Doctor Who - Nuclear Time Page 8

  Spurred on by this encouraging brown smudge, the Doctor resumed his saunter, whistling a jaunty tune and watching in mild wonder as small fragments of gravel bounced along the ground toward his boots with each step that he took.

  Then time stuttered once more.

  The Doctor yelled in agony as every molecule in his body was shunted forwards half a metre without any intermediate shift, and he choked on air that was suddenly being sucked into his mouth rather than exhaled. He doubled over in pain, stumbling backwards as his boots scuffed the coarse ground.

  Another shift, gentler this time, and the Doctor's personal time was restored to its anti-clockwise progression. He placed a hand on his tender stomach. Things were only going to get worse as he continued — the more he interacted with the world around him, the more the universe would protest.

  But he didn't have a choice.

  He resumed his walk once more, moving briskly to hide the shake in his legs, from himself 120

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  more than anything. The horizon maintained its constant line as the minutes ticked inexorably away, and the Doctor found himself wishing for the slope of a distant mountain range to slide into view, something to show that he was making progress.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Appletown was no more than a reflected cascade of sunlight behind him, and in the dead silence of the desert he began to feel rather lonely.

  He

  found

  a

  boulder

  further

  along,

  and

  unceremoniously dumped his jacket on it before slumping onto its vaguely horizontal surface. He reached down to retrieve a spray of brush that had been snapped off its parent stalk. It was black and ashy, reforming into a more organic-looking composition as he rubbed his fingers along the stalk. He moved to put it in his mouth and have a chew and then thought better of it. He fumbled in the inner pocket of his jacket and whipped out the sonic screwdriver.

  The familiar crackle of its Geiger setting made him gingerly return it to the ground, the stalk reattaching to the bush as he moved it closer.

  Fascinating. If he could already see the effects of his actions before he caused them, did that mean that he was obliged to follow a particular course? For these moments, moving backwards through a 121

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  universe of progression, was every minute detail of his life mapped out before him? He rubbed his chin and shivered at the implications, then patted the thick cotton of his jeans with a loud series of slaps as if announcing a change in mood.

  He turned back in what he was sure was the direction he had been walking in and opened his mouth in surprise. Whilst he had been ruminating, three dark green dots had appeared on the horizon, and now they were steadily growing larger before his eager eyes. The dots became blurs, and the blurs became rectangles, and soon the atmospheric haze retreated to reveal three large, camo-painted army trucks thundering in the Doctor's direction.

  'Civilisation!' The Doctor grinned.

  But his face fell as the trucks approached, reversing towards him at high speed. Their rear hatches were cracked and broken, hinges dented and deformed like the rest of the vehicle by a spattering of bullet holes that covered their back ends.

  The Doctor's hair spread across his face in the gust that accompanied the vehicles as they sped past him in the direction of Appletown, the unfastened ends of their covering tarpaulins snapping and cracking along the metal side panels. The soldiers in the cabins looked at him wearily as they drew alongside - a tired sadness

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  like they were too exhausted to care but thought they should at least pretend. The Doctor rubbed his nose and hoped that the dark brown stains that streaked the green paintwork of the trucks were only rust, then turned and continued on his way. He had no desire to return to Appletown just yet.

  It was half an hour later when the Doctor checked his watch once more, hopping awkwardly from foot to foot in an attempt to gauge the length of his shadow against the position of the sun against the hands that ticked across the gold-plated timepiece.

  Roughly he jammed his thumb into the air, blotting out the sun, and felt some consolation in the discovery that his personal time line was running neither faster nor slower than the world around him; a perfect negative progression. The Doctor wasn't entirely sure whether that was a positive thing or not.

  He checked behind himself, and a smile spread across his face as he spotted the familiar shimmer of the trucks returning from their excursion to the town.

  'About time!' he shouted, 'I was getting lonely. Now, how about a lift?'

  Dark eyes fixed firmly on the reversing convoy he began sidestepping swiftly from side to side, 123

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  trying to line himself up with the approaching vehicles. His gaze alighted on a faint set of tyre marks a few metres to his right and, with a hop and a step, he planted himself firmly between the tracks. Triumphantly he raised his arms and began gesticulating wildly in an attempt to alert one of the drivers to his presence.

  The trucks roared ever closer and the Doctor began to splutter as engine fumes coalesced out of the atmosphere around him, dust blowing away from the markings on either side defining the tracks as they approached. But still they made no sign of acknowledgement,

  continuing

  to

  approach

  at

  considerable speed.

  His face fell. 'Middle of the desert, in a hurry, weapons testing site, and the fact that to them I must appear to be waving goodbye...' The right-hand vehicle was almost upon him now, a rapidly diminishing gap of only a few metres. 'Not exactly the kind of situation where you'd need to check your mirrors!'

  He leapt into the air as high as he could as the clanking back panel of the truck slammed into him, long fingers grasping for a handhold on the camo-painted wood. He hooked his elbows over the edge and hung on for dear life as his boots kicked dangerously close to the rocky ground that was now hurtling past beneath his feet.

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  There was a rough jolt as one of the wheels glanced a particularly large boulder and the Doctor found himself flipped into the rear of the truck, his stomach catching the panel as he toppled into the shadow of the covered compartment, winding him. It took several empty gasps for his lungs to kick back into action and he gulped in great mouthfuls of stale air as he rolled slowly onto his back and cradled his head in his hands.

  Eventually he opened his eyes and immediately wished he hadn't. So he closed them again.

  Cautiously, he reopened one eye.

  Standing over him, impossibly still, swaying gently with the motion of the truck, were seventeen citizens of Appletown, and in his direct line of sight was Mr Sanderson.

  The truck lurched again and the Doctor slid across the floor, grabbing the man's pinstriped trouser leg to halt himself. It felt warm and soft to the touch - too human for comfort - and he snapped his hand away quickly, wiping it on his jacket as he swayed slowly to his feet.

  His face drew level with the man he would dismantle nearly two hours from now. 'Yeah,' he muttered, half to himself and half to the impassive figure.

  He jutted his jaw and stared into the grey-green gel-eyeballs as they blinked gently. 'Sorry about that,' he finished.

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  Absently, he lifted his hand to his neck and began to scratch. Then he stuck a couple of fingers down his collar and rubbed down his collarbone, and his other hand soon joined it as the Doctor began to scratch himself all over.

  'Urgh!' he declared. 'I'm all itchy!' With a concerted effort he stopped scratching and drew his fringe away from his face. 'Why am I itchy? I'm not usually itchy, am I? I'm far too busy to worry about being itchy all the time.' He spread his palms, then flipped them face down in front of him and began to rotate slowly, watching intently as the hairs on the backs of his hands lifte
d gently and moved ever so slightly. He stopped as he turned to face the rear of the truck. 'An electromagnetic field,' he murmured.

  He strode over to the back wall of the driver's cabin and yanked open a metal hatch. Inside was a large coil of metal wrapped around a series of blinking tubes that lined a large iron core.

  The Doctor screwed up his face as the itchiness increased even further and whistled through his teeth.

  'Phew, that's one serious bit of kit for the eighties.' He turned to the nearest figure. 'You're an expensive lot to maintain, aren't you? Don't you know there's a recession on?'

  The figure snapped its hand up and slapped the Doctor's hand away from the panel in an 126

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  awkward motion. The Doctor ducked out of instinct, yelping in pain as he knocked the open hatch closed to avoid the second blow. But the blow didn't come. The Doctor squinted into the shadow at the sunken face that looked back at him. 'Hold on a minute.' The sonic appeared in his hand, emitting a sharp burst of emerald light. 'You're not an android.'

  He flipped the device in his hand and examined the catch. 'You're one hundred per cent human being!

  Why are you in a truck full of killer robots?' He paused for a second. 'Hold on, why am I in a truck full of killer robots?' He shook the thought from his head and refocused his attentions on the human.

  The man stared at him blankly before uttering a string of incomprehensible syllables and slumping back onto the wooden plank that stood in for a seat along the edges of the truck.

  The tarpaulin covering of the vehicle flapped loosely at the edges, and the Doctor examined the figure in the brief shards of sunlight. Grey hair, grey eyes, a dirty brown tie that matched a dirty brown-checked shirt, crumpled beneath a grimy lab coat that must surely once have been white. This man had been through hell.

  Realisation dawned slowly on the Doctor, as the previous exchange between his companions flooded his mind. Albert.

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  'Oh,' he said slowly. 'Oh dear.'

  He stood there for a minute, unsure what to do.

  Without any means to communicate he was at a loss, but Albert looked at him with a mournful familiarity that made the Doctor assume he might come to know him better. He certainly hoped so.

  'All right, budge up, then.' The Doctor shoved his hands in his jacket pockets as he slid the man across the bench so that he could sit down. 'Oof, that's better.' He wiggled his boots out in front of him. He hadn't realised just how cramped his feet had become during the long walk. He turned to his companion. 'Right. Er...

  Right,' he finished limply.

  He let the motion of the truck wash over them for a while, gently rocking from side to side and watching as the grey shapes of buildings dawned on the horizon through the open rear of the truck, like a film in a darkened movie theatre. Finally, he decided he could stand the tension no more.

  'Oh, c'mere!' he said to the scientist, wrapping his arm around the man's thin shoulders and hugging him tightly to him. 'Thanks. Thanks for helping my friends escape. If you did. I'm sure you did.' He choked and looked at Albert with eyes that were tired of looking at death and turning away. 'And thanks for being here, so that I could tell you that.'

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  There was a grinding squeal and the Doctor broke away from the scientist, turning to discover that the truck had halted. Huge corrugated iron doors loomed ahead, blotting out the light, and he realised that they had arrived at the military outpost.

  The gates began to shudder, the noise swiftly drawing into a loud clang and they began to swing rapidly open at the hands of a group of soldiers who began chaining them to hastily erected posts. The Doctor could hear the accompanying trucks reversing into position around him, and he pushed carefully through the static bodies until he reached the wooden panelling at the rear of his own vehicle. A swift hop and he was over the side, crunching to the ground with ease.

  In response, the soldiers lazily drew their weapons up to their faces, aiming at the Doctor down the barrel of a series of large and intimidating rifles.

  'Oh dear,' said the Doctor. 'What will I do now?'

  He was cut off by what he assumed was the loud barking of orders, no doubt to enter the truck he had just exited.

  'Yes, yes. I complied, I went quietly, no problemo, relax.'

  He walked forward, into the shadow of the 129

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  compound, keen eyes examining the handful of men who backed away in front of him, guns still trained, and he realised that they were shaking.

  'I have a very bad feeling about this.'

  The Doctor pulled his jacket tighter. Something at the back of his mind was beginning to panic about the dust and grime that had started to coat the tweed as he patted the material down. He ignored the clanging from behind him as another squad of soldiers began to unload the cargo from the truck; docile citizens lined up and were carefully unticked from a checklist.

  The vista in front of him was much more terrifying.

  As they edged backwards, in time with his steps, the Doctor could see that his guards were seriously injured. One of them could barely walk, staggering whenever weight was applied to his right foot, dark patches on his torn trouser leg, flapping over a seeping bullet wound.

  The man in the centre was no better off; slowly unwrapping a bandage from around his head. And the other soldiers, their faces blackened and bruised, their uniforms crumpled and torn; all of them had suffered horrendously.

  The Doctor refocused his gaze to his surroundings, dreading what he knew was coming into focus as his eyes adjusted to the low light.

  Sprawled all over the compound, great pools 130

  NUCLEAR TIME

  of crimson soaking the sandy ground around them, were the bodies of over three dozen dead soldiers.

  131

  Chapter

  11

  Colorado, 28 August 1981, 2.00 p.m.

  'Yes, yes. No, sir. We're working as fast as we can.'

  Geoff screwed up his face in frustration at the tiny voice of authority that crackled through the speaker of a huge plastic mobile phone he had awkwardly stuck between his shoulder and his ear. In one hand he held a very large wad of papers bound in a pale blue folder with a biro jammed between two of his fingers, while his free hand scratched idly at the balding pate beneath his itching official hat.

  'Look, sir, speaking freely for a moment, it frankly doesn't make a difference what's going on over there; it's impossible to move any quicker 133

  DOCTOR WHO

  than we're already doing. The paint's still drying on the houses for God's sake, and we can't afford enough electromagnetic emitters to move the androids any quicker without risking a trigger. There are too many dead zones they have to pass through as it is, and we have no idea if the village will actually work.'

  He scratched one last time then tore the cap off in frustration, hurling it at the thick glass of the observation window. There was a soft bang and it ricocheted onto the large foldout table that was pushed up against the wall. Pinned roughly to the unvarnished tabletop was a large map, the majority of which was almost completely blank - there was just a large red felt-tipped 'X' scrawled in the middle of it, surrounded by a village plan printed in faint blue rectangles. Even the grey contour lines of the tediously

  flat

  landscape

  seemed half-hearted,

  taking a back seat to the compass lines and trajectory maps that had been imposed precisely and brutally over the top.

  Geoff slapped his folder roughly onto the map and, with a swift movement of his knuckles, brought the biro into his thumb and forefinger to write a humourless You are here in the lower corner of the diagram.

  'No, no,' he continued into the phone. 'There were the funds. You just didn't want to allocate 134

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  them to a project that was terminating.' Another pause.

  'I am ful
ly aware of how much a nuke costs, but that wasn't my decision, so you can either have this done quickly or you can have it done safely. I don't need to remind you of the security risks involved if it goes wrong.'

  The voice on the other end of the phone increased in volume, and Geoff winced, hurriedly reaching up and pulling the handset away from his ear.

  'These are my men, sir! I'm not going to put their lives in any more danger than I have to!'

  A lower, more threatening tone accompanied the response.

  'Yes, well, a lot of things will probably happen after this is over, but they are my men for now, and until I am relieved of the responsibility I will do it my way. Yes, sir. Goodbye.'

  There was a dull thud as the mobile was slammed down onto the table, closely followed by Geoff's elbows as he slumped into his chair and sunk his head in his hands. The folder was jammed underneath his left arm and he elbowed the wad of papers onto the floor to clear himself some space. He hadn't eaten all day, but his stomach was now too painful for him to even consider filling it.

  He rocked backwards, pushing his palms up and over his face into his hair and playing with 135

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  the wispy strands over his bald spot once more. His ashen face was bathed a warm orange by the daylight from outside, tinted through the safety glass. The sun might have been hidden by the slanted corrugated roof that overhung the view, but he could still feel its warmth in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the room.

  The observation tower stood three storeys high, tall enough to look out over the huge, barbed-wire-topped walls that marked the boundaries of the compound.

  The desert glow beyond resembled a sickly orange fog and Geoff screwed up his face in disgust.

  Without looking, he reached down to his belt and unclipped his walkie-talkie, turning his head slightly to speak into the grated microphone. 'Albert, I don't care what you're doing, I want you up here now!'

  There was a crackle, then a response. 'What's the problem?'