Doctor Who_ Drift Part 21

'Just be sure to leave some buildings standing,' the Doctor advised. 'The people are going to need some shelter. And whatever you do, don't put them all under one roof. Spread them between several buildings, some distance apart. I doubt it will help very much, but it should make them feel a little safer. For a while.'

'Thanks,' Morgan said, but meant the exact opposite. He licked his teeth and exhaled. 'All right. Doc. But before you go, listen up. There's been some new developments up there you should know about.' He briefed the Doc carefully on the incident at the cabin and indicated the site on his map. The Doc thanked him and gunned the engine of the snowmobile.

It spluttered and he had to gun it again.

'You sure you've driven one of these things before?' Morgan shouted above the noise.

'Oh,' the Doc waved a farewell, 'I'm sure I must have done.

In a previous life'

And with that, he was off, racing headlong into the h.e.l.lish blizzard.

It didn't see. see.

It touched without fingers. Its tactile consciousness dipped into the streams of energy that flowed between its scattered threads. And sometimes other minds would wade through those streams, lighting up in its consciousness like solar flares on animal retina.

There was a nest of many such minds nearby, aglow like the core of a galaxy.

And out from that core came a single mind, brilliant and intense, like a comet arcing across the night sky.

Chapter Fifteen.

As soon as they'd seen that cabin, Joanna Hmieleski had known another life was on the line. Now as they headed for the truck, that loss seemed manifested in the dragging depth of snow.

Jacks shoved her at the pa.s.senger door of the couple's pickup. Joanna stood firm, and looked daggers at Jacks'

reflection in the wing mirror.

'You don't have any plan, do you? All this killing is just so you can run away.'

Emilie's reflection twitched, but her eyes were stone.

'Crayford said the winds at the summit would be perfect.

They could have carried the word to everyone. Well, it's all dead now. We're all stuck in this world.' Her sneer was bitter and primitive. 'Survival's all there is. Something you should think about, before you open your mouth again.'

'You know,' Joanna said. 'I should have given him an answer. He deserved one.'

Jacks spat. What are you talking about?'

Your partner. Lagoy. He wanted to know the truth - about extraterrestrials. All those secrets I'm supposed to know because I work for the government.'

Jacks raised the AK like a polearm. ready to slam Joanna against the cab, but she looked trapped, caught between wondering if she could spare the time and whether she could afford not to. She asked, 'So what would you have told him?'

Joanna savoured the woman's pretend disinterest, while her throat burned from the acid medicine she was busy swallowing. 'I would have told him he was wrong,' she said.

'Extraterrestrials arc nothing to be wors.h.i.+pped. There's very little to get religious over. Do you know what they're really like? They're like us. There's good and there's bad. But I don't think any of them have sickened me as much as you do.'

'My heart is bleeding. Open the G.o.dd.a.m.n door and get in.'

Joanna knew she'd effectively lost her audience, but she turned around, slow and deliberate, to aim her hate where it would do the most damage. 'I'm an officer in the United States military. You know, for me a gun is a tool I'd prefer not to use unless I have to. I don't get off on muzzle velocity and cyclic rate of fire. Do you hear what I'm saying?'

Jacks was a fortress. 'So you stand back and let people get killed. How big of you.'

'Fine, so you figured out what's eating me. The difference is, you don't have to tell me where I've gone wrong. I have this thing called a conscience, does that for me on a regular basis. People like you make me regret my calling.'

'So you'd prefer I shoot you now?' Jacks gave a twisted grin and presented the muzzle of the a.s.sault rifle like an offer not to be missed.

'No - no, I guess not.' Joanna turned away. She opened the door and climbed into the pa.s.senger seat, trying to find some way of seeing that grin as a crack in Jacks' armour. 'Maybe some day one of these alien threats will learn to discriminate.

Weed out the trash.'

Jacks kept her gun on Joanna as she drew closer. 'Keep praying for the day,' she sneered.

Joanna saw the b.u.t.t of the AK swinging around to club her skull. Just before lights out.

Leela found it demanding enough simply to walk through this haunted land. Now they were having to run. Or at least to drive their limbs with the power of a run. while the land straggled by with aching sloth.

Kristal had been running a hand gingerly over the surface of a fallen trunk, as if, through the fabric of her gloves, she could feel the last breaths of the dead wood. A few dribbles of blood stained the l.u.s.treless bark. 'Whatever was here,'

Kristal determined, with a cryptic wisdom to rival the Doctor's, 'has gone now. Carried on the winds, and taking its victim with it.'

That was when the sound of the shots reached them through the wailing wind.

The sheer effort of the run seemed to indicate otherwise, but perhaps it was only a few minutes before the dark grey silhouette of the cabin emerged from the snowstorm, its gaping doorway venting all the heat, along with the scent of death.

There was a machine roar, finely chopped and tossed around with the snowflakes. A truck broke from beyond the cabin and skidded into a frantic turn, ploughing a fresh trail between the trees, its headlights edging the branches with ghostly silver.

Kristal cut across the open to the cabin door.

Leela followed her indoors, her pistol braced in both hands.

A female was crying over her dead mate, lagged in his blood from where she had embraced the body. Leela lowered the gun. There was no danger here, only distress.

'Where's the nearest cabin? Miss!' Miss!' Kristal squatted to shake the woman roughly by the shoulders. Leela had seen this before: mourners had to be dragged back to the land of the living if they were to be of any use. Kristal squatted to shake the woman roughly by the shoulders. Leela had seen this before: mourners had to be dragged back to the land of the living if they were to be of any use.

'Help,' the woman bawled feebly, teetering on some inner precipice. 'You have to help.'

Kristal stood, abandoning the woman and s.n.a.t.c.hing up her radio. Her features formed one of the harshest masks Leela had ever seen.

If only Sergeant Garvey 's radio had been an effigy of Kristal Owl Eye Wildcat, he could have wrung its neck. As things were, he had to settle for a mute growl at the crackling voice coming through on the speaker.

'Maybe you're not getting me, Lieutenant,' Lieutenant,' he strained as though shouting the full distance, 'but we've lost Marotta. he strained as though shouting the full distance, 'but we've lost Marotta.

We're still engaged in the search.'

' I know I know.' The radio made the woman sound even more callous. Of course you know, Of course you know, he swore in his head, he swore in his head, I Just told I Just told you. you. 'We don't have a choice, Garvey, so I'm not giving you one. Drop the search and haul a.s.s up to this cabin. Detail two riders to try for an intercept and you and I can argue this face to face - later.' 'We don't have a choice, Garvey, so I'm not giving you one. Drop the search and haul a.s.s up to this cabin. Detail two riders to try for an intercept and you and I can argue this face to face - later.'

Garvey swore again and surveyed the squad, who had been busy gathering around while he'd been on the radio. Landers looked like he knew he wasn't going to like his orders.

d.a.m.n it. Garvey was definitely going to take up voodoo after this was over.

The Doctor bent low behind the visor, teeth clenched like some ivory grille over a jet intake, and braced his frame for another impact. The snowmobile bounced, full throttle, off another ridge and its cha.s.sis rattled, while the Doctor grimly kept it on course.

From a distance, the vehicle might have resembled a skimming stone, clipping the crests of glacial waves. For the Doctor, riding that stone, the reality was a very b.u.mpy ride and a series of rough shocks that any lesser system might have had trouble absorbing. Such was the price of driving as the crow flies, although the Doctor sincerely doubted whether any crow had ever experienced this level of turbulence.

His hat was clamped tightly over his head with the scarf once again, while the tails of his great coat flapped behind him like grey wings. In his pocket, the weight of the graviton distortion sensor loitered on the periphery of his senses. He had already taken a preliminary reading from within the town and he hoped he might soon be able to triangulate on that signal to pinpoint the TARDIS.

But before he could complete that search, he needed to find Leela. And the only way to do that was to drive straight into the heart of the curse that had befallen this mountain.

White death.

Makenzie wondered if it was his own shadow, looming large over Amber's bed, that was keeping her awake. Even so he couldn't bring himself to leave, mindful that his movements might break the fragile emotion in the scene, as a tearful mother stroked the child's hair and urged her to sleep.

Amber seemed oddly at peace, paying scant attention to Martha's caresses and continuing to stare from her pillow out through the frosted pane, like a kid mesmerised by a blank TV screen while she waited for her favourite show to come on.

Drawing a sharp breath, Martha finally stood and let go of Amber's hand with a kiss. Makenzie's gaze fell into that small upturned palm.

And he backed up from the bed. Because he dared not take a closer look.

'I guess I should be going.' he announced, cursing himself for sounding too hurried.

A spark ignited Martha's eyes, but she defused it in good time. She walked briskly from the room and beckoned him out into the hall with a swipe of her hand. Makenzie moved slowly and pulled the door so it was left ajar.

Martha kept her voice to a brittle whisper. 'Isn't it time you thought about your priorities?'

Makenzie was genuinely confounded. Maybe because his mind was still in the bedroom, standing guard over Amber and feeling just as helpless as when he had lost Laurie. His own low voice couldn't hide his impatience. 'What are we talking about here?'

Martha was holding back on a scream of rage. 'The Army.

Your brother, the G.o.dd.a.m.n CIA - Curt lying dead downstairs, for Chrissakes. This town of yours is turning into a nightmare around us, and G.o.d only knows what it's done to her '. She hammered on her heart. 'I'm talking about She hammered on her heart. 'I'm talking about us, us, Mak. Maybe you should be thinking about Mak. Maybe you should be thinking about us. us. About getting us the h.e.l.l out of here. Think fast, Mak, because it's our future hanging in the balance.' About getting us the h.e.l.l out of here. Think fast, Mak, because it's our future hanging in the balance.'

'Martha, I don't have time for-'

'Make time!' Martha seethed and for a moment her eyes couldn't find their target. All too soon they were right back on Makenzie. 'What is it you want, Mak? You want to be a father to this town of yours, or you want to be a father to my girl?'

'I want you, Martha. I want us to be together. But there's things I have to-'

Martha shook her head, her face a portrait of disgust sketched with heavy strokes. 'That's not the right answer, Mak. Go think about it some more, and let me know when you're done. Just don't take too long, is all.'

Makenzie swore and lifted a fist to the doorframe, only to find his eyes drawn by the narrow band of hall light that strayed into Amber's room. He couldn't tell Martha. He couldn't do it.

He considered taking a second look, but there was no need.

He knew what he had seen.

A tiny scratch glistening in Amber's hand. So much like a sliver of ice.

Easing the door closed, he spun and hurried down the hall.

He had to find the Doc.

Night and the blizzard waged war over Melvin Village, and the fighting poured down into the streets, every available s.p.a.ce or niche seized by white drifts or black shadows. For once, darkness was on the losing side.

Morgan gave the order, another window was smashed and another Thermite grenade lobbed into another house. Five so far. Kyle withdrew as the flames erupted inside this one and sent the shadows running. Morgan didn't care for the way Kyle was grinning.

No blaze of glory this. In fact, the opposite.

He turned away so he didn't have to watch the house go up, but the view in the other direction was, if anything, more solemn. Derm and the remains of White Shadow were fencing back the folks of Melvin Village who had gathered to watch the pyrotechnics.

One of the hardest things Morgan had faced was the way they had all gazed on him like some sort of hero when he'd arrived. They looked like they'd been saved and he hadn't the heart - no, the guts - to tell them straight: sorry, that ain't my job. Now they were growing expectant, and that, for people who lived life so slow, amounted to a rapid change of mood. A mood which was even harder to take than their unqualified admiration.

Morgan had to give them something more than bonfires.

Putting on a business face, he walked up beside Derm and raised his hands. 'Okay, folks hear me out.' They had been utterly silent, but he was buying himself useful seconds.

Long before he had joined the Army, Morgan had learned one thing: if you are going to lie, you had best make it a d.a.m.n good one.

'The coyotes have brought some form of infection into town.

We're sanitising the affected households, but in the meantime you folks ought to prepare for a possible evacuation.' Yeah, that would work. 'It might not come to that, but maybe some of you folks can get organised, gather all the vehicles, fuel and supplies you can, a.s.semble them alongside our convoy.'

Already they were murmuring, happier with some action being taken.

For the moment it was make-work. But. since he didn't really know the truth, the story about the coy-dogs didn't exactly qualify-as a bona fide lie.

The cold mask that Kristal had donned went by the name of necessity. Necessity, which made its wearer at once less than human and superhuman. Kristal trusted Leela to recognise it as such, leading a swift run through the woodlands behind the cabin, seeking out, like a hunter seeks the spoor of a deer, the warmth and life that signalled another lonely home.

Kristal had done her best for the bereaved woman, and Garvey's squad would not be overlong in coming to take care of her. Meanwhile Kristal's mind was running over the prey's escape route, calculating how much time they would have to make up even if-Angular silhouettes in the blizzard answered the prayers she had offered up on the run.

Directing Leela around to the right, she charged around to the driver's side of the Cherokee, parked close to the A-frame shack. A couple of spare jerry cans were racked on the rear.

Well, they wouldn't be needing the extra fuel, she hoped, patting the vehicle's flank like a good horse and clambering in behind the wheel. Now all she had to do was hotwire the thing - p.r.o.nto - as Leela climbed in and heaved her door shut.

After that it would be a matter of an insane drive to catch up with the fugitive. And after that, since n.o.body could risk firing on the pick-up, their options would be severely limited.

A spasm of cold and fatigue coursed down Emilie Jacks'

spine, and her eyelids were shutters that couldn't make up their mind. She smacked her elbow against the door for a swift dose of pain - her preferred brand of uppers.

She had eased up on the gas right after that first skid, but even the trundling pace wasn't much help in this mess.