The Crawling Terror

by Mike Tucker

  As soon as Angela had revealed the insect, the Doctor had started firing off all kinds of scientific, biological questions, half of which Clara couldn’t even begin to understand. Angela’s relief at the realisation that she had someone to share her concerns with had been tangible. They had taken the mangled body back inside and the Doctor had listened as she had talked non-stop for nearly ten minutes about theories of mutations and chemical contamination.

  Only when he had her complete trust did the Doctor finally – gently – break the news about the body that they had found in the underpass.

  Angela went very quiet and pale. It took Clara a few moments to realise that in a community this small it was inevitable that the dead man would be someone that she knew, and probably knew well.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The Doctor placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘If it helps, I don’t think it was the spider that killed him. As far as I can make out he died of a heart attack.’

  Angela just nodded. ‘I think that I’d better get Constable Bevan.’ She pulled on her jacket, shivering despite the warm spring day. ‘Would you mind waiting here?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Of course.’ As soon as Angela had gone, he pulled the sonic screwdriver from his jacket and started examining the dead insect once more.

  Clara slipped off her stool and peered over the Doctor’s shoulder. ‘So, is she right?’

  ‘Right?’ The Doctor didn’t look up. ‘Right about what?’

  ‘Mutations.’

  He straightened, peering at the readings on his screwdriver. ‘Yes and no.’

  Clara folded her arms and glared at him. ‘Well, that’s a great help.’

  The Doctor fixed her with a piercing stare. ‘It is a mutation. But it’s not a natural one. Someone has taken a great deal of time, and used a lot of very expensive equipment, to engineer this creature.’

  ‘Engineer it?’ Clara stared at him incredulously. ‘You mean these things have been built?’

  ‘Modified. The basic physiognomy would appear to be a naturally occurring species, but there are traces of recombinant DNA, growth hormones, synaptic enhancers.’

  ‘But why? Why would anyone want to create these … things?’

  The Doctor tapped the sonic screwdriver against his lips. ‘I’m not sure …’

  Their conversation was interrupted as Angela hurried back into the surgery, followed by a stocky, red-haired man in a police uniform.

  ‘Doctor, Clara, this is Constable Bevan.’

  Any doubts and questions that Charlie Bevan might have had died in his throat as he caught a glimpse of the daddy longlegs on the table.

  ‘Oh, my good Lord. I thought … I thought this was some kind of …’

  He pulled a large, white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the sweat beading on his forehead. ‘I think you’d better show me where you found this body, don’t you?’

  Chapter

  Three

  A short time later, the Doctor and Clara were standing at the mouth to the underpass once more whilst Charlie Bevan took a closer look at the corpse. Angela had stayed at the surgery, saying that she wanted to continue her examination, but Clara could tell that it was just an excuse to avoid seeing first-hand what the spider had left. She couldn’t say she blamed her.

  ‘Be careful that you don’t touch any of the web!’ the Doctor called out. ‘I don’t want to be trying to cut you free if this thing returns.’

  Handkerchief clamped over his mouth against the smell that was starting to build, Charlie made his way back over to them, his face grave.

  ‘Any idea who it is?’ asked Clara softly.

  Charlie nodded. ‘Alan Travers.’

  ‘A local?’

  ‘He owns … He owned a dairy farm a few miles away. Knowing Alan, he was probably on his way home after a night out at the Wheatsheaf.’

  Constable Bevan reached for his radio. ‘I should call this in, try to arrange for a search party of some kind to look for this creature.’

  The Doctor caught the policeman’s arm. ‘Before you do that, I think that we should remove his body from the web.’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘The forensics team are going to want to examine it where it is.’

  ‘He wasn’t left hanging there just as a decoration,’ said the Doctor coldly. ‘This is a larder, and if our friendly neighbourhood spider gets hungry and comes back then there won’t be anything left for the forensic team to examine.’ He paused. ‘Besides, I’d like to do an autopsy.’

  Charlie looked at him curiously. ‘Are you a doctor of some kind?’

  ‘Of some kind, yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. That’s out of the question. We’ll have to take the body to the hospital at Chippenham. Dr Goodchild can conduct the autopsy.’

  The Doctor’s expression darkened, and for a moment Clara thought that he was going to argue with him. Then, obviously thinking better of it, he released his grip on the constable’s arm and regarded the body hanging in the tunnel once more. ‘We’re going to need help getting him down.’

  Charlie indicated the pub just visible through the trees on the other side of the field. ‘I’ll go and get some help from the Wheatsheaf.’

  ‘Good.’ The Doctor nodded. ‘Tell them to bring gloves, and a ladder, and cutters of some kind. Secateurs, or garden shears.’

  As Charlie hurried along the path towards the pub, the Doctor called out after him. ‘And get something to wrap him up in!’

  He turned to see Clara looking at him quizzically.

  ‘Autopsy?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘There wasn’t enough venom in the puncture wound for me to make a proper analysis. I want to see if there are the same indicators of genetic tampering.’

  ‘So you want to check that whoever engineered the daddy longlegs is the same person responsible for the spider?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well, they’d better be, otherwise it’s one hell of a coincidence!’

  The Doctor smiled grimly. ‘It can’t also be a coincidence that the TARDIS brings us to this exact spot on the trail of a mysterious energy signature.’

  ‘But what on earth can possibly connect giant insects, stone circles and ley lines?’

  ‘I guess we’re going to find out.’

  The Doctor’s eyes blazed and Clara felt a tingle of anticipation run down her spine. Despite the danger, despite the death, it was these moments that brought her alive, that made every second of her extraordinary life worth living. Her and her Doctor (and despite the changes to his outward appearance this was still her Doctor), side by side, facing whatever the universe could throw at them.

  A few moments later, the sound of a car engine made her look up, and she turned to see a battered Transit van pulling to a halt at the start of the footpath. Charlie Bevan and another man climbed out and walked up the path towards them.

  ‘Doctor, Clara, this is Bert Mitchell,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s the landlord of the Wheatsheaf.’

  With old-school politeness, Bert shook both of their hands in turn, but even as he did so he couldn’t tear his eyes from the cocooned shape that hung in the mouth of the underpass.

  Clara felt a pang of remorse at her earlier excitement. The dead man was one of their friends, their neighbours. This wasn’t thrilling for these poor people, it was terrifying. She tried to give him a reassuring smile. ‘I’m sorry. This must be difficult to believe …’

  ‘Difficult?’ Bert shook his head. ‘Impossible, more like.’

  The Doctor, Charlie and Bert started to extricate the body of Alan Travers from the sticky web. Clara sat at the top of the railway embankment, keeping a lookout for any sign of the spider. Even with the heavy-duty shears that Bert had brought, the strands of web proved incredibly difficult to cut, and it took them several long minutes of hard work before they finally managed to pull the body free. Wrapping it in a sheet, the three men struggled down the footpath to the Transit and lifted the body carefully into the back.

  Breath
ing heavily, Charlie wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Wait here a moment, Bert. I’ll just put a call in to the hospital, let Dr Goodchild know you’re coming.’

  As Charlie hurried across the green to the vet’s office, Clara could see people starting to go about their business in the village, as yet unaware of the horror that was starting to unfold in their midst. Bert was obviously thinking the same thing.

  ‘No one’s going to believe it,’ he said quietly. ‘After all those jokes about them breeding monsters in the science park.’

  The Doctor’s ears suddenly pricked up. ‘Science park? What science park?’

  ‘The other side of the railway.’ Bert nodded towards the distant embankment. ‘Agricultural science research. New fertilisers, weather-resistant crops, bio-diesel, that sort of thing. Been a standing joke in the village that Jason Clearfield has been breeding monsters in there.’ He shook his head. ‘Never thought that it might turn out to be true …’

  Clara exchanged a brief glance with the Doctor, but before they could question Bert any further, Charlie Bevan re-emerged from the vet’s office.

  ‘Is your CB set working, Bert?’

  The landlord climbed into the cab of the Transit, started the ignition and switched on the set bolted to his dashboard. ‘It seems to be. Why?’

  ‘The phone lines are playing up. Mobiles too. Tune it to the police frequency. Give me a call on that when you get over to the hospital. I’ve got a few things that I need to finish off here.’

  Bert nodded, closing the door and pushing the van into gear. As they watched it make its way out of the village Clara turned to Charlie with a puzzled frown.

  ‘CB? Do people still use that?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Mobile coverage isn’t too good out here, so CB is still popular with the farming community. Easy to use, easy to fix—’

  The Doctor interrupted him. ‘What was that about the phones?’

  He shrugged. ‘Interference of some kind. Couldn’t get a mobile signal at all. Managed to use Angela’s landline to get in touch with the hospital OK, but then the line went dead when I was on the phone to the Colonel.’

  ‘Colonel?’ The Doctor’s voice went icy.

  ‘Yes, Colonel Dickinson over at the army base at Warminster.’

  The Doctor closed his eyes. ‘No, no, no, no, no … Why did you have to go and do that?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Involve the army!’

  ‘Because we have a giant spider stalking the fields and killing people? Who else did you think I was going to call? The local zoo?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted the Doctor. ‘That might have been a sensible idea! At least they might want to capture it rather than shoot it. What good is it to us dead?’

  ‘What good is it?’ Charlie’s face flushed with anger. ‘Now listen, I don’t know who you are, but if you think that—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Angela Drabble stood in the entrance of the vet’s surgery glaring at the two men. ‘Stop it, both of you! You’re squabbling like children!’

  Such was the tone of the young woman’s voice that both men went quiet immediately. Clara had to smother a smile with her hand. It was rare that someone had the authority to cut the Doctor dead like that. She was going to get on well with the village vet.

  Angela marched over to them. ‘That’s better. We’ve quite enough problems without you two acting like a couple of farmyard cats squaring up for a fight. We’ve already lost one man, let’s make sure that we don’t lose any more.’

  She pointed at the people making their way to and fro across the village green. ‘We have to let people know what’s going on. Get them to get their kids off the street, stay indoors, arm themselves if necessary.’

  Sheepishly, the Doctor nodded in agreement. ‘You’re quite right.’ He peered over at the church bell tower. ‘Perhaps I can rig up some kind of shortwave radio transmitter. If I boost it through my sonic screwdriver, and if I can get the church bell to resonate at the right pitch, then we should be able to broadcast some kind of warning that everyone can hear.’

  ‘Or …’ said Charlie, ‘we could just call a village meeting.’

  *

  ‘Corporal Jenkins! Have you managed to reconnect my call with Ringstone yet?’

  ‘No, sir. The line is still dead.’

  Colonel Paddy Dickinson sat back in his chair, a frown creasing his weather-worn features. What Charlie Bevan had just told him sounded utterly preposterous, and yet Dickinson had met the man on several occasions – most recently at the army v. police rugby game last month – and he had always seemed like a solid, dependable, professional policeman. He certainly didn’t strike him as a man given to flights of fancy.

  But giant insects?

  After a few moments deliberation, he reached for the phone again. ‘Jenkins? Get me Joint Helicopter Command at Andover.’

  Ten minutes later, the Lynx was airborne, its two powerful Rolls Royce Gem 42 engines lifting it effortlessly off the tarmac and sending it hurtling above the English countryside at 180 knots.

  The crew had been given only the vaguest of instructions – reconnoitre the area and report back anything unusual – but the fact that they had been scrambled in an AW159 Lynx Wildcat fitted with the .50-calibre M3M machine gun had given the mission a frisson of unexpected excitement.

  Captain Jo Phillips, the pilot, couldn’t understand it. She had been in Ringstone last month with her fiancé, a ‘get to know you’ day out with her future in-laws. The village was nothing but antique stores and teashops: nothing that could possibly warrant a military response of this kind.

  She shot a glance at her co-pilot, Mike Vickers.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Vickers shrugged, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum and folding it into his mouth. ‘Could be anything,’ he said indistinctly. Vickers was half Bahamian, and invariably laid back about everything.

  ‘Remember last month?’ Leigh Brewster shouted from the cabin behind her. ‘They scrambled us because some farmer thought that he’d seen a UFO? Stupid yokel.’

  Phillips grinned. The UFO had turned out to be an advertising blimp that had broken loose from a big outdoor science fiction convention in Devizes. It had been painted up to look like the Millennium Falcon and had looked pretty good, so it was no wonder that it had caused a stir. But Brewster didn’t have much time for the locals; he wanted to be back in the field. Phillips thought he was crackers. She’d seen enough of the deserts of Afghanistan to last her a lifetime.

  Spotting the tower of Ringstone church poking up above the distant woodland, Phillips banked the helicopter, bringing it low over the fields.

  ‘Right, let’s see if we can work out what this is all about.’

  Gabby Nichols stood at the back of the village hall listening with mounting panic as Constable Bevan, Angela and a thin-faced, scary-looking man broke the news about the death of Alan Travers, and started to explain about the infestation of giant insects that seemed to be affecting the village.

  If Gabby hadn’t already witnessed one of the creatures first-hand, she might have thought that this was some kind of macabre practical joke. Several of the villagers around her were certainly of that mind.

  ‘Come off it.’ A voice that sounded like Simon George, the postmaster, rang out from the front of the hall. ‘You must think we’re soft in the head.’

  There was a murmur of agreement from the room.

  ‘It’s a bit early for April Fool’s Day,’ called someone else.

  ‘I realise that this must sound unbelievable,’ Charlie Bevan was looking flustered. ‘But there is a very real danger—’

  ‘Of you looking like a total numpty,’ finished Simon, eliciting laughs from the crowd. ‘Someone’s playing a bad joke on you, Charlie Bevan, and you’ve fallen right for it.’

  ‘Then perhaps you would like to come to the hospital with us and examine the body for yourself.’ The voice of the thin-faced man – the Doctor, he had called himself – cut through
the room. ‘No one is playing any jokes. These creatures are very real and very dangerous, and if you don’t start listening to us then someone else in this room is probably going to end up dead.’

  Now there was silence.

  Charlie Bevan gave the Doctor a grateful nod. ‘Thank you, Doctor. Now, here’s what I propose we do … You’ve probably already realised that we have a problem with the phones. This seems to be affecting both landlines and mobiles …’

  Gabby listened in a daze. That explained why she hadn’t been able to get hold of Roy. She glanced at the display on her phone. It was the same as it had been for most of the morning: still searching for a signal.

  There was a sudden tug on her trousers. ‘When is that man going to stop talking, mummy?’ Emily was looking up at her pleadingly. ‘I want to go.’

  That simple statement was like a light bulb going on in Gabby’s head.

  Her car was parked on the other side of the green. They could just leave.

  Hoisting her sleeping son onto her shoulder, she grabbed hold of her daughter’s hand and pushed her way out of the packed hall. Hurrying across the green, she scrabbled in her shoulder bag for the car keys. She’d misplaced them more times than she liked to remember since they’d moved house, so until she had got used to her new surroundings she’d taken to keeping them on her.

  Grateful for her forward planning she unlocked the car, bundled Emily into the booster seat in the back and started to strap Wayne into his travel cot.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Emily had her puzzled expression on.

  Gabby thought for a moment. She hadn’t really given much thought to where they might go. ‘Grandma’s,’ she said after a moment’s thought. They could get to her mother’s house in Wolverhampton in a couple of hours.

  ‘Are we going home first?’

  Gabby hesitated. Should she make a trip back home to pick up essentials? Wayne would need nappies and food. And Emily was only dressed in a light cotton dress.

  She shook her head. They could always pick up what they needed en route. They’d stop at the supermarket in Devizes. She had her credit card and phone. As soon as she could get a signal, she could call Roy and tell him where they had gone.