Exodus Code (18 page)

‘Wel ,’ the other man said, ‘she’s quietened down from when she first came in a few days ago.’ He set the brush on the bedside table. ‘Did your sister hurt herself too? My Lizzie tore off her own ear. Can you believe that?’

He slumped into the chair next to his wife’s bed, looking up at Jack with his eyes swol en and sad. ‘How does someone do that to themselves? What must be goin’ on in her head?’

Jack came over and stood at the bottom of Lizzie’s bed. ‘I’m sure the doctors here wil figure out what happened to your wife and to these other women. This hospital has one of the best neurological and psychiatric teams in the British Isles.’

‘That’s grand,’ said the husband mournful y, ‘but they can’t heal her ear, can they?’

‘Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?’ asked Jack. ‘I’m trying to figure out what happened to my sister and I think it may be the same thing that happened to your wife.’

‘Real y?’ said Phil, sceptical y. ‘The doctor told me that whatever had happened to make her hurt herself had come from inside Lizzie’s head and the doctor said it weren’t contagious.’

‘I know, and she is the doctor, but I’m curious anyway.’

Across the room one of the other women began spasming. No sooner had she started than Gwen’s body began to jerk and then Lizzie’s, their legs and arms twitching beneath the blankets. As if their movements had been choreographed, each of the women were spasming in unison.

Lizzie’s husband jumped up and began to brush her hair again, believing his touch was making al the difference when his wife settled after a few strokes.

Jack held his hands on Gwen’s feet, keeping her movements limited. He was not so sure his touch or Phil’s had anything to do with what he was suddenly witnessing, as each of the women came out of the spasms at the same.

The rock-hard bad feeling yawned in Jack’s gut.

‘Did your wife have a history of taking drugs, Phil?’ asked Jack, coming back to Lizzie’s bedside while keeping his eye on Gwen. ‘Even if it was only at col ege or in her younger days?’

Phil stopped brushing for a second. ‘Nah. Lizzie was always the straight one, hardly even took a drink, did she. She was always the one who took the car keys when we were out with our friends. Always the mum of the group, making sure the rest of us were right as rain.’

‘What about an emotional trauma in childhood?’

Phil shook his head.

‘An accident of some kind?’

‘The doctor wondered ’bout that too. But my wife’s as healthy as an ox.

Only time she’s ever been in hospital before now was to have the kids. When she’s feeling out of sorts, she goes for a night out wi’ her pals, shakes it off, like. She just got our youngest toilet trained and she were so happy not to be doin’ nappies any more.’

Phil’s voice caught in his throat. Jack poured him a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table. ‘Don’t know what I’m goin’ to tel the kids ’bout this.’

‘You’l think of something, Phil,’ Jack handed him the water. ‘Do you know when her breakdown started exactly?’

‘Was right after lunch four days ago. I’m sure of it. My 9-year-old cal ed me at work and said mum had run out of the house. By the time I got home, police were already there and said she was in emergency. Said that she’d had some kind of a fit in the shop.’

Across the room, Gwen let out a high-pitched moan. ‘Shewvee, Shewvee, Shewvee.’

Jack wanted to ask Phil more questions before the doctor returned and before Mary relieved him, but Gwen was becoming extremely agitated again.

Suddenly al the women were.

Jack wished Phil the best of luck and pul ed a chair up to the right side of Gwen’s bed. He took her hand. The leather restraint on her wrist was lined with cotton, but because Gwen had been fighting against it, her skin underneath the strap’s edge was rubbed raw.

Jack dug around in Gwen’s bedside locker and found some Vaseline.

Scooping some out with a finger, he massaged the ointment into her wounds.

Slowly, she turned her head at his touch. Jack smiled and leaned closer.

Gwen was crying.

‘Jack?’

He smiled, fighting back his own tears. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Jack?’

‘Yes. It’s me.’

She strained to lift herself up, but she couldn’t. Too much pain, too many monitors, too little strength, too tight restraints.

Jack put his hands on her shoulders, settling her gently against the pil ows.

‘Shewvee,’ she slurred, adamantly.

‘Gwen, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand what you’re trying to tel me.’

‘Esh,’ she said, her eyes blazing, her determination fighting against the deepening sedative.

‘S?’ asked Jack, taking her hand again. She squeezed.

‘Shoe. Shoe.’

‘U?’ Gwen squeezed his hand again, but her grip was weakening. The sedative pul ing her under.

‘Gwen, that’s great. The letters S and U.’

‘Wee… wee,’ she whimpered, and then her eyes drooped closed, her mouth slackened, her grip on Jack’s hand loosened and Gwen was silent and stil for the first time in days.

Jack final y understood what she’d been struggling to tel him. Kissing her lightly on the lips, he whispered, ‘Come back, Gwen. Please come back.’

JACK STOOD IN the hal way of the house, deep in thought. Gwen had spel ed out ‘SUV’, but she had drifted into sleep before tel ing him where she had hidden the keys, never mind the vehicle itself.

She wouldn’t have been sloppy in her hiding place because she wouldn’t want Rhys to find them, to know that she had a way to get in touch with him.

Hiding them in plain sight would not be an option. Besides al the household’s keys were on hooks in the kitchen, an extra set would be easily noticed.

Since returning to the house, Jack had already rifled through drawers, cupboards and Gwen’s empty gun locker, the firearms confiscated by the police when she’d attacked Rhys.

He had gone down into the basement and rummaged through boxes of Christmas decorations, old Hal oween costumes, discarded wedding gifts and old bikes. He’d taken apart toilet cisterns, lifted floorboards, and cut into wal s.

He stil had not found the key fob. Jack knew he didn’t have much time to keep looking, expecting that Rhys would be home with Anwen soon after taking Mary to the hospital.

Jack scanned the papered wal s in the hal way, thinking that perhaps he’d missed a safe hidden underneath one of the pictures, but he doubted it. Then he spotted a splash of colour under the bed in Gwen and Rhys’s room.

Reaching underneath, Jack retrieved a book:
The Day of the Triffids
. Jack skimmed the back cover, reading that the book was a post-apocalyptic novel (not Jack’s favourite genre, but clearly Gwen’s or Rhys’s), where a catastrophic event has left a few surviving humans blind while giant man-eating plants with poisonous stingers walk the earth. Jack knew al about
them
– a nasty species.

The book was old, its faded yel ow cover stained and smel ing faintly of cigarettes. Jack opened it, discovering its pages hol owed out and Gwen’s dad’s watch and wedding ring inside. Jack began tossing books from the shelves next to the window. Ten minutes later he found the Torchwood SUV’s key fob hidden in a hardback copy of
Brave New World
. After another twenty minutes, he’d discovered the wrecked vehicle hidden in the nearby lock-up.

Clicking twice on the key, Jack opened the vehicle’s hatch and the wave of images and smel s that assaulted his senses took him to his knees. Oranges and lilies and musk. He could see the team clambering into the vehicle and racing out to the Brecon Beacons, or speeding through the narrow backstreets of Cardiff. Tosh in the backseat, working on her laptop, Owen mocking her mercilessly, Gwen mocking Owen, and Ianto, dear sweet Ianto, taking care of them al . Jack leaned back on his heels and closed his eyes. Ianto touched his cheek, put his lips on Jack’s, his hands moving under Jack’s shirt.

Jack let out a sob, and opened his eyes.

A flock of starlings swooped over a nearby roof, panicking at something, darting higher up into the sky. Jack was aware of a rustling sound, close to the lock-up. He walked back out to the street, peering into the darkness.

A dark sleek puma padded across his line of vision. It stopped, turned its head and stared directly at him, its black eyes twinkling in the moonlight.

Ginger flooded Jack’s mouth. He inhaled slowly, every instinct tel ing him to get away, to flee, to run, but he couldn’t get his feet to move. Jack felt as if he was being held in place, as if hands were pressing down on his shoulders. His knees buckled again. The puma pounced. Jack ducked, shielding his head with his arms, a draft of cold air hitting his face.

When he looked up, the animal was gone. Nauseated, Jack leaned against a wal , calming his breathing, forcing his mind to clear. A car alarm went off in the distance. His stomach ached at the sound.

Jack slid to the ground against the wal , struggling to control his mounting anxiety, his head between his knees. He was fal ing through the sky. The ground rushed up to meet him, the air cutting through his skin. Jack tried desperately to tuck into a bal , but his arms and legs wouldn’t respond, he squeezed his eyes closed and felt the rough stone of the wal behind his back.

For the first time in his long life, Jack felt sheer terror beyond anything he’d experienced when confronting Daleks, or Cybermen, or – No, this kind of terror was making his bones ache, making his heart feel as if someone was squeezing and twisting it, making him doubt his sanity.

Jack crawled inside the SUV. The scent of the memory replaced with the stench of rust and mould and the stink of shit and rotting leaves.

What the hel is happening to me?

What, he wondered as he sat in the corner, his knees against his chest, what if the Doctor and al his theories about his mortality were wrong. What if this was how Captain Jack Harkness was going to end his existence. His body always able to heal itself, reanimate each cel , restructure every muscle, over and over and over again. Life always winning out within him. Perhaps the price of regaining his immortality after the Miracle had been the loss of his memories, his intel igence, his sanity?

Jack knew he could face death. He had faced death. But how could he face life on those terms?

Jack sat in the shel of the Torchwood SUV and sobbed, letting hopelessness burrow deeper into his psyche, letting emotions he’d never experienced in years course through his veins, letting the enemy inside.

Outside the SUV, the puma stalked the perimeter, its head lifted towards Jack. Then it paused, scratched at the ground around the SUV before fading into the darkness, leaving the smel of eucalyptus lingering in its wake.

Jack felt the tremor in his hands, an uncontrol able itch on each tip of his fingers. He clawed his hands across the carpet of the SUV, trying for relief.

The itch spread to his elbows like a mil ion mosquitoes biting him at once. He scrambled out of the vehicle, rubbing his arms against the wal , scraping and tearing the skin. Then he felt the ground rol beneath him. The garage wal s surrounding the SUV began to shake, the corrugated iron door buckling as dust and dirt rained down on him.

In the distance he heard a chorus of car alarms start as a tremor ran up the street, ripping up the pavement like paper and scattering trees. One toppled towards the garage, and Jack threw himself out of its way, his momentum carrying him on into the road. Except there was no road any more – the tarmac was fracturing beneath him.

Jack scrabbled to find his footing, but the ground shook around him, ancient pipes and cable snaking and jumping as the earth buckled. Above him, the little row of lock-ups was col apsing, their wal s bulging and splitting as the water mains burst through them. Jack fought his way onto a patch of road, and clung to it, a tiny island in a gushing torrent of water. He looked up, trying to see a way to get to the SUV before it was too late, but al he could see was the ground yawning further open, a vast, muddy canyon gulping down cars, wheelie bins and benches, bobbing around in a mundane flotil a. He could hear the cries of other people, could see them running as the crevice zigzagged further up the street.

Then, with a sudden rol ercoaster jolt, Jack’s little island slipped forward, tipping him into the churning morass, the blocks of concrete landing on his back, pinning him to the bottom.

Blood pounding in his ears, he tried pushing the blocks off him, but the weight was too much. Choking and flailing, Jack began to drown.

Then a great boom travel ed through the water, and the surging pool around Jack became a sudden rushing current, dragging and tugging at his clothes.

The ground had split stil further, pul ing the plug out of the basin and sucking the water, cars, stonework and flotsam down deep into the ground.

Jack was suddenly grateful for the masonry holding him in place. It was the only thing keeping him from being carried away. As the last of the water vanished, the blocks on top of him started to shift, and Jack pul ed himself coughing to his feet. Al around him was mud, sobbing and devastation. Jack was standing on the lip of a great chasm. Echoing up from it was the gurgle of water and the absurd echo of dozens of car alarms.

He tried to get his bearings and groaned. The street was a ruin. Houses crumpled like they were made of Lego. The lock-ups had gone. And there was no sign of the car.