The brides had frozen.
She held her breath.
All three dummies jolted upright. Spasmed. Then shuddered as though being electrocuted. They held their sharpened hands to their heads in an imitation of pain.
Jackie looked around. To her right, the crash-test dummies were juddering, jerking, colliding. To her left, the tiny bricks of the giant clown were bristling, making him look pixelated.
Then he fell apart. The clown scattered into a hundred thousand tiny pieces, splaying across the road in a multicoloured cascade.
And the brides snapped. Their plastic joints broke and they clattered to the floor in pieces, heads and hands bouncing on the tarmac. A veiled head went bump-bump-bump in front of Jackie, then came to a halt.
Jackie stared and said, ‘What the hell?’
Patrice, Sally and Mook cowered. And then realised they’d been cowering a little too long. They came out of their hug to look up, just in time to see the shiny-white dummies topple like fallen dictators, hitting the ground with a smack.
The five little child dummies collapsed into themselves, heads sinking down into their duffle coats. Their plastic-wire-frame bodies folded down into their yellow wellington boots until they settled in the alleyway as little piles of clothes.
The Bad Wolf band looked around, dazed. But then overjoyed. Giggling. Shocked. Ecstatic.
Mook stayed holding Patrice, deciding that he’d like to hold him for the rest of his life. And Patrice showed no signs of letting go.
Caroline hugged her sons and kissed the tops of their heads and whispered their names over and over again. But then she heard creaks, clanks, bumps, and looked up.
Both armies, on either side, were shaking in a frantic St Vitus’s dance. Hundreds of dummies jerking, jiggling, spasming.
And then their heads popped off like champagne corks. A cacophony of pops. Heads flew, bodies fell. Row after row, like a world-record domino display.
Caroline stayed on the floor, holding her sons. She looked back in the direction from which they’d run, hoping she would see Clive strolling through the smoke and fire towards them, beaming as ever, chuckling, all curly-haired and daft.
But no one came.
Far above the Thames, in Pod 27, the posh little boy, his mum and dad and the 20 Chinese students looked all around. The signal had stopped. The wheel was suddenly at rest.
In the city below, fires still burned and sirens wailed, but the battle had ended. Those dummies, or people in disguise, or whatever they were, had fallen to the ground. The golden monk below lay spreadeagled on the pavement, unmoving, dead.
For a moment, everyone in Pod 27 dared to recover.
They had survived.
Then they heard a deep, ominous crack, and the twang, twang, twang of high-tension cables snapping. And the London Eye began to fall.
‘Now we’re in trouble,’ said the Doctor.
Below the Embankment, there came a vast, awful thunk! One of the massive stanchions underpinning the London Eye began to rise upwards, like a huge peg being pulled out of the ground. As it rose, the second stanchion began to sink.
Everything started falling. The rising stanchion pulled up the gantries, which ripped the stairs free, which made the platforms collapse. The Nestene below was battered by falling rafts of metal as the whole internal structure began to collapse.
And the Doctor was laughing!
‘Come on,’ he yelled, and pulled Rose across to the last remaining stairway, to head up.
Towards the TARDIS.
Trapped on his ledge, Mickey wailed, ‘We’re going to die!’
‘Oh shut up,’ said the Doctor, and he reached Mickey’s level, ran across and took hold of his hand. Mickey let himself be yanked along, and they ran back to Rose, but the next second, a huge ball of flame roared up from the depths.
‘Oh my God!’ said Rose, clinging to the wall. She looked down to see fire erupting from the Nestene itself. The web of anti-plastic had thickened until the creature’s entire skin had become a beautiful, poisonous blue. The Nestene was solidifying, losing its elasticity. It reached out into tendrils but its skin tore open and fire guttered from the rips. It tried to rise from the pit but pulled itself apart, red flames bursting out of blue wounds. The chasm below became a lake of fire.
‘It’s destroying itself,’ said the Doctor.
In that moment, Rose saw his glee, and his agony, and she was terrified of him.
But then he said, ‘Up!’ and pulled her over to a ladder bolted to the wall. She clambered up, and the Doctor shoved Mickey onto the rungs.
‘There’s no way out,’ cried Mickey.
‘In there,’ yelled Rose, pointing at the TARDIS.
‘But it’s just a box!’ said Mickey, and Rose remembered how dumb she’d been just a short time ago, as she reached the TARDIS’s platform and pulled Mickey up, the Doctor following.
Above them, the uppermost walkway collapsed, and Rose saw the knight, the clown and the ballerina tumble into the burning depths, impassive even in death. But then she looked back up to see the entire roof buckling. With one stanchion slowly rising and its opposite slowly sinking, the whole space was about to be ripped apart. Debris began to fall. Rose ducked, dodging concrete and bricks as she pulled Mickey along the platform. She reached the rickety blue doors of the police box and yelled to the Doctor, ‘Key!’
The Doctor reached into his pocket. Took out the key. Threw it to her. She caught it, and for a second, held the Doctor’s look. Like he had trusted her with the most precious thing in the universe.
But then a girder hit the platform, and the whole rig swung and shook, its supporting chains threatening to snap. Rose shoved the key in the door. Swung it open. Pushed Mickey inside, and tumbled in behind him.
Again, that shock of entering the TARDIS, the change in pressure like a physical thump. And for Mickey, the interior was a brand new terror. He yelped. ‘Whaaat?’ and boggled like he was being attacked by bees, but she ignored him and looked back to find the Doctor.
He’d jumped into the doorway, his back to her, standing on the edge to look down.
Rose ran forward to join him.
‘What the hell is going on?’ said Mickey, but he was just a voice in the background as Rose stood beside the Doctor and they looked down to see the death throes of the Nestene Consciousness.
The creature was ripping itself into blue, fleshy chunks as it descended into the pit of fire, huge explosions blossoming up from the depths, the walls caving in on all sides. And above the roar, a terrible, keening sound as the Nestene wept.
Rose looked at the Doctor, though he did not look at her. He only stared down. His eyes like skies of ice. He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Then he slammed the door shut, sealing them inside the cocoon of the TARDIS. Mickey said, ‘We’re still going to die!’ But the Doctor strode past him, reached the controls, flipped a big red lever.
Rose sank to her knees, exhausted, with a blissful smile, welcoming the joyous sound of the engines lurching and stuttering into life. The shining glass within the central column began to rise and fall, and the roar of the world outside faded away.
In the lair of the Nestene, a final wail rose from the beast as the walls and roof collapsed into the burning ravine. The creature died in fury and despair, and the flames and rocks became its tomb.
The rising stanchion reached maximum stress and sheared in half with a snap like a thunderbolt. The last lattices of ceiling fell, exposing the chasm to the night sky above.
In Pod 27, everyone clung on for dear life as the ground beneath the London Eye collapsed into a deep, dark hole and the wheel was set free from its moorings. The snapped stanchion shot out of the ground and the entire Eye tilted over the river at an alarming angle of 45 degrees. The posh little boy, his mum and dad and the 20 Chinese students rolled and bumped, peas in their pod, tumbling onto the glass as the windows became the floor.
For a second, the Eye paused.
A silenc
e.
Everyone in Pod 27 was holding their breath. Praying the glass would hold. The dark glint of the river below.
Then with a creak, a squeal and a final almighty twang, the London Eye fell forwards, into the Thames.
It hit the water with a colossal smack!
The pods popped free and bobbed up to ride the tsunami. Pod 27 soared on the crest of a giant wave that swept over the river’s wall, hitting the Houses of Parliament. Water smashed through the windows and flooded the Palace of Westminster, flushing helpless, screaming MPs down the corridors, while Pod 27 sailed high over the rooftops, glanced off Big Ben, then plunged down as the wave broke, plummeting towards Parliament Square Garden. They screamed, the posh little boy, his mum, his dad and the 20 Chinese students, all howling and tumbling and rolling round and round.
A tree caught them. A wonderful, life-saving tree. Pod 27 jammed in its branches under the gaze of Winston Churchill, his statue standing tall as the flood parted around him to sweep down the streets, pooling out and subsiding into the city.
They cried and laughed, inside their pod. Limbs broken, bruised heads, but alive, alive when so many had died. The posh little boy hugged his mum, then his dad, then a student or two. Below their sturdy curved windows, the water ebbed away, leaving ruin in its wake.
In the devastation, people now began to stand upright. Stepping out of doorways. Emerging from hiding. Gazing around in horror. And then they looked up, above the wreckage, to see the stars in the night sky, unchanged.
19
Aftermath
The city began to recover. The wail of a thousand sirens called across the night as Sally, Patrice and Mook wandered out of the alleyway, dazed and shaken, wondering about everyone they knew, their mates, their families, Mickey and Rose. All three tried their phones, but the networks were down.
They looked towards Old Compton Street. Dummies lay on the ground, alongside the dead. But then, movement. Survivors. Calling out in pain or relief. Some staggering along, some sitting against walls, wounded, lost, in shock.
‘Bandages,’ said Sally, ‘and water, and painkillers. Come on.’ She strode towards Oxford Street to find a chemist’s or a supermarket with a pharmacy. The shops had been abandoned in the panic, so they’d just walk in and raid the place. No time for niceties. People needed help.
As they hurried along, she saw that Mook was still holding Patrice’s hand. About time, she thought. Everything had changed that night, and perhaps it was time she made some changes herself.
She should go home, to see her mum and dad. She should talk to them. She should tell them more, about herself and the Stephen who once was. Maybe she could even move back in for a while. The anger that had propelled her out of the house and into her new life seemed so much smaller now, so unimportant.
And one more thing. She took hold of Mook’s free hand, and made a decision on behalf of the Bad Wolf band.
‘It’s the name,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to change the name.’
Caroline stayed on the floor, hugging Ben and Michael. Both boys crying, out of shock, she supposed, doubting they yet understood what had happened to their father. She wondered how to tell them.
And there she remained, in the middle of a thousand dummies’ heads. She could hear people sobbing, and others shouting, asking if anyone needed help. Someone even began to sing. Rule Britannia. She stayed on the tarmac even as blue emergency lights began to flicker at the end of the road. A camera crew ran up. Fixed their ruthless lens upon her. Ran away.
Throughout all this, Caroline thought of one person.
She thought of the Doctor.
She’d listened to Clive’s stories. She’d read his files. She knew that every age had some sort of Doctor, whether young or old, male or female, in-between or neither, black or white or anything. And the Doctor invited disaster. Every single one of her husband’s stories said the same thing: death stalks the Doctor and anyone who crosses the Doctor’s path.
Which meant everything was the Doctor’s fault.
Sitting there, on the floor, holding her sons in the ruins of a broken city, Caroline Finch made a promise. Somehow, someday, she would complete her husband’s lifelong quest and find this mysterious Doctor.
And then she would have her revenge.
Jackie was desperate. Thinking of Rose. Her phone wouldn’t work, the networks had given up the ghost, but she kept trying, again and again, until she exhausted the battery and her handset died.
She kept walking. Heading for home. All around her, horrors. Injuries that made her flinch. People lying on the floor, asking for help. Huddled in corners, crying. Lost children. But Jackie didn’t have time, she had to get back to the flat, to find Rose. She’d been in that flat so many years ago, when the terrible news came about Pete. She had to be there now. To stop that news from ever coming again.
And then her mobile rang.
Which was odd, because it was dead. The power-bar still said zero as the screen blinked back into life to say: Rose.
Jackie answered, ‘Oh my God! Sweetheart, is that you? Are you all right?’
Rose’s voice was so clear, it startled her. ‘Mum! Oh thank God, you’re alive! Where are you? Are you okay?’
‘Never mind me, what about you?’
‘Honestly, trust me, I’m fine.’
‘Where are you?’
A pause.
‘Travelling,’ said Rose.
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘Never mind, I’m on my way home.’ Rose’s voice became muffled as she asked someone, ‘How long?’ Then she came back to Jackie, ‘I’m one second away, apparently.’
‘I’m still up West. Did you see it? All the dummies? And not just people dressed up, their heads fell off, I picked up this bride’s head and I gave it a tap and it was solid. Then I banged it on the floor, and I’m telling you, 100 per cent plastic! But it was moving! And they tipped over a bus! And killed this man right in front of me, you should’ve seen it, and this great big clown—’
‘Yeah, sorry, got to go.’
And click, Rose was gone.
‘Oh, well thank you, madam,’ said Jackie to her phone.
But Rose was alive. Her daughter was safe, and heading home. Jackie would get there somehow, even if she had to walk all the way, she’d burst through that door, she’d get out the whisky, she’d knock them up a curry, she’d toast their survival and hold her daughter tight. Hey, she might even sell her story for a bit of money. My Night of Hell, by Jacqueline Tyler.
But first of all, she thought of the children she’d walked past. And Jackie went back to help.
Rose held up her mobile and said to the Doctor, ‘Best reception ever, she sounded louder than she does in real life. And for my mother, that’s saying something. Did you give my signal a boost?’
‘The TARDIS might’ve helped,’ said the Doctor, with a smile. He moved around the central console, attaching one switch to another with the sort of elastic rope you’d use on a roof rack. The glass column sighed up and down above their heads, the engine noise reduced to a slow groan, the room tilting and swaying but gently, this time.
Rose said, ‘Could I phone Mars from here?’
‘Yeah. Tell them I want my boots back.’
‘Why, what happened to your boots?’
‘I left them there. Obviously.’ Even when joking, he was still so rude.
Mickey interrupted. ‘How do we get out of here?’ He was sitting on the floor, on the opposite side of the console to the Doctor, determined to stay as far away from him as possible. He’d initially retreated down one of the gantries, so scared of the chamber’s size that he’d tried to hide in the shadow of an internal doorway. But then he’d heard a roar from the depths of the TARDIS. ‘That’ll be the dragon,’ said the Doctor, and Mickey had scarpered back to the centre. Now he huddled into himself, miserable, smeared with grease and grime. As far as he knew, the police box was still inside the underground lair; he could accept that the int
erior was calmer somehow, safer and sort of detached, but he had no concept of the box having moved.
Rose supposed she could explain it to him. But later, maybe. The Doctor was more important, right now. Time with him was precious, he could vanish on a whim.
‘So what are we now?’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I mean, like this, right now, what are we doing, are we in flight?’
‘Sort of, yeah.’
‘But in flight where?’
‘Like I said, one second away.’
‘But it’s taking more than a second,’ Rose said. ‘So while we’re in flight, we’re not flying like a plane, so where are we?’
Mickey said, ‘What the hell are you on about?’ but the Doctor had a wolfish gleam in his eye. A challenge. He strode down the entryway, those big boots making the metal clatter and clang, to reach the wooden doors.
He said, ‘D’you really want to see?’
Rose said, ‘Yeah,’ and smiled, returning the challenge.
He opened the left-hand door.
She looked at the view, and took a good few seconds to accept it, to consider the angle, and the depth, and the likelihood, and the sheer oh-my-God sight of it, and she wanted to yell and run away and hide, but then she did what she was dying to do, and she went to stand at the Doctor’s side.
They were in flight above the Earth.
She stood on the edge of the rickety wooden box and below, there was the entire planet. She held the whole of the world within her sight.
‘It’s a trick. That’s not real,’ said Mickey. But she didn’t even look round. She heard a clang of metal, Mickey sitting back down and burying his head, she guessed, but she stayed in the doorway, looking out at the universe. She wondered: With the door open to space, how can we breathe? But in the same moment she thought: Well, we can, so therefore it’s possible. Simple as that. She could trust herself to work things out, and she smiled, thinking of everyone who’d ever doubted her, now so tiny, trapped by gravity far below while she sailed on high.
She looked down at Great Britain, the lights of London a yellow sprawl in the dark of night. Down there, she supposed, there must be fires and alarms and tragedies, but it seemed mercilessly peaceful from above. She looked to her left, the clouds of the Atlantic curling towards a bright fringe of sunlight, the long day ending beyond the curve.
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