Slow Decay Read online

  ‘And tomorrow,’ Toshiko muttered unexpectedly, ‘world peace and a solution to the Riemann Hypothesis.’

  Jack was standing over by the edge of the wharf, although Gwen hadn’t seen him move from the warehouse roof. Somewhere behind him, across the water, a spotlight was pointed towards them, outlining Jack in white fire, casting his dark shadow across the concrete and the tarmac and the weeds.

  Gwen nodded towards the device that Toshiko was holding. ‘What’s that thing do, then?’

  ‘It tracks Weevils,’ Jack replied.

  ‘I didn’t know we could track Weevils.’

  ‘I think—’ Toshiko began to say.

  ‘Owen tells me their body temperature is lower than humans,’ Jack went on. ‘They’re not quite cold-blooded, but they’re not far short. Toshiko figured out a way to use overhead infra-red imagery from military satellites to track anything of a certain size that’s moving at a walking or running pace and has a lower than normal body temperature.’

  ‘Assuming there aren’t many penguins on the loose in Cardiff,’ Owen added, ‘and, let’s face it, stranger things have happened – we should be able to sort out the Weevils from the chavs.’

  ‘Excuse me—’ Toshiko interrupted.

  ‘If we can do that,’ Gwen said, picking her way carefully through the words, because she knew that she was missing something, ‘then surely we can clear the Weevils out. Save some lives.’

  Jack shook his head; the light behind him magnifying the gesture into a dramatic shadow-play. ‘They spend time indoors, and Toshiko can’t track them there. And besides, I need to know how they move, how they live, how they breed, in order to determine their social structure.’

  ‘And what good is that going to do?’

  Toshiko looked from Gwen to Jack. ‘Excuse me, but—’

  ‘That way,’ Jack continued, ‘I can work out a way of getting rid of all of them for good. It’s like snails. You can step on individuals from now until doomsday, but if you know they don’t like moving across sharp objects then you can scatter crushed eggshells around the edges of your garden and they’ll never come in again. I need to find the Weevil equivalent of crushed eggshells.’

  ‘Will you all please stop talking?’ Toshiko snapped. ‘I have something to say!’

  ‘Go ahead, Tosh,’ Jack said. ‘We’re listening.’

  ‘I’m detecting twelve signals which I believe are Weevils. They are all moving in the same direction, at roughly the same speed. Eight of them are either moving through the warehouses near us or moving across the roofs. The other four are moving beneath us. I think they must be in sewer pipes.’ She paused, examining the scanner. ‘There is a time-lag between the thermal signatures being detected by the satellites and this scanner receiving the processed signal, but I think all of the Weevils are now either here or they have passed us.’

  ‘But if they’ve passed us…’ Owen started.

  ‘Then we are caught between them and whatever is chasing them,’ Jack finished.

  Something snarled at them from the end of the wharf.

  NINE

  Toshiko could smell the Weevils before she could see them: a rank odour, like the elephant house at the zoo. Whatever it was, it made her nose wrinkle and her eyes water.

  The display on the sensor receiver showed that they were being flanked on three sides: two Weevils somewhere in, beneath or on top of the warehouse; three more that had to be climbing under the wharf or swimming in the bay if they were anywhere; and another three in the darkness behind them. All eight Weevils were moving fast. Toshiko glanced around, but she couldn’t see any sign of them.

  Was this how the victims of the Weevils felt? A moment’s nervousness, a prickling on the back of the neck, looking around to see nothing, and then teeth sinking into the neck, tearing the flesh apart, shredding it. And then the hot splatter of blood on the face and the arms and the chest? And then darkness. Was that how it was?

  ‘Spread out,’ Jack said. ‘Everyone get your weapons out. Owen – that means your gun, OK?’

  Toshiko reached behind her and pulled the Walther P99 from the holster in the small of her back. The gun dragged her hand down. She felt wetness on the grip: oil, sweat, humidity – whatever it was, it made the grip slippery and the gun hard to hold straight. Long hours of training on the Torchwood firing range made her check there was a bullet primed and ready to go, and then made her click the safety off. The bullets were made of some alien alloy, and their noses had been hollowed out and filled with a Teflon fluid. The entry wound was the size of a penny piece; the exit wound was the size of a dinner plate. They could take down an elephant – if one ever went rogue in Cardiff. With one shot. And Toshiko hated them. They were technology gone bad.

  Owen had a Sig Sauer P226. He was holding it two-handed, sweeping it back and forth, tracking shadows and mist. Gwen had a Glock 17, pointing it straight up in the air. Both weapons, like Toshiko’s Walther, had come from the Torchwood armoury. Jack had once told her that he liked having lots of different weapons around, just for variety. Jack, of course, was suddenly holding his usual ancient Webley pistol.

  Something made her glance up towards the top of the warehouse, where Jack had been standing a few moments before. Where there had previously been a straight line, metal against starlight, there were now two dark lumps. Industrial-age gargoyles, silhouetted against the night. Faces like relief maps, all chasms and mountain ranges. Staring at the four of them. Staring unblinkingly with eyes that had seen alien worlds, alien suns.

  ‘Jesus fuck,’ breathed Owen. He had seen them too. No, Toshiko realised as she glanced at him – he hadn’t seen them at all. He was staring towards the bay.

  Toshiko turned slowly around. There, crouched along the crumbling concrete edge of the wharf, were three more Weevils. These ones were crouched, knuckles resting against the concrete. Their gaze, as they stared at the Torchwood team, was blandly curious. Their serrated teeth, wet with saliva, glinted in the meagre light. They were different from one another in size, attitude, expression, and yet they were the same. They were violence and death, incarnate.

  ‘Be calm, people,’ Jack said.

  Owen snorted. ‘As in, “Be calm. Be very calm”? I saw that film. It didn’t end well.’

  ‘What about Ianto?’ Gwen asked. ‘He’s got the SUV. He can come and get us.’

  ‘You mean, rescue us,’ corrected Owen.

  ‘I’m holding him in reserve.’

  ‘What, you think something worse is going to happen?’ Gwen snapped.

  Toshiko glanced at the sensor receiver display. It was still showing two traces on the warehouse side, three traces on the bay side, and three traces behind them. Slowly, she glanced over her shoulder. The spotlights on the cranes shone through the latticework of their construction, illuminating the wharf in a lacy web of light. And also illuminating three shapes that might have been piles of rubbish, might have been scrap metal, or might have been Weevils cutting off their retreat.

  ‘It already has,’ she said.

  ‘Weevils to right of them,’ Jack declaimed. ‘Weevils to left of them, Weevils in front of them. Boldly they rode, and well, into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell.’

  ‘Very poetic.’ Owen’s voice was scathing. ‘Is that Eminem or Chris de Burgh?’

  ‘They’re not in front of us,’ Gwen muttered. ‘They’re behind us.’

  ‘Like a lot of things in life,’ Jack said, ‘it depends which way you’re facing at the time.’

  As if reacting to an inaudible signal, the Weevils behind them – or in front of them, Toshiko corrected herself – loped towards the group. She braced herself, bringing her gun up.

  Gwen was tracking the Weevils on top of the warehouse as they broke their stony immobility and started moving along the line of the roof. Owen was doing the same to the Weevils over by the edge of the wharf. They were moving too. Jack was—

  Jack was standing with his gun by his side. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘
We’re not at risk.’

  ‘Are you willing to bet our lives on that?’ Owen challenged.

  ‘I am betting our lives on that.’ Jack glanced around. ‘Cos that’s what I do. Look at them. They’re treating us like some potentially dangerous obstacle in their path. Check it out, then go round it.’

  ‘Like buffalo,’ Gwen murmured.

  ‘Love buffalo,’ said Jack. ‘Thanks for asking.’

  Toshiko suddenly realised that the Weevils on the warehouse and on the edge of the wharf had gone, vanished into the night. The Weevils that had been behind them swept past, close enough to touch, close enough for Toshiko to smell them, and then they too were gone.

  ‘Well, that was fun.’ Owen lowered his gun. ‘We should do that again some time.’ His hand was shaking.

  ‘Perhaps with more Weevils,’ Gwen added. ‘Eight didn’t really do it for me. I reckon ten minimum.’

  ‘Sixteen,’ said Owen. ‘Four each. That seems fair.’

  Reluctant to join in, Toshiko bent to retrieve the sensor display unit. It had dropped from her hand at some stage during the confrontation, but she didn’t even remember letting go of it. The casing was scraped on one corner, but otherwise the device was still working. Green and orange webs meshed themselves together across the screen: a display that looked like abstract art unless you knew what it represented. Rapidly, Toshiko assessed what was going on. The Weevils, represented on the display by knots in the meshed webs, were moving off along the edge of the bay, strung out in a rough ellipse. They were moving fast.

  Jack was standing beside her, looking intently at her face rather than the display. ‘Have they gone?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re safe,’ Toshiko replied.

  ‘That’s not what I asked. Have they gone?’

  Toshiko shrugged. The distinction was meaningless to her. ‘Yes, they have gone.’

  Gwen had caught the edge of the conversation. ‘Is that it then? Can we go home now?’

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  ‘Why not?’ Owen asked. ‘The danger’s past. The Weevils have gone.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack said, ‘but why did the hedgehog cross the road?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Owen shrugged. ‘Why did the hedgehog cross the road?’

  ‘Because it was stapled to the chicken.’ Jack glanced back in the direction from which the Weevils had come. ‘The point being, sometimes you do things not because you want to but because you’re forced to.’

  Owen and Gwen pivoted to look in the same direction as Jack.

  ‘Hard to believe that anything could spook a single Weevil that badly.’ Gwen bit her lip. ‘Let alone eight of them. I can’t imagine anything that eight Weevils couldn’t handle.’

  Jack was still gazing out into the darkness. ‘Let’s not forget that one of their kind was taken down and eaten by something prowling this fine city. That kinda puts a damper on your day, even if you’re a Weevil. They’re a strangely gregarious lot, far as I can tell. I don’t think they sit around the campfire toasting marshmallows – or whatever else they find floating down in the sewers – but the death of one of them has a strange effect on the others. I think they’re truly scared.’

  ‘Scared of what?’ Owen asked.

  ‘Scared of that,’ Jack said, nodding his head towards a patch of darkness that seemed to have come unmoored from the night and was drifting along the side of the warehouse. ‘Tosh – anything on the scanner?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied, tearing her gaze away from the moving shadow and checking the display. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not registering on here.’

  ‘That means its body temperature is closer to human than the Weevils are,’ Jack said.

  ‘Or it hasn’t got a body temperature at all,’ Owen continued bleakly. ‘It’s cold-blooded. Or it hasn’t got any blood. No blood. Bloodless.’

  ‘Come on,’ Gwen chided. It sounded to Toshiko as if she was trying to talk herself out of bleak thoughts, rather than Owen. ‘You’re a doctor. You saw the photographs of the dead Weevil. Whatever killed it had teeth. That means it has a mouth. That means it needs to eat. That means it… oh shit. I’ve run out of conclusions. You know what I’m trying to say. It’s real, not some spooky Scooby-Doo ghoul thing.’

  ‘Actually,’ Toshiko felt constrained to say, ‘the ghouls and ghosts and monsters in Scooby-Doo always turned out to be men in masks. Usually the caretaker.’ She noticed Gwen’s raised eyebrow. ‘I liked Velma,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Yeah, which only goes to prove that you’re not a true Scooby-Doo fan,’ Owen said. He was still watching the patch of darkness as it hugged the corrugated metal side of the warehouse, moving slowly but inexorably toward them. ‘The sixth incarnation of Scooby-Doo, dating to the early 1980s, had Scooby and Shaggy meeting up with real ghosts, vampires and all kinds of shit. Didn’t you ever see The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo? Or Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers?’

  ‘Sadly, no.’

  ‘Fun though this is,’ Jack interrupted, ‘I think we have a more pressing concern right now. Although I did think that Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf marked an absolute low in the output of the Hanna-Barbera studios.’ He stepped forward. Toshiko expected him to raise his gun, but instead he left it hanging by his side. ‘Hi,’ he said brightly. ‘We’ve kinda gone astray. What’s the best way back to the Millennium Stadium from here?’

  ‘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 th
ere’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.