Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Torchwood team

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,493 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 347 - Bury

Summary: The team have an alien to dispose of.

‘Well, we don't have to look too hard to find what came through,’ Jack observed as Owen pulled the car around the bend in the road, bringing the empty, late night parking lot into view. The pallid glow of lights from the Sainsbury windows cast just enough to put the huge lump of alien creature into sharp relief.

Owen slowed the SUV, not wanting to get too close and potentially annoy the creature. ‘It had better not be difficult, he observed. We don't have enough sedative for something that big.’

‘I keep telling Jack we need to be better stocked,’ Ianto piped up from the back seat.

Jack sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘You sedate and capture one pterodactyl and now you're the authority on such things.’

He shrugged. ‘Torchwood One standard operating handbook. I wrote a few chapters.’

‘How about we just hope it's sentient and friendly?’ Gwen suggested.

Owen snorted as he drew the car to a stop. ‘Yeah, cause when has hoping for the best ever worked?’

Jack was out of that car before the rest of them as always. He had his Webley drawn and knew the others wouldn't be far behind him as he took point towards their latest visitor. It was a hulking mass of dark skin and thick hairs, turned away from him so that he couldn't quite make out a head, only the stumpy tail that curled around the end of its body as it lay there.

‘Jack, don't get too close,’ Tosh warned him, studying her PDA with a look of concern. ‘I'm getting radiation readings.’

‘Me too,’ Jack confirmed for her, checking the readings from his own wrist strap which was quietly beeping a warning at him. ‘I think I know what we're dealing with,’ he said, registering the unique radiation signature and putting two and two together. ‘We should be okay for now.’

‘For now?’ There was no concealing Owen's skepticism.

Jack ignored the question, edging ever forwards towards the creature. So far it hadn't moved but that didn't make him any less wary. Injured and vulnerable only made things more dangerous and at risk of lashing out, even to someone who wanted to help.

He holstered his gun, knowing it wasn't going to be of much use to him if things got ugly and closed the gap between them, rounding from behind to try and not startle it. He needn't have worried. Once he saw it from the front he knew it would pose no danger to them. He reached up and double-checked for life signs. ‘It's gone,’ he announced. ‘Nothing we can do.’

The rest of the team came towards it, studying it with curious looks. It might have been asleep, long tongue hanging out of its huge mouth between long teeth that stuck out from its lower jaw and curled up around its short snout. Only the pool of blackish blood pooling under its rotund stomach gave away the fact that it was mortally wounded.

Jack knelt to inspect the wound more closely, shining his torch underneath the body. ‘Don't think it was our fault,’ he finally said.

‘Like anything that falls through the rift is ever actually our fault,’ Owen reminded him.

‘It's been in some kind of fight with a larger predator and come off second best. Being sucked up by the rift before its foe went in for the kill was probably a mercy. It was sad to think that bleeding out alone in an empty parking lot in Radyr at night was a better way to die.’

‘Poor thing,’ Gwen said, frowning sadly at it. ‘It looks sort of dinosaur-ish.’

Jack stood back up. ‘Not far wrong, Gwen. It's a Klapstinex. Probably connected to the same evolutionary chain but about four hundred parsecs from here. It's on the small size so I'd guess it's adolescent, only eighty or ninety years old.’

‘What about the radiation?’ Tosh asked. ‘Did it pick that up through the rift?’

‘Nope. The star system where you find these has a very thin ozone and is a lot closer to the sun. They're built to withstand the worst of the ambient radiation and the rest they absorb. Unlike us, it doesn't break down their genetic code. Not whilst they're alive, anyhow. That's what our technology is picking up. Like mercury builds up in fish but doesn't kill it.’

Ianto shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Glow in the dark alien dinosaurs. That's a new one for us. We should start a museum.’

Jack chuckled. ‘You don't want this stuffed and on public display. If you think it's radioactive now, that's nothing compared to what it'll be like when the body starts decaying.’

‘Oh,’ Tosh said, running a quick calculation on her PDA. ‘I see what you mean. Molecular degeneration is going to release those stored nuclear particles.’

Jack nodded. ‘Like a Chernobyl victim but ten times worse. We need to dispose of the body. Bury it so deep none of the radiation can seep out and affect the local environment.’

‘But Jack,’ Gwen began, ‘surely we could just get somebody to come and pick it up and take it off our hands. We've got contacts, don't we?’

Jack shook his head. ‘Sorry, but there's no intergalactic rubbish collection service. And this qualifies as serious organic medical waste which is even worse. There are strict guidelines that have to be followed and the transport of emitting corpses is a bit no no.’

Owen rolled his eyes. ‘Since when do you care about things like guidelines, huh?’

‘Just stop your whining. You'd think I was asking you to shovel it by hand. We have a job to do so let's just get on and do it. There's only one safe way to dispose of this thing and that's to dig a massively deep hole, somewhere isolated, fill it with concrete, line it with lead, dump the body, more concrete and then fill the hole back in.’

Gwen didn't look overly enthused by Jack's plan. ‘Pretty sure Earth has illegal dumping rules as well. I take it that they get trumped by intergalactic ones?’

Jack smirked. ‘We're going so deep no one is ever going to find out. Ianto, think you can make a few calls and call in a few favours?’

‘Only if I get a turn in the big ground digger.’

Jack grinned. Some people were so easily pleased. ‘BYO sexy hard hat.’



It was already early morning and the sun was rising over the remote green hills as Jack waited for his team to arrive. Rhys and Gwen were the first to show, trundling bumpily across the Welsh countryside in one of Harwoods largest vans, bringing the Klapstinex to its final resting place. He didn't ask them how they got it in there, but he assumed there was a lot of marital swearing and threat-making involved. No doubt there'd be a bit more trying to get it back out of the truck without making a mess or damaging the truck, both of which Rhys would no doubt harp on about much to Gwen's displeasure. Jack wasn't so fussed. He found their married ranting quite entertaining and no one had ever made him responsible for mucking out a Harwoods lorry after Torchwood had finished with it.

Not long after they'd gotten out of the truck's cabin, another booming sound could be heard as a huge yellow digger rolled into view as it crested the low hills. It was followed by Owen and Tosh in a second utility vehicle, carrying large barrels of lead pellets and stacks of pressed lead sheeting. Jack was pleased that his team had once again managed to find everything they needed within hours, even if they'd had to rouse a few sleeping heads to get it. Jack waved them both over to the spot he'd chosen.

Ianto dismounted the cabin of the digger, fully decked out in steel toed boots, a bright neon yellow jacket and hard hat. He looked like a kid at Christmas.

‘No one has ever made high vis so sexually appealing,’ Jack said, leering at his getup. Somehow the suit and Village People construction worker combination worked. He'd have to remember that for later.

Ianto beamed at him. ‘If you're going to stand out, do it stylishly. I've got you a hat too.’

Jack waved off the offer. ‘Don't need one.’

‘Why?’ Owen asked, marching up to meet them. ‘Because your skull is already so thick nothing can penetrate it?’

‘Be careful I don't bury you in the hole while I'm at it,’ Jack warned Owen. ‘There'll be plenty of room.’

Ianto held out the keys for the digger. ‘She's all yours, sir. Try not to break her. I don't think our insurance covers us.’



Jack got a lot of pleasure from his job, but sometimes just being a big kid was the best part of all. He hadn't done something like this since he'd been back in Boeshane, digging holes in the sand where he and his brother would bury treasures they'd found. Of course by treasure, it was usually nothing more than strange bits of sea glass, rocks, driftwood and shells, but it was still theirs. He wondered if he might ever go back and dig them back up, just to see if they were still there. They might be worthless to anyone else, but to him they would be priceless.

It didn't take long to build up a huge pile of dislodged earth, forming a hole some forty feet deep. Whilst he'd been digging, Ianto had gone and fetched a large concrete mixer, its carriage spinning slowly to keep the mixture liquid in the background and readying to leap into action. With a thumbs up from one cabin to the other, the mixer swept towards the hole and dumped in half its load, coating that base of the hole in gloopy grey cement. Jack backfilled it with a few feet of the lead pellets Owen and Tosh had procured before scooping up the dead alien as carefully as he could and placing it in the hole on top. There were more layers of lead and then more concrete, and then all but a small mound of the dirt shifted back into place until the hole was no more. In a few weeks, the grass would grow back and no one would ever know it was there.



Jack cut the engine of the digger and jumped out of that cabin, greeting his team who had been loitering in the warmth of the SUV, and trying to sneak in the odd nap while they waited. He supposed it was fair enough. They'd been going since last night and now it was creeping towards tea time. He hadn't even noticed his own hunger until now.

'Are we done?' Owen asked. He looked bored and starving. They all did in fact.

'Yup. One alien corpse suitably contained without ruining the groundwater or causing a 40,000 year nuclear waste nightmare. Kinda sad actually. We probably should have said some nice words or laid flowers.' It wasn't every day you buried an alien.

Ianto yawned. 'I think the universe will forgive us our impropriety. Can we go home now? The only thing I fancy burying now is my head in a curry, followed by a nice fat pillow.'

'I second that,' Gwen said.

'Me too,' Tosh agreed.

'Not sure I get a say,' Rhys added, 'but I'm up for a curry. So long as it's not dinosaur vindaloo.'

Jack rolled his eyes and shook his head. 'And here I was thinking you'd all go vegan for a day.'