Torchwood: Slow Decay by Andy Lane

Author:Andy Lane
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Torchwood
Published: 2010-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Owen could hear sobbing even before he reached the cells.

He stopped before he rounded the corner, and she saw him. It wasn’t that he liked listening to women cry – although he’d experienced more than his fair share since he lost his virginity in a stationery cupboard at school when he was fifteen – it was more that he didn’t want to see what any girl looked like when she was crying that hard. The sobs were racking, heaving things, and sobs like that in his experience were accompanied by snot and dishevelled hair and a general loss of self-respect. He liked women who were neat and tidy; at least, outside the bedroom.

When she showed no sign of stopping crying, Owen scuffed his foot against the floor. She didn’t hear or, if she did hear, she didn’t respond, so he did it another couple of times.

Eventually the crying stopped and, after a few moments when Owen imagined her hurriedly wiping her face, a small, scared voice said, ‘Is there someone there? Hello?’

He walked nonchalantly around the corner as if nothing had happened. She was in the third cell along: a girl with blonde hair, matted now, and a face blotchy from crying and streaked with mascara. Still, at least she’d made an effort to clean herself up. She was still holding a tissue. Cardboard fragments lay scattered around her feet. Owen had a feeling that they were all that was left of the pizza boxes that had been stacked up in her cell earlier.

‘Hallo, Marianne,’ he said.

‘Everyone seems to know my name,’ she replied, ‘but I don’t know who anyone else is.’

‘I’m Owen. I’m a doctor.’

She moved closer to the transparent barrier that separated the cell from the corridor. ‘Am I ill? Is that why I’m here? I can’t remember.’

‘This is an isolation ward. We think you might have caught an infectious disease.’

She wasn’t convinced. ‘It looks more like a cell. A really old cell.’

‘Ah. This part of the hospital had been closed down. We reopened it because of the epidemic.’

‘But I thought I’d been drugged. The man who was here earlier told me someone had drugged my drink.’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Owen said, thinking quickly. ‘But we think whoever drugged your drink was infected with a tropical disease.’ He racked his brain for the name of some remote illness, the kind of thing that GQ published ghastly colour photographs of under the heading ‘10 Diseases You Really Don’t Want To Catch’. ‘It’s called Tapanuli Fever. Never been seen in the UK before. We’re isolating anyone this guy came into contact with until we can get them checked over.’

‘Is that why I’m so hungry all the time? Is that one of the symptoms?’

‘Look,’ he said reassuringly, ‘the chances are you’re clean, but we need to be sure. If we’re wrong, it’ll make avian flu look like a joke.’

‘Avian flu was a joke. It never happened.’

‘Yeah, but if it had, it would have been really serious.’

He took a deep breath. She wasn’t your normal Cardiff city centre good-time girl, this one.

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