Pack Animals

by Anghelides, Peter

  Gwen intercepted Ianto and the Portland brothers as they struggled up the final set of fire stairs. The Achenbrite pair were laden with capture equipment, and unable to use the escalators because Brigstocke had reversed the direction so that they only travelled down and out of the store.

  The store’s back-up generator had kicked in, offering low-level emergency lighting. When they reached the toy department, they found that Jack and Owen had already picked their way across the debris. David Brigstocke hovered behind them nervously.

  There was no sign of Gareth Portland. A fading glow around the MonstaQuest stand illuminated a group of four huge insect creatures that huddled over something.

  With a thrill of horror, Gwen recognised that the something was Jennifer Portland.

  Matt Portland had noticed this too. He let out a howl of anguish and rage, and started to charge at the creatures. Between them, Owen and Gwen managed to hold him back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gwen told him. ‘So sorry, but it’s too late for her. You have to help your brother set up the capture equipment.’

  The insects were losing interest in Jennifer’s body, but the noise from these newcomers had attracted their attention. One of them opened its wings and flitted up to the ceiling. The other three twisted to look at their new prey, and their mandibles champed in anticipation.

  ‘Stand back!’ shouted Chris. He and his brother had angled the capture equipment at the larger group of insects, and the devices hummed into life. A static crackle filled the air, and the bulbous ends of the Achenbrite rifles spat out a cloudy spray that enveloped their targets. The three insects twisted, shrieked, and dwindled in size.

  ‘Get them in the box!’ Chris called out to his brother.

  But Matt threw the capture box aside, and ran over to the three shrunken insect creatures. His face was contorted with utter fury and he slammed down the end of his rifle against them. The insects splattered under the assault, a yellow-green stain smeared on the carpet tiles. Matt continued to pound at the gooey remains until he slumped down exhausted, his rifle a useless, mangled mess beside him.

  The remaining insect shrieked its anger, and swooped down at Chris Portland. The Achenbrite man stumbled back, tumbling over a display case of Disney characters. The monstrous insect snatched at the plush characters, slicing them with the ends of its sharp legs. Shreds of material and stuffing scattered over the floor. Chris stumbled free, and brought up his rifle to fire.

  The end of it was crushed and bent out of shape. He fired anyway, but the rifle smoked and sparked in his hands, and he had to throw it aside.

  A fusillade of shots rang out. The Torchwood team had all taken aim at the insect. Their bullets pinged off its carapace, barely scratching the creature but ricocheting in all directions.

  The creature rose into the air and menaced them from above.

  Jack was already activating his earcomm. ‘Tosh? Plan B. Did Ianto patch things through to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, bring the cellular network back online.’ Jack waggled his hand urgently at David Brigstocke. ‘Gimme your camera phone.’

  Brigstocke fumbled in his tweed jacket and finally produced the item.

  Jack’s fingers fiddled with the phone interface. He angled its camera lens up at the looming insect. ‘Get back, all of you.’

  When they all moved, the insect motioned to follow them.

  ‘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 Visu
aliser.

  ‘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,’ Brigstocke 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 u
p 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.