Peter Anghelides - Pack Animals

Before the doors slid open, there was a mighty thump against the other side, accompanied by angry shouting.

‘Keep your hair on!’ called Owen. ‘They won’t open any faster if…’

His voice trailed off as the doors parted. Beyond the lift, two huge gorillas were hurling furniture across the sales floor. Gorillas in alien uniforms. Terrified shoppers and Wendleby’s staff were scrambling to get through or over the displays and away to safety.

Gwen unholstered her handgun. Owen was ahead of her, already out of the lift and stepping over the remains of the coffee table that had been hurled against the outer doors.

One of the creatures broke off from its bombardment, and swung onto a tall, freestanding unit. Racks of cutlery tumbled off and clattered to the floor. A young sales assistant stood below it, petrified. One of her friends seized a skillet from a display of pans and lashed out wildly. The gorilla casually reached out one long arm and simply batted him away into a rack of electrical goods.

Owen waved away some shoppers who had raced from the next department to see what all the noise was. One woman was struggling with her many bags of shopping, while her husband yanked the sleeve of her coat and told her to leave them. The short argument was abruptly ended when the nearest gorilla landed right in front of them with a thump, opened its huge mouth and bellowed a savage roar straight into their faces. The woman shrieked, flung her shopping aside, and fled. The gorilla began to pick curiously at the abandoned Wendleby’s bags.

Two other shoppers were angling their mobile phone cameras at the creature. ‘Are you insane?’ Owen yelled. Before he could reach them, there was a swirl of brilliant white light from over by the sofa beds, and one of the gorillas melted away into nothing.

Owen rushed up to the nearest shopper, a bristle-headed lad in a bomber jacket who bore an uncanny resemblance to the gorillas. He smacked the camera phone from the lad’s hand. ‘That could have been the last picture you ever took.’

‘It will be if you smashed my camera, you jerk!’ He was bunching his fists, squaring up to Owen.

Owen held up his compact double-action 9mm pistol so that the lad could see it clearly. ‘Talk to the gun, ’cause the face ain’t listening.’ He was pleased to see the bloke was shocked into silence. ‘Get out of here before you’re killed. Could be that thing that does it, could be me.’ Owen switched on his earcomms. ‘Ianto, you there, mate?’

‘Receiving.’

‘Take out the mobile phone network.’

‘Doing it now.’ Ianto’s voice crackled in his ear. ‘Got some activity up there?’

Gwen was in on the conversation now. ‘We might need back-up. Are those Achenbrite boys on standby with their capture equipment? These things look like the biggest gorillas you ever saw.’

‘Gorillas?’ said Ianto. ‘You don’t see many of those in Wendleby’s.’

‘They’re not picking out fabrics,’ said Gwen. ‘They’re in combat gear.’

‘Oh,’ said Ianto. ‘So they’d be guerrilla gorillas, then?’

‘Just send Achenbrite up here, Ianto.’

The remaining gorilla bellowed from its position atop the display unit. It swung its hairy, drooling face around, and its scrunched expression suggested that it couldn’t work out where its monstrous mate had gone.

‘I used to love a bit of a shop, me,’ sighed Gwen as she took aim. Her bullet struck the monster right between the eyes. It fell backwards off the display and clattered down into a display of coffee makers and kettles.

Owen hurried over to where it had fallen. A small crowd of frightened people edged nearer to it. The gorilla heaved one last great gust of rank air, and its final breath sprayed the crowd with snot from its huge nostrils. The crowd cowered. A handful stared at their mobile phones as though they could will them into action, but the handsets had died as abruptly as the creature. Owen could hear the three-note apology from the nearest ones, and the calm Achenbrite statement.

‘What’s going on?’ demanded the lad in the bomber jacket. Owen held up his gun as a fresh warning, and the bloke looked shocked again. Except this time, it was at something behind Owen.

He whirled to face a new threat. A spindly creature with a tiny central body and etiolated limbs staggered across the furniture department. It trailed its dangling hands almost lazily over a nearby sofa bed. The cover split open and spewed stuffing and springs, as if it had been eviscerated. The creature flicked its head from side to side quizzically, reached out one long arm, and plucked at a ceiling-mounted CCTV camera.

‘Shit!’ spat Owen. ‘Ianto, you have to kill the CCTV!’

He loosed off a couple of shots. The creature picked up a two-seater sofa and flipped it across the room. It could have been made of feathers for all the effort it seemed to require. But it felt heavy enough when it glanced off Owen and knocked the gun from his hand. Gwen took a harder blow, and fell beneath the sofa.

The creature stalked closer. A sales assistant got in the way, so it picked him up and flexed its fingers. The man’s body was severed, and the two halves of his corpse were discarded like litter. Blood sprayed over the nearby furnishings.

The creature moved towards Owen. He scrabbled backwards, desperate to get away from the knife-edged talons.

It brought its insectoid head closer to him, so close that he could see his face reflected in its compound eyes. Was it looking at him? Scenting him? About to devour him?

He didn’t have time to speculate any more, because the head split open in an explosion of dark liquid.

When Owen opened his eyes, Jack Harkness was grinning down at him. One hand held his .38 Webley revolver, which was still smoking. The other was held out to help Owen get to his feet.

‘I can’t believe all of this, Jack.’ The stranger beside Jack sported a tweed jacket and a Welsh accent.

‘Who’s your mate?’ Owen asked Jack.

Jack clapped the stranger on the shoulder. ‘David Brigstocke, from BBC Radio Wales. Gimme a hand, David, I think one of my officers is trapped over here. She looks good in leather, but not when it’s on a sofa.’

Owen assisted them in freeing Gwen from beneath the tumbled heap of furniture. ‘He’s your journalist?’

‘He wanted to do a “day in the life” piece, I said he could tag along.’ Jack was staring at the ceiling-mounted cameras. ‘Why are these cameras still operational?’

Ianto’s voice said in their ears: ‘I’m having a bit of trouble isolating the feeds.’

‘Take out the power to the whole place!’ shouted Jack.

The journalist, Brigstocke, looked alarmed. ‘Shouldn’t we evacuate the store first?’

‘We?’ smiled Jack. He indicated the shrinking crowds around them. ‘Besides, I think they’ve got the message. OK, David. Until the power goes out, let’s make sure they’re keeping clear of this area. Go and hit the reverses on the up escalators. Then call all the lifts to this floor and jam their doors open. Prevents anyone getting trapped inside them.’

Owen saw that Brigstocke was hesitating by the torn remains of the store clerk.

‘Hey!’ Jack snapped at Brigstocke. ‘You wanted to be a part of this… Go!’

The toy department was deserted now. Most of the shoppers had been parents, accompanying their bright-eyed children to plan Christmas. Thinking about birthday presents. The occasional weekend dad making up for his workday absence with the bribe of a gift. Mothers and fathers whose parental instinct was to protect their children first of all.

So when a whirlwind of savage animals had sprung from the MonstaQuest display, it had rapidly become obvious that this wasn’t a store event. That much was clear from the genuine terror in the staff, who had abandoned their desks and tills and fled the scene screaming like everyone else. Two huge gorillas had lumbered off, dragging their feet and knuckles, whooping and chattering at the new sights. A whirlwind group of huge, savage insects hovered and chittered in the deserted toy department, plucking at the soft toys as though considering how edible they were.