m_findlow

Title: Hard to swallow
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 985 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, You're not supposed to swallow them!" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack gets a little too up close and personal with nature.

'I hate the countryside,' Owen moped, trailing a good three yards behind the rest of them.

'We know Owen,' Jack said, trying to hold his temper in check. 'You've told us a hundred times.'

'And fifty of those at least in the last hour,' Gwen added, readjusting her backpack as they trekked over the rugged Welsh hills. It was one of those rare sunny days where she would have preferred it to be more overcast. The sun's rays were causing a tiny trickle of sweat to run down her back. She couldn't understand how Jack was still wearing his thick coat, seemingly oblivious to the warmth. The rest of them had ditched their jackets over an hour ago.

'You need to learn to appreciate the beauty of nature,' Jack lectured to anyone who'd listen. No one stopped him as he carried on about the frailty of life and how some planets he'd been to had poisoned their world so much so that it would never recover. He spoke of fake skies and domes that created livable atmosphere, before chastising their own wastefulness and the way they treated Earth like a garbage receptacle. They were all too out of breath to argue with him, finding the steep hills enough of a challenge.

Gwen nearly bumped into Tosh as she came to a halt at the base of the valley they'd just descended into. 'Is it much further?' she asked, gratefully accepting a bottle of water from Ianto as he handed them around from his pack. She prayed Tosh told them they wouldn't have to clamber all the way up that next ridge which looked not only steep but quite rocky. Someone was bound to injure an ankle trying to get up there.

'Should be somewhere down along here, just a little bit to the east,' she replied.

Good, Gwen thought, though unsure which way was east given the sun was high in the noonday sky. Luckily, it turned out east was following a small creek that snaked along the dip of the valley. After a few minutes of walking, they found what they were looking for, crumpled near the edge of the creek. It was clearly dead, stank to high heaven in the heat of the sun, and was covered in swarms of flies and maggots.

'What is it?' Ianto asked. 'Or more importantly, what was it?' he said, trying to hold his stomach in check against the pungent odour of rotting flesh.

'Hard to tell,' Jack said, slipping on a pair of gloves and gingerly turning it over. It was about as big as a badger, black, and there were still clumps of fur that indicated it had been quite hairy when it had been alive. It could have been any one of a dozen things he knew of, or something else entirely, but the corpse was too far gone to make out any real identifying features.

'How do you think it died?' Tosh asked. 'It's right by the water, so it shouldn't have been from thirst or hunger. This place would have been teeming with life once the sun went down, all of the native wildlife coming out of hiding.'

He lifted up a paw and out from underneath came crawling a thousand maggots which caused the rest of the team to back away, reeling from the sight and smell. There was a huge gash under what was probably its armpit where all the insects had made their home, gorging themselves on the carcass.

'Injured,' Jack said. 'Either when it came through the rift, or when it tried to pick on something bigger than it. Probably hoped it could recover from the wound, and stayed close to fresh water and food while it was weak.'

'Didn't help it much in the end, did it?' Owen said dispassionately.

'At least now we know, though,' Jack said. The last thing they needed was some carnivorous beast haunting the beacons and picking off unsuspecting hikers.

'Please tell me we don't have to take it back with us,' Ianto said, not relishing the idea of lugging anything so rotten and fetid.

'Nope, I think it's safe to say we can leave it here in peace. It's no threat to anyone, so let's just let nature take its course.'

'Sodding nature,' Owen muttered, though secretly relieved. He knew which one of them would be made to help Ianto carry it back if it had come to that.

'Alright, well, that's the formal business out of the way,' Jack said. 'Now we can all enjoy the rest of the afternoon.'

'With a three hour hike back to the car,' Gwen said. She didn't know about the others, but that didn't sound all that enjoyable to her.

'Cheer up, Gwen,' Jack said. 'It's a beautiful day, the sun's shining and we're out in the wide open beauty of nature. What's not to li-' Jack gagged on his last word, gripping his throat like a man drowning.

'What's wrong?' Tosh asked. 'Is he choking?'

He certainly looked like it, gagging and hacking out a series of coughs. Owen quickly took charge, ordering him to keep coughing, knowing that whatever it was, if he was coughing, that meant his airway wasn't completely blocked. If he hadn't been able to cough, Owen would have been more worried.

Eventually Jack got himself back under control, though was bent over still gasping for a proper breath. Owen handed him some water and told him to take slow sips.

'What was that?' Ianto asked, putting a reassuring hand on Jack's shoulder as he heaved in a few more breaths.

'A giant fly just flew into my mouth,' Jack said.

'You're not supposed to swallow them!' he replied.

'I didn't mean to. It was just suddenly down there. Must've been from that alien corpse.'

'See,' Owen said. 'Didn't I tell you nature was gonna kill us one of these days?'