Doctor Who - I Am a Dalek (6 page)

The Doctor was thrown backwards, hurled into the sea. He just had time to notice a fish swimming by before he blacked out.

43

KATE WALKED THROUGH THE market, flinching from contact with the humans bustling around her. There were other animals too, flying pests and filthy dogs. The scents of the food products around her were vile. Nutrition was a need, not something to be enjoyed flabbily.

She felt flooded with strength. ‘I will be unstoppable!’ she shouted out loud.

A few of the humans in the market around her laughed.

‘Oh, will you?’ said a flat, dull voice behind her.

Kate turned. She knew the voice. It was Serena, shopping bag under her big fat arm.

‘Serena,’ said Kate, relishing each syllable of the name.

‘Do you realise you’re sacked?’ Serena said, pushing her stupid glasses up her nose. ‘I didn’t swallow that road accident story for one minute. And now here you are, lunchtime, mooching around the market. Had your hair done, I see. It’s been mad this morning. De-lays in mattress delivery all over Liverpool and the North-East, people screaming my ears off in Scouse and Geordie. “She’ll come in,” I kept telling myself. “Even she can’t be that irresponsible. Perhaps she was actually telling the truth. . . ”’

Kate reached out and clamped her hand around Serena’s throat.

‘Stop your prattling!’

Serena’s eyes bulged. Her fleshy, wet mouth struggled for air. One by one, the people in the market who were near enough to see what was happening moved towards Kate. They were screaming for her to let go, but she ignored them and tightened her grip on Serena. She felt gloriously happy.

‘I will never have to worry about you again,’ she spat, turning Serena from side to side. ‘To think, this morning, I was worried about you. Worried what you might say. Worried about my job. Worried 45

about clearing my debts.’ She threw back her head and laughed joyfully. ‘And you were nothing!’

‘Please, Kate. . . ’ Serena pleaded.

‘Put her down, Kate!’ shouted another voice.

Rose ran up to her, pushing through the astonished crowd.

Kate smirked, shaking Serena like a doll. ‘Why?’

‘Look, there must be something human left inside you,’ Rose told her. ‘Your mum and dad, you live with them, don’t you?’

‘That is not relevant!’

Rose pointed to Serena, who seemed to be on the point of passing out. ‘What would your mum say about that? Could you kill that woman and look your mum in the eye?’

The words stirred something in Kate. She imagined her mother’s horrified face. A sliver of conscience pricked at her and she relaxed her grip.

Serena dropped to the ground, then got up and stumbled off.

Meanwhile, Kate sank to her knees. ‘Rose, please help me.’

The Doctor woke in the water. At first he was only distantly aware of murky shapes and a feeling of floating contentment. Then he remembered.

He shook himself and swam up towards the light. He burst out of the water, taking in great lungfuls of air. The sonic screwdriver was bobbing in the shallow water a few feet away. He reached out and snatched it up, shook it dry, then looked about, treading water.

He’d been knocked back a fair distance from the cliff edge. He found the landmark of the crane with its wrecking ball on the skyline and looked down.

There was no sign of the Dalek.

He swam over to where it had fallen and cursed under his breath.

The casing had repelled him – and stolen electrical energy from the sonic screwdriver. The Dalek was active now, its mind fully formed.

Its instinct was to exterminate. What would it do next?

His mouth ran dry. ‘Frank,’ he said. ‘Frank, I’m so sorry.’

He started climbing up the cliff.

46

∗ ∗ ∗

Frank couldn’t help laughing. He pictured his wife getting in tonight, asking how things had gone at the dig, and him replying that there’d been nothing unusual. He’d just met a doctor who could travel in space and time, and seen the corpse of an alien robot from the planet Skaro. Oh yeah, and that Doctor, he would be popping in later.

He was on the train back home, his canvas bag on the seat next to him. Despite what he’d said earlier, he did have questions for the Doctor. He wanted the truth – and at the same time he didn’t. The Doctor would probably turn out to be just some bloke called Steve with a weird sense of humour.

Frank chuckled again. He found himself almost more willing to believe that the Doctor
was
an alien.

He didn’t know why, but there’d been something reassuring about the Doctor. In their brief time together, he’d seemed to represent something timeless. He had given off the comforting sense that no matter how bad the world got, things were going to be OK. Like a parent to a child.

The train ground to a shrieking halt. That was nothing unusual.

He heard sighs from the three or four other passengers in the com-partment. Frank stared idly out of the window, into someone’s back garden, where washing was flying on the line.

Something made a loud clang on top of the train carriage. This time Frank looked up, startled.

A section of the roof was bulging out, as if an incredibly powerful magnet was pulling at it. The other passengers stood up.

Frank looked towards his canvas bag, his heart pounding.

The roof splintered open, a jagged hole revealing a patch of bright blue sky.

Frank clutched the canvas bag to him. Though he was terrified, a small part of his brain rejoiced. The Doctor
was
for real. There
were
aliens.

Through the gap in the roof the Dalek descended. It gave off power, strength, sinister life. It spoke in a throaty electronic rasp, one syllable at a time, like an old computer in a 1950s B-movie. ‘I have detected 47

the weapon in this vehicle. Where is the weapon? Which of you has the weapon?’

One of the other passengers, a girl of about fifteen, screamed and the Dalek zoomed across to her. ‘Answer! Answer!’

Frank’s hand carefully unbuckled the straps on the bag. Perhaps there was some way he could use the weapon against the Dalek.

The Dalek caught the movement of his hand. ‘You will attach the weapon.’

Frank pulled out the gun, his hand shaking, and trained it right at the Dalek. His fingers felt desperately for some kind of trigger, a button or anything. . .

‘Attach the weapon now! Obey!’ screeched the Dalek.

Frank hesitated.

The Dalek’s sucker grabbed the girl and flung her down the carriage like a bag of rubbish. ‘Obey or the young female dies!’

Frank staggered forward.

‘Attach the weapon!’ ordered the Dalek. ‘Obey!’

Frank remembered the Doctor’s description of the Daleks – the most evil things in the universe. He couldn’t do it. But then he heard the young girl sobbing at the other end of the carriage. He couldn’t not do it.

He walked up and slotted the weapon into its housing. It clicked neatly back in place.

‘The Doctor will stop you,’ he heard himself say. ‘I know him. He’ll stop you. He’ll save us.’

The Dalek paused before replying, ‘The Doctor is not here.’

It raised the gun and Frank closed his eyes. The Dalek fired and a bolt of energy shot out.

Frank screamed, and for a second his body was suspended in the air, his skeleton showing through the dazzling beam of unearthly light.

Then the Dalek turned and picked off the other passengers one by one. It screamed with pleasure and joy, ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!

Exterminate!’

48

POLICE CARS HAD SCREECHED into the pretty market square. Seconds later, Rose found herself surrounded by officers, while the shoppers pointed accusingly at Kate, who was slumped against a lamp-post, sobbing quietly to herself.

‘I’m supposed to be looking after her,’ she told a policewoman. ‘It’s all my fault. She needs to get to a hospital far, far away.’ She was praying for the Doctor to turn up. Even to her ears, her words sounded feeble.

She watched as the police led Kate to the car. There was nothing she could do.

Suddenly there were screams. The sound of crashing cars. Running feet. A distant metallic voice cried, ‘Exterminate!’

The police and shoppers turned their heads towards these weird sounds.

Rose felt her stomach flip over. ‘Oh, no. No, you’re kidding me. . . ’

It was now twenty past twelve. People were starting to come out of the building societies, shoe shops, baker’s shops and butcher’s shops along Twyford high street, crowding on to the narrow pavements.

A column of smoke was rising from the far side of town.

The Dalek appeared through it, its, gun arm waving in all directions, strafing the street with sizzling bolts of deadly radiation.

A middle-aged woman got out of her car to run for cover. The Dalek fired again. Her skeleton glowed green as she was cut down without mercy.

The Dalek saw humans crowded in a window. It fired. The glass shattered and the humans backed away, running into their offices, screaming. The Dalek zoomed over, turned its midsection, thrust its gun through the smashed window frame and blasted them one after another.

49

Then it sped down the high street, chasing the fleeing, panicking humans.

‘Where is the other?’ it called. ‘Where is the one called Kate?’

Crouched behind a bin in the now deserted market square, Rose and Kate heard the voice. Kate instantly leapt to her feet.

‘No!’ shouted Rose, grabbing her, trying to hold her back.

When she looked into Kate’s eyes, she knew the battle for her mind was lost. The tears dried and the life went out of them. Her face took on an expression of twisted pride.

Kate flicked Rose away. ‘There is nothing you can do now,’ she said.

‘The Dalek factor is too powerful.’

Rose got up and pointed towards the high street, towards the smoke and ringing alarms. There were bodies all over the ground.

‘Look at that! Think of your mum, your dad!’

‘Family connections are a genetic weakness,’ Kate said in a flat voice.

‘They are weak and unnecessary.’ She stalked away.

The Dalek appeared through the smoke. It was now shining and gleaming. The casing could have been brand new. Rose guessed it had taken electrical energy from somewhere to repair itself.

Kate and the Dalek moved towards each other. Kate bowed her head.

‘Master, what are my orders?’

The Dalek pointed to Rose. ‘The other humans have fled. Who is this one?’

‘Rose. A companion of the Doctor.’,

‘Yeah,’ shouted Rose proudly. ‘You know, the Doctor, the man you’re so afraid of.’

The Dalek swung its gun to cover her. ‘I am not afraid,’ it said as if it were deeply offended. ‘Daleks do not fear. Must not fear.’ It moved closer and the blue glow in its eye seemed to stare right through her.

‘You have an emotional connection to the Doctor.’

Rose swallowed and stepped back.

‘The Doctor will be weakened by your death,’ the Dalek continued.

‘It is a Dalek directive to weaken the Doctor.’ The gun swivelled in its 50

socket.

Rose closed her eyes.

Then she heard the distant roar of ancient alien engines.

She opened her eyes to see the side of the TARDIS standing right in front of her. She heard the Dalek fire. The bolt bounced off the battered wooden doors. Then the Doctor emerged. He looked wet and scruffy but he was smiling in an angry, dangerous way. He turned to face the Dalek.

‘I see you’ve got your gun back,’ he said quietly. ‘Easy to find you.

Not many people firing high-energy lasers around here today. Something in his voice was different, more emotional than usual. He raised his hands.

‘Come on, then, exterminate!’

51

ROSE HURRIED TO THE Doctor’s side. He waved his hands in front of the Dalek. ‘Come on. Fire. Even you can’t miss at this range.’

He nodded to Kate. ‘Oh, and you’ve got a girlfriend now, have you?

About time. We were all starting to wonder.’

The Dalek lowered its gun.

‘It won’t kill you,’ said Rose. ‘So it wants something from you?’

‘Of course it does,’ said the Doctor. ‘It needs knowledge. That old data store it’s using is out of date. It wants to take the knowledge from my mind. Am I right?’

‘That knowledge is of value,’ said the Dalek.

‘We can discuss having my brain sucked out later, over a burger perhaps,’ said the Doctor, rubbing his hands together. ‘But first I want a few explanations.’ He strolled over to the Dalek casually.

‘Stay back!’ shouted the Dalek.

‘Yeah, not afraid at all,’ called Rose.

‘Come on, then. Let’s get the whole story. Because after I’ve destroyed you, Rose over there’s gonna be full of questions. You know, yatter-yatter in my ear, how did it come to life in the first place and all that. So you might as well tell her now.’

Rose could see that beneath his jokiness the Doctor was actually furious.

The Dalek faced the Doctor squarely. In an even louder voice than usual, it began. ‘My glorious Dalek ancestors –’

‘Oh, here we go,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘Couldn’t resist showing off, could you?’ He smiled at Rose. ‘I can play a Dalek like an old fiddle.’

‘My glorious Dalek ancestors,’ the Dalek repeated, ‘sent a time capsule back to Earth. It arrived here centuries ago. Its mission was to spread the Dalek factor to all humans and use their life force to create back-up from raw matter.’

53

‘How embarrassing for you,’ said the Doctor. ‘The mighty race of Daleks, so weakened they needed help from the humans they despise.

A last, desperate gamble. To alter the genetics of the human race. And judging from that scented candle shop over there, it didn’t work.’

The Dalek continued, ‘The capsule was blasted towards Earth in the final battle of the Time War. Its engines failed on the journey. My ancestor, the owner of this casing, ejected and fell to Earth.’

‘Where it let go a little bit of Dalek factor, just a whiff,’ said the.

Doctor, ‘before it died. It caught on to some humans. Not active, but always there in their genes, handed down from generation to generation. Probably only one in half a billion have got it-now, including Kate over there.’