Peter Anghelides - Pack Animals

The creature was the size of a large dog. It squatted like a dark gargoyle at the far edge of the roof, facing away from her. Its tall pointed ears swivelled, scanning ahead. What at first appeared to be a broad humped back was actually a pair of folded wings. They flexed as though the thing was about to fly off the roof. The head moved side-to-side, like a cat judging the position of its prey.

With no connection on her PDA, Toshiko tried to remember the layout of the building she’d seen earlier. Maybe the images were still in the PDA’s memory, but there was probably only time to rely on her own. This side of the mall overlooked the multi-storey car park. So, the creature was sizing up people as they parked their vehicles.

The wings unfurled. Thin layers of veined black skin stretched over a frame of thin bones, with a small tear in one wing. Short clawed hands flexed at the ends, long talons visible against the sky. It was like an enormous predatory bat.

A bat the size of a retriever. Wasn’t that what Gwen had seen?

And it was preparing to fly.

Toshiko squared her feet, bracing herself to fire. The walkway beneath her clanked as the metal moved. At the sound, the dark creature immediately twisted to face her. Beneath those tall ears was a small, savage face, half-filled by a mouth that bristled with razor-sharp, foam-flecked teeth. It quickly repositioned its legs, swirled its wings into position, and prepared to launch itself at her.

She squirted off a couple of panicky shots. One flew wide, but the other tore through the leathery membrane of skin in the creature’s right wing. It howled a scream of rage, and sprang towards her.

Toshiko dropped to one side, rolling off the metal walkway. The gravel-covered surface of the roof sagged under her weight, and she struggled to recover her position.

The bat-creature was on her with frightening speed. Toshiko’s head thumped against metal. Lights sparkled dizzily, and a nauseous wave threatened to engulf her. Claws raked her jacket. She threw one arm over her face as she tried to get the other, gun-hand between herself and her attacker. But the creature smacked out dismissively with one of its rear feet, and the gun clattered away into the distance and over the edge of the roof.

The edges of Toshiko’s vision clouded into darkness.

The monster pressed its weight on her chest. The tiny, savage head pushed close to hers, its mouth wide, its scream filling her ears.

Toshiko thought of the torn remains in the security room, and wondered what would be left of her to identify the body.

There was a hard push on her torso. The creature jumped off her and towards the edge of the roof.

Toshiko hadn’t even noticed that she had forgotten to breathe. She started to suck in air again, greedily, desperately. Why had the creature stopped? She wanted to look where the thing had gone, but her body felt too heavy to move, and her eyes just wanted to close.

A static crackle hissed in the air nearby. The bat-creature howled again, though the sound seemed to fade and die in the air. Toshiko forced herself to look. Two men in grey boiler suits were stalking across the roof. Were those rifles they carried? They had shoulder-stocks and scopes, and the men carried them like weapons; but the barrel fanned out into a bulbous end, incongruously like a garden hose. These devices spat out a cloudy spray that fizzed and coiled towards the cowering creature.

The two men stepped past Toshiko, ignoring her. She tried to call out, but her voice failed. They couldn’t have missed her; they were simply ignoring her.

The bat-like creature was a long way off now. It must be a hundred metres away.

But that wasn’t possible, because the roof wasn’t that wide. The bat-like monster was shrinking, diminishing, struggling within the fizzing cloud of particles sprayed from the rifles. One of the men produced a small container, no bigger than a shoebox. He tugged on a pair of thick gloves before he scooped the helpless creature into the box.

Toshiko felt unconsciousness overwhelming her. The last thing she noticed before she closed her eyes was the insignia on the men’s boiler suits. A stylised device of crossed keys, and a single word: Achenbrite.

The Withington Hotel was not infested with alien bedbugs. Which wasn’t to say that it didn’t have unpleasant biting insect life in its five-star bedrooms, reflected Owen Harper.

Jack had asked him to pursue this investigation. ‘A safe pair of hands,’ Jack had called him. Yeah, right. What Jack meant was that it would be a safe assignment for him in his condition. Nothing would get broken, particularly Owen.

Dead Man Walking. What was the point in coming back to life if Torchwood wouldn’t find him any death-defying assignments?

One of Toshiko’s monitoring software programs had identified an unexpected peak in GP records about urticaria, with a statistically significant increase in patients with red, itchy weals on their skin. Cross-checking credit card details suggested a further statistically significant link to the Withington Hotel, a Rift hotspot some three months previously.

At least Jack now allowed Owen to carry his handgun again. ‘Not that it’ll be much good for picking off alien insects,’ Ianto had explained when he’d delivered the weapon from the Armoury that morning. ‘You’re not that good a shot.’

‘Well, how could I defend myself again alien bedbugs?’ pondered Owen.

‘Tuck your trousers into your socks,’ Ianto had suggested, with no indication that he was joking.

Owen arrived at the Withington shortly before 10 a.m. and spent less than an hour masquerading as a hotel inspector. Enough time to send the hotel management into a minor panic, and also sufficient for Owen to access all necessary areas. He swiftly identified the reason for so many bitten guests as cimex lectularis – the common bedbug. Even the honeymoon suite had evidence of eggs, faecal spots, and a lively collection of first-instar nymphs.

So, the outbreak had not come through the Rift. However, Owen had identified a missing Vredosian who was working as a chambermaid on the fifth floor. The plaid polyester of the staff uniform anonymised the staff of most large hotels, and yet Owen found it hard to understand how she’d gone unrecognised with her triangular teeth and pale grey skin. Hedgehog spines poked through her mop cap, like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. He studied his captive as they both waited for the lift to arrive. ‘How did no one notice you?’

The Vredosian wriggled uncomfortably beside him, her thumbs cuffed together. ‘The staff captain thought I was from Eastern Europe,’ she rasped. ‘Sometimes the obvious stares him in the face.’

Owen laughed. ‘I’ve got a Captain like that.’

The lift pinged. He was about to give the Vredosian an encouraging push into the lift when he remembered that she was the source of the bedbug outbreak. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get that close to her in the lift, but what was the alternative? He needed to get her back to the Hub. And then what – a bowl of bread and milk? He supposed Jack would know. ‘So, you’ve travelled millions of miles to find the job of your dreams,’ he said, and indicated she should board the lift. ‘Working for the minimum wage in a South Wales Hotel. Doesn’t get better than that, eh?’

The Vredosian lowered her spiny eyelashes and ignored him. She wasn’t dangerous; just another bloody nuisance in a city that already had enough of them to worry about without a flea-carrying extraterrestrial working illegally in the Welsh service industry. God, just imagine the Daily Mail headline.

Owen studied his own reflection in the mirrored wall of the lift. Is this what he’d become – a nursemaid to vagrant aliens? He put his left hand up to his face experimentally, aware again that he could feel nothing. The glove covered his permanently broken left finger. It also enclosed the tatty crepe bandage that held the splint in place, in turn concealing the scalpel cut across his palm that would never heal and that required re-stitching each week. He stroked one finger down a sideburn. The first day home after his return from the dead, he’d had a careful shave – his final shave, as it happened. He’d never have five o’clock shadow again. The beard would never grow back. On the bright side, he’d never get hair in his ears like his dad. And he’d had to decide, right then in front of the bathroom mirror in his apartment, whether he wanted to lose those sideburns for the rest of his life. No, not life – his existence .