by Doctor Who
The soldiers fell back as the barriers broke and overturned. The desperate mob surged forwards towards the river, taking Jackie and Keisha with them.
Rose stared as the body of water loomed ever closer to the cargo dump, ready to burst over them with incredible force. ‘Maybe they can’t kill us,’ she said, ‘but they’re gonna make sure they teach us a good lesson!’
The creatures had stopped their slithering advance, watching them, their huge dead-fish eyes still glinting with malice. The eyes of the drowned fixed on them too in silent recrimination. She looked away, looked down. . .
‘The crate!’ she yelled over the oncoming roar. ‘Jay, grab hold of the crate!’
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‘It’s no good, it’s not heavy enough,’ he told her. ‘The wave will wash it out with us.’
‘Exactly!’ She hugged the crate, gripping on as hard as she could.
‘If they’re gonna take us, they can have this too.’ Jay joined her, scrabbling for something to hold. ‘Maybe we can find a way to use it, or –’
Then the wave struck with the force of a truck. The ground tipped and the freezing water sledge-hammered Rose’s back, knocking all breath from her, engulfing everyone and everything in the store. She, Jay and the crate were sent smashing into one side. Grimly she clung on as they were swilled back out of the dump with a bundle of bodies and into the river. Were the white things coming too? She couldn’t tell. Her vision was speckled with black and silver. Was Jay still holding on, or had he been washed clear somewhere? There were so many dark figures falling through the water alongside her it was impossible to tell. Gasping for breath, she found that the water tasted good in her lungs, wanted to be sick. There were voices shouting for her – Mickey’s the loudest, and Vida’s too – but she couldn’t catch the words over the roaring in her temples.
The crate dragged her down but she wasn’t going to let go now, not if this was the one thing the Doctor said could hurt these things.
She felt herself snatched by the dark currents of the river, shut her eyes and clung on as she was tugged down deeper and deeper.
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‘Rose!’ Vida yelled from the river’s stone edge as the girl was plucked back down beneath the water.
‘It’s no good,’ said Mickey, staring in disbelief over the shoulder of the sailor he held in a necklock. ‘She’s gone.’
‘And so have the tracers.’ Vida hugged her own sailor dismally.
‘That’s it, then.’
Huntley shook his head. ‘We can dive down and get them!’
Vida pointed down at the churning water. A thick, white shape undulated beneath the surface, like a giant slug. ‘Into that?’
‘I thought we wanted the tracers in the water?’ said Mickey.
‘The release trigger for the flasks is built into the bottom of the crate. Without that the contents are locked inside. Useless.’
Feeling numb, she barely looked up as a fresh wave of noise crashed across from the far bank of the river. A seething serum of people had broken through the barriers. They jumped or fell screaming into the river, or surged over the boats still moored there to throw themselves in. Hundreds of them.
‘That’s it, then,’ said Mickey.
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She thought he was talking about the exodus into the Thames. But as she slowly turned she saw that the pirate and the kid had returned, back from asking Mum. And with them was Commodore Powers, together with a few other fright-night friends.
‘Stay back!’ Huntley shouted. Waving his bit of glass about, he looked pathetic rather than menacing. ‘Take another step closer and we’ll kill every carrier.’
Mickey produced the other hand grenade. ‘And this’ll make sure of it.’
But even if he’d meant it, he would never get the chance. Too late, Vida saw the water pooling at their feet. A moment later, two more of the ravaged figures burst into being – a submarine captain and an old man in a greatcoat. In a blur of bloated flesh, Huntley’s makeshift blade was smacked flying. The old man, pearl-eyes gleaming, pushed Mickey to the ground and grabbed Vida by the throat, while Powers led the others in a sudden, stumbling charge to get the rest of them.
‘Get on with it, then,’ the Doctor snarled. The queen had oozed round behind him, squelching and slithering, getting herself into position.
Suddenly, the sinister fishermen released him, stood away. ‘About time,’ he said, ‘I’ve lost all feeling in my arms waiting for –’
The sharp tips of her giant mandibles probed the back of his neck.
It felt as if scalding hot water was pumping into his body.
‘Feeling in the arms back now, thanks,’ he gasped. Then it seemed he could do nothing but boil as the probes pushed into his spine.
Keisha wanted to scream but the breath had been all but crushed from her lungs by the packed crowds. She was being carried backwards on to the wharf, struck something solid. A metal pole, a sign warning you not to park here.
So fine me, thought Keisha.
Twisting round, she grabbed hold of the pole, clung to it against the tide of people. She could do this. She could hold on.
Then she glimpsed the girl being jostled towards her. Seven or eight, maybe, a black girl, wide-eyed and terrified. No one was with 182
her or watching over her. She had been abandoned. ‘Look out!’ she yelled at the crowd. ‘That little girl’s gonna get trampled or. . . ’
No one was listening. No one even looked, except the girl herself.
Keisha stared all around desperately as the people shoved against her.
Heard big splashes, explosions as people hit the river. Where were the soldiers now, or the police? Someone had to do something about the little girl. It couldn’t be down to her. Not her.
There were so many shouts and screams all around her. But she could only hear one voice now, from hours and hours ago. Rose’s voice.
‘Sort your life out, Keisha. No one’s gonna do it for you.’
The little girl was being swept past her, reaching out. Keisha just stared, paralysed. And by the time she’d reached out her own hand in response, it was too late. The girl had been bustled by.
‘Stop!’ Keisha screamed. And she let go of the pole, fell fighting into the crowd, to get to the girl before she was crushed or went over the edge.
Vida gasped as Mickey charged between her and the old man, breaking them apart. She staggered back to the river’s edge, choking, as Mickey was clubbed to the ground. Powers and his friends had all but subdued Huntley and the others. On the far bank people were still cascading into the river like a human waterfall, and in desperation Vida was about to throw herself into the grey waters – when it bubbled up, right in front of her eyes.
The crate, tossed about on the river, with Rose still clinging on to it like a half-drowned rat.
‘Wouldn’t let me in,’ Rose shouted frantically, filthy water pouring from her mouth. ‘I think they know these things can hurt them. Want rid of them, but not of me –’
The water foamed white around Rose and then erupted, throwing her clear as the entire crate was literally spat out of the water. With a clanking crash it landed upside-down on the bank.
Vida stared at it disbelievingly for a few seconds. There it was, their one shot at somehow fighting back. But without the proper acti-183
vation signal there was no way to release the tracers from the flasks.
Unless. . .
The old man was scuttling towards her again.
Vida broke into a run, fell upon the crate, tried to heave it back towards the river. ‘Mickey, that other grenade, where’d it go?’ He was still lying on the ground. Was he knocked out, or worse? Panic and fear lent her strength and the crate budged a little way. She pushed again. ‘Mickey, if we can just –’
But then the old man’s hand clamped around her mouth, wormed into water that started to force its way down her throat.
Holding her breath, weeping with fear, Vida kept furiously shovi
ng at the crate, nudging it back towards the river’s edge – until the old man hauled her clear. He started to drag her away, arms and legs flailing. . .
Why had he stopped?
Vida looked down and saw that Rose had resurfaced and was gripping the old man firmly round the ankle, anchoring herself to him as something in the water tried to drag her back under.
The old man seemed to sink into the pavement as his lower body turned liquid to shake off Rose. But while he was distracted, with the last of her strength Vida twisted free, spluttering for breath, and stumbled back over to the crate. She strained to shift it but her head was spinning; she was too weak.
Then a hand clapped down on her shoulder.
It was Mickey. And in his other hand he had the grenade.
‘Found it,’ he said. ‘Now what?’
‘Help me with this.’
With both of them behind it, the crate scraped across the concrete till it sat teetering on the edge. Vida looked back. The old man was free once more, turning to face them.
‘We’ve got to blow it apart once it’s in the water,’ she panted.
‘Five-second fuse on these things,’ said Mickey, trying to jam it into a split in the crate’s casing. . . ‘What about when it goes under? Will water put it out?’
‘I don’t know. Jam it in!’
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But now the old man was hunched over them. He grabbed hold of Mickey with one hand and threw him into the river. But the grenade was still wedged in place. The drowned child ran towards Vida, grinning, water spilling from its ears and nose.
It threw itself on to her back. But Vida didn’t let its cold, dead weight shift her. She depressed the safety handle, pulled on the pin.
5. . .
By some miracle, the grenade stayed in place. The child’s hands scrabbled for her throat.
4. . .
Tendrils of water coiled round her throat like steel bands and squeezed.
3. . .
Her vision blurring, holding her breath, Vida pushed herself and the crate forwards into the water with a cold splash.
2. . .
At once she was steered away and down into the dark depths of the river, the child riding her like a jockey. But what about the crate?
Would it be thrown straight back out again?
1. . .
The blackness grew absolute. Please God, let it not all have been for nothing.
Rose had used the last of her strength trying to stop the old man from getting Vida. Now she gave herself up to the darkness and the hungry current.
Then shockwaves blasted through the water. She was aware of a tang in her mouth, a cold chemical taste. Her mind fired up with the realisation.
And then Rose thought of the Doctor, shut her eyes as the entrance to the drainage channel loomed, ready to swallow her. Will he ever know? she wondered. Will the Doctor know we did it?
And then suddenly there he was. She could see him, eyes tight shut, standing up in some blinding white place. Standing in a bubbling pool of water with a monster close behind, its two needle-tusks inserted 185
deep into his neck. He looked terrible, sweat literally pouring from his shocking-white skin, drenching his clothes. But somehow he must have sensed that her image was there, for his eyes opened Bambi-wide. She felt he could see her as clear and bright as the moon. And he forced a wonky smile.
‘Of course you did it,’ he said.
Sinking to his knees, he put his fingers to his temples, and shouted at the top of his lungs.
‘Doctor!’ Rose didn’t see or hear what happened next, because she was back in the black water, sinking like a stone.
The Doctor felt like barbed wire was being dragged round his head, snagging on every nerve. A bright ball of light was searing through his senses. Slowly it became a vast eye, filling his mind, pearly and lolling in its encrusted carapace.
‘Now your cells are ours, Doctor.’ The eerie voice held no triumph, as if it had always known things would end this way. ‘We have you.’
He spoke aloud, an anchor to the real world he could no longer see through his stinging eyes. ‘Well, actually. . . I might just have you.’
‘We are linked to you now. You are as one with the hive.’
‘Yes, I am,’ the Doctor agreed. Slowly he straightened, forcing himself to his feet. ‘My mind is your mind, and all that.’
‘We swim the same cold, deep water.’
‘Sorry, old love, but I think you might be in hot water.’ The Doctor gritted his teeth. ‘Because I let you into my head. I needed you up close and personal so I could fathom your wavelength – puns fully intended, by the way. Because now I know that my friends have done what they set out to do, I can do this.’
In his mind he grabbed that heavy, dreadful eye and planted a big wet kiss upon it.
For a second he experienced life through the alien senses of the queen. The signals that teemed about her like life. The billions of scraps of information that fed her, that sped from her; that held the hive in harmony and allowed it to spread and grow.
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He breathed in those senses. He experienced the hive dreaming through her, the first stirrings of life in every egg. And as he shuddered, so they stilled.
Quickly he felt out through the black complexity of the alien water and grasped the new filaments that were drifting out in clusters. All those tiny, transmitting filaments. Rose and Vida and Mickey and everyone had risked their lives to get them there.
And before the last of his strength could leave him he thought over the queen. He switched on those transmitters with a single murmured command. And he felt the same sting that she did as the water became alive with new signals.
The signatures were wrong, the wavelengths jarring and alien.
The harmony of the hive was shattered by a sea of dead static.
‘How long have you prospered by poisoning love and longing?’ the Doctor gasped. ‘How many races have you tricked, drowned and slaughtered just so you can go on existing? Well, it stops here.’ A piercing shriek jolted through his mind but he did not falter. ‘That’s not just feedback. It’s payback.’
The queen screamed and the Doctor screamed with her, cast out into the deeps and the blackness.
Jackie was down in the water with so many others, trying to swim back to the bank. Her limbs were cramping up. People kept on piling into the water. Some were already swimming with determination for the far side of the river; others flailed about, screaming for help that would never come as the bodies rained down.
She glimpsed Keisha, her lovely hair wet and plastered over her face so she couldn’t see, straining to hold a little black girl above her head, out of the water.
Then something grabbed hold of Jackie’s leg, tugged her down before she could catch a breath.
Amid the thrashing legs and arms of the frantic swimmers, fat white creatures were circling. Jackie caught the dead glint of their eyes in the murk. She couldn’t free herself, flailing and floundering as she was dragged ever deeper down.
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Then the water around her seemed to convulse, to bubble and froth with a life of its own. The white things fell away from her, and she was being propelled upwards, shooting out from the freezing water like a cork from a champagne bottle.
Surviving the blast in the water had been the easy bit. The child had drained away but Vida was still caught in the eddying current, drawing every last smack of oxygen from what must surely be her last breath. She shut her eyes as the creatures swarmed around her, pricked her with spindly tusks, tore at her skin as if they wanted to tear her apart in revenge for what she had done.
She felt herself spinning helplessly. A whirlpool must have sprung up. Now it was sucking her in.
Or pushing her out.
In a dizzying rush she broke the surface of the water, along with one or two of the laws of physics.
Somehow she stayed floating there, lying on her back, whooping down breaths of smoky London air. It
was sweet as a flower’s per-fume. What the hell was happening? Instinctively she made to start swimming, but the water didn’t want to know. She couldn’t force her legs or arms beneath it. It was as if she was rolling on the most comfortable bed in creation. On the far side of the river, she saw many others in the same bizarre yet quite agreeable predicament.
Close beside her, Mickey popped up, cut and bruised and bewildered. ‘What’s going on?’ he spluttered. ‘Where did those things go?’
Vida looked. Outside Stanchion House, the grisly, bloated figures of the long-since drowned had vanished, leaving Huntley and the sailors in a daze on the concrete concourse. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, waving at Huntley, who was getting groggily to his feet. ‘I don’t have a clue.’
Back on the far bank, the people still tumbling into the Thames were bouncing back up, shrieking and screaming and splashing, but otherwise unharmed. There was no current, so they didn’t drift. And all across the water, as far as the eye could see, heads were bobbing into view, strange pearls given up by the river bed.
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Vida was so gobsmacked she let in a mouthful of the water – then spat it out and grimaced. ‘Salt! This river’s awash with salt!’
Mickey managed to balance himself in a kneeling position. ‘Normal salt or weird alien salt?’
‘Give you two guesses,’ she offered. ‘But that’s why we’re floating!
We can’t sink!’ She gingerly stood up. ‘Look! I’m walking on water!’
But Mickey wasn’t looking. He was pointing past her, laughing and cheering because the stodgy river had parted to allow Rose through as well, close to the bank outside Stanchion House. She lay still on her back for a few moments, and Vida’s face fell.
But then Rose jerked up, her hands flying to her face.
‘You all right?’ Mickey bellowed, scrambling across the water to reach her.
Rose didn’t answer. Vida walked unsteadily across to join them. It was like treading the skin on a tapioca pudding.
‘Are you all right?’ Mickey asked again, more softly.
