Risk Assessment (11 page)

Agnes ignored him, reloading her weapon. ‘As long as I have rockets, it is my duty to this country to attempt to contain this monstrosity.’

‘It’s not going to work,’ said Jack.

‘It is important to try.’ Agnes fired off another missile, her posture barely shifting under the kickback. ‘The Empire wasn’t built by people just rolling over. You’ve always been only too eager to,’ she finished sourly.

‘Agnes,’ Jack tried a reasonable tone. ‘It’s not going to work. That creature is too big. We’ve got to find a way to rescue those people and get out. We’ll find a solution. We lose this battle, but we win the war.’

Agnes fished around in her shoulder holster and sighed. ‘I have only three pieces of ordnance left. What do you suggest?’

The kickback from the gun knocked Jack off his skates and onto the blood-soaked floor of the roller-discotheque. In the distance, over the twitching headless corpses, he could see Agnes gliding past, firing shots into the dancers, her exultant face flashing with reflections from the glitterball.

‘Captain Jack Harkness!’ she bellowed. ‘Get off your fundament!’ And then, with a whoop, she was away.

Murmuring hatefully, Jack tried to stand up, the roller skates shooting away from him, and leaving him scrabbling like a kitten on polished lino.

Whatever Agnes had said, they definitely were not blending in.

‘Harkness!’ she yelled again.

‘I. Am. Trying,’ growled Jack, pitching painfully onto his shoulder. He’d never got the hang of roller skates.

‘No, Harkness, look out!’ somehow Agnes’s warning was tinged with exasperation.

Jack twisted over awkwardly, managing to neatly shatter the chin off an attacker with a flailing skate. The zombie staggered back, blood spurting through a cloud of dry ice.

Jack fired his gun and watched the corpse fall to the floor.

Agnes swished past, executed a neat turn, stopped on point, and offered him her hand.

‘Honestly, Harkness. When I was a child, one was skating on the Thames before mounting one’s first pony.’

‘I’ve never mounted a pony,’ muttered Jack.

‘Well, we must be thankful for small mercies,’ said Agnes, propelling him neatly to the sidelines. ‘You can provide covering fire from the barriers.’

‘Are these really zombies?’ Jack had never really believed in the Undead.

Agnes shook her head. ‘Of course not. These poor unfortunates are probably just the victims of a lethal space plague.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Jack leaned against a thumping speaker and fired off a shot, sending a hot-panted attacker reeling back. ‘Is that a technical term?’

Agnes smiled tightly. ‘I am sure that space medicine has advanced since my day. I leave you to fill in the details.’

And she soared across the floor in a graceful arc towards a huddled clutch of the living. ‘Goodness!’ she gasped to Jack. ‘In these skirts I must look like one of the Georgian State Dancers.’

And then one of the Undead dropped on her from the lighting rig. Agnes howled and fell to the floor, trying to keep its drooling teeth from her neck. Her gun had fallen from her.

‘Harkness!’ she cried, gasping with pain as a talon raked across her arm.

Jack let go of the railing, and wobbled unsteadily to her rescue.

‘I knew we should never have come to Sweden,’ said Agnes.

It was later. The lights had come on in the roller discotheque. Grim-suited men in uniform were dragging sequined corpses from the floor and collecting up various body parts. Occasionally one of them would shoot an angry glance at the figure in military uniform crouched over a woman in elaborately old-fashioned skirts, sat awkwardly on an orange plastic chair.

Jack was leaning over Agnes, wiping down her arm with iodine. She winced, and looked up at him. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Captain?’

He smiled, just slightly. ‘Mostly, I’m waiting to see if the infection takes hold.’

‘Ah,’ said Agnes quietly. ‘Yes. I rather fear you’ll enjoy shooting me in the head.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I’m fairly sure it’s my turn. Scared?’

Agnes paused for a second before replying.

‘Well, it certainly isn’t the plan. Mind you, this century isn’t exactly what I was expecting.’

‘That’s Torchwood for you,’ said Jack.

‘Indeed,’ said Agnes. ‘And you do hang around it a lot, if I may say. I expected you would be long gone. Instead you keep turning up like a bad penny.’

‘I guess I’m just looking for a home,’ Jack replied.

‘And is Torchwood really your home?’

Jack shrugged. ‘Sometimes, I think so. Sometimes not. And then I’ll go travelling for a bit. Or do something totally different. I had a brief spell in life insurance.’ He caught Agnes’s glance. ‘Yeah, I know. Didn’t last long. Then there was the burger bar on Bondi Beach. That was fun. But I always come back to Torchwood.’

‘Well, I’m sure we’re all very grateful,’ said Agnes tightly.

Jack smiled at her, surprisingly fondly. ‘We have our moments, you know.’

Agnes looked at him. ‘And whatever do you mean by that, Captain Harkness?’

Jack grinned. ‘You, me, a disco, the Undead, two guns, and one sense of balance. There aren’t many people I can do this kind of thing with.’

Agnes laughed a little. ‘I suppose that’s true.’

‘And, seriously, the twentieth century is proving pretty eventful,’ he told her. ‘You’re actually seeing some of the more interesting corners of it.’

Agnes nodded. ‘It’s just so uncertain. I never know what I’ll see when I wake up. I’ve a younger sister. . . I had a younger sister. Tilly. I tried to look her up when I first awoke. But by then. . . I don’t know. I couldn’t find her. I had so much to tell her. I could always tell her anything. And she was gone. That was a shock. And that was a couple of weeks ago. Mama. Papa. Tilly. Everything I knew is just history. And now my one remaining link to the past. . .’

‘Me?’ said Jack with a rueful smile.

Agnes frowned. ‘Well, yes, there is you, I suppose.’

Jack chuckled. ‘Faint praise indeed, Miss Havisham. We will have to get used to each other. At this rate, you’ll be around another thousand years.’

Agnes snorted, nearly causing a policeman to drop the corpse he was carrying. ‘Familiarity breeds contempt, Harkness.’ She giggled. ‘Jack.’

‘Oh, it does, Agnes, it does indeed.’ Jack squeezed her shoulder and smiled.

And then he kissed her.

Captain Jack Harkness sat alone in the empty roller disco, nursing a fractured jaw. He stood carefully, and rolled towards the exit in search of his boots. Down the road, somewhere, he knew Abba were in concert. And he’d be able to get a ticket off of Agnetha. Or was it Bjorn? One of the blondes, anyway. He looked up at the lone glitterball that still sparkled as it turned, and then he walked out the door.

Gran, slumbering on the sofa, woke suddenly and looked around. Anita handed her a beaker of tea, which she took, blinking with momentary confusion and then a weak smile.

Nina wandered over to the staff-room door, where Janice was peering through the slats in the blind. Under her breath she was saying, ‘Well, our insurance is covered for flood. This is a mud slide. I’m fairly certain, oh yes, that we’re covered for mud.’

Through the slits, Nina could see the giant black thing flinging steel racks around like paper darts. The noise was terrific, not helped by the way the walls of the building were making a remarkable noise. It was, she figured, the sound of concrete being squeezed.

Occasionally, she’d see two figures darting between aisles, somehow keeping on fighting – both the creature and each other. It was so oddly, reassuringly human that she felt, against all the odds, a little bit of hope.

There we go, Nina Rogers,
she thought.
You’re probably going to be eaten by a giant alien blob, but you’re still feeling all upbeat. That’s nice.

‘Goodness,’ said Gran, sitting up. ‘Are those two having any luck out there?’

‘No,’ sighed Janice. She was watching as a whole set of swings and trampolines flew past.

‘Do we know anything about them, dear? I just think it’s important to know what organisation they represent, don’t you?’

There was a muttering of agreement.

Irritated, Gran pressed on. ‘But does anyone know who those people are? What authority they have?’

Everyone shook their heads.

‘We don’t know who they are, Nan,’ said Anita, dolefully.

‘They’re superheroes,’ put in young Scott, hopefully.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Gran quietly. ‘That’s nice.’

‘I’m going to take a sample,’ said Jack, grinning. ‘Cover me.’

Agnes ducked as a volley of mountain bikes flew over their heads and clattered into the walls.

‘At least if we can learn something from all this. . .’

Agnes opened her mouth to protest, but then nodded. ‘It’s the first sensible thing you’ve said today. You have fifteen seconds.’ She raised her rocket launcher and, instead of directing it at the creature, fired it at a row of computers. The resulting explosion scattered clouds of razor shrapnel towards the creature.

Jack threw an arm across his face and vanished into the maelstrom.

‘I don’t believe it,’ groaned Janice. ‘They’re firing at the stock.’

‘Yes, dear,’ tutted Gran sympathetically. ‘But who would normally be called at such an emergency?’

Dad looked up. ‘My brother’s a fireman,’ he said. ‘He’s seen a fair few remarkable things these last couple of years. But I don’t think. . .’

‘The army,’ said Anita suddenly, certainly. ‘Soldiers would be good at this.’

Scott nodded, excited. ‘With their tanks and their nuclear weapons and their harrier jump jets.’

‘That’s the air force!’ cried out Anita, happy and excited.

‘I see,’ said Gran, shifting slightly on the sofa. ‘But what if they weren’t enough? What then? Who would help us then?’

Jack was pressed underneath a checkout counter. Flapping around him was the burning hail of what had once been a bouncy Princess castle. He watched as the plastic fragments slapped into the alien creature and were instantly absorbed.

The mass pressed up against the formica and steel of the checkout, and Jack knew he only had seconds left. Hurriedly, he grabbed a carrier bag from the counter and reached out to scoop a sample, like a dog owner picking up a turd. And then he remembered that the alien ate plastic and dropped the bag hurriedly. He looked around again, patting his pockets without luck. He knew that Torchwood had bonded polycarbide bags that could hold almost anything. Failing that were portable force-field containers. But he didn’t have any on him. Instead he made do with a steel cash box, hoping that the steel would hold it. He reached out and snapped the box shut, and then, as the checkout splintered around him, he ran, ducking slightly as a rocket soared over his head and thudded wetly into the shivering black blob.

The Vam had sensed the little man. It knew he wanted a sample. And the Vam felt generous. Let these humans find out what they were up against. After all, it was doing exactly the same.

‘I wonder what they’re doing,’ said Gran.

Anita, perched on a desk, beckoned her over. ‘Come and have a look.’

Gran shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, dear. I’m quite comfortable here. Just tell me what they’re up to.’

‘Cowering,’ said Janice, dismissively.

‘Oh,’ said Gran. ‘I expect they’ll die in a minute.’

Anita looked at her in shock. ‘Nan!’ she wailed.

Gran patted her hand. ‘Oh, hush,’ she said. ‘They’re clearly outclassed. They’ve just got guns. It’ll all be over quite quickly.’

Jack joined Agnes underneath the burning remains of the train set.

All around them the building was shuddering, giant corrugated sheets splintering down as the creature dripped in around them.

‘Retreat?’ suggested Agnes.

‘Oh yeah,’ agreed Jack.

‘Shall we join the others?’ Agnes loosed off the last rocket and threw aside the spent gun. She hoisted up her crinolines. ‘Let’s strike out!’

‘Yeah. They can make us a cup of tea,’ said Jack and raced after her.

Behind them, the store shattered in a rain of concrete and steel.

Agnes and Jack pelted through the door of the staff room, slamming it somewhat pointlessly behind them. They stood there, panting for a few seconds and then guiltily met the gazes of the other people in the room. Hope had been replaced by a look of fear and betrayal. They’d swept in, they’d assumed authority, and, as far as anyone could see, they hadn’t achieved much.