The Forgotten Army Read online

  'They hit me with six tranquilliser darts. Even two hearts take a while to get rid of that kind of dose. I must have been asleep for... No!'

  With a sense of dread, the Doctor looked at the time. Six hours. He'd been asleep for six hours. He rattled the door of the cell. 'We have to get out of here!' Pulling himself up on the window ledge he could see that the sun was setting. 'Oh no, no, no, no, no.'

  Amy told him to calm down. 'Woolly is safe in the zoo, all behind bars. Job done. Us one, mammoths nil.'

  The Doctor wasn't ready to celebrate. 'We must be too late... We need to get to it...' He realised he wasn't making much sense to Amy and launched into a passionate explanation. 'I know what's wrong with the mammoth!

  When I was on its back I could hear it, and beneath the muscle and the sweat there was another noise. There was a ticking, and a clanking of old machinery getting back into action. The mammoth isn't real. It's a fake. A giant mechanical creature, disguised to look like a vicious 67

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  prehistoric animal.'

  Amy was quiet for a moment. 'I read somewhere that all the dinosaurs and prehistoric animals were fakes—' she said.

  The Doctor cut her off. 'Nah, I've been there. Lovely caves, beautiful sunsets in those days. They were definitely real. But this is something else, and more than that - it's unprotected, and it's right in the middle of New York.'

  'But who would make something like that?' Amy asked.

  'I don't know.’ the Doctor answered impatiently, pacin g the cell with frustration. 'But I need to find out. Unless the cavemen got very clever without me noticing, something from another planet or another time hid the mammoth under the ice.' The Doctor gestured at Amy to hurry up. 'So come on, Pond, can't you pick the lock with a hairpin, or something?

  I need to get out of here!'

  Amy smiled. 'I've got an easier way. C'mere, Brad.'

  In the corridor outside the cell, a handsome clean-cut police officer walked over to the door and winked at Amy.

  'Not leaving already are you?'

  Amy charmed him with ease. 'Me and my dozy friend are off now. Your boss said he was OK to go as soon as he could walk.'

  Brad peered in at the Doctor, who was doing his best to look harmless. 'He looks kind of weird to 68

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  me, but whatever floats your boat.'

  With a smile, Amy whisked the electronic key tag off Brad's belt and pressed it up against the door. With a loud clunk, the door to the cell slid open, and the Doctor stepped out. He promptly tripped over his boots.

  Brad looked at him with visible disdain.

  'Right, first shoelaces,' the Doctor decided. 'Then let's go!

  We need to get to the mammoth. And fast.'

  While the Doctor had been asleep, Amy had watched as the massive mammoth was loaded onto a flatbed truck and transported across town to the New York City Zoo.

  'Right now,' Amy told the Doctor, 'the mammoth is sleeping happily between the rhinos and the elephants.

  They're going to get a surprise when it wakes up.'

  The Doctor looked distressed. 'Oh, Amy, you should have woken me up...'

  Amy was disappointed. She'd done her very best without the Doctor and had hoped he would have noticed more of what she'd managed to do. 'Hang on, I stopped them carting you off to the Gotham Asylum, or whatever they have here, and I convinced them I was the only person fit to look after you. Professor of Psychology at Oxford no less. And Special Inspector with Scotland Yard, Flying Squad. So less of the grumpy face.'

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  The Doctor smiled sympathetically. 'You're right. Sorry.

  You've been brilliant. But our days of working with the NYPD are over, Professor Pond. Far better we do things our own way from now on. The right way. Follow me. I'll show you how it's done.'

  They found a rear exit and walked out of the station into a backyard full of rubbish bins. Beyond the bins, squad cars and riot vans were parked up, ready to take out on patrol for the night shift.

  The Doctor grinned at Amy. 'I've always wanted to drive one of these!'

  Amy held him back. 'We can't steal a police car!'

  The Doctor wasn't deterred. 'First the clothes, now this.

  Next you'll be telling me to take the TARDIS back to whoever I borrowed it off.'

  Amy wasn't convinced. 'I'm an honorary member of the NYPD, anyway. Well, maybe.'

  Leaping into the driver's seat, the Doctor soniced the ignition, and the engine roared into life. 'Come on, Amy!'

  Amy got into the squad car. 'I suppose it's nice to see one of these from the front seat.'

  Oscar ran round to the back of the station, just in time to see the Doctor and Amy drive off. He resisted the urge to call in and get the car pulled over. Strebbins had told him to do this quietly.

  Instead, he called in to Brad that he was taking a car. After signing four forms and a health disclaimer, 70

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  Oscar headed off after the Doctor and Amy.

  It wasn't difficult to work out where they going. They wanted the mammoth, and he knew exactly where to find them.

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  7

  The sun was setting over New York. The Doctor left the squad car parked on Fifth Avenue, and Amy took a moment to take in the beauty and sheer scale of Central Park. Above her, ducks circled lazily, and thousands of lights were being switched on across the city, making the steel and glass towers glow against the sky.

  'Wow!' Amy was impressed. 'On the maps, the park looks tiny. But you could fit all of Leadworth into it. Twice.'

  The Doctor signalled for Amy to be quiet as they got within sight of the Zoo. As the evening drew in, the Zoo was shutting down for the night, and the main entrance was full of groups of schoolchildren, filing out as the security guards closed up.

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  'Where exactly is the Zoo?' the Doctor asked.

  Before Amy could speak, he answered his own question.

  'It's right in the middle of New York, isn't it...'

  'Does that mean anything?' Amy asked.

  'We're about to find out.'

  They circled the Zoo fence until they reached the service gates. Beyond the heavy steel doors, they could see the top of the large animal enclosure, tantalisingly close.

  'I can sonic the gates open,' the Doctor told Amy, 'but I'm gonna need a diversion...'

  He nodded towards the entrance. On either side of the service gates, two security guards were sitting back in their chairs, chatting and laughing.

  Amy smiled and whispered to the Doctor, 'I've got a really good idea. You stop here, I'll get them out of the way.'

  The Doctor crouched on the ground as Amy crawled across the road and ducked behind a bush. A moment later a tiny pebble skittered along the tarmac and came to rest beside the foot of the security guard. The man didn't notice and kept on talking to the other guard.

  Amy tried again, with a slightly larger stone. This time it bounced up, and knocked against the guard's knee. But he still didn't notice. The Doctor signalled to Amy that they didn't have much time.

  On her third attempt, Amy chucked a hefty stone.

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  It flew through the air, bounced off the ground, and whacked the guard right on the forehead.

  'Owww!' cried the guard. Putting his hand to his head he fell back off his seat, crying in pain for a second time as he landed heavily on the ground. Concerned, the other security guard rushed over to his side.

  Amy was sure she could see tears rolling down the guard's cheek as he rubbed his sore head. She ran back to the Doctor's side.

  The Doctor asked, 'Was that your really good idea? I thought maybe you'd cause a clever scene, or something, not whack him on the head.'

  Amy rolled her eyes. 'Enough with the criticism. Your turn now.'

  The Doctor raised an eyebrow at Amy,
not impressed at all.

  'I'm sorry, all right,' she said. 'I panicked. You were pressuring me. I didn't mean to make him cry.' She paused, and added: 'Looks like they're off, though.'

  Sure enough, both guards were heading off to get first aid, one of them still visibly upset.

  'Don't you dare stop asking me to do this stuff though,'

  Amy continued. 'I'm good at this. Just you wait and see.'

  As she spoke, Amy slipped in a large pile of elephant dung. She glared up at the Doctor, who backed away laughing.

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  'I'm not saying anything.’ he told her. 'Look at me, not saying anything. See me, absolutely not pointing at you and laughing.'

  Amy tried to ignore him. 'Hurry up. They're distracted, aren't they? Come on. Sonic away. Get those locks open.

  Let's go!'

  While Amy cleaned herself up, the Doctor clicked the screwdriver and, with a thunder crack, the doors of the Zoo blew open with an enormous bang.

  The Doctor grinned, looking stupidly pleased with himself. I didn't know it could do that! Sonic energy excites the hydrocarbons in the oil in the hinges, and - Boom! Instant access. Just look at it.'

  Amy was aghast. 'All of New York will have heard that!

  What was the point of me distracting them?'

  'You've been in Leadworth too long, Amy Pond. Big city like this, they'll think it's someone celebrating New Year.

  Always a New Year for someone...'

  Inside the Zoo, the elephants were uneasy. Flappy the Elephant (named by a children's TV programme) had been perplexed when his usual afternoon visit had been abandoned and men clad in black baseball hats had unloaded a strange and new kind of animal.

  Flappy had learnt to be glad whenever new animals arrived, especially elephants. He'd been a bit lonely since Elephunk the Musical Elephant had

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  gone to Philadelphia Zoo, and he wanted someone to talk trunk to trunk with. But this new animal was different...

  The zookeepers hadn't been pleased when it arrived.

  There had been shouting and screaming and tones of voice Flappy normally only heard if the goat's head butted a child.

  And then when he had finally seen the creature unloaded, he'd been deeply suspicious.

  It wasn't the colour that seemed odd: in his short life, Flappy had seen creatures of all kinds go past. It was the smell. The new woolly thing in the next cage smelt clean, almost like it was new. It didn't smell like an actual animal. It smelt more like a load of washing, or the boiler suits worn by the keepers every second Monday. Flappy had tried to communicate this to his favourite keeper, but she'd simply given his trunk a rub and fed him a banana. And now that the woolly creature had woken up, it was behaving even more oddly, pawing at the ground, and walking in strange concentric circles.

  Flappy wasn't to know, but the Polar Woolly Mammoth was doing something very akin to pacing out the dimensions of the cage.

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  8

  The Doctor and Amy crouched low and stepped quietly into the Zoo. The locks were red hot and smoking in the evening air.

  To get to the enclosure" they had to sidle past a little hut where the crying security guard was holding an ice pack to his bruised head while his friend was busy putting plasters on his injuries.

  Safely past the hut, the Doctor and Amy ducked off the main track and crept along behind the enclosures. This was the secret part of the Zoo where the keepers stored the animal food and the old, smelly hay. These shortcuts from the main path zigzagged through the Zoo, and unwittingly the Doctor and Amy stumbled out onto one of the main walkways.

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  As a crowd of naughty school children went past, Amy saw someone headed straight for them and pulled the Doctor back. She was too late: a zookeeper returning from her rounds stopped to talk to the Doctor.

  'Hey, mister, nice bow tie.'

  The Doctor turned to Amy, grinning triumphantly. 'See! I told you it was cool. Just you wait and see, they'll all be wearing them soon.'

  Amy pointed over the Doctor's shoulder where the keeper was still waiting to talk to the Doctor...

  'School visiting time is over now, sir,' the keeper continued. 'Would you be so kind as to fetch your class from the petting zoo. It's closing time.'

  Amy struggled to keep a straight face. The keeper thought that the Doctor was a teacher.

  The Doctor smiled and tried to explain himself. 'Ah, right, you think I'm a teacher 'cos of the jacket and the bow tie, ah, I think you'll see their teacher is actually over there.' He pointed to the other side of the path, where a flustered-looking man was having a sneaky cigarette by the koala cage.

  The teacher was a deeply uncool man in his forties, flustered, paunchy and wearing a purple shirt and bow tie.

  He was trying very hard to ignore the noise of the rowdy children who were meant to be in his care.

  Amy laughed out loud. 'You could so be brothers.'

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  The keeper pointed down the path. Thank you both. The exit is that way.'

  Amy held her hands up as the keeper walked away. 'I am saying nothing. That was just priceless.'

  'Yeah, quiet, Pond. Just keep walking...'

  The Doctor and Amy followed the keeper's instructions until they were out of sight, then ducked down another back alley. The service path weaved in and out of the animal enclosures and made the Zoo look like a crazy mass of concrete walls, bars and piles of animal dung.

  'Where do you put a mammoth in a place like this?' Amy asked.

  'Follow me,' said the Doctor, striding off down the dusty path.

  As the light faded, and the last visitors left, the Zoo became dominated by the excitable chattering of wildlife.

  Macaque monkeys squabbled in the trees, gnus lounged in the long grass and, safe from view, polar bears did energetic laps of their pool, throwing pieces of fish to each other as if they were playing water polo.

  As they walked, the Doctor told Amy the best way to deal with wild animals. 'In a place like this they're all well fed, so you've no real need to worry. Out in the wild there is one very important thing to remember. You need to make sure you look as little like food as possible.'

  'Is that it?' Amy said. 'Grrrreat. Top advice.'

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  The Doctor pointed to a crocodile, and they both went very quiet.

  Tiptoeing past, the Doctor whispered to Amy when they were well clear of the reptile. 'I don't think he remembered me... Never do a deal with a crocodile, Amy. They tend to eat the contract.'

  Amy laughed. 'You expect me to believe everything.'

  Finally, they reached the large animal enclosure. The mammoth's cage had been clumsily covered with white plastic sheets, and a double fence closed the area off.

  The Doctor looked at Amy. 'One more chance. Keep out signs are like a red rag to a bull for you. I'm sure you can get through here.'

  Amy grinned, stepped forward, casually lifted the fence from its support, and stepped through the gap. 'I've never paid for a festival yet.'

  Pushing up the bars, the Doctor tore the white plastic sheet down, and found himself face to face with the Polar Woolly Mammoth.

  'Whoa! It must have been watching us through the sheets.

  That's some eyesight it's got.' The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out and shone it into the mammoth's eyes.

  This is beautiful work,' he said. 'Exceptional. It must have taken years to make an iris and a pupil that work as well as this. And the tusks! Yep, hardened dead hair, definitely real.'

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  'So what's fake about it?' Amy asked. As she did, the mammoth let rip a fart. That smells pretty real to me.'

  The Doctor was staring absentmindedly into the distance.

  'I wonder...' He fiddled with his sonic scr
ewdriver and shone a green light onto the mammoth's fur.

  Where the beam touched the fur, the light seemed to linger, as if the sonic screwdriver had caused the fur to glow.

  'What are you doing, Doctor?' Amy asked.

  The Doctor was too focused on his task to answer. 'This is just amazing...' Swinging up on the bars of the enclosure, the Doctor stood above the beast, and lit the mammoth with a large torch. All of the creature was glowing a mysterious green, phosphorescent in the dark of the Zoo.

  'Where did you get that from?' Amy wondered, looking at the torch.

  'Big pockets. Not really relevant at the moment.'

  'You want me to ask about the fur?'

  'It's not fur. Can't be. Ordinary fur doesn't glow. And not just with the sonic, it's any light source that sets it off.

  Whatever else is real about this, the fur definitely isn't. Looks like some kind of nano-fibre-optic technology, something that certainly wasn't around in the mammoth's time.'

  'Unless all the mammoths were alien robots.’ Amy suggested.

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  The Doctor grinned. 'I'll take you there some day, you can find out for yourself.' As he spoke, he was fiddling with his sonic screwdriver, and a beam of light shone into the mammoth's ear, which began to twitch bizarrely.

  'Ha! I've got it! But I think this is about to get very embarrassing indeed.'

  The Doctor leapt down into the enclosure with the mammoth, and opened the gate from the inside to let Amy in.

  He kept talking as he shut it carefully behind her. 'Very, very embarrassing. I expect they'll be blushing when they have to explain themselves.'

  'Tell me what you mean.' Amy gave him a friendly punch on the arm. Although not so friendly it didn't hurt him a bit.

  'Hey, spaceman, you're not making sense!'

  Rubbing his shoulder, the Doctor went on. 'Sorry, sorry, am I talking out of sequence again? So many things in my head sometimes they just come out in the wrong order. I'm not mad, just got a very busy mind. But just as real fur can't be activated with sonic technology, a real mammoth doesn't have oil in its ear joints. In fact, it doesn't have "ear joints" at all. And you certainly can't make it do this...'