THREE

The wedding dress wasn’t ready. Gwen Cooper sat calmly in the food court while bridesmaid Megan got angry on the bench beside her. ‘It’s an outrage, is what it is,’ Megan snapped. ‘How do you know it’ll even be ready in time for the wedding? Worst thing that could happen.’

‘The way you’re going on, you’d think this was your wedding dress!’ Gwen sipped her cappuccino and smiled. She could think of lots of worse things, including yesterday evening’s encounter with Ianto, a slime creature, and a mop and bucket. But none that she could tell Megan about. ‘C’mon, let’s make the most of it. We can look for my going-away outfit. There’s a sale on in Happy, I saw signs in the window.’ She checked her watch: nearly half ten. ‘We might still beat the rush.’

Megan looked liked she’d prefer to go back into Best Day Bridal and tear another strip off the unfortunate manageress.

Gwen rubbed Megan’s arm. ‘Mum insisted I get something special. “Don’t want that snooty cow Brenda sniping as your car leaves for the airport” is how she put it.’ She knew Megan could be jollied out of her mood by a good grumble about Rhys’s formidable mum. Soon to be Gwen’s formidable mother-in-law.

‘Don’t like this place,’ announced Megan as they negotiated a path through the mid-morning rush of Pendefig Mall shoppers. ‘Flowers are all fake. Never a bin when you need one. The toilets are miles away on the top floor. And the place is heaving with bloody English students this time of year.’

‘What about Southampton Simon you went out with? He was a post-grad, wasn’t he?’

‘Exactly,’ said Megan with a finality that brooked no further argument. She popped her head up above the crowd, like a meerkat. ‘There, what about Valley Girl? They had some fantastic Vivienne Westwood jackets.’

Shoppers were looking to the opposite side of the mall. Shouting and a ripple of people down the escalator indicated someone shoving his way down. Gwen fought the temptation to go over – she was emphatically off-duty, and now was not the time for a spot of community policing. She followed Megan. When she tucked her handbag firmly under her arm, she could feel the butt of her Torchwood handgun. Off-duty, maybe, but never off-guard.

‘I am loving your boots, by the way.’ Megan appraised Gwen’s black, calf-length footwear. ‘Converse?’

‘Belstaff,’ admitted Gwen.

‘God!’ shrieked Megan. ‘They pay you well enough in Special Ops, then. How much?’

Gwen didn’t like to admit how much she’d spent on them. She hadn’t told Rhys yet. ‘They’re a bit of a bugger after a couple of hours,’ she admitted. ‘Wearing them because I want to make sure the jacket will go-with, you see.’

‘How about this? It’s waisted, apparently.’ Megan picked out a tailored anthracite jacket. ‘Just the thing for the hen night, eh?’ she brayed. ‘We’ll all be wasted.’

Gwen held the jacket against herself. It was the sort of thing she’d have bought without a second thought before she joined Torchwood. Now she found herself considering the practicalities of washing alien grime out of designer gear. Nothing with ‘Dry-Clean Only’ these days, if she could help it.

‘It says “Anglomania” on the label.’ Megan sucked her cheeks in. ‘Lovely thing, though. So I won’t tell Rhys if you won’t.’

Gwen slipped on the jacket and examined her reflection in a tall mirror. She politely declined Megan’s offer to hold her bag, instead putting her foot on the strap. ‘Does this make my arse stick out? And if you can’t be kind, Megan, at least have the decency to be vague.’

Megan cackled. ‘I used to say that to Banana Boat. Not that he took the hint.’ She affected to remove a piece of lint from the arm of Gwen’s jacket. ‘Is he back in the country?’

‘Missing him?’

‘Like a hole in the head.’ Megan wrinkled her nose. ‘That was a bigger mistake than Dr Simon.’

‘Or Geraint Honess.’

Megan groaned theatrically. ‘Still, if I had those three in front of me and a shotgun with two barrels, know who I’d kill and who I’d spare?’ She cocked her head to one side, but didn’t wait for Gwen’s answer. ‘I’d shoot that idiot Banana twice, to be completely sure.’

‘And then smash his head with the stock!’ laughed Gwen.

‘Stock? Listen to you,’ noted Megan.

Gwen looked away. ‘Firearms training,’ she muttered.

Megan’s mood seemed to have brightened, though. ‘Anyway, this isn’t a shotgun wedding is it. Is it?’ she asked again teasingly.

Gwen didn’t respond. Through the open frame of the shop doorway, something outside had caught her eye. An all-too familiar hunched shape in a leather jacket was shoving through the crowd, spitting and snarling.

‘Stay here,’ Gwen said. She picked up her bag and ran through the exit and towards the Weevil.

‘You clumsy bastard!’ snapped Jenny Bolton. ‘I’ll have you.’ The yob had barged into her, and spun her into an old woman tugging a wheeled shopping basket. Jenny had been in the middle of phoning her mum, to find out where she had got to. The phone was a birthday present from her mum. So where was she? Supposed to be outside Boots a quarter of an hour ago. Jenny wasn’t going to wait all day, was she?

The yob was still shoving his way through the crowd ahead of her with an odd sort of lolloping walk. He careered into a gaggle of teenagers who were entering Valley Girl. A burly goth with long black hair and startling kohl eyes grabbed the yob by the lapels of his leather jacket. ‘Watch it, mate,’ said the goth slowly and calmly. ‘Other people here. Can’t you see through that mask?’ Other shoppers seemed unsure whether to stare or look away in embarrassment, avoiding involvement. Not Jenny. She fumbled with her phone’s camera setting. Take a photo, get him banned. Fed up of being knocked about.

What was wrong with him, anyway? All that scrubby pale hair, could be alopecia. Or chemo. Jenny had momentary second thoughts about the photo. Then the yob gave a weird guttural roar and lunged at the goth, head-butting him. The goth yelled, tumbled backwards, blood on his face.

The yob whirled round, sweeping his surroundings with a roar. It was a horribly realistic mask – red-eyed, drooling, and now flecked with blood. Jenny’s thumb jerked, almost involuntary, on the shutter button. The flash flickered, the yob threw up a clawed hand.

‘Gotcha,’ said Jenny. Except she hadn’t. She’d been distracted by the camera flash, and the yob must have slipped away into the crowd.

A young woman skidded to a halt beside her. Long black hair, straight-cut fringe, bit of a wild look in her eyes. Nice jacket, noticed Jenny, but the security tag was still on the sleeve. That would explain the beeping alarms. An angry blond lad – blue Valley Girl shirt, pink face – grabbed her shoulder. The dark-haired woman delved into her handbag and brandished an ID at him: ‘Leave it. I’m Gwen Cooper, with the police.’

‘Police don’t shoplift,’ snapped the angry lad. His pink face paled when Gwen Cooper replaced her ID with a handgun.

A space appeared in the crowd. Gwen Cooper closed her free hand over Jenny’s phone and shut it so that Jenny couldn’t photograph her. ‘Did you see where it went?’

Jenny shook her head mutely.

The armed woman was fishing something else out of her bag. Too small to see what, but she was poking it into her ear with her finger. ‘Tosh,’ she was saying now. But anything else was lost in another shattering roar behind her.

Two more yobs smashed through the nearby fire doors and charged their way through the crowd. A strong blast of cold air gusted through the mall behind them. Newspapers and leaflets whirled and spun. Shoppers tumbled aside, sprawled onto the floor, their bags bursting and the contents scattering. Several people howled in shock and pain as the masked hooligans forced their way past. Screams mixed with the howl of the wind. There were tears and blood. The yobs slashed at people with knives, like talons in their hands. The crowds shrank back as the yobs shoved past and fled for the exit doors.

A wall of cowering shoppers shied backwards, inadvertently pressing Jenny against the plate glass of Valley Girl. A stiletto scraped her instep, a damp umbrella pressed against her face. She could hear the glass behind her creaking. Panicked, Jenny jabbed with her elbows and shuffled sideways as best she could. She managed to squirm off the window and practically fell through a pair of fire doors.

Jenny staggered into an echoing space of cold air. These were the emergency stairs. The fire doors had swung closed. She peered through their tall, narrow windows and saw the crowd was still thronged outside. No way past, so she decided to take the stairs and cut across the upper floor instead.

On the next landing she found a torn leather coat. Further up the stairway was the slumped body of another yob, still wearing his face mask. Had he fallen? Maybe he was drunk. He smelled as though he’d shat himself. Jenny ventured closer. ‘You all right there?’

There was so much blood. One of the figure’s arms had been torn off. The arteries had sprayed out over the stairs and up the wall. She could see that it wasn’t a person, more like a savage ape. Who would dress an animal up like that yob in the mall? She still had her phone in her hand, so she checked the picture she’d taken – the creature was unmistakably the same. In the confusion before, she must have forwarded it to her mum. Her mum was returning the call.

Jenny whimpered as she pressed Receive. Then she shrieked as the fire alarm went off.

The clamour disturbed something else in the stair well. Jenny hadn’t noticed it where it had spread itself on the underside of the stairs. A hellish bat-like creature dropped in front of her, the size of a large dog. It surveyed her with pitiless, pitch-black eyes.

The phone dropped from her hands and skittered down the stairwell. Jenny’s desperate thought was: ‘If I’ve broken that phone, my mum’ll kill me.’

But it wasn’t her mum that killed Jenny Bolton.

Gwen couldn’t understand where the abrupt rush of air was coming from. Even if they’d opened loading doors somewhere, it shouldn’t whip up this kind of through current. She cupped her left hand awkwardly over her right ear. ‘I can barely hear you, Tosh. Get back-up to Pendefig Mall. I got two uncontained Weevils, and it’s a mess.’

‘I said, I thought it was your day off,’ shouted Toshiko. ‘Anyway, back-up isn’t available.’

Gwen pursued the fleeing Weevils away from Valley Girl and through the yelling crowds, unable to take a shot for fear of hitting a terrified bystander. Most of the shoppers jumped aside, and those that didn’t were slashed by the Weevils. Gwen couldn’t remember seeing these alien creatures in crowds like this before. Maybe that was what had spooked them. The ugly brutes kept glancing over their shoulders as they tore through the mall. Eventually they must have spotted natural light from the glass entrance doors that led out into the street, and their pace increased.

She half-considered abandoning her expensive boots, because the heels made chasing at full pelt quite difficult. But by the time she’d tugged them off her feet, the Weevils would be long gone.

The fire alarm went off, startlingly loud. A new ripple of uncertainty ran through the crowd.

The Weevils slammed into the glass doors on the hinge edges, and bounced off. Gwen took careful aim at the nearest one, but her target was obscured by a woman running across her line of fire. Gwen stepped calmly aside and refocused. But the Weevils had given up their brief assault on the exit. A fire door opened in the flanking wall. The Weevils leaped for the gap, knocking aside a startled janitor whose dropped bucket clattered down the steps after them.

‘Bloody hooligans!’ he bellowed after them. Further remonstrations died in his throat as Gwen squeezed past him, her gun ready.

The stairs led to the service area in the basement. In the blissful absence of screaming shoppers, the loudest noises were the hum of equipment and the insistent clamour of the fire alarm. Even the sound of rushing wind was replaced with the whine of air-conditioning systems. Gwen could finally hear Toshiko yelling at her through her earpiece. ‘OK, you’re very loud and clear now, Tosh.’ Her own soft voice echoed oddly in the concrete stairwell.

Toshiko’s voice crackled in her ear again. ‘I’m on my way.’

‘Who’s looking after the shop?’

‘I’ve left the pet in charge.’

‘Does a pterodactyl know how to answer a phone?’ hissed Gwen.

‘Pteranodon,’ retorted Toshiko.

‘Yeah, that’d make a difference. What about everyone else?’

‘Jack’s out in Newport with Ianto. Checking out Rift activity.’

‘Is that what they’re calling it now?’

‘Suspicious peak in the readings around a church,’ continued Toshiko. ‘And Owen’s doing that hotel investigation. So it’s just you and me. See you soon.’

The connection dropped.

Gwen continued down the cold, grey-painted steps. Smears of blood on the walls showed where the Weevils had pressed against them on their headlong flight down the stairs.

The lighting in the maintenance corridor hummed overhead. One fluorescent tube with a faulty starter struggled to come on, sparking its fitful illumination. Gwen tried to get her bearings. If Toshiko had been there, she’d have called up a schematic of the mall on her PDA and picked out their precise location with GPS. Gwen didn’t have the time to get her PDA out of her handbag, never mind work out how to interface it to the mall’s wireless network. From what she remembered of the sloping ground where Pendefig was built, this maintenance corridor below the main shopping area would lead out into the rear of the mall and the loading areas.

In a pool of light fifty metres ahead, one of the Weevils had stopped. It hunched down against a wall, quivering. Beneath it was a crumpled body. Another human victim, thought Gwen, a hot flush of anger suffusing her. Killed and eaten by the alien. No matter how many victims she’d seen since joining Torchwood – and it must have been dozens – she was determined never to get hardened to this. She’d known mates in the police who joked about the street detritus that they encountered, like they were objects and not people. They’d be shaken out of their cold indifference, she thought, if they’d seen how animals from other worlds really did treat humans like bags of meat. And then they might have a bit more respect even for Queen Street’s stinking vagrants or Friday night drunks slumped outside the Adonis Bar.

The Weevil was shaking its head slowly over the body. It wasn’t eating, it was mourning. The body in its arms was the other Weevil. Gwen almost laughed as she trained her gun on it. The surviving Weevil was trying to make itself look small, even in plain view. Did it think she wouldn’t see it?

It wasn’t hiding from her, though. It was now staring, terrified, at something opposite.

Another creature squatted just inside the overlapping plastic doors of a storage area. Gwen saw its breath steaming the cloudy, scratched plastic.

Abruptly, it lunged through the doors. The Weevil flinched, but did not flee. It was transfixed to the spot, or resigned to its fate. The attacker plunged its bestial face into the Weevil’s neck and shook it like a dog with a toy. The Weevil let out one pitiful, high-pitched squeal before sagging against the wall.

Gwen choked in horror. And the attacking creature immediately snapped its head up in her direction. It was the size of a Labrador. Its scaly black body had strong rear limbs. When it spread its thin, powerful forearms, the attached wings spread incongruously large either side of its tiny, savage head. Coal-dark eyes glittered in the light of the corridor, and it hissed a sibilant warning breath from a mouth wide with savage teeth. With the wings extended, it looked like a bizarre bat.

The powerful back legs shivered. Gwen had seen her mum’s cat do that as it prepared to leap at a bird in the garden.

Gwen feinted to her right. As the bat sprang, Gwen loosed off two quick shots in succession, and fell left.

The creature shrieked an echoing cry as both bullets tore through its wing. It continued its run, scraping past her and heading towards the exit ramp at the end of the grey corridor. Gwen launched herself after it, firing twice more at its back.

She burst out from the top of the exit ramp, squinting into the bright morning light, nerves jangling in anticipation of the bat-creature waiting for her. Instead, it was flapping around in a circle, unable to fly off and hemmed in by parked delivery vehicles. Its unforgiving black eyes bored into her, but it was going nowhere.

No more options.

Gwen adjusted her firing stance, feet at shoulder-width, left foot advanced, leaning slightly forward, right elbow almost straight. It had become instinct now, and she rarely had the need, or the luxury of time, to think it through.

She took a breath, and prepared to exhale half of it before she fired the round.

A lightning flash from the middle distance dazzled her. A streak of yellow-white light spiralled around the bat-creature, enveloping it and then dissipating.

Gwen whirled, half-fearing that the monster had got round her. But there was no noise from the ramp behind, nor any movement under the haphazardly parked transit vans nearby. High on a pole, a CCTV camera turned lazily towards her position, as though mocking her.

There was nothing for either of them to see. The creature had vanished.

The emergency vehicles speckled the market stalls with blue light. Traders were hurriedly bundling their goods into cardboard boxes or sheets as the crowds flooded out of the mall and into their pitches on the street. Empty plastic punnets scrunched underfoot in the spilled remnants of a fruit and veg stall, overturned in the evacuation. Gwen could hear Toshiko chattering in her right ear. Something about parking. Megan grumbled beside her into her left.

‘Madness it was,’ Megan babbled. ‘The air conditioning went crazy. There was clothes blowing all over the place. We got out through the emergency exit at the back of Valley Girl.’

‘We?’

‘Me and Robert.’ She thumbed a gesture towards the pink-faced lad nearby, and lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Bit of a looker, isn’t he?’

‘You go for a bit of blond,’ smiled Gwen.

‘Shut up,’ said Megan. ‘Better not let him see that jacket. You keeping it, or what?’

Gwen covered up the security tag in a self-conscious gesture.

‘Trina hadn’t heard about all this when I phoned her.’

Gwen raised her eyebrows. ‘You called Trina before you called me? I could have been trampled to death.’

‘You’re used to crowd control,’ replied Megan offhandedly. It was evident she’d seen nothing of Gwen’s activities after she’d raced from the store. ‘And Trina’s on speed dial. Look at this lot. Bloody students, I told you they were trouble. Rag Week seems to go on for ever, it’s just an excuse for them to arse around. All this mad panic for nothing.’

‘Someone said they’d been messing with knives.’ Robert had sauntered over to join them, and placed his hand on Megan’s shoulder. ‘People got hurt.’ He eyed Gwen thoughtfully. She put her hands behind her back to hide the security tag, and smiled back at him.

‘It wasn’t students,’ said Toshiko Sato, who’d emerged around the leather goods stall beside them. ‘It was skinheads on the rampage. I heard it from the police back there.’

Gwen felt herself relax a little now. ‘Megan, this is a friend of mine from work. Tosh, this is—’

‘Megan,’ beamed Megan. ‘I’m one of Gwen’s bridesmaids, you know.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Toshiko.

Megan was oblivious to her reaction. ‘Me and Robert are going to grab a coffee. Laters!’ she concluded cheerfully, linked arms with the surprised but pleased shop assistant, and was off. As they went, she glanced over her shoulder and gave Gwen a big grin.

‘You tart,’ Gwen mouthed at her.

‘I know,’ Megan mouthed back, wide-eyed.

Toshiko was fiddling about with her PDA now, sweeping it to and fro until she eventually settled on a route to the rear of the mall.

As Gwen retraced her steps to the loading bay, she said to Toshiko: ‘They weren’t skinheads.’

‘Weevils,’ agreed Toshiko. ‘Yes, you said earlier. But if you seed something like skinheads in people’s minds, it’s amazing what they think they remember afterwards. I’ve already dropped some pre-written draft copy in the local press inboxes. Faked a few eyewitness accounts on their participation blogs.’

‘What about the CCTV footage?’ asked Gwen. They’d reached the circle of transit vans by the loading bays, and she could see the camera rotating on its pole. ‘Or is nothing beyond your talents?’

‘Certainly not a closed system like that. Nice jacket,’ she added. ‘Are you going to buy it?’

Gwen smiled, embarrassed, as Toshiko tapped the security tag on the sleeve. And then gasped when whatever Toshiko did with the PDA harmlessly detached the tag. With barely a pause, Toshiko showed Gwen the display. ‘Now look at that – the Rift signature in this area has already died away almost to nothing. That’s quick.’

‘I haven’t seen that sort of alien before, Tosh. Nasty piece of work. Like a bat, but the size of a retriever. And it frightened the crap out of the Weevils.’

‘What, literally?’

‘It was like…’ Gwen pondered the reaction of the cornered Weevil. ‘Like they were its prey. I winged it, but it kept coming. We need back-up on this.’

‘Not any more.’ Toshiko closed her PDA. ‘Whatever is was, it’s long gone.’

‘It was right here less than half an hour ago,’ insisted Gwen.

‘Long gone in Rift terms.’

Gwen sighed in exasperation. ‘So where are the others? Why is it just me whose day off gets ruined? I bet Jack and Ianto’s date won’t be interrupted, will it?’

‘Oh, that’s what they were talking about,’ realised Toshiko. ‘I think they were going to Ianto’s for a meal. He told Jack he was cooking up something special.’

‘Something to eat, but maybe not lunch.’

Toshiko affected to look shocked. Her expression changed when she saw the smile slip off Gwen’s face. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Rhys was going to cook my lunch. And I’ll be tied up here and miss it again!’

‘No you won’t,’ said Toshiko. She picked her way carefully down the ramp and into the mall. ‘Show me where the Weevils ended up, and I’ll arrange clean-up with Owen. You can get off home.’

‘That’s not fair on you. Don’t you think we’re stretching ourselves a bit far? We can cope with an alien here and a monster there. But what if there was a rush on, eh? If the Rift got its skates on. How can five of us cope against the world? Against many, many alien worlds?’

They reached the torn remnants of the two Weevils. The animals remained locked in a ghastly final embrace. Toshiko appraised the nearby CCTV camera with an expert eye. ‘Simple enough to erase any actual photographic evidence of the Weevils from their system.’

Gwen looked unsure. ‘Need any help?’

‘Can you tell the difference between UTP wire and 75 ohm coaxial cables?’

‘Obviously not.’

‘In that case, I’ll struggle on without you. Go.’ Toshiko gave her a little wave. ‘Nice boots, by the way. Belstaff?’

Back outside in the trampled marketplace, ambulances were drawing up to collect the last victims. ‘Skinheads, out of control,’ one of the paramedics was saying.

And beyond him, shoppers continued their calm progress towards retail outlets in the streets, unperturbed by recent events as the prosaic reality of life went on.