Slow Decay

THIRTEEN

Gwen stared at Lucy.

The girl’s eyes were wide, pupils surrounded by whites on all sides. She was licking her lips convulsively.

‘I was looking for you,’ Gwen said cautiously.

‘That’s good,’ Lucy said. ‘I was hoping someone would come. I thought it might be Rhys, but I was hoping it was you.’ She smiled. ‘I’ve already tasted Rhys. He’s kind of spicy. Must be the amount of Indian food he eats. But I haven’t tried you yet. I wonder what you taste of.’

Gwen brought her gun up in both hands, arms bent at the elbow, knees slightly bent as well, ready to absorb the recoil if she had to fire the gun. Classic shooter’s pose, as taught to her not by the Cardiff police force, who had never armed her in eight years of duty, but by Jack, who had within three days.

‘Cordite,’ she said. ‘I taste of cordite. Want to try some?’

‘I’ll skip the starter,’ Lucy said, ‘and go straight for the throat.’

She moved forward, and before Gwen could even think about pulling the trigger Lucy’s left hand was knocking the gun away while her right hand gripped Gwen’s jaw and wrenched it viciously to one side. Gwen’s fingers tightened convulsively; the gun fired into the ceiling with a deafening blast. Plaster and fragments of wood fell around them. Lucy’s forefinger and thumb were pressing deep into her flesh, bruising the bone, while the rest of her fingers were embedded deep in Gwen’s windpipe. Somewhere in there, the carotid artery was faltering and spluttering, and Gwen’s vision grew darker, as if something had parked in front of the window, cutting out the light from the street.

With her last shreds of strength, she brought the gun down on Lucy’s head once, twice, and felt the girl’s grip falter. She brought both arms down to her waist, thrust them up between Lucy’s hands and then used what leverage she had to push Lucy’s arms outwards. The girl’s fingers reluctantly released their grip and Gwen sucked air noisily into her lungs as she backed away.

‘Don’t fight,’ Lucy whispered, crouching. Blood was trickling down her face from the wound on her scalp. ‘Fighting makes the muscles go all tense and bloody, but they taste better when they’re relaxed.’ Her gaze flickered sideways, to the remains of her boyfriend on the bed. ‘He was so blissed out, he didn’t even realise I was eating him. His muscles were like nothing I’ve ever tasted before. And his eyes… so, so sweet.’

‘Lucy, look at me. Look at me. Why are you doing this?’

‘Hungry,’ Lucy wheedled. ‘So hungry, all the time. Stomach feels like there’s something twisting around and around in there, and it’s never satisfied. Never ever satisfied. I have to eat all the time now, just to keep going.’

‘But not me.’

‘You’re the only fresh meat here,’ Lucy said, and launched herself at Gwen. She crashed into Gwen’s chest, carrying her backwards. Gwen’s feet caught in a piece of loose carpet and she toppled, Lucy’s weight carrying her down. The room twisted around her as she fell, then it fragmented into shards of light as the back of her head hit the floor beside the bed. Lucy’s weight fell directly on her stomach, driving the hard-won air from her lungs again. The girl’s knees slid to either side of Gwen’s chest, pinioning her. Hands held her wrists to the floor. The gun skittered away from nerveless fingers.

Pain scoured every nerve in her body, burning as it went. Gwen’s breath hissed in her swollen throat. She wriggled, but Lucy’s legs and hands were holding her body firm. She couldn’t move.

Lucy leaned forward. Her breath smelled rank. Shreds of bloody skin were caught between her teeth. ‘How romantic,’ she hissed. ‘Your flesh and Rhys’s, reunited inside me. The ultimate threesome.’

‘Why Rhys?’ Gwen panted. ‘I thought you fancied him?’

‘I do. But you don’t understand the hunger. Nothing is important compared to the hunger. It has to be satisfied.’

‘Even when it means your boyfriend has to die? Even when it means that Rhys has to die?’

Lucy winced, eyes blinking closed and then looking away. ‘It’s like breathing,’ she whispered. ‘Even if I try to stop, I can’t. I find myself just throwing food into my mouth to keep from screaming. Rice and bread don’t do it. I need fresh meat.’

‘But not mine,’ Gwen shouted, twisting her legs so that one of her feet caught beneath the edge of the bed. She bucked, almost knocking Lucy off her chest. Lucy let go of one of Gwen’s hands, grasping at the bedspread to keep herself from falling back. Gwen flailed around with her hand, looking for her gun but finding only something smooth and covered with fabric. Desperately she brought it up and hit out at Lucy’s face with it, realising only as it passed in front of her eyes that it was a woman’s shoe, black, probably a Manolo Blahnik knock-off, with four-inch heels.

The heel struck Lucy on her left temple, leaving a bloody gash behind it. She shot backwards, screaming, arms windmilling wildly. The back of her head thudded against the edge of the door, which had been left half-open when Lucy had pushed it earlier. It sounded resonant but liquid. Lucy bounced forward again, eyes wider than before but pupils rolled up so far they were staring at the insides of her sockets. Her head left a smear of blood and hair behind on the door. She fell towards Gwen, but Gwen rolled out of the way. Lucy’s face impacted on the carpeted floor, and she didn’t move.

‘You’re shit at this predator lark,’ Gwen said, lying back on the carpet as she tried to get her breath back. ‘You haven’t watched nearly enough David Attenborough.’

Marianne was changing into the clothes that Owen had gone out and bought for her. He’d retreated down to the far end of the cell area near the imprisoned Weevil while Marianne undressed and dressed again, the two of them like men waiting for their wives outside a boutique changing room. He even found himself glancing sideways at the Weevil and raising his eyebrows without realising what he was doing. The Weevil just stared at him from its deep-set, piggish eyes. He couldn’t tell whether it was sympathising with him or planning to rip his arms out of their sockets.

‘I never asked before,’ Owen called, ‘but what do you do?’

‘Eat and sleep and talk to you.’

‘I meant when you’re out in the real world. What kind of job did you do?’

‘I install computer networks for financial companies. It’s all right — I’m dressed now. You can come back.’

Owen walked the few metres down to the brick arch in which the armoured glass of Marianne’s cell was set. She was standing close to the glass, arms folded shyly in front of her. She was wearing a pair of tight brown slacks in a moleskin material, and a T-shirt top. ‘Looks good,’ he said.

‘You have interesting taste. I would never have thought to pair this shirt with these trousers.’

‘They look fine to me.’

Marianne laughed. Holding her arms out, she twirled for him. ‘Actually, it kind of works. Thanks for making the effort. I feel so much better in fresh clothes.’

‘And you look great,’ Owen said, appreciatively.

‘I feel OK as well. Look, I’m not even showing any symptoms!’ Marianne held her arms out for Owen’s inspection. The contrast between the brown, freckled skin on the outside of her forearm and the soft whiteness of the inside made him shiver with its unexpected sexuality. ‘See,’ she continued, ‘no rashes, no spots, no scabs or peeling, and no blisters. And I’m feeling OK. Really, I am.’

‘Problem is,’ he said, gazing at her through the armoured glass of her cell, ‘that we just don’t know how long the symptoms of Tapanuli fever take to emerge. And you may not be symptomatic, but you might be a carrier. We have to wait and find out.’

‘How long?’

He shrugged. ‘A week. I dunno.’

‘A week!’ She was on the verge of despair. ‘I don’t know if I can survive another week in this place. I mean, the company’s great, but…’

Owen wished he could tell her the truth. He thought she deserved the truth. Trouble was, he didn’t know what the truth was. Toshiko was still processing the ultrasound scans of Marianne’s body and, given that the blood tests had shown nothing particularly out of the ordinary, there was no way at the moment of knowing what was wrong with her. As a doctor, he was stumped. Why had she attacked people, tried to eat them, and then tracked the Weevils through the city centre with a view to turning them into a mobile fast-food franchise?

‘You’ll survive,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’

She glanced up at him from beneath long eyelashes. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Your colleagues don’t like me much, I know. You’re the only one who treats me like a person, rather than a lab rat.’

‘I’m sure they’d like you if they got to know you,’ Owen said defensively.

‘The Japanese girl doesn’t want to look at me. She just comes in every now and then, points some gadget at me, makes it go “bleep”, then goes away again. The American guy just stares at me for a while, wearing that big coat of his, then he goes away as well. He seems to spend more time with whoever it is in the cell down the end than he does with me. I can hear them talking — well, I can hear him talking, but I can’t hear what he says. There was another woman who I saw on the night I was brought here, but I haven’t seen her again. And there’s a young bloke. I think he wears a suit. Sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep, and I turn over and open my eyes suddenly, he’s standing there, watching me, but he always moves away quickly, before I can focus on his face.’

‘It’s their job to be dispassionate,’ Owen said, as reassuringly as he could. ‘They’re all working on this Tapanuli fever outbreak. They can’t afford to get emotionally involved with their patients.’

‘And you?’ She looked down at the ground. ‘Is it your job to get emotionally involved?’

‘It’s not my job,’ he said. ‘It’s just an optional extra.’

‘You’re really kind. I wish — I wish I’d met you before all this.’

Owen grimaced. ‘If you’d met me before all this,’ he said, the words spilling out before he had time to think about what he was saying, ‘then you wouldn’t have liked me.’

‘But I do like you.’

‘There’s a barrier between us.’ He slapped his hand against the glass, making a sound that echoed through the brick arches. Somewhere down the end, the Weevil grunted, surprised. ‘I can’t get to you and you can’t get to me. All we can do is talk.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ she said, with feeling.

‘You don’t understand.’ He closed his eyes, rested his forehead against the glass. ‘Look, if we were in a bar then I’d be all over you like a rash.’

‘Don’t mention rashes.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve seen guys like me before. Whatever we say, whatever we do, it’s designed to get you into bed. That’s the way it works with me. The only reason I’m talking to you now is because I can’t get to you.’

‘You’re missing the point. You are talking to me. You could have walked away. Like the others.’

‘I know. But I didn’t want you to be scared of what was happening to you. That’s my medical training coming out.’

‘What changed?’

Owen frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You said the reason you didn’t walk away was that you didn’t want me to be scared, not that you don’t want me to be scared. Past tense, not present. So what’s the reason that keeps you here now?’

‘I like you. I like talking to you.’

‘And if we’d been in a bar, and I’d taken you home, then we wouldn’t have talked and you’d never have got to find out that you like talking to me. What does that tell you?’

He sighed. ‘It tells me that I need a break.’

Gwen lay there for a few moments, listening to Lucy’s breath bubbling through her nose. The girl wasn’t dead, and Gwen wasn’t sure whether that was a result or a shame. Part of her wanted to reach out, retrieve her gun and place a couple of rounds through the back of the bitch’s head, just for the sheer cheek of trying to chat up Gwen’s boyfriend, but that was the adrenalin talking.

Eventually, when she had got her breath back enough to talk, she pulled her mobile out of her pocket. Her finger hesitated over the 9, but reluctantly it moved on to the speed-dial button that got through to Torchwood. In principle, Gwen should notify the police straight away. In practice, what the hell would she tell them? Only four people in Cardiff — probably only four people in the world — could help her now.

Ianto answered the phone.

‘Tell Jack that I’ve got one of these women who attack anything that moves,’ Gwen wheezed. ‘I’m over in Grangetown. Eighty-eight, George Avenue. I need the SUV and restraints.’

‘We’ll be there as soon as we can,’ Ianto said. There seemed to be alarms going off in the background.

‘What’s going on?’ Gwen asked. ‘It’s not fire alarm test day is it?’

‘Some problem in the cells,’ Ianto said. ‘Jack has gone to investigate. I’ll tell him as soon as he gets back.’

Gwen rang off, and pulled herself to a sitting position at the end of the bed. Something intruded in her field of vision; she turned her head to be confronted with a foot belonging to the corpse of Lucy’s boyfriend. Most of the toes were missing: reduced to stumps. She winced. That might have been her.

‘Thank God for high heels,’ she muttered.

She rooted around in her bag until she found two pairs of restraints: braided plastic loops with a ratcheted toggle that could reduce the size of the loops and couldn’t be slid back again. She put one of the restraints on Lucy’s hands, pulled together behind her back, and another pair on her feet. Let her eat her way out of that.

While she waited for the Torchwood team to sort out their emergency and get there, Gwen searched the flat. It seemed to be balanced between chaos and order, with Lucy’s boyfriend presumably leaving mess around him and Lucy trying desperately to clear it up all the time. Part of Gwen’s mind felt sorry for Lucy, trapped in a dead-end relationship in a dead-end area of Cardiff, but the rest of her remembered the way the light had gleamed off Lucy’s incisors as they parted, ready to rip her throat apart.

The cabinets on either side of the bed were obviously his’n’hers. The boyfriend’s one she only gave cursory attention to, but Lucy’s one was more interesting. On top of the various pieces of paper and hairclips in the top drawer was a blister pack, similar to the kind of thing that paracetamol came in but containing only two transparent bubbles. One of the bubbles had a pill in it; the other was empty. Gwen turned the blister pack over. The foil on the other side said nothing about the nature of the drug it contained. Two words were printed on it: the empty bubble was labelled ‘Start’, while the bubble that still contained a pill was labelled ‘Stop’. No ambiguity there, and no need for the kind of triple-folded instruction leaflet that most pharmaceuticals came with these days.

Gwen slipped the pack into her pocket, and kept searching. Underneath where the pills had been was an A5 hardback book covered in a pink material. It said ‘My Diary’ on the front in big, childish letters. Gwen took it out and held it for a moment. Somewhere in those pages were Lucy’s feelings about Rhys. Fantasies, perhaps, of him doing all kinds of things to Lucy that he’d occasionally hinted at doing with Gwen but never followed through on. Gwen’s fingers curled around the edge of the cover. She could read it, while Lucy was still unconscious. There might be clues in there as to what had happened to her. There might be useful information she could take back to Jack.

There might also be descriptions of things that had happened between Lucy and Rhys for real, things that he hadn’t admitted to Gwen.

She threw it back into the drawer. There were some questions it was probably best not to ask, not when things seemed to have improved between them.

Beneath where the diary had been was a flyer advertising a diet clinic: presumably the one that had helped Lucy lose so much weight. Was that what the pills were for? One to start losing weight, the other to stop. Could life really be that simple? No counting of calories, no cutting back on carbohydrates, no tedious exercise? Just two simple pills?

Gwen took another look at the flyer for the diet clinic. It was headed ‘The Scotus Clinic’, and there was a photograph underneath the heading of a thin and youngish man with a short, well-coiffured mass of blondish hair. The blurb underneath was written in short, pithy sentences, asking questions that begged particular answers, like Do you want to lose weight and be the size you deserve to be? and Tired of not getting dates and getting passed over for promotion because of your size?

Looking at the flyer, Gwen began to wonder. Lucy went to a diet clinic, and ended up wanting to eat everything in sight. Had Marianne — the girl they had back at Torchwood — been to the diet clinic too? Was something going on there that needed to be looked at? Jack would probably disagree — if there was no alien context then he was quite prepared to walk away, no matter how many lives had been lost or might still be lost — but Gwen still thought like a policewoman. If the Scotus Clinic was preying on young girls, screwing up their metabolisms with dodgy drugs, then they needed to be called to account. And if Jack wouldn’t get involved then she would do it herself.

The rest of the search turned up nothing of interest. By the end, Gwen was sick and tired of sharing a room with a corpse and a cannibal. Torchwood were taking their own sweet time turning up, so she went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea.

‘Why don’t you like getting close?’ Marianne insisted. ‘Is it because you might get hurt?’

Owen shook his head. He still couldn’t look at her. ‘It’s because it’s never permanent. Everything dies. Everything gets destroyed. Even love. So we just make the best of it — get our pleasure where we can.’

‘And what brought you to that conclusion?’

‘Seven years of hospital, and then this place…’ He paused, remembering his medical training: the gradual knowledge that there was nothing to humanity but flesh, blood, bone and brain, and the soul-destroying realisation of how fragile they all were. How easily broken. And then discovering through Torchwood that even the little comfort he had taken from the warmth of flesh was an illusion, that humanity was a small bubble of sanity floating in an ocean of madness.

‘Poor Owen.’ For a moment he thought she was being sarcastic, but her tone of voice was genuine, concerned. ‘And I thought I was trapped.’

‘That’s enough about me,’ he said. ‘I have my cross to bear. I’m more interested in you at the moment. You’re not showing any obvious symptoms. You’re still lucid, I can see that, but what about how you’re feeling? Any aches and pains? Any unusual tiredness? Mood changes?’

‘No more than usual,’ she said morosely.

‘I can prescribe some stuff that might help. Paracetamol if you’re feeling feverish.’

Marianne shook her head. ‘I hate taking tablets. I’ll just ride it out, I guess.’ She paused, and wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Strange thing is that I’m hungry, all the time. My stomach seems to be churning, although that might just be the stress of being locked up here.’

Owen looked at the pizza boxes and foil containers from the nearby Chinese takeaway that were stacked in the corner of the cell.

‘Seems to me,’ he said carefully, ‘that you’re doing pretty well when it comes to food.’

Marianne followed his gaze to the boxes and containers, and frowned as if she’d never seen them before. ‘I didn’t eat all those, did I?’ she asked. ‘I couldn’t have. Not if I’ve only been here a day.’ She glanced at Owen imploringly. ‘Owen, tell me the truth — how long have I really been here?’

He thought for a moment. ‘Honestly — about thirty-six hours.’

‘That’s what I thought. But I must have eaten ten pizzas and a shed-load of Shanghai noodles in that time. And I keep forgetting how much I’ve eaten, and I keep wanting more.’ She was breathless, almost screaming now. ‘What’s happening to me?’ She turned and threw herself against the far wall, hands pulled close to her chest, forehead pressed against the brick.

‘Calm down,’ Owen said reassuringly. ‘It might be something to do with the Tapanuli fever. Your metabolism might have speeded up, raising your temperature to try and kill the virus off. Speeded-up metabolism means hunger. I’ll check your temperature again. If it’s normal then I could try prescribing some beta-blockers to suppress your appetite.’

‘I get the strangest dreams,’ she said quietly. Her voice was muffled, as though her hands were pressed up against her mouth. ‘I dreamed I was chasing something through the city centre, and if I caught it I was going to eat it. And I dreamed I attacked a man in a bar. I was biting his face, and I couldn’t stop myself. And I think there was a pigeon as well. I tore its head off with my teeth and swallowed it. I pulled its wings off and ate those as well. God, Owen, I can’t stand these dreams. The hunger just rages through me, and I’d do anything to satisfy it. Can you give me something to stop the dreams? Please?’

‘I could try Dosulepin,’ he said, thinking. ‘It’s a tri-cyclic antidepressant, but it also acts as a sedative. It might take a few days to kick in, but it’s worth a go.’

‘Anything,’ she said. He could hardly make out the words: her voice was so muffled. It sounded like she had something in her mouth, although she’d eaten her last lot of pizza an hour ago. ‘I can’t stand it much longer. I hate it here.’

Owen pressed his hands against the armoured glass. ‘Just hold on,’ he said urgently. ‘We’re working to find a cure. Just keep holding on.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ she said, voice almost incomprehensible. ‘The hunger… oh God, Owen, I’m so hungry.’

‘Do you want me to get more food?’ he asked. ‘Pizza suit you? Or do you want to go for an Indian this time?’

Marianne turned around from the far wall. Her hands were held up in front of her face, and for a moment Owen couldn’t work out what was wrong with them. Her fingers were streaked red and white, and they were thinner than they should have been. And the joints were exaggerated, arthritic.

It was the gore and the shreds of flesh that were clotting on her chin that made him realise.

While he was talking to her, while she was talking to him, Marianne had nibbled her fingers down to the bone.

Without thinking, he banged his hand on the control set into the inside of the brick arch. The armoured glass pivoted back into the cell with a grinding sound. Somewhere behind him, alarms went off in the Hub.

‘Marianne, it’s OK. Stay calm. I can help, OK?’

Marianne stared at him, eyes bright and wide with sadness and with agony. Blood dripped from her chin and onto the white T-shirt he’d bought her only hours before.

‘Owen, I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

And launched herself, skeletal hands outstretched, at his throat.

By the time Gwen got back to the flat it was dark, and she was so tired she just wanted to fall into bed and sleep for a week.

Ianto had eventually picked her up in Grangetown. He was alone in the SUV. When Gwen let him into the flat and noticed he was alone, she asked him where everyone else was. ‘I believe Owen was attacked by the young lady we have prisoner,’ he answered. ‘He triggered the alarm, and Jack and Tosh had to subdue her whilst he escaped.’

‘Subdue her?’ Gwen said, thinking back to her epic battle with Lucy, ‘How!’

‘Jack used a fire extinguisher.’

‘OK.’ She nodded. ‘That makes sense. I guess they distracted her with the freezing carbon dioxide.’

‘No, they beat her back with the flat end. Caused quite a mess.’

Gwen winced. ‘Is Owen all right?’

‘He has some bruising.’ Ianto glanced at Gwen’s neck. ‘Looks like you’ve suffered much the same thing.’

‘Different attacker, but same intention, I guess. Talking of which…’

Together they had manoeuvred Lucy’s tightly bound and still unconscious body into the back of the SUV. Ianto offered her a lift back, but she still had the car parked round the corner. Reluctantly she watched him drive off and then took a deep breath before braving the Cardiff traffic.

She hadn’t eaten since before she set out to Grangetown, but the fight with Lucy had made her feel nauseous. The last thing she wanted was food. Now, pushing open the front door, she would quite happily have curled up on the hall carpet and slept if there was even a half-closed door between her and her bed.

‘Oh my God!’ Rhys appeared from the living room. The dressing on his cheek made him look like a lopsided hamster. ‘Gwen — what happened?’

‘What happened where?’ she said muzzily.

‘Your neck!’

‘Oh, that. I got in a fight. With Lucy.’

He reached out to take her in his arms. She fell forwards, letting him take her weight.

‘Are you all right? Did you win?’

‘There’s no video,’ she said, eyes closed, pressed into his chest and smelling the mixture of aftershave and antiperspirant that she knew so well she could tell Rhys apart from a dozen other men in a darkened room. ‘And we weren’t fighting in mud, so you can stop getting excited.’

‘I’m not getting excited,’ he said. ‘I’m just worried about you.’

‘That’s nice. I’m OK. I’ll be even better when I get to bed.’

‘You need to put some antibiotic cream on those scratches. Funnily enough, I actually have some you can use. It’s in the bathroom cabinet.’

‘OK.’

‘You’re not moving.’ His arms went around her. ‘What happened with Lucy?’

‘She’s in custody. In a secure unit.’

‘Will I have to make a statement?’

Gwen shook her head against his chest. ‘I don’t think so. There’s obviously something wrong with her.’ She brought her hands up and pushed herself away from Rhys. ‘Get yourself to bed. I need something warm to cuddle into.’

Rhys headed for the bedroom, pulling his shirt off as he went, and Gwen went into the bathroom. She reached for the door to the bathroom cabinet and pulled it open. Paracetamol, cotton buds, athlete’s foot cream, tampons… where the hell was the antiseptic cream?

OK, there it was, sitting on the bottom shelf.

Right in front of the blister pack that only had two plastic blisters on it, one of which was empty.

And Gwen knew with a sickening lurch in her stomach that if she turned it around, the foil on the back would have two words printed on it.

‘Start’ and ‘Stop’.