18
Ianto checked the road ahead – all clear – and slowed a little, raising his foot a fraction from the accelerator. The road behind them looked blurry and indistinct, like a painting in which the colours were running, slowly seeping down the canvas.
He squinted, trying to make it out, and then he noticed the same blurring creeping up the windows from the rear, as though trying to overtake the car.
Instinctively, he tapped quickly on the brake pedal for a split second, and illuminated the road behind them in the red glow of the brake lights.
His mouth dropped.
Dozens of them, bathed in crimson as though they had burst straight from hell itself, loping in the tiny hatchback's wake like dogs.
A swarming, heaving mass of shadows that blotted out the road, making the woods lining the road seem alive.
Spiders? Hitchers!
Ianto gasped and stamped on the accelerator wildly, all thoughts of proceeding with caution abandoned.
As his gaze swung back to the road ahead, Gwen screamed in the passenger seat, her hands held out ahead of her face protectively.
Heading straight for them, an oblivious participant in a deadly game of chicken, was the town butcher, drenched in blood still in his apron, the lights of the car disappearing into his vacant, glistening eye-sockets.
His mouth was split by a wide, hungry grin, displaying a set of blood red teeth.
Ianto tried to spin the wheel, but too late.
The butcher ran straight into the radiator grille as if it were nothing more threatening than a garden sprinkler, and disappeared in a cloud of blood that filled the windscreen.
The car lurched as it bumped wildly over the body, and the wheel slipped from Ianto's grasp as Jack called out his name with alarm. The world seemed to hold its breath for a fleeting second as the car flipped, and Michael had time to see the tarmac rushing toward the driver side window before everything became twisting, shrieking metal, and darkness.
.
.
.
.
"No, no, no."
Ianto shook his head and smacked the steering wheel in anger with the palms of his hands. "Please tell me this isn't happening."
The car came to a stop and Ianto snarled, "Why now? Why the fuck did this have to happen now?"
He had no idea how many times he had stepped out of his means of transport on the barrens this particular evening, in this God-awful weather, but he was hoping this was going to be the last.
That crashed vehicle abandoned back there had been bad enough, the front grill looking like it had taken out a large animal and his stomach churned as a small voice whispered what that animal had been.
Fuck.
He now had a small matter of trying to remove a large quantity of dirt and grass off the road.
Ianto looked to the hill, to the right of the country road, and it appeared that some of the hill, probably due to the weather, had fallen away and had blocked most of the road off.
There was no chance he could drive around it, because of the lack of space available to do so, or over it, as the part of the hill that had fallen away and crumbled was too high to drive over.
He went back to the car, grabbed the tyre iron off the passenger seat and, leaving the lights on and the keys dangling in the ignition.
It was agreed that Ianto, Jack and Owen would go search for a bolthole while everyone else stayed in the relative safety of the vehicle, something Gwen started to argue about, before nodding and un-holstering her weapon.
Andy and Cheryse still fresh in everyone's minds.
With little deliberation they began to jog around the huge mound of dirt and once they progressed away from the SUV, they were eventually jogging in complete darkness, drenched in panic.
Ianto felt panic setting in and glanced at Jack, calmly jogging beside him as his coat tails flapped.
Ianto resisted the urge to giggle. He was on the Barrens, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by darkness, and all he had for light was a small torch on his phone. There was no fat moon hanging in the sky, and the stars seemed to be taking a vacation as well. Even without the macabre events that had just happened, it was an outlandish and creepy night.
As he ran, holding his phone in his left hand, tyre iron in the right, he wondered if he had managed to kill the gowned man, and also wondered what the fuck it was anyway.
Ianto decided to stop running, and bent over to catch his breath.
Jack stopped and placed a hand softly on his back, encouraging him to find strength as Owen made loud raspy noises while still trying to reach them.
Ianto's breathing became shallow and his body shivered in the torrential rain that seemed to have got heavier, if that was at all possible. The light from the phone was making little difference to his visibility, so he decided to shine it on the floor to the left.
He could now see the edge of the road and used the edge as a guide.
In front of him he couldn't see anything apart from blackness, but at least he knew if he used the light it would stop him from getting near any potential drops.
His walk continued for another ten minutes, and he looked behind them.
He had no idea why he did this. He was surrounded by a blanket of darkness, and it didn't matter whether he looked in front, behind, to the right, or to the left, the scene was the same.
The road was now ascending again and the hill was making his thighs ache and his knees twinge. He had no idea how long he had to walk, as his knowledge of the Barrens was zilch, but he was beginning to think that he could die out here. With the night drawing in, the bad weather, and the lack of shelter, Ianto thought that there was a chance he could die of pneumonia. His clothes were soaked right down to his underwear, and his shivering suggested that his body was dropping in temperature.
The men were exhausted, and once they finally reached the top of the road, all the exhaustion seemed to evaporate when they saw a light in the distance.
"Oh, thank God," Owen cried.
Suddenly Ianto's thighs didn't ache anymore; his knees weren't hurting either, and as the adrenaline coursed through him, his legs had found new energy. He ran his heart out, and once the road descended, the run became easier as his soaked feet pounded the road.
He was still unsure how bendy the roads were and had to tell himself to slow down in case he continued to run straight and unknowingly tumble down a hill.
His phone wasn't making any difference, and once he saw that the flashlight was draining the hell out of his battery, now forty-one percent, he turned it off and placed it inside his pocket.
He was getting nearer to the light and it appeared to be a solitary stone house, sitting in the middle of nowhere. What a bizarre place to stay, he thought.
The rain was still hammering down, and now that he was just a matter of yards away, the brightness from the outside light of the house showed him that it was a guesthouse, and there was a small car park at the side of the place to imply that this place could have visitors.
He approached the main door and never hesitated in knocking.
Jack's soft bark of warning lost in the storm's wrath.