by Mark Morris
It was she who finally came to him, crouching beside him, putting one hand on his arm as if feeling his biceps, the other on his back. The Brigadier had never been much of a one for physical contact, but now he felt absurdly grateful for the consideration she was showing him.
‘Are you all right, Brigadier?’ she asked gently, warily.
The tears had mostly run their course, but the Brigadier felt entirely drained of energy. It was as if he was viewing the world through thick gauze; he felt as if great areas of his mind were no longer his, but merely empty chambers waiting to be filled by whatever had cleared out his thoughts.
He nodded, however, and murmured, ‘There’s life in the old dog yet.’
She smiled and patted him on the back. ‘Come on then, old dog,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you out of here. Can you walk?’
The Brigadier would have found it too much of an indignity to say no, so he nodded again and forced himself to his feet.
He tried to convince himself that he was escorting her as much as she was supporting him as they shuffled out of the building. The fog was closing in again and he had to channel all his efforts, all his concentration, into remembering who and where he was, into putting one foot in front of the other.
After a while he felt his chest and shoulders itching again, but this time it was a pleasant itch; it seemed to send ripples of sensation, like pure energy, coursing through his body.
‘Xaranti,’ he murmured, lovingly.
‘What?’ asked Tegan.
The Brigadier felt a flash of irritation. ‘We are Xaranti,’ he told her.
The girl looked at him anxiously, and suddenly in his eyes she seemed so puny, hateful, pathetic. ‘No. You’re Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. You work for UNIT, remember?’
For a brief moment he was confused, felt as if his mind was struggling with itself, then the delicious itch flowed through him again, imbuing him with strength and confidence. ‘We are Xaranti,’ he repeated, snatching his arm from her grip.
‘And you...’ He stepped closer as if to strike her, then stopped. He sensed... sensed... yes. ‘You are Xaranti too.
The girl looked shocked. ‘No!’ she said, backing away from him.
He laughed. ‘Soon we will all be Xaranti.’
‘No!’ the girl said again, more venomously this time.
He was about to reply when he felt something in his mind: a tickle, a voice, an instinct, an idea, a compulsion. It was all of these and more, but wherever it had come from - and the Brigadier felt as though it had come as much from inside him, from his memories and knowledge, as from outside - the message was clear.
‘The Doctor,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘We must -’ He stopped abruptly; he was telling her too much. The human influence in her was still too strong. He pressed his teeth together in a tight grin. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes wide, searching.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘You’re not going to have the Doctor. He’s the only one who can help you.’
She turned and ran into the darkness. The Brigadier hissed his displeasure and followed. But his new-found energy burned off quickly, and after a minute or so he was panting again, sweat pouring off him. He struggled along, hands slapping the wall to maintain his balance, but the girl drew so far ahead that soon he could not even hear her footsteps.
It didn’t matter. She couldn’t get away. He was linked to the group mind now and he knew that there were Xaranti waiting on the outside for her too.
Sooner than he had expected, he burst through a set of double doors and into the light. He stood swaying for a moment, blinking and disorientated. He could hear people shouting, hear his own kind hissing at those who were still transforming. As his eyes adapted he took in the scene before him at a glance.
The UNIT soldiers, many of whom were clinging to their humanity only by the thinnest of threads, were fighting a rearguard action against those of his kind whose transformations were more advanced than his own. If it hadn’t been for the man, Yates (backed up by Benton) marshalling them, shouting out orders, pulling them back from the brink, the Brigadier felt sure that most of them would have succumbed by now. At Yates’s behest, the soldiers had encircled an army truck, in the back of which lay the Doctor, still unconscious. Crouched beside the Doctor and facing the conflict wild-eyed with fear was the Australian girl. The hybrids were prowling the perimeter of the human circle, looking for a way in. Those who ventured too close were driven back by blows from rifle-butts. The Brigadier knew that they had not yet attacked in force, overwhelming the humans by sheer numbers, because they needed the Doctor in one piece.
The Doctor was important to them. His mind would make an invaluable contribution to their cause. Indeed, it was not an exaggeration to say that the sum of his knowledge could turn the Xaranti into the most powerful race in the universe.
It was imperative, then, that the humans were not pushed to firing their weapons. Consumed by bloodlust they would be unable to differentiate between friend and enemy. Under such circumstances the Doctor might be damaged beyond repair.
More subtle methods had to be employed, therefore. The current stand-off needed to be brought to a swift and bloodless conclusion. The one major unpredictable element in this situation was the Doctor himself. Who knew what kind of influence he might be able to exert if, or when, he regained consciousness?
Suddenly, as if the idea had come fully-formed into his mind, the Brigadier knew what he had to do. He drew his gun and stepped towards the small pay-booth at the front of the Ghost Train. From there, keeping low and hiding behind the screen of hybrids, he crept around the perimeter of the circle until he was opposite Mike Yates. Yates was standing in line with his men, gun drawn, still shouting out orders and encouragement, occasionally checking with Sergeant Benton on the far side of the truck to keep the circle tight.
The Brigadier suddenly stood up behind the hybrids and proceeded to barge through them, brandishing his gun, pointing it into the faces of those that made a show of lunging at him, hissing. He even clubbed a couple for good measure to make it look convincing.
‘Sir!’ Yates shouted, seeing the commotion, and despatched two of his men from the circle as a rescue party.
They were back within seconds, the Brigadier staggering between them, the hybrids making a show of surging forward then falling back as the soldiers swung their rifles this way and that.
‘Sir,’ Yates said again, ‘are you OK?’
‘Fine, Captain Yates,’ said the Brigadier heartily. ‘I see our little problem has increased somewhat.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Yates. ‘As you can see, we’re in a bit of a spot. This lot are hanging back for the moment, but they’ve got us surrounded. Thing is, I don’t want to give the order to fire if I can help it, because... well, because whatever they look like, they’re still people, sir. To be honest, I’m damned if I know what to do next. I keep hoping the Doctor’ll wake up and come up with something.’
A cry came from behind them, raucous and vehement.
‘Don’t trust him!’
It was the Australian girl, standing up in the back of the truck, pointing a rigid finger at the Brigadier.
‘Miss Jovanka -’ he began, speaking her name before he was even aware he’d remembered it.
‘He’s changing into one of those things,’ Tegan shouted. ‘He might not look like it yet, but he is.’
‘As are we all, Miss Jovanka,’ replied the Brigadier, then turned to Yates with a cold smile. ‘Except for you, Captain, of course.’
Suddenly he pressed his gun barrel against Mike Yates’s temple. ‘I suggest the best thing would be to hand the Doctor over to us,’ he hissed.
For a moment Yates looked almost comically incredulous.
Then an expression of sad resignation appeared on his face and he said, ‘You know I can’t do that, sir.’
‘You have no choice, Captain Yates,’ the Brigadier sa
id briskly. ‘You can’t fight us. You are the only true human left here. We are all Xaranti.’
At that moment something slammed into the Brigadier’s back, expelling the air from his lungs and knocking him to the ground with such force that he cracked his forehead on the concrete. A weight landed on his back and a voice muttered, ‘Not yet we’re not.’
The Brigadier didn’t realise he was still holding his gun until it was twisted from his grip. The voice, which the Brigadier quickly recognised as belonging to Sergeant Benton, said, ‘Sorry about this, sir, but it’s for your own good. We can’t let them take the Doctor.’ Pinning the Brigadier’s arms and legs to the floor, Benton lifted his head and spoke to Yates. ‘Get in the truck and go, sir. Take the Doctor with you. Take him somewhere safe.’
Yates’s voice: ‘I can’t just leave you all.’
‘Yes you can, sir. The Brigadier’s right. Soon we’ll all be changing into these bloody things. And then it’ll be too late.
Just go, sir. Go now.’
A pause, then Yates said, ‘We’ll never get through.’
‘Yes you will, sir.’ Benton raised his voice. ‘listen to me, men. Captain Yates is our last chance. If he doesn’t get out of here with the Doctor, we’re finished. Do you get me? We’ll all end up like these poor sods, and eventually like that... that thing in there. So if anyone or anything tries to stop the Captain from getting through, I want you to shoot them. You hear me? If you don’t we’ll all be dead anyway.’
There was a rumble of assent from the men, the Xaranti aggression within them lending the sound an eagerness, an excitement at the prospect of killing. But as the Brigadier, still pinned face-down on the ground, heard the truck’s engine start up, he knew that the Xaranti would not attack.
The Doctor might be escaping now, but already Xaranti energy from the sting was surging through his body, attacking his cells. Soon the Doctor would succumb, and the meagre threat that he posed would be at an end. There was no escape for any of them.
It was evident that the Xaranti felt their influence was now well-established enough for them to have no further need for secrecy. In the half-hour or so since the Brigadier had picked up the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough in his car, Tayborough Sands had dissolved into chaos. The seafront streets may have been cleared in the wake of the Xaranti attack on the beach, but there had still been a great many infected, transforming humans holed up in hotel rooms, boarding-houses and B&Bs. As if responding to some internal signal, these hybrids had now emerged and were roaming the streets in groups of anything from three to thirty, hunting down, infecting or killing the minority of unaffected humans who had been foolish enough to venture back out into the open.
Turlough’s hope that his nightmare had ended with his escape from the fun-fair was short-lived. As he drove back to the hotel, unable to think of anywhere else to go, the delayed shock of his narrow escape from the fairground was further intensified by the sights around him. There were bodies lying in pools of blood, crashed cars, and even makeshift roadblocks, constructed of anything that the hybrids had been able to get their hands on - furniture, chunks of timber, electrical equipment. Though there was barely any traffic on the roads, discouraged by the diversions presumably set up by the army or the police to prevent people heading into town, several vehicles had still come to grief at these obstructions, including a police car and an ambulance which had been pushed over on to its side.
It was like driving through a war-zone where the indigenous population was hostile and savage but thankfully unarmed. Several times hybrids had run at the jeep; some even throwing themselves at it, their fledgling Xaranti legs scraping the paintwork as they scrabbled for purchase.
Spurred by terror and desperation, Turlough had driven round them, or through them, or slewed from side to side to shake them off. Eventually, after smashing through a roadblock and taking a circuitous route through a number of quiet backstreets to avoid two more, Turlough drew up in front of the hotel. Thankfully there were no hybrids in sight and he sat for a moment trying to regain at least a modicum of composure, his hands aching from gripping the steering wheel so hard, his breathing rapid and ragged.
For a moment he honestly didn’t think he would be able to make himself get out of the jeep. Though vulnerable, the driver’s cab seemed like sanctuary. He wished the Doctor had entrusted him with a TARDIS key. If he got ripped to pieces between here and his hotel room, it would be all the Doctor’s fault.
Even when he did finally gather the resolve to make a move, Turlough looked up and down the road a dozen times first to ensure it was still deserted. Reassured, he opened the driver’s door, and winced at the meaty ‘chunk’ it made, half-expecting a screeching horde of Xaranti to emerge from all sides like the Zulu warriors in that ridiculous film he had watched with Hippo one wet Sunday afternoon. Though he had hated his time at Brendon, he wished he could be there now.
To his surprise, the ratcheting din of the opening door went uninvestigated, and so he slid out of the jeep and on to the pavement. It was only three paces to the bottom of the stone steps, and another eight up into the hotel, but Turlough felt exposed for an appallingly long time as he dashed across and up, stooped over like an old man.
The foyer sucked him into its coolness, eliciting a gasp from him as if he had just emerged from deep water. Relief mingled with apprehension. Though buildings seemed safer than the streets outside, there was no reason why they should be. Indeed, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light he saw the bodies. He flinched from the startling redness of blood and its profusion, but he had seen enough to know that the victims, two women and a man, had not died painlessly.
He scurried across to the lifts, hoping that his trembling body and crumbling nerves would survive long enough for him to reach his room. He jabbed at the lift button, then decided he didn’t like the idea of standing around, waiting, and turned towards the stairs. The staircase was wide and carpeted. Turlough had ascended no more than half a dozen steps when the lift announced its arrival with a ‘ping’.
His foot hovered above the next step as he dithered over whether or not to run back for it. Then he heard something catapult out of the lift and into the foyer. He turned and saw what had once been a tall, balding man wearing a grey suit.
Now, though, the back of the suit had burst open to accommodate a wavering, clicking mass of Xaranti legs.
Turlough neither moved nor made a sound, but the hybrid seemed to sense his presence. It spun round, hands outstretched and fingers arched like claws. Its bulging eyes gleamed like tar, and spines sprouting from its sallow face scraped together like bone as it opened its mouth in a snarling hiss. With terrifying agility it sprang towards the stairs, its obvious intention propelling Turlough up them.
His back felt wide and vulnerable, and though he was leaping three steps at a time, his breath ragged with panic, he felt he was wading through water. On the first landing the red cylinder of a fire extinguisher stood stoutly in the corner, Turlough lunged towards it, almost sprawling headlong, but managing with a pinwheeling of his arms to remain upright.
He grabbed the extinguisher and spun round.
The hybrid was only four steps below him. One good leap and it would bring him down. Turlough had been planning to use the fire extinguisher as a weapon, but he was so shocked by the creature’s proximity that he actually threw the heavy red cylinder at it.
It was a lucky shot. The extinguisher struck the creature full in the face and caught it off balance. The hybrid fell backwards, arms spread out like a high diver. It looked almost graceful until it hit the steps about half way down, and then it became a spinning mass of arms and legs and thrashing Xaranti limbs. Its head met the floor at the bottom of the staircase with a sickening thump and a halo of brown fluid began to form around it. Turlough didn’t hang around.
He turned and lurched up the rest of the stairs.
He reached the fifth floor without further incident and hurried along the landing to his room. He fumbled th
e keys out of his pocket and pushed the largest into the lock. It wasn’t until he was in his room with the door locked behind him that he began to shake with reaction. Trying to ignore it, he shoved his bed against the door, then piled every item of furniture in the room on top of it. At last, for want of a better weapon, he grabbed a coat hanger from the wardrobe and sat in the corner of the room, facing the barricaded door.
Wishing desperately that he could make himself invisible, he pressed himself as far back into the corner as he could and drew his knees up under his chin.
‘You see now?’ the Brigadier said.
Benton nodded. ‘Yes.’
The Brigadier put his hand on Benton’s shoulder. Benton winced as the itching beneath his skin intensified. A wave of sensation that was part pleasure, part pain rippled through his body.
Benton could no longer understand why he had allowed the human, Yates, to take the Doctor away. He only wished he had had his eyes opened in time to prevent it. Human motivation seemed so petty, so pointless, so alien to him now.
He looked around and saw soldiers and hybrids standing shoulder to shoulder, united in a common cause. It felt good.
It felt right. And although for the moment he was still aware of who he was, still retained his human identity, he understood and embraced the fact that individuality was no longer important, that it was a human characteristic, divisive and inefficient. Soon there would be no need for it, would no longer even be any further need for speech. For the time being, though, it would remain a useful marshalling device.
‘Let’s move out,’ Benton shouted, and moving across to the nearest army vehicle he slid behind the wheel.
Obediently everyone followed suit, clambering up into the vehicles, squeezing themselves in as tightly as they could.
When the vehicles were full to bursting point, Benton started the engine of his jeep and they all filed out, a grotesque slow-moving convoy. There was no need to discuss a plan of attack, no need to issue orders; they were all working as one now, all knew exactly what they had to do. Their immediate objective was clear to them all. They would search tirelessly until they had recovered the Doctor.
