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jupiter2932Title: Left for Dead, Right for an Unpleasant Stroll
Author:jupiter2932
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG
Word Count: 553
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Team Torchwood
Notes: Written for Febuwhump, day 27, Left for Dead
Summary: It's not every day an alien tries to take over Cardiff with an army of the recently deceased, but Torchwood is ready when it does.
"Just a few more." Jack stops when they come to a fork in the tunnels and catches his breath. He swipes at his brow with his sleeve and squints at the mess of blood, sweat, and what he's fairly certain is brain matter that ends up on it. God. "We get through this group and we can go home. Get some rest."
He's trying to sound calm and collected, but even ten hours after the first corpse attacked a funeral director Jack still finds himself squeamish when facing another. But they're so close to done, now.
It's not every day an alien revives all the dead bodies in Cardiff's morgues and funeral homes in a bid to take over the world, but his team have risen marvelously to the occasion.
He's never been so proud of them.
It's been a hell of a day, and they've all nearly died multiple times each, but they're still here, taking his orders, tramping through the sewers at half past four in the morning to make sure every single one of the walking corpses is laid back to rest, to make sure no one else in Cardiff dies because of this attack.
"Which way, Jack?" Gwen asks, taking the momentary rest to set her hands on her knees and suck in several ragged, heaving breaths through her mouth. "Left or right?"
She's got sweat stains around her neck and armpits and bruised, bleeding knuckles from where she's gotten into it hand-to-hand with the corpses, wielding the fire ax she stole from the theater they passed through.
Ianto, behind her, has got bloody knuckles too, his hand tight around the hilt of the sword he borrowed from the vaults. He's got a cut as well, running along his left shoulder that Owen--who's going to have black eyes for weeks, courtesy of his taped and broken nose--patched up with butterfly stitches. Tosh has escaped with the least physical injuries of them all, but she's covered in patches of a disgusting, sticky slime thanks to the two hours she spent fighting her way out of an alien cocoon, which Jack imagines will provide her with plenty of nightmare fodder for months to come.
Beat up and exhausted and ready to keep going for as long as necessary. Though hopefully clearing up this last batch of brain-eaters won't take more than a few minutes.
Quarter hour at most.
And the sooner they finish, well, the sooner they finish.
Jack looks down at the Dead Detector--a slapdash piece of tech that Tosh and Ianto slapped together that somehow, miraculously, works and peers at the grouping of pale yellow dots not four hundred feet away.
"Left," he says. He puts the Detector back in his pocket and grabs the machete from the sheath he improvised on his hip. The tunnels are lit with a bare bulb every twenty feet, but the light is dim, and the shadows seem to stretch into each other further up ahead.
"Just a few more," he says, keeping his voice steady and light, and gathers himself and plunges ahead.
And Gwen behind him hefts her ax, and Ianto his sword, and Owen his hammer and Tosh the butcher's knife and crowbar she liberated from the mayor's townhouse, and they follow his footsteps into the dark.
Author:
jupiter2932Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG
Word Count: 553
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Team Torchwood
Notes: Written for Febuwhump, day 27, Left for Dead
Summary: It's not every day an alien tries to take over Cardiff with an army of the recently deceased, but Torchwood is ready when it does.
"Just a few more." Jack stops when they come to a fork in the tunnels and catches his breath. He swipes at his brow with his sleeve and squints at the mess of blood, sweat, and what he's fairly certain is brain matter that ends up on it. God. "We get through this group and we can go home. Get some rest."
He's trying to sound calm and collected, but even ten hours after the first corpse attacked a funeral director Jack still finds himself squeamish when facing another. But they're so close to done, now.
It's not every day an alien revives all the dead bodies in Cardiff's morgues and funeral homes in a bid to take over the world, but his team have risen marvelously to the occasion.
He's never been so proud of them.
It's been a hell of a day, and they've all nearly died multiple times each, but they're still here, taking his orders, tramping through the sewers at half past four in the morning to make sure every single one of the walking corpses is laid back to rest, to make sure no one else in Cardiff dies because of this attack.
"Which way, Jack?" Gwen asks, taking the momentary rest to set her hands on her knees and suck in several ragged, heaving breaths through her mouth. "Left or right?"
She's got sweat stains around her neck and armpits and bruised, bleeding knuckles from where she's gotten into it hand-to-hand with the corpses, wielding the fire ax she stole from the theater they passed through.
Ianto, behind her, has got bloody knuckles too, his hand tight around the hilt of the sword he borrowed from the vaults. He's got a cut as well, running along his left shoulder that Owen--who's going to have black eyes for weeks, courtesy of his taped and broken nose--patched up with butterfly stitches. Tosh has escaped with the least physical injuries of them all, but she's covered in patches of a disgusting, sticky slime thanks to the two hours she spent fighting her way out of an alien cocoon, which Jack imagines will provide her with plenty of nightmare fodder for months to come.
Beat up and exhausted and ready to keep going for as long as necessary. Though hopefully clearing up this last batch of brain-eaters won't take more than a few minutes.
Quarter hour at most.
And the sooner they finish, well, the sooner they finish.
Jack looks down at the Dead Detector--a slapdash piece of tech that Tosh and Ianto slapped together that somehow, miraculously, works and peers at the grouping of pale yellow dots not four hundred feet away.
"Left," he says. He puts the Detector back in his pocket and grabs the machete from the sheath he improvised on his hip. The tunnels are lit with a bare bulb every twenty feet, but the light is dim, and the shadows seem to stretch into each other further up ahead.
"Just a few more," he says, keeping his voice steady and light, and gathers himself and plunges ahead.
And Gwen behind him hefts her ax, and Ianto his sword, and Owen his hammer and Tosh the butcher's knife and crowbar she liberated from the mayor's townhouse, and they follow his footsteps into the dark.
