Doctor Who BBCN08 - The Feast of the Drowned Page 5

  ‘Now, then, Huntley,’ said Crayshaw, tightening the scarf about his neck as if he felt the cold. ‘Why did you approach the intruder?’

  ‘He looked. . . well, conspicuous, sir.’

  ‘Why did you not raise the alarm at once?’

  ‘He had a red pass card, sir.’ Well, he said he did. ‘And he said you had sent him here yourself. He mentioned you by name, and I thought –’

  Crayshaw waved away his excuses. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. He told me things, in fact.’ Huntley shrugged. ‘Mis-information, I’m sure. A lot of wild nonsense. I mean, why would he –’

  An impatient sigh. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘He put the dissection of the ship down to anti-cellularisation.’

  Most of the military types were lost at the first whiff of jargon, par-ticularly the older types. But Crayshaw seemed unfazed, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, his mad theory was that matter was being reworked at an atomic level, fused by hydrogen.’ Huntley paused, thoughtful.

  ‘Though if hydrogen could be harnessed as the power source, the sea would be a perfect medium in which to operate such a –’

  ‘Do you now believe there could be any truth in this “wild nonsense”?’ Crayshaw inquired.

  Huntley could almost feel his colleagues shrinking back from him, disowning him utterly. ‘Fresh ideas,’ he said quietly, smoothing over 45

  his few remaining hairs. ‘That’s what’s needed here. In the absence of conventional explanations –’

  ‘– we should accept the ramblings of an unidentified intruder?’

  Huntley could feel his legs slowly turning to jelly. He spoke quickly before they could give way completely. ‘I simply believe in keeping a mind open to all possibilities, sir.’

  Unexpectedly, Crayshaw smiled. ‘Excellent, Huntley.’ He rounded on the other scientists. ‘You should all take a leaf from this man’s book! Not one of you has come up with a satisfactory explanation as to what can have happened to this vessel. I need answers, gentlemen!

  I need commitment!’ He jabbed a finger at the decon chamber, where the systems boys were clustering like aphids around a bud. ‘And I need those doors open at once!’

  The more electrically-minded scientists headed over to see what they could do. Huntley was about to try and lend a hand himself when Crayshaw stopped him. The black lenses of the old man’s glasses, brightly peppered with the reflected lights, made it hard to look at him.

  ‘When does your shift end tonight, Huntley?’

  ‘Eleven, sir.’

  ‘I think perhaps we need to talk. Wait for me here. Don’t leave before I come to you. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Huntley, trying to hide how startled he was. Crayshaw gave him a slightly sickly smile. Then, with a protesting screech, the decon doors opened to ragged applause. The old boy stalked off without another word. ‘I’ll lead the way,’ he shouted. ‘Fall in.’

  Huntley watched him go, chewing his lip. There was a whiff of advancement about this invitation, he was sure of it.

  Despite everything, the mysterious Dr Smith had been right all along.

  And if he’d been right about that. . .

  Huntley shuffled off, ignoring the dark looks and mutterings in his direction from the remaining scientists. His mind was tussling with unruly new ideas, and inside he was shining as bright as the lights.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  46

  The Doctor splashed on through the dingy access corridor. The flu-orescent lights in the ceiling were caked with grime, and many had conked out. His shoes were soaked, and his sodden trouser legs clung to his ankles.

  After a sharp turn, the corridor opened up into a large, dark, circular chamber. ‘Hello,’ the Doctor murmured. ‘A significant bit. Or do I mean pit?’

  There was no ceiling. He was stood at the bottom of an enormous vertical borehole through the concrete. He decided it must be the cargo lift shaft, used to ferry materials down to the secret workshops.

  It was impossible to know how high and far it stretched, the only lights being small white maintenance bulbs, flanking an inspection ladder at intervals. A huge, filthy pool was set in the centre of the floor – some kind of drainage channel for the excess river water that came down with the cargo. And yet right now it was full to the brim. It had been flooded.

  From the smell of it, flooded with sea water.

  ‘So,’ the Doctor announced, his voice boomy and hollow in the near-darkness. ‘Are you just a blocked drain? Or a nice little home for some special form of marine life?’ He crouched down, pulled a crumpled polythene bag from his breast pocket and dipped it into the water.

  The water was icy cold, made his fingers tingle. ‘All I need now is a goldfish,’ he decided, holding up the full bag. ‘Any goldfish about?’

  He thought he caught a flash of movement – a ripple, dead in the centre of the dark pool. But the light was so poor, he could have imagined it. He straightened, tied a knot in the bag and placed it back in his pocket. A distant clanking sound echoed eerily from the way he had come. He knew he didn’t have long.

  Skirting the sinister dark pool, he hauled himself up on to the inspection ladder and started to scale the shaft. But he had barely covered a couple of rungs before he stopped still. Parts of the steel ladder were wet. From the position of the patches, they could only be hand-and footprints.

  Someone sopping wet had been here before him only recently, climbing into the dank darkness.

  47

  Lying in wait.

  ‘Maybe they’ve got the goldfish,’ the Doctor reasoned.

  Warily, as silently as he could, he continued up the rungs.

  48

  Up theDoctor went, ever higher intothe cold, stifling gloom. Freezing water dripped remorselessly down on him from high above.

  The metal rungs were cutting into the thin soles of his sneakers, and his arms and legs were aching with effort. The tiny white stud-lights did little to dispel the inky blackness, so he kept stopping every few feet to listen out for the tell-tale sound of someone above him. Whoever they were, they hadn’t dried out – his fingers kept encountering the wet residue.

  He held his breath and listened: nothing save the sprightly thump of his two hearts pulsing in his ears.

  Finally he came up against a solid metal barrier, blocking his progress upwards. Since it meshed into metal grooves on either side of the shaft, this had to be the cargo platform, waiting to fetch down whatever was loaded on to it. And since there were no controls at the bottom of the shaft, it must be controlled from the tug up above. But how was he going to get past it? He groped with one hand along the underside of the platform. There should surely be an –

  ‘Inspection hatch,’ the Doctor hissed, his hands closing around a metal handle. It felt warm and sticky under his fingers as he twisted, 49

  released the catch. A circular hatch cover pivoted clear. A pale light shone from within, illuminating the shaft.

  The Doctor saw his hand was now sticky with blood. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he said. ‘Not to mention nastier and grosser.’

  He would have to lean across and pull himself up through the hole in the platform’s underside. That would leave him dangling over a drop of at least 300 feet, while whoever had got here ahead of him could well be waiting just out of view – bleeding and very, very wet.

  He started at a sudden volley of noises far below: the muffled rap of an order, well-drilled footsteps, the crack of hefty safety catches coming off. Then an uneasy silence.

  The Doctor decided to chance leaning over towards the open hatchway – just as the gunfire started.

  ‘Well, this is fun,’ Mickey announced, and Rose gave him a look. She couldn’t blame him, though. They’d been sitting together in tense silence for a good hour, waiting for something scary to happen. Al-though from the sound of soft snoring, Anne had opted out of the nerves marathon for now.

  Through the window, Rose
was dimly aware of the world going on around them. Boys shouted to each other in the street, kicked cans around. Dance music pumped posily from someone’s car stereo.

  A gang of girls clopped down the pavement in their heels, excited, laughing. It was a Friday night. Once upon a time, that alone would have been a cause of celebration. It would have been unthinkable to stay in on a Friday.

  Keisha used to start texting her and Shareen on a Tuesday and they would plan their big night in crazy detail – hair, what to wear, which bar to kick off in. Which clubs, of course-that was a serious business.

  You had to rate the DJs on how good they were compared to how cute they looked, and the arguments and the laughter went on well into the night.

  Together, Rose and her mates had always made Friday night come early and last most of the week. That was the sort of time-travel the Doctor would never understand in a billion years. And yet it all 50

  seemed so distant to her now. She was only nineteen, but being with the Doctor had made her grow up so much.

  Or maybe grow old so fast.

  ‘I’m gonna pop out, get some fresh air,’ Mickey announced. ‘I want to check the paper, see if there’s anything more being said about the ghost ship, people disappearing and that.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Rose said.

  ‘Does that news agent’s on the corner still open late?’ Keisha nodded. ‘Maybe not today, though. Something happened there today, didn’t it?’

  Rose nodded. ‘The Doctor said some of the customers collapsed or something. There were ambulances and. . . ’ She trailed off. ‘Oh, God.

  How thick am I?’

  Mickey frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘Just before. . . before Jay appeared, those people in the newsagent’s round the corner collapsed or something. And when Anne saw her son, those soldiers went down.’

  ‘And I felt really sick.’ Mickey nodded. ‘So what does that mean, they’re linked?’

  ‘Jay wouldn’t hurt no one,’ said Keisha flatly.

  Rose looked at her sympathetically. ‘He might not mean to, but –’

  ‘He wouldn’t!’ Her face darkened. ‘What makes you think you know so much about everything, Rose? Just ’cause you’ve been travelling –’

  ‘Oh, and what, the Doctor’s given me airs and graces? You sound like my mum!’

  ‘Oil’ hissed Mickey, pointing at Anne. ‘You’re gonna wake her up.’

  Rose and Keisha both fell silent. The distant carefree blare of music and people having fun drifted in through the dirty windows.

  ‘Why can’t things just be like they used to be?’ whispered Keisha.

  Rose didn’t have an answer.

  Slowly she got up. ‘I think I’ll try and find out what happened in that newsagent’s.’

  Mickey frowned. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Not worth it, I’ll only be five minutes.’

  She pointed to Anne,

  mouthing, Look after her. ‘I’ll bring you that paper, yeah?’

  51

  ‘But I’m the one who wanted some fresh air.’ He looked hurt. ‘You think I can’t handle this.’

  ‘You got sick last time, remember? If anything weird happens again, you could get it worse.’

  ‘Well, what about you? What if you get sick this time?’

  ‘Just five minutes.’ She turned and crossed to the front door. ‘Take care.’

  ‘Just ’cause you’re his mate, it don’t make you indestructible,’

  Mickey called after her. But she had closed the door, and her footsteps were already fading away.

  Mickey glanced down at Keisha, still kneeling on the floor in front of the chair. She was watching him.

  ‘Here we are again, then,’ she said coolly. ‘Alone at last.’

  As the harsh death-rattle from a dozen light support weapons started up, the Doctor lunged for the rim of the open hatchway. The sound of the gunfire, distorted and magnified by the cavernous stone acoustics, thundered all around him as he just managed to grab hold. He dangled in the darkness, clinging on by his fingertips as bullets burst past.

  Concrete shrapnel and shards of metal exploded into the air, stinging his skin.

  Abruptly the firing stopped. His ears still ringing in the aftermath, the Doctor pulled himself up through the inspection hatch and lay face down, the metal floor cold and wet against his skin. The cargo lift doors were open, and he saw the platform was aligned with the floor of another enormous access tunnel, waiting for the next load to be wheeled on board.

  But there was no one here waiting for him. In the dim lighting of the access tunnel the Doctor could see spatters of bloody water on the platform’s scarred and grimy surface.

  A further sharp chatter of gunfire broke out, and the Doctor felt the bullets’ impact as they pounded into the underside of the platform.

  Then a man’s voice rose in anger, and even the echoes seemed somehow clipped and dry with age.

  52

  ‘Get up above and alert the perimeter patrols,’ he said. ‘I want that tug well covered, but no one is to board it until I say so.’

  ‘At once, sir.’

  The Doctor nodded to himself. Rear Admiral Crayshaw, I presume.

  ‘The rest of you, fan out and search back the way we came.’ A pause, and then, before the eerie echoes could die down, ‘I will check the pool myself.’

  The Doctor screwed up his nose. ‘Good luck.’ He clambered to his feet and was about to get going when he heard another voice echo spookily up to him. It was softer, more sibilant, a female voice maybe, rising like a sudden mist over the black waters.

  ‘Remain selective who you take from. For now, we need these soldiers alive.’

  Do you now, thought the Doctor. Personally, I could do with them somewhere else. Just who are you anyway?

  ‘We will capture the escaping one. Bind him. Bring him back. He must play his part to swell the numbers at the feast.’

  ‘Me?’ the Doctor murmured. ‘Or whoever got up here first?’ Burning with curiosity, for a lunatic split-second the Doctor contemplated popping back down the shaft to see what was happening. But he knew he couldn’t afford to stay eavesdropping. Whoever had left the blood and water was still at large, hurt and most likely scared as all hell.

  A fellow fugitive, it seemed – but what had he escaped from? The Doctor knew he must find him fast and get up to the tug’s deck before the soldiers completely cut off their only chance of escape.

  So he stole away along the winding access tunnel, splashing once more through freezing, dirty water. It got deeper the further along he went – salt-stinking, and already up to his shins. But it had to be passable, he thought, rounding a corner. There was still no sign of the mysterious escapee –

  Scratch that.

  The Doctor came to a sloshing stop. A dark figure stood turned from him, half in shadow, hunched against a door in the wall. It shook and shivered, rasping for breath.

  ‘Hello!’ the Doctor called. ‘You OK? Hurt yourself?’

  53

  The figure didn’t react.

  ‘It’s all right, we’re in the same boat. Literally, as it happens! But I’m not talking about the tug, I mean we’re both in hot water. Um, metaphorically, this time. It’s actually freezing cold, isn’t it? Or is that just me?’

  The figure ignored him. The swirling water was almost up to their waists by now.

  ‘So, anyway, I can probably open that door. Who are you? I’m the Doctor.’

  The figure froze. ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, no, not literally a doctor, but I –’

  ‘Can. . . can you help me?’ It was a man’s voice, hoarse, south Londonish. ‘Can you?’

  The Doctor waded through the water towards him. ‘S’all right.

  Show me where you hurt.’

  The man spun round to face him. The Doctor stopped in his tracks.

  It was a young black man, tall and burly. The sleeve of his ragged blazer was braided with the sing
le stripe of a naval rating. His face was in shadow, but thick bloody welts sat like gorging slugs on his cheeks and neck. Clots had oozed down to stain his white square collar crimson.

  ‘Where have you come from, then?’ the Doctor murmured. ‘What have they done to you?’

  ‘I had to get out of there,’ the young man said, starting to shake again. ‘I can’t stop them coming. You’re a doctor, you make them stop. Make them stop coming.’

  ‘We’ll figure something out,’ the Doctor assured him. ‘But right now we have to get out of here.’ He held out a hand. ‘So come on, move away from the door, let me see. . . ’

  ‘It’s my little sister, right? And my mum.’ The young rating edged forwards, still shaking, and the Doctor saw his face for the first time.

  There were three deep score marks in the skin of each cheek, twitching and puckering like baby mouths, spitting and sucking down air.

  And his eyes were huge, blank and bulging from his sockets, a dull smooth silver-white like enormous pearls.

  54

  The Doctor stared at the man sadly, kept his hand outstretched.

  ‘Come on,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Mum, my little Keisha. . . ’ The rating was wheezing for breath, and a bloody tear squeezed out from one of his pearly eyes. ‘I don’t want to hurt them, but I can’t. . . can’t stop it. . . ’

  ‘Oh, blimey,’ said the Doctor as the penny dropped with a nasty clatter. ‘You’re Keisha’s brother. Jay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Keish. . . ?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Rose. You know her, don’t you? Rose Tyler?

  Yeah, course you do.’ As Jay stumbled forwards, choking, an anger as cold as the churning water stirred inside the Doctor. ‘Who did this to you?’

  Hang on – churning?

  ‘They’re coming,’ Jay hissed, hugging himself. ‘I’ll never stop them coming. Can’t get away.’

  ‘We can get away,’ the Doctor insisted. The water was thickening like a strong, salty soup as he pushed through to the door and pressed the bulb of the sonic screwdriver against the hinges. The water forced it open, surged through to engulf the first few steps of a metal stairwell, a means for the cargo handlers to travel from tug to loading bay.