Doctor Who: Drift (25 page)

Their affair seemed stupid, childish, pathetic. Everything was pain. And Gary was free.

Then she remembered his irritating obsession with his radio.

Amber slowly uncupped her hands from her ears. The coyote out on the landing had fallen silent. Maybe it was dead.

The cries of the coyote had been so extreme, she’d endured them with her ears covered and her back wedged firmly against the door as though she might actually bar the sound from entering her sanctuary.

Tremulously now, she turned and stared at the door.

‘Amber!’ The voice was the velvet bass of the stranger. ‘Stay where you are! Lock yourself in if you can!’

Amber wiped a sleeve across her eyes. She grabbed for the bolt and drove it home hard. ‘Ow!’ She snatched her hand back and sucked at where the metal had pinched her skin.

Thinking, glancing about, she went to the wash-basin. The medicine cabinet had one of those mirrored doors and in it she could see how pale and drawn she was from all her crying. Sniffing, she eased her hand from her mouth and looked down to inspect the damage.

The mark was minute, without the redness she’d expect.

But it burned all the same. It burned
cold.

Where the unfortunate Bertelli should have landed, there had been nothing left of him to hit the floor. The Doctor wasted no time after that, dancing spryly sideways, and calling to Amber as he launched himself up the stairs three at a time.

Below and behind him, Spence and Makenzie had been manoeuvring clear of the ice storm that had erupted in Bertelli’s place.

‘What in the name of
God?’
Spence was practically screaming.

‘Take it out!’ bellowed Lieutenant Beard, on the edge of panic. ‘Take it out!’

The Doctor stole a hurried look along the landing and saw what must have been the last thing Bertelli had seen: the very thing Bertelli had become. For the Doctor, it was like gazing into the microcosm he had studied under the lens.

Before him, and now down in the lounge, it was magnified and translated into a livid mass of crystalline tendrils, shooting in every direction.

An electrical storm, frozen and re-frozen in a shifting nexus of white fury.

Some of the tendrils dug like spindly claws into the bathroom door.

An automatic rifle cracked fire. The Doctor glanced downstairs.

Spence was firing point blank into the maelstrom. Parts of the chaotic ice sculpture shattered like glass, but Beard was having to duck out of the way as most of the rounds shot straight through and blew the staircase to splinters. The Doctor threw up a hand to shield his face.

He caught a motion from along the landing.

The ice elemental fired forks of frozen lightning straight at him.

It didn’t
move
.

It consumed itself. Particles of itself, burned up like white coals feeding a neural furnace, to be ferried along crystal threads and restructured as matter at the opposite end, in whichever direction it wished to travel.

A cycle as fast as thought. Inevitably, in that cycle, some energy was expended.

Energy that had to be replaced.

Even the Doctor’s reflexes were pushed to save him, diving aside as the twin forks of iced lightning flashed through the air. Sparks of frost played over the wall behind him.

‘Quick, man! A flare!’ Huddled close to the banister, he snapped his fingers at Lieutenant Beard. ‘Amber!’ he shouted up the stairs. ‘Do exactly as I say! Turn on the hot water -

full!’

There was no answer, but as the Doctor caught the flare that Beard tossed his way, he
hoped
he heard the rush of water churning into a large bath. Difficult to tell, with the bursts of automatic fire pulverising the manic ice sculpture and the lower stairs alike.

Above, the icicle sparks were drawing an erratic spider’s web through the painted wood, sending out strand after strand from where they had struck the wall, reaching for Beard, who was determinedly breaking open another flare for himself.

‘Get everybody out of here!’ the Doctor yelled at him, breaking the head off his flare. The two flares erupted like synchronised volcanoes. ‘Now!’

Packing the man down the stairs, the Doctor was up and advancing on the micro-blizzard, the flare thrust forward to spout its flame at the heart of the beast. A hundred crystal tines snatched back, like a child’s fingers from a roaring hearth.

Each thread tried to feel its way around the heat, desperate to embrace him.

Amber needed no second prompt: white lines were creeping through the crack between door and frame. She grasped the faucet in both hands and wheeled it round.

Behind her, ice was racing across the wall in knotted scratches.

Hot water splashed up from the tub and Amber narrowly-avoided a scalding as she dropped the plug into place. Done, she retreated to the window and prayed for the steam to come wafting up from the tub like a fog bank. Like whenever Mom tried to run a bath.

At least, that way, she wouldn’t be able to see the ice, eating up the wallpaper in tracks like fevered sketches of winter trees.

Captain Shaw vaguely recalled a Laurel and Hardy classic, where Stan was guarding a trench during WWI and was left forgotten; cut to ten years later, the hapless sentry has dug himself a deep ravine with all his pacing back and forth.

Morgan looked down at his own tracks in the snow and he could see where he was headed if he didn’t snap out of it soon.

It wasn’t so funny when you had men and women out there in the worst storm this side of the birth of Christ - who he hadn’t heard from for what seemed like the same length of time.

Every so often, Morgan would hop up into the CPV and bug O’Neill for some news.

Morgan kicked the crown off a pile of snow. Ben McKim was long overdue.

And where in hell was Kristal? Joanna?

‘Sir!’ Kev O’Neill poked his head out from the CPV. ‘Think you’ll want to take this!’

Morgan leaped aboard, giving his comms guy scant time to back away. ‘Which team?’

O’Neill passed him the mic. ‘CB. sir. Civilian was attacked, sir. by some screwy bitch with an AK and a hostage. She described Lieutenant Hmieleski, I swear. Sir.’

Morgan clicked to transmit. He mouthed a question at O’Neill:
Name?

‘Lowell, sir. Charlene Lowell.’

‘All right, Charlene. Cavalry’s here. Take a breath, then tell me your position.’

Now
they could be getting somewhere.

Makenzie Shaw charged from the Walsh house in a daze, feeling like a criminal for leaving Amber inside. Trusting that Doctor guy was the toughest choice he’d ever made.

Lieutenant Beard, in any case, had shoved him outside, backing through the doorway after him. suhmachinegun levelled and shaking ever so slightly. Makenzie aimed his revolver at the same point. He jumped - and nearly pulled the trigger.

Spence was there in the doorway - but he was dead. Or dying.

Makenzie hoped it was the former.

The grenadier’s face was fixed in a scream that never made it into the world of sound, his eyes as wide as they’d go; and what was left of him was enmeshed in barbed threads of ice.

They whipped around him and through him and the man diminished with every second.

The Lieutenant gave an anguished, almost animal yell and fired into the face of his trooper. Makenzie told himself there was no life there to kill. Even as he fired his own two shots.

It was his turn to grab hold of Beard’s arm and haul him into a retreat as the remains of the corpse thudded onto the steps. The ice wires thrashed a while like beached eels and lay still. Makenzie tried to ignore them, searching the second floor windows for any sign.

‘Sir!’

A White Shadow man was hopping the fence onto the snow-covered lawn.

‘Kyle!’ Beard bellowed at him. ‘Get your ass over here and put a Willie Pete in that house!’

The grenadier nodded fiercely. ‘Sir, yessir!’ He was already ripping a stubby nosed grenade from his belt and popping it into the tube under the barrel of his rifle.

‘Wait!’ Makenzie waved him back, and frantically searched the windows again.

There! Above the porch, the legs of a bathroom stool smashed through a frosted window. Within seconds, the stool was tossed aside and the Doctor was helping Amber through and out onto the roof of the porch. He kept a firm hold of her as he clambered out and slid down the roof ploughing great clumps of snow with his heels. He hit the ground and rolled like a paratrooper, Amber locked in his arms and shielded from the fell. Then he was up and she was running with him for the fence.

‘It’s all yours, gentlemen! Be my guest!’

The Doc had taken the scene in like that, fully up to date in the space of a blink. The grenadier, loaded up and sighting keenly along his barrel, waited for the word from his senior officer Beard practically exploded himself: ‘Torch it! NOW!’

The grenade launcher coughed, blowing in a window before the whole interior was alive with a blinding white inferno.

Willie Peter: white phosphorus.

Makenzie couldn’t think of anything more appropriate.

Squatting down, he gratefully took Amber from the Doctor, and pulled her into a hug. which she didn’t even think to fight.

* * *

Melody jumped out of the car in perfect synch with her partner, and they trotted over to join the party watching the savage flames spitting and hissing out of every window, as the snow fell over the scene like white ash.

‘Ah!’ the Doctor rounded on them. ‘Just the people!’

‘Well,’ Melody shrugged affably. ‘Parker here was concerned for your safety.’

‘Was not,’ Parker mumbled childishly.

‘Well, naturally I’m flattered,’ the Doctor said, barging past and making a beeline for the 4WD. ‘In any case, your help couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune moment.

Lieutenant Beard, run ahead and give a full report to the Captain, won’t you? A
full
report,’ he stressed, looking over his shoulder and throwing open a passenger door. ‘And do tell him I’d like to borrow one of his snowmobiles, there’s a good fellow.’

The Lieutenant appeared to evaluate the order a moment, then led his grenadier away after a firm but silent assent.

Melody traded looks with Parker, and hoped he was going to maintain his cool after his earlier slip.

The Doctor barely acknowledged their departure, too busy rummaging around in the back seat of the 4x4. ‘Meanwhile, we have a young patient here who could use plenty of rest and I’m sure you two won’t mind conducting her back to the hotel.’ Apparently satisfied, he beckoned to the Police Chief.

Makenzie Shaw obliged, steering the girl tenderly to the truck.

‘ Hey, Doc, what do you
suppose
you’re doing?’ Parker covered the ground in a few steps. ‘
If
you don’t mind me asking.’

Melody sighed and wondered why Parker’s hackles could never rise quietly. Obviously the few quiet words she’d had with him after the previous quarrel hadn’t taught him anything. She decided to position herself close, in case Parker needed a kick to shut him up.

‘I don’t mind you asking, Agent Theroux, but it could be a costly delay for what amounts to an obvious answer. The fact is,’ the Doctor was lecturing Parker severely, ‘someone needs to warn those people up on that mountain just what they could be facing.’

Just as soon as he was done being dark and ominous, the Doctor slipped seamlessly into considerate paternal mode, bundling Amber gently into the back of the vehicle. ‘There you go, young lady. Try not to sit on the nice agents’

computer.’

The girl looked shell-shocked and Parker, Melody had to give him credit, lowered his voice for her sake. ‘Doc, we need to discuss exactly what
It
is.’

The Doctor scowled, but his tone emerged as vaguely con-ciliatory. ‘Of course, neither of you have seen what we’re facing - not its true extent. I doubt I have. But I think we can stop searching for unseen enemies in the mist. The mist and the enemy are one and the same.’ His gaze wandered out into the blizzard, and it was some moments finding its way back to them. ‘Now, listen, I’m relying on you two, because you appear to be in the know.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

Melody clenched her teeth behind a civil smile. She wished Parker would just play it cool. ‘It’s true, Doctor,’ Melody interceded hurriedly, ‘we’ve had more than our fair share of
special
assignments over the years. Um, what sort of tests do you want us to conduct?’

‘Everything you can think of,’ the Doctor declared, hovering over Melody. ‘I’m sure Corporal Pydych can help you out in the laboratory if you need it.’ Then he motioned to the Police Chief again, encouraging him to sit with the girl in the vehicle. ‘Perhaps you’d best look after Amber, there’s a good chap. She’s had a nasty shock.’

Melody wandered over, putting a lot of effort into her patient tone, but feeling free to speak openly with Makenzie tucked out of earshot. ‘Okay, but Doctor, are you implying this
ice
is
intelligent?
Because I haven’t seen it display any evidence of rational thought.’