Risk Assessment (13 page)

Behind her, the big black blob, glistening under all that water, reached out casually and consumed a fire engine.

The Vam exulted. These creatures knew about it and they feared it. That was the true feast of the Vam. The sheer joy of what it was doing fuelled its expansion, and it swelled and twisted, sucking the very last of the toy shop into itself and swelling out. It realised it was surrounded – the forces of the locals making a first doomed attempt at containment, with all their little vehicles, or, as the Vam thought of them, snacks.

It considered what to do next, idly popping out a few thousand eyes to watch the conflagration beneath. Obviously it was going to expand, to surge and devour, but in which direction? It could sense a large cluster of. . . suburban dwellings on the other side of the road. The crowd which was currently watching it, learning to fear and curse the name of the Vam, why, they had streamed from them in curiosity. The Vam could just extend out a little way and take them with very, very little effort.

So it did.

‘Get back!’ screamed Gwen. Everyone had been busy watching one side of the creature devouring the fire engine, but she’d noticed the back swell out and start to topple over onto the watching crowd. She grabbed a discarded loudhailer that the emergency services had been using to shout at each other and screamed into the crowd, ‘Run!’

The crowd heard her, but stood frozen, staring at the surging mass.

A lone photographer ran forward, crouching down in front of the monster. Horrified, Gwen screamed at him through the loudhailer. ‘For Christ’s sake get out of the way, you bloody idiot!’

The crowd’s natural deference to someone in authority – perhaps mixed with their vague feeling that it wasn’t all that usual to be sworn at through a loudhailer – prompted almost everyone to leg it. But the photographer stood his ground, trying to get the perfect shot. Which he did. And then the Vam ate him and then his camera.

A sticky black curtain poured down between Gwen and the crowd. She could see them running away, and that was all she needed to know.

Then the beast, as though sensing that she had warned its prey, splattered and oozed down on her.

Agnes looked up from the microscope. ‘Fascinating. Complex hydrocarbons, elementary protein strains. This is like a primordial soup that was too lazy to bother evolving out of the swamps and just. . . became a self-regenerating organism.’ She giggled. ‘I suppose you’re all rather used to the principles of Mr Darwin, but I must admit, I still find it all rather novel. Even when I’m confronted by marvels of creation that outclass anything offered by the Galapagos, I’m still. . .’ She smiled. ‘This is an extraordinary example of an efficient, lethal being.’

‘It’s petrol,’ said Jack. ‘It’s petrol that thinks.’

‘Actually,’ muttered Ianto, ‘strictly speaking, it’s closer to diesel.’

‘What?’ Agnes looked at them both. ‘And you really. . .?’ She stopped, frowning. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I just need to go and check something on your internet.’

‘OK,’ said Jack. ‘While you do that, I’ll just upload our results to a concerned colleague at UNIT. She’s our unofficial scientific adviser – and she may be able to offer a slightly more complex analysis.’

Agnes waved a hand distractedly at him. She was already sat down at a terminal, pulling information out of it.

‘Righto,’ sighed Ianto. ‘I’ll make some tea, then.’

Gwen was still alive, marvellously. She wasn’t quite so sure about everyone else around her, but the noise and the smell were extraordinary. It was like a gas station mixed with rotten trout. And it was everywhere.

She opened her eyes, and realised she was buried under bricks that were shifting as though some enormous weight was. . . Oh God. The thing was on top of her. The bricks ground and shifted as the black mass moved, and pressed down against her. . . and then suddenly went away.

Gwen, gagging, eyes watering from the stench, pulled herself gently up. She’d have liked to think she sprang up immediately, but it actually took her about two minutes before she plucked up the courage to move. Her body had just frozen with the sheer horror of it all.

She realised that all that had been on top of her was a tendril of the creature, which was shifting its shape, rolling out thick coils across the ground as it moved its bulk. She scrambled out from under the bricks and stood watching as it swept some abandoned cars towards itself. Ahead of her, she realised, were a few scattered policemen. She looked for a face she recognised in the crowd but couldn’t see any. A camera crew had assembled by a toppled ambulance, trying to get a picture lit. Some firemen stood around in a desultory fashion. Behind her, she was aware, the crowd had re-formed.

Her phone rang. It said ‘withheld’, which promised yet another furious government official. She nerved herself for the inevitable.

As she took the call, she watched one of the firemen being hunted by a flapping tendril. It closed in on him, and he threw out a hand to defend himself. Instead, it latched on to his hand, and dragged him towards itself. Colleagues ran towards him, trying to free him from the tendril. Instead it flowed under him and snared them too, pulling them in a leisurely, macabre tug of war towards itself. With shouts and yells, they braced themselves, pulling in a macho fashion, with some laughter and encouragement. But gradually they realised the hopelessness of their situation and just pulled back against the inevitable.

The crowd started to scream and cry. Some brave souls rushed up, and they too became ensnared, inching painfully towards the bulk of the monster.

Gwen switched off her phone mid-rant and just watched, horrified.

Agnes stood up from the terminal and crossed over to Jack. ‘Did you send those findings on to your United Nations contact?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘And they’re very interested.’

‘I bet they are,’ snapped Agnes. ‘You are to have no further communication with them.’

‘What?’ said Jack. ‘But—’

‘They’ve reached the same conclusions about this creature as I have myself. And they leak like a colander. In the last two minutes I have had offers of assistance from the Kremlin, from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and from the Oval Office. It is vitally important that we get back to that creature before anyone else does.’

There was nothing they could do. Onlookers stood by the sweating, crying chain of people, carefully not touching them, just watching, not meeting any of their desperate eyes.

Gwen ran up. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the first fireman.

‘Ted,’ he replied. ‘I’ve caused all of this, haven’t I?’

‘No,’ said Gwen. ‘It’s a trap, that’s all.’

He strained, trying to lift a hand from the impossibly viscous mass that was oozing around his wrists and then he looked at her. ‘Can you get my phone?’ he pleaded.

Gwen reached out, and then stopped. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I daren’t touch you.’

‘Oh God,’ he sobbed, and was dragged another step closer to the monster. ‘I want to phone my girlfriend.’

‘Sure,’ said Gwen. ‘Just tell me the number.’

He shook his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘That’s the problem. I don’t know. I can never remember it. I just want to speak to her.’ He looked up at the shuddering mass, now so close to him, and he turned back to Gwen, his eyes as frightened as a child’s. ‘Oh God,’ he breathed. ‘I’ve not got long have I?’ He slumped forward, the tendril jerking him even closer.

Gwen nearly reached out to him, but stopped herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But it’s OK. Tell me her name – I can find the number out. The people I work for are very good.’

‘Ianto?’

‘Yes?’

‘Can you get me a number for a Lorraine Leung?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘It’s important, that’s all.’

Gwen held the mobile as close to the man as she dared.

‘The mobile you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Please call again later.’

The man just stood there, shaking all over, and was dragged even closer to the beast’s shimmering surface.

As the SUV roared up the road, the sky around them darkened. The creature had raised itself up, almost blocking out the sun. It looked like a swollen cloud come to Earth.

Sat in the front seat, Agnes looked at it. And she smiled, slightly.

The fireman screamed as his hand touched the surface of the creature, flowing around and sucking him in.

Gwen stood, watching, crying. ‘I’m sorry,’ she shouted. ‘Sorry!’ She wanted to reach out, to touch him as he struggled, but she kept her hands by her sides. ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

Ted drew breath as his body vanished into the creature, his head twisting around to look at her. The black gel oozed around his face, pouring into his eyes and his nose. His mouth opened wide and screamed. And then the scream stopped, and Gwen was just staring at a wide-open mouth poking out of the shuddering black mass.

The mouth spoke. ‘This is the feast of the Vam,’ it said.

And then the fireman pulled the rest of the crowd in after him.

And Gwen Cooper stood and watched.

Agnes strode from the SUV, magnificent in the face of crisis. She passed the stunned onlookers with barely a glance, pausing only to look at Gwen, standing in mute shock, staring at an abandoned shoe.

Agnes smiled tightly at her, then lifted up a loudhailer. She was speaking to the crowds, she was speaking to the news crews filming from a distance, she was speaking to the helicopters that were now buzzing cautiously above the mass, and, Gwen realised, she was speaking to the creature itself.

There, on a ravaged car park off the Penarth Road, the Vam was addressed by a confident woman in a thoroughly starched dress, neatly tied bonnet and spotless gloves.

‘My name is Agnes Havisham, and I claim this creature on behalf of the British Empire.’

XI

MRS

GENERAL

In which Captain Harkness finds himself overruled, and he seeks consolation from a surprising quarter

Across galaxies of suffering, the Vam had seen many things. But even it popped out a few dozen extra eyes to survey the woman standing calmly in front of it. She did not seem afraid.

Curious.

Jack hadn’t even made it out of the car. At the sound of Agnes’s words, he sank back into his seat with a groan. Ianto Jones had seen Jack Harkness shot, stabbed and shagged to death, but only now did he see the life go out of him.

Ianto hurried round to him. Jack sat in the car seat, eyes fixed quietly on the flickering blue dashboard. He let out another groan and shut his eyes. Ianto stood there, torn between staying with Jack and running over to Agnes and Gwen.

When Jack spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper. ‘If I count to ten and open my eyes, will that woman still be here?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Ianto quietly.

‘Lie to me.’

‘She will most certainly be gone, yes.’

‘I don’t pay you enough.’

Jack opened his eyes and looked at Agnes with a despairing fury. He hoisted himself out of the car, his hand, just casually, brushing through Ianto’s hair. ‘Enough of this,’ he said, his voice firm.

He pulled his coat around him and strode over to Agnes.

Agnes was staring defiantly up at the Vam, while also quietly acknowledging the focused searchlights of the world’s media. She stared raptly into the black shimmering mass of the beast and smiled.

Gwen stood next to her, her face streaked with tears.

‘Jack,’ said Gwen. ‘You missed some pretty fantastic people.’

‘I know,’ he said quietly, and turned to Agnes. ‘Agnes. . .’ he began softly.

The smile snapped off and she turned to stare at Jack, an eyebrow raised.

‘Enough of this,’ said Jack, his voice sounding like a grinding millstone. ‘Enough bloody bonnets and la. It was all very well as a private joke, but it stopped being funny when you started World War Three.’

Agnes blinked, then grinned. ‘You treasure,’ she said, sweetly. She swept a lace-wrapped arm up towards the creature. ‘That, Jack, is the future. And it is beautiful.’

‘This is sick,’ said Gwen, loud and fierce.

If Agnes was disappointed, she didn’t show it. She tilted her head, slightly. ‘Yes, Mrs Cooper, it is. But it is progress. I discover that the twenty-first century is a slave to oil. It can’t escape – every alternative it explores is more costly, more destructive, more futile than making energy from fossil paste. And this creature is the answer: it takes almost anything –
anything
– and converts it into the fuel you are so dependent on. Very efficiently, I might add. Wales has overnight become the most oil-rich country in the world.’

Ianto made a noise. If it had been anyone else, it would have been described as a wolf whistle, but this was Ianto.

Even Jack blinked.

‘No,’ Gwen stood her ground. ‘I’ve seen what that creature does! It is vicious, it is cruel, and we’ve got to stop it.’

‘Gwen’s right,’ shouted Jack. ‘That creature kills. That is all it does. It devours. Look at it – you saw what it did in that toy store. How can you possibly even think of this? We have to destroy it. It’s like asking Hannibal Lecter – oh you won’t get that, will you. . . Look, it’s like asking a cannibal to do your catering.’