Peter Anghelides - Another Life

Gwen shushed her, and held her shoulders to calm her. She was trembling in Gwen’s arms now. ‘We don’t know. It’s all right, don’t worry.’

Wildman can’t have been thinking things through properly, Gwen thought. Because he’d been going to work for the past week — Toshiko had deduced that much from the badge-in records. It was uniquely Wildman’s thumbs that proved he’d been in Wales and not Egypt. So why had he told Betty he was going to be in Egypt? In fact, why had he told Betty anything?

Gwen kept her voice soft. ‘What’s your connection with Mr Wildman, love?’

‘Neighbour,’ sniffed Betty. She plucked a hankie from her cardigan sleeve, wriggling awkwardly where she sat in the large chair. ‘I’ve been feeding his plants for him while he’s been away. The succulents don’t need much, of course.’ She pointed to a pot across the room that contained a plant with pointed pale green leaves. It was the only plant that Gwen could see, so presumably there were more in the other rooms. ‘That’s his Amyris elemifera . Can’t neglect that one.’

Betty was constantly watching Jack, warily considering his moves around the apartment as he continued to scan his Geiger counter. The clicking noise never got much higher than a steady ‘tut-tut’ noise of disapproval, even when he ran it over the unwisely chosen leopard-skin rug in front of the gas fire. He must have sensed her gaze, because he turned away from the kitchen area and treated her to one of his unexpected, dazzling smiles.

‘Cap’n Jack Harkness,’ he told her smoothly. ‘Do I know you from somewhere?’

Betty broke away from his gaze abruptly.

‘Sorry,’ Jack said. ‘Thought from the way you were looking at me that you think you recognise me from somewhere. I get that a lot.’ Gwen wondered if he was hitting on Betty. She was a conspicuously handsome woman, slim and fit with short-cut blonde hair and striking cheekbones. Her smart A-line dress fell to just above her knee, revealing shapely calves and firm, smooth skin. So Gwen was childishly pleased to see the grin falter on Jack’s face as he held it just too long without getting any sort of encouraging response from Betty.

‘OK,’ said Jack firmly. He scuffed his way across the shag pile, and motioned Gwen to stand up. ‘There’s nothing surprising here,’ he murmured to her.

Gwen cast a glance around the room. ‘Except for the decor that time forgot.’

He clicked his tongue, in a way that reminded her of the Geiger counter. ‘No readings above the sort of background radiation there would be if Wildman had visited the apartment. Nothing to suggest the fuel packs are in here.’

‘Wildman probably just came in for a shit, shower and shave,’ suggested Gwen.

‘Yeah,’ Jack agreed. ‘Then hid the power packs elsewhere. So someone elsewhere in Cardiff could be getting a really big dose of radiation. Get on to Tosh and see if she’s got any way of detecting that.’ He indicated the bathroom door. ‘One more room to check.’

Gwen smiled apologetically at Betty, and hunkered back down next to her to continue their conversation. She got no further because, just as she was about to inquire further about the absent Wildman, she was interrupted by a yell from Jack.

It was a cry of shock and anger.

Gwen bounced back to her feet, and rushed into the bathroom after Jack. He was struggling with a long beige towel that he’d got draped over his arm. But she knew that people didn’t wrestle with wet towels.

It was the limb of some monstrous creature in the bath tub. There was no visible head or torso. The thing looked like it was just a collection of long, coarse-skinned arms emerging from the water in the bath. Two of them stretched up across the off-white tiles opposite, and made a soft popping sound as their suckers detached and reattached themselves to the smooth surface of the wall and shower screen. The other two draped over the edge of the tub, a metre long apiece. Gwen steadied herself on the linoleum, which was soaked in water that had splashed over the edge of the bath. The nearest of the monster’s limbs had seized Jack’s right forearm. It was wrapped firmly around the sleeve of his greatcoat and was dragging him, skidding him, across the floor. He must have struggled to draw his revolver with his left hand, because it was lying in a pool of water beside the bath panel.

Gwen stared, appalled. She went cold with fear as she recognised what it was. ‘It’s like that thing you trod on when you confronted Wildman!’

‘I don’t care how pissed its big brother is with me,’ Jack yelled back, ‘get it off!’

Gwen recovered her composure, and drew her weapon. She stepped sideways to avoid Jack’s back, straddled the toilet bowl to place her feet firmly, and held the pistol steadily in a two-handed grip, the way Jack had shown her in the Torchwood shooting range. Took a deep breath. Released it slowly and, while she exhaled, squeezed the trigger gently but firmly.

Four shots in swift succession, deafeningly loud in the tiny bathroom. Four shots into the creature that writhed in the bathwater. Four shots that barely made it twitch.

Just above the edge of the bath now she could see where the limbs joined the creature’s body. Underneath it a dark hole was opening up, and a tube began to extrude itself like some ghastly proboscis.

No it wasn’t its nose, she realised with a thrill of horror. It was its mouth.

Jack was being dragged helplessly across the room towards the creature’s maw, and Gwen couldn’t stop it.

‘Still need some help here, Gwen!’ yelled Jack. His boots skittered on the wet surface of the bathroom floor. A grubby bathmat was crumpling up beneath one of his boots. The bizarre starfish creature itself made no noise, save for the slap of its arms against the wall tiles and the plastic side of the bath and into the water surrounding it.

Jack tried to throw himself away from the creature, using the strength of his upper body to propel himself violently sideways. He smashed brutally into a flimsy bathroom cabinet on the wall. The mirror shattered, and the chipboard carcass disintegrated and disgorged its contents on top of Jack as he slumped to the floor. Shampoo bottles, a packet of razors, a plastic basket of individually wrapped soaps. Several boxes of plasters and Paracetamol struck his shoulder, and two bottles of aftershave rolled off his back. A packet of individual haemorrhoidal towelettes scattered around him like a dropped deck of cards.

Gwen seized a bottle of pink aftershave — ‘Espèce! pour homme’, it told her. The revolting tentacle had now writhed its way twice around Jack’s sleeve. Gwen twisted the cap off the aftershave and tipped up the bottle so that the astringent pink liquid glugged out onto the bizarre starfish’s limb. The coarse skin bubbled and fizzed, but the tentacle did not withdraw. It didn’t even flinch.

‘Stop!’ Jack yelled.

She pointed. ‘It’s starting to burn through it!’

‘Unless you got another twenty bottles, it ain’t gonna make a heap of difference.’

Gwen stared desperately around the room. A hairdryer had fallen from the cupboard, and she picked it up as though it might give her some inspiration.

‘What the hell are you gonna do?’ bellowed Jack. ‘Backcomb it to death?’

‘Nowhere to plug it in,’ she admitted. It’s a bathroom, she thought. No plugs.

Gwen cast the hairdryer aside, and it bounced off the sink and clattered to the floor, where it landed next to two empty tins of dog food that had been incongruously abandoned by the far wall. She scrambled over the toilet and back out through the door to the lounge area.

Betty was still sitting in the armchair, staring towards the bathroom with a curious, strangely calm air about her. Gwen could understand that she might be in shock. ‘Get out!’ she shrieked at Betty. ‘Get out of here now!’