Doctor Who BBCN04 - The Deviant Strain Read online

  Jack was on his feet again. Krylek was stumbling beside him, one side of the man’s face slick with blood as the lights flickered one last time, then died.

  The room was bathed in the eerie, faint glow of the creature that finally heaved itself through the doorway. Plaster and concrete were now crashing down from the ceiling above it.

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  Shots rang out as the soldiers tried to delay the husk-like scientists charging after the villagers. The emaciated figures staggered back but did not fall.

  ‘Move – move!’ Levin was shouting.

  The Doctor bundled Rose ahead of him, urging others towards the hole in the wall. Jack, through the gap now, was pulling people through after him as quickly as possible, hoping they didn’t jam up the hole in their frightened hurry.

  One of the men fell, immediately in danger of being trampled. Jack reached into the mass of crushing bodies and hauled him to his feet, dragging him through – away from the mayhem and out into the corridor.

  The man gasped his thanks, wiping a trickle of blood from his face with the trembling back of his hand. His eyes locked for a moment with Jack’s – and Jack saw that it was Mamentov. Valeria’s father.

  Valeria.

  He was back at the hole in the wall, trying desperately to see where she was. And glimpsed between the rushing, desperate people, he could see the silhouetted figure of the girl – standing still and alone.

  ‘Rose!’ Jack shouted ‘Help Valeria!’ There was no possibility that he could force his way back inside, and if he waited until everyone else was through it would be too late.

  On the other side of the broken wall, Rose nodded. She turned and ran back towards Valeria, struggling against the current of people.

  Then the wall was a mass of dark bodies, heaving through, and they were lost to sight.

  The Doctor was pulling Jack away. ‘Go with Levin – keep Klebanov and his mates busy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Weren’t you listening? They’ve got a plan to create a sudden, massive release of energy that will power up the ship and make them all but immortal.’

  ‘Bad, huh?’

  ‘The ship’ll be too powerful to stop then. And how would you generate that much energy in a place like this with just a makeshift village, 158

  a ruined scientific base and a few old nuclear submarines loaded with barely decommissioned missiles?’

  Jack bit his lip as he considered. He didn’t need to consider for long. ‘Good point. I’m on it. Colonel Levin!’ he shouted.

  Some of the soldiers had torches. Their beams crisscrossed the bare concrete walls and floor and ceiling of the corridor as they hustled the villagers along.

  The Doctor was running with Jack. ‘I’ll take the villagers.’

  ‘Great – where?’

  ‘You sort out the zombies, I’ll defeat the blobs.’

  ‘Deal,’ Jack shouted back. ‘Where’s Rose?’

  A line of Levin’s men was firing at Klebanov and the scientists, driving them back with a wall of bullets. More of the soldiers were shoving villagers towards the ragged hole in the wall. They poured through, desperately trying to evade the thrashing tentacles of the first of the creatures as it slithered into the large room. Behind it another filled the doorway. The whole room was lit with pale, pulsing blue.

  Rose struggled through the mass of people, trying to get back to where Valeria still stood in the middle of the room. A tentacle whipped past the impassive girl, withdrew, lashed out again – this time latching on to one of the men from the village and dragging him back. Rose forced herself not to watch, struggled onwards.

  But she knew she wasn’t going to get there.

  The soldiers were retreating, in an orderly line, despite the advancing creatures. Halfway to the wall, they stopped shooting, turned and ran.

  Leaving Valeria alone with Klebanov and his men, and the creatures.

  One of the soldiers grabbed Rose as he ran past, dragging her with him towards the way out – away from Valeria.

  She shook herself free. But there was nothing she could do.

  Klebanov reached out and stroked the girl’s wrinkled cheek. ‘Have they left you behind?’ he said.

  She did not move or answer.

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  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The villagers were stumbling and running back down the hill they had so recently climbed. The fire was all but burned out now. The creatures that had been there were gone – having taken a different route to the institute or been burned in the flames.

  The Doctor was at the front, encouraging them along. Telling them his plan.

  ‘They’ll come after us,’ he shouted. ‘They’ll take any energy they can get, but they still like humans best. Yum yum. So we lead them to where we want them, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Vahlen agreed. ‘But where is that?’

  ‘Anyone who wants can go home. Or at least to a home at the edge of the village, as far away as possible from the harbour. Cos that’s where we’re going. We lead the blobbies there, OK?’

  ‘And then what?’ Catherine Kornilova asked, breathless and afraid.

  Her lab coat was stained and torn.

  ‘Must be plenty of fuel left. Even if we have to siphon it out of the subs, though I don’t fancy that – tastes disgusting. We get them all there and light up.’

  ‘The dry dock,’ Vahlen said. ‘That’s where most of the fuel is. What’s left of it.’

  ‘Great. Let’s get set up, lead the blobs to us, and then you can light the blue touch-paper while I nip off and sort out their ship.’

  ‘Simple as that?’ Catherine asked.

  The Doctor grinned. ‘Doubt it.’

  Jack and Colonel Levin stood side by side. They were moving back slowly along the corridor, together with the rest of the soldiers. It was a classic retreat. The back row of troops fired, then moved to the front, while the next row fired before moving on itself.

  The grotesque figures stumbling after them were being torn to shreds. But still they kept coming – nothing seemed to stop them.

  The best they could hope for, Jack knew, was to slow the advance. To keep them busy so they didn’t realise what the Doctor was up to. At least, for the moment.

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  Klebanov himself was at the front of the group. His coat was riddled with bullet holes and his face was cratered and torn. But still he and the others kept coming.

  They backed round a sharp corner in the corridor, close to the main entrance now.

  And behind them, a creature appeared – tentacles extended as if to welcome them.

  ‘Back!’ Levin shouted.

  Jack expected – like the others – to find Klebanov and his men waiting. Instead there was another of the creatures.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ Jack realised. ‘They knew another way out. They’ve got away – and left us trapped.’

  The soldier next to Jack screamed as a tentacle wrapped round his leg and ripped him off his feet. The whole corridor was now pulsing with blue light as the creatures advanced.

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  Most of the walking dead had gone after Jack and the soldiers. But two of the zombified scientists waited long enough to lead Valeria after them. The girl was still sleepwalking her way through things.

  Rose pressed back into the shadows, trying not to think what would happen if she ended up trapped between the scientists and the creatures that were pulsing gently but menacingly in the corner of the room.

  ‘She’s no good to us. Just a husk, a shell,’ one of the scientists told the other. His voice was cracked and brittle, a hoarse whisper. ‘No life left. Nothing worth taking. We should throw her to them.’ He gestured at the creatures across the room.

  ‘They won’t want her either,’ the other scientist said. ‘But she may be useful as a hostage. The villagers protected her before, and while they have hardly hampered us so far, we might need to hold them off.’

  They led Valeria through the broken wall. It was a bizarre sigh
t, Rose thought – two zombies from Dawn of the Dead escorting a young woman with an aged face, and all illuminated by the pale-blue glow of the blob monsters from hell. Best not to think about it. Best not to think about what she was doing either, she decided, as she glanced back at the creatures, then tiptoed after Valeria.

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  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Krylek was working as fast as he could. Another scream – another soldier dragged away, clawing at the concrete floor as the life and vitality was sapped from him. There were only a few of Levin’s troops left now – perhaps a dozen in all.

  ‘Soon would be good,’ Jack murmured.

  Levin glared at him.

  Krylek stepped back from the wall. ‘Ready.’

  ‘Do it,’ Levin snapped. ‘Cover!’ he shouted to the survivors.

  Tentacles flailed and thrashed as the creatures pressed forwards.

  Then Krylek pressed the detonator and the world was filled with noise and smoke.

  They didn’t wait for it to clear, didn’t wait to see whether the explosives had blown a hole in the wall. They just threw themselves at it. Smoke clawed at the back of Jack’s throat and stung his eyes. But then it cleared and he was coughing and rolling in the cold snow, and laughing and leaping to his feet, and helping Krylek and Levin and the others. And running.

  ‘Where to?’ Levin asked.

  ‘After the Doctor. He might need help.’

  ‘ We might need help,’ Krylek said. ‘Look!’

  From round the end of the low, grey building came the scientists.

  Klebanov was in the lead. He paused, staring at the soldiers. He might have been surprised, but there was not enough of his face left for any expression. Suddenly he was running, the other scientists stumbling and staggering after him on stick-thin, bony legs.

  ‘Move it!’ Levin ordered.

  Behind them, when Jack looked over his shoulder, Klebanov was standing watching them run. The other scientists were grouped round him. It seemed to Jack that they were all laughing.

  ‘They won’t pose much of a problem,’ Klebanov said. It sounded as if he was chewing gravel.

  ‘They’re making towards the harbour,’ one of the other scientists pointed out.

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  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Klebanov told him. ‘They can’t stop us. And when we launch the missiles, the ship will absorb enough power to regenerate us all. Enough power to make us invincible. Enough power to keep us alive for centuries.’

  Behind them, in the shadows of the building, pressed close to the wall, Rose watched and listened. Valeria was at the back of the group

  – perhaps they would just leave her. Forget her. Abandon her.

  ‘What about the girl?’ one of the scientists who had brought her asked.

  Klebanov walked over to Valeria. He reached out and stroked her cheek. ‘She is no use to us,’ he said. ‘Except. . . Yes, bring her.’

  ‘Why bother?’ one of the others asked. ‘She’ll just slow us down.’

  ‘Don’t be so impatient. That Intelligence captain, he’ll be in charge now. And he cares for her. That makes her useful. Gives her a purpose.’ Klebanov laughed. ‘The only purpose she can have now.’

  Some of the villagers had slipped away, escaping into the night. The light flickered on the dark, rusting bodies of the submarines and glinted on the ice-covered water.

  The lights were all out now, so Vahlen and some of the others had organised torches – burning lengths of wood scavenged from the dockside and soaked in petrol from a drum outside the inn. The procession of villagers, with the Doctor at the head, made its way through the abandoned harbour and down towards the dry dock at the end.

  On the hillside behind them was another procession – a line of pale glowing blue that was following them to the harbour.

  ‘I think they can sense us,’ one of the men said. ‘Just like old Georgi could sense things without seeing them.’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ the Doctor countered. ‘We need those things to believe they’ve got us where they want us.’

  ‘The dry dock?’

  ‘If that’s where the fuel is. We’ll check it out, set it up and then I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘What?’ Vahlen said. ‘You’re just going to let us fend for ourselves?’

  ‘You’ll do all right. Really.’

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  ‘You sound like poor Georgi. So where will you be?’

  ‘Me?’ He shrugged. ‘Thought I might go for a swim.’

  The dry dock was not dry any more. The gates that had once held back the icy sea were buckled and broken and the whole dock was flooded and frozen. Two submarines jutted up from the white landscape – one almost on its side, resting on the other. The hull had rusted through, huge ragged holes of even deeper blackness. The dark shapes towered above the Doctor and the villagers.

  ‘So where’s the fuel?’ the Doctor asked.

  Vahlen led them to the end of the walkway round the dock wall.

  Another shape loomed up out of the night – black against the white of the ice. It didn’t look like fuel drums, more like one of the shapeless creatures asleep and waiting. But Vahlen and several of the men pulled back the tarpaulin that covered the drums of fuel to reveal them piled into a rough, flat-topped pyramid.

  ‘Now what?’

  The Doctor blew out a long misty breath. ‘Now we cover the ground for as far as we can. We wait for the creatures.’

  ‘And when they’re on the oil, we set fire to it,’ Vahlen realised.

  ‘Yeah, well. Cross your fingers first and hope you get ’em.’

  ‘And in the meantime you’re going swimming?’

  He grinned. ‘Thought I might. Could walk, but it’s a long way from here. Good bracing swim, just the job.’

  ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ Vahlen realised.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘But – you can’t go swimming in this,’ the old man said. He gestured out across the frozen harbour. The wind was whipping up, scattering the flames from the torches and sending sparks flying from the burning wood.

  ‘Well,’ the Doctor said, ‘I’ll have to break the ice first, I suppose.’

  The surviving soldiers made their way rapidly down the path to the docks. Jack and Levin led the way. Neither of them was in the mood for much conversation; both of them were agreed that they should 166

  find and help the Doctor rather than risk their lives against the scientists.

  Further up the hill, a long line of the glowing creatures was making its way after them. Klebanov and his scientists had disappeared into the night, but Jack was pretty sure they too would be making for the docks. He just wanted to get there first.

  Their boots crunched on the recent snow. By the time they reached the inn at the edge of the docks, the snow was gone – swept away by the creatures’ earlier advance. They headed for the dry dock, where they could see the distant glimmer of firelight. And always the blue glow kept pace behind them, only minutes away.

  Jack’s foot slipped as they approached the dry dock. He stumbled and almost fell. Beside him, Levin was also having problems.

  ‘Oil,’ Lieutenant Krylek said. ‘They’ve spread fuel oil all across here.’

  Jack managed to regain his balance. He could see now that the ground was dark and slick. ‘What a life,’ he grumbled. ‘Attacked by the walking dead, chased by life-sucking blobs and now our own team’s trying to make me break my neck.’ He shook his head and yelled, ‘Hey, we’re on your side, you know!’

  There was an answering shout from up ahead. Two of the men from the village were wheeling a drum of fuel oil along the quay towards them. The barrel was unstoppered so that oil slopped out as it rolled.

  One of the men, Jack realised, was Mamentov – Valeria’s father. As they passed, the man met his gaze and then looked away.

  ‘The Doctor down that way?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No,’ the second man replied. ‘He went for a swim.’

  ‘He w
hat?’ Levin said.

  Jack just smiled. ‘Typical. Come on, then, let’s help with these barrels.’

  The scientists seemed oblivious to the creatures slithering down the hill with them. But Rose was only too aware that they would kill her as soon as they caught her. She just hoped they didn’t realise that there was food following the scientists and Valeria down from the cliffs to the harbour. She concentrated on not making any noise, on keeping 167

  to the darkest shadows, on watching where the group in front of her was going.

  She knew they were heading for the docks, she just didn’t know exactly where. In the distance Rose could see the faint flickering of small fires – the villagers, Jack and the Doctor. Was Klebanov leading them to attack the villagers? Evidently not, as they headed for a different area of the docks. They were close – close enough to make out the people working, rolling drums along the wall surrounding the dry dock and out on to the approach road. But there was an expanse of frozen water between them and the snub-nosed bulk of one of the submarines.

  Getting as close as she dared, Rose took shelter behind a pile of rotting crates. Thick ropes coiled like enormous decaying snakes on the top. She peered out at the scientists climbing up to the top of the submarine’s conning tower. She could see Valeria with them still, being helped up the ladder. One by one the dark figures disappeared inside the sub, leaving Rose alone outside in the cold.

  Perhaps the best thing would be to get to the dry dock and tell the Doctor where Klebanov had gone, which submarine he was on and what he was planning. But while it wasn’t far across the frozen harbour, Rose wasn’t going to risk falling through into the icy water.

  And it would take a long time to get there using the access roads.

  Klebanov would think they were safe and unseen. With luck they would leave Valeria alone and unguarded – confident that she wasn’t going to wander off or escape.

  Before she knew it, Rose was climbing the ladder after them. The rusting metal flaked away under her hands. It was cold and rough.

  She hauled herself on to the top of the submarine. Across the harbour she could see the first of the creatures approaching the road to the dry dock, tracking down the villagers and the soldiers. She could make out the small, dark figures hurrying back and forth, desperately spreading as much oil as they could before the creatures arrived. All except one.