Bay of the Dead

of the creatures looked awful, terrifying — rotting and scabrous, some with parts of their bodies or their faces missing — but the majority of the tense and muttering multitude which had gathered in Reception simply couldn't stop staring at them, couldn't stop gazing with wonder and awe and disgust at the grotesque and the impossible.

After the initial flurry of panic, things had started to settle down. Despite the tension and the fear, a sort of siege mentality had set in, a touch of the Dunkirk spirit. The people inside the hospital, the living, were pulling together, helping one another. The staff were even handing out refreshments, nurses going round with trays of tea and biscuits. Of course, if the walking dead actually did something rather than simply stand and stare — if they tried to smash their way into the hospital, for instance — then the situation would undoubtedly change; the screaming and the panic would start all over again. But for now there was a stand-off. Not a truce, as such, but a stillness, a silence. A sense of dreadful anticipation.

Like most people, Rianne and Nina had been drawn to the Reception area, had felt a peculiar need to be close to the action — or at least close enough to be able to see first-hand what was going on. And, also like most people, they were now staring with fascination and revulsion at the walking corpses — the zombies — standing in silent rows outside the hospital. Like sentinels. Like guard dogs.

Rianne shook her head in response to Nina's murmured question. 'I don't know,' she said.

Speaking in a hushed voice, as though afraid the creatures outside might somehow overhear her, Nina said, 'It's almost as if they're waiting.'

Rianne looked at the girl. 'Waiting for what?' she said.

Nina looked back at her with haunted eyes. She gave a little shrug. 'For the order to attack, maybe?'

Gun in one hand, PDA in the other, Ianto ran through the building site, taking care not to slip in the mud and rubble. Eschewing subtlety, he yelled his friend's name as he ran, his eyes darting every which way, constantly on the lookout for movement between the silent, hulking machines, and in and around the roofless shells of houses caged by scaffolding.

Jack's comms were down, which did not bode well. But at least his life-sign readings were still registering on the PDA. Trouble was, they were too imprecise for Ianto to get a fix on Jack's exact location. Jack could be in any one of the two dozen or so soon-to-be 'desirable luxury dwellings' springing up from the few acres of quagmire that Ianto was currently wading through.

In the centre of the site, Ianto stopped and pivoted on his heels, taking a good look round. There were no street lamps here and the half-finished buildings were nothing but featureless blocks of darkness around him, cutting off what little light had previously bled through from the adjacent street. Ianto wished he had a third hand with which he could hold a torch, and thought that maybe he ought to think about rustling up some kind of head- mounted devices for them all. However, the thought of how horrified Jack would be if it was suggested he wear something practical rather than stylish almost made him smile.

'Jack!' he shouted again, his voice bouncing off the black walls around him. 'Jack! Jack!'

This time he received a reply. Jack's voice was tight, as if he was trying to speak and lift weights at the same time.

'Ianto,' he grunted. 'In here.'

Ianto spun round. It was impossible to tell where the voice was coming from. 'I hear you, Jack, but I can't tell where you are. Keep shouting.'

He followed Jack's strained cries towards a house on his left. He squelched across what would one day be an immaculate front lawn and into a rectangular gap awaiting a door. The blackness swallowed him as soon as he stepped into the building, and he shivered as if the new plaster was giving off a clammy chill.

'Jack!' Ianto's voice echoed around him. 'Where are you?'

'In. . here. .' Jack gasped, so close that Ianto felt as though he could almost have reached out and touched him.

He felt his way along the narrow passage until he came to an opening. He slipped through it, gun arm swinging from left to right.

At first he thought the room was empty, and then, from over by the far wall, there came a scuff and a grunting snarl. Ianto screwed up his eyes and glimpsed what appeared to be a suggestion of movement.

'Jack,' he said cautiously. 'Is that you?'

Jack's voice was a grunt in the darkness. 'Get. . her. . off me.'

Ianto stepped closer, still pointing his gun. He saw a blue glint on the floor, and realised it was Jack's earpiece, which must have fallen or been pulled off. The PDA cast a metre or so of cold, bluish light before it. Six strides brought Ianto close enough to see Jack lying on his back, trying to hold off the dead teenage girl, who was writhing like a wildcat, her teeth clacking together as she snapped at his face.

Jack glanced up at Ianto with an almost embarrassed expression. 'She's a lot. . stronger than. . she looks,' he said. The girl snapped at him again. He turned his face aside. 'And her breath really stinks.'

Ianto put his gun away, placed the PDA on the floor, and produced a choke-loop, which the Torchwood team sometimes used on Weevils, from the inside of his jacket. He tried to loop it over the girl's head, and had to snatch his hand back when she twisted in Jack's grasp and snapped at him.

'Hold her still,' he said tetchily.

'I'm. . trying,' Jack replied, indignant.

Ianto had another go at snaring the girl, and again almost lost several fingers for his troubles. Sighing, he delved into the left hip pocket of his jacket and produced a nebuliser. This time when the girl twisted her head towards him, he sprayed her full in the face.

He wasn't sure whether the chemicals would have the same immobilising effect on the girl as they did on Weevils — presumably she had no working respiratory system — but it certainly seemed to disorientate her long enough for Ianto to slip the choke-loop over her head. Once that was done, it was only a matter of minutes before he and Jack had the girl gagged and bound. They carried her, still struggling wildly, out of the house, back through the building site, and out onto the street, where the SUV was parked and waiting for them.

In the ten minutes or so that Ianto had been away, three more zombies had arrived, and were now clustered around the SUV, batting ineffectually at the toughened glass of the windows, trying to gain access to the juicy titbits inside.

Jack and Ianto put the trussed and wriggling girl down on the road, and Jack pulled out his gun.

'Oh, you guys are so damn tiresome,' he shouted, and ran towards them.

***

Andy gave Dawn another worried look as he turned into the road leading to St Helen's Hospital. She looked awful — pale and sweating, her eyes ringed with dark circles. The tea towel around her injured hand was stained red, but the blood loss wasn't so great that she would be in any immediate danger.

He thought of what she had said after she'd been bitten, of how she'd been afraid that the suspect might have infected her. But what kind of infection attacked its host so quickly? This was more like the effects of snake venom or something.

Unless. . Andy swallowed, hardly daring to contemplate the possibility.

Unless this was some sort of alien infection. A plague from beyond the stars. Some bloody germ or other that turned people into flesh-eating monsters.

He went cold at the prospect. Best to put it out of his head for now, concentrate on the matter in hand.

'Soon be there,' he said, wincing inwardly at the tremor beneath the false cheeriness of his voice.

Whether Dawn could hear him or not he didn't know. A few minutes ago she had closed her eyes, murmuring that she was 'so tired'. Since then he hadn't heard a peep out of her.

'Dawn?' Andy said, hoping that she was just dozing, that she hadn't slipped into a coma. 'Dawn, are you — Oh, Christ! '

It was what his headlights had revealed as he had turned into the hospital car park that had prompted his outburst.

Zombies. Hundreds of the buggers. Forming a cordon around the hospital. Just standing there in ordered