered like a plucked string. The dead zebra had been flung right over it, fully twenty metres. And the alien monstrosity that had tossed it that distance began to howl. A hole further along in the fence revealed how it had got in. The remaining zebras were running in panicky circles on the far side of their paddock.
The monster was a nightmare creature of ragged scales. A ridge of plates ran from the tip of its thrashing tail until it bifurcated at the shoulders and ran to the crown of two independently swivelling heads. Each surveyed a different area of its surroundings, baring an impossible number of slivered teeth at the humans below.
The bruisers in the boiler suits leaped into sudden activity, snapping open locks on their cases. If they had any sense, thought Ianto, they’d be fleeing for the exits with all the other zoo visitors. Instead, they were coordinating their movements around the double-headed creature.
‘It’s a Brakkanee. Stay still,’ Jack told Ianto in a low, insistent voice. ‘It relies more on sound than sight.’
‘No wonder that tiger fled in terror.’
Jack studied his wrist device. ‘It’s a killing machine. It could handle a whole pride of tigers and not get out of breath.’
‘It’s not a pride, it’s an ambush of tigers—’
‘Not now, Ianto!’ And with this, Jack was haring off towards the zebra enclosure, staying on the grass verge to reduce noise.
Ianto chased after him. Jack didn’t look pleased when he saw that he’d followed him.
‘Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems,’ joked Ianto.
‘Yeah, right,’ hissed Jack. ‘The big monster that slaughtered that zebra made a little mistake. It’s really sweet and lovely and kind to smaller animals. What a pity that ninety-nine per cent of Brakkanee give the rest a bad name.’
The Brakkanee breached the chain-link fence, peeling it back as easily as a net curtain. One head loomed towards them, hissing.
Jack had already activated his ear-comms to call the Hub. Ianto tried to tune in and listen, until he remembered his earpiece was back in the SUV’s glove compartment. Trust Jack to have conveniently overlooked his own.
‘She’s gone shopping?’ Jack was saying incredulously. ‘All right, send Owen then, if he’s nearer.’
The Achenbrite boiler suits were removing equipment from long pockets in their baggage. Jack reached the big redhead, and asked him to move back to safety with an insistent: ‘We’re Torchwood.’
The bloke reached out one meaty hand and pushed it into Jack’s face. ‘Leave it. It’s under control,’ he said. He sounded Scottish.
Jack stumbled back from the shove. ‘If this is under control—’ he began.
One of the armed zookeepers fired her tranquilliser gun. The feathered pellet slapped into the Brakkanee’s head, and hung stupidly from its scaled cheek. The huge head shook in irritation, swooped down, and brutally smashed against the zookeeper. She plunged into the low earth moat around the zebra enclosure.
Ianto scurried quickly and quietly to help her. The woman was dazed and confused. He pulled her bodily up the embankment. Further along from where she had fallen, Ianto could see an earlier human victim of the Brakkanee. The white hair and the crumpled beige coat meant it could only be Walter. His wife knelt awkwardly beside him, sobbing, her hand still clutching his as he lay splayed out on the dry earth.
The creature had sensed movement below, and s
wung its two dreadful heads in small arcs as it attempted to pinpoint Ianto’s position. Jack had seen this, and threw himself forward, yelling wildly. The two heads flicked immediately in his direction.
The Brakkanee dipped one head and seized him by the left leg. Jack was snatched into the air, shaken like a chew toy, and flung aside. He tumbled down the chain-link fence and crumpled in a heap, his leg mangled beneath him. The other alien head cocked as it considered this new victim.
A grey-green mist began to envelop the Brakkanee. During the commotion, the Achenbrite men had managed to remove equipment from their suitcases and erect tripod-mounted rifles. These weapons had balloon-shaped barrels, and sprayed a fizzing cloud of energy that wrapped itself around the contours of the alien. The Brakkanee shivered, shimmered, and began to shrink. Within a minute, it was small enough for one of the Achenbrite men to cover it with his suitcase, then snap it securely shut with the alien trapped inside.
Jack lay motionless by the fence. Ianto’s instinct was to run to him, but he overcame the urge. Jack would be fine. There were other priorities.
The Achenbrite men were storing pieces of equipment back in their cases, and barking orders to each other. Ianto walked stealthily back to the tiger enclosure while they bickered: ‘You left what? Well, go and fetch it!’
The ginger guy looked surprisingly cowed for a big bloke. He was coming this way. Ianto had to get the device unburied before he got here.
The Achenbrite man saw what he was doing. ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘Stop that!’
Ianto managed to scrape the mud away from the edge of the alien tech. He prised it loose, pulled it free.
‘Put it down!’ bellowed the other man, pounding towards him. The giant guy was practically on top of Ianto now. ‘The defence system’s still active!’
The alien device scorched in Ianto’s hand. There was a fiery blast of heat and light, and everything went white, whiter, whitest. And faded away to silent black.
ELEVEN
Rhys followed the directions they got from the traumatised shopkeeper. He steered the Vectra straight through town, negotiating the Saturday morning traffic. Progress was slow, and he annoyed Gwen by cracking open a can of Coke he’d found in the glove compartment and slurping it noisily.
‘What’s the point of having cup holders if I never use them, eh?’
They were headed to an address in Rhiwbina, a suburban area of North Cardiff near to the golf course. Gwen called Toshiko, who was already back at the Hub. They’d managed to find Gareth’s surname from the electoral roll for his address. Toshiko had pulled up the photos from Gareth Portland’s university matriculation card and passport, and sent those to Gwen’s PDA. A solemn boy, with long hair and high cheekbones, stared back at her with insolent green eyes.
Throughout the remainder of the journey, Gwen tapped her fingers irritably on her knees at every delay. A young mum wrestling a buggy across a pelican crossing. A kid on a bike steering from pavement to pavement across a T-junction without checking for cars.
A fire engine wailed past them, traffic falling away for it in a slowly rippling wave. Rhys pulled over to let the emergency vehicle through. Gwen tutted, but then apologised.
‘I haven’t got blue lights on this thing,’ Rhys grumbled.
‘Not fitted as standard on our company vehicles.’
Gwen ached for the device that Toshiko had installed in the SUV that would change traffic lights to green as they approached. ‘Should have got the Astra when we had the choice,’ she grumbled. ‘Nippier about town in the rush. Easier to park, and all,’ she added as they went past a space that was just too small to reverse into.
After a few minutes fiddling around with the Cardiff A–Z, Rhys parked around the corner from their destination.
‘You’re on a double yellow,’ Gwen noted.
Rhys laughed at her as he slammed his car door. ‘When did Torchwood worry about parking tickets?’
Gwen gave him her ‘you’ll-be-sorry’ face and said: ‘It would be abusing my position to get a ticket cancelled for Harwood’s Haulage.’ She crossed the street, and laughed at his momentary hesitation before he jogged to catch up. ‘Had you going there,’ she smiled.
Gareth’s house was set back from the road, a large Victorian redbrick building with wide bay windows. A thick twist of dark smoke spiralled out of its tall, highly decorated rubbed brick chimneys.
Gwen’s first assessment was that it would be difficult to approach the building covertly because of the noise they’d inevitably make over the gravel driveway. Once they got to the main gate, however, the need for stealth evaporated. There were tyre grooves, deep and wide in the pale gravel, where a fire engine had swung in off the road and charged towards the house. That smoke wasn’t coming from the chimneys – the upper floor of the house was alight. The roof had slumped and collapsed like melted wax on the far side, bringing down a couple of bedrooms with it. The crew rolled up the corrugated side of their fire appliance and attached thick hoses.
‘It’s a day for this kind of thing, isn’t it?’ observed Rhys.
Flakes of paper and ash were lifted from the fire into the air, and fluttered down into the driveway. Rhys showed a couple of half-burned examples to Gwen. ‘We found the right place.’ The charred fragments were still recognisable as MonstaQuest cards. ‘Just got here a bit late, eh?’
‘I wonder if he printed and packaged them in the house?’ pondered Gwen. She looked around, and spotted a dilapidated wood-framed garage that stood separate from the house against the tall pine hedge. ‘Maybe there’s more stored over there?’
A small group of nosy locals had already gathered to gawp at proceedings. Gwen approached them and listened in.
‘Hell of a row,’ said a woman in a pink dressing gown and slippers, who was holding court among her neighbours. She was clearly not the type to miss out on a local tragedy. Her bedraggled hair was half-fixed with curlers, like an impromptu crown. ‘They say that she’s still in there. She’ll be burnt to a crisp by now.’ This last observation was delivered with a mixture of horror and relish.
‘Who’s that then, Mrs Stackpole?’ asked a mousy woman in the group.
Mrs Stackpole tilted her head regally towards her inquisitor. ‘His girlfriend,’ she explained condescendingly. ‘The mother never liked her, apparently.’ Her voice dropped as though she was imparting a top secret. ‘Ideas above her station. Maybe that’s what the row was about. Heard it from my bathroom window, when I was doing my hair.’
‘Leaning out of your bathroom window, more like.’
‘It overlooks the far side of the house,’ retorted Mrs Stackpole. ‘Can I help it if there’s shrieking and banging and Lord knows what other commotion? They were shouting fit to raise the roof, I shouldn’t wonder. And blow me down, if the roof doesn’t actually fall in! I thought it was an explosion.’
‘That’d be the bolt of lightning,’ piped up a thin woman in a tartan coat.
Mrs Stackpole didn’t appreciate the interruption. ‘Lightning indeed, Mary. There’s not a cloud in the sky.’
‘I saw it myself, from across the way,’ insisted Mary.
Mrs Stackpole pouted in disbelief. ‘Well, I was the one who dialled 999 straight off, wasn’t I?’ Her voice trailed off as she saw Gwen earwigging on the conversation. ‘Can I help you, love?’ she asked snappishly.
Gwen favoured her with a big smile. ‘I was looking for Gareth.’
Mrs Stackpole set her mouth in a grim line of apology. ‘I’m sorry, my love. He and his girlfriend were in the house when it collapsed. Did you know him?’
‘We were… supposed to meet him here on business,’ Rhys improvised.
‘Odd man,’ continued Mrs Stackpole, her mask of concern slipping somewhat. ‘Geeky, my Robert would call him. Gareth was strange when he was at school, and didn’t change much when he was at university.’
‘Kept himself to himself,’ volunteered the mousy woman.
‘Solitary, yes,’ continued Mrs Stack
pole relentlessly, unwilling to surrender the stage at this point. She nodded in the direction of the smouldering house. ‘But I don’t think there’ll be much of him for the fire brigade to find—’ She broke off. Something had caught her attention over by the house. Everyone turned to look with her.
Two firemen were rushing away from the collapsed building, hampered from running as fast as they evidently wanted to by the gravel drive and their bulky reflective uniforms. ‘Get back!’ yelled one of them as he rounded the fire engine. His helmet fell off the back of his head, but he did not stop to retrieve it.
‘Oh my good God,’ said Mrs Stackpole as she saw something that finally made her shut up.
Gwen shrugged off the fleeing fireman who tried to stop her, and slipped from Rhys’s anxious grasp too. She moved closer to the extraordinary sight that was destroying the arched porch of the house.
It looked like an angry little diplodocus, about the size of a cow, thrashing its long neck from side to side. Ash and fragments of MonstaQuest cards continued to dribble down from above. That’s when Gwen remembered where she’d seen this thing before. It was exactly like one of the MonstaQuest toys from the shop. That horn she’d noticed in the model was actually a third eye in the centre of its forehead.
She flicked on her PDA, and angled it towards the house. Her comms clicked online as she tapped her ear. ‘Tosh? Are you back at the Hub yet?’
Toshiko’s voice crackled. ‘Yes I am.’
Gwen focused the PDA’s viewfinder. ‘Are you getting this?’
‘I take it you’re not in Jurassic Park?’
‘No. Nearer to Heath Park.’ Gwen could hear Rhys calling her away now. The diplodocus swung its long neck in her direction and its mouth yawned wide. She backed off, but stumbled, twisted awkwardly and fell onto the path.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Toshiko in her ear.
The little diplodocus took a couple of stomping footsteps towards her. Gravel squirted from under its feet like gunshots. Gwen threw up her arm to defend her face. Just as it was upon her, the huge creature was enveloped in a bright flash. Gwen instantly recalled what that woman, Mary, had said: a lightning strike. But there was no noise.
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