Border Princes

NINE

The bedside alarm display glowed 01:00 in bright red digits. James was asleep.

Gwen got out of bed in the dark and padded into the lounge. The uplighters were still on. A filthy night swirled outside. She wondered where James kept the painkillers. She had a rubbish head again.

A huddle of framed photos sat along the top of a shelf unit, surrounding a plush ‘Andy’ that Toshiko had bought for James. They were all represented there: Toshiko, Owen, Ianto and herself, along with James. Various combinations, laughing, joking. None of Jack, of course, but then Jack was notoriously camera-shy. There were a few other shots of people she didn’t know. Parents, she supposed. Uncles. Siblings. James had a sister in Oxford, and a brother in London that he’d spoken of.

She picked up one picture of her, James and Toshiko. She couldn’t recall the exact circumstances in which it had been taken, but the subtle differences in haircuts and clothes suggested it was going back a while.

It made her feel strangely deprived. The albums back at her flat, the photos on the fridge door and the pinboard, none of them showed James or Owen or Toshiko. Just her, Rhys and various friends. She didn’t have the freedom to put up snaps of the team where Rhys could see them and ask who they were. Such was the divide between her domestic and work lives. The secret fold between two entirely different yet entirely real Gwen Coopers.

Except, she wondered, was that true any more? She’d lived a dual existence since joining Torchwood, but the older part of her was struggling to keep pace these days. It felt like the old Gwen, and the life-baggage she carried, was fading out, sloughing away like old skin. Her police career, her flat in Riverside, her relationship with Rhys; it was getting eclipsed. She’d always presumed — always been determined — to be both Gwens. She’d been happy with her lot, and had never intended to ditch it. But old stuff was slipping away and becoming irrelevant of its own accord.

That was a horrible word, she decided. Irrelevant. Cruel to think that. People moved on, that was organic, and you had to let things go sometimes. You had to let things go when you didn’t need them any more.

God, it was going to be hard to do, but she owed it to Rhys to let it be hard to do. He deserved that much.

On the couch was a spill of CD cases. They’d been listening to music earlier. She’d picked through James’s collection. For every cool band like Torn Curtain and The Buttons, there was a howler like Boulder and Foreign Hazard, which James put down to a misspent teenage with mates who were into metal and prog. She had a funny feeling Rhys still liked Boulder. She’d seen some in amongst the Genesis and the Rush and the Jerry Goldsmith soundtracks. How the hell had she spent so long with a man who had once suggested that ‘Vader’s Theme’ might be an appropriate wedding march?

Poor soft, loveable, puppy-dog bastard. It was going to be so hard to do.

‘Can’t you sleep?’

She looked around. James smiled at her and stifled a yawn.

‘No, sorry,’ she said. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

‘What?’

‘You’re what my mum would call very naked,’ she said.

‘So are you.’

Gwen felt self-conscious suddenly.

‘It’s all right,’ James said.

‘I know. I just can’t remember the last time I paraded around naked at home.’

She noted that James let the ‘at home’ slide. ‘Really?’ he said.

‘I just don’t do it any more.’

‘He’d get some funny ideas, would he?’

She shrugged. ‘I think it was the worry that he wouldn’t get any funny ideas.’

James nodded. ‘Coming back to bed, then?’

They curled up together in the dark. Raindrops drummed against the window.

‘It’s all right me being here, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘What do you think?’

‘I didn’t mean like that. I’m imposing. Taking up residence.’

‘It’s fine. I like it.’

They were silent.

‘It’s only fair you speak to him,’ James said. ‘When you’ve got your head straight, I mean.’

‘I know. I will. The next day or two. I hate lying. I hate the lies more than anything. I’ll have to go back, face the music.’

She paused.

‘And maybe pick up a few things.’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. All my stuff?’

He pulled her closer.

The artillery barrage was creeping closer, great white flower-blooms in the night, more pressure-slap than noise, the booming too loud to actually be heard. The world shook and rattled. Muddy vapour stung his nose, terror clawed like a cat in his chest, trying to get out.

Davey Morgan woke up. It was black, black like the Black Out. The luminous hands of his little wind-up alarm clock formed a tiny, green fuzz. He groped around and found his specs, put them on his face. Four o’clock gone.

The noise that had woken him, the noise that had penetrated his dream and whisked him back to ’44, was just the storm. Pelting rain, and a juddering gale. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.

Cold to the bone, Davey swung slowly out from under the eiderdown and put his feet on the balding carpet. He found his slippers and his dressing gown. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.

The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. Or maybe like some yobbo bastard thumping on his backdoor. Some yobbo bastard who’d been beering it up and fancied some fun and games at Taff Morgan’s expense.

This late? In this weather? It seemed unlikely, but the trepidation wouldn’t let go of him. Davey could still remember the dream, the terror of the dream. Fresh and real. Funny, it had been years and years since he’d dreamt about service life, years and years since he’d packed the raw memories of beachheads and the bocage up in some mental drawer and slid it tight shut.

What had opened that up again, after all this bloody time?

He followed the sound of the banging onto the landing. Shadows waved and jumped in the gloom: the wind waving tree branches in front of the street light outside.

He limped down the narrow stairs. More banging, sporadic.

‘It’s all right,’ he reassured the picture on the hall table.

He entered the kitchen. So much rain streamed down the windows, the glass looked like it was melting. Bang! Bang-bang!

‘Who is it?’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’

Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!

Davey took a step towards the backdoor.

The door and windows blew in at him in a blizzard of glass and fire. Pots flew off the stove. Mugs jumped off their hooks and shattered.

Davey Morgan lay on his back, numb, ears ringing. His face was wet. Rain? Blood?

He could smell burned earth, heat, the fetid stink of deeply churned soil exposed to the surface for the first time in centuries. It was a smell he’d never forgotten, the smell of ’44.

He could hear the crackle of flames, the tinkle of glass chips dropping out of broken window frames.

He got up somehow, hauling on the doorframe. There was a bright light outside, a leaping orange glare. Ribbons of smoke oozed in through the gap where the backdoor had been.

Davey Morgan reached the doorway. The yard had gone. The back path too, and the houses and allotments all the way over to Connault Way.

They had been replaced by hell.

The night was a black cave lit up by vast lakes of fire. The ground behind his house had been excavated and tilled by God’s own wrath, torn up, heaped, broken, scattered with debris, splintered fenceposts, mangled chunks of metal and tile. Spools of wire coiled from the banked mud. Burning hanks of ash and soot fluttered down.

As Davey stood and gaped, volleys of mammoth explosions went off along the skyline, overlapping ripples of light-flash. Overpressure bent the air and fanned the flames. Carpet bombing, or heavy barrage, five miles out. He felt the delayed punch of it in his chest.

He thought about ringing the police, but that was just daft. Like they didn’t know about this already. It would be on the news. He hadn’t had the radio on all day. What story had passed him by, what international crisis that would have led to the systematic bombing of Cathays?

He saw a figure, fifty yards away, back-lit by the firestorms, striding slowly across the ruined ground towards him. A tall, thin silhouette, with sharp angles and slender limbs. Another, off to the left, slightly further away. Skinny, gangly, like some bloody teenage yobbo.

No, not even slightly. Too tall. Too thin. Eight, nine feet tall, arms like broom handles. Hands like bunches of bananas.

There were three of them now. Cartoon stick figures, with emaciated frames and giant hands. The firelight glinted off the nearest one. Flame-light off gunmetal, the wink of light catching brass or steel.

From somewhere off to his right, beyond the house, tracer fire started up, the coughing chatter of a heavy weapon. The luminous rounds raked the fire-broken earth and tried to get the range of the approaching figures. Davey ducked down, involuntarily. Gunfire, find cover.

The tracer rounds stitched explosive plumes of soil out of the ground around the nearest figure. It turned slightly, facing the origin of the gunfire, and something pulsed dull yellow on its head where its eyes should have been. Davey felt a scourging, invisible heat buckle the air. Off to the right, a crunching blast threw sparks up into the sky. The gunfire cut off abruptly.

Davey tried to edge his way back into the ruined kitchen. The nearest shape had resumed its slow plod towards him.

He saw it more clearly as it came closer, revealed by the light of the raging ground fires. Bone-thin legs, twice as long as a man’s, took long, measured strides across the churned ground. The legs carried a tall, narrow torso of paint-chipped metal and a head — set on a long, thin piston of a neck — that was half-skull, half-sculpture. Burnished metal features, cadaver-thin cheeks.

‘Go away!’ Davey cried. ‘Go away!’

The thing’s gaze located him. A little hum, a slight change in pitch.

A pulse of dull yellow where the eyes should have been-

Davey Morgan woke up. It was pitch black. The luminous green hands of his alarm clock told him it was four o’clock gone.

He lay there, shivering in his own sweat, listening to the rainstorm throwing itself against the bedroom windows.

Just a dream. Just a bloody dream. Just a stupid-

The noise that had woken him came again. Something was banging and knocking, persistently.

Cold to the bone, Davey got up. His knee hurt when he put his weight onto it.

The banging was close by. Like a door or a gate, tugged by the wind. He’d had this already. He’d been around this dream once already, and he didn’t want another bloody turn.

He limped down the narrow stairs. Bang! Bang-bang! Bang! He gently touched the picture on the hall table as he went by. He tasted mint.

He entered the kitchen. So much rain against the windows, the glass looked like it was melting. Bang! Bang-bang!

‘Who is it?’ he called. ‘Who’s there?’

Bang! Bang! Bang-bang!

Davey took a step towards the backdoor.

The fan light of the kitchen window was ajar. He must have left it open. The gale had pulled it off its brace, and now it was banging and jumping in its frame.

Bang! Bang-bang! Bang!

Davey fastened it. He checked the bolt on the backdoor.

He went into the bathroom and turned the light on, squinting in the hard electric glare. The thing lay in the tub where he had left it. A heavy, rounded tube of paint-chipped metal about three feet long, topped by a featureless ovoid the size of a rugby ball. Tube and ovoid were made of the same metal, and had been joined with such engineering skill, Davey could locate no seam or weld.

Davey lowered the toilet lid and made a chair out of it. He sat himself down carefully, holding onto the sink. The close air smelled of soap and mildewed bathmats.

He faced the thing in the tub.

‘Right then,’ he said.

A low hum.

A slight change in pitch.