Along the promenade, from the Eye to the National to the Globe and beyond, they stood: the living statues. A robot. A pixie. A gladiator. A golden monk. A bowler-hatted businessman. All fixed and frozen. And all ignored, as everyone turned to watch the London Eye.
But then the robot twitched.
In the chamber below, bolts of electricity zig-zagged across the huge space. Rose yelled at the Doctor, ‘What’s happening up there?’
He was still struggling in the Auton’s grip, helpless as he called across, ‘It’s activating the plastic.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ said Mickey, but she ignored him as she looked up at the roof, imagining London above.
Out there, right now, the Nestene invasion of Earth was beginning, and Rose could think of only one thing.
Her mother.
She took out her mobile. Would she get a signal, underground? She could only hope with all her heart, as she keyed in the number designated Mum.
15
The Army Awakes
Jackie’d had a hell of a day.
First of all, her bamboo coffee table had been broken. Second, her daughter had been mysteriously flighty with that tall bloke who was way too old (although, nice jacket). Third, Rodrigo had cancelled. Fourth, she’d obviously developed an allergy to milk, because she’d popped into Jacinta’s who’d insisted on making her a cappuccino when a cup of instant would’ve been fine, but no, she’d bought herself a frother and had to show off, so Jackie had been feeling a bit nasal ever since and would have to give up milk for the rest of her life. Fifth, these jeans had shrunk.
But still. She’d battled on. She’d gone to the police station to ask advice about Rose’s compensation, since madam was too busy chasing after lanky Mancs to do anything about it herself. They’d given her a phone number, but it was permanently engaged. Then Billy Croot said that Henrik’s had opened a help desk on Oxford Street, so Jackie trotted off, up West.
The area around the bomb site had been closed to traffic. They’d erected portacabins in the street, some for the police, one for Henrik’s management to deal with unemployed staff. Jackie queued up with grumbling shop assistants and chefs and lift engineers to get the necessary forms. Rumour had it that the son and heir, Rudi Henrik, was going to appear in person to shake hands and commiserate with the troops. He’d bring a windfall of thousands of pounds, cash in hand, they said. The Henrik family loved their workers, they’d do them proud. But as yet, there was no sign of him. ‘I bet his helicopter’s stuck in Monte Carlo,’ said a bitter ex-security guard. Still, Jackie tucked in her blouse a little tighter. You never know, she thought. Jackie Henrik. Madder things have happened.
A hush fell across them when news came from the ruins. A body had been found. Bernie Wilson, the caretaker, they said. A woman started crying. ‘I loved him,’ she said. Her friends said, ‘Be brave, Erica. He died doing the job he loved,’ and took her for a cup of tea, so Jackie nipped into her place in the queue.
Best thing of all: sales! Everywhere! Fifty per cent off. The shops were scared that the explosion would drive everyone away, so they’d reduced everything in price, with late-night opening. Bonus! As soon as Jackie had the compensation forms, she walked down Oxford Street, searching for bargains. Obviously, she was really very sorry that the shop had blown up and all that, but it’s an ill wind … The people in the portacabin queue had reckoned they’d get £1,000 minimum for shock and trauma, and since Jackie was technically Rose’s landlady, that gave her a good £500 to play with, if not more. So when her phone rang, Jackie had already bought new jeans, a white leather belt, some oven gloves and a nice pair of opal earrings.
Her screen said Rose, and in that eternal and mysterious war between mothers and daughters, Jackie had now called a truce, all smiles as she answered. ‘Hello sweetheart!’
It was a bad line, crackling and dipping. Rose’s voice sounded a thousand miles away. ‘Mum, where are you?’
‘I’ve got you that compensation form,’ said Jackie. ‘And who’s that woman that Howard likes, is it Cynthia Rothrock? Cos I thought I could buy him a DVD, after I knackered his washing machine.’
‘No, but listen,’ said Rose. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m up West, you should see Henrik’s now! How the mighty are fallen. It’s like Pompeii. Oh and they found that man, they said he was dead, that’s sad, isn’t it? Didn’t you say he was horrible?’
Rose’s voice flickered in and out, ‘Mum,’ and then ‘Don’t,’ and then maybe, ‘Go home.’
‘Sorry darling,’ said Jackie. ‘Bad line. I’ll speak to you later, I’m off shopping. On your money, but you’re a very kind girl. There’s a bit of paella in the fridge if you’re hungry, although heat it up properly because old rice can kill you, see you later.’
As Jackie hung up, she heard Rose swear—cheeky girl! Right, she thought, what next?
She walked on. All around her, shop windows, bright with light. Display after display of dummies, dressed in the latest fashions, all fixed in position, staring out at the night.
But then, behind her, a dummy in a red miniskirt turned its head.
Not far away, the Bad Wolf band strolled from Camden towards Soho.
Patrice, Mook and Sally were despondent. Mickey had vanished that afternoon, although the fact that both he and Rose had their phones off surely meant they were having fun together, somewhere. But it wasn’t like them to let anyone down, so a low level of worry had ticked away throughout the evening.
The band had made do, for the gig. Their mate Big Bone Bill had taken Mickey’s place on bass guitar, and now Bill had driven the drums and kit home in his van leaving the others to wander to the Cellar Lights bar on Old Compton Street. Patrice knew a barman there who could slip them a free drink or two.
But the whole night had been lacking. The crowd for Bad Wolf had been sparse. The pub had only started filling up in anticipation of the next act, three brothers from Dulwich who called themselves Three Brothers from Dulwich. Patrice, Mook, Sally and Big Bone Bill had packed up their stuff in the tiny backstage corridor, hearing yells and applause they’d never had.
‘It’s the name,’ said Mook, as they crossed Oxford Street. ‘We shouldn’t have changed the name. Maybe Bad Wolf is bad luck.’
‘I like it,’ said Sally.
Patrice said, ‘Haven’t I seen it somewhere before?’
‘It’s graffiti,’ said Sally. ‘It’s all over that Jordan Street car park, it’s been there for years. Must’ve been a gang, or a tag.’
‘I wonder,’ said Mook.
‘We’ll never know,’ said Patrice.
And they wandered into Soho, smiling, laughing, but with that faint, nagging worry about Mickey and Rose making everything a little thin.
Behind them, a row of child-size dummies stood in their primary-coloured shop window, staring out into the night.
The dummy of a little girl turned its head.
Not far away, Clive Finch marched his family along and read from his notebook. ‘According to my spreadsheet, if we move 20 per cent of our summer money into spring, we can all afford a little treat tonight. But that’ll mean belt-buckling in July!’
His wife Caroline said, ‘Yes, cap’n,’ with a mock salute while his sons, Ben and Michael, laughed. Ben gave his dad a little shove.
Clive smiled. The love and mockery of family life. Exactly what he needed right now. He’d had a bad afternoon. He’d made that nice girl, Rose Tyler, think he was an idiot. Worse than that, he’d scared her away.
She truly had met the Doctor. He knew it. He could see it in her eyes, that shiver of fear, that little glitter of excitement. She had glimpsed the impossible and, oh, he was jealous. From the moment he’d met her, he’d been clumsy and bumbling, overwhelmed with both envy and a joy that the Doctor might be near. And then he’d said too much, he’d babbled, he’d poured out all his nonsense and he’d seen her face darken. She’d run away, Rose Tyler, never to be seen again.
Cli
ve then stamped around in his shed, furiously finding new ways to alphabetise things. Until Caroline appeared, always Caroline, knowing him so well, smiling and kind, leading him out of the shed, back to the house, to the kids, to his normal, lovely life.
Clive had first met Caroline at Durham University when his UFO Society and her Reclaim The Night Enclave had convened upon the same double-booked room, him with five pals, her with forty-four. Clive’s little team had been ousted, but Caroline then tracked him down to Cuth’s Bar and apologised with a lager and black. They talked into the night, and she was honest from the start: she believed some of his theories, not all. Alien life, yes, alien invasions, not so much. And she agreed wholeheartedly that there was something suspicious about his father’s death. As the years went by, she’d assume a thin, distant smile if he talked too much about creatures and conspiracies, but she loved him for his passion. Let him have his shed! Let him spend £100 a month on photocopies. Let him journey to the foot of Mount Snowdon with his mates Jacko and Bean if they believed a spacecraft had once crash-landed there. Because that same passion made him an honest husband and a splendid father. She had mates who’d married fools and liars and cheats, while Clive’s greatest fault was to get a little bit too excited whenever there was a meteor storm.
And now, on days like Rose Tyler days, Clive always compensated for his mood by spending a bit of money. He’d taken them out that evening for a Chinese buffet, and now they’d have a little wander and a shop. ‘You can have whatever you want for under £40,’ he said to the boys. Then to Caroline he said with mock pomposity, ‘The funds are limitless for you, my darling.’
She laughed, slapped his arm and said, ‘I’ll pay for myself, thank you.’ Then she reached out and held Clive’s hand. He gave her the most massive smile. She leaned in, tucking her arm into his, and the family walked on into the night.
Behind them, in a shop window advertising the glories of England’s countryside, a big plastic sheepdog flicked its tail.
On the Embankment, the London Eye finally juddered to a halt, overwhelmed by lightning bolts. All along the river, everyone stared as the crackles of electricity smoothed out to form an unbroken circle of light around the wheel’s circumference.
The posh little boy in Pod 27 was scared. They’d stopped a good 14 pods from the ground and now he was trapped, along with his mother and father and the 20 Chinese students. His red-faced dad yelled into his mobile phone, but the signal was swamped beneath howling static.
Then the posh little boy and everyone inside Pod 27 looked up and down and around, amazed, as …
The London Eye pulsed.
It pulsed out a signal, visibly, concentric circles of light beaming from its centre to radiate across the city, hoops of blue energy widening out, out, out, in an exact visual representation of a signal being broadcast.
Along the riverbank, people stared up, not seeing the living statues step down from their boxes. No one paid any attention as the monk, the businessman, the pixie, the gladiator and the robot took some faltering steps, jerked a little as though getting used to this new freedom, then looked around. Their faces blank and yet full of malice.
Then their hands sharpened into blades.
And they began to murder.
16
The Battle of London
Jackie heard a huge smash, leapt out of her skin! She turned around to see that some idiots dressed as shop-window dummies had broken open their windows, now hacking away at the remaining shards.
I’ve seen that on TV, she thought, as shock turned to laughter, sugar glass, that glass is made of sugar, thin sheets of sugar, easy to break. But why would anyone do that?
In every shop?
She yelped as the windows of the shop to her right caved in, smashed apart by tall female dummies in sharp black clothes. Jagged teeth of glass fell from their frames, biting down onto the pavement, shattering into splinters. To her left, another smash, a range of high-fashion dummies breaking free. Further down the street, another storefront was being trashed. And another. And another.
And she focused on the glass, rather than the dummies. Because that’s not sugar, she thought. That’s heavy. That’s sharp.
That’s real.
A young red-haired man was yelling, furious. The falling glass had cut his arm, his sleeve ripped open on the bicep. Blood on his jacket. He aimed his fury at a tuxedo-dressed dummy marching stiffly towards him. He’d sue, yelled the red-haired man, he’d take them to court, he’d get compensation.
Jackie was just thinking, I could help you with that. She even reached for the compo papers in her denim bag.
Then she saw the tuxedo-dummy raise its hand, the hand flattening into a blade even as Jackie watched, a blade that it lifted up and then swung down on the head of the helpless red-haired man.
Jackie Tyler screamed.
Then she ran for her life.
For the first time that night, Bad Wolf were having a good laugh. They’d reached Old Compton Street, a row of cafés, bars and pubs, all bright, busy and buzzing, none of them hosting dummies in its windows.
Except one.
They’d been standing outside what Patrice called ‘a gentleman’s specialist,’ telling Mook he should go inside and treat himself, when some sort of publicity stunt happened right in front of their eyes. A shiny-white shop-window mannequin with exaggerated musculature, naked except for a studded harness and black leather pants, suddenly turned to face them.
They all leapt!
And then laughed.
‘Oh my God, he’s real,’ said Sally.
‘He’s looking at you, Mook,’ laughed Patrice. ‘You’re in there!’
‘I wish,’ said Mook.
But then the model pulled back its arm, and swung it round in a karate chop. The window shattered.
Patrice, Sally and Mook jumped back, shielding their heads, yelling out. As they recovered, they saw the dummy and its two companions—one head-to-toe in black leather, the other dressed only in speedos—step down from the window, kicking the remaining glass into the street.
‘You idiots,’ said Sally. ‘You could’ve killed someone!’
But she was interrupted by a stocky, bald, bearded man in a white T-shirt and leather waistcoat running out of the shop—the owner, presumably—and heading for Patrice, the tallest and presumably the one to blame. The man yelled at him, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
Patrice just pointed, and the man turned to see the plastic threesome stepping towards him.
They all stared, dumbstruck, as the harness-dummy lifted its hand. And they saw the hand change shape, the fingers fusing to become something new, a hard, jagged blade. And suspended in that second, they all began to notice the intrusion of noises from far-off; sirens in the distance, smashes, glass breaking, brakes screeching, the yells and screams of men and women, the whole world around them going mad somehow, as the dummy in front of them raised its new hand above its head.
The shop owner stood his ground, blazing with anger. ‘You’ll have to pay for that window!’
The dummy swung its arm down.
Patrice, Mook and Sally flinched. Gasped. Horrified.
And then they began to run.
Clive was studying his notebook, thinking he should differentiate between his 2s and his 7s, perhaps going continental with the latter, so he just muttered, ‘Yes, in a minute,’ when Michael and Ben told him to look.
But then Caroline let go of his arm, complaining, ‘Honestly, they could give someone a heart attack.’ Clive looked up.
The shop-window dummies were moving. The Finch family had been walking past a display extolling The Great Outdoors, dummies dressed in kagoules, hi-vis jackets and climbing boots. And now the dummy at the front—male, probably, but with no face, his head a stylised blank globe—was looking, without eyes, from right to left. Either side of him, two mountaineer dummies stepped forwards. In the next window, three globe-headed female dummies in jogging outfits turned
to face out.
Ben and Michael were laughing. ‘They’re people dressed up!’ said Michael.
Except Clive was looking at the neck. The absence of a neck. The globe-heads were joined to the shoulders by a thin rod, barely an inch thick. There couldn’t be anyone inside those clothes. Which meant it was robotics, somehow …?
‘That’s clever,’ said Caroline, but now Clive looked down the entire street. He saw pedestrians all the way along, stopping, laughing, pointing. Every shop. Every window containing dummies, coming alive.
And now, in sudden coordination, every dummy in every window lifted its arm and swung down. Row upon row of glass shattered, bright chips cascading to the floor. All along the street, people screamed, yelled, some still laughing. Caroline said, ‘Well that’s not very funny,’ and she grabbed hold of the boys to pull them back.
But Clive was staring. With horror. And yet, with delight.
Because he remembered.
In his files. In those mad old stories of monsters from Loch Ness, and wizards in Cornwall, and robots at the North Pole, there had been tales, from long ago, fables about shop-window dummies coming to life and attacking people, a slaughter, so the secret files said, a massacre on the streets of England, hushed up ever since by the Powers That Be, the population doped and duped into forgetting. And Clive, even Clive, had read those stories and thought, How can that possibly be true?
But here it is, he thought.
It’s happening again.
Which meant the Doctor was true. Every word of him and her and them. All Clive’s fantasies were now becoming facts, right before his eyes. But if the glories were true then so were the terrors. And Clive felt a chill in his heart as he watched the plastic army step down into the street.
He turned to his wife and children.
He said, ‘Run.’
Caroline stared at him, more scared by the look in his eyes than by the dummies.
He said quietly, ‘I’ll try to stop them. Now for the love of God, run.’
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