'I've got a wife and daughter,' said the man. 'They're asleep upstairs. I'm not leaving them.'
Gwen swore. The zombies were moving slowly, and it was a wide road, but there would be nowhere near enough time for the man to wake his family and bring them out to the car before the creatures were upon them. Maybe she and Rhys could take them all out, she thought; there were only eight of them, after all.
At that moment at least a dozen more zombies appeared from between two houses on her left and started moving in their direction.
'What's this?' Rhys shouted, head swivelling from one group of zombies to the other. 'Zombie tactics? They've got us in a pincer movement!'
Gwen took another shot at the zombies, hitting one of them in the shoulder, but it was no more than a token gesture. She knew that, no matter how slow the undead were, there was no way she and Rhys would be able to put them all down before they overwhelmed them with sheer numbers. If she and Rhys had been on their own, she would have suggested beating a hasty retreat, but she couldn't face the thought of leaving a young family to the mercy of the creatures, not after what had happened at the café.
And so she did the only thing she could — she grabbed Rhys and propelled him towards the house.
'Inside!' she shouted. 'We'll fight them from there.'
'Not sure that's a good idea,' he panted, running along beside her. 'Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?'
She scowled. 'Have you got any better ideas?'
ELEVEN
'Now, now, Mildred,' Jack said as the zombie snapped at him, missing his fingers by inches, 'don't be rude.'
Ianto, who was standing behind the chair into which the creature had been secured, raised an eyebrow. 'Mildred?'
Jack removed the last of the sensor pads attached to the zombie's forehead, and straightened up. 'Don't you think she looks like a Mildred?'
Deadpan, Ianto said, 'I'd say she's more of a Kylie.'
'In those shoes? No way!'
The girl might have been small, but she'd been as lively as a Weevil when they had hauled her up from the cells. Between them, Jack and Ianto had eventually managed to strap her into what Jack — and therefore the rest of them — always referred to as the 'interrogation chair'. It had been part of the fixtures and fittings at Torchwood since Emily Holroyd's era in the 1890s, though the thick leather wrist, ankle and neck restraints had been replaced several times in the intervening years.
Jack and Ianto had attached sensor pads to the girl's head to monitor brain activity — if any — and had taken samples of her blood, skin and hair. Finally they had subjected her to a comprehensive body scan, using the Bekaran deep-tissue scanner, a natty little hand-held X-ray device which Owen had been particularly fond of.
Now the results were scrolling across various computer screens arrayed around the girl's snarling, tethered form — and they were making mighty interesting reading.
Jack raised his eyebrows as he scanned the latest findings.
'Well, that decides it,' he said.
'She isn't human?'
'She never was. In fact, she was never anything. She's a construct. She's made of some kind of alien substance which our equipment can't identify. She's ersatz meat.'
'Like Quorn, you mean?' said Ianto.
Jack laughed. 'Zombie flesh as a vegetarian option. Now there's a novel idea.'
Ianto frowned. 'So basically what you're saying is, she's a special effect?'
'But one with substance,' said Jack. 'One that can maim and kill.'
Ianto and Jack looked down thoughtfully at the gnashing, snarling creature in its blood-spattered Girls Aloud T-shirt, straining against its bonds in front of them.
'But where do these things come from?' asked Ianto. 'Who's creating them?'
'That,' said Jack, 'is the question.'
'That's the best I can do,' Andy said, 'though ideally she probably needs a few stitches. Course of antibiotics too, I shouldn't wonder.'
He straightened up, looking down at Dawn, who was lying unconscious on the settee. He had cleaned, disinfected and bandaged her hand, and now all he could do was hope that the infection raging through her system didn't get any worse.
Given tonight's track record, he had half-expected his street to be crawling with zombies when he had turned into it fifteen minutes earlier. But in fact Canton as a whole had been relatively quiet, compared to other parts of the city. The closest zombie to Andy's flat had been an all-but-skeletal old woman with wispy white hair, who had been dragging herself along the pavement on her stomach three streets away.
Even so, Andy had been nervous as he had fumbled for his keys on the drizzle-slick pavement once he and Sophie had carried Dawn the few metres from the car to the mostly lightless apartment block. Even after they had made it inside and shut the door behind them, he had been wary, half-expecting zombies to lurch out at them from every turn of the stairs.
Now, though, finally, he felt able to relax, at least a little. Of course, he was still anxious about Dawn — she looked like death warmed up — but at least, for the time being, they were safe from the marauding undead.
Despite her swollen knee and lacerated feet, Sophie had been a trooper, helping Andy as much as she could, but now she sank into the armchair next to the settee with a groan.
Andy looked at her, and immediately felt guilty for not noticing before how pasty her mascara-streaked face had become. 'You look as though you could do with a cup of tea and some painkillers,' he said.
The trace of a smile flickered on her face. 'I'd rather have a Harvey Wallbanger. But I suppose I'd better keep my wits about me. Just in case. .'
Her words hung in the air between them. Andy knew exactly what she was thinking, for the simple reason that he was thinking precisely the same thing. He knew that neither of them wanted to voice the possibility that there might yet be further horrors in store, and that secretly they were both wondering how and when this terrible nightmare would end.
He wondered whether he ought to say something optimistic, reassuring, but nothing that came to mind struck him as anything but hollow. In the end he simply muttered, 'I'll stick the kettle on,' and sloped out of the room, feeling that somehow he had let the side down.
He was using a spoon to alternately prod the teabags in two mugs, watching the boiling water darken to the colour of chestnuts, when Sophie appeared in the kitchen behind him.
'Don't s'pose there's any chance of a hot bath?' she asked.
'Sure, help yourself,' said Andy. 'First door on the left. You'll find clean towels in the airing cupboard. Oh, and you might as well take these with you as you go.' He handed her a pack of Ibuprofen and hastily scooped the tea bag out of her mug before splashing milk into it. 'Sugar?'
'I'm sweet enough, thanks,' she said with weary humour, and limped out of the room.
Andy heard her enter the bathroom and close the door. A moment later came the soft, somehow comforting spatter of water on plastic. He took a long sip of his tea and closed his eyes, relishing the momentary stillness. He felt utterly exhausted, and yet at the same time he couldn't imagine sleeping ever again — not while zombies were still roaming the streets of Cardiff, at any rate.
When he'd finished his tea, he plodded through to the hallway and tapped on the bathroom door. 'Would you like me to find you some clean clothes to change into?' he asked.
He heard the gentle lap of water. 'Don't suppose you've got a nice cocktail dress I can wear?' she replied.
Andy surprised himself by laughing. 'Mine's in the wash, sorry. T-shirt and jeans do you?'
'Guess it'll have to,' she replied. He could tell from her voice that she was smiling.
He selected a red T-shirt and his tightest black jeans from the drawers in his bedroom, and knocked on the bathroom door again. 'I'll leave the clothes outside,' he told her. 'You might have to roll the jeans up a bit.'