Doctor Who_ The Tomorrow Windows Part 27

But what if their world was past saving?

Dittero had been right. Estebol would soon be a vacated property. If there were no people left, there would be n.o.body to drive the cars. The fuel would run out and they would all die, not with a bang, but with the stutter of an exhausted motor engine.

These girls, they weren't fighting to save their world, they were fighting to make it end sooner sooner. They were trying to put it out of its misery.

Kera's head tilted to one side as she examined him. 'You know there is something strange about you. . . '

'Is there?' Fitz laughed nervously. 'What?'

'Your voice. . . and your,' she looked at his chest, his chin, and then his crotch, 'body.'

'Ah, yeah, well,' Fitz smiled, 'that's because I'm a bloke.'

'A bloke?' said Kera. 'What is. . . a bloke?'

'Ah,' said Fitz, embarra.s.sed. 'It's kind of hard to explain.'

143.

The concrete flyover stretched above the expressway. The arctic cold reminded Fitz of his trek through Siberia. He took shallow breaths. G.o.d knows what this atmosphere was doing to him. If only he had some sort of filter to breathe through on this planet, smoking was probably the healthy option.

Kera halted and waved the others to her side. Fitz squeezed into the gap between the crash barrier and the wall. His foot sank into an icy puddle.

Resting his elbows on the wall, hugging his jacket around him, Fitz peered out across the motorway, the wind making his eyes sting.

The only colour came from the steep lamps and the lights of the cars that streamed beneath them. The congested traffic created a constant, doleful rumble.

Not all of the cars were moving, however. On the outside lanes Fitz could make out parked cars. There were hundreds of abandoned, scorched-out wrecks.

Kera unzipped a holdall and pa.s.sed Fitz a petrol can. He caught a sickly whiff of petrol. Kera then pa.s.sed out more cans among her group. Damp rags had been twisted into the spouts.

'What, are we playing pooh sticks?' joked Fitz. He couldn't make out Kera's expression. At least, not until she clicked a cigarette lighter and her features appeared in its orange light. She s.h.i.+elded the flame from the rain and held it away from the can.

A screech cut through the darkness. At one end of the bridge, two headlights rose out of the fog. The beams picked out the rain, spattering into puddles.

Fitz looked back the other way. Another set of headlamps halted. They had been discovered. They were trapped.

'Now!' screamed Kera, holding out the lighter. One by one, the women dipped their fuses into the flame until they caught alight. The material burned quickly, dripping soggy lumps of smouldering fabric.

Fitz threw away his petrol can and climbed back over the barrier. He felt horribly sick. His head span with fear.

The cars were approaching from either side of the overpa.s.s. Their tyres sloshed in the rain. They twisted, left and right.

The girls pitched their petrol bombs over the wall and on to the traffic below. Fitz couldn't see the result. He only heard the heart-thudding roar and the screech of traffic. Metal screamed. Explosions thundered. Gla.s.s shattered.

There was the ear-splitting sc.r.a.pe and rattle of car against concrete.

A fireball blossomed, unrolling from the wreckage below like a mushroom, hurling sharp, smoking debris high into the air.

Kera was already handing out more bombs.

To Fitz, it sounded as though the traffic below was screaming in pain. He backed away, away from the chaos. His legs protested, his joints locked with 144 the cold.

As they neared their prey the two approaching cars swerved more violently.

Fitz could see the girls' faces caught in the headlights. They had never seemed so pale, so deathlike.

Fitz turned and scrambled away from the girls, debris raining all about him.

He dragged himself on to the opposite wall of the bridge.

Looking down, there was a sheer drop of sixty feet.

He turned back. The two cars slammed into the barrier.

Fitz wished he'd looked away.

The barrier buckled inwards, crus.h.i.+ng the girls. Their bodies flailed like crash-test dummies. Then the cars ploughed on through the harrier, smas.h.i.+ng into the concrete. The wall collapsed and the cars' engines shrieked as they flew off the bridge, diving into the inferno below.

In response, another fireball ploughed up into the sky. Fitz felt the rush of hot wind upon his face. His skin p.r.i.c.kled. He hovered for a moment, unsure what to do.

There was nothing left of them. He was alone.

He dropped to his knees and crawled off the wall. He could barely stand, his legs were shaking so much.

So he ran.

How many hours had pa.s.sed, Fitz didn't know. His first priority had been to get off the road. Once off the bridge, he had swung himself over a crash barrier and dropped six feet on to the walkway below. Then he had kept on running.

The city had been the same wherever he went. A square of amber-lit roads intersected at the corner of every block. Everywhere there were the same neglected buildings and faded billboards. He soon lost all sense of direction, but he couldn't stop, he couldn't turn back. He had to get away.

He found shelter in a boarded-up doorway. He doubled up and coughed up phlegm, which was a relief because he'd thought he was going to vomit. He stayed like that until the pain subsided and he could stamp some feeling back into his feet. Then, his hands on his knees, he lifted his gaze.

Rain dripped from above. The street was empty. Boarded-up shops ran the length of the road, some scrawled with graffiti, others pasted with sodden posters.

Something slithered along the ground nearby. It was about the size of a rat, but it had a terrier-like face. It twitched, as though disturbed, and darted away.

There was the screech of rubber on tarmac. Seconds later, the shop opposite was picked out in a s.h.i.+fting glare. The windows that still had gla.s.s reflected 145 the two slit eyes as they swept their beams across the road.

Fitz ducked out of sight and shoved at the door. The lock clattered. He shouldered the wood again and the rotten timber gave way. He crawled through the hole, and into the nothingness.

He waited for a moment. The light flared outside, then died away The car gave a screech and was gone.

The smell here was different a hospital smell of bleach and disinfectant.

Fitz ventured deeper into the building. His footsteps clinked in the gloom he guessed from the acoustics that he was in a corridor. He kept one hand ahead, patting his way along the wall. The bricks had been smoothed over with paint. The wall stopped and Fitz felt his way down some steps.

Fitz didn't know why, but he had to keep on going. His fingers fumbled upon something familiar. It was a metal box, a wire running from its base. He decided to risk it. The room flickered into electric light.

It was a factory floor.

The room was vast another deserted warehouse building with a high ceiling supported by steel pillars. The remaining bulbs illuminated abandoned, rusted machines and a conveyor belt. Workbenches, pigeonhole units and huge metal drums cluttered the hall. Everything was draped in cobwebs as thick as sheets.

Fitz recognised it from doc.u.mentary films an a.s.sembly line. As the cars moved along the conveyor belt, the workers would add to the cha.s.sis, lowering in an engine on a chain, bolting on doors and so forth.

But this a.s.sembly line didn't make cars.

It had been halted in mid production. So the objects on the conveyor were incomplete, at the various stages of construction.

Overhead, dangling from hooks, frosted with mould, were dozens of human arms. Bloodless like frozen meat. Each had the shoulder bone exposed, revealing the gristle and flesh.

Behind them, there was a forest of legs, suspended from the ceiling like stalact.i.tes.

The metal drums contained not machine parts, but hands, each severed at the wrist bone. The workbenches on either side of the conveyor belt were littered with unfinished sections of arm, leg and neck.

Looking at the conveyor belt, Fitz could follow each step of the process.

They would begin with the torso. Then the lower limbs would be attached, followed by the arms and hands. And then. . .

Something Kera had said to him clicked in Fitz's mind. He could hear her voice.

'The levels of carbon monoxide and lead. . . we grew sick. Our children were 146 146 stillborn, or deformed. We were dying out.'

So the people of Estebol had found a new way to reproduce.

Fitz staggered out into the night, and this time he was sick.

He had to get away. Before the cars found him.

The wind grew in strength. Fitz wished he'd had some of the insulation coats the girls had been wearing. They'd keep out the cold. And hide the joins.

Fitz forced himself to move. Every movement made his limbs ache and his bruises throb. The road was slick with water, the rain churning the puddles.

Lights moved in the windows. Fitz ducked behind a street lamp as he heard the wail of an approaching engine. He kept out of sight as the first car sluiced past.

The second car, giving chase, skidded. Fitz watched as it slid across the road, its wheels gus.h.i.+ng up sprays, its body in a spin. It slammed sideways into the wall and halted. Its lights dimmed and its engine died.

Looking left and right, Fitz crossed the road, his body stooped and each step a splash. As he came closer to the car, he slowed.

He had to get away.

Fitz approached the driver's door.

Inside was a woman, as gaunt and pale as Kera had been. She had a slit in the centre of her forehead that dribbled blood. From the way her head was lolling, Fitz knew her neck had broken.

Taking one last look round, Fitz forced open the door. The driver's body flopped into the road. Fitz lifted her legs free of the car, clambered inside and slammed the door shut.

The rumble of the city died away. He was alone, safe, in silence. He leaned back into the warm leatherette.

Everything was different, and yet familiar. Fitz let his fingers rest upon the steering wheel. It felt good. He let his fingers slide around its circ.u.mference.

Fitz twisted the key in the ignition. The engine turned over. He squashed the accelerator pedal and the revs built up. The outside street was illuminated as the headlamps came to life.

He would be safe in a car. They would never catch him here.

He examined the controls. There was everything he needed.

'They become part of the automobile. They're no longer one of us, but. . . one of them.' of them.'

He gripped the gear stick and jammed it into reverse. Slipping the clutch, he reversed the car into the road. Then he twisted the wheel and floored the accelerator.

147.

As the car jerked forward, Fitz relaxed. Warm air from the engine blasted out of the vents.

He scrubbed the condensation from the windows and switched on the wipers. The spots of rain on the windscreen were smeared away.

'They forget they were ever human.'

Outside, high-rise apartments slid by, one identical building after another.

Fitz followed the line of street lamps, the amber glows appearing as a chain of floating lanterns that detached itself, piece by piece, as he approached.

The dashboard grew lighter. Fitz checked his rear-view mirror. A car was following him. Then its headlamps flared as it turned off down a side street.

It was the perfect place to hide.

'The people in the cars, why don't they just get out?'

'Once someone is part of an automobile, they're lost.'

Fitz laughed, as he followed the curve of the road up on to the motorway.

The car was taking him where it wanted to go.

Ahead were the red tail lights. He followed them. He could follow them forever. He would never have to stop. He would never have to leave the car All he needed to do was drive.

'There is no going back.'

'Mr Kreiner,' said Dittero, leaning forward to tap him on the shoulder. 'It's time we returned to Utopia.'

Fitz kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. He changed up a gear. The rocking of the car made his head nod.

'Mr Kreiner.' Dittero prodded him on the shoulder again. 'We must leave.

'No.' Fitz's voice was low and slurred. 'I'm driving driving.' His gaze remained fixed on the trail of red lights ahead.