Mark Morris - Bay of the Dead

'Hi there,' Jack said gently. 'You're Oscar, right?'

The young man didn't respond. With his wide, staring eyes and sickly complexion, he looked not unlike a zombie himself.

'Is he awake?' whispered Gwen, standing at Jack's shoulder.

Whether in response to her voice or simply reacting to the light, Oscar swung his legs stiffly out of bed and stood up.

As he did so, sensor pads tore themselves from his skin, leaving circular red marks, and the IV drip on its metal stand tottered and fell with a shattering crash. The plastic IV bag burst open like an overripe fruit, spattering liquid across the floor. Rhys winced as the IV tube was ripped out of Oscar's arm with a spurt of blood.

Oscar seemed oblivious to all of this. He padded barefoot towards Jack and held out his hands.

'You want the pod? Is that it?' murmured Jack.

'You're not going to give it to him, are you?' asked Rhys.

'Sure. Why not?'

Jack stepped forward and placed the glowing pod carefully into Oscar's outstretched hands. Oscar came to a halt, a mildly bemused expression on his face. He looked like a blind man trying to identify something from its shape and texture. And then all at once his throat bulged, like that of a bullfrog, and his mouth opened wider than seemed possible.

'Oh my God,' muttered Gwen.

'What the hell's that ?' exclaimed Rhys.

Something emerged from Oscar's mouth, something grey and jelly-like. It resembled an overlong tongue, or perhaps a gigantic glistening slug. It oozed from between Oscar's lips, moved sinuously through the air, like a snake swimming through water, and entered the pod.

There was a sudden surge of light and the pod sealed itself before their eyes, becoming whole again. It rose into the air, hovering, like a mini-sun.

'What now?' wondered Ianto nervously.

'It looks as though it's getting its bearings,' whispered Gwen.

Jack stepped forward.

'My name is Captain Jack Harkness. I represent the people of Earth. And I really think we need to talk.'

'People of Earth, is it?' whispered Rhys to Gwen. 'Pompous git.'

She elbowed him in the ribs.

As if responding to Jack's proclamation, the pod drifted down and latched itself to Oscar's forehead. Oscar went momentarily rigid, his eyes and mouth widening in shock.

Then his features relaxed and he rotated his jaw a few times, as though to check it was in working order. When he spoke, the voice that emerged was fluting and ethereal, almost playful.

'Greetings, Captain Jack Harkness,' he said. 'I am Leet. I am a child of the Dellacoi. I will use the language of the Oscarphillips to communicate with you.'

'Nice to meet you, Leet,' Jack said neutrally. 'You mind telling me what you're doing here?'

Oscar stared straight ahead, his mouth moving with an odd stiffness as the alien spoke through him. 'I was riding the time winds when I was snatched away and hurled into this world. My life-shell was damaged on impact. In order to survive I sought refuge in this life form.'

'So you're a parasite?' Jack said.

'I am a symbiont,' replied the alien with no trace of indignation. 'The relationship between myself and the Oscarphillips has been a mutually beneficial one. Without me the Oscarphillips would not have survived, and without the Oscarphillips I would have perished in the cold wastes of this planet.'

'So you've been keeping each other alive for the past three months?' said Ianto.

'Three months, yes. I have learned this time frame from the Oscarphillips. For three months our consciousnesses have been linked, our thoughts, dreams and desires merging into one.'

'So what's with the night of zombie mayhem?' Jack asked. 'I'm guessing you're responsible for that?'

'Two nights ago,' the Dellacoi replied, 'I heard the call of my life-shell. I used images from the most recent memories of the Oscarphillips to create search units so that my life-shell and I could be reunited. However, the memories of the Oscarphillips proved too. . volatile. Once I had activated the units, I found I could not control them. And so, in order to contain the units and limit the damage, I created a barrier around this place, this. . Cardiff.'

'And you created them how?' asked Ianto.

For the first time the Dellacoi sounded puzzled. 'By thinking them. Isn't this how you create your world? Your buildings and your TV sets, your cars and your computers?'

Gwen glanced at Jack, and knew that he was thinking the same as she was: a species that could create a world of solid objects out of pure thought! If the Dellacoi proved hostile there would be no stopping it.

Ignoring the alien's question, Jack said, 'So tell me, Leet, how do we get rid of these units of yours? How do we get things back to normal?'

The Dellacoi said, 'The units are no longer mine. They belong to the Oscarphillips. Only the Oscarphillips can contain them.'

Before Jack could respond, there was a bang as the double doors leading into the Intensive Care Unit were flung open. Gwen and Jack drew their guns.

'Time out!' Jack shouted. 'Arm yourselves, people!'

Rhys had left his golf club behind in the mad scramble up to the Samuels's attic, so he picked up the metal IV stand. Ianto looked around frantically, then ran across to a metal-framed chair next to the room's tall window and snatched it up, holding it in front of him like a lion tamer.

There was a blundering rush of movement in the corridor, and suddenly zombies were crowding against the observation windows of the IC unit, their ravaged faces savage now, eyes glaring, driven by the primitive urge to protect their creator.

Snarling and groaning, the creatures threw themselves against the door and windows, all of which cracked and then burst inwards in a shower of glass.

The walking dead flooded into the room, and as Jack and Gwen began firing, and Rhys and Ianto fended off attackers with their makeshift weapons, the Dellacoi pod rose from Oscar's forehead, flared and vanished. Instantly Oscar's eyes slid closed and he collapsed to the floor with a sleepy groan.

Gwen roared through her bared teeth as she pumped bullet after bullet into the advancing army of living dead. However, it quickly became obvious that she was fighting a losing battle. Despite the ever-growing pile of rotting corpses, the creatures just kept on coming, a seemingly endless stream of them, intent on tearing her apart.

She fired again, and another zombie fell, the bullet ripping half of its head away, then spun to her left to take out a bloated teenager in a supermarket tabard. As she did, a boy no older than four, his mouth and hands a mess of gore, threw himself at her leg like a pit bull terrier. Caught by surprise, Gwen stumbled and fell heavily, cracking her shoulder on the metal frame of the bed with enough force to jar the gun out of her hand. She had no time to see where it went because the boy was on her in an instant, his bloody hands climbing her body, his teeth gnashing as he homed in on her throat.

She held him off as best she could, but he was like an eel — slippery, vicious and immensely strong. She was vaguely aware of other zombies crowding around her, reaching down with their clawed and rotting hands.

In rage and terror, Gwen screamed. .

Deep down, in the dark and the quiet, Oscar and his friend Leet were talking. Leet had confessed how he had borrowed and moulded Oscar's memories without his permission, and how those memories had subsequently escaped, replicating and mutating like a virus, turning bad.

'Oscar,' Leet said to him — and to Oscar he seemed to speak in thought bubbles, like in a comic book — 'only you can save the world. It's up to you to put it right.'

Oscar nodded slowly, his face grim and determined. 'Leave it to me, Leet,' he said authoritatively. And then he rather spoiled it by asking, 'What do I do?'