The Forgotten Army Read online

  The Doctor stepped closer. 'I thought I told you lotto...'

  Something extraordinary was happening. The Vykoids were now moving with impossible speed, like Keystone Cops on fast forward. In the time it took the Doctor to make one step, they had unloaded mini combat helicopters, tanks and troop transporters. There was even a mobile kitchen set up, serving out soup to the troops.

  'How did they do that?' Amy asked.

  By the time she'd finished the question, the Vykoid army had put wheels on the base of the air deck in the mammoth's belly and had loaded it up to depart.

  Amy moved quickly, and flung herself at the army, determined to stop them throwing themselves at New York. As much for their sake as hers. She didn't want a new species to be slaughtered, just by misjudging their sense of scale.

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  But as she lunged, Amy felt hundreds of pinpricks on her ankles. The Vykoid troops were scampering up her legs, so quickly she could barely make them out. These were specialist climbing Vykoids, equipped with ropes, carabiners and the like. She may have imagined it, but Amy was sure they stopped for a tea break on her kneecap, before continuing their climb.

  Within seconds, Amy had been pulled to the ground, every bit of her tied and secured. General Erik marched onto her face and peered into her large eyes. To him, she must have seemed like some wondrous deep-sea creature, all plate-sized eyes, enormous limbs and improbable physics.

  This close to him, Amy could see the Vykoid's features properly for the first time. His skin was tough, like leather left out too long in the elements, and his eyes were mean and dark. The spirit of conquest was strong in him, and Amy felt rebellion rise in her heart - she would not be bested by him.

  General Erik didn't talk, he boomed. 'Do you accept our victory?'

  'No!' Amy bellowed back. Her breath was so strong General Erik was almost rocked off his feet.

  'Analyse her!' he snapped, and in a flash he was replaced with dozens of white-coated Vykoids. Scientist Vykoids, Amy thought, trying to clear her head of the notion that she could feed the Vykoid army for a millennium, should they decide to eat

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  her. Or, even worse, they could make their next vehicle inside her... Where was the Doctor when she needed him?

  She tried to turn her head but was rewarded with a sharp jab in her ear, and an outraged squeaking from below.

  'Sorry!' she called out. 'I can't see you back there, don't have eyes in the back of my head.'

  As one, the Vykoid scientists started lifting her hair and examining her scalp for hidden eyes.

  Then, as rapidly as they'd arrived, the Vykoids had gone.

  Not a squeak to be heard. And it had got dark. Amy realised she had been unconscious - she must have been out for hours.

  She lifted her hand and found it was no longer restrained.

  Luckily, the Zoo was well lit, so she could see her watch.

  She was amazed to see that it was close to midnight. She also saw that her hand had been stamped in bold red ink: 'Not Suitable.'

  Amy guessed that this was a good thing. The entire Vykoid army had shipped on out. But, oh, this was much, much worse than she'd thought. They had left her behind, but they had taken the Doctor with them. She was on her own in New York. And the Army of the Vykoids was marching to take Manhattan.

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  Around her, the animals had gone back to their night-time activities

  - meerkats chittering to themselves and giraffes sleeping quietly.

  'Doctor!' she shouted into the Zoo, but there was no reply.

  She kept thinking his tousled head might emerge, grinning like it was all part of his plan, but it looked like he was really gone. This was hopeless. Amy was going to have to stop the Vykoids alone.

  'OK, don't panic.’ she told herself. 'Just think -what would the Doctor do? First off, no talking to yourself, definitely a bad thing...'

  She was alone, in a locked cage in a zoo, while an army of tiny soldiers had been let loose in New York. She had no idea what they wanted, or how she was going to find the Doctor.

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  'Come on, come on.’ she thought. 'Not done yet. Assets, Assets! OK, no Doctor, no sonic screwdriver, no ray gun... and still talking to myself.'

  Amy put her hand into her pocket, and was delighted to find the psychic paper. 'Ha! Just what I need.'

  As confident as Amy liked to pretend to be in front of the Doctor, she had rarely been alone in a foreign city before, let alone one being invaded by diminutive aliens.

  She told herself she just had to focus on finding the Doctor.

  Amy wasn't one for fainting or calling out for help.

  So, to her great surprise, Amy found herself searching for tracks in the sawdust and hay of the Zoo, peering into the gloom of the night. Skirting the now quiet and still mammoth, she saw neat rows of tiny footprints and tyre tracks from the miniature jeeps. And alongside was a larger dragging mark, which could only be the Doctor.

  Amy fought to keep down her sense of panic. The Doctor had been kidnapped by a tiny alien race, but he was bound to be all right. He'd been through far worse, and even if he was in trouble, he'd be fine as soon as she found him.

  Following the Vykoid trail was tricky. They'd darted through tiny openings, and Am y found herself squeezing through gaps, and heading over large objects. At one fence, she was impressed to see that the Vykoids had made time to construct a

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  ramp up and down either side so they could march straight over the top, dragging the Doctor behind. Like a column of ants, they'd taken their prey and had headed single-mindedly out of the Zoo.

  The trail led Amy out onto Fifth Avenue. Looking up for a moment, Amy gazed in wonder at the New York skyline, gleaming in the night sky. If anything, it looked bigger at night. A vast tribute to human might, with office lights shining far brighter than the stars and galaxies above. It was true what they said: bright lights, big city.

  But as she marvelled at Fifth Avenue, Amy realised she had lost any way of tracking the Vykoids. The hard tarmac showed no traces of the tiny army, and even the Doctor's drag marks were impossible to see. Amy hadn't imagined she'd ever yearn to have a husky as a faithful companion, but short of finding a big sign saying 'Doctor this way', she was stumped... She couldn't even go back to the TARDIS, as the Doctor had hidden it and she had no idea of how to get it back.

  Amy wasn't intimidated by what was ahead. She had always made the most of where she was and -whether it was Leadworth or New York - she wasn't about to let herself flounder. Smiling, she thought to herself of the new gang she'd form. The Pond Gang.

  With this in mind, Amy was delighted to get back to their stolen squad car - and to see a familiar 105

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  figure silhouetted at the wheel of another police patrol car across the road from her.

  Oscar seemed to have nodded off to sleep, but Amy's squeal of delight woke him up.

  'Hey!' Amy called through the car window. 'A sexy man in uniform waiting to look after me. You don't know it yet, but you are just what I wanted to find.'

  Stepping out of his car, Oscar looked Amy up and down.

  'What's that on your clothes?' he asked, pointing at the elephant dung. 'Smells like—'

  'Shut up!' Amy cut him off. 'This is an emergency. A big one. Just here. Me, in fact. I need your help.' Amy winked at Oscar. 'Work with me, I'll see if I can put a good word in.

  Who knows, could be a promotion in this for you.'

  Oscar didn't look that impressed by Amy's offer, but she pressed on. 'It's good to see you again, Oscar. I thought I'd have to ring 999 or something, sorry, should be 911

  shouldn't it. But no - here you are already! That's what I call community policing.'

  Oscar seemed perturbed by her attitude, and Amy decided to try a differen
t approach. She hadn't watched all of Glee without learning a bit about American culture. 'My friend is in great danger, and I need you to help me find him.' She thought she should lay it on a bit thicker for his sentimental American side and continued: 'Of course, thing is, I'm at a point in my life now where I have some 106

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  big decisions to make, and its getting kind of tough but I'm gonna pull through it all, thing is, I need your help, tonight, and I will be grateful for ever.' It seemed to be working. At least, Oscar was not actually disagreeing with her. 'Oh, and another thing - we're going to need a dog. You can manage that can't you?'

  Amy smiled. She was getting the hang of this. Of all the things she'd thought New York had to offer, chatting up hot cops was definitely an added bonus. And here she was, assembling a crack team to save New York. Back home, Rory wouldn't even trust her to make a cup of tea, let alone choose the button that might save the world. Now, she was like The A-Team meets Cagney and Lacey. Since meeting the Doctor she'd had the chance to do so much more, and be better then she'd ever imagined. Now she was ready to go solo.

  Oscar had retreated back into his squad car, having a long conversation with someone on his phone. He hadn't told Amy who he was calling, but from the sound of it, he was pretty scared of them.

  As he ended the call, Amy leant in the window, and smiled as nicely as she could. 'So have we got a pooch?'

  Oscar nodded, with a pained expression that he was doing his best to hide. 'The tracker dog is on its way.'

  *

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  Back in her office, Commander Strebbins had called in all the officers she had at her disposal, and had placed the city on a Level One alert. She had no intelligence to back this up, but knew in her gut that she needed to get the pieces in place. She was more than happy to let Oscar have whatever resources he needed as long as he was sticking with the enigmatic Amy Pond.

  Her records showed that Amy was nothing more than a kissogram from a small town in England. She had no connections to UNIT and there were no records of her working with the Doctor, yet she had thrown herself into the action at the Museum like a seasoned professional. She was definitely hiding something, and Strebbins suspected it would lead to the heart of the matter.

  Amy was impressed with the speed at which Oscar had been able to summon help. As she waited on the pavement, he was talking earnestly to another police officer, who was mid-handover of an excitable Alsatian.

  As Oscar signed some papers, Amy gazed again at the New York skyline, glowing brightly in the night sky. This was a place where so many people had come to find their dreams and start their lives all over again. Perhaps it was true, and if Amy could make it here, she'd be able to make it anywhere. Oscar seemed a good start for the Pond Gang, if a 108

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  bit quiet. He had a disconcerting habit of noting down everything Amy said, but as long as he was on her side she didn't really mind.

  She'd thought of recruiting the new officer who had turned up, but he'd been decidedly grumpy, and she could do without that. Amy heard the dog van's engines start up, and pull off to reveal Oscar, fully kitted up, and a bouncy Alsatian by his side. Her team was in place. She smiled, and said out loud, 'Bring it on, New York!'

  Then, one by one, the skyscrapers' lights started to go out.

  First the Empire State Building changed from a beacon of light to a mere silhouette, then the Bank of Manhattan became a slab of black granite. New York was losing power and flickering like cameras at a concert, the entire skyline changed to black.

  Am y stared up Fifth Avenue as a wave of Upper West Side's grand buildings all receded into darkness. The streetlamps that marked out the grids of the city so neatly lost their sodium glow and, block by block, New York became as dark as the heart of the rainforest...

  Am y looked around her in horror. New York had been blackened by an accumulation of night. She wasn't scared of the dark, but dark in a city was a different kind of feeling. The buildings around her now looked like tombstones, mere ghosts of skyscrapers, casting dark blots and angles

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  against the sky. Manhattan felt smaller, and more dangerous. Only the island of Manhattan had lost power, and the orange spill of Queens and New Jersey marked the edge of the blackout zone. But rather than reassure Amy, it made the city feel even darker, totally enclosed.

  All around her, office buildings were emptying early for the night. People were starting to pile out onto the streets, laughing and cheering; grinning late-shift workers, delighted to be released from a night of hard work stuck to their computers. She was sure she could see a firework going off above Harlem. New Yorkers loved a party, and this looked like it was going to make Saturday night a whole lot more fun.

  Wandering near her, a girl was struggling with her phone.

  'Hello? Dan? Are you there? I don't know how I'm going to get home.'

  Amy called out to Oscar. 'Check your phone.'

  He gave the answer she was expecting: 'It isn't working.'

  As Amy listened, she heard a kind of quiet that hadn't reached the city in decades. Nothing was working. Bars were shutting their doors, restaurant kitchens were closing, the Metro lines were down, as all the things the city relied on had simply stopped.

  When she was a child back in Scotland, they'd sometimes had blackouts that lasted for hours -

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  technology briefly beaten back by snow, or floods, or just by a car hitting a pylon. But there were twelve million people here, and Amy knew the lights weren't going to snap on any time soon like they had in Inverness.

  Amy wanted to stop everyone walking past and shepherd them inside. This wasn't a temporary fault or an excuse for a short-lived party in the dark. The Vykoid Army was behind this and, unless Amy could find the Doctor and stop them, light wasn't going to return to New York.

  She was baffled by how powerful the pint-sized aliens were. They were a strange and terrifying kind of army. They operated anonymously under the shadow of darkness, and with a motive so clear and so brutal it was difficult to do anything but plunge into conflict with them. A battle Amy desperately wanted to avoid.

  If only she could find the Doctor.

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  Oscar had already raced back to his car and pulled out his radio to call in to the station. Amy hurried over, leant in and switched it off.

  'Hey!' Oscar protested.

  Amy simply smiled at him. 'You don't need that thing any more. I'll give you all the commands you'll need. So - down to business. I've lost my friend, and I need you to help me find him. So get Fido over here, and let's go!'

  'Lady are you seriously telling me that in the middle of the biggest blackout since 1922, you expect me to help you?'

  Amy smiled. 'Don't take it so hard. You may have won the War of Independence, but right now you can consider yourself my colonial conquest...'

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  Oscar considered for a moment, then nodded in agreement.

  Amy beamed at him 'Good! Let's go to work then, partner.'

  She cheerily took the car keys out of the ignition and called to the dog. 'Over here, Fido!'

  Oscar's sniffer dog leapt up at her, excited to be on a case after hours dozing on the station floor. Amy pulled a bow tie from her pocket and dangled it in front of the dog. 'This is one of his most colourful,' she confided. 'I've confiscated it, in case he ever decides to wear it...'

  The dog was acting strangely, not used to the smell of a Time Lord.

  'Come on.’ Amy went on. "There's a good dog. Eurgh, this actually has one of his hairs on it,' Amy pulled away a long strand of hair, adding, 'He is such a girl.'

  Oscar was watching Amy with a weary look on his face.

  He clapped his hands, and the dog ran to his feet. 'His name is Bismarck. And he'll do as I say
...' Another clap of his hands had Bismarck tracing the ground for a scent, dashing to and fro in ten-metre bursts, covering the area methodically.

  'My friend was on the pavement there.' Amy pointed, but Oscar looked confused. 'Oh, OK, if it makes you happy, on the sidewalk. Honestly, it's not like you've got a mainwalk, is it?'

  Oscar opened his mouth to answer, but then Bismarck gave a businesslike bark and started to 114

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  hare along the sidewalk towards downtown New York.

  Amy turned to Oscar, surprised. 'I thought he might have been taken to Central Park or something. Wouldn't someone have noticed a man being dragged along the street?'

  This was something Oscar did understand. 'You see all sorts in New York, ma'am. Takes a lot to stop traffic.'

  As they followed Bismarck, Oscar asked: 'So, tell me about this guy we're trying to find.'

  'The Doctor?' Amy paused. There was something about Oscar that made her want to tell him everything. 'He's the most amazing man you'll ever meet, Oscar. So wonderful, and so kind, and able to do the most incredible things. He's shown me places I didn't know existed, and made me realise I can do things I never expected. But most of all, he'll walk across the galaxies to stop a single innocent life being lost.

  He's the man I've been waiting for almost my whole life, and now I've found him, it's even better than I expected.'

  From his expression, Oscar clearly thought Amy was in love with the Doctor. She quickly decided to tone down the limitless appreciation.

  'He's also a complete buffoon, with a silly fringe, and bandy legs, and the most bizarre way of talking. But if he was here, Oscar, he'd have the lights back on again in a second.'

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  Amy realised Oscar was now trying to work out exactly how mad she was. She smiled at her tame New York cop.