Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men Part 30

'How did I know,' said the Doctor, 'that whatever devious and overcomplicated plan you were hatching, if you'll pardon the pun, it would involve someone being tied up?' He peered more closely. 'It's Miss Baber, isn't it? Good evening.' He doffed his hat.

'Very amusing,' said Hatch as Slater finished his search of the two men.

'They're clean,' he said.

'Good,' continued Hatch. 'If they move, you know what to do.' He turned back to the Doctor. 'You shouldn't have interfered, Doctor,' he said sadly.

'Couldn't help it,' noted the Doctor. 'It's my job.'

'Interference?'

'Hmm.' The Doctor ignored Hatch, and walked around the table to the silent surgeon. 'How do you do?' he said holding out a hand. 'I'm the Doctor.'

'Nicholas Bevan,' said the surgeon instantly. 'Erm, a doctor of what, exactly?'

'Oh, this and that,' replied the Doctor. 'What's your speciality? Genetics?'

Bevan cast a nervous glance at Hatch and then back at the Doctor. 'You've heard of me, perhaps?'

'No,' said the Doctor. He leaned over the operating table and gave Rebecca a rea.s.suring pat on the head. 'Don't worry, my dear,' he said. 'We'll have you out of there in a jiffy.'

'If you hurt her...' began Trevor, his voice overwhelmed with emotion. The chauffeur gave a menacing flick of the blade, and Trevor shrank back towards the door.

'She's more interested in monkeys than people, Trev,' said Hatch. 'Has she never told you?' He pushed the Doctor away from the table. 'She's screwed me up one time too many.

And, family or no family, n.o.body screws with me.' Hatch smiled. 'Pardon my my pun.' pun.'

'Not even Jack i' the Green?' asked the Doctor quickly.

Hatch spun around, his eyes ablaze. 'What dost thou know of Jack i' the Green?' he asked, his voice guttural and rough.

'Not as much as I'd like to,' said the Doctor. 'I'd really like to meet him. Could you arrange that?'

'Old Jack don't be needing the likes of 'ee,' said Hatch.

'Are you all right, Matt?' asked Bevan.

Hatch turned his head slowly towards his friend. 'Fine,' he said in his own voice. 'Why do you ask...?'

'Jack,' said the Doctor. Hatch's attention snapped back to him. 'I want to talk to Jack. Are you you Jack?' Jack?'

'I am he, and he is me...'

'...and we are all together,' continued the Doctor.

'Don't play games,' said Hatch. 'I have the cure, Doctor.'

'What are you talking about?' shouted Denman, but the Doctor shushed him to silence.

The cure?'

'The final obliteration of Jack's taint,' said Hatch, as though that explained everything.

'The people of Hexen Bridge cannot reproduce outside of that environment,' stated the Doctor. 'And you've isolated the mutated gene that controls that.'

Hatch smiled. 'We took genetic material and ova from Rebecca, made certain changes to the DNA, and synthesised a serum.'

'So you'll be able to fill the world with little Hatches?'

queried the Doctor. 'I'm delighted for you, if somewhat horrified for everyone else.'

'You don't understand. Sterility is only part of the problem.'

Hatch tapped the side of his head. 'We humans have so much potential up here that we simply do not use.' He smiled a grey smile. 'Like Jack, I abhor waste.'

'And the drug we saw in the water supply in Liverpool liberates untapped psychic ability,' said the Doctor.

'Yes. We've combined a concentrated version of that drug with the new serum.'

'You mustn't use it,' said the Doctor. 'Jack will destroy you.'

'Doctor,' said Hatch softly. 'You're making a habit of being too late. I took the drug ten minutes before you arrived. I now have the power of the universe flowing through me!'

There was a sudden crackle in the air, like the release of static electricity. The Doctor's skin felt p.r.i.c.kly and hot.

'You've used alien technology,' he said.

There were worried looks on the faces of Trevor and Denman, and even Slater was relaxing his grip on the knife.

The vibration increased until it began to pound like an industrial piston. The air around Hatch was glowing. His skin was a spectral pale, his eyes burning fire across the room and into the Doctor's mind.

'I am he and he is me.'

The others fell to their knees, clutching their heads, screaming. Rebecca Baber thrashed wildly against her restraints, her eyes bulging.

The Doctor resisted for as long as he could, his face a mask of pain. By the time he crumpled to the floor, overwhelmed by the a.s.sault, Denman, Trevor, Slater, Rebecca and Bevan had long since succ.u.mbed to Hatch's power.

The humming died away. Hatch stepped over the bodies and walked out of the room.

PART FOUR.

MAD JACK'S EYES

CHAPTER 13.

THE VACANT ZONE.

Ace threw herself at the scarecrow, dragging it away from Joanna. Her fingers dug deep into the creature's eye sockets, stabbing into the cloth and the rotting vegetation beneath. At least, that's what Ace told herself it was. When she pulled her hand free, her fingers were wet and coloured reddish-brown.

In the car, Joanna was screaming. Steven stood rooted to the spot, his mouth hanging open.

Ace rolled free of the scarecrow, aiming a kick up at the creature's head. There was a satisfying thump of impact - Ace imagined the brain rolling around inside the cloth-covered head - and the creature stumbled backward, arms flailing.

Ace looked down the road. More scarecrows, cross shapes against the rising sun, were lumbering slowly towards them.

Joanna was babbling hysterically.

'Get her out of the car!' shouted Ace.

'Then what?' asked Steven.

'Run!'

They ran.

A hundred yards down the road, Ace looked back. The scarecrows had stopped beside their fallen colleague, pulling the creature to its feet. It was an almost pathetic sight.

Ace grinned. Then she remembered that she was being chased through an English village by killer scarecrows and that wiped the smile from her face. 'I think we've got their attention,' she said, breaking back into a trot after Steven and Joanna.

'Jack's sent them,' wailed Joanna. 'We're all going to die.'

'Not if I can help it,' said Ace with a grim determination, glancing at Steven. 'Come on, let's get to your parents' place.

We should be safe enough inside.'

Steven grimaced. 'I'm glad you're so confident.'

'I'm not, I'm optimistic,' replied Ace, honestly. 'But they they don't know that.' don't know that.'

The harvest had begun.

The stickmen dragged the weak and vulnerable from their beds and on to the green, where alien fronds reached out hungrily. Jack ate what he could, and what he could not eat, he used. used. His hollow men then turned to the wicked and the arrogant. His hollow men then turned to the wicked and the arrogant.

Jack i' the Green was a kindly father, longing to shower gifts upon his children. Now, at last he could - the gifts of death and screaming insanity.

All the while the black stain grew, tentacles pulling themselves from the ground, flailing blindly in the air, then burrowing down again. The scarecrows marched relentlessly as Jack expanded, reaching out towards the surrounding villages.

Bob Matson woke with a start. It was as if he'd had a sudden dream of falling from a great height, but the only images that penetrated his fogged unconscious were of the stickmen and the spreading black stain.

That hadn't really happened, had it? He hadn't really been... expelled?

The mattress beneath his back was thin and hard, the sheets provided little warmth.

Bob Matson sat up on the park bench, the dirty pages of newspaper falling from his legs like layers of sloughed skin.

Where the h.e.l.l was he?

Matson looked around him at an unfamiliar expanse of short gra.s.s and flower beds. Beyond the park were tall buildings and countless rows of red-brick semis. A feeling of claustrophobia, such as he had never experienced in Hexen Bridge, washed over him.

He had had been banished. He remembered now with grim clarity the flight from the scarecrows that had pursued him until he was well clear of the village. And, if his dream was to be believed, he'd been granted only a temporary stay of execution. been banished. He remembered now with grim clarity the flight from the scarecrows that had pursued him until he was well clear of the village. And, if his dream was to be believed, he'd been granted only a temporary stay of execution.

He was so alone.

He pulled the s.h.i.+rt collar up around his neck and stared at the first light of the rising sun, s.h.i.+vering.

Eventually the noise, the incessant ringing in his ears...

faded.

Denman picked himself up from the floor, cradling his throbbing head and swallowing down the feelings of nausea.