Bay of the Dead

mates.'

There was no recognition in her eyes, nothing but a flat, dull hunger.

Maybe he could knock her out, Andy thought, or disable her in some way. Without taking his eyes off her, he put the knife on the counter behind him and reached for the handcuffs on his belt. But then he remembered he had used the cuffs to restrain the zombie at the party earlier that evening. He took a quick glance over his shoulder, looking for something else he could use.

As soon as he broke eye contact with her, she leaped at him.

Unlike most of the other zombies he had encountered, she was fast. Fast and ferocious. Maybe it was because she wasn't actually dead — or was only just dead, he couldn't help thinking — but she had crossed the room and was at his throat almost before Andy could react. At the last possible instant he threw up his arms and managed to deflect her clawing hands. She went for him again, but this time he managed to grab her wrists, her forward momentum forcing him back against the kitchen units with enough force to rattle the cutlery in the drawers.

'Dawn!' he shouted again, but she just dipped her head and snapped at his face. Her teeth clacked together, mere millimetres from the tip of his nose. He tried to wrestle her off him, to use his superior height and strength to subdue her, but it was as though her muscles were locked, immovable.

Her feral, chalk-white face filled his vision. Clots of her spittle flecked his face and he could smell her hot, sour breath.

Then Andy glimpsed something above her head, something white, bird-like, swooping down on her. He realised it was a towel only when it settled over her head and was pulled tight across her face, yanking her backwards.

Immediately he realised what had happened. Sophie had entered the kitchen behind Dawn and had thrown a towel — maybe the one she had been using to contain her damp hair — over the other girl's head. She was gripping the towel in both fists now, tugging back on it, trying to pull Dawn off balance.

Andy helped her, hooking his foot around Dawn's ankles and whipping her feet from under her. Towel still wrapped around her face, Dawn fell, Sophie jumping back as quickly as her injured leg would allow as the WPC thumped heavily to the tiled floor.

Like a wrestler going for the fall, Andy dropped unceremoniously onto his partner's body, covering her limbs with his own, using his weight to immobilise her. She bucked and thrashed beneath him, but he held on, pressing her to the ground.

Glancing up at Sophie, he shouted, 'Get me two more towels, quick!' Sophie limped away, and returned less than a minute later with a couple of fluffy white towels from the airing cupboard in the bathroom.

'Twist them into ropes!' Andy gasped. 'We need to. . tie her up.'

Sophie did as he asked, and then dropped to Andy's side, wincing at the flare of pain in her knee. Together the two of them wrapped and tied the towels first around Dawn's hands, and then her feet.

By the time they had done, they were both sweating, Sophie's damp blonde hair sticking to her flushed cheeks.

'What do we. . do with her. . now?' she panted, looking down at Dawn's writhing form.

'Suppose we'll have to stick her in the bedroom,' Andy said. 'I'll tie something round the handle to stop her getting out.'

He sat back on his haunches and let out a long, heartfelt breath. Then he looked at Sophie and gave her a shaky smile.

'By the way,' he said, 'those jeans really suit you.'

'The windows are the most vulnerable points,' said Gwen. 'Have you got any wood we can cover them with?'

Rhys and the owner of the house, whose name was Keith Samuels, were struggling out of the front room and into the hallway with a heavy sideboard to shove up against the front door. A constant backdrop of dull, meaty thuds accompanied their attempts to make the building secure, and occasionally a window would rattle, causing Gwen's stomach to flip over. So far, though, the zombies didn't seem to have worked out that the windows were the house's weak points.

'Don't think so,' Keith panted.

'It's only in movies where people have window-sized sheets of wood lying about,' said Rhys. 'But then the things they're trying to keep out always seem to come down the chimney anyway.'

'We haven't got a chimney,' Keith said.

'Well, that's something at any rate,' Rhys replied.

Frustrated, Gwen said, 'Haven't you got anything we can use?'

Keith thought about it. 'There's a chalkboard in the kitchen. And Jaz has got a big cork noticeboard on her wall. She sticks photos and things on it.'

'Well, that's a start,' said Gwen, and called down the hallway. 'Jaz, will you get your noticeboard for me?'

Jasmine, aged eleven, a pretty little slip of a thing, had been helping her mum, Naomi, wedge small but heavy items — the toaster, the microwave — into the barricade of furniture against the back door. She looked at Naomi with wide, scared eyes, as if for approval.

Naomi — short and bespectacled, with black spiky hair — pursed her lips but gave a curt nod, and the little girl scampered upstairs.

'What about the kitchen table?' Gwen said. 'That's nice and big. We could break that up.'

'You're not breaking up my kitchen table,' Naomi bridled, overhearing her. Ever since being roused from her bed she had been acting as if Gwen and Rhys were responsible for the chaos that had befallen her family, as if the two of them had deliberately brought it along in their wake. 'That was a wedding present from Mam and Dad.'

Gwen took a deep breath and counted to five as she walked the short distance along the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house. She entered the room, flashing Naomi one of her warmest smiles.

'Well, it's like this, see,' she said sweetly. 'If we don't barricade the house, those things out there — those dead things — will get in. And if they get in, they'll rip us apart with their bare hands and they'll eat us. But if you think it's worth risking that happening to your daughter for the sake of an old table. .'

She broke off. Tears were sparkling in Naomi's eyes, and suddenly Gwen realised where the woman's hostility was coming from. It was fear. Plain and simple. Naomi Samuels was terrified.

Instinctively Gwen stepped forward and enfolded the other woman in a hug, the way that Rhys did to her when she'd had a bad day.

'Hey, come on,' she said gently. 'Everything'll be all right. But we've got to pull together on this. OK?'

Huddled against Gwen like a child seeking comfort, Naomi nodded.

Sarah Thomas and her baby son were sleeping. Watching them, Jack smiled, but he couldn't help feeling a pang of sadness at the knowledge that, unless his circumstances changed drastically over the next half-century or so, he would outlive this boy. As the years slipped past, he himself would remain unchanged, while this tiny human being, less than an hour old, grew and blossomed, withered and died. Jack had lost so many friends over the years. He had been to so many funerals and cried so many tears that he was now all but cried out. That still didn't stop him feeling each new death as keenly as the last, however. Blowing a kiss to the sleeping mother and child, he turned and slipped silently away.

Upstairs, Ianto was fussing round the 'pod', which had become something of a pet project of his. In light of their recent discovery, he and Jack had earlier spent twenty minutes discussing strategy over mugs of excellent Java Santos, but the only conclusion they had come to was that their new information didn't really add much in a practical sense to what they already knew. OK, so the zombies were not actually the newly risen dead of Cardiff, but how did that usefully change things? It still didn't give them any insight into who or what might be responsible for the 'invasion' — and, more especially, why it was taking place. Was the outbreak a random occurrence, perhaps some freakish quirk of the Rift, or was it part of the sinister agenda of an evil mastermind, or even a race of aliens, who were currently lurking somewhere in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to emerge?

In the end, Jack had called a halt to the discussion, saying that they both needed to go away and indulge in a little private 'thinking time'. Now, however, he was back, having thought himself to a standstill.