Andy Lane - Slow Decay

‘Perfect.’ There was something dark in Jack’s voice. ‘One pill to start the weight loss and another to stop it. Absolutely perfect. Symmetrical, in fact.’

Owen reached out and took a pair of tweezers from the tray. ‘Perfect apart from all the side effects,’ he said, picking the creature gently up from the autopsy table and holding it close to his face, turning it around so he could examine it from all aspects. ‘That raging hunger isn’t everything — there’s psychotic behaviour as well. We don’t know what causes that yet. And from what you said, the mature form of this thing leaped out of the receptionist’s throat, rupturing a major blood vessel in the process before it attacked you. That’s not the kind of behaviour that I’ve ever seen a tapeworm exhibit. It almost indicates awareness, perhaps even consciousness.’

‘Is it intelligent?’ Gwen asked. ‘Could we communicate with it?’

‘I don’t think the brain’s big enough to hold much intelligence. I think it’s going on instinct, and some basic processing of sensory inputs. What surprises me is the way you say it attacked you. Tapeworms are just inert assemblages of self-replicating segments. This thing — whatever it is — has the ability to sense where things are, decide they are threats and move to do something about that threat. Wherever their natural habitat is, they probably stalk their prey in some way before either laying eggs inside it or colonising it in the adult form.’

The colour had drained away from Gwen’s face. Her throat was working as if she was trying to stop herself throwing up.

‘We’ll call it George,’ Jack said suddenly.

‘Call what George?’

‘The parasite that’s inside your boyfriend. Makes it easier if we label them differently. Stops us getting confused. The one that attacked us in the Scotus Clinic was Ringo, the one inside Rhys is George, the one inside Marianne Till is Paul and that leaves the one inside Lucy Sobel as John.’

‘You forgot this one,’ Owen said, waggling the tiny alien creature back and forth in the air.

‘This one can be Stuart. As in Sutcliffe.’

‘Who was Stuart Sutcliffe?’ Gwen’s hand, still raised to her mouth, muffled her words, and Owen had to think for a moment before he could figure them out.

‘He was the one who left the Beatles in Hamburg, before they made it big. Nice guy. Invented the mop-top haircut, believe it or not. Dab hand at the old collage technique. Girlfriend’s name was Astrid, I think. Or Ingrid. One of the two.’

‘Jack.’ Gwen’s voice was tremulous. ‘We have to get rid of them. All of them. We’ve got the “Stop” pills. We can get Rhys and Marianne and Lucy to take the pills before anything worse happens to them.’

Jack looked down at Owen. Tell her , Jack’s eyes were saying.

‘We don’t know anything about the life cycle of these creatures,’ Owen said slowly. It was the same tone of voice he used to use when he was telling people that they had some inoperable cancer, or they were going to be paralysed for life. Slow, firm and reassuring. ‘And we don’t know how many other people are infected. I need one of the “Stop” pills so I can analyse it to see whether it can be synthesized, and we need to keep at least one of these creatures alive so we can study it and determine what it wants, what it needs, how it grows, how fast it grows and what its weaknesses are.’

Gwen turned towards Jack. ‘We only need one of them. Owen just said so — you heard him. We can give two of them the pills.’

‘And who gets to choose?’ Jack asked. He looked from Owen to Gwen and back again. ‘Which one of us gets to play God? Or would you rather we drew straws?’

‘Rhys is my boyfriend !’ she said, looking from one to the other. ‘Doesn’t that count for anything?’

‘And Marianne’s a nice girl with a family,’ Owen snapped. Something in him felt close to breaking point. He’d failed Marianne so far: he wasn’t going to fail her any more.

‘And no boyfriend,’ Jack reminded him.

‘That’s not the point,’ Owen shouted, rounding on him.

‘But what about Lucy?’ Jack asked them both. ‘I’m sure she’s got a family as well. Doesn’t she deserve the best chance we can give her?’

‘She’s a murderer,’ Owen reminded them both. Turning to Gwen, he said, ‘Do you want her to get away with killing her boyfriend? Isn’t it right that we keep the creature in her alive and save Marianne and Rhys?’

‘Punishment isn’t the same as justice,’ Gwen said slowly, shaking her head. ‘Jack’s right — we don’t have the right to choose.’

Owen’s fists clenched in frustration. ‘I do. I’m going to give Marianne the “Stop” pill,’ he said. ‘She’s suffered enough.’ Before Jack or Gwen could stop him he grabbed one of the blister packs off the instrument tray and dashed for the door.

He could hear the sound of their pounding footsteps echoing off the Victorian brickwork as he sprinted through the tunnels of Torchwood. Gwen was shouting his name; Jack was silent but Owen could sense his steely determination.

His own breath rasped in his ears and burned in his chest. He could feel his blood pulsing through the arteries in his throat and in his temples. He couldn’t tell how close they were; any second he expected a hand to close on his shoulder, pulling him back, but it never did.

Skidding round a corner, he reached the cells. The Weevil in the closest one was pressed up against the glass, sniffing at the air and exposing its teeth, but he paid no attention to it. He kept going, past the cell where Lucy was incarcerated and on to the end cell, where Marianne waited for him.

‘I’ve got it!’ he called. ‘The cure. Just one tablet and you’ll be fine! I promise!’

Marianne didn’t answer. She was slumped in her cell, her bandaged hands with their damaged fingers still chained to the wall so she couldn’t chew on them again.

Instead, she had found a different way to feed on herself. She had twisted her body around so that she could reach her upper right arm with her teeth. She must have dislocated her shoulder to manage it. Owen knew that she had dislocated her shoulder because she had chewed all the way through her arm, regardless of the pain, until there wasn’t enough flesh left to keep it attached. With no joint there to hold the arm in, the weight of her body had pulled her shoulder and her arm apart, tearing through what few muscles and tendons remained. Her body had flopped forward onto the stone flooring, while her arm dangled separately from the restraint above.

The stone floor of the cell was a lake of glutinous blood.

Marianne’s head had dropped forward on her chest, and her hair, her gorgeous blonde hair, hung over her eyes.

Owen slumped to his knees. The blister pack dropped from his fingers. He felt as if a yawning chasm had opened up within him, an abyss into which his heart was dropping.

‘Owen,’ came Jack’s voice from beside him. Strong fingers took his head and turned it until he was looking straight into Jack’s eyes. Jack was kneeling beside him, and Gwen was kneeling beside them both. ‘Owen, I will ask many hard things of you. This is not the hardest, not even close, but it will seem that way. It will seem like the hardest thing in the world. Owen, I need you to cut Marianne’s body open as quickly as you can and get that thing out of her. It might be still alive, and we need to find out all we can about it. I won’t ask you if you can do that for me, because you will do it for me. Do you understand? You will do it.’

Owen nodded bleakly. Of course he would do it. What else was left? He used to be a doctor. He used to cure people. Now… now he couldn’t even cure himself, let alone anyone else.