Doctor Who: Drift (24 page)

‘Second in Command, huh? I rate that highly?’

‘Chief, sir, we should find that little girl before nightfall,’

Beard said. ‘If she stuck to the town, she’d be a whole lot safer where someone could keep an eye on her.’

The Doctor chose that moment to burst forth from the hotel, the two CIA agents in tow. ‘I couldn’t agree more! We all need to be somewhere safe and warm! Which reminds me.

Captain.’ he pushed his way briskly to the front of Morgan’s little audience, ‘we need to gather all the townspeople under one roof. Safety in numbers, remember. And we have to do something to warn your people up on the mountain - not to mention my friend. They’re all in a great deal more danger than they realise.’

Makenzie was almost grateful for the way this Doc took charge. For one, he hadn’t cared to admit that the Lieutenant was right: he should have been thinking about Amber, not his feud with Morgan. Now he was anxious to kick-start this search.

Morgan wasn’t happy. ‘Thanks for the news, Doc, but I’m here right now trying to raise my teams on the radio.

Meanwhile I don’t have the manpower to go herding the good folk of Melvin Village out of their homes!’

Makenzie smirked at how easily the Doc put his brother’s back out of joint. He sobered himself in the same second, command the best medicine for his flagging morale.

‘Listen up, Lieutenant,’ he gestured up and down the street, each end of which was all but invisible, ‘I’ve conducted a broad sweep of the main streets, but I may have hurried a little. Maybe a couple of your men can go over the old ground, while we check out some of the other areas. And as long as we’re conducting a search, we might as well knock on some doors and ask the folks to relocate. It needn’t take that long.’

Makenzie could hear the pessimism in his own voice. He anticipated the townsfolk obliging willingly, but Amber was a difficult kid to track down in the best of situations.

The stairs were the other side of the room, on Amber’s left.

The coyote was closer to them, and the animal seemed to know as much. It studied her at its leisure, disinterested now in the pathetic scrap of fish locked in the pane of ice.

If it weren’t for her tearless sobs, she might have forgotten to breathe altogether.

‘Please don’t hurt me,
please’,
she whispered, afraid of making any louder sound.

Amber tensed. But there was no strength left in her legs to launch herself into a run. She was terrified if she moved she’d simply fall over and lie stranded like that fish. And all the others, strewn around the carpet, dead and somehow unreal. Like the rainbow-tinted pair, their swim suspended in a frozen pool around the base of the lampstand.

Scuffles and bangs from the kitchen doorway gave her a start: a fight had broken out in the pack. Amber could hear them all snapping and growling out there.

The coyote before her padded into the middle of the room, wary, but building up its snarls in ferocious layers. That was when Amber realised she was playing a game of chicken: she had to be braver than the coyote.

‘You get away from me!’ she screamed right at its eyes.
‘Get
away!’

It recoiled, ever so slightly, but that was all Amber needed.

She grabbed for the lampstand, wrenched it free from the ice and hurled it at the beast with both hands. The coyote bolted back and Amber made a blind dash for the stairs.

Melody turned over the ignition and the low growl of the engine expressed her irritation admirably. Still, as Parker took his time settling in beside her, she felt the need to add something more. ‘Just don’t underestimate the Doctor. He’ll pick up on every tiny slip.’

‘What if he does?’ Parker shrugged. ‘Even the smartest cookie can be made to crumble.’

Melody coiled up inside. He could be so infuriatingly casual at times.

Still, they were meant to be assisting in the search. The Doctor question could wait.

The door was wide open and the wind was blasting in, driving the heat from every corner of the room. The cold only registered as a secondary symptom, ever-present but positively the least of Charlene Lowell’s worries.

She hugged the robe around her and couldn’t stop crying She shuffled fitfully on her bare feet. Gary sat up in bed, wide awake and struck dumb by what was going on.

‘Don’t get up on my account,’ the woman with the crew-cut pointed her gun at Gary. ‘You! Get the keys to the pick-up.’

The woman’s prisoner - Charlene guessed that was what she was - looked like she might be with the Army or something. But she stood perfectly still, head slightly bowed.

Why didn’t she help? Charlene wanted to yell at her.

‘I said,’ the voice broke in harsher than before, and something solid whacked Charlene across the face, ‘get the keys to your truck.’

Charlene was in a spin, her legs folding. She threw out a hand to steady herself and the prisoner woman caught her.

She stared into Charlene’s eyes as she helped her up.

She sent a message clear as day:
do as she says.

Charlene nodded, but she saw a motion past her helper’s shoulder.

Gary - in his boxers - flew from the bed, diving for the gun in the other woman’s hands. Horrified, Charlene fell back, and the hostage let her go. Gary actually had a hold of the gun, or so it seemed to Charlene - for just a second.

But the next thing she knew, all she could hear were these impossibly loud bangs that wouldn’t go away, and there was smoke in the room, and there was Gary dropped at the end of the bed like a broken toy.

‘Make yourself useful: find the damn keys.’ The order sounded muffled, but the harshness in the voice was unmistakable. Charlene sat there, sobbing hysterically, her world in pieces she didn’t even recognise any more.

Mercifully, someone kicked her in the side of the head.

The upstairs hall was like a tunnel, frosty light gliding in from the window over the stairwell. Amber backed her way along, scared to look around while she could hear the faint scratch of paws ascending the bare pine stairs.

Her heel slid on an old rug. She threw out a hand and caught hold of a doorframe.

The coyote loped into view, shining its eyes into the tunnel.

Amber gasped, but her voice had deserted her. The coyote pounced onto the landing and flew at her, fangs and eyes aimed up at her face. Amber forced a shrill scream and pushed herself sidelong through the doorway. She fell.

The coyote skidded on the rug.

Amber scrambled frantically to flip onto her back. The coyote faced her through the open doorway, head low and slavering rabidly.

Makenzie leaped the fence and pulled out his revolver. The Doctor and Lieutenant Beard weren’t far behind, along with a couple of the White Shadow guys. But Makenzie wasn’t concerning himself about backup.

The crowd of coy-dogs, milling and scrapping outside the Walsh house, had attracted his attention and he’d come trotting up. Earl’s Chevy was parked in the drive and he had to wonder,
where the hell was Earl?
All he had for an answer was a memory of Laurie and the empty vehicles on the road.

Jesus - and then the scream that had to be Amber’s.

The soldiers spread wide over the white lawn, fingers on triggers, and started hollering and swearing at the dogs.

Makenzie thought, the hell with it, and fired two shots into the air.

The pack scattered, some of them stealing bites out of one another as they fought to get clear. The Doctor, meanwhile, strode right up to the door and grabbed the handle.

Plainly, he wasn’t much concerned about backup either.

The hotel looked deserted. Martha had the sense the whole town was out searching for her daughter. Well, hell, Martha hadn’t asked any of them for their help. Amber was in a bad place right now, she needed to hide. She’d come running back soon enough and Martha would be there for her when she did.

Martha didn’t get the special urgency this time out. Maybe Mak felt the need to over-compensate, now the girl’s real Daddy was out of the picture.

Real Daddy. Sorry excuse, more like.
Goddamn
him.

‘Help you, miss?’

That soldier with the premature wrinkles, Pydych, regarded her uncertainly from the doorway to the restaurant. He was turning over a piece of the aircraft in his hands.

‘Where’d they take the body?’ she demanded.

‘Of the guy?’ Pydych nodded hesitantly. ‘Across the hall.

But you really shouldn’t be-’

Martha murdered his objections with a glance. He retreated back into his shell, murmuring an apology but appearing to lose his voice. Martha swallowed hard, then moved to the door. Only right and proper that Curt should be laid to rest in a hotel bar.

She let the door swing closed behind her, flinching micro-scopically, as her attention became the exclusive property of the dead mass on the table before her.

Its condition, exposed and sliced open, didn’t even penetrate her. What sickened was how she still saw the living Curt: the self-loathing drunk who’d never known where to turn his hate next. The man who’d made marriage feel like breaking rocks on a chain gang: and the man who, when Martha finally slipped those chains, had hounded her from state to state for eight hellish years on the
pretext
that he loved his baby girl. Goddamn you, Curt Redeker. Why couldn’t he have died in some remote hole, and Martha get a letter some day? Even in death, he had to break back into her life and hang around her neck forever.

Martha backed up to the door, nauseous. She turned herself around and walked slowly out through the hall like she was running on different time to the rest of the world.

Every step, she had to fight back a fresh tear.

Martha paused out front of the hotel, trying to get a hold on her breathing. The cold air was waking her up, but she felt lost.

Snowflakes snagged at her cheeks like barbed confetti.

‘Help, oh please, God, help! I’m up here! In the bathroom!’

The sound of the shots had been a shock to Amber and the coyote alike. Amber was quicker to recover and she kicked out hard. The bathroom door slammed closed.

Then she was on her feet, pressing herself to the door. She heard the door downstairs smashed open and she fumbled at the lock in a panic.

A heavy weight battered the door from the other side.

The inside of the house was surreal. Like the kid crying out from the bathroom must have been having a nightmare and they’d all stepped into it.

Dermot Beard had spent years schooling himself to think fast and react, and file away complex questions for later. This was one of those situations where he went into automatic pilot and he expected every soldier to react with him. ‘Spence, stay put,’ he ordered, before rushing to the foot of the stairs.

Then he motioned his other man. Bertelli, ahead of him.

He showed a palm to the Doctor and the Police Chief. He was figuring on coyotes at worst, but after the house on the mountain there was no point in taking chances.

He expected an argument from the Doctor, but instead the guy relented and started toeing at some of the fish and broken glass. It looked like somebody’s fish tank had exploded down here; no big deal as far as Dermot could tell.

But Dermot was no scientist.

Bertelli rounded the top of the stairs. The young soldier’s gun went up immediately.

‘Bertelli. what is it?’

There was an agonised howl that didn’t sound like any coyote. And a thud-thud-thud like a heavy body was thrashing about on the floorboards up there. Bertelli was static, the barrel of his rifle wavering like he couldn’t get a clear aim. The banging stopped.

‘Bertelli!’ Dermot started up the stairs, getting angry now.

He had Bertelli in his sights, but he still didn’t quite see it: something stabbing out, solid and gleaming. Bertelli dropped his gun and clutched his face.

Dermot shrank back into the wall as Bertelli stumbled back over the top stair.

The soldier, Spence, brought his gun to his shoulder, sheltering behind the bulk of the grenade launcher. Makenzie rushed forward. hoping to God the man wasn’t about to use that thing in here. The Doctor came up on Makenzie’s left, but even he was stopped dead in his tracks.

The Italian, Bertelli, was being eaten as he fell.

The soldier was caked in frost and underneath it he was rotting away. It was like watching a time-lapsed movie, all super-fast: a joint of frozen meat, thrown through the air and consumed, packaging and all, by a plague of maggots. Except there weren’t any maggots and the man was unravelling in a wire-mesh vortex, woven from ice.

All the while, Amber was upstairs, crying her heart out, begging to be rescued.

Charlene hauled herself up, leaving her long hair hanging untidily over her face for a few moments more. A few moments more of not seeing anything.

No, that wasn’t true. If she lifted her eyes, she could see Gary vividly enough, even through the cascade of hair. The cruel holes were lost in the blood welling in his folded abdomen.

The carpet was damp under her hands and knees and she knew, while she’d been out of it, he’d been busy bleeding himself empty.