Doctor Who BBCN04 - The Deviant Strain Page 15

  Even so, it was a nightmare journey. The outer wall was crumbling

  – tentacles reaching through the concrete and thrashing along the corridor. One of the creatures was blocking the end of the corridor that led back towards the main doors. It scraped and squelched against the walls as it dragged itself along.

  Krylek and one of the soldiers rolled grenades down the corridor.

  Everyone ran the other way, and soon the corridor was filled with noise and smoke and confusion.

  Brodsky, pale-faced, was keeping pace with Rose when he suddenly disappeared with a cry. She turned round – to see the man struggling and clawing at the floor of the corridor as he was dragged back. He was looking right at her when his face collapsed in on itself.

  Catherine screamed, clutching Rose’s arm, and they ran on. In front of them Rose could see Jack pulling Valeria along, urging her onwards. Dust and grit showered from the ceiling. A tentacle fell through in front of them and Rose pushed Catherine aside, so she narrowly missed it.

  ‘Come on!’ the Doctor urged from somewhere ahead of them.

  Gunfire and explosions from behind.

  There were too many people to fit in the storeroom. They were spilling out into the corridor. The Doctor, Levin and Krylek pushed their way through. Jack, Rose and Valeria were left at the back.

  The young-old girl just stood, staring into space. Her wrinkled face was stained black from the fire and one side of it had been scalded on 147

  the hot metal of the digger’s front scoop. Rose smiled at her, but as ever there was no response, no flicker of interest or acknowledgement in the eyes.

  Further along the line of people in the corridor, Jack could see the girl’s father watching. His expression was as blank and unreadable as his daughter’s.

  The sound of gunfire echoed along the corridor. Two soldiers appeared round the corner, half running, half stumbling as they turned to fire at the enemy behind them.

  But as the first tentacles lashed out after the soldiers, the corridor filled with even more people. They were coming out of the storeroom and back into the corridor. Levin and the Doctor were ushering them out urgently.

  ‘Can’t we get through?’ Rose wanted to know. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  One of the soldiers cried out as a tentacle wrapped round his leg and brought him down. The end of the corridor was lit with a blue glow as the creature approached.

  ‘They’re blowing the wall,’ Jack told her. ‘You don’t want people standing beside it when you set off the charges.’

  ‘If it’s a choice. . . ’ Rose started to say. But she was interrupted by the arrival of the Doctor.

  ‘Krylek’s setting the charges,’ the Doctor said. ‘But it’ll take him a minute.’

  ‘We don’t have a minute,’ Rose replied.

  The creature filled the corridor now – pulsing forwards, tendril-like tentacles whipping and flailing. People pressed back against the cold concrete walls as they tried desperately to keep out of the way.

  ‘Hold it back,’ the Doctor said. ‘I’ll help Krylek. Half a minute. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll do it.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ Rose told him, but the Doctor was already gone.

  ‘I do,’ a voice said quietly beside them. It was Minin. He was holding the bottle that he had taken from his desk. He pulled out the stopper and pushed his handkerchief into the bottle.

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  ‘You need something to burn. Something more than just the alcohol

  – that won’t be enough. Let me help,’ Jack told him.

  ‘I don’t need help.’ He had a lighter. Was walking slowly along the corridor towards the grotesque creature squeezing its way towards them. ‘You get them to safety, Captain. They’re my people. I’ve looked after them as best I can. Now it’s your turn. Don’t let me down.’

  The white of the handkerchief became orange and red as the lighter touched it.

  The creature’s squeal of triumph was Minin’s scream of pain and defiance as it caught him, dragged him towards it. His hand was shaking, ageing, withering. But somehow he managed to smash the bottle to the ground beneath him as he collapsed. Into the flames.

  Tentacles dragged him back – through the pool of fire. His clothes were igniting and burning. The creatures were squealing and retreating as the man staggered and stumbled after it – driving it back down the corridor.

  Then the corridor was full of dust and smoke. Jack’s ears rang with the rumbling roar of the explosion as Krylek’s charges ripped through the concrete wall at the back of the storeroom.

  ‘Come on!’ The Doctor’s voice cut through the confusion. ‘Everyone inside, quick!’

  Jack grabbed Valeria’s hand and led her through to the storeroom.

  The Doctor was standing just inside the door, ready to slam it shut as soon as everyone was inside. He saw the shock on Rose’s face.

  ‘Minin?’

  ‘Bought us some time,’ Jack said.

  The Doctor nodded. He closed the door. ‘Right, everyone wait here while we go inside first. Never know what we might find.’

  ‘What do you expect?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Will it be dangerous?’ Rose said.

  ‘If the toxin’s still active, we’re already dead,’ Jack told her.

  ‘It isn’t,’ the Doctor said.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yep. You can tell from the plans that the air conditioning’s still connected to this area. Always has been. There was never any toxin.

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  Never any leak.’

  ‘Then why’s it sealed?’ Jack wondered.

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  Levin, Krylek and most of the soldiers had already gone through the ragged hole in the end wall. They were standing in a short section of corridor the other side. The floor was coated with a thin layer of dust, but otherwise in the light from the storeroom it looked like every other corridor in the building. At the end of the corridor was a heavy metal door.

  ‘Do we open it?’ Levin asked the Doctor.

  He nodded. ‘Yep.’

  ‘You know what’s inside, don’t you?’ Levin said as Krylek turned to the door.

  ‘Yep.’

  The door swung open. Beyond it – blackness.

  ‘Power should be on. There’s a light switch on the wall to your left,’

  the Doctor called to Krylek. ‘It’s marked on the plans.’

  Fluorescent lights flickered into life as the Doctor followed Krylek and Levin into the huge room. Rose followed, with Jack leading Valeria after them. The rest of the soldiers and the villagers streamed in behind them.

  ‘Close and bar the door,’ Levin called out. He did not turn. Like everyone else, he seemed unable to take his eyes off the scene revealed in the room.

  It was a huge laboratory. Equipment was piled up on workbenches and antiquated computer systems stood against the walls – tapes and switches and dials and meters. Dust lay heavily over everything so that the glass jars and tubes and pipes seemed opaque. Several surgical trolleys were in the middle of the room, linked up to an arrangement of tubes and pumps, similar to the equipment at Sofia Barinska’s house.

  But none of this was what held the attention of the people standing inside the door. Fifty people – men, women, children, soldiers, time travellers. All staring at the figures that lay on the trolleys, or 150

  sat propped on lab stools so that they leaned over the workbenches.

  Several were slumped against the walls or computer banks.

  All wearing hooded lab coats that had once been white but were now grey with dust and mould. Skeletal arms and bony hands poked out of the ends of the sleeves – pale and brittle as stone. The faces were shrunken, withered husks – mummified and skull-like. Fleshless and grey.

  Silence.

  Then the creaking, like a ship starting to set sail. Movement. Skull-heads turning slowly towards the doorway. Figures jerking into un-steady life –
twisting, rising, shambling. . .

  ‘Who are they?’ Rose breathed.

  ‘The scientists who found the spaceship about fifty years ago,’ the Doctor said. ‘The scientists who adapted its systems to keep them alive. If you can call this life.’

  ‘It isn’t always like this,’ said a voice behind them.

  Klebanov pushed his way through the crowd of people. He stood staring at the decaying figures that were slowly shuffling towards them.

  ‘He’s right. Sofia wasn’t like that,’ Rose said. ‘Not all the time.’

  ‘Takes a lot of energy, though. This lot are waiting for the power to build enough to give them all a dose. Isn’t that right?’ He was talking to the nearest of the skeletal figures.

  Its reply was cracked and dry, like old hones. ‘Is it time?’ the figure whispered hoarsely. ‘Have you found a way for us all to live again? To live for ever?’

  But it wasn’t talking to the Doctor. It was talking to Klebanov.

  The chief scientist nodded. ‘It is time. And look. . . ’ He turned towards the people crowded into the back of the room, opened his arms to include them all. ‘I’ve brought you food,’ he said.

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  From the storeroom behind them came the sound of crashing ma-sonry as the creatures started to force their way through.

  ‘Not doing that great,’ Jack said. ‘Plan D?’

  But the Doctor ignored him. He was talking to Klebanov. ‘So was Barinska working with you? Or was she freelance? Cos she’d been here for a while, hadn’t she?’

  As Klebanov started to reply, the Doctor glanced at Jack. A look, no more – but Jack knew what it meant. Plan D was up to him while the Doctor kept talking.

  ‘She found the ship almost a century ago. Didn’t understand it, or what it did for her when she meddled,’ Klebanov said.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘She’d been able to draw off some energy, influenced by the pilot’s lingering soul and spirit. But it needed a scientist to adapt it further.’

  ‘Barinska showed me the ship when I took over as director here in 1947.’

  ‘No wonder Minin couldn’t find a record of your assignment. He was looking thirty years too late.’

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  The husks of the scientists were shuffling forwards, arranging themselves in a semicircle around the people. The villagers were frightened but quiet. Everyone watched the Doctor and Klebanov, which gave Jack a chance to tap Lieutenant Krylek on the shoulder. The two of them slipped away, hiding within the group.

  ‘And you all think you’re gonna live for ever, is that it? No idea why, of course. That’s the pilot’s influence again. Wanting you to want to stay alive until you’ve done his job. So what was the deal? She stays young. Her and you. And the rest of your mates wait here while you sort out a solution, a way of keeping you all young and vibrant?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Because there isn’t enough power for you all, is there? Not while the ship’s just ticking over. It only needs one of you, after all. And a lot of the energy it had left wasn’t the right sort of power anyway. So it got you to adapt it, play with it – before you all got too old and had to take it easy in here. You tried using the monkeys.’ The Doctor gave a short laugh. ‘Not such a success, was it, though?’

  Klebanov frowned. ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘About what? About how some of your chums got monkeyfied. Give them the energy of a simian and they turn into proto-baboons. And there aren’t many bananas to be had out here.’

  Klebanov gave a snarl of rage and the other scientists took a step forwards, hands raised now – ready to strike.

  ‘So you had to keep draining human energy. Not too much, though.

  Don’t want people getting too suspicious, and you don’t want to run out of food either. So just now and then – the odd sacrifice on the stones, was it? Set the controls in the ship and strap some poor young human down. Get Barinska to blame it on the mythical Vourdulak.

  That’s what happened to Valeria’s friend.’

  At the edge of the group, Jack froze, listening intently to the Doctor’s words. He could see Valeria standing impassively beside Rose.

  ‘He got drained to feed you lot. To keep you going. Top you up like a mobile phone. And then you started on Valeria, only the ship got distracted part of the way through. Switched off when someone answered its little message. Whatever else he may have done, Jack 154

  saved her life.’

  Jack swallowed. Had he saved her? For this? And was it worth it?

  He couldn’t even begin to think about that, though he knew what the girl’s father would say. He nudged Krylek and they edged out of the group towards the side of the room. Towards where Jack calculated the main corridor ran right outside the wall. . .

  The lights flickered. When they came back on they seemed dimmer than before.

  ‘It’s started,’ the Doctor said. ‘As the ship powers up, it’ll reverse your modifications. Those remote collectors out there will be after any energy source soon. Not just humans, though they might have acquired a taste for them. One of them’s found the power lines, or the generator. ‘It doesn’t need to keep you lot alive any more. It thinks help’s almost here and it’s after all the power it can find for itself.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Klebanov said. ‘As you said, the problem is one of quantity as much as quality. We can absorb a proportion of the energy. If there is enough, it won’t matter where it comes from. And believe me, we have planned for this moment. We have an energy source ready and waiting that will power up the ship and fill us with life for ever. The stronger the ship gets, the stronger we become.’

  ‘What power source?’ Rose said. ‘Anyway, whatever it is, it won’t work if we destroy your dentist’s chairs.’

  Krylek was the expert. Jack let him get on with positioning the charges against the wall while he stood in front, shielding the soldier

  – he hoped – from the view of the scientists. One of the emaciated husks turned towards them. Jack made a show of cowering away in apparent fright and horror. The scientist snarled and turned back towards the main group of villagers.

  Klebanov was tiring of the conversation with the Doctor. He dismissed Rose’s comment with a wave of his hand. ‘Not necessary. Oh, Sofia liked to connect herself up in the old-fashioned way, to feel the energy flowing into and through her. She didn’t trust our methods.’

  Jack could see Vahlen and a few of the others watching him and Krylek, glancing furtively so as not to give anything away, but wondering what they were up to. He nodded, as small a movement as he 155

  could so they could understand that they needed to be ready, even if they didn’t know what for. At the front of the group, Colonel Levin seemed to pay them no attention at all. But he clasped his hands behind his back – one of them in an obvious thumbs-up.

  ‘Your methods?’ the Doctor prompted.

  ‘Direct connection to the ship’s storage cells. The energy comes to us as soon as it is available. We can draw it off at will. Once there is enough energy available, we can take what we need to live for a thousand years or more.’

  ‘Wireless network.’ The Doctor sounded grudgingly impressed. ‘You adapted an energy transmitter from the ship, I s’pose. Neat solution.

  Bit like how poor old Georgi communicated. I assume you waited till he was in his trance, then gave him different instructions. Won’t help, though, cos you’ll all be dead soon.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Because I have to shut down the ship. And once it’s gone, you’ll find that time catches up with you.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I know so.’

  Klebanov shook his head. ‘But you, Doctor, are never going to leave this room.’ He snapped his fingers and at once the other scientists lunged forwards.

  At the same moment, there was a crash from behind and the door vibrated under a sudden impact.

  ‘Those things out there w
ill kill you too!’ Rose shouted.

  ‘They won’t harm us,’ Klebanov said. ‘They know that if they drain energy from us it will just feed right back. They’d be wasting their time.’

  ‘They might still try,’ the Doctor told him. ‘Could be rather painful, I’d think.’

  The desiccated remains of the scientists hesitated, turning to look at Klebanov. He frowned. Maybe he hadn’t thought of that, Jack realised. Or maybe he was dealing with one problem at a time. Whatever the case, now seemed like the best moment to make their escape.

  ‘Now!’ Jack hissed to Krylek.

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  The lieutenant nodded. ‘Just about done.’ he murmured. He was holding a small radio-detonator. ‘We’d better take cover and hope this works.’

  Jack glanced quickly round the room. One of the scientists was heading their way, bony fingers clicking as it stretched out its arms for them. Jack swallowed. ‘Er, cover?’ The lights were flickering again now – each time they came back less brightly than before.

  ‘What you gonna do – feed us to them?’ Rose was shouting above the hammering of the creatures outside. The door was beginning to give way.

  ‘Exactly right,’ Klebanov shouted back. He was smiling. ‘It should begin to sate their appetite while we slip away to attend to some unfinished business down at the docks. There is a way out of here, you know. But you’ll never find it.’

  ‘Don’t need to,’ the Doctor snapped back. ‘Jack!’

  ‘OK,’ Jack decided. ‘Forget cover. Just do it.’ He threw himself to the floor.

  The door collapsed inwards and a mass of writhing tentacles stabbed into the room.

  The skeletal remains of the scientists hissed in anger and antici-pation, and charged forwards ready to drive the villagers – and the Doctor and Rose – back towards the creature forcing its way through the door.

  The lights went out.

  Then Krylek set off the charge.

  Lightning crashed across the darkened room and debris rained down on top of Jack. He coughed and flinched. A flash illuminating clutching hands, frightened faces, the soldiers hustling the villagers towards the smoking gap in the wall.