Bay of the Dead

'Any ideas?' he asked, his voice ringing around the Hub.

Ianto, who had changed into a blue suit, pink shirt and blue flowery tie, straightened from his examination of the pod and shook his head. 'Not a sausage. You?'

'Nada,' Jack admitted. 'What say we just go tearing round the streets, kicking asses and looking for clues?'

'I don't think that's-' Ianto began, and then he looked up, to a point above Jack's head. 'Oh.'

Jack turned, following his gaze. A man was standing on the walkway of the level above them, looking down, swaying slightly from side to side. It was Trys Thomas, and he looked ghastly. His face was fish-belly white, his eyes flecks of grey flint in sunken hollows. He wore a slack expression, as if he was drugged or sleepwalking.

'Hey there!' Jack said, raising a hand. 'How you doin'?'

Trys did not reply. Instead his head swung drunkenly from side to side, as if he was looking for an access point to the floor below. Sure enough, he shuffled to the metal steps like an old man and began to clang down them. Jack moved forward to greet him, but Ianto said, 'Careful, Jack.'

'I'm always careful,' Jack said out of the corner of his mouth. 'Just be ready with the handcuffs.'

'If I had a penny for every time you've used that line,' Ianto deadpanned.

Jack shot him a look, then strolled across to the bottom of the metal stairs, like a one-man welcoming committee for a visiting dignitary.

'Good to see you up and about, Trys,' he said. 'It is Trys, isn't it? Guess you're wondering where the hell you are, huh?'

The blankness of Trys's eyes, and the way he moved his head, made Jack think of a blind man fixing someone's position by the sound of their voice.

'Sure you are,' Jack continued breezily, studying Trys's face for any kind of reaction, any flicker of humanity. 'Well, this is the Hub, I'm Captain Jack Harkness and that there is Ianto Jones. And guess what? Your wife Sarah's downstairs, safe and well. Remember Sarah? Remember how she was all big and fat the last time you saw her? Well, I bet you're just dying to know what's been happening while you've been asleep, huh? Want me to tell you?'

Trys was only a few steps from the bottom of the stairs now. His dead eyes were still fixed on Jack, but it was clear that he had no interest in, or understanding of, Jack's words.

All at once he raised his hands and lunged forward. Ianto shouted a warning, but Jack was ready.

'Oh no, you don't!' he cried, grabbing Trys's hands and stepping back. 'You don't catch me out a second time.'

He continued to move backwards at speed, like a ballroom dancer, swinging his partner after him. Trys was shorter than Jack, and his feet barely touched the floor, the toes of his shoes scuffing the metal. Restrained by Jack's grip, he tried to crane his neck forward, to snap at Jack's face, but Jack evaded him easily.

'Never on a first date,' he said with a good-natured grin, and swept Trys around and across the floor, bypassing the workstations and the zombie he had nicknamed Mildred, which was still strapped in the interrogation chair. Mildred watched them pass with the flat eyes of a snake alert for prey. Jack winked at her and swept Trys across to where Ianto was now waiting, beside a rusty but torso-thick support stanchion, handcuffs at the ready.

The two of them were used to subduing strong and vicious Weevils, and it took them no more than a few seconds to drag Trys's arms behind his back and cuff him to the stanchion. When he was secure, Jack and Ianto stepped away, out of range of his snapping teeth. Trys kept trying to walk towards them, and couldn't seem to work out why he was unable to do so. His constant, frustrated efforts were rather pathetic to see.

'What are we going to tell Sarah?' Ianto said sadly.

Jack looked grim. 'Maybe we won't have to tell her anything.'

Ianto frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'Hey, don't look at me like that! What do you take me for? What I mean is that Trys and Mildred are different. She's not a real zombie, so maybe he's not one too.'

'His condition could be psychosomatic, you mean?'

Jack shrugged. 'Let's find out, shall we?'

It was decided, for the sake of convenience, to cuff Mildred to a stanchion on the far side of the Hub for now, and to transfer Trys to the interrogation chair in order to run some tests on him. Jack managed to seal Mildred's mouth with a strip of duct tape without getting his fingers bitten off, and Ianto slipped a choke-loop attached to a metre-long metal pole over her head. Jack then undid the leather straps securing her to the chair and Ianto directed her across the metal floor of the Hub to another support stanchion on the far side of the vast room.

The sound began as a gentle, almost musical warbling. Jack, who was walking beside Ianto with a second set of handcuffs, came to a halt, a puzzled expression on his face.

'You hear that?'

Ianto nodded. 'What is it?'

'I don't know. It's kinda hard to pin down.'

'It seems to be coming from. . everywhere,' Ianto said, looking around. 'It sounds like a song.'

Jack frowned. 'Let's worry about one thing at a time. Her first;

then

we'll work out where the music's coming from.'

They started walking again, Ianto using the metal pole to urge the zombie onwards. The warbling sound grew louder. Jack and Ianto looked at each other. Another few steps, and it was becoming less like a song and more like the howling shriek of an alarm.

They halted again, almost in unison. The sound was unearthly, alien. It filled the Hub with echoes, which resounded and clashed, feeding off one another.

Jack looked up into the vast vault of shadows above him, where the pteranodon could sometimes be seen, swooping and circling.

'What the hell is that?' he demanded, hands over his ears.

Ianto cast about, looking for an answer. His gaze fell on a nearby workbench.

'Look,' he breathed.

Jack looked. 'My God.'

The partially reconstituted pod was going crazy. Coloured lights were flickering across its surface in rapid, but seemingly haphazard patterns. From deep within it emanated a kind of glow, a pulse, like something alive. Now that Ianto had identified it, it was clear that this was the source of the peculiar alien ululation, the heart-rending sound that was somewhere between symphony, siren and scream.

Ianto looked at Mildred and saw the flickering lights of the pod reflected in her dull, silvery eyes.

'It's her,' he said. 'Jack, it's reacting to her.'

Jack nodded. It was true. Unless it was an almighty coincidence, the pod was responding to the proximity of the false zombie, the ersatz meat.

'Now we're getting somewhere,' he muttered.

TWELVE

The ceaseless thumping was setting them all on edge. It was a constant barrage on every wall, door and boarded-up window, a mindless tattoo of heavy-handed thuds, underpinned with the wordless, idiot groaning of the undead.

Naomi was twitchy, clearly close to the end of her tether. All five of them were sitting in the front room, Gwen, Rhys and Keith gamely trying to make conversation, when she suddenly slammed down her coffee mug and shrieked, 'Why don't they just

stop?

' Jasmine, clutching a yellow rabbit and seeming much younger than her eleven years, abruptly burst into tears.

Gwen and Rhys looked meaningfully at each other, knowing how much more volatile an already terrifying