10
Meanwhile Jack and Ianto.
Tense words in the kitchen.
"Maybe you should go stay with your parents for a while." Jack snarls, "Micha needs you now."
"Maybe you should go stay with my parents."
"Look, this isn't …" Jack sighs theatrically.
"No, Jack, you're not the only one with responsibilities here, half these people are my …" Sees something out the kitchen window.
It scares him.
"What? What was it?" Jack moves to his side.
"Shadow."
Jack grabs his gun and goes out.
Jack stands at the edge of the property, eyeing the back field. It's eerily still.
"Somebody there?!" he calls out.
Silence.
Turning, he sees the light is on inside the shed.
He walks over, pushes open the door with the gun muzzle.
As he peeks warily inside tools fall to the floor. Scares the hell of out him. Jack switches off the light and then hears glass shatter inside the house.
"Who are you?!" Ianto is screaming "Who are you?! JACK!"
He crosses the yard at a sprint, kicks open the screen door And sees three soldiers in boi-suits forcibly escorting Ianto to the front door.
Jack lunges into the fray, gun outstretched. "What the fuck! Get off him!"
His heroics are short-lived. Grabbed, spun, put in a chokehold, he is disarmed and dragged out the door by the suited intruders. It's over in two seconds flat - chilling, the ease with which he is subdued.
They wrestle Ianto aboard an idling school bus. Jack behind him, still resisting, choked blue in the face.
"Where are you taking us?!" Ianto asks, shaking.
.
.
.
.
Hurtling along under armed guard, Jack and Ianto see shocking images out the windows.
FAMILIES BEING PULLED FROM EVERY HOUSE IN SIGHT.
The entire town is being corralled onto buses like pigs off to slaughter.
All the people stand in lines under the lights. Stunned. No one saw this coming. Raised ten feet and topped with razor wire, the fence is patrolled by armed guards in hazmat suits.
A recorded message plays over the field's tinny P.A. system:
"...Please remain calm and do not interfere with the work of the examiners. Information will be provided to you as it becomes available. Thank you for your cooperation..."
Repeating as medical personnel come down the lines with digital ear thermometers checking temperatures.
A single BEEP means you're okay.
A quick triple BEEP-BEEP-BEEP means you're not and prompts a swift response, which we see playing out across the field:
Burly MEDTECHS loading the unlucky person into one of the many golf carts on the scene - pulling wives away from husbands, husbands away from wives, children from parents, parents from children - a coldly scientific process that ends with the golf carts speeding the outtakes up the hill to the high school while loved ones scream in vain for their return.
Here are Jack and Ianto, as stunned and disoriented as everyone else. Jack confronts a passing examiner, his outrage reflected back at him in the mirrored face shield.
"What did we get exposed to?! What was it?!" Jack demands.
The examiner walks past without reply. Ianto meanwhile appraises the medical teams, the work being done.
"Elevated temperature usually means infection, but a toxin can do the same thing... I don't know, the way Gwen was acting makes me think it's chemical." Ianto says softly.
" So they round us up with assault rifles, what's that?" Jack snarls, still bristling.
" Medical response teams train with case studies, they know the symptomology, pharmacological outcomes –"
"In plain-speak." Jack asks.
" They're as scared as we are." Ianto hisses.
Ianto steps away to help an elderly woman who is leaning against the fence. Soldiers escort Mayor Hartman and her assistant onto the field.
" Governor Hatfield's a personal friend of mine!" Yvonne is screaming.
Nobody cares. They get dumped in a line near Jack. Hartman draws hostile stares. Word of her hasty exodus has apparently gotten around.
"Hey 'Vonnie, how's Kentucky?" Jack barks.
"Bastards spiked our hovers, pulled us out at gunpoint." She returned.
"Wow, sounds like your civil rights might have been violated, you should look into that." Jack says with wide eyes and Hartman frowns at the sarcasm, taking in the angry stares.
"Is that what everybody's so ticked off at me for?"
"You ran. Town needed a leader." Jack shot back.
"You be the leader." She sighs, "It's not our town anymore."
Jack steps to the fence, watches the guards prowling the perimeter.
Otherworldly riflemen with biohazard hoods and leashed dogs. His gaze finds the old scoreboard behind the backstop. Lingers on it. Something poignant about it there behind the barbed wire.
But what he sees past it is chilling.
Two figures standing in the tungsten glow of a flood light, staring at him...
JACOB AND KEIREN WILLIAMS
Rhys's sons. Delirious with rage and vengeance.
Teeth and gums exposed by some obscene tightening of the jaw muscles.
Noise on the PA system makes Jack jump. He looks back and the Williams boys are gone. Haunted, he scans the dark woods. And suddenly a hand grabs his shoulder. He spins, ready for a fight. It's his deputy.
"Funny thing happened on the way to Wichy." Andy drawled.
Gallows humor.
Followed by a deadly serious, "Who are these fuckers?"
"Same ones who don't know anything about a dead pilot and aren't missing a plane."
Jack surveys the crowd, sensing beneath the fear and bewilderment a growing rage. It's palpable, a chemical shift in their psychology.
"This don't end well." Andy said under his breath.
Jack shakes his head - nope. An examiner comes down the line checking temperatures.
Jack engages. "I need to talk to somebody right now! Hey, do you hear me?!"
The examiner jams a thermometer in Jack's ear.
Pushes the button.
BEEP.
Moves on to Ianto, who is preoccupied with patient care.
"This woman is asthmatic, she needs her medica –"
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Time stands still.
Ianto in disbelief.
Jack spins to fend off the onrushing med-techs.