Bay of the Dead

'But what if something happens while you're away?'

'It won't,' he said firmly. He produced a mobile from his pocket and handed it to her. 'My number's on there. Call me if you have any problems. Not that you will.'

She took the phone, but still looked worried. 'I'm really not happy about this.'

'You'll be perfectly safe,' Ianto assured her. 'Nothing can get in here. It's the most secure place in Cardiff.'

Gwen put her phone back in her pocket.

'What did Jack say?' Rhys asked.

'He said he and Ianto have got a lead on what's happening. They're on their way to St Helen's Hospital.'

'Why? What's at St Helen's Hospital?'

Gwen glanced at the Samuelses. It was clear she didn't want to discuss the situation in front of them — or, more particularly, in front of Naomi Samuels, who was not the most open-minded of people.

'Long story,' she said. 'I said we'd meet them there if we could.'

Rhys raised his eyebrows. 'How we gonna do that, love? We're stuck here for the time being.'

'Who are these people you're talking about?' Keith asked.

'Colleagues of mine,' said Gwen.

'Fellow spooks, you mean?'

'We're not spooks. But. . yeah, that kind of thing.'

She lapsed into silence, thinking. From below came the sound of dozens of zombies, blundering and shuffling about.

'Not very bright, are they?' Rhys said. 'They can't even work out how to get up here.'

'That's why we're going to win,' said Gwen, reloading her gun.

'Win?' Naomi said sourly. 'And how are we going to do that then?'

In the dusty gloom of the attic, Naomi's face was a pallid mask of pinched, nervy anger. Gwen bit back on her impulse to snap the woman's head off, telling herself yet again that Naomi was just scared — and with good reason.

'We'll find a way,' she said.

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' Naomi demanded. 'It doesn't mean anything.'

'Calm down, love,' Keith said placatingly. 'This isn't Gwen's fault.'

'She brought those things here, didn't she? Her and her boyfriend.'

'I'm her husband, actually,' said Rhys. He had wandered over to the grimy skylight in the roof, and was fiddling with his mobile.

'And we didn't bring them here,' Gwen said, trying not to get angry. 'Cardiff's overrun with them. It's chaos out there.'

'But they wouldn't have bothered us if you hadn't turned up,' Naomi retorted.

'We don't know that, love,' said Keith.

Gwen flashed Jasmine a reassuring smile. The little girl was clutching her yellow rabbit and eyeing the bickering adults with trepidation.

'Keith's right,' said Rhys. 'If those things had got in while you were asleep you'd have been torn apart in your beds.'

He noticed Gwen glance meaningfully at Jasmine and give a quick shake of the head. He shrugged.

'Sorry, Gwen, but it's true. You're a lot safer up here. Come on.'

This last remark was directed at his phone, which he was now holding above his head, as though making an offering to the moon.

'What are you doing, Rhys?' said Gwen irritably.

'I'm trying to get a decent signal on this bloody thing.'

'Why?'

'Why do you think? I want to make a call.'

Frustrated, he lifted the security bar on the window and shoved it open, then thrust the hand that was holding the mobile out into the drizzly night.

'Bingo!' he exclaimed.

'Who are you wanting to call anyway?' said Gwen. 'Rentokil?'

He gave her the look a teacher might give a facetious pupil. 'I'm calling in a favour,' he said. 'It's a bit of a long shot, but you never know.'

The pod, which was sitting in an open containment case on Ianto's lap, was going crazy, pulsing brighter and more fiercely as they neared the hospital. The coloured lights flickering just beneath the surface of its opaque skin were moving so rapidly that Ianto couldn't keep track of them. The pod's rate of regeneration was increasing too; indeed, Ianto fancied he could now see the silvery orb repairing itself before his eyes. He was watching it, mesmerised, when the SUV slammed into something, jolting him out of his reverie.

'Zombie roadkill,' said Jack. 'Couldn't be helped. He stepped right out in front of me.'

Ianto glanced into the rear-view mirror, to see a dark smear on the road behind them.

'There's no need to sound so happy about it,' he said. 'I worry about you sometimes.'

Jack grinned. 'What can I say? I enjoy my work.'

They were very close to the hospital now. The drive through Cardiff had been a journey through a nightmare landscape. Even in the couple of hours they had been in the Hub, the number of zombies had increased dramatically. They were everywhere, filling the streets, aimlessly shuffling. Cardiff had become a city of the dead.

Jack had managed to avoid most of them, though some had had to be nudged aside. Ianto knew that if Jack had had his way, he would have simply ploughed through the lot of them.

'It's not like they're real,' he had told Ianto, when Ianto had asked him to slow down and be careful, 'and this baby is big enough and tough enough to cope.'

'That's not the point,' Ianto said. 'You're not the one who has to clean up the mess afterwards.'

It didn't help that the creatures seemed so interested in the pod. Whether it was the flashing lights or something more intrinsic, it certainly seemed to spark a reaction. Or maybe it's just us, thought Ianto. Maybe it's just the fact that we're the only thing apart from themselves that's moving. Certainly, wherever they went, the dead would converge on them, arms outstretched and something like. . what? eagerness? recognition? in their otherwise glazed eyes.

At last they turned a corner, and there was the hospital entrance, a hundred metres ahead of them.

'Weird,' said Jack.

'What is?'

'Look around. What d'you see?'

Ianto peered through the windscreen. It was a leafy street in a nice part of town. Big houses on the left; the hospital grounds, flanked by high hedges, on the right.

At first he didn't see what Jack was getting at, and then he realised. 'Oh,' he said. 'No zombies.'

'A coupla streets behind us it was wall to wall, but here there's nothing,' said Jack. 'Pretty odd, wouldn't you say?'

Ianto remained silent. It was only when Jack swung the SUV through the gates leading in to the multi-level car park and they saw the brightly lit building before them that the mystery of the missing zombies was solved.

The creatures were standing in rows, several layers deep, forming a cordon around the building. There were literally hundreds of them, and they were motionless and eerily silent.

'My God,' breathed Ianto. On his lap, the pod was pulsing more fiercely than ever.

Jack looked across at Ianto and raised an eyebrow. 'No prizes for guessing what they're guarding,' he said.

It was odd in a way, but the constant state of tension, of apprehension, had become boring after a while. Tired of the crush of people in Reception, and more particularly of their endless theorising and analysing, Rianne and Nina had retreated to the empty maternity ward, and were now sitting in the semi-darkness, staring out over the car park, cradling mugs of tea.

They hadn't talked much in the last half-hour or so. In fact, Nina had spent much of the time dozing. A nurse had cleaned and re-bandaged her leg for her; despite what Nina's friends had thought, she hadn't needed stitches.

'I wonder what happened to the Thomases,' Rianne said.

'Huh?' Once again, Nina's eyes had been drooping closed. Rianne reached out and gently took the half-empty mug out of her hands.

'Sarah Thomas. She's one of my ladies. She phoned earlier this evening to say she'd gone into labour. I hope she's all right.'