by Doctor Who
She told herself that she should stop right now and turn back.
But Angela Hook had never backed down from anything.
Besides which, it was infinitely better than hanging around the mouth of the tunnel doing nothing but argue with Gaskin.
She rested against the tunnel wall for a few minutes to get her breath back. Sadie was always telling her she wasn’t as young as she had been; but then, as Angela always argued, who was?
It was then that she heard the sound of a distant scream. At least it sounded like a distant scream. The tunnel acoustics made it difficult to be sure. The long, ghastly wail had seemed to drift up out of the gloom, borne on a chill gust of air that made Angela think of empty winter graveyards.
It never occurred to Angela to retreat. Summoning all her resolve, she started down the tunnel again, heading into the darkness, towards the scream.
Seconds later she heard the sound of running feet and she was practically knocked over by Martha Jones coming the other way. Angela let out a startled yell and it was answered by a distinct cry of shock mingled with a fair bit of fear. ‘Oh! Martha? Is that you, dear?’
‘Angela? Is that you?’ Martha’s voice – frightened but relieved. ‘You scared me half to death! What are you doing down here?’
‘Never mind that!’ said another voice – the Doctor. ‘Just keep going!’
Angela felt her arm gripped and she was propelled back up the tunnel at speed. She still couldn’t see a thing. ‘What’s going on?
Doctor? Is that really you? Are you with Martha?’
‘Yes, it’s really me,’ came the answer, ‘and yes, I’m with Martha, and yes, we’re all being chased by some kind of alien creature.’
‘What?’
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‘Just run!’
But, although Angela could still do many things at 83, running wasn’t one of them. ‘Oh, Doctor, really, I can’t. My running days are long since gone.’ They halted and Angela could hear Martha panting. They really had been sprinting up the tunnel. Angela had only managed a few paces and he was beginning to wheeze herself. ‘I’m only going to slow you down,’ she said eventually. ‘You two go on ahead and I’ll catch up.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ gasped Martha.
‘What bit of “we’re all being chased by some kind of alien creature”
didn’t you understand?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Well, all of it, actually.’
‘OK,’ said the Doctor quickly, ‘So it’s not exactly an alien creature, more your human-alien proto-mutant life form, but you get the general idea: it’s chasing us and we’re running.’
‘Sorry, can’t help,’ Angela said.
‘Listen,’ replied the Doctor, and then said nothing. He didn’t have to. They all stood in the dark for a moment and heard the sound of something approaching from further down the tunnel making inco-herent snarling noises.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Angela, turning to run.
But it was hopeless. They could see the distant white speck that was daylight at the tunnel entrance but it might as well have been a mile away. Even with both the Doctor and Martha holding on to Angela, they couldn’t move fast enough. The tunnel simply wasn’t wide enough for them to frogmarch her at speed. Within seconds Angela had stumbled and Martha half fell on top of her.
‘I’m sorry, Martha, I can’t do it! I should never have come down here!’
‘Come on,’ Martha shouted, ‘it’s just a bit further!’
‘We won’t make it,’ said the Doctor quietly. In the faint light of the tunnel entrance, Angela saw him glancing anxiously backwards.
Martha looked equally fearful.
‘Leave me here,’ Angela said. ‘You two get moving.’
‘We’re not leaving you,’ Martha told her.
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‘Too late,’ said the Doctor as the most hideous creature Angela had ever seen suddenly loomed out of the shadows behind them.
Gaskin lowered Nigel into a chair in the conservatory. ‘There you are,’
he said, patting him on the arm. ‘Rest easy for a minute.’
Nigel didn’t need any persuading. He seemed as weak as a kitten and had barely resisted Gaskin’s suggestion that they return to the manor. Now his head lolled back in the chair and his eyes remained half closed.
Gaskin straightened up with a groan. ‘Oh dear,’ he said quietly.
‘There was a time when I could climb mountains. Now look at me.
Puffed out helping you back from the garden!’
Nigel said nothing. His head sank to one side and a string of saliva drooled from his lips.
‘Yes, well,’ muttered Gaskin. ‘Thank you for your concern.’
He wondered what to do next and decided that a drink was needed.
He fetched a bottle of brandy and poured a stiff measure into two glasses. He put one on the little table by Nigel’s chair and raised the other towards the prone figure in salute. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Carson, old boy. Cheers, anyway.’
At that moment Jess came into the conservatory and sat down by her master. ‘Hello, girl,’ said Gaskin, rubbing her ears affectionately.
‘At least you’re pleased to see me. . . ’ Jess looked over at Nigel, her ears suddenly upright.
A low growl sounded deep inside her, something Gaskin didn’t hear very often. ‘What’s up, Jess?’
The dog lowered her head flat to the ground and whined.
‘Something’s got you all bothered, hasn’t it?’ Gaskin bent down and patted her flank. ‘What is it? You know Mr Carson, don’t you? What’s the trouble, Jess?’
The dog refused to explain, so Gaskin stood up and poured himself another brandy. He looked thoughtfully at Nigel Carson while he drank it and then said, ‘Nigel? Nigel, can you hear me?’
Nigel didn’t stir. ‘He really is out for the count,’ said Gaskin thoughtfully. He put down his brandy glass and then, very carefully, felt in 109
Nigel’s jacket pocket. He found the object easily enough, a rock the size of a cricket ball wrapped in a handkerchief. He put it on the table and unwrapped it. Jess got to her feet with a warning snarl.
‘It’s all right, Jess. I’m only having a little look.’
The stone looked harmless enough, although a bit unusual. On closer examination it didn’t really feel like a rock, or a fossil, or indeed anything at all that Gaskin could liken it to. It wasn’t artificially made, but then it didn’t seem altogether natural either. It looked organic, smooth like an egg, but heavy.
Jess growled, and then gave a nervous, unhappy bark before backing away from the thing, ears flat to her head and her tail swishing low.
‘You don’t like it much, do you, girl?’ Gaskin said with a faint smile.
He looked back the object. ‘And neither do I.’
There was something very peculiar about the stone. Gaskin couldn’t find the exact words to describe it, but the one that kept coming to mind was alien. He truly felt as though he was holding something in his hand that came from entirely another world.
But that wasn’t all. Because while he stared at the stone, Gaskin had the distinct impression that it knew he was watching.
It was moving on two legs but it was scarcely human. Jagged spines had erupted from Duncan’s head and shoulders, and his face had distorted into some kind of bony carapace with glistening, black eyes.
But worst of all was the writhing mass of weed which covered his exposed skin and stretched out to grope at the tunnel walls like the antennae of a giant cockroach. Bizarrely, the creature still wore Duncan’s jeans and T-shirt.
The Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver but Martha put a hand on his arm. ‘Wait!’
The monster jerked to a halt, as if unsure why its prey had simply stopped.
‘Duncan!’ Martha pleaded, trying to keep her voice low and calm.
‘It’s me! Martha! Do you remember me, Duncan? From the pub –110
y’know, the Drinkin
g Hole? You said I should never judge a banana by its skin. . . ’
The creature’s skull-like head dipped towards her until they were both at eye level. Martha tried to look deep into the blood-red eyes without flinching, hoping to see some tiny spark of the man she had chatted to last night.
But there was nothing. The angular jaws widened and a green glow emerged from the alien gullet. For a moment Martha’s face was lit by the putrid light and then the Doctor dragged her away. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, ‘but we really should be leaving.’
It was going to attack.
The Doctor grabbed hold of Angela by the collar of her camouflage jacket and heaved. The creature’s twisted fingers grasped thin air as she was hauled out of the way. It roared furiously, drooling black spittle, surging up the tunnel after them, filling the narrow space with its writhing veins.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ gasped Angela, falling again.
‘We’ve got to try!’ Martha shouted.
The Doctor pushed both of them ahead of him and then turned to face the snarling beast. There was no hint of reason or intelligence now, just an insane anger.
Grim-faced, the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver straight up at the ceiling. It gave a shrill whine, quickly building to an ultrasonic squeal. There was a noise like a crack of thunder reverberating down the tunnel and a shower of dust dropped from the roof onto the creature’s shoulders.
‘Oh that’s a big help,’ said Angela, unimpressed.
But then a huge section of the roof caved in with an ear-shattering roar, and Duncan disappeared under an avalanche of collapsing soil and rock. The Doctor pushed Martha and Angela away as the tunnel was filled with dust and noise. Gradually the falling debris ended in a shower of loose earth and there was no longer any sign of the creature.
‘How. . . how did you do that?’ asked Angela.
‘Sonic resonance,’ replied the Doctor, helping her towards the light 111
of the tunnel entrance. ‘Found a weak spot in the roof, hit the correct frequency and – hey presto.’
‘You nearly buried us too,’ said Martha, coughing drily. ‘What about Duncan?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘I can’t see him. But at least he won’t follow us now.’
There was a dull rumble over their heads and an ominous trickle of loose earth.
‘Uh oh,’ said Martha as the whole tunnel began to shake. Dust and lumps of earth were pouring from the ceiling, and then the wooden cross-beams supporting the tunnel roof began to sag, splitting apart with sudden, fierce cracks.
‘Run!’ yelled the Doctor. But they didn’t get far. The tunnel was suddenly filled with falling earth and everything went black.
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Jess was still making a fuss. At first Gaskin thought she was upset about the stone, so he wrapped it up again in a tea towel and, after a moment’s consideration, put it in a drawer in the kitchen.
Nigel Carson remained spark out in the conservatory, but Jess still wasn’t happy.
‘Be quiet, there’s a good girl,’ Gaskin said. But the dog was having none of it. ‘What’s got into you?’
The Collie ran across to the conservatory doors and whimpered.
‘Oh, you want to go out, do you?’
Jess gave a peremptory ‘Wuff!’
And it was at that moment that Gaskin suddenly had the strangest feeling – like a chasm of anxiety opening up inside his guts as he remembered Angela disappearing into the tunnel alone. Jess barked urgently again and this time Gaskin knew exactly what to do.
He opened the door and the dog shot out into the garden. Gaskin hurried after her.
At the tunnel entrance, Jess stood and barked loudly again. Gaskin peered inside but it was too dark to see anything. One thing was for sure, however: Angela hadn’t yet returned, and nor had Martha Jones.
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Gaskin knew he should go into the tunnel to look for them, but he couldn’t bear the thought of such a horribly confined space. He loved the wide-open spaces, the outdoors, craggy mountains under wide blue skies. The idea of going into that narrow patch of darkness made him feel physically ill.
Jess looked up at him with her big brown eyes, asking the impossible. ‘I can’t go in there,’ Gaskin told her plaintively. ‘You know I can’t.’
Jess whined and went into the tunnel alone.
‘Oh, all right,’ muttered Gaskin crossly.
He followed her inside. It was all right for the first few yards because of the light from outside, but it quickly grew dark and the smell of earth was overwhelming. Gaskin felt his old heart begin to race.
Summoning the courage that had served him well in his days in the Parachute Regiment, he fought back the urge to turn around and followed Jess further into the shadows.
It wasn’t long before he met an awful sight: the way ahead was completely blocked by soil and rock and a thick wooden beam lay diagonally across the tunnel.
‘Great Scott! There’s been a rockfall!’ Gaskin forgot all about his claustrophobia as Jess barked again, loud and urgent. She must have sensed it in the house, felt a faint tremor in the earth, or perhaps heard the distant subterranean thunder. But now she’d found something in soil, something that stirred near the ground, under the fallen roof beam.
A thin, white hand.
‘Angela!’ Gaskin grasped the hand and pulled. The hand, cold and shaking, held on to him with an iron grip as he hauled Angela out of the earth. Loose soil poured off her camouflage jacket and hat, and, with a sob of relief, she grabbed hold of Gaskin. He pulled her upright. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’
‘Martha. . . and the Doctor. . . ’ she panted. ‘They’re still in there!’
Jess was barking and prancing around their knees in excitement as someone else slowly emerged from under the roof beam. Covered in soil and dust, coughing and choking, Martha Jones clambered out, 114
followed by the Doctor.
‘Mr Gaskin!’ said the Doctor cheerily as he stood up. In the dim light of the tunnel entrance, his face was streaked with cuts and mud.
He offered a grimy hand. ‘How nice to meet you again!’
They went straight back to the manor. Martha was amazed to find that the sun was already setting and there was a chill in the air as they walked across the garden. The adrenalin was fading now, leaving her nervous and exhausted.
She shivered, and the Doctor put his arm around her. ‘Cheer up!
We’ve lived to fight another day.’
But Martha kept thinking about Duncan. She’d liked him; it had been horrible to see him transformed and inhuman. She was relieved to have survived, of course, but what about him? If the transmutation hadn’t killed him, then surely the rockfall must have. She wondered about it all the way back to the house.
In the conservatory, Nigel Carson was still unconscious.
‘Been like that ever since I brought him back,’ Gaskin told them.
‘I much prefer him that way,’ said Angela.
Gaskin wanted to take Angela to the A&E department at Wardley Hospital, but she was having none of it.
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she insisted. ‘All I need is a bath and some of that brandy.’ All the same, she accepted a chair from the Doctor and sank into it with a groan. ‘I’m beginning to think Sadie has a point.
Perhaps I am getting too old for all this gallivanting.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the Doctor. ‘Keeps you young – look at me!’
Martha insisted on examining the old lady. ‘No bones broken, at least. You’re lucky. Just minor cuts and contusions.’
‘She’s as tough as old boots,’ said Gaskin, handing her a drink.
‘Here, get this down you.’
The damage could have been worse for all of them. Most of the rockfall had been deflected by the fallen cross-beam, under which the three of them had been able to shelter. Martha and Angela were bruised and dusty, but the Doctor had a nasty graze on his forehead.
&nbs
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Angela’s mobile phone chirped. ‘Excuse me.’ She opened it and then held it out at arm’s length as she tried to focus on the display.
‘Confounded thing – why do they make the writing so small? Oh, it’s a text from Sadie asking where we’ve got to. It’s only just come through.’
‘You must have been out of signal range in the tunnel,’ said Martha.
‘I’d better give her a call, fill her in on what’s been happening.’ The old lady paused for a moment. ‘Although I’m not at all sure where to begin. . . ’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ said Gaskin gruffly. He turned to the Doctor.
‘I think it’s high time we had an explanation. I had been told you were languishing at the bottom of the village well.’
‘I never stay in the same place for long,’ said the Doctor, who was sitting on a stool dabbing at the blood on his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Especially if I find myself sharing it with a mindless alien predator.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That’s what I found at the bottom of your well: a particularly nasty example of extraterrestrial life called a Vurosis. Intelligent proto-molecular parasite from the Actron Pleiades star system. They usually prey on defenceless planets containing easily adaptable carbon-based life forms, such as Earth. The Vurosis arrives as a seed, germinates underground and then starts to spread and reproduce by transmutagenic alteration of the indigenous dominant animal population.’ The Doctor looked at each of them in turn. ‘That means you lot, by the way. Humans.’
Gaskin blinked. ‘I didn’t understand a word of that, let alone believe any of it.’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t expect a fly to believe in chemical insecticides, but there we are.’ He mimed using a fly spray. ‘Pssh! Erk.
Dead fly.’
Gaskin huffed. ‘But even so! Extraterrestrials? Here in Creighton Mere? Poppycock.’
‘Be quiet, Henry,’ said Angela quietly. ‘You didn’t see it.’
‘Are you trying to say you did?’
