The Undertakers Gift (25 page)

Smoke poured from Kerko’s gills and mouth as the flesh cooked and then, quite suddenly, it was over. The fierce, hissing crackle that had accompanied the seizure faded and all that was left was a blackened shell. It crumbled to its knees and then collapsed into the steaming water, leaving nothing but smoke and a terrible smell of fried fish.

On the far side of the pool stood Zero, one globby orange hand withdrawing from the water. Energy crackled from the thick fingertips.

‘Thanks,’ Jack said, ‘for the shock ending.’

FIFTY-FIVE

Gwen tapped Ianto gently on the side of his face. ‘Ianto!’ she hissed. ‘Wake up!’

His eyelids fluttered and the eye beneath rolled back into focus.

‘C’mon,’ Gwen insisted. ‘I’m not losing you now. Not now.’

‘What’s the point?’ he breathed. ‘Look. The sky is falling.’

He gestured weakly with his hand, but Gwen didn’t need to look. She had seen the boiling black clouds as they gathered ever more thickly around the gaping wound above. When she had last dared to look, the shimmering luminescence had been filled with movement, twisting and winding like a nest of glowing snakes. The edges flickered with lightning, great ragged bolts leaping to the ground beneath. Several trees and cars were in flames having already been struck, and the wind was blowing the smoke across the ruins of the Black House in dark, choking gusts.

‘I know,’ Gwen said. ‘That’s why I woke you up.’

‘The sky is falling. . .’ Ianto repeated softly. His eyes reflected the fire above.

With a loud crack, lightning forked into the ground not ten feet away. The water in the puddles evaporated in sharp, hissing gasps and Gwen drew closer to Ianto.

‘He isn’t coming back,’ Ianto said.

‘Don’t say that.’

‘He’ll use that wrist-strap again. That code. He’ll use it to teleport himself away again.’

‘Don’t
say
that!’

More lightning crackled down around them, stabbing into the concrete. The rain splattered in the puddles and the wind blew harder, forcing Gwen to crouch lower. Her hair whipped around her head.

‘What’s happening?’ she wailed.

‘I told you. . . the sky is falling. It’s getting lower. The atmospheric pressure is all shot to hell.’

The clouds were swirling, lowering still further, sweeping up leaves and twigs and lashing them angrily across the ground. More lightning smashed into the ground, sending sparks scattering around them. Glowing fragments of concrete sizzled in the puddles.

‘What’s that noise?’ Gwen yelled over the roar of the storm.

‘I can’t hear anything!’

‘Listen!’

They strained to hear but it was difficult over the noise of the wind and rain and lightning. But eventually, faintly, something could be heard.

A growling noise.

‘Animals?’ frowned Gwen.

They huddled closer, fearing the worst – dogs, or perhaps more pitbullfrogs. It was difficult to tell.

The growling increased, became a roar. Long, sustained, getting closer.

‘That’s not an animal,’ realised Ianto.

It smashed through the railings with the deep roar of a diesel engine at full power – a single-decker bus, bouncing across the rubble and skidding to a halt in front of them. Crackling lines of energy surrounded it, jumping back and forth between the broken railings and the clouds above.

The front windscreen of the bus was shattered, obscuring the driver, but when the pneumatic doors flapped open a tall figure bounded out, greatcoat flaring behind him.

Gwen was open-mouthed in disbelief. ‘Jack?’

A broad white grin spilt Jack’s face. ‘Hi, kids!’ he laughed. ‘Miss me?’

‘
Where the hell have you been?
’

‘I had to fetch someone,’ he said. ‘You may know him.’

Something moved in the bus, something glowing with a fierce orange light. As it moved, electricity crackled around the bus in fierce, jagged sparks. It followed Jack off the bus, stepping down amid a web of fizzing energy.

‘Zero,’ said Ianto.

As the orange jelly creature walked slowly towards them, the effect on the sky above was instant and profound.

The clouds suddenly seemed to part and the oily light above bulged downwards in a vast, inverted dome shape. It looked like a gigantic bubble, full of swirling colours. Lightning flowed from the clouds down to the earth, leaping across the concrete in flashing sparks until it reached Zero. Then the energy rose up him, flowing over him, caressing him.

‘What’s happening?’ Gwen cried over the crackling discharges.

‘Reunion!’ Jack yelled back. The rain swirled in the wind, plastering his black hair against his forehead as he watched Zero absorb the lightning bolts.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I said Zero was lost,’ Jack told them, his eyes never leaving the alien. ‘Lost and alone – trapped here on Earth. Well. . .’ He pointed up into the sky as the swelling bubble of colours. ‘That’s Mom. She’s come looking for her boy.’

Gwen stared, wide eyed. ‘But – what is it? Where’s it from?’

‘It’s a Vortex Dweller,’ said Jack. ‘No one knows what they’re really called, or anything much about them – apart from the fact that they exist in the Time Vortex. It’s extremely rare to even glimpse such a thing. But occasionally, once in a million years, they break through into our universe.’

Zero’s bright orange colour suddenly turned a deeper, darker shade and then red, scarlet, purple, blue and green. The colours flowed through him like oil in water, and he instantly resembled the vast creature above.

‘The lightning is how they communicate here,’ Jack was grinning again. ‘Electricity for words – get that!’

‘You mean every time Zero electrocuted someone he was just saying hello?’

‘Yeah!’ Jack was laughing, although he suddenly became serious. ‘I mean, yeah, something like that. . . It’s kinda tragic – but it was an honest mistake. He never meant anyone harm. He just wanted to go home.’

Zero was floating high into the air as they spoke, borne aloft by flickering tendrils of energy. He was heading up towards the creature in the clouds, pulled towards it in a fierce, crackling embrace.

Gwen was on her feet, and she was smiling at the sight. ‘But why – how come the mother has only come now?’

‘My guess? She’s been looking for him – and the temporal fusion bomb has blown open a hole in time and space big enough for her to peep through.’

Zero flew up and up, surrounded by lightning, and suddenly merged into the coruscating colours above.

‘Mommy’s come for him,’ Jack cried. ‘She must have been worried sick and now she’s got her baby back again.’ He grabbed Gwen and Ianto and kissed them both. ‘Oh boy, do I love a happy ending!’

‘Happy ending?’ repeated Ianto. ‘Are you serious? Cardiff has been
totally
destroyed
!’

‘It ain’t over yet.’ Jack squeezed Ianto close, still smiling. ‘What would any worried parent do when they found their lost child?’

‘Well, I don’t know, I’m not a parent. But I imagine they’d be pretty relieved.’

‘They’d be very grateful,’ realised Gwen.

Jack laughed again. ‘You said it.’

And with that, he patted them both on the backside and walked forward alone, looking up at the flickering light show. Zero was now nowhere to be seen, but the shimmering bulge of the parent was still sending bolts of lightning down to earth.

Jack stopped beneath it, still looking straight up, and raised his arms.

‘No,’ said Gwen. ‘Oh no. . .’

And the lightning suddenly converged on Jack, picking him up like a leaf in the wind, scouring through skin and bone, illuminating him from within.

And his screams were awful to hear.

LAST ORDERS

FIFTY-SIX

It was quiet in the pub. It had been quiet all week. The landlord was beginning to wonder if anything was ever going to happen. Cardiff was a wonderful city but sometimes the paying customers needed a bit of a kick up the arse. What he needed was another International at the Millennium Stadium, or another Olympic homecoming, to help bring the punters in.

He sighed, wiping dry the last pint glass. It was nearly throwing-out time and there were only one or two tables with anyone still sitting down. He decided to give it another five minutes before he rang the bell. The three people at the far table looked like they were having a serious conversation, and he was in a generous mood, even if they hadn’t been drinking much.

The two students were nursing their drinks – half a bitter for the lad and a rum and coke for the girl.

The older bloke, clean-cut type in a grey military overcoat, had a glass of water. The landlord remembered him getting the round in. He was a yank, and they were always a bit odd. Good tippers, though.

Jack Harkness pushed the two little white dots across the table. His two companions regarded them dubiously.

‘It’s your choice,’ Jack said quietly.

Rachel Banks looked up at him, straight into his eyes. She could always tell when someone was lying to her. But all she saw in those blue eyes was truth and sincerity. She turned to Wynnie. ‘What do you think?’

He held her hand tightly. ‘Voluntary amnesia? I dunno. . . my mind’s in a bit of a muddle as it is, to be honest.’

‘These pills will un-muddle things for you,’ said Jack. ‘It will be like the last couple of days never happened. You’ll go home, go to bed, and wake up not remembering a thing about it. Hell, you’re students – you must be used to that.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ray said. She looked back at the little white pills. ‘I don’t do drugs. Not ever.’

‘Me neither,’ said Wynnie. He looked at Jack, then shrugged. ‘Well, not much. I mean, nothing serious. But these. . .’

‘Let me just recap,’ Jack said patiently. ‘You have both been through a terrible ordeal. Seeing the funeral cortège, tracking down the pallbearers to the Black House. Meeting Gwen and going down into the cellars. . . all of that happened. There was more—’

‘I know,’ Ray said quietly, flinching. ‘I thought things were bad before – but that. . . those creatures, the gunfire. . .’ She looked at Wynnie and squeezed his hand in both of hers, leaving the sentence unfinished.

‘It got worse than that, believe me,’ Jack said. ‘Unimaginably worse.’

‘How?’

‘I can’t explain that now, and I won’t even try. Because it doesn’t matter. But things were put right again – changed, completely and in ways you can’t imagine or understand. But it will have affected you in ways you may not like, and if you tell anyone about it they won’t ever believe you. That goes for me, Gwen, Torchwood – the whole lot. You can’t write about it, you can’t blog it, you can’t go to the newspapers. That can be a hard thing to bear.’

‘We have each other,’ Wynnie pointed out.

‘That’s why I’m giving you the option.’

‘And what about Gillian?’ Ray asked. ‘She saw it all too.’

‘She’s probably already sold her story to
Hello
,’ said Wynnie.

‘My colleagues are meeting with Gillian,’ Jack said.

Jack’s tone, coupled with a twitch of a smile, suggested that there was more to it than just a meeting, and Wynnie raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re gonna make Gillian forget everything, aren’t you? You’re not giving her the choice.’

‘That’s horrible,’ Ray whispered.

‘It’s sensible,’ argued Wynnie. ‘You know Gillian can’t hold her own water at the best of times. And with all this in her head. . . She’d blab to anyone who’d listen.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And she’d be made into a laughing stock,’ Wynnie continued thoughtfully, as the implications mounted up. ‘Everyone would think she was mad. I mean, we know she
is
, but not like that.’

Ray just stared at the tablets on the table and said nothing.

‘
That
would be horrible,’ Wynnie told her softly. ‘She doesn’t deserve that, does she? Better she comes back as the old Gillian, with nothing in her head at all.’

Even Ray had to smile at that, just a little. ‘Maybe. But why are we being treated differently?’

‘I wanted to see you two together,’ said Jack simply. They both frowned back at him, puzzled, not quite understanding. But they would. They still hadn’t stopped holding hands. Jack smiled at them and then finished the last of his water. He stood up. ‘It’s your choice,’ he said. ‘You call it.’

Later, by the waterfront at Mermaid Quay, he caught up with Gwen and Ianto.

They were battered and bruised – Gwen’s ankle was strapped up and she was using a walking stick, temporarily, and there were some minor cuts and contusions on her face that Jack had assured her would be healed by the time Rhys returned home.

Ianto was in a worse state, of course, although it hardly showed. He was wearing a rather smart Burberry overcoat over a new suit, which hid the heavy bandages Jack knew were wrapped around his chest. A lot of the damage had been undone, but there were still sores. There would probably be scars.