Doctor Who: Drift (12 page)

Hal was done with the nice face. „Shoplifting‟s a crime anywhere, far as I know. Open your coat and turn out your pockets, sir. I like to think I give service with a smile here, but trust me, I can get real ugly real fast‟

„You‟re making a big mistake.‟ Real anger was creeping in now. Hal liked him even less.

„Show me what you took and then I‟m calling a cop. We have one here, you know. Happens to be a buddy of mine.‟

„I don‟t care about your goddamn buddy, jackass! Now get the hell out of my way!‟

Hal blinked. Trouble with anger, it was contagious. „Hey, you‟re not bullying little kids in the schoolyard now. You‟re caught for real and it‟s time to pay. It‟s time for regrets not excuses, friend. What, you think we‟re really that stupid, to be taken by the likes of you?‟

Hal barked out a laugh and grabbed the guy‟s arm.

Suddenly the man yanked away and screamed in Hal‟s face. There were goods falling to the floor, toys and such, and it would have been comic if he hadn‟t pulled a gun from somewhere in there. A compact little automatic, looked like a

.38.

„This is what‟s real!‟ the guy blew up. „And yeah, I think you‟re really that stupid!‟

Hal said nothing. He guessed he ought to raise his hands.

Makenzie gave up trying to raise the dead. He‟d been getting undiluted silence on the phone, static on the radio. No chance of backup any time soon. Plenty of the townsfolk would willingly muster for search parties, but in these conditions he‟d only risk losing more people. He‟d exhausted all of his options and himself in the process.

Then he‟d taken a moment to ring Martha and he was getting the dial tone on the other end, but she wasn‟t home.

Something more to fret about. The worst part though, the office was unbearably empty with no Laurie.

Makenzie was waking up to just how alone he was here.

The edge of the world had come to the outskirts of Melvin Village and everyone was walking or driving right off it. Hell, he might even join them. No, no good to anyone, thinking like that. He tried massaging some life into his eyes, hoped it might find a way through to the rest of him.

So where was he? Stuck.

No chance of a solo tour around the cult place. Oh yeah, he‟d thought about it plenty, but he knew it was plain stupid

- especially assuming they were involved. All he was left with was looking after the folks still here. If he ever found Laurie, he‟d have to explain the delay to her then. He‟d be happy to see her hate him for it.

Just as long as he saw her.

Standing, he thought he might swing over to Hal‟s, let him know some of what was going on. He didn‟t want to tell him about Laurie just yet.

„Mak! Hey, Mak! Get yourself out here!‟

That was Phil Downey calling at him through the door. The old boy was padded out with coats and sweaters, but they all looked like they‟d been thrown on.

„What is it, Phil? You should be home by the fire.‟

„Army‟s here, Mak. They just rolled up. Take a look.‟

Makenzie stepped out beside him and looked along the street: a line of Snowcats and a couple of Hum-Vees, outriders on Ski Doos; all of them parking up outside Janny Meeks‟ hotel. Armed men, answering Makenzie‟s prayers.

Janny was going to hit her own roof.

Makenzie strode past Downey. He had to get a closer look, make sure the help wasn‟t going to disappear on him.

Makenzie broke into something close to a trot, uttering a few prayers of thanks to a God he‟d forgotten existed. Then took them all straight back the moment he recognised the man hopping down from the lead Snowcat to take charge of his town.

The engines wound down as his boots hit the snow. Man, was it good to be back home.

Kind of.

Morgan glanced along the side of the hotel. Where a grey shape dissolved hastily into white. A toppled trash can rolled noiselessly in the snow-covered driveway.

The Doctor landed beside him. „More coyotes. You know. I can‟t help thinking they must be hopelessly sentimental or desperate to be courting the company of humankind so freely.‟

Morgan Shaw cleared his throat. You had to wonder about this Doc. He was on another planet most of the time. „Hey, listen. Doc, do you think you can count yourself as a member of the human race just long enough to help us out here?‟

„I shouldn‟t think that will be a problem. It‟s no more than I usually do.‟

Again with the solemn, mysterious tones. Where did UNIT

ever dig this guy up?

Morgan returned his attention to the town, at least the length of the main street. No, this didn‟t really look like home at all. Maybe that was why it felt good to be back. He was standing in the town but he was still very much outside of it.

The best way to be.

„When they get the lab set up,‟ he began absently, „I‟ll want you going over every piece of that wreck with Pydych. We need results, the faster the better.‟

As he finished the last word, Morgan forgot all about the Doctor. Another grey shape was looming out of the veiled street, and the shape had Morgan‟s exclusive attention even before the details had property resolved themselves.

Makenzie. No surprise, of course, but later would have done as well as sooner.

Man, was it good to be back home.

McKim called out from the map room. Joanna heaved the cellar hatch closed and hopped off the steps, satisfied that she‟d shut out the wind and the snow, if not the cold. This basement room had turned up only more shelves of chemicals, canned goods, spare parts and gas cans.

Hoping Ben had struck gold, she turned from the plank steps and switched her flashlight back on. Her small endeavour had also shut out the daylight, of course.

„Ben,‟ she called, her voice like an intrusion as she passed into the other room, „don‟t you get a feeling there might be something still in here with us?‟

Ben McKim was over by the sink. Solid old porcelain, the cracks of age in its surface, he had pulled it some way free of its nesting place and was reaching into the gap behind.

Cold feet danced over the base of Joanna‟s neck. She glanced over her shoulder: nothing.

„Something we can‟t see,‟ she prompted, wanting the conversation.

„You mean the Invisible Man?‟ Ben tugged a plastic folder from the niche and gave it a once-over before passing it to her. He clapped his hands clean and stooped to retrieve his H&K. „Come on, Joanna, there‟d have to be a whole bunch of them to take out this many And all these guns going off, none of these invisible aliens get hit? Not to mention where are the bodies? Normally, you loot a battlefield, the corpses are the thing you leave.‟

„Ben. I don‟t understand any of this but I know we‟ve missed something. More than paperwork.‟ She drew a deep breath to flush out the tightness. She teased a few of the documents from the folder, focused on those with a lengthy frown. „Although these are definitely interesting.‟

There was a clatter and bang from the next room. She and McKim looked to the doorway.

Wind, snow and daylight had all broken in again.

Paul Falvi was up and bolting out of that attic room in a little under a second, slinging his rifle in favour of the Beretta. It wasn‟t a hundred per cent definite he‟d seen anything, but he was going to check it the hell out right now. Lieutenant McKim was not appreciative of false alarms. Probably even less appreciative of alarms that didn‟t get raised.

Down a flight, across the hall, he poked his head into Barnes‟ room. „Hey, you got any activity out front, Barnes?‟

„All quiet on the eastern,‟ she told him, her eye squeezed up on the sight like his had been until a moment ago.

Falvi raced to the head of the main stairwell, leaving a shout trailing: „Maybe I got something. Movement between those two trucks.‟

‘Maybe
you got something?‟ her call chased after him.

Pistol locked in a firm grip, Falvi descended the stairs two at a time. Urgency or no, he couldn‟t help a wry shake of the head. Didn‟t she ever let up, Barnes? One time she‟d said they were like Legolas and Gimli at the battle of Helm‟s Deep.

Falvi hadn‟t even read
Lord of the Rings,
but after she‟d explained the comparison he‟d given it a shot. Twelve pages in and he‟s skipping ahead to Helm‟s Deep, where the two warriors are in hot competition for the most bad guys notched up. Mostly, Barnes and him were just a practice target‟s worst nightmare and they never counted their live ones out loud.

Now she was having a dig because he wasn‟t a hundred per cent. He‟s been watching the snow smother the woods for so long he‟s starting to see in monochrome. And she‟s covering the front, while the best view out back is out of bounds because there‟s no floor in the goddamn room!

Falvi hit the downstairs hall at a run, making for the back of the house. If he wasn‟t mistaken, then it wasn‟t just points at stake.

Joanna stuffed the folder inside her parka and backed swiftly against the left side of the doorway. McKim moved quietly and efficiently to the opposite side.

In the next room, light from the reopened hatch was projecting a shadow onto the dark boards. An expanding silhouette, it looked to be brandishing a rifle or a shotgun.

Joanna studied McKim‟s eyes, trying to gauge if he could see any more than her.

Ben had his SMG aimed high and she could almost read his mind, running through every possible play. Joanna was pretty sure she‟d covered them already.

In one respect, she had reason to be relaxed: the shadow was all bulk, but human. Safety was off. She hooked McKim‟s gaze on hers and signalled for him to cover her.

One long slow breath and she swung around the doorframe.

Steel struck her flat in the side of the face. There was a loud slam that carried on into her head, a liquid sloshing underneath it. Her world was on the move and she reasoned she was falling. By the time she hit the deck she worked it out:
someone else in here.

Amid the ringing pain and the underwater vision she could make out the man. He was huge, magnified, at the foot of the basement steps. Frigid light was barging its way in from above, filling the dingy space and crisping the edges of the shadows. The shotgun had a silver lining as it came up and blew a great crater in the air over her head.

Splinters blew back from the doorway.
Ben!

Joanna‟s fingers closed around her weapon‟s pistol-grip and she wondered: is this how it begins? In this house, people - human beings - shooting at each other, only to be swallowed into some otherworld oblivion? Fresh meat for a bloodthirsty void.

Near-blinded by the ache in her face, she brought her gun up anyway.

Riding frozen rapids. Squeezing all the speed out of the snowmobile. Kristal would have willed it to fly if she could.

Even on the expanding borders of hell, there was a certain terrifying poetry to Kristal‟s situation. Leela‟s arms locked around her waist, Kristal found her courage shored up by the added responsibility she felt for her passenger. Nature‟s destructive forces make children of us all, she thought; so what, then, were any of us in the face of the supernatural?

Behind them the storm played predator.

Zooming into view on her left, she saw Landers, up on one knee with the rifle slammed against his shoulder. She didn‟t hear the discharge as he launched a round from the M203

grenade launcher far over her head. Then she was zipping between two shallow foxholes and glimpsed Marotta in one of them, his machinegun braced to fire the moment the other snowmobiles had passed him by.

She glanced aft to spot the blast. The eruption was negligible, a cough in the cloud front, like it had swallowed nothing more than a harmless pill. The storm carried on tumbling over the rise like the fallen walls of Jericho.

Kristal hadn‟t expected much more. She wanted some sign though of the effects on the forces driving that wintry smoke-screen. That was over-optimistic, maybe, but she could rely on Marotta to give it his best shot before following them.

Leela shifted her grip. The foxholes slipping far behind, Kristal aimed her eyes front - and saw they were running out of level terrain. Kristal shouted back. „Hold on!‟

Chill wind gnawed at her cheeks.

She thought hard about the storm‟s rate of advance, next to their own. She also thought about how the Plains tribes hunted buffalo. All right, she concluded, we‟re through running.

One final glance back, and she could hear the guttural spit and crack of the machinegun above the other rifles. She didn‟t know what good it could do, and had to tear her gaze free from the icy vortex to focus on her driving. She managed a quick signal for the three snowmobiles to follow her lead.

Then, praying it was a slope and not a cliff, she made sure the accelerator was at maximum ready for when the ground dropped away.

Leela‟s hold nearly squeezed the breath out of her.

The vehicle cut the lip of the hill and took to the air, taking half a ton of broken snow with it. The engine whined in panic and they were flung like ammo from a catapult. They hit just as hard too, the impact jarring Kristal‟s every nerve.