Torchwood First Born

First Born

T O R C H W O O D

First Born

James Goss

Rhys!'

I opened my eyes. It was the middle of the night.

My wife was standing at the end of the bed, alert as
a ninja. A heavily pregnant ninja.

'Rhys!' Gwen repeated. Even in the dark, even
seven months gone, she was still so pretty. I'm a
lucky man.

I sat up. This was important.

We've got to go,' she said.

My eyes drifted over to the two holdalls by the
door. They'd been packed for months. The blue one
was for when she went into labour. The black one
meant something else.

'Which one? I asked, peeling off the duvet. It was
freezing.

'What?'

The blue and black bags look the same in the
dark,' I explained, reaching for the bedside lamp.

'Don't touch that light!' she hissed.

Ah. So it was the black bag, then. Great. We were
about to go on the run, and I was just wearing a pair
of boxer shorts.

There was a noise outside. Gwen crossed to the
window and peered down at the street. They're
coming!' she groaned.

I sloughed on a pair of trackie bums and stumbled
over to the window. Big solid cars were turning into
our road. Big, solid, unmarked cars.

Who are they?' I asked.

'How should I know?' she groaned. There's a queue for us, these days. Come on!'

We ran down the stairs, and into the hall. Gwen stopped and made a face. 'Gotta go pee,' she said.

'Now?' I bellowed in a whisper.

'Junior is using my bladder as a trampoline,' she hissed back at me in frustration. 'Can't help it. Won't be a tic.'

So I stood there, in the draughty hallway, utterly terrified by the sound of my own breathing, aware that the security forces of any number of agencies, countries or secret organisations were right now parking up outside the front door. They had come for us because they wanted us dead, or worse. Scared? I was bricking it.

Not so long ago, my wife worked for a thing called Torchwood. It protected the Earth, sometimes from alien invasions, sometimes from itself. Things had ended pretty badly - the office had got blown up, and the rest of the team were gone. As in dead or left-the-planet gone. The only remaining bit of Torchwood was Gwen Cooper. The last custodian of a lot of alien secrets. My wife.

Who was, just then, complaining about how cold the toilet seat was.

I heard car doors slam outside and people whispering into crackling radios as their shoes crunched along the pavement. Shadows fell across the door, haloed in orange from the street lamps.

'They're here,' I said, tiptoeing back up the stairs.

We'd been prepared. It wasn't just about the black bag. Oh no. I fumbled with the key ring in my pocket. A tiny bit of technology, no bigger than a coin, probably fell off the back of a flying saucer.

I pressed it, and all the car alarms in the street went off. We'd also prepared an escape route out the bathroom window.

We crept through the garden. I kind of regretted that we'd not been there long enough to do much with it - planted a few bulbs, that kind of thing. Bit late for that - I knew we'd never see the place again.

We slipped out into the alleyway and got into our getaway car. Nothing flash, just something Gwen had taken from work - a beaten-up minicab - the perfect vehicle for moving through Cardiff at night without getting noticed. Gwen insisted on squeezing her bump in behind the steering wheel. Clearly she'd be in the driving seat. No change there, then.

We set off down the road, and Gwen laughed.

'Goodbye, Cardiff,' she said.

Who were they?' I asked, as we rolled gently down empty streets. Not too slow, not too fast - not drawing attention.

'No idea,' she said. 'But let's face it, love, we knew they'd come eventually. No one was going to forget about us.'

'Yeah,' I said, glancing at the rear-view mirror.

No sign of any pursuit.

'Where are we going?' I asked.

'Oh, no idea,' said Gwen. 'There were plenty of keys in the lock-up. Lots of nice places to choose from. Pick one.'

'OK,' I said. 'Just as long as we'll be safe.'

'Absolutely,' agreed Gwen, flashing me a big smile. 'We're safe now.'

Which was when the helicopter roared overhead.

We both screamed.

'What the hell?' I was still shouting as she threw the car into an abrupt U-turn, and we bombed down a back lane, bumping around wheelie bins.

'We are being chased by a helicopter,' Gwen stated the obvious, as though I'd bloody missed it. There was a tiny edge to her voice. Like it might have been my fault, just a little.

Bullets sparked off the road ahead of us. Warning shots, I hoped.

Gwen just ignored them, throwing us into reverse and then down towards the stadium. Overhanging trees kept the helicopter back a bit as she ploughed on, bouncing up onto the main road and on our way out of the city. We were leaving Cardiff behind us.

The helicopter rose overhead again, spotlights blinded us and more shots were fired, tearing into the tarmac.

'Gwen Cooper! Give yourself up!' a loudspeaker blared.

More shots, and the car swung around again, heading for a pedestrian underpass. Hopefully it would be empty at this time of night.

'Gwen?' I shouted, 'What are you doing? We can't outrun a helicopter in a minicab!'

'Just watch me, love,' she shouted, putting her foot down. And she grinned.

*

Two months later...

'Rhys!'

I opened my eyes. Grey daylight. Thereabouts dawn. My first breath froze in the air in front of me.

I looked across at Gwen, sat in a chair cradling our daughter, the two of them wrapped up against the ice like Eskimos.

'Morning, Campers!' I said, trying to be cheery.

My feet sank onto the scratchy nylon carpet. The tiny ancient portable television hissed away in the corner.

'Not watching S4C again, were you?' I asked.

'Someone has to,' she groaned, standing up and stretching. 'If it wasn't for us breastfeeding mothers, I swear their audience would be zero.' She yawned, pushing a free hand through,her hair. 'I am now an expert on sheep tics. As a result, I am going to take a shower. Look after her, will you?' and she passed me our baby.

Anwen is beautiful. Someone once said that all babies look like Winston Churchill, but that turns out to be a total lie. All babies look like tiny, furious angels.

She's heavier than you'd expect and lumpy in all the wrong places, but I think she's utterly amazing.

I tell her this regularly, but she never really gives a sign that she understands. While Gwen stood cursing under the kitten-lick of a shower, I held Anwen, and jostled her and said nonsense to her, which she never seemed to grow tired of. The things you do for the tiniest facial twitch on a baby that may, just may be a gurgle of pure delight. Or regurgitated milk. I also checked to see whether or not she needed changing.

I did this very carefully. Anwen can redecorate a room, and I was running out of clean clothes.

For one thing, we didn't have a washing machine.

When we went on the run, we started staying in some fairly interesting places. By interesting, I mean utter dumps. The phrase Torchwood Safe House'

conjures up quite an image, doesn't it? Of a house for starters. But we were currently staying in one of those immobile home caravan things - you know, a giant box on wheels lavishly decorated in Formica and orange. A nasty beige fridge. Any warmth came from a three-bar heater (only one bar working) or, if we fancied a treat, we left the gas hob on. Luxury.

The one advantage of this place was that it was in the middle of nowhere. The caravan park itself was long closed down (there'd been trouble with gypsies or something - plus who would stay here?) and the nearby village was a stubbornly un-picturesque bit of North Wales. We'd been here a few days and no one had paid us any attention, which was a good sign. At least it looked as though we'd be able to stay here for a while before They found us. Lord alone knows who 'They' were, but we kept moving on, like the Littlest Hobo, only with better rows.

Since giving birth to Anwen (no, we don't talk about the actual birth, thank you very much - the head-spinning scene of
The Exorcist
but at the wrong end), Gwen had become even more paranoid - although in her more rational moments, she'd announce that eventually They would stop looking for Us. She'd say it dandling Anwen on her knee which was kind of weird - 'Soon They'll stop trying to kill Mummy and Daddy, won't that be lovely? Oh yes it will!' But to be fair, it was all fairly horrible - the shitty houses, the imminent death by Men In Black... but most of all, having a baby was a bloody nightmare.

We were so tired we'd gone beyond cross-tired and well into exhausted. The killer thing is breastfeeding, since you ask. Now, unlike childbirth itself, breastfeeding is agony for both parents - it's quite something when you're delighted to have had three solid hours of sleep. It's like Anwen is some creepy alien creature that has somehow enslaved us to a life of constant misery. We get no praise (beyond the occasional smile that's mostly trapped wind), just a lot of screaming if we do anything wrong or have failed to anticipate her needs instantly and correctly. And we love her for it. You hear people banging on about suspected terrorists placed under control orders - unable to leave the house, have any free time, and subject to a strict curfew. This is viewed to be cruel and inhumane. Forget it - it's the story of my life. Only give a few of these suspect terrorist buggers a newborn baby, and they'd crack within seventy-two hours.

I know what you're thinking. That's all very well, but neither you nor Gwen have a job.' Yeah. Right now I'd love to have a job, to be able to get out of here for just a few hours a day. Just for a break.

Right now Rhys Williams would kill to hear about purchase orders or invoices or spreadsheets. Hell, I'd even sit through a sales meeting with Evil Josephine From Newport (a lass who has mastered the art of being simultaneously boring and creepy).
Anything
other than sit around Baby-this and Baby-that-ing with Gwen.

No, since you ask. Not a great time. I think we still loved each other. But it was hard to tell. I'd have loved us to get pissed and have a laugh, but we couldn't ('Because of the milk,' said Gwen), so we just didn't. 'Have a beer, go on,' she'd say. I'd sit, drinking it with the solid grimness of an old man while Anwen stared at me. 'That's Daddy. He's having his happy juice,' Gwen would say. Great.

I finished the near-radioactive job of changing the nappy as Gwen emerged from the shower. She was wearing a towel burqa, it was that cold. All I could see were her eyes gazing critically at my nappy changing. You'd think I'd never wiped an arse before.

But I said nothing, applied a fresh nappy and then realised.

'Balls. That's the lot. No more nappies.'

'Oh,' said Gwen. She leaned back against the door.

'I think there's a bag in the car,' I said. 'But maybe I should pop into town to get some.'

'Town?' her tone was guarded.

'The village. Rawbone.'

'Right. It's not a town. We'll be lucky if it's got a shop.'

'It might have. Failing that, I saw a superstore a few miles back. I can drive there.'

Gwen shook her head. 'CCTV. Best not.'

'OK.' This was one of Gwen's Mad Policies. Avoid getting on CCTV. Which sounds sensible. Fine, let's avoid the big supermarkets. But every time we fill up with petrol we're on camera. ATMs are out - not that there's anything much in our accounts, probably.

We're managing with a car boot of cash that Gwen got from the storage unit.

'Village shop it is, then.' I cracked a smile at her.

'Hey, what about it? Fancy a walk into the village?'

Gwen looked tempted and hopeful for a moment.

Then Anwen made a noise. A tiny, intuitive little noise that could have been a cry, could have been a hiccup. No Freedom For You, Mother. Gwen shrugged, helplessly. 'Perhaps not today, eh?' she said. Her smile wasn't even 40 watt. She picked up Anwen's leaden weight and flopped into a chair covered in bobbly green nylon felt. 'Go on,' she sighed,

'go have fun,' like she was giving me a pass to Tiger Tiger.

I grabbed the keys from the lock, trying not to look at the fob that said 'I. Jones', and stepped out into the crisp, crisp air. It was one of those doors that there's a knack to closing. You know, handle up, handle down, spin round three times, slam.

I set off, then risked a backward glance. Gwen was feeding Anwen, but the baby looked up at me, and fixed me with a stare. I made a little bye-bye wave and trudged off down the hill. I was wearing my pyjamas. But I didn't care. It was raining only slightly. Great.

As I trudged towards the first house, I reached a sign announcing this was Rawbone to anyone who cared. I noticed a patch of flowers growing around the sign and into the hedgerow. They were odd, like giant, rotten tulips. Bloody funny things, I thought, and wondered why no one had got around to pulling them up. They reeked.