Fic: Night Of The Harvester - Part 9
Title: Night Of The Harvester - Part 9
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2568
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: The battle continues. Can Jack and Ianto finally defeat the monstrous Harvester?
Written For: spook_me 2024, using Torchwood, Pumpkinhead / Jack O' Lantern.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Set in my Through Time and Space ‘verse.
Previous Part
“What now?” Ianto repeated when Jack didn’t immediately answer him, briefly glancing over his shoulder to see the other man staring off into space, his night-sight goggles pushed up onto his forehead.
Looking up at his husband, Jack grinned. “I guess now would be a good time to press our advantage.”
Ianto snorted. “Such as it is. How d’you suggest we do that?”
“Give me a minute, I’m thinking.”
“Think faster.” Ianto had already turned away, continuing to watch Harvester, not wanting to lose sight of him even for a moment. “Our friend over there isn’t feeding; he’s making straight for the farm buildings, and he’s going to be disappointed again when he gets there and finds nobody’s home. That’s not going to improve his mood.”
“No, it won’t,” Jack agreed. “That means we’d better get after him; we can’t risk him getting away. Hopefully, if we can avoid getting too close to him, he shouldn’t be able to drain the life out of us.”
“Yes, let’s definitely avoid that.” Ianto shuddered at the thought; he’d much rather get through the night without either of them dying. “Are there any more of the meteor fragments on that farm?” he asked the TARDIS.
‘I am unable to tell from this distance. The scanning devices on your belts have limited range.’
“Why, what’re you thinking?” Jack stood up, digging a couple of energy bars from his bag and passing one to Ianto.
“We destroyed the fragment Harvester used to get there, so to leave he’ll have to find another one. If we can burn out any other fragments within the borders of that farm, we’ll have him penned in, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
“Clever!” Jack smiled proudly at his husband.
“I have my moments,” Ianto replied modestly.
‘Indeed,’ the TARDIS agreed. ‘I did not detect any more fragments amongst the onions, or as you passed through the turnip field, so it will not be necessary to search there.’
“Then we should get ahead of Harvester while he’s busy searching the farm buildings. It’s likely he can detect the meteor fragments better than we can, since he’s attuned to them, so to speak.” Shoving the energy bar in his pocket for later, Ianto started to jog along the track, heading in the same direction as Harvester.
Jack finished his own bar in two bites, barely bothering to chew it, before hurrying to catch up.
‘We should start with the fields the far side of the farmyard.’
‘Agreed. And we should split up, each take a field, join forces again when our beautiful lady detects a fragment. Unless there are fragments in both fields.’ Ianto had shoved the laser pistol back in his holster and was checking the pulse pistol’s power levels as he ran, ejecting an almost depleted power cell and replacing it with a fresh one. Jack hurriedly followed his husband’s example, smiling his thanks as Ianto passed him a handful of re-loads.
‘You take this field, and I’ll take the next one,’ Jack told his husband as they veered off the track, leaping the ditch again. The further field was closer to Harvester, which made it the more dangerous one to search.
‘Promise you’ll be careful.’
‘You have my word.’ Jack didn’t bother extracting a similar promise from his husband, because there was no need; he trusted Ianto to always be careful, knowing he’d never shared Jack’s own cavalier attitude to personal safety.
As Jack continued on towards the adjoining field, Ianto made for the centre of the one he was in, turning a slow circle so the TARDIS could more easily check for the telltale readings that would indicate the presence of meteor debris.
‘There is a piece approximately ten metres from the far fence, and a second some thirty metres beyond that, in the next field. Both appear to be quite close to the surface, barely a metre deep.’
‘Good, hopefully I can burn them out faster than the last one. It would help if I had something metal to conduct the electricity.’
‘I am not detecting any suitable metallic objects nearby.’ The TARDIS sounded apologetic.
‘Doesn’t matter, I’ll just have to manage without. At least I can fire at the first one from closer range.’ Ianto let the TARDIS direct him to the place the fragment was buried, then he climbed the wooden fence between this field and the pasture beyond, and fired directly into the ground, burning out the piece of meteor with just four pulses, before moving on to deal with the one in the pasture.
A couple of hundred metres away, Jack was directed to a single fragment near the centre of his field, which he destroyed, giving himself a couple of mild electric shocks in the process. By now, both men could hear Harvester’s howls of frustrated rage coming from among the deserted farm buildings. If he’d been angry before, now he was really furious.
Ianto ran across the field to join Jack as they made for the last couple of fields at this end of the farm. No meteor fragments were detected in the first of them, but there were two amongst the cabbages in the last field and the two men split up once more to deal with them. They were almost done when Harvester appeared, lumbering unsteadily across the field towards them, snatching at the occasional cabbage, but obviously more intent on reaching the only sources of life energy within range of his senses.
“Time to vacate the premises,” Jack shouted, firing a couple more times into the ground, then running towards Ianto, snatching at his husband’s sleeve as he passed.
Ianto staggered, but regained his footing almost immediately, heading for the fence at the far end of the field. He was almost there when behind him, he felt Jack abruptly weaken and fall. Skidding to a halt, ripping a furrow in the soft earth with his bootheel, Ianto spun around, raising the Big Gun, and firing directly at Harvester’s head. The damage it did wasn’t enough to stop the monster, but it broke Harvester’s concentration, and Jack floundered back to his feet. They were less than twenty metres from the fence now, and they plunged towards it faster than either man would have thought possible, scrambling up and over the rough wooden rails and all but falling off the other side, among tall rows of ripe maize.
Looking back, they saw Harvester had stopped a few metres from the fence, his head turning one way then the other, as he tries to locate his prey. He lumbered closer, gnashing pumpkin teeth in all his pumpkin mouths, his gaze passing right over Ianto and Jack without pause.
Ianto scrambled to his feet, leaving the Big Gun on the ground, and drawing both his pulse gun and laser pistol. “We’re not going to get a better chance than this! You okay?”
Jack levered himself upright as well. “A little shaky, but I’ll be fine.” He drew his own weapons and stepped up to the fence. “Let’s finish this!”
It wasn’t quite that simple; dealing with monsters seldom was. They lopped bits of Harvester off with the lasers, fired electrical pulses into his body, causing disruption to the energy field holding him together, but as the creature stumbled backwards, he wound up out of range. Then it became a sort of cat and mouse game. One of the men would climb over the fence to lure their quarry closer again, then quickly retreat while his husband was busy shooting at Harvester, weakening him further. Back and forth, over and over, the energy being slowly getting smaller as more and more of the gourds that made up his physical body fell away and dissolved into sludge.
Harvester kept trying to reabsorb the bits that were sliced away, but it was fast losing cohesion, and after forty minutes or so, it gave up and turned away, lumbering unsteadily back across the field, its movements slow and uncoordinated.
“Did we get all the meteor pieces on this farm?” Ianto asked.
‘I am unsure,’ the TARDIS replied. ‘From this end, certainly, but we did not check the farmyard and one other field beyond it.’
“Then we’d better do that now.” He scooped up the Big Gun and set off at a steady pace, Jack following him. By now, he’d mostly shaken off the effects of Harvester’s attempt to drain him. Keeping to the neighbouring farm’s fields, they quickly outpaced Harvester and were able to reach the farmyard while the pumpkin creature was still nearly half a mile away.
No fragments were found in the farmyard, but both men winced at the destruction Harvester had wreaked. “Looks like there’ll be a lot of rebuilding once this is over,” Ianto said as they hurried towards the final field.
“Only two farms damaged though, and no fatalities. Could be worse,” Jack pointed out. “We can help with the repairs.”
‘One fragment detected in the field ahead,’ the TARDIS murmured. ‘It is quite large, however. Over a metre in diameter.’
Ianto looked around, spotted a shovel leaning up against the farmhouse, and picked it up.
“You’re not thinking of digging it up, are you?” Jack asked incredulously. “We won’t have time for that!”
“It’s metal,” Ianto said. “Good for conducting electricity. Grab that pitchfork too. We’ll stick them in the ground, give ourselves something to aim at.”
Jack grinned. “That’s my Ianto, always so clever!”
“You’d have thought of it if I hadn’t.”
“Sometimes I think you have too much faith in me.”
“Sometimes I think you don’t have enough faith in yourself.”
They shared a smile as they set out across the field, stepping carefully over row upon row of carrot tops.
Arriving at the point in the field where the chunk of meteor was buried, they jammed the farm implements as deeply into the ground as they could manage, keeping a watch for Harvester, who’d just about reached the first of the farm buildings. He would have to cut through the farmyard to reach this field as they had done; it was the most direct route.
“Okay, that’ll have to do. We’re right where Harvester wants to be, on top of the only bit of meteor left that he can use to transport himself to another farm, and I’d rather not still be here when he arrives.” Ianto backed away, glancing around, looking for the best position to fire from. The fence was too far away, and there were no convenient rocks, or anything else they could stand on to distance themselves from the effects of the electrical pulses they were about to fire into the ground.
“We were fine back in the onion field, so we’ll just have to take our chances and hope that carrots aren’t better at conducting electricity than onions are,” Jack said, reloading his pulse gun.
Drawing back to the limits of their weapons’ effective range, they opened fire, shooting at their makeshift conduction rods, electricity sizzling down them and into the ground.
Harvester appeared from the farmyard, moving towards them, howling as he saw his last hope of escape being destroyed. He lurched forward on legs of different lengths, reaching out with the stump of one arm, but the distance was still too great for him to drain life energy from the two immortals.
‘How much longer?’ Ianto thought, firing repeatedly, then pausing to reload his gun.
‘The energy within the fragment is fading, but it will be several more minutes before it is rendered unusable.’
“Keep shooting,” Jack said, handing his pulse gun to Ianto. “I’ll do a bit of target practice with this baby, see if I can’t slow our friend down.” He patted the plasma rifle.
“That didn’t work last time,” Ianto reminded his husband, firing one pulse gun and then the other, as quickly as he was able.
“Harvester’s a lot weaker now. Besides, I have my laser pistol, and we know they work.” Jack made a wide detour around the meteor fragment, quickly checking the plasma rifle and raising it to firing position as Harvester came within range. A stream of superheated plasma hit the monster in the chest, then Jack adjusted his aim so the next burst hit the creature right in what would be the face on a normal person, but in this case, was one of several faces, all over its upper body.
By this point, Harvester was no more than ten feet tall and looked as though rats had been gnawing at him. The damage inflicted by Jack and Ianto’s weapons was no longer able to be repaired. The pumpkin monster faltered, raising what was left of its arms in an effort to shield its pumpkin head. Jack immediately aimed lower, half melting the face from the big pumpkin that formed Harvester’s belly, then the moment the creature lowered its arms, he fired at the head again.
Tucking the butt of the plasma rifle under his right arm, not the ideal position to fire from but manageable for someone with enough experience, Jack pulled the laser pistol and fired straight through one of Harvester’s slitted eyes. The monster jerked back, screeching, so he aimed at the other eye. Behind him, the whine of the pulse pistols ceased, and then Ianto was alongside him, blasting at Harvester with the Big Gun, slicing at him with the other laser.
The two men continued firing, driving Harvester steadily backwards, until what had once been a towering nightmare was nothing more than scattered fragments of a farmer’s pumpkin crop, already dissolving into mush. A weak flicker of blueish energy shimmered over the mess, but a few shots from one of the pulse guns, and it dissipated, winking out.
Silence fell, broken only by Jack and Ianto’s harsh breathing. Finally, Ianto shook himself. “Is that it? Is it over?”
‘I am not detecting Harvester’s energy signature anywhere in your vicinity,’ the TARDIS said. ‘Or in the vicinity of the devices carried by the sentries. It appears to be quite dead.’
“Okay then.” Putting the Big Gun down and shoving his pulse gun back in its holster, Ianto dug the energy bar Jack had given his earlier out of his pocket and stood there, quietly munching on it. “You think that sludge might harm the carrot crop?”
‘I do not believe so,’ the TARDIS replied. ‘I detect nothing harmful, merely overripe squashes.’
“Good.”
Jack looked up at the sky; the second moon had just risen and the first had not yet reached its zenith, which meant not much more than four hours of the eleven-hour night had passed since they’d sat waiting on the tree stump, drinking coffee. It seemed impossible that so much had happened in such a relatively short time.
Wearily they returned the rest of their weapons to their holsters, collected spent power cells from the ground around them, and retraced their steps to where they’d left their shoulder bags in one of the neighbouring farm’s fields. Sitting on the fence from behind which they’d battled the monster a short while ago, they drank the rest of the coffee from Ianto’s flask, then gathered up everything they’d brought with them and headed back along the dirt tracks towards the town and their TARDIS, spreading the news among the sentries guarding the occupied farms as they went. Soon everyone would know Harvester was defeated.
TBC in Epilogue
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2568
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: The battle continues. Can Jack and Ianto finally defeat the monstrous Harvester?
Written For: spook_me 2024, using Torchwood, Pumpkinhead / Jack O' Lantern.
Disclaimer: Sadly, I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
A/N: Set in my Through Time and Space ‘verse.
Previous Part
“What now?” Ianto repeated when Jack didn’t immediately answer him, briefly glancing over his shoulder to see the other man staring off into space, his night-sight goggles pushed up onto his forehead.
Looking up at his husband, Jack grinned. “I guess now would be a good time to press our advantage.”
Ianto snorted. “Such as it is. How d’you suggest we do that?”
“Give me a minute, I’m thinking.”
“Think faster.” Ianto had already turned away, continuing to watch Harvester, not wanting to lose sight of him even for a moment. “Our friend over there isn’t feeding; he’s making straight for the farm buildings, and he’s going to be disappointed again when he gets there and finds nobody’s home. That’s not going to improve his mood.”
“No, it won’t,” Jack agreed. “That means we’d better get after him; we can’t risk him getting away. Hopefully, if we can avoid getting too close to him, he shouldn’t be able to drain the life out of us.”
“Yes, let’s definitely avoid that.” Ianto shuddered at the thought; he’d much rather get through the night without either of them dying. “Are there any more of the meteor fragments on that farm?” he asked the TARDIS.
‘I am unable to tell from this distance. The scanning devices on your belts have limited range.’
“Why, what’re you thinking?” Jack stood up, digging a couple of energy bars from his bag and passing one to Ianto.
“We destroyed the fragment Harvester used to get there, so to leave he’ll have to find another one. If we can burn out any other fragments within the borders of that farm, we’ll have him penned in, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
“Clever!” Jack smiled proudly at his husband.
“I have my moments,” Ianto replied modestly.
‘Indeed,’ the TARDIS agreed. ‘I did not detect any more fragments amongst the onions, or as you passed through the turnip field, so it will not be necessary to search there.’
“Then we should get ahead of Harvester while he’s busy searching the farm buildings. It’s likely he can detect the meteor fragments better than we can, since he’s attuned to them, so to speak.” Shoving the energy bar in his pocket for later, Ianto started to jog along the track, heading in the same direction as Harvester.
Jack finished his own bar in two bites, barely bothering to chew it, before hurrying to catch up.
‘We should start with the fields the far side of the farmyard.’
‘Agreed. And we should split up, each take a field, join forces again when our beautiful lady detects a fragment. Unless there are fragments in both fields.’ Ianto had shoved the laser pistol back in his holster and was checking the pulse pistol’s power levels as he ran, ejecting an almost depleted power cell and replacing it with a fresh one. Jack hurriedly followed his husband’s example, smiling his thanks as Ianto passed him a handful of re-loads.
‘You take this field, and I’ll take the next one,’ Jack told his husband as they veered off the track, leaping the ditch again. The further field was closer to Harvester, which made it the more dangerous one to search.
‘Promise you’ll be careful.’
‘You have my word.’ Jack didn’t bother extracting a similar promise from his husband, because there was no need; he trusted Ianto to always be careful, knowing he’d never shared Jack’s own cavalier attitude to personal safety.
As Jack continued on towards the adjoining field, Ianto made for the centre of the one he was in, turning a slow circle so the TARDIS could more easily check for the telltale readings that would indicate the presence of meteor debris.
‘There is a piece approximately ten metres from the far fence, and a second some thirty metres beyond that, in the next field. Both appear to be quite close to the surface, barely a metre deep.’
‘Good, hopefully I can burn them out faster than the last one. It would help if I had something metal to conduct the electricity.’
‘I am not detecting any suitable metallic objects nearby.’ The TARDIS sounded apologetic.
‘Doesn’t matter, I’ll just have to manage without. At least I can fire at the first one from closer range.’ Ianto let the TARDIS direct him to the place the fragment was buried, then he climbed the wooden fence between this field and the pasture beyond, and fired directly into the ground, burning out the piece of meteor with just four pulses, before moving on to deal with the one in the pasture.
A couple of hundred metres away, Jack was directed to a single fragment near the centre of his field, which he destroyed, giving himself a couple of mild electric shocks in the process. By now, both men could hear Harvester’s howls of frustrated rage coming from among the deserted farm buildings. If he’d been angry before, now he was really furious.
Ianto ran across the field to join Jack as they made for the last couple of fields at this end of the farm. No meteor fragments were detected in the first of them, but there were two amongst the cabbages in the last field and the two men split up once more to deal with them. They were almost done when Harvester appeared, lumbering unsteadily across the field towards them, snatching at the occasional cabbage, but obviously more intent on reaching the only sources of life energy within range of his senses.
“Time to vacate the premises,” Jack shouted, firing a couple more times into the ground, then running towards Ianto, snatching at his husband’s sleeve as he passed.
Ianto staggered, but regained his footing almost immediately, heading for the fence at the far end of the field. He was almost there when behind him, he felt Jack abruptly weaken and fall. Skidding to a halt, ripping a furrow in the soft earth with his bootheel, Ianto spun around, raising the Big Gun, and firing directly at Harvester’s head. The damage it did wasn’t enough to stop the monster, but it broke Harvester’s concentration, and Jack floundered back to his feet. They were less than twenty metres from the fence now, and they plunged towards it faster than either man would have thought possible, scrambling up and over the rough wooden rails and all but falling off the other side, among tall rows of ripe maize.
Looking back, they saw Harvester had stopped a few metres from the fence, his head turning one way then the other, as he tries to locate his prey. He lumbered closer, gnashing pumpkin teeth in all his pumpkin mouths, his gaze passing right over Ianto and Jack without pause.
Ianto scrambled to his feet, leaving the Big Gun on the ground, and drawing both his pulse gun and laser pistol. “We’re not going to get a better chance than this! You okay?”
Jack levered himself upright as well. “A little shaky, but I’ll be fine.” He drew his own weapons and stepped up to the fence. “Let’s finish this!”
It wasn’t quite that simple; dealing with monsters seldom was. They lopped bits of Harvester off with the lasers, fired electrical pulses into his body, causing disruption to the energy field holding him together, but as the creature stumbled backwards, he wound up out of range. Then it became a sort of cat and mouse game. One of the men would climb over the fence to lure their quarry closer again, then quickly retreat while his husband was busy shooting at Harvester, weakening him further. Back and forth, over and over, the energy being slowly getting smaller as more and more of the gourds that made up his physical body fell away and dissolved into sludge.
Harvester kept trying to reabsorb the bits that were sliced away, but it was fast losing cohesion, and after forty minutes or so, it gave up and turned away, lumbering unsteadily back across the field, its movements slow and uncoordinated.
“Did we get all the meteor pieces on this farm?” Ianto asked.
‘I am unsure,’ the TARDIS replied. ‘From this end, certainly, but we did not check the farmyard and one other field beyond it.’
“Then we’d better do that now.” He scooped up the Big Gun and set off at a steady pace, Jack following him. By now, he’d mostly shaken off the effects of Harvester’s attempt to drain him. Keeping to the neighbouring farm’s fields, they quickly outpaced Harvester and were able to reach the farmyard while the pumpkin creature was still nearly half a mile away.
No fragments were found in the farmyard, but both men winced at the destruction Harvester had wreaked. “Looks like there’ll be a lot of rebuilding once this is over,” Ianto said as they hurried towards the final field.
“Only two farms damaged though, and no fatalities. Could be worse,” Jack pointed out. “We can help with the repairs.”
‘One fragment detected in the field ahead,’ the TARDIS murmured. ‘It is quite large, however. Over a metre in diameter.’
Ianto looked around, spotted a shovel leaning up against the farmhouse, and picked it up.
“You’re not thinking of digging it up, are you?” Jack asked incredulously. “We won’t have time for that!”
“It’s metal,” Ianto said. “Good for conducting electricity. Grab that pitchfork too. We’ll stick them in the ground, give ourselves something to aim at.”
Jack grinned. “That’s my Ianto, always so clever!”
“You’d have thought of it if I hadn’t.”
“Sometimes I think you have too much faith in me.”
“Sometimes I think you don’t have enough faith in yourself.”
They shared a smile as they set out across the field, stepping carefully over row upon row of carrot tops.
Arriving at the point in the field where the chunk of meteor was buried, they jammed the farm implements as deeply into the ground as they could manage, keeping a watch for Harvester, who’d just about reached the first of the farm buildings. He would have to cut through the farmyard to reach this field as they had done; it was the most direct route.
“Okay, that’ll have to do. We’re right where Harvester wants to be, on top of the only bit of meteor left that he can use to transport himself to another farm, and I’d rather not still be here when he arrives.” Ianto backed away, glancing around, looking for the best position to fire from. The fence was too far away, and there were no convenient rocks, or anything else they could stand on to distance themselves from the effects of the electrical pulses they were about to fire into the ground.
“We were fine back in the onion field, so we’ll just have to take our chances and hope that carrots aren’t better at conducting electricity than onions are,” Jack said, reloading his pulse gun.
Drawing back to the limits of their weapons’ effective range, they opened fire, shooting at their makeshift conduction rods, electricity sizzling down them and into the ground.
Harvester appeared from the farmyard, moving towards them, howling as he saw his last hope of escape being destroyed. He lurched forward on legs of different lengths, reaching out with the stump of one arm, but the distance was still too great for him to drain life energy from the two immortals.
‘How much longer?’ Ianto thought, firing repeatedly, then pausing to reload his gun.
‘The energy within the fragment is fading, but it will be several more minutes before it is rendered unusable.’
“Keep shooting,” Jack said, handing his pulse gun to Ianto. “I’ll do a bit of target practice with this baby, see if I can’t slow our friend down.” He patted the plasma rifle.
“That didn’t work last time,” Ianto reminded his husband, firing one pulse gun and then the other, as quickly as he was able.
“Harvester’s a lot weaker now. Besides, I have my laser pistol, and we know they work.” Jack made a wide detour around the meteor fragment, quickly checking the plasma rifle and raising it to firing position as Harvester came within range. A stream of superheated plasma hit the monster in the chest, then Jack adjusted his aim so the next burst hit the creature right in what would be the face on a normal person, but in this case, was one of several faces, all over its upper body.
By this point, Harvester was no more than ten feet tall and looked as though rats had been gnawing at him. The damage inflicted by Jack and Ianto’s weapons was no longer able to be repaired. The pumpkin monster faltered, raising what was left of its arms in an effort to shield its pumpkin head. Jack immediately aimed lower, half melting the face from the big pumpkin that formed Harvester’s belly, then the moment the creature lowered its arms, he fired at the head again.
Tucking the butt of the plasma rifle under his right arm, not the ideal position to fire from but manageable for someone with enough experience, Jack pulled the laser pistol and fired straight through one of Harvester’s slitted eyes. The monster jerked back, screeching, so he aimed at the other eye. Behind him, the whine of the pulse pistols ceased, and then Ianto was alongside him, blasting at Harvester with the Big Gun, slicing at him with the other laser.
The two men continued firing, driving Harvester steadily backwards, until what had once been a towering nightmare was nothing more than scattered fragments of a farmer’s pumpkin crop, already dissolving into mush. A weak flicker of blueish energy shimmered over the mess, but a few shots from one of the pulse guns, and it dissipated, winking out.
Silence fell, broken only by Jack and Ianto’s harsh breathing. Finally, Ianto shook himself. “Is that it? Is it over?”
‘I am not detecting Harvester’s energy signature anywhere in your vicinity,’ the TARDIS said. ‘Or in the vicinity of the devices carried by the sentries. It appears to be quite dead.’
“Okay then.” Putting the Big Gun down and shoving his pulse gun back in its holster, Ianto dug the energy bar Jack had given his earlier out of his pocket and stood there, quietly munching on it. “You think that sludge might harm the carrot crop?”
‘I do not believe so,’ the TARDIS replied. ‘I detect nothing harmful, merely overripe squashes.’
“Good.”
Jack looked up at the sky; the second moon had just risen and the first had not yet reached its zenith, which meant not much more than four hours of the eleven-hour night had passed since they’d sat waiting on the tree stump, drinking coffee. It seemed impossible that so much had happened in such a relatively short time.
Wearily they returned the rest of their weapons to their holsters, collected spent power cells from the ground around them, and retraced their steps to where they’d left their shoulder bags in one of the neighbouring farm’s fields. Sitting on the fence from behind which they’d battled the monster a short while ago, they drank the rest of the coffee from Ianto’s flask, then gathered up everything they’d brought with them and headed back along the dirt tracks towards the town and their TARDIS, spreading the news among the sentries guarding the occupied farms as they went. Soon everyone would know Harvester was defeated.
TBC in Epilogue