The Apocalypse Stops For No Time Lord [Part Seven]
Part Seven
Sherlock’s time frame was almost perfect. Bela and Jack made it to the quarry with a minute to spare. The military man passed the demon her gun and an extra magazine. For a moment he caught her hand, holding it tightly.
“Be careful,” Jack’s voice was quiet, eyes focussed on her.
“Always am.”
“I mean it, Bela.” She nodded, her hand instinctively coming up to cover his.
“I’ll be fine,” she reassured. “You’ve got my back.”
“Always do,” was his soft reply. Then his hand was slipping away and Jack was climbing out of the SUV. Bela followed, trying not to think about the tingling in her hand or the stupidly mushy feeling in her chest.
They had stopped as soon as the first buildings had come into sight, not wanting to miss anything in the ink black of the witching hour. Now Bela stood in front of the SUV, eyes straining to make out as much as possible with the moon hidden behind thick cloud cover. To each side were squat buildings, no doubt the administration quarters of the quarry. Beyond them, all she could make out were towering, twisted structures lurking in vague silhouettes against the horizon.
“This place could not be creepier,” Bela muttered as Jack came to stand beside her.
“Not scared are you?” She shot him a glare although it was probably lost in the night.
“Don’t insult me, Captain Harkness.” Jack turned to the SUV and pressed a button on the keys he still had in his hands. Instantly light slammed into Bela’s eyes, bursting from the powerful flood lamps mounted atop the car. Stars dancing across her vision, the thief threw another glare in Jack’s direction. “Give a girl some warning next time you flash her.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” Jack said with a chuckle. Blinking her eyes rapidly, Bela glanced around at the now illuminated quarry. She almost wished the lights had stayed off.
All around them were huge complex structures of wood and metal, each of them used for the transportation, sorting, storage and processing of anything the quarry workers ripped from the earth. The light cut across their limbs, throwing shadows everywhere and turning the ordinary structures into man-made beasts of supernatural size. Among them crouched mutated machinery, the sentries that obeyed humans by day and were left to slumber by night.
It seemed that there were a thousand places for something to hide and a million ways to meet an unfortunate end. Bela had to give Crowley credit. By day the quarry might well have been the lifeline for local families but with only the harsh light from the SUV to hold back the dark, it was The Joker’s abandoned fairground.
With zombies.
“This is going to be fun,” she muttered, pulling a torch and Glock from her belt. She flicked the small light on, just testing it. For a moment nothing happened then a small beam burst from the torch. Instantly it started spluttering, ducking in and out. “And a faulty torch, that’s great.”
“What about the school?” Jack said slowly, his mind clearly a few kilometres from the quarry. “Crowley said we should hurry when I mentioned Mary Immaculate High School.”
“That’s just him playing with us,” Bela replied calmly, checking the ammunition in her belt. “He wants to split us up. Divide and conquer, very Crowley. Who’s going to be at school at one in the morning anyway?”
“Are you sure?” There wasn’t really uncertainty in Jack’s voice, just the overhanging knowledge of the world once more resting in their hands.
Bela looked over to the military man with a smile. “Trust me.”
“Of course,” he replied with a nod. They both paused for a moment, checking their equipment but staring out beyond their haven of light. There were fingers of cold dread ghosting down Bela’s spine and the uncomfortable feeling that they might not see the sun rise. Angrily she pushed fear down, not letting it distract her.
“Here.” Jack offered her five syringes, each filled with a clear liquid. “Whilst I was writing a program to find you, Sherlock made enough doses of Croatoan cure to set us up for a zombie hunt.”
“Of course. You were trying to save my life and cheekbones wasn’t helping.”
“No,” Jack said with raised eyebrows. “He was trying to save the world.”
“Yes, yes,” she growled. “Very noble. I’m sure the Winchesters would love him.”
A wane smile crossed Jack’s face but faded quickly. “Do you think there might be demons out there?”
“I wouldn’t put it beyond Crowley,” Bela replied. “He’s not one to hold back.”
“Then you’ll need this.” Jack handed her the Knife, its blade cleaned of demon blood. “I picked it up before we left and I'm guessing you know how to fight with blades.”
“I know enough,” she said grimly, taking the weapon and slotting it in her belt. “What’s the plan?”
“We start there-” he gestured to the larger of the structures on their right “-and move across to the smaller one.”
“Starting big,” Bela said, raising her eyebrows. “Maybe the zombies will give us directions when we get lost.”
“Let’s go,” Jack said authoritively, ignoring Bela’s comment.
They pulled away from the SUV reluctantly, moving towards the hulking construction. The flood lamps still lit the world around them but Bela’s back felt disturbingly exposed without the metal vehicle to brace against. She couldn’t help re-adjusting her grip on the Glock, forcing away the urge to check behind her.
The light followed them all the way to the structure, dulling the further they got. As they slipped under the first shadow, no more than a dark line across the gravel, Bela raised her torch and flipped it on. Jack copied her. Bela felt a chill run down her spine as Jack’s torch started flickering with hers.
“Demons,” she whispered, their eyes meeting for a moment. Then they were desperately searching through the darkness. Their beams caught on the dusty machinery and made the dirty metal gleam. Each time they flickered, the shadows cast would dance around them and the machines would blink like waiting monsters.
Moving even more cautiously than before, they made their way around a crouched digger. The teeth of its bucket seemed to reach out to them, snagging Bela’s jacket for a second. Hastily she pulled away, not caring about the ripped material. Jack ushered her over to a small door set in the side of one of the walls.
“Do you think we should knock first?” Bela asked, trying not to think about how dry her throat was. Jack just ignored her and flattened himself against the wall beside the door. She mimicked him on the opposite side. Trying to keep her breathing calm, she flicked the safety off her gun.
“Ready?” He asked, voice taking on its serious leader tone. A thousand smart replies came to Bela’s mind but in the end she just nodded. Slowly Jack turned the doorknob. With a soft click the door swung open and she darted inside.
Quickly she threw her torch around the room, trying to cover as much of the space as possible. It was hard to see in the flickering light, bright one second, pitch black the next. All she found were strange instruments and machines she had never seen before. A second later Jack’s beam joined hers, jumping around the room. Most of the time at least one of their torches would be lighting the space but every now and then they would synchronise to complete darkness.
“Keep going?” Bela let her torch beam rest on a door to their left.
“What else?” Jack brushed past her and the thief tried to mask her jump at the unexpected contact. Steeling herself, she followed her boss over to the second door. This one had a window in the top half but it was impossible to see anything beyond the grime ingrained in the glass. Jack reached out to the door knob as Bela glanced behind her.
“Wait.” Her torchlight was lingering on a second door, opposite the one they came through. She hadn’t noticed it behind a particularly peculiar looking metal contraption. “There’s another door.”
“We’ll come back to it.” Bela directed a glare at Jack that clearly expressed her feelings on the matter.
“Bela, no.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sighed. “If we don’t split up this is going to take all night.”
“That,” he gestured in the direction of both the door and Bela, “is a really bad idea.”
“We’re in the middle of a no doubt booby-trapped quarry in the middle of the night with real life zombies lurking in the darkness and the king of Hell gunning for us. Pray tell me, what part of this is a good idea?”
“Fine,” Jack relented darkly. “But put your Bluetooth in and don’t turn it off this time.”
“Yes, sir,” Bela half-grumbled, pulling the little earpiece out of its pocket in her belt.
“I want to hear your voice all the time.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Carefully she hooked the device around her ear, managing to balance her torch and gun in one hand. “Permission to proceed all alone into what could be a nest of zombies?”
“Remind me why I keep you around,” Jack sighed.
“You love my charming personality, sir,” she replied with a smile, then slipped through the door.
She found herself outside the protective walls of the inner structure. Instantly cold air pressed up against her body, filtering between the threads of her clothing. It was a chilling reminder of the night, the brisk wind swirling through the quarry.
Bela was underneath the gigantic structure now, its metal belly hanging above her head. On all sides, chutes plunged down into the ground, stilted legs for the beast to balance on. Around each chute was a perplexing array of machinery.
Cautiously she started to move across the ground, torch balanced under her raised gun. On all sides the shadows followed her, flashing in and out. Gravel crunched loudly under her feet and Bela couldn’t shake the feeling that there were a hundred eyes watching her.
“I can’t hear you talking.” The earpiece burst into life, Jack’s voice coming through clear and too loud in her ear. Bela made a sound somewhat akin to a ‘meep’ and swung violently to the side before she realised where the voice had come from.
“Jesus Ch-” she hissed, heart pounding in her chest. “I just about - you just - I am going to kill you.”
“Sorry,” Jack said, A glimmer of amusement in his voice. “You weren’t talking.”
“Talking, right.” She cast a pointless glare at the building. “You want me to be talking.”
“That was the deal. Where are you?”
“I’m outside. Where are you?”
“Outside where?”
“Where do you think?” She grumbled, starting to move forward once more. “I’m under the monstrosity you decided we should check first.”
“Is there anything out there?”
“You are really bad at this ‘keep her talking thing’.” She skirted around the edge of a large pile of rocks. “Don’t you think I would have told you if there’s anything out here.”
“Fine, you do the talking.” For a moment Bela considered arguing, then a cruel idea presented itself in her mind.
“You know,” she said conversationally, leaning over a small pit in the earth. “People always split up in horror movies.”
“What?” Jack’s voice was suspicious of where she was going.
The pit was empty. “That’s when they die.”
“Bela...” Jack’s voice was tight, brokering no argument.
“Well, the hot girl does anyway. Some violent axe murderer gets her.”
“Bela.”
“Good thing we’re not in a horror movie.”
“Remind me to fire you.”
“Then again... zombies and in the middle of the night.”
“Never mind, I’m going to kill you.”
“And a dem-” Bela broke off suddenly. Out of the corner of her eyes something moved. Instantly she froze, straining to try and make out the movement again. Nothing moved. Very slowly she started to turn, cursing the flickering torchlight.
“Bela?” She ignored Jack’s voice.
There! It moved again. Just the tiniest shift of a body. Perhaps the settling of something about to pounce. Bela took a deep breath. Then she spun to face the shadow. The torchlight whipped with her. It landed on a shred of cloth, impaled on a nail. The wind picked up again and it fluttered lightly.
“Fuck,” she hissed, angry at herself for scaring so easily.
“Bela!” Jack’s voice had a desperate edge. “What’s going on?”
“Keep your knickers on,” she snapped instinctively. “I don’t have to keep in touch every second.”
“Okay, sorry.” There was an understanding in Jack’s voice that Bela both hated and loved. “I just thought that-”
“No.” Her voice softened, an unspoken apology hidden under it. “Everything’s fine.”
“Okay, just be-” Jack’s last words were drowned out by static. Then a shout forced its way through. “Bela!”
Suddenly everything went completely silent. No Jack. No static. Just silence. Instantly Bela was moving. Her feet slammed against the gravel as she sprinted back over her footprints. The torch swung back and forth at her side, but she barely needed the light. All she wanted was to keep moving.
Dodging around the last obstacle, she crashed into the door. It gave way under her, slamming back against the wall with a bang. Barely slowing, she dashed inside. The spluttering torch lit the inside in glimpses. It pinned the wildly dancing shadows in freeze-frames against the wall.
Bela hit the door Jack had taken at full tilt. It swung open, revealing a large space beyond it. At first the room seemed strangely empty. Then the torch light caught on a shape in the corner. It was Jack, crumpled on the floor. Bela charged over to him, skidding to a halt and dropping. The military man looked almost fine, except his neck was twisted at an impossible angle.
“Oh dear.” A voice filtered out from the shadows on the other side of the room. Just then the neon lights Bela hadn’t noticed swinging from the ceiling flickered on. The King of Hell seemed to form from the darkness itself, black suit composed of shadows. “Looks like your Prince Charming took a tumble.”
“Crowley,” Bela hissed angrily. “You know you can’t win this.”
“Really?” The demon turned to look a door on the other side of the room. As Bela glanced over, it opened. One by one zombies began to file into the room. Each of them turned to stare at her with black eyes. “I don’t know about you, but I think the odds are in my favour.”
“You sick f-”
“Now, now, darling.” Crowley grinned widely, spreading his hands in front of him. “There’s no need for that. Just tell me how to open the rift and you and your dearly beloved are free to go.”
“And what if I say no?” Bela asked scathingly. “You’re going to kill us? You know you can’t kill Jack and in case you haven’t noticed-” she pulled the Knife out from her belt, shifting her crouch into a fighting stance “-I’m the one with the demon-killing knife.”
“Good for you,” Crowley replied with a patronising smile. “One little problem with your plan. While a demon can possess a zombie without getting hurt, if a zombie bites a demon... Well let’s just say you won’t be saving any lives afterwards.”
Crowley grinned widely and Bela let her hand slip under Jack’s coat. “And if that’s what happens to a demon, I can’t imagine what will happen to your Captain Jack Harkness.”
Bela’s searching hand closed around the cold metal of the Colt, just as Jack suddenly jerked awake. Not waiting to explain, the thief pulled the gun from his belt and swung it up to point at Crowley. She was seconds too late. The King of Hell was gone.
On the other side of the room, the demon-zombies started to move towards them.
“Get up!” Yanking Jack to his feet, Bela thrust the Colt into his hand, taking the Knife in her own. Mind still struggling to catch up, Jack shook his head at the weapon, eyes glancing at the once-human creatures advancing on them. “We don’t have time for this. You have to kill them.”
“No.” Jack’s voice was cold and unyielding. “They’re still human.”
A gunshot rang through the room. It seemed to bounce off the walls and echo back to the pair time and time again. The demon-zombie at the front of the pack reeled backwards, knocking his friends away. There was a hole in his forehead. John was standing in the doorframe closest to them, gun still raised. Sherlock was next to him, wielding a handful of syringes.
“The cure doesn’t quite work,” Sherlock said. “The virus mutates the cells within the hosts bo-”
“Sherlock,” John interrupted his detective with a steady voice. His gaze moved to Jack’s, understanding between military men written on his face. “No, Jack. They’re not human. Not anymore.”
“Good.” Bela smiled at each of them in turn before turning to the demon army that was almost upon them. “Let’s kill them all.”
She didn’t bother to wait for a reply. Shifting the Knife around so the blade ran down her arm, she threw herself at the demon-zombie closest to her. Instinctively he dodged backwards and found himself tangling limbs with the demon-zombie behind him. Unable to stand, the hapless pair tumbled to the ground. Bela grinned. This was going to be too easy.
Knife slicing through the air, she buried the blade up to the hilt in the nearest creatures chest. Gold lines sparked under the demon-zombie’s skin at the impact. They spread out from the wound like a spider web spun from gold. The black eyes faded to red as the demon withered away.
But the creature was still alive. The wound hadn’t killed it yet. Snarling the zombie writhed on the end of Bela’s knife. Without thinking, she pulled the syringe out of her belt and slammed it into the creature’s flesh.
Instantly the snarling stopped, the zombie’s body going limp. Instead it started to cough violently, blood spurting from its mouth. For a moment Bela thought Sherlock was wrong, thought that she had buried her knife in a human. For a moment she thought she had killed a defenceless human and pure, human anguish ripped through her veins.
Then the zombie reached for her again, fingers like claws and lips pulled back from its teeth. There wasn’t any of the rabid urgency; the need to kill that was there before. It was just instinct, lashing out at the enemy. The cure had stopped Crowley’s kill orders reaching the zombie but it wasn’t human. Not anymore.
Bela didn’t have time to think about the revelation. A hand grabbed her hair and yanked her backwards. She barely had the presence of mind to wrap a hand around the Knife and take it with her. For a strange moment she was swinging in a circle as her captor wrenched her up from the ground. It gave her a glimpse of the carnage in the room.
Jack was standing in one corner, the Colt in his hand. Systematically he cocked, aimed and fired. Just as Bela glanced at him, Jack pulled the trigger and nothing happened. The Colt was dry. Face grim and zombies closing in around him, Jack dropped to the floor, pushing bullets into the revolver as quickly as he could.
On the other side of the room John was standing between the zombies and Sherlock, face determined as he shot at the creatures. Then the detective pointed, words falling from his mouth just loud enough for Bela to hear.
“That’s it! The mother!” Sherlock was pointing to a zombie at the back of the room. It was hunched over on itself, bloodshot eyes following the squirming bodies.
Bela didn’t hesitate. Flipping the Knife in her hands, she stabbed it into the body behind her. The hand around her hair went limp and she easily slipped free. Without pausing she leapt over a corpse, swinging her hand up to slash the throat of a zombie on the other side. Slipping a hand into her belt, she pulled out another syringe. Her eyes remained fixed on the shape in the corner.
On the other side of the room she heard Jack swear loudly. Forcing herself not to look, she shouldered the last zombie out of the way. Her target looked up as she stopped in front of it. Perhaps ironically, the mother was a male. For a moment Bela was struck with the sense that she knew him.
The creature stood up, face turning into the light. Then it clicked. The creature’s face was bloodied and bruised but she could see who it was. There was no hesitation. Simultaneously Bela buried the syringe in flesh and slammed the Knife into the soft flesh under her father’s jaw.
The reaction was instantaneous. All around the room the demon-zombies paused, eyes going wide as the connection to the mother, and Crowley, was severed. It gave Torchwood and the detectives the hesitation they needed.
Jack wrestled away from the zombie who had grabbed him. Sliding the last bullet into place, he snapped the Colt back together with a flick of his wrist. Bela flipped over a crouching demon-zombie, coming to stand next to the military man. John and Sherlock dodged around a pair of dazed creatures, coming up on Jack’s other side.
“Should we kill them?” The tall detective pulled out a Glock from the depths of his coat.
“Sherlock!” John sounded exasperated. “I thought I had lost that gun.”
“You left it in on our bed-side table.”
“Right, I left it there. It was supposed to be there!”
“Focus!” Jack broke in, exchanging amused looks with Bela. “Come on, thief. Let’s save the world.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied with a grin.
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| Epilogue |