Doctor Who: Drift (26 page)

‘What makes you think intelligent beings have to behave rationally, hmm? Intelligence takes many forms. Whatever this entity is, it has motivation - it attacked that aircraft to reach the Stormcore - and it has awareness - it reacts to heat and it detects its prey. That puts it at least on a par with the coyotes.’ The Doctor pondered a moment, rubbing his chin.

‘Coyotes.’

Parker beat Melody to it. ‘What’s on your mind?’

‘Fish, Agent Theroux.
Fish!’
He strode over to the fence and studied the blaze. ‘This house was deserted - in the same way that the cult house was deserted. Ask Lieutenant Beard, and he’ll tell you what must have happened to the members of that cult.’ He wheeled about ponderously. ‘I think our uninvited guest got hungry - hungry enough to rupture the tank to get at the tropical fish. It must have lain inert, waiting for the warm water to freeze. Then it infected the coyote when it came in search of a fish supper.’

‘So it can’t detect low levels of heat and it’s inert in liquid form,’ reasoned Melody quickly.

The Doctor regarded Melody like she was the star pupil, then clapped a hand on her shoulder and steered her back towards the truck. ‘Precisely. You know, with thinking like that I’m sure you’ll go far. Anyway, you two are going to have to bang your scientific heads together. And bear in mind, it has an aversion to alcohol.’

‘Sorry, Doctor, remind me,’ said Melody, ‘how is it we know that?’

‘Well, there’s been nothing left of anyone else to examine.

We can’t be sure when Mr Redeker was infected, but something slowed the process in him. And Makenzie confirmed that he’d been drinking heavily. It’s the only obvious factor that sets Mr Redeker apart.’

‘So the thing’s teetotal.’ Parker applauded theatrically. Now
there’s
something we can use!’

Melody wondered whether the rules of reasonable force applied to shutting her partner up. ‘Doctor, you might have something. The spread of infection has certainly been -

insane,
in everybody but Redeker. And he’d pickled most of his organs in advance of any autopsy.’

‘So maybe the freezing point was sufficiently depressed by the alcohol to - I don’t know - make it hard work for this -
Ice

- stuff to crystallise within the body.’

‘Well, I’m sufficiently depressed,’ commented Parker.

‘What is this?’ The Doctor was rapt. ‘The old good cop, stupid cop routine?’ Before Parker could land one on him, he shook Melody by both shoulders.

‘Do you know something, Melody? You’re extremely clever!

But it might equally be something in the neurological effects.

Be a good girl and examine every angle.’

He glowered at Parker. ‘You know, you really could learn a lot from your partner, Agent Theroux. I’d take very good care of her, if I were you.’

Melody fluttered her lids at Parker before strolling around to the driver’s side of the 4x4. Her partner couldn’t but agree with the Doctor’s sentiment. ‘Well, we see eye to eye on something anyhow, Doc.’ Parker sniffed and scratched his neck sullenly. ‘And by the way, I hate it when your thinking actually starts to make some sense.’

‘So do I,’ declared the Doctor, gloomy thoughts flocking to his brow. ‘That’s the nature of uncovering the truth. It’s like condensation on a mirror. Wipe it away, and you’re stuck with your reflection whether you like it or not.’ He twirled a finger in the air, as if his lingering thoughts needed stirring into positive action. ‘Good luck, you two. We need to learn everything we can if the world is going to survive another winter.’

Melody hesitated at the door of the 4x4. She was drawn to the sight of that house, the snows falling on the fires in wave after wave; and in it the sense that even the near-solar heat of that white phosphor blaze could not hope to survive such a war of attrition.

The Doctor doffed his hat as a good-luck gesture, before stalking purposefully down the street. ‘
Now
is the winter of our discontent!’ he shouted Into the wind.

Then he was gone, disintegrated in the blizzard, his voice trailing in the wind like an omen.

No sooner than they had driven up with the girl, the agents had withdrawn to the lab, promising to produce results as soon as humanly possible.
If
there were any results to be had, Morgan Shaw had qualified silently. Meanwhile, his brother had gone to the station house to organise the townsfolk and quell the rising panic, now the whole town had heard of old Walsh’s disappearance. And the kid, she was safely stowed in one of the hotel rooms, looked after by her mother and Janny Meeks. Chained to the goddamn bed, if they had any sense. As far as Morgan Shaw was concerned, her little flight had cost him two good men.

Of immediate concern, though, was Derm’s report, which had been disturbingly thorough and, Morgan noted cynically, demonstrated a newfound respect for the Doc.

Wherever he was.

Captain Shaw expected to have to do a lot more pacing before he finally showed up.

But no, there he was at last, striding into view like a walking headstone. Morgan headed to meet him, eager for a little clarification. The Doc, though, hopped straight onto the waiting snowmobile that Morgan had cleared for his use.

‘Hey, hey, wait right there. What kept you?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. You know what the roads are like these days.’

‘All right, you know what, I don’t care what you’ve been up to. All I care about right now is when can I expect some answers?’

The Doc apparently felt the need to adjust his hat, and he ruffled his ridiculous mop of hair irritably. ‘We already have our answers, Captain. What we need to do now is ask a lot more questions. I hope to have a few by the time I get back.’

Morgan folded his arms and waited to hear something more.

The Doc sighed. ‘We’ve seen the face of our enemy, Captain.

We know what it does. Hopefully, our two CIA friends are working on the how. But the question we really have to ask is
why.’

Morgan could see he was going to have to settle for the pith and hope the flesh of the fruit turned up soon. He was hoping the Doc would be able to contact his teams out there.

‘Okay, so what do the rest of us do in the meantime? Sit around and warm our butts by the fire?’

The Doc offered him a shrug. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you could.

But I’d suggest your time was better spent searching every house in this town and torching every one of them where you find any trace of this creature.’

‘Okay. Good.’ Morgan Shaw wasn’t happy, but it gave him a course of action.

‘Just be sure to leave some buildings standing,’ the Doctor advised. ‘The people are going to need some shelter. And whatever you do, don’t put them all under one roof. Spread them between several buildings, some distance apart. I doubt it will help very much, but it should make them feel a little safer. For a while.’

‘Thanks,’ Morgan said, but meant the exact opposite. He licked his teeth and exhaled. ‘All right. Doc. But before you go, listen up. There’s been some new developments up there you should know about.’ He briefed the Doc carefully on the incident at the cabin and indicated the site on his map. The Doc thanked him and gunned the engine of the snowmobile.

It spluttered and he had to gun it again.

‘You sure you’ve driven one of these things before?’ Morgan shouted above the noise.

‘Oh,’ the Doc waved a farewell, ‘I’m sure I must have done.

In a previous life’

And with that, he was off, racing headlong into the hellish blizzard.

It didn’t
see.

It touched without fingers. Its tactile consciousness dipped into the streams of energy that flowed between its scattered threads. And sometimes other minds would wade through those streams, lighting up in its consciousness like solar flares on animal retina.

There was a nest of many such minds nearby, aglow like the core of a galaxy.

And out from that core came a single mind, brilliant and intense, like a comet arcing across the night sky.

As soon as they’d seen that cabin, Joanna Hmieleski had known another life was on the line. Now as they headed for the truck, that loss seemed manifested in the dragging depth of snow.

Jacks shoved her at the passenger door of the couple’s pickup. Joanna stood firm, and looked daggers at Jacks’

reflection in the wing mirror.

‘You don’t have any plan, do you? All this killing is just so you can run away.’

Emilie’s reflection twitched, but her eyes were stone.

‘Crayford said the winds at the summit would be perfect.

They could have carried the word to everyone. Well, it’s all dead now. We’re all stuck in this world.’ Her sneer was bitter and primitive. ‘Survival’s all there is. Something you should think about, before you open your mouth again.’

‘You know,’ Joanna said. ‘I should have given him an answer. He deserved one.’

Jacks spat. What are you talking about?’

Your partner. Lagoy. He wanted to know the truth - about extraterrestrials. All those secrets I’m supposed to know because I work for the government.’

Jacks raised the AK like a polearm. ready to slam Joanna against the cab, but she looked trapped, caught between wondering if she could spare the time and whether she could afford not to. She asked, ‘So what would you have told him?’

Joanna savoured the woman’s pretend disinterest, while her throat burned from the acid medicine she was busy swallowing. ‘I would have told him he was wrong,’ she said.

‘Extraterrestrials arc nothing to be worshipped. There’s very little to get religious over. Do you know what they’re really like? They’re like us. There’s good and there’s bad. But I don’t think any of them have sickened me as much as you do.’

‘My heart is bleeding. Open the goddamn door and get in.’

Joanna knew she’d effectively lost her audience, but she turned around, slow and deliberate, to aim her hate where it would do the most damage. ‘I’m an officer in the United States military. You know, for me a gun is a tool I’d prefer not to use unless I have to. I don’t get off on muzzle velocity and cyclic rate of fire. Do you hear what I’m saying?’

Jacks was a fortress. ‘So you stand back and let people get killed. How big of you.’

‘Fine, so you figured out what’s eating me. The difference is, you don’t have to tell me where I’ve gone wrong. I have this thing called a conscience, does that for me on a regular basis. People like you make me regret my calling.’

‘So you’d prefer I shoot you now?’ Jacks gave a twisted grin and presented the muzzle of the assault rifle like an offer not to be missed.

‘No - no, I guess not.’ Joanna turned away. She opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat, trying to find some way of seeing that grin as a crack in Jacks’ armour. ‘Maybe some day one of these alien threats will learn to discriminate.

Weed out the trash.’

Jacks kept her gun on Joanna as she drew closer. ‘Keep praying for the day,’ she sneered.

Joanna saw the butt of the AK swinging around to club her skull. Just before lights out.

Leela found it demanding enough simply to walk through this haunted land. Now they were having to run. Or at least to drive their limbs with the power of a run. while the land straggled by with aching sloth.

Kristal had been running a hand gingerly over the surface of a fallen trunk, as if, through the fabric of her gloves, she could feel the last breaths of the dead wood. A few dribbles of blood stained the lustreless bark. ‘Whatever was here,’

Kristal determined, with a cryptic wisdom to rival the Doctor’s, ‘has gone now. Carried on the winds, and taking its victim with it.’

That was when the sound of the shots reached them through the wailing wind.

The sheer effort of the run seemed to indicate otherwise, but perhaps it was only a few minutes before the dark grey silhouette of the cabin emerged from the snowstorm, its gaping doorway venting all the heat, along with the scent of death.

There was a machine roar, finely chopped and tossed around with the snowflakes. A truck broke from beyond the cabin and skidded into a frantic turn, ploughing a fresh trail between the trees, its headlights edging the branches with ghostly silver.

Kristal cut across the open to the cabin door.

Leela followed her indoors, her pistol braced in both hands.

A female was crying over her dead mate, lagged in his blood from where she had embraced the body. Leela lowered the gun. There was no danger here, only distress.

‘Where’s the nearest cabin?
Miss!’
Kristal squatted to shake the woman roughly by the shoulders. Leela had seen this before: mourners had to be dragged back to the land of the living if they were to be of any use.

‘Help,’ the woman bawled feebly, teetering on some inner precipice. ‘You have to help.’

Kristal stood, abandoning the woman and snatching up her radio. Her features formed one of the harshest masks Leela had ever seen.

If only Sergeant Garvey ‘s radio had been an effigy of Kristal Owl Eye Wildcat, he could have wrung its neck. As things were, he had to settle for a mute growl at the crackling voice coming through on the speaker.