Torchwood: Slow Decay (16 page)

‘I… I’m not sure,’ said a tremulous voice from the darkness. ‘I think I’m lost. Can you help me?’

‘We can help anyone.’ Jack’s voice was confident, but Toshiko noticed that he wasn’t moving forward. ‘That’s what we do. It’s our
shtick
, if you like. Or our
raison d’être
, if you prefer. Do you want to step out into the light, where we can see you?’

‘Are you all right?’ Gwen called when the voice didn’t answer.

‘I’m hungry,’ the voice said. ‘I’m so very hungry.’

And then it was on them in a blur of limbs and clothing, crossing the concrete wharf between the warehouse and them before anyone could react. Its feet seemed to touch the ground once, twice, propelling it forward like a greyhound. Its limbs were just as thin, its face narrow and pointed.

It wore a silk blouse and large, silver earrings, Toshiko noticed in the frozen moment before it launched itself at her face, jaws impossibly wide, teeth strung with glistening strands of saliva. And its belt was probably Prada.

The thing’s hands caught her right in the middle of her chest, but it was like being hit with a handbag. Toshiko stumbled backwards more through the shock of the impact than anything else. Whatever the thing was, it was light.

As she fell, she realised that the thing was snapping its teeth in her face, trying to rip the flesh from her cheeks. She held it off as best she could, but it was strong – much stronger than its size would have indicated.

Her head hit the concrete of the wharf. For a moment, concerns about teeth and body mass went flying. The number of stars in the sky suddenly doubled, tripled, and the sudden jagged shards of pain that tore through her head made her feel like it had come apart like a melon, leaving her brains steaming on the pavement. That would also explain why she couldn’t think properly. Everything was muddy. Distanced. Small details occupied the entirety of Toshiko’s mind – a moving point of light high in the sky that might have been an aeroplane or might have been a satellite; the sticky feel of blood matting her hair; the way the teeth of the thing that was attacking her had fillings in its molars. Porcelain as well, not the cheaper mercury amalgam that so many people had.

As the thing’s teeth closed around her throat, Toshiko’s last coherent emotion was despair.

The thing’s teeth snapped shut, but not on Toshiko. Something had grabbed it and was yanking it away. It yowled, thin and angry. Limbs thrashed madly in all directions.

Hands were checking Toshiko over, from head to foot. Calm hands. Experienced hands.

‘Owen,’ she breathed.

‘Stay still,’ he said. ‘I don’t think there’s any major damage but I need to make sure. Can you look left? Right? Up? Down? Good girl. How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Eight,’ she murmured, wondering how he could get so many fingers on one hand, and how come she’d never noticed before.

‘Divide by two,’ he said.

‘Oh – four?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How’s my Toshiko?’ said a voice from behind Owen’s head. A young, brash, American voice. Jack’s voice, her brain told her after a slight delay.

‘Skull’s intact. Some contusions on the scalp; no indications of concussion, but I’ll check for sure when we get back to the Hub. Arms and legs are OK – no sign of any fractures. All in all, nothing that a couple of aspirin and some rest won’t cure. You see worse things in Cardiff city centre every night of the week.’

‘You don’t almost get your face eaten off by a crazy woman in Cardiff city centre,’ Jack said, moving round in front of Toshiko.

‘You do if you go to the right clubs,’ Owen breathed.

He helped Toshiko to sit up. The world swirled around her, and she felt suddenly hot and sweaty. Saliva flooded her mouth.

‘Not too fast,’ Owen said. ‘Breathe deeply.’ He produced some pills from a pocket. They were loose. ‘Take these – let them dissolve in your mouth. They’ll help quell the nausea.’

Toshiko peered at the tablets. ‘What are they?’

Owen glanced down at the palm of his hand. ‘Whoops – not those.’ His hand dived back into his pocket, returning with a couple more tablets, larger this time. ‘These are the ones. Trust me – I’m a doctor.’

Dubiously, Toshiko nibbled the tablets from Owen’s palm. The coating dissolved with sudden sweetness in her mouth, and was replaced with a chalkier, grittier taste. The world seemed to gradually swim back into focus: lights were brighter, she could see further and the sensation that she was about to throw up receded. Shakily, with Owen’s help, she got to her feet.

Jack and Gwen were holding something down on the ground – something that struggled madly in their grip. ‘Is that the thing that attacked me?’ Toshiko asked.

‘It is,’ Owen said, still holding her arm. She didn’t want him to let go. Not ever.

‘But it attacked and killed a Weevil! Eight other Weevils were scared to take it on! How come Jack and Gwen can just hold it down like that?’

‘Because Weevils don’t have a pharmaceutical industry.’ He frowned. ‘As far as we know. Actually, they might
all
be qualified pharmacists.’ He brightened. ‘But a dose of carfentanyl works on them the same way it works on most living creatures.’

‘What’s carfentanyl?’ Toshiko asked.

‘It’s an anaesthetic and sedative,’ Owen explained. ‘It has a quantitative potency approximately ten thousand times that of morphine. Usually it’s used to sedate large animals. Very large animals. I’ve been wondering whether it would have any effect on Weevils but I’ve never had a chance to find out. Fortunately, I had some with me.’

He reached into his jacket pocket, frowned, moved his hand to a different pocket, smiled in relief and brought out a plastic tube with a nozzle on one end and a small trigger or lever about halfway up. A transparent window in the tube indicated that it was empty. ‘Pressurised air syringe. Blasts drugs straight through the skin. Well, human skin, anyway. It just makes Weevil skin soggy.’

Toshiko moved closer to the writhing, hissing thing on the ground. ‘How much did you use?’

‘Everything I had. And it wasn’t enough.’

Jack was straddling the thing’s chest, holding its arms down to the ground. Gwen was kneeling on its legs. Toshiko moved to one side so that neither of them blocked her view of the creature that had attacked her.

It was a woman.

Actually, it was a girl. Late teens or early twenties. Blonde hair. Brown suede trousers, a white silk blouse and a leather jacket.

‘
Hell!
’ Toshiko exclaimed. ‘I thought it was an alien creature!’

‘No such luck,’ Jack said, still trying to stop the girl springing to her feet. ‘Owen – any more of that sedative stuff?’

‘Used it all up.’

‘Nothing at all left?’

Owen frowned, then reached into his jacket and pulled out another of the pressurised air syringes. This one was full of a yellowish liquid. ‘Ketamine?’ he asked.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’

Owen reached down, grabbed an arm, and pressed the trigger on the syringe. There was a sudden hiss, and the yellow fluid vanished from the tube. A few seconds later the girl’s struggles subsided. ‘That’s my evening ruined,’ Owen muttered.

‘Look on the bright side,’ Jack said, standing up. ‘You’ve got a girl paralytic and you didn’t even have to spend any money.’

The four of them gathered around the girl’s body and gazed down at her. She was moving her head slowly from side to side, and her eyelids were flickering. There were stains on both the blouse and the jacket. Toshiko thought at first they were blood, but there were fragments of herb and crumbs mixed in. Tomato sauce? It looked like she’d been in a car accident with a pizza delivery boy.

Jack knelt down again, this time beside her. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked gently.

‘Marianne.’ Her voice was coated with a patina of pain and worry. ‘Marianne Till.’

‘OK, Marianne, how are you feeling?’

‘Hungry.’

‘When did you last eat?’

‘I’m always eating. I can’t get enough food to stop the hunger.’

‘What have you eaten this evening?’

‘Chinese takeaway. Pizza. Some sandwiches I found in a bin.’ She hesitated. ‘A pigeon. Someone’s dog. I tried to eat this guy who bought me a drink in a bar, but he ran away. There was blood on his face, and he was screaming. And… and I ate a kebab.’

‘A kebab,’ Owen muttered. ‘That’s just sick.’

‘Don’t worry, Marianne. My name is Jack, this is Gwen, and that’s Toshiko and Owen. We’re going to be your friends, and we’re going to try and help you get over this.’ Without turning his head, or taking his gaze away from the girl, he said to Gwen, ‘Call Ianto. He’s parked just around the corner. Get him to drive over here as quickly as he can. We have to get Marianne back to the Hub.’

Gwen stepped to one side and brought her mobile up to her mouth. While she was talking, Toshiko just stared at the creature. At the girl. At Marianne.

‘She’s so young,’ Toshiko said. ‘And so thin! How can she be that thin when she eats that much?’

Owen shrugged. ‘Fast metabolism?’ he said. He reached out towards her face.

For a moment Toshiko thought he was going to stroke her hair, but instead he reached around and felt the back of her head. ‘Bleeding’s stopped. You need to get that washed when you get back. I’ll give you some cream.’

‘Thanks.’

With a quiet rumble of tyres, the SUV pulled up beside them. Its black surface reflected the warehouses, the cranes, the wharf, defining the car’s presence only by the way it distorted its surroundings. The driver’s door opened and Ianto stepped out, leaving the engine purring. As usual, he was dressed in a three-piece suit and tie. His shirt was double-cuffed, secured by cufflinks. He even wore a tie pin. Sometimes Toshiko thought that he wasn’t quite real.

‘I hope I’m not too late,’ he said calmly.

‘Ianto, you’re never too late and you’re never too early.’ Jack stood up and looked around. ‘That’s why we love you. Now, everyone, we need to get this young lady back to the Hub and find out what’s wrong with her. And just in case the various anaesthetics that Owen’s injected her with start wearing off, I recommend that we immobilise her. Ianto, did you bring the cuffs?’

‘I assumed you might be needing them.’ He brought his hand up to show that he was already carrying the thin metal tapes that could be wound around a captive’s wrists or ankles and, when pressed together, would meld into an unbreakable loop – unbreakable, that was, until they were irradiated with low-level microwaves, in which case they would revert back to their ribbon-like state. Toshiko had spent many months trying to determine how they functioned, without success.

Ianto passed the tapes to Gwen, who bent down and pinioned Marianne’s ankles, and then her wrists. Ianto and Owen then picked Marianne up and placed her carefully into the back of the SUV.

‘I hope we’re not stopped by the police on the way back to the Hub,’ Ianto said. ‘Explaining why we’ve got a young girl tied up in the back could be tricky.’

Jack smiled. ‘We’ll let Owen talk us out of it. I’m sure he’s had lots of practice.’

They all climbed into the SUV and drove back through darkened city streets to the Hub. Ianto used a device fixed to the dashboard that automatically set the traffic lights to green as they approached.

The trip was quick, but Toshiko found herself drifting into a reverie as they drove. The lights of the city elongated into ribbons of light that wound around each other in a psychedelic skein. She felt hypnotised. Anaesthetised, like Marianne. Part of her knew it was the shock of the attack and the after-effects, as her body reacted and then recovered, but the rest of her just wanted to curl up and let unconsciousness take her away. Let the darkness win, just for a while.

She woke as they were arriving in the Hub via the hidden vehicular entrance in the basement of the Bute Place car park. As she climbed from the car, Ianto went to fetch a trolley. Together they all manhandled Marianne onto the trolley and rolled her through the Torchwood tunnels towards the area of sealed cells where occasional guests were kept.

Still rubbing her eyes, Toshiko watched as Ianto and Jack carried Marianne into the cell, and Jack removed the metal tapes from her arms and legs while Gwen covered him with her automatic. Together they all backed out of the cell, shutting and sealing the entrance behind them.

At which point, Owen asked the question that had apparently been in everyone’s minds. ‘So – what do we do with her now?’

Jack grimaced. ‘We need to work out what’s happened to her. I don’t know whether it’s physical or psychological, but she’s somehow developed this ravenous hunger that nothing can satisfy. Owen – we need to find some way of getting some blood from her that you can run tests on. Might be best to do it quickly, before the horse tranquillisers wear off. Make sure Ianto covers you. Check for anything that might explain her actions. Gwen – I need you to work on her identity. She said her name was Marianne Till. See if she’s local, and if anyone’s reported her missing. She also mentioned biting a man in a bar; see if that’s been reported as a crime. I want to track her progress across the city. I want to track it
back
and find out where she started from. Tosh – I need you to work on non-invasive sensors that can give us a picture of what’s going on inside her. Microwave, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, X-ray… anything you can get to work at a range of six feet through an aluminium screen. I know it’s a tall order, but we can’t afford to keep sending people in there to conduct tests. They’ll pretty soon become lunch. Which reminds me. Ianto – get on the phone to Jubilee Pizzas. We’ll need a whole load of stuff. Just get them to load the pizzas up with whatever they have and keep them coming. Tell them we’re having a party.’

Owen, Ianto, Gwen and Toshiko turned to leave. Jack remained, staring at the girl. As Toshiko walked away, she heard him say: ‘Stay with us, Marianne. We’ll get you through this.’

The last cell in the row was the one that contained their long-term Weevil guest. As Toshiko’s gaze scanned across it her heart missed a beat. For a moment the cell looked empty, and she panicked, thinking the Weevil had escaped. Then she looked closer, and relaxed. The Weevil was still there, slumped against the wall.