Before Nina could rouse herself to answer, the faint screech of brakes from outside drew Rianne to the window. At the top end of the car park was a big shiny-black vehicle, all lit up like a Christmas tree. In fact, it was pulsing with light, as if it contained some kind of mobile disco.
Rianne tensed. Clearly the occupants of the vehicle had seen the creatures massed around the hospital. Turn back, she urged them silently, turn back.
The big black vehicle began to rumble forward.
'No!' Rianne said, loud enough to snap Nina fully awake.
'Wassamatter?' Nina muttered.
Rianne gestured at the approaching vehicle in dismay. 'Another lamb to the slaughter.'
Nina hauled herself out of her chair and hobbled across to stand beside Rianne. They watched the big black car edging towards the hospital, rippling and strobing with inner light, almost as if it wanted to draw attention to itself.
The creatures encircling the hospital had been still and silent for some time, but now twenty or more of them jerked into motion and peeled away from the main throng, shuffling towards the newcomers.
'Get away from here. Get away,' Rianne urged, her fists clenched in dreadful anticipation.
Nina's voice was as bleak as her words. 'Whoever they are, they don't stand a chance.'
In his hospital bed, Oscar Phillips thrashed and writhed. His lips curled back over clenched teeth gleaming with spittle, and his eyes rolled madly behind their closed lids.
FOURTEEN
'This isn't good,' Ianto said nervously as zombies swarmed over the SUV.
Jack, however, seemed unperturbed. 'Relax, Ianto,' he said. 'This thing's tougher than a tank. There's no way in hell they can get in.'
'Yes, but there's no way we can get out either,' Ianto replied. 'In fact, there's so many of them I doubt we could even drive through.'
Jack acknowledged the observation with a shrug. 'There is that, I guess.'
He nodded at the orb, pulsing madly in the box on Ianto's lap.
'Maybe buddy boy there will protect us.'
'Or maybe they'll tear us apart to get to it,' Ianto said. 'It certainly seems to have agitated them.'
It was true. In the presence of the pod, the zombies seemed more animated, more ferocious than usual. They were crawling all over the SUV, pounding and scrabbling at the windows, leaving greasy smears of themselves behind. Their rotting faces glared in at Jack and Ianto, the pod's light flashing silver in their lifeless eyes.
Jack unholstered his Webley. 'Only one way to find out,' he said.
Ianto blanched. 'You're not going out there?'
As ever, Jack seemed to relish the prospect of extreme danger. 'It's either that or sit here till doomsday.'
'But you'll be killed,' Ianto said.
Jack shrugged. 'So what's new?'
'This is different, Jack, and you know it. They'll tear you apart. They'll eat you.'
Jack was unmoved. 'Well, you know what they say about life — the best way to enjoy it is to fill it with new experiences.' He held out his hand. 'Give me the pod, Ianto.'
'This is madness, Jack,' Ianto protested.
Jack's face was set, determined. 'Give me the pod,' he repeated.
Ianto sighed, momentarily undecided, and then unhappily he handed the box over to Jack. Jack lifted out the pulsing pod and slipped it into an inside pocket of his greatcoat. He tossed the box onto the back seat, then leaned forward, pulled Ianto towards him and kissed him on the forehead.
'You wait for me here. If I don't manage to find Oscar and stop all this. . well, just do what you can. Drive. Get back to the Hub.'
But Ianto shook his head, suddenly decisive. 'No. If you're going, I'm coming with you.'
'No way,' Jack said. 'My own stupidity I can live with. I'm not having you risking your life.'
Now it was Ianto's turn to look determined. Drawing his gun, he said, 'It's my decision, Jack. I chose to do this job. I know what the risks are.'
Jack looked as though he wanted to argue, but couldn't find a firm basis from which to do so. In the end he simply flapped a hand at Ianto and said, 'OK. If that's what you want, let's both go out in a blaze of glory. You ready?'
'Ready,' Ianto said grimly.
'Now!' Jack shouted.
They shoved their doors open simultaneously, causing zombies to tumble back like skittles. Instantly more of the creatures surged forward to fill the gap, teeth bared and eyes staring, hands reaching out.
Ianto pointed his gun and started shooting. And horrible as it was to see fleshless skulls shattering into fragments and heads disintegrating into bloody meat before his eyes, he continued shooting, trying to console himself with the knowledge that the creatures weren't real, that they felt no pain, that this was, in effect, nothing but a three-dimensional — albeit potentially lethal — computer game.
He was still shooting as he swung his legs from the SUV and stood up. And behind him he was aware that Jack was shooting too, the sharper crack of his Webley revolver underpinning the deafening boom of Ianto's semi-automatic.
Zombies fell in swathes before him, but they kept coming out of the darkness, kept pushing him back. One grabbed at him from the roof of the SUV; he turned and shot it from point-blank range.
Another swiped at his face, raking jagged fingernails down his cheek, before he was able to swivel and shoot it in the throat.
Yet another, a goth girl with black lipstick, panda eyes, and entrails leaking from a festering wound in her stomach, latched on to his left arm and sunk her teeth into his shoulder. He dislodged her by slamming her into the side of the SUV before she could break the skin, and then shooting her through her spiky forest of black hair while she was scrabbling on the ground.
At last the inevitable happened. While Ianto was pointing his gun, a flailing arm knocked the weapon from his hand. Ianto watched in despair as it flew through the air and clattered to the ground, among the shuffling feet of the walking dead.
Oh God, this is it, he thought as they surged towards him. He turned, grabbed the still-open door of the SUV and used it to haul himself up towards the roof of the vehicle, in the final desperate hope that he might be able to defend himself better from up there.
Just as he reached the roof, kicking out at hands that were snatching at his legs, he became aware of three things simultaneously: an incredibly bright light, a loud, clattering whirr, and a raging wind that swooped down on him from nowhere. The light dazzled him, and the wind knocked the breath from his body and threatened to wrench him from his precarious perch. Clinging on for dear life, Ianto dropped to all fours and managed, with extreme difficulty, to turn his head.
For a second or two the light was so blinding that he couldn't work out what he was looking at. Hovering in the air above the SUV was what appeared to be an illuminated metal wall painted in white and orange stripes. Then Ianto saw landing wheels and the whickering blur of rotor blades, and suddenly realised he was staring at the underside of a helicopter. It had a bright red nose and tail, and a white body. The words 'COASTGUARD RESCUE' were printed in bold black capitals on the fuselage side of the aircraft.
Ianto sensed scrabbling movement beside him and twisted his head again, thinking that one of the zombies had climbed up after him. But it was Jack, bathed in the glare from above, and with rainbow light from the pod pulsing through his thick coat, still firing his Webley into the throng below. He turned briefly and grinned, hair flapping wildly around his head. He shouted something about 'cavalry', but the roar of the helicopter was too loud for Ianto to make out his words properly.