The Apocalypse Stops For No Time Lord [Part Five]
Part Five
It took Bela a second to process what Crowley had said. Then she heard it too. There was a steady beeping coming from the little pouch where she kept her tablet. Fingers fumbling with the zip, she managed to pull the device out. On screen the zombie radar program was still running.
In the centre of the screen were two green dots, Bela and Jack, surrounded by the black mass of the Torchwood headquarters. Just inside the radar’s coverage was a group of red dots. They were moving fast and heading straight for them.
“Bela?” Jack’s question was more of a command than anything, his face drawn tight with worry. “What is it?”
“Zombies, heading this way and fast.” She swallowed heavily. “Please tell me you shut the door behind you.”
Silence. Jack broke it, a shocked look on his face. “Shit.”
Then they were moving, perfectly in sync with each other, sprinting off up the stairs. They hit the winding corridors of Torchwood without missing a step. Jack had been loading the SUV in the courtyard out the back of the building through a gate that essentially served as Torchwood’s back door. With it still open, the zombies could be in the headquarters in seconds.
Bela shoved the tablet back into her belt and pulled out her Glock. Jack matched her movement, both of them sending their guns around corners first. Corner after corner spun by. Up the stairs and through a storage room. Just as they were about to take the last turn, the electricity sparked and died. There was a pause then a blaring alarm shrieked through the building, accompanied by flashing red lights.
‘Proximity alert. Breach on ground level. Lockdown in 10.’
“Move!” Jack grabbed Bela’s arm and yanked her through a door to the left. “Come on! We’ll have to take another exit.”
They pelted across rooms and down corridors, leaping down a short flight of stairs in one stride. They turned the corner as one. At the end of a passage was a rectangle of lamp-lit night, a huge concrete slab falling down across it.
‘5,’ the alarm laughed. Bela sprinted towards the lowering door, legs screaming with exertion.
‘4.’ She was five metres out. The gap was below shoulder-height.
‘3.’ Through the small glass window of the door she could see the stars dotted across the black sky.
‘2.’ With a metre left she dropped to the ground and skidded along the dusty metal floor.
‘1.’ Just in time, she slid under the door, feeling the concrete brush against her forehead.
‘Lockdown complete.’ The alarm shut off and Bela lay gasping on the concrete outside the building, arms grazed where they had scraped across the ground. Slowly she clambered to her feet, looking around for Jack. He wasn’t beside her. There was a heavy thud as something hit the door behind her. Through the window Bela could see the military man staring back at her.
“Jack!” He trudged over to the window at her shout. For a moment Bela had the sudden urge to press her hand against the glass but it quickly faded, replaced by desperation. “Open the gate!”
“I can’t.” Jack’s voice came through the door muffled, barely audible. “The lockdown won’t end until the zombies are dead, gone or controlled.”
“You-” Bela’s voice caught in her throat and she flung herself furiously at the door, smashing fists and feet against the concrete. “Your stupid fucking system!”
“Get out of here.” Jack’s voice was unshakably calm again. “Go and get help.” It wasn’t hard to hear what was behind his words. He might be invincible but neither of them knew what would happen if he got infected. “Meet up with Sherlock. He’ll make a cure.”
“I can’t,” Bela muttered. “I won’t.” She took a deep breath and pushed the tremble from her voice. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Go!”
“I can get you out of th-” The words caught in her throat. Inside the building the alarm had shut off but the lights were still flashing. At the end of the corridor, bathed in red, she thought she saw the shadow of a human. It was just a glimpse over Jack’s shoulder, outlined in red. The light flashed again. It was a zombie, staring down the corridor at the pair.
“What...?” Jack followed her gaze and saw the creature in the next flash of light. Then the corridor was black. Another burst of light and the zombie was charging towards them. Instantly Jack pulled out his revolver and Bela made her decision.
Spinning out of sight, she dropped to her knees. Taking a deep breath she threw her head back. For a moment she struggled to rip her demon soul away from her meatsuit, the black tendrils so deeply imbedded in the flesh. Then she was peeling away. A pillar of smoke exploded from her body.
It had been a long time, years, since she had last been out of her meatsuit. It took her a few precious seconds to calibrate. The world was muffled in grey mist, anything solid showed up as nothing more than black shadows. Living bodies were outlined in glowing colours, like neon lights beyond condensation windows. Human bodies glowed green, demons red, angels white.
Most demons could see the colours in their meatsuits anyway but somewhere along the way, at some point while learning to be human, Bela had stopped looking at the world through demon eyes.
Now she could see it all. Quickly she slipped through the tiny gap between wall and door and into the building. She could see the zombie racing down the corridor, its outline only sparks of green choking under the red coughed forth from its pores. Jack was a strangely thick, dark green, almost black.
Bela didn’t dwell on the colours, just threw herself at the zombie. They met two metres from Jack. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, easy to trickle into the zombie’s body and overwhelm its placid mind. For a moment its thoughts captivated her, full of distorted, kaleidoscopic images dripping like melted wax. Then she was in control.
Instantly she threw up her arms and forced the zombie’s raw vocal chords to work. “Jack, it’s me.”
The military man instantly lowered his gun. “Bela?”
Suddenly the demon was acutely aware that her friend had never seen her in smoke form, had never seen her slip on a human body as easily as thumbing back the safety. She hadn’t reminded him that she could strip a human of control over their body. A fear Bela had never felt before surged through her in waves of heat.
“No, it’s God,” she snapped, defensive words coming as easily as they had come in her human life.
“You were the smoke?” Bela gave a short nod, rolling her shoulders uncomfortably. “Neat trick. Remind me to ask you how that works some time.”
“You’re not bothered by it?” The question sounded pathetic and Bela regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. “I just mean that most people run screaming.”
“Well then that’s another thing we have in common,” Jack replied with a smile and Bela’s thoughts went to all the bullets and blades that couldn’t keep the military man dead. Jack’s words were followed by a screeching roar, echoing from somewhere in the building. Urgency jolting through her, Bela darted over to the door’s control pad.
It was a simple terminal for entering a code to open the door. With the lockdown in place the pad had simply shut down, the buttons and screen completely dead. The only way to open the door now was to get rid of the zombies or get in behind the control pad and short-circuit the system somehow. Bela tried not to wince. She could do this, in theory.
Pushing doubt from her mind, she glanced around and quickly spotted a scalpel in one of the rooms attached to the corridor. The small space was filled with medical supplies for some reason that Bela decided not to ponder upon. Snatching the scalpel, she turned her attention back to the pad.
It was easy enough to lever the casing off the terminal and remove the screws below, pulling the face of the panel away from the wall.
“You’re going to open the gate with that?” Behind the panel was what looked like a multi-coloured mass of spaghetti, wires shoved in haphazardly in a way that was clearly meant to confuse anyone who didn’t have a rather high IQ.
“I’m just that good,” Bela replied, resisting the urge to cross her fingers. Carefully she started grouping the similar coloured wires together, trying to remember what little she had learnt about re-wiring code-locked doors.
Scalpel in hand, she stripped the sheaths off one wire of every colour. The yellow wire was the one she needed, that much she could remember. Now spark the yellow against the red... or was it blue? Since when were there purple wires? Bela couldn’t stop a grim smile. Zombies in Cardiff and she was choosing between the red wire and the blue.
“Fuck it.” Holding her breath, she shoved all the wires together.
Jack’s nervous ‘what?’ was lost in the storm of sparks and a thumping groan as the door sprung up from the ground and slammed into the ceiling. Bela coughed at the acid stench of burning plastic, grinning at the open door.
“Wow,” she pulled her body to its slightly shaky feet. “I really am just that good.”
“Don’t get cocky, kid,” Jack replied with an undeniably impressed shake of his head. “Although it’s a bit late to be saying that now.”
Bela shot Jack a glare before heading back into the medical room. Depositing the scalpel on a metal tray, she grabbed a syringe. Stripping the packaging off, she sent a silent apology to whomever’s body she was inhabiting and stabbed the needle into her arm. A dull pain washed through her mind, more like an ache than anything else thanks to the barrier that existed between a demon mind and a vessel’s body.
Red liquid filled the syringe, thick and darker than Bela had ever seen human blood. Once the syringe was full she slipped it into a small case she found and turned back to the corridor. Jack was waiting for her at the door, an eyebrow raised.
“Sherlock wanted a blood sample.”
Just then pounding footsteps rounded the corner. The corridor flashed red and there was a zombie sprinting towards them. There wasn’t time to think. Jack pulled out his gun, cocked it and fired. The creature collapsed on the ground with a shrieking cry, bullet lodged in its leg.
Its scream was answered. At the end of the corridor another zombie appeared, outlined in red. Darkness as the light flashed away. Then it was back and there were two outlines. The hairs on Bela’s neck stood up. Darkness. Red light. Four zombies.
Bela didn’t wait to see what the pattern was. Spinning around she pressed the case holding the syringe into Jack’s hand and shoved him towards the door. The military man quickly caught on and slipped out into the night, disappearing out of sight.
As soon as he was gone, Bela turned back to the wires spilling from the access panel like the wall’s innards. Instantly she was out of her depth. She had never thought to read instructions on how to close the door again.
Feet started down the corridor towards her. Desperately she shoved the wires together again. Sparks flew but the door didn’t budge. The injured zombie gave a keening cry as the feet carelessly trampled over their fallen comrade.
“Fuck it,” Bela muttered again, mouth twisting into a grimace. Grasping the wires in both hands, she yanked as hard as she could. The panel shrieked, sparks flying like a fireworks display. There was a loud groan and the door fell half a metre from the ceiling then shuddered to a stop. The zombies were five metres away.
Bracing her feet against the wall, Bela pulled again. In a crescendo of sparks, the wires ripped away from the wall and the thief tumbled backwards. Beside her the door dropped to the ground like a guillotine blade, screeching as it met the metal floor.
A second later the zombies slammed into the door, teeth bared against the unyielding concrete. A few crashed to the ground, bodies sprawling over Bela. Instinctively she scrambled backwards, head knocking against the wall behind her. The creatures barely noticed her, preoccupied with the confusion of a closed door, genuine looks of bewilderment on their faces.
Carefully Bela pushed herself to her feet, backing away from the zombies. They still didn’t notice her, milling around the door, a few of them pressing at the concrete as if they might simply fall through to the other side. They seemed achingly innocent, like lost creatures who just couldn’t understand, or children without parents to explain the world to them. Behind her, the injured zombie screamed again, but no one cared.
Bela tossed her body’s head back and forced her way out of the zombie meatsuit. The grey world once more took over. Slipping through the group of zombies, she slid back between the door and the wall, billowing back out into the night.
Jack’s dark green form was hunched over next to the wall. Across his knees was the fast-fading outline of Bela’s body, coloured in a strange black that seemed to spark every now and then. It was the colour of those bodies who were just empty vessels, deserted by their owners and slowly dying. It was the colour of those things that weren’t yet dead but hadn’t been truly alive for a long time.
Before the glow was gone, Bela slipped back into her body, easily slotting back into the hollowed out inside. For a moment she lay completely still, revelling in the warm rush of feeling that was so distinctly human. She had missed it, the threads that tied her to this body, all the feelings that had belonged to her in the previous life. It was comforting even if it was just the pretence of humanity.
“Bela!” Suddenly she realised that Jack was called her name, voice edged with concern. His hands were on her shoulders, shaking almost viciously. “Come on!”
“Relax,” she muttered. “I just went out for a smoke.” She opened her eyes and grinned up at Jack’s glare.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
“Yes, sir,” Bela said with a smile. Carefully she extracted herself from his lap, clambering to her feet. Jack took the hand she offered and, as soon as he was standing, pulled her into a tight hug. Body betraying her resolve, Bela looped her arms around the military man’s neck and tried not to think about his fingers digging into her back.
“Don’t do that again,” Jack growled against her ear.
“Yes, sir,” she whispered. “No more saving your ass.”
“Come on.” Jack was smiling when they pulled apart and Bela instinctively answered with a smile of her own. The Torchwood SUV was waiting for them around the corner. Jack glanced over to where a zombie was pressed against the window of another concrete door. “Remind me never to leave the back door open again.”
“And here I thought you liked taking the back door,” Bela quipped as she headed around to the passenger side.
“Bela Talbot,” Jack gave her an impressed look. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, sir.” She winked over the top of the SUV before climbing in.
It wasn’t until she was sitting in her seat that Bela realised she had no idea where they were going and, honestly, she didn’t know where they could go. It wasn’t like she had anyone out there who would take them in and if Jack had family or friends, he never mentioned. The Torchwood headquarters had been her home, sleeping in the top levels of the building, eating at paper-strewn tables. There had been no need for her to know any other places in Cardiff.
“What now?” She asked as soon as Jack was in the car.
“We make ourselves useful until Sherlock and John get here,” Jack replied easily, thoughts already ordered as though losing the headquarters had been his plan all along. “We need to go back to that warehouse and see if there’s some way we can trap the zombies inside like these ones.”
“If these ones have got this far, surely the others would have escaped as well?”
“Unless whoever is controlling them knows we’re trying to stop them. They might’ve thought those zombies would take us out.”
Bela nodded and then a thought struck her. Instantly her hands flew to her belt, pulling the tablet out of its pouch. Apart from a couple of new scratches, the device was unharmed. Fingers crossed, Bela turned on the display and opened the zombie radar program. For a moment the tablet stalled, trying to locate the Torchwood network. Then the little green dot of the SUV appeared, fleeing from the infested headquarters.
“God, I’m good,” Bela laughed, tilting the tablet towards Jack in answer to his raised eyebrows. “Toshi automatically powers off all electronics including herself in a lockdown but I wrote a secondary program which allows one server to keep running. It can only be accessed electronically and only by me. I’ve got a few files and programs on there, most recently our zombie radar. So long as our captives don’t get into the server room, we still have all the digital essentials.”
“You wrote a program to alter my lockdown procedure?” Jack’s voice was flat and distinctly unimpressed. “And you didn’t tell me?”
Bela coughed awkwardly. “Yes?”
“Of course you did.” A smile appeared on Jack’s face and he chuckled lightly. “Of course you did.”
“Were you expecting anything different?”
“No really.” Jack shot a grin at her. “I guess that’s why I-”
Abruptly his words were choked out by a roaring in Bela’s head. For a moment pain streaked through her mind and it felt as though fingers were plunging through her skin. The phantom hand clenched around her insides in a tight, hot grip and started to rip her away from the world. Grey smoke filtered in to blur out her vision, soaking away the colours of the world.
Just as the SUV was about to drop away, Bela managed to shove her tablet at Jack. For a heartbeat she felt his skin against hers and just maybe, she heard him call her name. Then it was gone; Jack, the SUV, the deserted Cardiff streets. Everything was black.
Slowly she opened her eyes. It had been a long time since she had last been summoned and she had forgotten how it felt. Around her everything was white tiles, various metal implements and chains hanging from the ceiling. On the floor was a pentagram, Bela in the middle. Standing in front of her was Crowley, clad in fluffy bunny-rabbit slippers.
“Bela Talbot,” he smirked and his meatsuit’s eyes narrowed. “I’m so glad that you could make it.”
“I wish I felt the same way,” Bela hissed. “What do you want Crowley?”
Slowly the King of Hell sauntered over to one of the metal tables cast about the room. Picking up a knife, he ran a finger along the flat of the blade and smirked. Bela’s blood ran cold as she recognised the marks on the surface. She knew that blade, had seen it set golden fireworks sparking through demon’s bodies.
“Ah, so you do know this one.” Crowley laughed humourlessly. “Of course you do. You profession was - how did you put it? - To ‘procure unique items’. What’s more unique than a knife that can hurt a demon?”
Crowley flicked his hand and chains skimmed across the room, wrapping around Bela’s wrists before she could realise what was happening. Instinctively she lashed out, trying to free herself. Desperately, she reached for the threadbare vestiges of what little demonic power she had. They did nothing, atrophied like limbs that had ceased to be used. As she struggled the chains tightened, yanking her arms up until she was barely touching the floor.
“I hate to use such a cliché,” Crowley murmured. “But the harder you struggle, the tighter they will be.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Bela growled through gritted teeth. “You’re the son of Satan trapping girls in torture chambers. There’s no way anyone would think you’re a cliché.”
“Perhaps, but how many Kings of Hell have made zombie apocalypses?”
The words hit Bela like bricks and human part of her flinched away. Crowley was laughing at her shock, eyes cold and cruel. Electric sparks of fear ran along her spine and all she could think was that she had been wrong, so terribly wrong. While Crowley had prepared to rip the world apart, they had been chasing shadows. Human ashes would fall like snow on a time-ravaged world and Bela would know it was all her fault. If she survived that long.
“You should see your face.” Crowley let his mouth drop open, eyes widening in a mock-surprised expression. “Good look on you, darling.”
“How?” It was the only word Bela could choke out, asked before she could properly think about it, the ritual to call the horsemen looping in her head. “You’re-”
“- the son of Satan. A lovely title.” Crowley smirked and Bela couldn’t help but wonder if his meatsuit could hold anything but a twisted mind. “You should pay more attention to your lesser known translations. I managed to tickle a different ritual from a friend. ‘Fifteen of Satan’s followers and one of God’s daughters. Split the world to bring forth the slaughterers’. It rhymes and everything.”
“God’s daughter?” Bela’s voice was thick, the words barely recognisable. Fear coated her insides like mud trying to suck the air from her body.
Crowley spread his hands in front of him, the knife cradled in his upturned palm. “There’s no one closer to God than the demon who wants to be human.”
Bela was sure the world tilted then, the scales tipping until she couldn’t tell up from down, couldn’t feel gravity holding her steady. If the chains hadn’t been holding her up like a puppet on strings, her legs would’ve given way.
“You’re insane.” Everything was spinning out of control but Bela’s voice was somehow holding steady.
“Really?” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “That’s the best you’ve got?” He lazily waved a hand and the pentagram disappeared. More chains slinked across the floor, metal snakes that wound around Bela’s legs. A dusty cloth gag slipped into her mouth and instinctively Bela screamed. Jack’s name was the first thing that came to mind but the word barely registered, muffled like a daughter’s protests or the presence of an apathetic mother. Crowley sauntered over, knife twirling between his fingers.
“Of course I’m insane, darling. That’s what Hell does. You’ll remember soon enough.” The tip of the knife rested against her skin, not quite digging into the flesh, just waiting there like a lover’s teasing touches. “I want to know where the rift’s weakest point is and you’re going to tell me.”
The knife pressed forward, slicing through skin. Bela felt it, pain clearer than anything she had felt since the years she spent in Earth’s basement. She had forgotten what it was like to truly feel, not to have that barrier between mind and body, stripped down by the knife that could kill demons. Blood trickled down her arm and she promised herself she wouldn’t cry.
“Do let me know if this hurts.” The knife shoved deeper and Bela screamed Jack’s name again.
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| Part Six |