Doctor Who - Nuclear Time Read online

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  It was with an almost mocking tone that Isley responded. 'No. I have been operational for exactly five years. My data assimilation, learning capabilities and military programming are, on average, tenfold superior to the other models — most of which have not yet applied their basic military tactics.'

  Rory snorted. 'So they might be indestructible killing machines, but they're stupid indestructible killing machines.'

  'Except for me,' Isley interjected.

  Rory was surprised that the android had responded and was unsure whether she was merely stating the facts or whether she actually sounded smug. 'Yes, except for you,' he finally agreed. He turned to his fiancé. 'Right, what are we supposed to do with her now? We might have an hour's grace, but she's still lethal.'

  Amy

  shrugged.

  'Like

  you

  said, she's

  indestructible. I suggest we find out what the Doctor wants us to do in here, then put a safe distance between us and the end of that tape as quickly as possible.'

  There was silence for a few minutes except for the quiet guitar riff coming from the speakers around the robot's neck, its sound dampened by the dust that coated the floor. The pair looked around.

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  'Well I've got —'

  'No idea.' Amy finished. 'Me neither.'

  Rory ran a hand through his hair. 'Isley? You seem in a helpful mood. Any ideas?'

  Isley twitched. 'Where's Albert?' she said simply.

  'I don't know, lady; probably where you last saw him!' Exasperated, Rory ran over to the mower, now highlighted in a pool of golden light, its green paint coloured a dull orange. 'No note, Doctor? Come on! Give us something!'

  'There!' Amy ran over to the huge wooden doors of warehouse, where a tiny post-it had been slapped on the wooden bolt that ran across the entrance. She peeled it off and examined it, squinting through the yellow haze.

  'Well? What does it say?' Rory demanded. 'It doesn't make any sense.'

  'He never makes any sense!' Rory called back. 'Just read it anyway!'

  'Uh, OK.' She cleared her throat and began. "'You have exactly nine minutes and twenty-four seconds to get to the town square—"'

  Rory looked incredulous. 'How on earth could he know exactly what time we'd pick up that note? It's tiny for a start!'

  'I've not finished.' Amy ran her finger across the looping script. 'What it says is, "You have exactly 219

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  nine minutes and twenty-four seconds to get to the town square from the moment the buildings begin to disintegrate." There, see? Not so magic.'

  But Rory wasn't listening. 'Amy.' His voice began to shake. 'How did you manage to read a post-it note in a room that was pitch black when we entered?' He held out his hand, puncturing a column of deep golden light that was flooding downwards from above.

  'And why has everything got so... orange all of a sudden?'

  Amy's eyes widened as, suddenly, a bright shaft of daylight flooded into the centre of the warehouse, picking Rory out in pure white highlights. Her hair ruffled and tugged at her scalp and she could feel a wind whipping up around her. Both of them looked up at the same moment, eyes moving slowly, dreading what they were about to see.

  The roof of the warehouse was coming apart, planks and tiles flaking and shattering as they were picked up and scattered by the wind. Through the gaping holes they could see the sky, but now it had been transformed to a sickly yellow and grotesquely deformed clouds scudded over their heads, warping and stretching as they watched.

  Rory extended his arms, palms uplifted as if presenting the sky to those around him. 'Ruddy hell,'

  he shouted over the gale. 'It's the end of the 220

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  world!'

  There was a kick, a growl and the lawnmower motor spluttered into life. Rory turned to find Amy astride the metal seat, beckoning to him to hop on behind her. He had to read her lips to work out what she was shouting.

  'I think our nine minutes and twenty-four seconds might have already started!' she yelled.

  Rory leapfrogged over the rear engine, slamming his hip-bone against an awkwardly placed piece of metal. Amy took his roar of pain as a sign to get the hell out of there, and she slammed her foot down hard on the accelerator. Rory wrapped his arms around his fiancée’s waist as the beast began to rumble towards the bolted exit, steadily gathering speed.

  'Wait!'

  Rory turned his head in surprise. Isley was jogging alongside, the faint vocals of the music in the headphones bouncing around her neck barely audible over the bass of the wind and her sandy hair was tinged almost blood-red in the apocalyptic light.

  'Wait!' she repeated. 'Where's Albert?'

  But they didn't have time to wait. Rory turned back to see the gates looming perilously close. 'Shouldn't we have opened them first?'

  Amy smiled to herself. 'Why should the Doctor 221

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  get to have all the fun?' she replied, thumbing a button on the dashboard. The lawnmower blades unfolded from the sides of the vehicle, spinning wildly as they approached the exit and Amy felt Rory's arms squeeze tight around her as both of them dipped their faces into their chests in preparation for the impact.

  There was a brutal, crunching sound, like that of an enormous buzz-saw, and the couple were showered with splinters and sawdust as, with a hefty crack, the gates split, and the momentum of the vehicle carried them out onto the open road.

  'Wahoo!' Amy yelled in triumph and held her palm up for Rory to high-five. He did so with a loud wolf whistle and leant over Amy's shoulder to kiss her sawdust-coated cheek.

  'I've got to hand it to the Doctor,' he shouted in her ear. 'He certainly knows how to liven things up!'

  222

  Chapter

  18

  Colorado, 28 August 1981, 2.04 p.m.

  'Well, I've got to hand it to myself: I certainly know how to liven things up.' The Doctor wiped down his sonic screwdriver with a rag from his pocket and slipped it into the inside of his jacket before wiping down the side of the lawnmower once more. 'There you go, all nice and turbocharged. I'll put it on your tab shall I, Amy, Rory?' He looked around sadly, before his confidence got the better of him. 'I always waste my best lines when I'm alone,' he sighed.

  The light from outside cast a slanted beam through the smashed-up hole in the back wall that almost touched his boots and he crouched down 223

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  to write a post-it in the glow.

  A moment later and he'd stuck the sticker across the barred front entrance to the warehouse and was ducking outside once more, taking a moment to admire the last ten minutes' handiwork, his hands on his hips and a wry smile across his face. 'Let's just hope the androids don't notice anything out of the ordinary when they arrive,' he muttered, mopping his brow and unwittingly leaving a streak of oil across his forehead.

  He pulled his bike away from where it had been resting against a nearby wall and began to pedal out into the road and towards the centre of Appletown.

  'And they said it was impossible to pedal a bike backwards,' he said to himself with a grin.

  A few minutes later, the familiar blue shape of the TARDIS came into view around a corner. The Doctor greeted it with a wave and a whoop.

  'Hello, beautiful!' he shouted.

  His back wheel skidded round as he applied the brakes, and he looked up at the white-rimmed windows as he dismounted. 'What? Giving me the silent treatment, are you? Well, I don't blame you, to be honest. I've been an ungrateful Doctor, that's for sure.

  You go to all this trouble to save our lives, and I go and mess it up at the last minute — for another bunch of idiot humans, no

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  less.' He reached out a hand to stroke the painted wooden frame. 'You know, one day I'll find a less self-destructive species to hang around with, an
d you and I can live a much quieter life... Ouch!' he yelped.

  'You're hotting up pretty bad in there. Can't be much longer till the bomb's back to its full potential.' He pointed accusingly. 'If you didn't talk so much...'

  In a flurry of movement he pulled off his jacket, wrapping it around his arm again to open the door. Taking a deep breath, he stepped over the threshold, threw his jacket onto the hat stand inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

  All was quiet for a few minutes until suddenly he popped his head out into the sunlight once more.

  Cautiously he looked both ways then reached out to grab the bike by its handles.

  'Yoink!' he declared. 'Happy Christmas, me!' before wheeling it inside and shutting the doors behind him.

  In the vast interior of the TARDIS, a war was being waged and the air conditioning seemed to be on the verge of losing as the Doctor bounded up the steps to the console, snapping his braces tight against his shoulders. Above his head, the flaming ball of the nuclear bomb rippled and flashed in its stasis field.

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  The Doctor jabbed an angry finger at it. 'You - keep cooking away all you like, I'll be rid of you in a moment, and you -' He turned his attention to the console - 'You and I have some things to do. Three things, in fact...' He held up three fingers, then stopped and lowered his hand thoughtfully. Somehow this just didn't seem quite dramatic enough. 'Wait there!' he called over his shoulder before disappearing down a branching corridor.

  The Doctor returned seconds later carrying a flip chart and set it up in front of the monitor. 'Right!'

  He tore off the first page and let it tumble to the floor before scribbling furiously with a marker pen.

  'Three things! First - we need to rescue Amy and Rory.' He flipped the pen at the scanner. 'And I've already started to sort that, so you'd better make my post-it note come true. Second - we need to eject the bomb and use it to destroy Appletown and its entire population of sinister robots. Third... OK, I'm going to be honest with you here, this one's the toughie. Third,'

  he repeated, 'we need to eject the bomb and let it detonate without producing a mushroom cloud. If the Russians spot the test, I refuse to bear witness to the beginning of a war. I'm sure Albert or Geoff will be clever enough to come up with a cover story for all the radiation and stuff.' He stopped and paused.

  'Lord knows they owe me that.'

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  He underlined the three points clearly, then again for emphasis, before finally making a dash for the console. 'We can have it all today!' he shouted with a roar of determination. 'I promise you, today we are going to have it all!'

  The control panel sparked and flashed like a Catherine wheel as he jumped from lever to lever, oblivious to the burns on his hands as he prepared the TARDIS to jump back to the moment of impact. The scanner flashed and clicked on, displaying a fuzzy grey meter at almost ninety-seven per cent and the clock beneath continued to tick through negative time as the craft neared the end of its loop.

  'OK, I'm taking the safeties off!' the Doctor shouted, just in case the console hadn't had time to catch up with his flurry of inputs. 'When we snap back to the point of capture, I want you to jettison the cargo and continue on - overshoot the target by... I dunno...' He looked at his watch. 'An hour and thirty-seven minutes? That should spread the impact thinly enough.'

  The size of the time difference dawned on the Doctor. 'Oh Amy, Rory, over an hour and a half at the mercy of those monsters?' He crossed his fingers.

  'I bet you gave 'em hell!'

  Suddenly, the stasis field behind him jerked outwards in all directions as the bomb's energy 227

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  returned to full capacity, and the Doctor was hurled across the control room, hitting the curved side of the wall and sliding down into the shadowy space beneath the gantry.

  'This is it!' he shouted. 'Break the loop!'

  The TARDIS juddered and shook as it flipped and reoriented around its own time line before rocketing into the future, groaning and screeching as it tore into the reconfigured chain of events that the Doctor had crafted. The Doctor staggered to his feet; across the room he could see the main view screen, local time strobing across it in loud bursts of light.

  2.37, 2.52, 3.10, 3.40, 4.03...

  Mustering all his strength, he hauled himself over the edge of the parapet and his hands burned as he crawled over to the console and grabbed the handbrake for support. He lifted his chest to prop himself against the control panel as his right hand felt for the correct lever.

  4.15, 4.27, 4.40, 4.51, 4.57, 5.01...

  'Detonation point! Eject and overshoot!' The Doctor nearly pulled the lever off in his hand, and above him the stasis field glowed white, swelling in a nanosecond before snapping out of the TARDIS's interior dimensions with a sonic boom of repressurising air that made the Doctor reel with sudden deafness.

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  5.15, 5.26, 5.55, 6.10, 6.23, 6.45...

  The Doctor slumped over the handbrake and, with his last ounce of strength, depressed the button and forced it on. He collapsed to the floor with exhaustion, watching the glow of the central column grind and slow as the TARDIS jumped and skidded through time before coming to a halt in the middle of Appletown village square at 6.49 p.m. on 28 August 1981.

  'They're coming for us!' Rory turned his head as far as he dared. He was sure a ride-on lawnmower shouldn't be travelling this fast.

  'Let

  'em.'

  Amy

  grinned.

  'They

  might

  be

  indestructible but they'll stay away from these blades if they're clever.'

  All around them, the citizens of Appletown were tearing down front doors, vaulting over garden hedges and sprinting out into the road in pursuit. The steady crowd was growing stronger with every passing second, each model travelling at top speed, their strides pounding the ground in unison.

  All around the couple, the wooden-clad buildings were crumbling and disintegrating, tiles and timbers cast into the air as they dissolved in the fire like sugar in tea. The sky was filled with angry clouds -

  low, amber monsters that blotted

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  out the sun and transformed the afternoon into an eerie twilight.

  'You know we thought we were going to be nuked?' Amy called over her shoulder as she swerved to avoid the owner of the coffee shop who had thrown himself onto the street from a top-floor window.

  Rory was too busy holding on for dear life to care at this point. 'Oh yeah?'

  'Well, I think it just happened.'

  The ground was on fire now, the stones melting beneath the thundering wheels of the mower. A pack of androids rounded an upcoming corner, and Rory retched as he saw the melted, stringy plastic that dripped and fell from their faces. They stumbled to their knees as the mower tore past, metal sparking and shattering as they disintegrated.

  'I suppose there's no point asking why we're not affected?'

  Amy shook her head. 'I don't know the answers, but I know someone who owes us some!'

  She pointed ahead of them.

  'Oh, mama, I never thought I'd see that again!' cried Rory.

  The dark shape of the TARDIS was grinding into existence at the end of the road. Dust and debris tore across its faded outline as the howling 230

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  roar of the engines threatened to take on the wind itself.

  There was a sharp thud and the mower skidded sideways, Amy wrestling for control as a wheel and both of the machine's blades snapped away from the chassis. 'The mower's gone squiffy!' she shouted through gritted teeth.

  'It's in the middle of a nuclear explosion!' Rory exclaimed. 'Just keep it straight, we've got enough momentum to slide the last bit.'

  The metal crumbled away from their legs, red-hot dust spraying across their shins as they skidded across
the desert sand, Rory's trainers curling and smoking as they hit the ground.

  'Doctor!'

  Amy

  shouted

  as

  they

  prepared

  themselves for impact with the TARDIS. 'Open the doors!'

  As if viewed through a dream, a bright haze flooded out onto the path ahead as the double doors of the TARDIS were flung open to receive its guests.

  A silhouette slouched against the frame and, with the flourish of a circus ringmaster, the Doctor beckoned the pair into its vast interior, just as the mower exploded into a cloud of liquid metal behind them.

  Casually, the Doctor reached out a hand and caught a small black box before tossing the object into the air and slipping it into his pocket.

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  He tugged his forelock at what was left of Appletown and - with a cheery 'Goodbye for ever!'

  - he slammed the doors behind him as the storm exploded outside.

  A second later and the TARDIS had faded away.

  'Aaaand bingo!' With a sweep of his wrist, the Doctor crossed out the first item on his flip chart and stood back to see all three of his goals thoroughly scribbled out. He rubbed his chin. 'Should have put "Save Rory and Amy" at the bottom - would have made it much more satisfying to work through that way.' He looked at the bedraggled pair in the corner of the room. 'But between you and me they -' He nodded his head conspiratorially -

  'probably wouldn't have appreciated that.'

  He was interrupted by a loud flapping sound as Rory tried to extinguish his shoes against the wall of the TARDIS. 'I'm sure I keep a fire bucket handy somewhere...' the Doctor muttered, glancing around in an attempt to be helpful. But the shoes were already out, their blackened soles crumbling to ash in Rory's hands, so the Doctor simply shrugged and forgot about it.

  He strode over to the railing along the gantry and leaned over to grin at his companions from 232

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  their position by the door. 'It's called a thingy by the way,' he said.