Gwen winced. ‘What was I supposed to do — tie him to the bed? I wanted to stay with him, I wanted to protect him, but I couldn’t tell him why. He only took the pill, a day or two ago, so he’s probably not as far gone as the other two. And if there’s going to be a cure, it’s going to come from here. From us. Staying with him would just… just mean I was waiting for the inevitable. At least here I can pretend I’m helping. So — what’s the progress of this disease, if it is a disease? I have a vested interest now.’
Owen shrugged. ‘If they don’t get enough food, then they start eating themselves.’ He caught the bleak look on Gwen’s face and winced. ‘Sorry, but it’s true. Anyway, I dunno how far they could get before pain or blood loss made them pass out. Maybe both hands and both forearms. That’s just a guess. Then again, given that this thing, whatever it is, seems to affect the brain, maybe it changes the way they feel pain. If they used tourniquets to control the bleeding then there’s no reason why they couldn’t munch their way through both arms up to the shoulders and both legs up to the knees. If they were gymnastic enough, they might get halfway up the thigh. Lips would go as well, of course. They’d probably save the tongue for last, if only because tourniquets wouldn’t work and they’d choke on their own blood.’
Toshiko slid her plate towards the centre of the table. Suddenly she wasn’t feeling hungry.
Judging by Gwen’s white face, she didn’t feel well either. ‘And if they do get enough food?’
‘Then I just don’t know.’ Owen speared a piece of fried bread with his fork and bit the corner off. ‘There’s always the possibility that they just keep on going, but I think that’s unlikely.’
‘Why?’ Jack asked, succinctly.
‘Because they aren’t putting weight on.’ Owen used his fork to cut a piece of black pudding. ‘They’re plugging massive amounts of calories into their systems, and those calories are going somewhere apart from hips and thighs. In fact, not only aren’t they putting weight on, they’re actually losing it. I reckon Marianne’s lost half a stone since we caught her, and she’s been eating like pizza’s going to be reclassified as a Class A drug. If she keeps on going, she’s liable to suffer from malnutrition.’ Owen popped a piece of black pudding into his mouth. ‘She could actually starve to death,’ he said, and chewed.
‘I’ve got to ask,’ Jack said, staring at the remnants of the black pudding on Owen’s plate. ‘Although I probably don’t want to. What exactly is black pudding?’
‘It’s a kind of sausage made from a blend of onions, pork fat, oatmeal and pig’s blood,’ Ianto said.
‘OK,’ Jack said slowly. ‘Black pudding is made from blood. I get that. Nothing wrong with that. But you can get white pudding as well.’
‘Yeah,’ Owen said cautiously.
‘So what’s that then? The same thing but made with white corpuscles rather than red corpuscles?’
‘It’s just black pudding without the blood,’ Gwen said reassuringly.
‘Although earlier versions often had sheep’s brains as a binding agent,’ Ianto added. ‘Are you going to eat that black pudding?’
‘I think I’ll pass,’ Jack told him.
Rhys was woken up by a pain in his gut. It felt like stones were grinding together in there, rough surfaces grating on each other, and the membranes of his stomach were caught in the middle, torn and bleeding.
He curled up, pulling the sheets over himself and trying to force himself back to sleep, but it was no good. The pain was too intense.
Pain? It was hunger. He was starving.
Gwen had left before dawn, leaving a cup of coffee beside the bed before heading for her precious Torchwood, and Rhys had surfaced for long enough to phone work and leave a message on the answerphone saying that he’d been in an accident, and was taking a few days off. It seemed wiser than telling them the truth. He just hoped that nobody made the connection with Lucy being off work at the same time and came to the conclusion that the two of them were having an affair or something.
Eventually, he threw the duvet off and padded out, naked, into the split living room and kitchen area, taking the now cold cup of coffee with him. He and Gwen lived on the first floor of a converted house, so nobody was going to be gazing in through the window, and they lived in Riverside, so even if anyone could gaze in through the window at him they’d be too polite to do so.
He put the cup in the microwave and blitzed it until it was warm enough to drink. Sipping it, he went to the fridge and pulled out a tub of margarine, peeled the lid off, then walked across the living room and plonked himself down on the sofa.
What the hell was happening?
Scooping out a gobbet of margarine with his fingers he popped it into his mouth and tried to work out where things had suddenly gone wrong. Why, for instance, Lucy had suddenly attacked him. It wasn’t like he’d made a move on her and she’d pushed him away and accidentally injured him; in fact, if anything, she was making a move on him before she took a chunk out of his cheek.
He excavated another gobbet of margarine and slipped it into his mouth, licking his fingers to get rid of the last traces, running his tongue along the sharp edge of his fingernails, then reached up to touch the wound dressing, pressing down lightly on the cotton wool to see how much residual pain there was. Strangely, he didn’t feel anything. Whatever cream they’d used on him the night before had worked a treat.
As he scraped more and more of the thick yellow fat from the tub, Rhys began to wonder what his cheek actually looked like. He’d not dared look at it the night before. The lasting agony of Lucy’s teeth latching onto the flesh and then tearing it away had made it feel like he’d lost the entire cheek. He’d been afraid that if he looked at himself in the mirror he would have seen his teeth and the inside of his mouth through a ragged hole. Even at the hospital he’d been wondering if they were going to operate — perhaps take some flesh from his thigh to replace the cheek, leaving him looking like a living jigsaw puzzle. Thank God Gwen had been there to calm him down. The pain had been intense, pulsing in time with his heart, sending tendrils of agony through the entire side of his face until the painkillers had kicked in. But now… now there was nothing.
Perhaps the nerve had died. Perhaps the skin was turning black around the edges. He sniffed, trying to detect some sign of gangrene, but he didn’t even know what he was trying to find, and all he could smell was the rich oiliness of the margarine. Which, he discovered, looking down at the empty tub, he appeared to have finished.
His stomach had stopped complaining now. Draining the last of his coffee, he got up and went into the bathroom. In the mirror his face looked pasty. It also looked thin. He reached up wonderingly with his hand to feel the area under his chin. It used to bulge slightly, a chubbiness that he’d never really shed since childhood, but now there was a concavity where his neck and jaw joined. And the jawline itself stood out proudly. He smiled. He hadn’t looked that good for years. If ever.
Rhys edged his fingernails beneath the transparent tape beneath his eye socket that held the dressing onto his skin, and paused for a moment. Did he really want to do this? Did he really want to see what was underneath?
Before he could talk himself out of it, he ripped the tape away from the skin. It pulled smoothly away, distorting the flesh in a wave as it went. The dressing fell away, held only by the tape on the bottom, by his jaw.
Leaving behind it an expanse of smooth, pink flesh, marred only by a set of small, crescent-shaped scars where Lucy’s teeth had sunk into the skin.
Scars that he could swear were getting smaller even as he watched.