The Forgotten Army Read online

  "Thought you had a plan?' said Amy. 'You told that lot it would be over in minutes.'

  The Doctor grinned at Amy. 'I might have exaggerated the plan part a bit. But don't worry. This is what makes things fun!'

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  'Whoa...' the Doctor breathed. 'This is not looking good.'

  In front of them, the entrance hall of the Natural History Museum had been trashed beyond recognition. The once spotless polar habitat display was smashed, and its cubes of fake snow were scattered across the marble floor. The neat rows of red chairs had been knocked skewiff as the audience fled, and the massive drapes lay in velvet tatters on the floor.

  There was no sign of the audience, and heavy wooden and iron doors had been shut all around the huge Grand Hall - locking the miraculous mammoth inside.

  Amy heard a heavy clang, and saw that the entrance doors had been closed behind them. They were locked in with a prehistoric monster.

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  Amy was impressed by the scale of the damage. 'Where is it, then? How can it hide?'

  The Doctor scanned the room with his sonic screwdriver.

  'Never mind that. Lots of places to go in this Museum... Come on, this way.' He was heading for the edge of the room.

  'How do you track a mammoth, anyway?' Amy asked. 'I thought you'd be on your knees using your Time Lord tracker senses or something, listening for mammothy sounds?'

  The Doctor was thinking out loud. 'Why would it do this?

  How could it come back to life? We need to work out the precise order of events, but that's impossible.'

  While he was talking, Amy picked up a camera that had been abandoned in the struggle to escape.

  'Hey, Time Boy, have a look at this!'

  Amy scrolled through the pictures, past grinning shots of a young teacher at a school party, until she reached the unveiling of the mammoth. The first picture showed the hall packed.

  Some of the same children that had been at the party were grinning brightly. In the second, the man in the white blazer was making a speech.

  The next three pictures were of the floor. The final shot made Amy scream with delight. 'Look at this!'

  The picture was a close-up of the mammoth's head, in all its wonder. Its jaws were wide open, and

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  Amy could see row after row of sharp teeth, tusks curving a cruel circle in the air.

  The Doctor said nothing. Peeved, Amy looked around and saw him clambering up one of the marble columns, pressing his ear up against the stone. She hurried over.

  The Doctor offered Amy his hand. 'Better come up here.'

  Amy wasn't impressed. 'Why on earth would I do that?

  Anyway, I've just found the exact order of events, just like you wanted.'

  The Doctor came straight back with: 'I've done better, I've found the mammoth. Now get out of its way.'

  Amy turned to follow the Doctor's gaze. But in front of her the hall was empty. 'There's nothing there.’ she protested, 'so will you get down from that post! We've got a mammoth to find.'

  'Did I not tell you I have very good hearing? Listen through this.'

  He leant down and held his screwdriver to Amy's ear. Out of nowhere, a raucous pounding noise filled her ears. Heavy breaths and grunts like nothing she'd ever heard before. It was the panting and stomping of an enormous creature, smashing and howling as it made its way through the Museum. Amplified by the screwdriver, Amy could hear people screaming in horror.

  An overlapping mix of voices: mums telling children to 'Get back!' Men cursing under

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  their breaths, car horns beeping and mobile phones chattering with the news: 'Oh no, it's coming!'

  Amy was lost for words.

  'It is a sonic screwdriver,' the Doctor explained.

  Nervous now, Amy asked, 'How far away is it?'

  The Doctor bent his head to one side. 'Not far. I'd say two hundred metres. Or, actually twenty metres. Hard to tell with these things.'

  Just as he finished speaking, the glass front of the Museum shop shattered. Glass shards sprayed over the floor, and a huge display of plastic Triceratops exploded, flying through the air. Charging out of the store, souvenir posters and T-Rex T-shirts festooning its massive form, was the wild and frothing mammoth.

  The Doctor twiddled his screwdriver, puzzled. 'Glass must have distorted it,' he muttered.

  'Never mind that!' Amy yelled. 'It's heading right for me.

  Pull me up!'

  She grabbed the Doctor's hand, and he hauled her up the column, sitting her on top of a window ledge, high above the floor.

  She smiled at him. 'Not bad. You're surprisingly strong for a skinny bloke.'

  The Doctor looked hurt. 'I am not skinny! I'm just you know, not too show-offy about my strength.'

  Below them, the mammoth was getting ever nearer, veering from side to side, almost like it was unbalanced.

  Amy watched it slowing slightly as it

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  reached the centre of the room. She'd never seen anything quite like it.

  Next to her, the Doctor was transfixed by the sight.

  'Wowzers, that is beautiful!'

  Amy shot the Doctor a critical look, mouthing 'wowzers'

  at him with disdain.

  'Yeah, sorry, I'm so not saying that again,' he said. 'Mind you - wowzers. Might catch on...? No?'

  Amy shook her head disapprovingly. 'Not likely.'

  The Doctor wasn't put off though. 'You have to admit it is beautiful. What a wondrous thing. And it might not even be alien. Could be from your own planet. We could send it back to its own time. Or maybe it'll be happy here. Find it a nice elephant to share its life with—'

  'What's it doing?' Amy interrupted. 'It doesn't look very scared.'

  From where they were, it almost looked like it was trying to read the calendar in the mess of the gift shop. Amy discounted that as ridiculous.

  The Doctor motioned for her to keep quiet, then made a complicated set of hand signals that left her baffled.

  Are you trying to tell me that it'll follow our sounds?' she whispered.

  Instantly, the mammoth was on to them, raising its big eyes to gaze at them perched on the window ledge.

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  The Doctor nodded, then realised there was no point being quiet now. 'They can't see that well, all that hair in their eyes -

  but just look at those ears!'

  'How big do you think it is?'

  'I'd say four metres high, probably weighs about ten tonnes, need to eat a lot to keep up that kind of energy.' He noticed Amy's reaction. 'I didn't mean to say the wrong thing about eating. They don't eat humans, far as I know, not that I've met one before, I'll just stop now, OK?'

  Looking decidedly angry, and smashing a path through the seats, the mammoth was heading straight for their vantage point. Amy felt very exposed. They were in the centre of the mammoth's path, high and dry, with no way of escape.

  Acting tough in the face of danger, Amy went on. 'A little beastie like that? You've fought off worse. In fact, I've fought off meaner-looking things in Leadworth. If the caveman can get rid of it, then surely we can?'

  The Doctor looked straight at Amy Pond. He was half proud of her and half scared. Amy was confident beyond her abilities, ready to leap into any situation whatever it meant, and full of absolute trust in him.

  'You are brilliant, Amy Pond,' he said, 'but there's a thing. A very important thing. A thing that's been troubling me for the last five minutes. This mammoth has survived two ice ages, the Stone Age, the Bronze

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  Age, the Iron Age, the nuclear age. So how has it managed that when almost nothing else has? Maybe it's because it's the most vicious mammoth in all of creation, so bloodthirsty it survived.

&nb
sp; Or maybe it's because it's so wise and peaceful no one has ever wanted to harm it, and it has been kept safe and protected for thousands and thousands of years. Or, and I'm not making a speech this long again, especially halfway up a marble column, or - it's not a mammoth at all. Which leads me to think it's drawing the attention of the world to it, so maybe it's just a mistake? Or, or, or it could be a diversion and, while I'm here, Washington is being turned into a spa town for insect creatures.

  Either way, we need to stop it before anyone else does...'

  'Sshhh!' Amy was calm and focused.

  The mighty mammoth was almost directly below them now.

  She could hear its every breath and pant. Something in it was rumbling and growling, a noise so deep and so primal it would have stilled the assault of any predator.

  The Doctor continued regardless. 'Whatever it is, it's trapped in a museum with five hundred innocent people, and we can't allow it to reach them. We need to get it out the door, where your new admirers can tranquillise—'

  Amy interrupted him again. 'Before you do that, Doctor, would you mind telling me why it's safer up here?'

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  The Doctor looked at Amy as if she was crackers. 'Safer?

  It's not safer up here. We came up here to make it easier to get onto it.'

  Amy was filled with horror. 'Onto it? Are you mental? I thought we were staying out of its way.'

  The Doctor was calm and pragmatic. 'No, it would be far safer down there, here we're on its level.'

  Only metres away from them, the mammoth raised its head, and its huge eyes looked right at them, its brutal tusks almost touching their legs.

  Why did doing what the Doctor said ever seem like a good idea, Amy wondered. 'You know Doctor,' she said,

  'I've never taken orders from a bloke before.'

  The Doctor smiled. 'Ah, but then again, you never got to do this!' With a yell of: 'Geronimo!' he swung Amy off the window ledge, and the two of them landed straight on the back of the mammoth.

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  Digging his hands into the mammoth's thick white coat, the Doctor leant over and yelled in Amy's ear, 'Hang on! It's going to be a bumpy ride.'

  Amy curled her fingers into the mammoth's hair and clung on as the beast thundered around the Grand Hall of the Museum.

  'It's a bit like horse-riding,' the Doctor yelled.

  'I've only been once, I broke my arm.’ she replied.

  'Well let's hope you learned.’ the Doctor shouted back.

  'Never went bullfighting, though.’ Amy yelled.

  'Bullfighting?'

  She pointed ahead, almost losing her balance. 'Looks like that's what he's doing!'

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  In front of them, a man had stepped out into the hall. He was wearing what had once been a strikingly white blazer, which was now stained and torn. Amy recognised him from the footage of the mammoth breaking loose.

  The Doctor had obviously recognised the man too, because he yelled in Amy's ear, 'Look, he's OK.'

  Amy twisted round to see the man standing proud in the middle of the hall.

  'Oh no,' the Doctor continued. 'I think he's trying to knock it out... with a wooden chair.'

  The man was waving and shouting to attract the mammoth's attention, and was hopelessly trying to hide a chair behind his back.

  'Oi, hairy!' the man yelled. Within seconds, the mammoth had changed direction and was heading straight for him.

  'Get out of the way!' Amy cried, not quite able to believe the man was even attempting this. She saw him take the chair from behind his back and raise it above his head, all set to smash it on the runaway creature.

  Acting quickly, the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver and directed a quick burst at the chair, which fell apart in the man's hands.

  'Why did you do that?' Amy asked.

  'No point getting it any angrier.’ the Doctor replied.

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  Weaponless and surprised, the man turned to run, but the mammoth now had a new target: the door to the rest of the Museum. It headed at full pelt for the locked door.

  'Duck!' the Doctor yelled.

  In an explosion of splinters and broken wood panels, the mammoth broke free of the Grand Hall and charged down a marble corridor. It roared as it raced through the hall of the Age

  of

  Man,

  sending

  the

  skeleton

  of

  a

  three-million-year-old woman clattering to the floor with a thrust of its tusks. Then it slowed to gaze at the vast diorama of Neanderthal man and a picture of a relatively small brown mammoth.

  The Doctor was looking around with interest. 'This is the best way to see museums. It gets it over with so much quicker!'

  He had ended up sitting behind Amy on the beast's back and was now hanging onto her waist as the white mammoth skittered round the marble floors, his legs flailing out to one side.

  Amy shouted back, 'What you doing?'

  The Doctor didn't answer - he was too busy trying to stop himself slipping off. Amy reached back and grabbed him by his braces, yanking him back up on top of the mammoth.

  'Hah, I never thought I'd be thankful you're wearing those braces,' she said. "Thought you'd be OK sitting on this with those bandy legs of yours.'

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  The Doctor looked rattled. 'What do you mean?'

  Amy grinned at him. 'Haven't you ever looked in a full-length mirror? You could ride a horse between those!'

  As the mammoth thundered along another corridor, the Doctor leaned forward as far as he could, and aimed his sonic screwdriver at the mammoth's ears.

  'It's not working,' he yelled back to Amy. Hanging on with one hand, he fiddled with the device and tried again.

  'What's not working?'

  'There's a thing you can do to some animals, makes them relax, like stroking a dog, or turning a rabbit on its back.'

  'And that was your plan, was it?'

  If anything, the mammoth seemed to have become more erratic, not less.

  "Thing is,' the Doctor explained, 'it should work on a mammoth. Something's not right.'

  'What do you mean?' she asked.

  The mammoth abruptly changed direction, and the Doctor began to slip again. Amy had to yank him back on. She looked back up to see that they were now heading full-pelt for a massive whale skeleton.

  The Doctor had seen it too. 'Got to be able to steer this thing. I told Commander Strebbins we'd bring it out under control...'

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  Amy was flabbergasted. 'There is no way you can steer a mammoth!'

  The Doctor leant forward and put Amy's hands on the neck of mammoth. It felt warm and powerful under her hands. 'Just pull to the left and see what happens.'

  'You are impossible!' Amy shouted. She'd imagined travelling around New York in style, and here she was trying to steer a prehistoric animal around the New York Natural History Museum.

  Amy gripped the animal tight and pulled the mammoth's neck to the left with all of her might. The mammoth wailed in outrage, and spun rapidly to the right. They smashed through the blue whale's tail, sending bones flying through the air.

  Amy wasn't amused. 'I think it's trying to shake us off.'

  Increasingly enraged by its unwanted passengers, the mammoth was now heading for a replica cave. The top was so low the mammoth was barely going to squeeze through it...

  'Can't you steer it away?' the Doctor asked.

  7 am so going to get you back for this, thought Amy.

  The Doctor yelled 'Duck!' and Amy flattened herself on the animal's back as it galloped through the cave. They made it through to the other side where the mammoth hurtled into a display of penguins, toppling them like dominoes.

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&nb
sp; Amy blinked, her mind distracted, confused by something.

  'Are there any Nile Penguins here?'

  The Doctor stared at her like she was mad. "They don't exist, Amy. That's a myth. What made you think of them?'

  Amy wasn't sure. For a brief moment, it had felt like a long-forgotten memory had burst urgently back into her life, but it had departed just as quickly, and she had no idea why she'd thought it was important. 'I just had such a weird feeling of déjà vu.’ she said.

  'That's just echoes of memories.’ the Doctor told her cheerily. 'Reverberating down your timeline, nothing to worry about. Unless it's déjà vu of you wetting yourself. You haven't, have you?'

  Amy laughed. The Doctor had an amazing ability to make the scariest things feel fun, and the worst times become the best.

  She wanted to hug him, but realised they were about to hit another doorway.

  Amy and the Doctor ducked down close to the mammoth's fur again. When they sat back up, they were in the glorious light of the Hall of Diamonds. Amy was dazzled. She'd never imagined such enormous jewels existed.

  'Maybe this is a robbery?' Amy yelled at the Doctor. 'A very clever robbery...'

  'I don't think so...' the Doctor replied.

  He was still lying on the mammoth's back, and was listening intently to something. He gestured for 48

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  Amy to bend down with him. 'Tell me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound like an animal to me...'

  Am y couldn't tell for sure but, through the fur and warmth of the animal, she thought she could hear the click-click-click of cogs turning.

  The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out and pointed it at the mammoth's back leg. It whirred and the mammoth's leg gave way with a FATOO M! Amy clung to the fur as, for a second, it seemed like the creature was going to collapse.

  With a mighty effort, the mammoth hauled its leg back up.

  'That's interesting.' The Doctor was tapping at the mammoth's back. 'This is real muscle and real fur, held on in a real way.' He tugged a bit of white fur loose, and the mammoth wailed. 'See, it really hurts.'