Doctor Who: Drift (35 page)

The Doc was a wuss. Whereas Parker could take his liquor neat. He had armed himself with a bottle of Jack Daniels from the bar and once he was safely out of sight, he brought the snowmobile to a temporary halt to permit a few precious swigs. (He wasn’t, after all, too proud to admit that the Doc might know what he was doing on that score.) Better safe than sober.

He stowed the bottle back into his coat pocket and grasped the handle bars.

Before he opened the throttle, something substantial landed on the seat behind him. The same thing poked him in the side with what felt like the muzzle of a pistol.

‘You can go after the Doctor,’ Leela allowed him generously.

‘But I am coming with you.’

Parker sniffed and debated whether to try the old reverse thrust with the elbow.

But no. The pressure from the gun held him off; along with the thought that if he really wanted to stay the Doc’s hand -

just long enough to recover the Prism, of course - a bargaining chip could be priceless. And bargaining chips didn’t come much prettier than Leela.

‘Sure,’ he consented, ‘I always say, a biker’s nothing without a pretty chick to back him up.’

Parker gunned the throttle and steered the snowmobile for the back streets, searching for the safest route out of town.

* * *

‘I wonder why she left in such a hurry,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it can’t be your driving.’

‘She’s going after my partner. Let’s just concentrate on what we have to do, shall we?’

Pydych decided to shut up for a while. He tensed as they bumped down the bank and onto the lake. Up ahead, the lights of the evacuation convoy were diluted close to nothing in the swirling blizzard. The pale gloom made the line of vehicles look like a cortege.

Even Irving Pydych was all out of humorous comment at that point.

The storm was waiting to embrace her, urging her on. Amber was sure she could feel it pumping energy through her arms and legs, driving her onwards up the snow-blown hill.

The grind and growl of a large engine reached her through the wind and her hood.

She looked down to see one of the military vehicles struggling up the slope, churning up the snow with its big tracks.

It wasn’t veering towards her, so perhaps the driver hadn’t spotted her yet. There was only one place it could be heading.

Ducking slightly, Amber trotted a short way down the slope to draw level with the vehicle. Then she raced across the open, like a hare darting from hiding.

The crawling speed of the vehicle was enough to make it hard work, but Amber flipped back the tarpaulin on the trailer and hoisted herself inside.

She was sure the storm would be pleased with her, now it wouldn’t have to wait so long.

The ice creature didn’t care for inanimate materials, but it would eat through them to get at what it really wanted. The Doctor presumed his dulled wits had preserved him up till now, but this close to the core, he knew he was pushing his luck.

And luck had a habit of pushing back hard.

In his next glance away from the snow-smeared windscreen, he could see the first threads of ice weaving their spidery lace over the interior of the Snowcat.

Melody didn’t dare drive too wide of the evacuation convoy for fear the ice was thinner off the marked route. Pydych confirmed that Sergeant Garvey’s squad had been assigned as trailbreakers and they had done a fine job, planting poles in the ice and attaching coloured rags as markers. It implied there would be some extra help waiting for them on the far shore.

Still, it wasn’t the best of news.

It meant she had less time than she’d hoped for making her decision.

If there were White Shadow people waiting up ahead, then any act of sabotage would have to be committed in front of an audience. It made life just a little more difficult.

Magnesium threads lanced across the Doctor’s view like crooked laser beams: crystalline fire quite distinct from the blizzard, and a telling sign that the nucleus wasn’t far.

The Doctor slowed the vehicle and reached for the handbrake.

Cold teeth bit deep into his palm. He snatched his hand away and grit his teeth. He defied any palmist to interpret the chaos of white lines embedded in his skin.

A smudge, no bigger than a child, crossed in front of the vehicle, then vanished into the maelstrom of threads. Amber!

The Doctor leaped up from his seat and grabbed the backpack full of explosives.

He lunged for the door and practically fell from the vehicle, all but sinking to his knees in the snow. He could already feel the alien crystals coursing through him, like sand through an hourglass, one deadly grain at a time.

Amber walked into a giant nest.

That was what it looked like: a vast bird’s nest; icy fibres whizzing around ferociously like pencil lines in a cartoon tornado; except white, so very white. They scrawled themselves over and over, doodling in the air around her as she passed through the wall of the nest.

Spinning in the centre was an egg. A glowing egg.

A yolk of alien light housed in a framework instead of a shell, it seemed to take hold of her and tug at her, as though dragging her from her body.

Amber screamed.

The nest went insane.

The Doctor stumbled through a cyclone of barbed threads, the colour of bleached silver. Every strand a frozen spark against his skin, stabbing and searing with each pinprick impact.

The alcohol wasn’t slowing the rate of conversion as effectively as he had hoped. Instinct urged him to fight, to erect a psychic barrier against the alien invader. But the very act of concentration would feed its appetite for mental energy and speed the neural traffic into an inevitable
dead
end.

His vision blurred, and he knew it had nothing to do with the alcohol.

He whipped up a hand to fence out the light that had tugged at his eyes. Before the shield came up, he had caught sight of Amber, hurling silent screams into the light. And a familiar blue lamp poking up like a timid periscope directly under the Stormcore.

The tracked vehicle looked abandoned, its door gaping open.

As to why, the spinning ice storm now as wide as the mountain offered a portentous explanation.

Leela mastered her fears and leaped from the snowmobile before Parker brought it fully to a halt. She drew a few deep breaths, preparing herself for the sprint to the Snowcat.

She realised her mistake as soon as she heard the heavy footfall behind her.

Before she could complete the turn, Parker knocked her to the ground.

There was nothing else for it, but to put their heads down, run like crazy and sweat. The heat and the smoke were the worst barriers by far. At least the collapsing timbers and the fires could be dodged if they kept their wits about them.

Ray was first out into the yard, the frosty air flooding his lungs and forcing out the smoke in hacking coughs. He managed to get a few choice swear words out along with the fumes.

Zabala darted out past him and made for the fence, Godzinski right after her. Another mighty crash erupted from within, and Ray figured it was time to get moving. He followed the girls at a fast jog; the best he could manage with starved lungs.

The fence was sprouting a lightning crest of ice.

Mary Mother! Ray conjured up an extra burst of speed from nowhere. He hopped the fence, hit the ground. He coughed hard. And skidded.

Flat on his front.

Zabala, up the street, stopped and stared. Godzinski hovered, then came running.

Ray was scrabbling up, trapped in a coughing fit. Godzinski was close and she thrust out a helping hand. Gratefully, he grasped at it and pulled.

Then looked up into the icicles stabbing through Jen Godzinski’s eyes.

Hellish mockeries of human figures danced out of the crystal fog like marionettes. Skeletons of ice with shifting wire-thin bones and icicle-tendrils pulsing around inside.

Derm didn’t have time to shout orders: Kyle just opened fire.

Derm lifted his own rifle. He was down to four magazines, and the frozen fogbank was already throwing more of its macabre infantry ahead of its advance.

The eastern shore wasn’t the most scenic, so there were a couple of points where the power lines had approached the lake. One tower stood a short way down the road from the church, camouflaged to a degree by the surrounding trees.

Morgan nabbed Joanna, O’Neill and the others and led the run to the other Hum-Vee. He yanked the door open and turned to climb in behind the wheel. The sight at the north end of town stopped him dead. A solid snowdrift, rolling down the street like a slow tsunami.

Strong fingers gripped Amber’s shoulder and spun her around. She’d been so busy screaming - voicelessly, like in a nightmare - she was about to let out another one, but she was met by a strange calm, deep in the centre of the Doctor’s eyes.

‘Amber,’ he mouthed her name precisely, and she could feel the vibration of his voice through the fingers at her shoulder.

‘We have to leave here.
Now.’

She noticed his other hand: veins of ice crawled where they should have run blue. Amber shook her head, determinedly It wasn’t as easy as he’d anticipated. Parker had the advantage in size and strength, but Leela was one tough chick. Not to mention agile and vicious.

She wrestled him over at one point, striking out at his jugular. Parker took the blow with his forearm, saw his opportunity to throw her off as she reached for the knife at her belt. As soon as she landed, she went for the knife again.

Parker dived at her and pinned her.

He groped for the gun inside his coat, but as he pulled it, she freed an arm from under his knee and smacked it flying.

He watched it land too many yards away in the snow. ‘Now, why did you have to go and do that?’ Sighing, he pulled back his fist to punch her out.

Ray Landers yelped, Godzinski’s grip had seized up, like she was in some sort of electric shock. Her hand was a vice around his wrist and the rest of her was turning to ice.

Lines of it ate up her arm, racing one another to get to him.

Ray tugged so hard it hurt his wrist.

He rolled onto his side and swung his rifle like a club. It smashed through the limb of ice and the hand flopped into the snow, tiny crystals starting to eat through the glove.

Ray hauled himself out of there and ran for Zabala, who was sighting along her rifle at what had once been Jen Godzinski. Ray turned to follow her example.

Raising the rifle, all he saw was the ice eating its way along the weapon towards his eye.

Joanna racked her brain so hard she was almost in danger of blacking out again. She’d volunteered - insisted on volunteering - to hold back the drift. Moments after the Hum-Vee had burned off in the direction of the electrical pylon, her two troopers were announcing they were all out of grenades -

of any kind.

The drift was holed and cratered in places, but it mended itself and continued its advance.

This stand of hers was more about guilt than courage, she was too aware of that. Action to compensate for inaction, the way a belated card is supposed to make up for a forgotten birthday. If anything, though, it made her all the more determined she wasn’t going to fail.

‘Explosives!’ Joanna motioned the soldiers to follow her.

Pack a charge on board that Snowcat and send it into the thing!’

‘Lieutenant, we’re short of charges-’

‘Just do it!’ Her throat was so raw, she didn’t even sound like her any more.

The Stormcore was only doing what it was designed to do: multiplexing energy streams and drawing them into a central nexus. It was powerful enough to reel in all sound and even play tug-of-war with the neural pulses travelling the optic nerve.

There wasn’t time to explain any of that to Amber: the Doctor lifted her up and carried her away from the centre.

She pummelled him with furious blows, but when he could hear her cries he planted her down again and knelt to bring his gaze to bear on tearful eyes.

‘Amber, listen to me. You don’t share any connection with the storm. This ice creature is an alien creature; it doesn’t belong here. It was pulled or fell through a gap opened up by that device you saw.’

‘That’s the thing that’s making it do all this! Get rid of it, take it away from here! Then I can talk to it, I know I can. It’ll listen to me.’

‘No, Amber,’ the Doctor argued, keeping his voice firm, but his gaze gentle. ‘That device is a sort of steering wheel. It’s using it to help control its actions. This creature won’t be appeased or controlled, not by you, me or anyone. Control is what it wants for itself. It wants nothing more than to be master of its own destiny.’

‘You can’t know how it feels,’ the girl complained bitterly.

‘No, I can’t,’ the Doctor told her honestly. ‘Not for certain.