Slow Decay

NINETEEN

Jack let the Webley fall from his hand onto the tiled floor.

‘OK, big boy,’ he said to the goon who was holding Gwen’s neck, ‘you can let go now.’

The goon twisted Gwen’s head around a little further. Jack could see her tendons standing out. Her cheeks and forehead were suffused with blood and her eyes were almost popping out of their sockets. One more turn and her neck would break.

‘If anything happens to my friend,’ he said calmly, ‘I will take my pistol and shove it so far up your ass that you’ll gag on it. And then I’ll reach down your throat and pull the trigger.’

The goon kept smiling at Jack, and shook his head in mock-chastisement, but he relaxed his grip a fraction. Gwen sucked in great whooping gulps of air, her face gradually returning to its normal colour. She was still holding the bird-cage in her hand, and she shakily set it on the floor without disturbing the shroud.

‘Not sure where this guy fits into the scheme of things,’ Jack said, turning to Doctor Scotus. ‘Are you branching out into fitness? Hiring personal trainers?’ He eyed the goon up and down. The man obviously lifted weights every day. No need for diet pills there. ‘Cos I could do with a workout, if you know what I mean.’

‘I’ve… made a deal with some of the Cardiff criminal fraternity,’ Scotus said. ‘They protect me, and carry out some small tasks, and in return I give them a cut of the profits.’

‘Small tasks like kidnapping your customers off the street because you can’t afford to have them running around going psychotic?’ Jack gazed at the goon, who was getting edgy at the attention he was getting. ‘I wouldn’t start counting on those profits if I were you,’ he said. ‘The bottom’s dropped out of the diet-pill market, what with all the problems with murder and cannibalism and stuff.’

‘Issues, just issues,’ Scotus said, rubbing his hand across his eyes. ‘The creatures are growing too fast, requiring too much nutrition. I’ve developed a hormone that will delay their growth, slow it down. It will require my patients to take another tablet every day, of course, but I will tell them that it’s just a part of the treatment. One tablet to start the treatment, a tablet every day to keep it going, and a tablet to stop. It’s simple, and effective.’

‘How long did it take to develop this hormone?’ Jack asked. ‘And how many people died along the way? Was your receptionist one of them?’

Scotus grimaced. ‘Poor girl,’ he said. ‘She missed taking a tablet. Just forgot. The creature inside her reacted… badly. It escaped, and hid somewhere in the air-conditioning system, or under the floor. I had to move out of the office suite in a hurry, before it attacked anyone else.’ He shook his head. ‘It should be a fairly simple process to adjust the dosage to ensure that my customers can miss one or two tablets in a row without the creature becoming agitated.’

‘But you need the eggs,’ Gwen rasped, rubbing her throat. ‘You need lots of eggs if you’re going to develop an efficient business model.’ She spotted Jack’s sceptical glance, and shrugged. ‘Rhys bought a book called Fifteen Ways to be an Effective Manager,’ she said. ‘I had a flick through, one night, when I was bored.’ Turning back to Scotus, she said, ‘So where do all these eggs come from? As I understand it, a host needs to be implanted by one of those flying things, and I doubt you got more than a few dozen eggs from that dog of yours. You’re going to need thousands, even tens of thousands, if this thing takes off. What’s the secret? Where are the eggs going to come from?’

Scotus looked away, discomfited. ‘There are… possibilities,’ he said. ‘I have identified a new source of supply.’

‘No.’ Jack felt a rage building within him, burning through his heart and brain. ‘This stops, here, now.’

Scotus shook his head. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘The potential impact of my diet pills is immense. They could literally change the world. They are the only diet pills guaranteed to make you lose weight. Not “help”. Not “assist”. Not “only in conjunction with a calorie-controlled diet”. No, if people stick to the regime, then the pills actually make them lose weight. Overnight, there’s no more obesity epidemic in the western world. The National Health Service can turn its resources away from treating heart disease and diabetes, and all the other things that obesity causes, and start working on the things that matter, like curing cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The government can redirect its resources to fighting global warming. Just one simple thing, like making people slim, and the effects are incredible. Is it so much to ask that a few people sacrifice their lives in the early stages of testing?’

‘Yes,’ Jack said. He could feel the rage darkening his voice. ‘It is.’

Scotus was almost pleading now. ‘But there are always risks in drug tests. Do you think that antibiotics came for free? Do you think that drugs for controlling blood pressure didn’t cause any problems during testing? Even when new drugs go into a few years of double-blind tests to check their efficacy, the people given the placebos have to suffer a continuation of their symptoms when the other people on the trial are being given a cure. Is that fair? All medical research is built on pain and death. We accept it, when we think about it at all, because the potential benefits are so great!’

‘There is a difference,’ Jack said, ‘between research that may have an unfortunate side effect and research that’s guaranteed to kill your test subjects.’

‘It’s no good,’ Gwen said. She was staring at Scotus. ‘You won’t convince him. He will keep on going, producing his pills, whatever arguments you make.’

‘She recognises the truth in what I’m saying,’ Scotus proclaimed. ‘She recognises the passion behind my words.’

‘No,’ Gwen said. ‘I recognise the fact that you’ve been infected yourself. There’s one of these creatures inside you, and it’s controlling your thoughts.’

Halfway along the corridor, past the door they had come in by, Toshiko stopped by the first of the massive riveted metal slabs.

‘What’s this?’ she asked Owen.

He rushed past her. ‘Cold store,’ he said. ‘It’s where they would have kept the frozen carcasses they offloaded from the ships, before canning them and taking them away to the shops. Transport area’s back that way,’ he gestured over his shoulder, ‘so the canning area is probably up ahead.’

‘The power is on,’ Toshiko said simply.

Owen stopped. ‘It can’t be. This place has been deserted since the 1970s.’

‘There’s a generator,’ Toshiko pointed out.

‘But that was set up to keep the medical monitoring equipment running, and provide lighting.’ Owen was getting irritated; Toshiko could tell from his tone of voice. He didn’t like people disagreeing with him. ‘There’s no point cooling the cold store down to some ludicrous temperature. That’s just a waste of energy,’

‘It would be,’ Toshiko said, ‘if there wasn’t anything in here.’ She pressed her face against the thick glass. ‘But I think there is.’

She turned her attention to the control box by the side of the door. It had a thermostat on it, plus a couple of buttons that turned the cooling on or off. The thermostat was set at just above freezing. There was also a button that opened the door, although there was a massive handle on the door itself which would do the same in case of power failure. She guessed there was a similar handle on the inside just in case anyone became trapped.

Owen moved alongside her. She edged to one side, careful not to brush against his arm. She had poured antiseptic over it, back in the large area where they had fought and vanquished their opponents, and then placed dressings over the area where the nails had ripped his skin and bound the whole thing up with bandages. He had then done the same with the back of her hand. Owen had left their opponents tied to two empty beds at the end of one of the rows. He had wanted to use the nail-studded chain to tie them down with, but Toshiko had vetoed the idea.

‘Let’s take a look inside,’ she said. She pressed the button on the box that she thought would operate the mechanism. Somewhere inside the door, something went clunk. A hydraulic system wheezed into life, pulling the door slowly open. Toshiko and Owen both stepped backwards as the door swung ponderously towards them and a cloud of freezing vapour puffed into their faces.

As the vapour cleared, Toshiko stepped forward. She had retrieved her Walther from the floor of the medical area, and now she held it in front of her in both hands, ready to fire.

‘Oh hell,’ Owen said. His breath turned to white vapour as it left his mouth, condensed into water droplets by the cold that rolled towards them from the opening door. ‘Are those what I think they are?’

‘They look like…’ Toshiko started, and then trailed off as her thoughts caught up with her words. ‘Oh fuck,’ she said primly.

The cold store was about the size of the Boardroom back in the Hub, but twice as tall. It was empty of carcasses, shelves or anything else apart from meathooks hanging from the ceiling and what looked at first glance like a series of sticks that had been thrown onto the floor and frozen to the walls and ceiling. At second glance, they weren’t sticks. Sticks didn’t have wings that had frozen into solid boards, but which were still beating slowly.

‘That’s where the things from those patients’ stomachs went,’ Owen breathed. ‘Scotus must have removed them surgically, and then put them in some kind of nutrient solution until they turned into these flying egg-laying things. God alone knows why he wanted to. I mean, if he’s that much of a psycho, he could just have killed the patients and let the worms feed off the nutrients in the dead bodies. They would have turned into the flying things naturally. I wonder why he went to all the trouble of taking them all out by hand?’

‘Maybe he wanted the patients for something else,’ Toshiko said. She turned to look at Owen. He looked back at her. Neither of them wanted to guess what Scotus wanted the patients alive for, but they just couldn’t help themselves.

‘If we assume he wants to make lots more eggs,’ Owen started. ‘I mean, a regular production line of eggs, then the best thing he could do would be-’

‘To turn the eggs he already had into worms,’ Toshiko continued, ‘then turn the worms into flying egg-layers and let them find secondary hosts, then each flying egg-layer would lay hundreds of new eggs.’

Owen’s face was bleak. ‘And as long as Scotus keeps some back, he can have a continuous production line! Oh, that’s just too sick to bear thinking about.’

A handful of the flying creatures were moving sluggishly towards the door, attracted perhaps by Toshiko and Owen’s body heat. They were using their wings to push themselves along the icy floor.

Toshiko pressed the button that closed the door. Cumbersome, unwieldy, it started to move.

And caught the first of the creatures as it pushed itself over the lip of the doorway, crushing it. The creature’s shell cracked, leaking yellow ichor, and the door started to open again.

‘Safety cut-out!’ Toshiko cried. ‘It thinks someone’s trapped their foot!’ She hit the button again, but the door kept swinging outwards. More of the creatures teetered on the lip of the door, then fell out. As the warm outside air hit them, their wings lost their rigidity, becoming flexible and diaphanous again. Toshiko could hear the wings buzzing as they beat faster and faster. Their little red eyes, so like jewels, seemed to glow in the light from the corridor as they tracked Owen and Toshiko’s movements.

One of them started to rise shakily into the air.

Jack gazed levelly at Doctor Scotus.

‘How can you tell he’s a host?’ he asked Gwen.

‘Look at his hair,’ she replied.

‘Yeah, OK, I grant that he’s got that whole “mad scientist with wild crazy hair” aesthetic going, but I see that a lot. It’s not proof.’

‘His hair is waving in the breeze, isn’t it?’

Jack looked at Scotus, who was staring at Gwen in disbelief. ‘Yeah, so?’

‘So there isn’t any breeze.’

Jack looked back at Scotus. Thin blond strands haloed the man’s head, but Gwen was right. Now that he was concentrating, he could see that the strands weren’t only waving in the absence of any breeze; they weren’t even moving in the same direction as each other.

‘What the hell…?’ he muttered.

‘Remember the worm thing that attacked us in Scotus’s office?’ Gwen moved to one side; the goon who had been standing behind her, guarding her, moved too, but so did some of the tendrils on Scotus’s head, shifting to track her motion. ‘That thing had a whole bunch of thin white tendrils at both ends of its body, didn’t it?’

‘I had other things to worry about at the time, like stopping it from throttling you, but let’s say I do remember that.’

‘Imagine those tendrils much longer. Six feet, maybe. Imagine them finding their way up his throat, out into the air. Imagine them finding their way in between the cells of his body, infiltrating themselves past arteries and veins, through muscles and into his brain, and then out through his scalp. Imagine-’

‘Thanks. I get the picture.’ A thought struck Jack. ‘Hang on — that worm thing had tendrils at both ends.’

They both glanced down to Scotus’s groin. Was it Jack’s imagination, or was there something stirring down there as well?

Jack looked up at Scotus’s face. ‘What happened?’ he asked simply.

‘I tried one of the pills,’ he said. ‘I had to. Who would buy diet pills from a fat nutritionist? I got the same cravings as the others, the same desire to eat anything, no matter what it was. I suppressed it, with powdered protein supplements at first, then using drugs. Eventually, I discovered that by taking sedatives I could cause the creature’s appetite to reduce. Its weight is stable now, but the tendrils you mention — the way it perceives the world — continued to grow. They permeate me. They have infiltrated me.’

‘Then why not take the second pill?’ Gwen asked. ‘Why not flush the thing from your system?’

‘Because the tendrils are too entwined with my brain and my nervous system,’ Scotus said simply. ‘Killing the creature would most likely kill me. That’s one reason. The other is simpler. It won’t let me.’

‘It won’t let you?’ Jack stepped forward.

The goon behind Gwen tracked Jack with her gun, but let him go. The man was too engrossed in what was going on. It was obvious from the expression on his face that he thought he’d fallen into a pit of madmen. ‘You mean, it’s controlling you?’

‘Nothing that obvious. It’s not intelligent; not as we measure intelligence, anyway. But it does have instincts, which it communicates to me. The instinct to survive is very strong.’

‘I think I’ve heard enough,’ Jack said. ‘Have you heard enough?’

‘More than enough.’

Jack reached into a pocket of his greatcoat. His hand closed around the alien device that they had found at that Cardiff nightclub what seemed like years ago now. Toshiko had already set it up so that it would pick up local emotional reactions and amplify them further away. All he had to do was to press a couple of buttons to activate it. His fingers found them quickly.

He nodded to Gwen. She bent and quickly pulled the shroud off the bird-cage before the goon could stop her.

The winged alien creature in the cage shifted, confused by the sudden flood of infra-red signals.

‘Jesus!’ the goon said, and stepped backwards, raising the gun and aiming it at the cage.

One of the other alien devices that Toshiko had determined was part of a matching set was wired to the cage, shoved in through the little flap through which the creature had originally been shoved. It transmitted electrical charges along a plasma path generated by a low-power laser beam. It was aimed directly at the creature, which didn’t have any room to squeeze out of the way.

Before the goon could stop her, Gwen pressed the button that activated it.

A lambent orange glow filled the cage, and the creature suddenly bucked as a charge of electricity went through its body for the second time that day.

The pain it felt was picked up by the original alien device and amplified all around. Scotus doubled over in agony, throwing up on his desk; Gwen collapsed, eyes rolling up in her head; and the goon just keeled over. Gwen’s gun fell from his fingers.

Jack fought against it. Pain and he were old friends. He could keep going through agony that would fry the nerves of any other human.

While the effect lasted, Jack walked slowly through the pain like a man walking underwater, collecting all the weapons and dumping the goon’s body next to that of Doctor Scotus, fastening both of them to the canning machinery with some flexible metal restraints that he’d brought with him from the Hub. Then he turned both alien devices off.

Gwen recovered first. He’d expected that. She had more force of will than almost anyone he’d ever known.

Owen pulled Toshiko to her feet.

‘What was that?’ she asked.

‘That was Jack’s plan working,’ Owen said grimly.

‘It was as if someone was drilling out all my teeth at the same time.’

‘Let’s hope it bought Jack the time he wanted.’ Owen looked around at the winged creatures that had spilled out of the cold store. The pain felt by their brother had obviously hit them hard, but they were beginning to recover. ‘Quick, let’s get out of here.’

He half-dragged Toshiko through the door and into the room beyond, pulling the door shut behind him. He didn’t have much time to take in the sight of all the canning machinery, and the two men fastened to it. Jack was standing in the centre of the room, propping Gwen up. He smiled at Owen and Toshiko as they arrived.

‘Are we having fun yet?’ he asked.

‘There’s something you should know-’ Owen started.

‘There’s many things I should know, including how to mix the perfect hyper-vodka and how to recover from its effects. What’s this one?’

‘There’s about thirty of those winged things loose outside, and a hospital ward with about the same number of sedated patients,’ Owen said rapidly. ‘The winged things are going to head right for them, plunge themselves right in and lay their eggs. The eggs we can deal with — I recommend a flamethrower and then some acid on the ashes — but that leaves us with thirty-odd dead people, and I’m not comfortable with that.’

Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?’

‘I reckon we have about three minutes before it’s too late.’

Jack’s gaze flicked left and right as he considered his options. ‘Bullet’s will take out those flying things, won’t they?’

‘Yeah, but there’s a swarm of them. You’d never get them all before they get you. Remember, they’re attracted by body heat.’

‘Yeah, I remember.’ A grin burst across Jack’s face. ‘Did I see a fire extinguisher out in the corridor?’

Owen shrugged.

‘Yes, you did,’ Toshiko answered.

‘Carbon dioxide or foam?’

Toshiko thought for a moment. ‘Judging by the colour coding, carbon dioxide.’

‘Perfect. Can someone get it for me without getting hit by one of those things?’

Gwen, Owen and Toshiko exchanged dubious glances. Eventually, Toshiko opened the door, Gwen grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and Owen held his automatic at the ready in case any of the creatures flew at them.

He needn’t have worried. They were all crawling or flying unsteadily along the corridor, gaining strength by the moment, towards the medical unit. Towards their new hosts.

Jack had taken his coat and shirt off, and was standing bare-chested, arms extended. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Do it.’

‘But-’

‘Do it.’

Owen raised the fire extinguisher. He looked uncertainly at Gwen and then at Toshiko. They just stared back.

He pulled the safety pin out and pressed the handle firmly down.

Carbon dioxide gushed from the fire extinguisher’s nozzle, enveloping Jack in a pall of white fog. The gas, expanding as it emerged from its pressurised state, sucked heat from the air. Jack’s hands were just visible, emerging from the cloud, white with frost, the fingertips glistening. He was turning slowly, letting the vapour hit him from all sides.

Owen released the handle and let the fire extinguisher drop.

Jack stood there like a marble statue, every muscle on his stomach and his arms standing proud and firm.

He opened his eyes and winked at Owen. Then he scooped up the guns — his and Gwen’s — from the table. Gwen held out a spare magazine she had taken from her pocket. Jack took it, then walked stiffly out of the room and down the corridor.

There was silence for a few moments, then Owen heard the sound of gunfire — six rapid shots from Jack’s Webley, then a series of deeper roars from Gwen’s Glock. Owen imagined the creatures whirring around the cavernous room with the hospital beds in the centre, and Jack, standing there, picking them off like a man firing at clay pigeons. The firing started up again, higher and flatter than the Glock. He must have reloaded his Webley. Another pause, and then the firing started again, deeper this time: the Glock again.

Owen had lost count of the number of shots he’d heard, when suddenly everything went silent. Had Jack killed all the creatures, or had one of them plunged itself into his chest, filling him full of eggs? Still, no sound. No footsteps. Nothing.

Fingers appeared around the edge of the doorway. White, cold fingers.

Jack walked slowly back into the room.

‘That was fun,’ he said. ‘Forget about diet pills: I think we’ve just discovered the logical successor to paintballing.’