Doctor Who_ Deep Blue Part 23

'What's up there?'

Her face remained deadpan and he thought she'd switched off. Then she said, 'We couldn't get through. There were barriers.'

Mike pondered for a moment. It seemed his initial theory that half the patients had been killed by the others had been wrong. Perhaps part of the Xaranti plan had been to keep those infected out of hospital - and indeed away from other environments and situations where their affliction may have been discovered - until a stranglehold had been established on the town. Which meant that the missing patients had been infected during, not before, the Xaranti attack.

'Tegan,' he said now, his voice quiet but intense, 'Tegan, can you hear me?'

She stared at him, a tiny frown appearing, her eyes swirling with confusion.

'You are Tegan Jovanka,' Mike said firmly. 'You are Tegan Jovanka and an alien force is trying to take over your mind.

But you're strong, Tegan. You can fight it. Fight it, Tegan.'

The frown became a wince of pain. Tegan s.n.a.t.c.hed her hands from the wheelchair grips as if they had become hot and rubbed at her forehead as though trying to erase a stain from her skin - or from beneath it.

'I am... we are... no, I I am Tegan,' she gasped. Her eyes crinkled into slits and her mouth stretched wide to reveal her clenched teeth. She gave a little scream and fell forward. am Tegan,' she gasped. Her eyes crinkled into slits and her mouth stretched wide to reveal her clenched teeth. She gave a little scream and fell forward.

Mike caught her smartly. She opened her eyes and looked at him, her face etched with fear and dismay.

'Are you all right?' he asked softly.

Her face crumpled and she began to sob, clutching at him.

'So scared,' she whimpered. 'I don't want... this to... happen to me again.'

'I know,' Mike said, 'I know.' He held her until her sobs had subsided. At last he said, 'Are you ready to go on?'

'Where?'

'To the top of the building. That's where everyone is.'

'How do you know?'

'You told me. When you were... when you had your funny turn. It's like you'd clicked in to their thinking again for a minute.'

She was silent, finding the information unpalatable. Finally she said, 'I'm still useful for something then, at least.'

He wasn't sure how to reply, so he gave her a squeeze instead. They wheeled the Doctor out of the ward and across to the lifts. The topmost b.u.t.ton was 12, which Mike pressed.

As the lift approached their destination he raised his gun, pointing it at the opening doors.

The corridor ahead was as featureless as the rest they had seen. It was silent and deserted, too. Mike stepped out first, checking around, then motioned for Tegan to follow with the Doctor. To their left, at the end of the corridor, were the stairs that led down to each of the lower floors. To their right, the corridor was foreshortened by a huge pair of vault-like doors. In large red stencilled letters on the doors were the words:

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT UNIT.

STRICTLY LIMITED ACCESS.

AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Beside the door was a touch-b.u.t.ton panel, with numbers from 0 to 9.

'Pretty snazzy for the seventies,' Tegan said, back to her old self for the time being, although she sounded tired.

Mike moved forward and banged on the metal doors with the b.u.t.t of his gun. 'Hey!' he shouted. 'Hey, is anyone in there?'

There was no reply. Mike continued to thump the door and shout for the next half-minute. Tegan watched him anxiously and scratched at her arms. The Doctor slept on despite the noise.

At last a voice on the other side, sounding no more than the thickness of the doors away, said, 'Who are you?'

Mike raised his eyebrows at Tegan with an expression not quite of triumph and shouted, 'My name is Captain Michael Yates. I'm an army officer who has been called in to deal with the current crisis. I'm accompanied by two civilians, one of whom is severely injured and in need of medical attention.'

There was a pause, then the voice said fearfully, 'How did you know we were here?'

'We worked it out,' Mike replied slickly. 'After seeing the carnage on the first three floors we realised that the only way you could have gone to escape was up. It didn't need a genius to see that this was the only viable option.'

There was an even longer pause this time, then the voice said, 'Stand back. I want to see you on the cameras.'

Mike glanced up and saw two cameras affixed to the ceiling above his head. He stepped back so he was looking directly into their lenses and smiled.

'You don't look like a soldier,' the voice said suspiciously.

'I was employed as an advance guard, to check out the terrain. That's why I'm in civvies,' Mike explained.

'Have you got any proof?' the voice asked.

Mike reached into the back pocket of his cords and located his UNIT pa.s.s, which he held up to the right-hand camera.

'UNIT? What's that?'

'United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. Special peace-keeping force. Affiliated to the British Army. All the information's there if you want to read it.'

The pause was so long this time that Mike thought his credentials had been rejected. Then the voice was back, and saying reluctantly, 'All right, you can come in.'

Turlough was not sure how long he had been sitting against the bedroom wall when he heard the sound outside in the corridor. He stiffened, clutching his coathanger to him, drawing his knees up tighter under his chin.

The sound had been like the scuff of movement that someone who was trying to be stealthy might make. Turlough tilted his head a little as if that might enable him to hear better - and almost leaped out of his skin when someone rapped loudly on his door.

He cringed, praying that whoever was out there was banging on doors at random and would move on if he failed to respond. There was silence for a moment, then a voice he recognised said, 'We know you're in there, son.'

It was the voice of the big, burly soldier, the Doctor's friend: Sergeant Benton. Still Turlough said nothing, but looked around panic-stricken, wondering where he could hide, how he could possibly escape.

A second voice replaced the first, this one more clipped, authoritative; the voice of the Brigadier.

'Be reasonable, lad,' he said, sounding nothing but reasonable himself. 'It's not you we want, it's the Doctor. We just want you to take us to his TARDIS.'

They must have missed it at the fun-fair, Turlough realised.

If his plight hadn't been so desperate he would have found that funny. He wondered fleetingly whether he might be able to speak to the Brigadier, reason with him. The man might be infected, but he didn't sound too far gone - though it might well have been the Xaranti themselves who were allowing allowing the Brigadier to sound reasonable. the Brigadier to sound reasonable.

Yes, perhaps that was it. Perhaps the present approach was simply a ploy to lull him into a false sense of security. Or even to get him to give himself away, because, after all, they couldn't know for certain he was in here. They could only be guessing that he was. They had probably been looking for him all over the place. If he stayed quiet they would probably go away.

Then the Brigadier said, 'All right, young man, be it on your own head.'

There was a loud bang, and before Turlough realised what was happening a chunk of wall exploded, not two feet from his left ear. He stared at it for a moment, dumbfounded, then glanced back through the barricade of furniture piled atop his bed and spotted a ragged hole in the door, beside the lock.

They were shooting their way in - and they weren't too worried who was on the other side. Discarding the coat hanger, Turlough scrambled to his feet and ran to the window. He looked out and to his horror saw two fully-grown Xaranti patrolling the streets below.

He ducked instinctively as a second shot blasted through the door and reduced part of the barricade to flying matchwood. Frantically he loosened the catch on the window, flung it open and stuck his head out. There was no way down, but if he could climb up on to the roof he might be able to make his way across it to the building next door.

As a third gun-blast turned more of his barricade to splinters, Turlough grasped the sides of the window frame and stepped up on to the sill.

Walking through the vault-like doors, Mike and Tegan found themselves in a small vestibule furnished with a semi-circular desk like the one in Reception. On brackets on either side of the doors were a pair of small black-and-white TV screens depicting the now-empty corridor outside.

Waiting for them just inside was a large black man dressed in the blue-grey uniform of a hospital orderly. His face was s.h.i.+ny with sweat and his eyes were wide and wary. As soon as they were inside, he heaved the doors shut again and locked them with bolts and a metal locking-bar as thick as a man's wrist.

'Thanks for this,' Mike said, holstering his gun. 'It's pretty hairy out there.'

'Don't I know it?' said the man and squinted at them suspiciously. 'How did you manage to get through all them...

all them things?' things?'

'There are none out there now,' said Mike. 'I think they must have all headed down to the sea. We've got a truck, and I've got a gun. We had a few bad moments, but we managed to make it through OK.'

'What's wrong with your friend?' the black man asked, looking at the Doctor slumped in the wheelchair.

'That was one of our bad moments,' said Mike. 'We were attacked. He was wounded. I'm Mike Yates by the way, this is Tegan Jovanka, and the chap having a snooze there is the Doctor.'

He thrust out a hand, which the man cautiously shook.

'Doctors are something we're not short of here,' the man said. 'I'm Max Butler.'

'So what happened here, Max?' asked Mike. 'You were attacked, I take it?'

'From all sides. I've never seen anything like it. Those freaks had taken out two floors before we even knew what was happening. A bunch of us managed to round up the patients from the fourth floor and bring them here.' He shook his head, sending droplets of sweat flying in all directions.

'We're safe enough. Not even a tank could get through those doors. But it's a bad situation. A lot of the patients need special care - medication and stuff. We've got mothers with new-born babies here. The babies that were in the incubation unit we had to leave. One of the nurses stayed with 'em. The doors there aren't as strong as they are here, but at least they can be locked. I just hope to G.o.d those freaks didn't break in there and find 'em all.'

'We saw no evidence of it,' said Mike. 'And as I said, it's quiet out there now. You'd be safe going down to check on things and to get what you need. I'll go with you if you like.'

Max nodded. 'Thanks. But let's sort your friend out first.'

He flipped a thumb at the doors. 'Any idea where those things out there came from?'

Mike glanced meaningfully at Tegan, hoping she would still have enough of her wits about her to realise that they would have to be careful what they said here. 'They're just people,'

he said casually. 'They're carrying an infection which alters them physically and mentally.'

Max looked dubious. 'It's not like any infection I've ever seen before.'

'It's a new strain,' Mike said vaguely. 'We've got experts working on a cure for it right now.'

Max looked at him for a moment longer, then shrugged. 'If you say so. Come on, let's see to your friend.'

He led them out of the vestibule and into a corridor whose widely-s.p.a.ced doors were linked by viewing windows. The windows looked into medical research laboratories, most of which contained equipment and apparatus whose purpose Mike could only guess at.

'How many people have you got up here?' Mike asked.

Max raised his eyebrows as he thought about it. 'I'd say around two hundred.'

Mike whistled as Max turned right at the end of the corridor and pointed ahead. 'There's a kitchen and dormitory along here. A real home from home. It's where the doctors sleep when they haven't got time to go home, when they've got experiments and stuff they need to keep an eye on. That's where everybody is.'

A murmur of conversation drifted to meet them as they drew closer. They pa.s.sed several more labs, these ones full of people. Most of them were patients in dressing-gowns, who were standing or sitting around - talking, reading books and newspapers, playing cards, drinking tea. There was a kind of Blitz spirit in evidence, a sense of pulling together, of cheerfulness in adversity. If Mike had been wearing his uniform rather than his civvies, he had little doubt that many of the older men would have been saluting him as he pa.s.sed by.

Max led them into the dormitory area, containing around a dozen beds, all of which were occupied by the more serious cases. Most of these patients were asleep, though several were groaning in pain. Some patients were lying on the floor between the beds, draped with spare blankets, heads propped by 'pillows' of bundled-up dressing-gowns and other articles of clothing. Others were sitting with their backs to the walls and their knees drawn up, looking dazed or sh.e.l.l-shocked.

Doctors, nurses and some of the more able patients were moving between the beds, offering care and comfort where they could. Mike spotted Charlotte sitting beside a cadaverous old man who was lying on the floor like a bundle of sticks wrapped in blue and white pyjamas. With one hand she was supporting his head as he raised it, and with the other she was holding a transparent plastic cup, from which he was taking small sips of water.

Mike wanted to call to her, but thought it inappropriate.