by Mark Gatiss
Whistler shook his head and clamped his eyes shut.
‘What’s going on?’ he mumbled, raising a shaking hand to his temple. ‘Who are you people?’
The Master stared at him. ‘That’s not important now. There’s nothing at all that’s important except that you show me where the last of these objects is hidden. The ninth key.’
Whistler steadied his breathing. He was severely disorientated and could remember very little of his recent experiences, but he knew an interrogation when he saw one and he wasn’t about to let these people have what they wanted.
‘I’ve never seen anything like those things in my life,’ he said carefully.
Bliss barrelled towards him, moving swiftly despite her bulk. ‘Lies!’
She raised a hand to hit him but the Master grasped her wrist.
‘Do you have to be so drearily unsubtle?’ he hissed. ‘Please, allow me to do this my way.’
Bliss snatched her hand away. The Master turned back to Whistler. ‘Focus on the keys, Wing Commander. Let me see into your mind.’
Whistler gritted his teeth and tried to turn away. The Master grabbed his chin and wrenched his head round. Despite himself, Whistler looked directly into the stranger’s eyes. When he tried to look away, all he saw were the whirling spools of tape on Bliss’s computer. They seemed to be as one with the Master’s eyes; merging, blurring, spinning…
The Master’s voice was persuasive, Whistler had to concede. Fella must’ve had some training. Probably a Russian. Though he didn’t look it. His appearance and the tone of his voice were more like a Turk. Or a Spaniard. The voice was… the voice was…
‘Look at the keys, Wing Commander. There are eight of them. Where is the ninth? Let me see.’
The Master’s voice was warm and soothing. It was almost as though Whistler could see it. Its colour. Brown. A warm brown. Whistler felt his befuddled mind clearing a little. He saw a huge canopy of blue sky and a beautiful, dusty landscape. Vineyards and olive trees dotting the soil like cloves pressed into a Christmas orange. His plane was soaring overhead, giving a victory roll. Beneath, the crowds were cheering and cheering. It was all over. The war was finally over. Whistler smiled beneath his large goggles. His face was black with smoke and oil but he was happy. Happier than he’d ever been. He’d got through it. Feeling inside his leather jacket, his fingers found the small, crystalline object he’d come upon that day in the grounds of Culverton aerodrome. The day after she’d been taken from him by the bloody bomb.
He cradled the thing in his palm now. It was warm to the touch…
The Master snapped his fingers in front of Whistler’s eyes and the old man started.
‘What? Where was…?’ he stammered.
‘Well?’ asked Bliss.
The Master smiled. ‘I know exactly where it is. Shall we go?’
Bliss’s chalky face split into an impossibly wide grin. ‘The configuration will be complete. The invasion can begin!’
Whistler sank back into his chair, feeling utterly worthless.
The Doctor threw off his smoking jacket and, quickly and efficiently emptied the unwashed dishes from Whistler’s sink. He rolled up his sleeves and then looked up as Jo and Noah stumbled in from the garden, each carrying a bag of fertiliser. Jo let hers flop to the tiled kitchen floor and groaned.
‘Mind telling us why we’re doing this, Doctor?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘No time just now. Noah, go back out to the garden. There must be a potting shed of some kind. Bring back all the tools you can lay your hands on.’
Noah looked puzzled but shrugged and dashed out.
The Doctor turned both taps on and water thudded into the old, square porcelain sink.
Without looking at Jo, he began to speak. ‘We have to stop the villagers’ advance in order to help the Brigadier, yes?’
‘Yes,’ said Jo.
‘But we can’t risk harming any of them. Yes?’
Jo sighed. ‘Yes.’
‘And what we want most of all is for those people to be free of the aliens’ influence.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Well,’ cried the Doctor happily. ‘If I’m right, this may be a way of killing two birds with one stone.’
Noah kicked open the gated kitchen door and came back inside, staggering under the weight of an old grey canvas bag. He dropped it to the floor with a loud clunk. A quantity of hammers, files and nails spilled over the tiles.
‘Splendid,’ said the Doctor. He nodded towards the front room. ‘See how they’re getting on, would you?’
Noah raced from the kitchen. The Doctor rapidly sorted through the tools on the floor. ‘Right, Jo. You’re a practical sort of girl, aren’t you?’
Jo shrugged. ‘I like to think so.’
The Doctor pointed towards Mrs Toovey’s cooker. ‘Can you get that going? I need it heated to about two hundred degrees.’
‘OK.’ Jo moved towards the cooker.
The Doctor pulled a chair from under the kitchen table. Its legs scraped over the tiles. Feeling inside the pockets of his abandoned smoking jacket, he retrieved his sonic screwdriver and a few other objects that Jo had never seen before. One of them appeared to be some sort of compact glass retort. He ransacked the tool bag, hurling a metal ruler and a hammer over his shoulder.
‘What’re you looking for, Doctor?’ asked Jo, bending over the cooker.
The Doctor didn’t look up. ‘If we’re out of luck, I’ll have to use a file to create my own – ah!’
He held up a jam jar filled with some black substance and beamed triumphantly. ‘I knew the Wing Commander wouldn’t let me down. He’s a tinkerer like me.’
Jo tried to make out what was inside the jar. ‘I don’t…’
‘Iron filings!’ cried the Doctor. Then, without pause, he got up, dragged one of the bags of fertiliser across the floor, hefted it on to the table and split the packaging apart with a well-aimed blow with a Stanley knife. Dark, peaty matter spilled out on to the table.
Noah ran back in from the front room.
‘How’s it going out there?’ asked the Doctor.
Noah’s expression was grave. ‘Not good.’
Benton let fly with a devastating punch, knocking a burly man in a cable-knit sweater to the ground. The man, grinning madly, simply rolled over and came at him again, his spade-like hands outstretched. He made to grab the sergeant around the throat but Benton ducked and dodged, slamming the butt of his rifle into the man’s side.
Around them, the scene was very much the same. The dozen or so troops left after the Brigadier and Yates had left for the attack on the aerodrome were struggling to keep back the villagers. Most had now fully absorbed the disgusting embryos and wore the same fixed grins. Some, less advanced in the conversion process, had strange, lumpen disfigurements as though they were suffering from the mumps. What they all had in common was their determination to break through the UNIT platoon.
Private Billy Dodds fell backwards at the combined assault of Ted and Max Bishop. He yelled in terror as their hands clawed at his face, then managed to kick his booted foot into Ted’s groin.
Silently, Ted rolled off him and fell to the ground, his smiling face smacking off the bullet-pocked tarmac. Dodds dragged himself to his feet and retreated behind the makeshift barricade the UNIT men had constructed.
Panting with exhaustion he sank to the ground and noticed Sergeant Benton next to him, hastily reloading his rifle. Benton cracked the magazine into place and then got up on one knee. Aiming carefully, he shot at the road in front of the villagers’ advance.
‘You lad!’ he yelled at Dodds. ‘Go into the cottage and tell the Doctor we can’t hold them any more!’
‘But, Sarge –’
‘Do it!’ cried Benton, aiming again with one eye closed.
He gave Dodds covering fire as the inexperienced private scuttled across the road and into Whistler’s cottage.
Dodds ran through the front room and into the kitchen wh
ere a strange sight met his eyes. Burst bags of what looked like fertiliser were scattered all over the floor and red rubber hoses snaked from the cooker into a sink full of water. There was a pervasive, sweet smell and for one crazy moment Dodds thought someone might be making jam.
A tall, white-haired man in shirtsleeves was at the sink. A girl and a young boy stood nearby looking extremely worried. All three had wet handkerchiefs or tea towels over the bottom half of their faces.
The tall man was filling milk bottles, but Dodds peered at the dozen or so on the side of the sink and they appeared to be empty. Each had been sealed with what looked wax; a pan of melted candles on the stove bore witness to this.
‘Would one of you be the Doctor?’ asked Dodds lamely.
The girl pointed to the white-haired man, who was too immersed in his work to reply.
‘It’s all right,’ came her muffled voice. ‘We don’t know what he’s doing, either.’
Dodds walked up to the Doctor and saluted. The Doctor looked up, noticing the private’s presence for the first time.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Dodds. ‘But Sergeant Benton says he can’t hold them any more.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘Right. It’s time we got everyone inside the cottage.’
He thrust two of the milk bottles into the private’s hands. Dodds looked down at them and frowned. ‘What do I do with these, sir?’
The Doctor doled out the remaining bottles to Jo and Noah, then grabbed three for himself. ‘Come on,’ he ordered.
Marching off through the cottage with the others close behind, he opened the front door with the toe of his boot and dashed outside.
He took in the chaotic scene in an instant.
‘All right, Sergeant,’ he shouted. ‘Call off your men.’
Benton appeared from behind the barricade and yelled the order to retreat.
‘Get everyone inside,’ shouted the Doctor.
The UNIT troops gratefully retreated, racing past him and into the cottage. Benton paused on the threshold as the last two of his troops piled inside.
‘Fisher! Dodds! Get upstairs. I want your rifles trained on the attackers.’
He looked worriedly at the Doctor. ‘We may have no choice, Doctor.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘We’ll see.’
He raised the first of the milk bottles into the air as Jo and Noah appeared in the doorway. ‘Are you ready?’ he cried.
‘For what?’ asked Jo.
The Doctor looked affronted. ‘Chuck ’em, of course!’
He hurled his bottle in a wide arc and it smashed in front of Ted Bishop. It was immediately followed by two more.
Almost at once the heavy, sickly-sweet smell grew stronger.
Ted Bishop staggered slightly and then something extraordinary happened. He began to laugh. A strange, high giggle rolled out from his distended face, building to an almost hysterical pitch. Then, just as suddenly, his dark eyes rolled over white and he fell to the ground, unconscious.
The Doctor’s eyes, the only part of his face visible beneath his wet handkerchief mask, sparkled with triumph.
‘Doctor –’ began Jo.
‘Don’t just stand there!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Throw!’
He grabbed the bottles from Jo’s hands and threw them into the crowd of villagers. One after another they stumbled and fell, convulsed by hysterical, frightening laughter.
Noah hurled his bottles at his uncle’s feet. The glass shattered into shards and Max Bishop fell to the roadside, arms flailing. In seconds, he had blacked out.
‘Doctor…’ gasped Jo. ‘What… what’s going on?’
The Doctor watched the chaos with satisfaction. ‘Nitrous oxide, Jo,’ he said above the chorus of insane giggling coming from close by. ‘I isolated the nitrates in the fertiliser and heated it with the iron filings. Now we know it works, we need to produce as much as we can.’
He grinned as Jo suddenly fell down flat on her backside, giggling. ‘Nitrous…’ she gasped.
‘Oxide,’ said the Doctor. ‘Of course, there are lots of impurities in it, the way I knocked it up. Causes some side effects. You probably know it better as laughing gas.’
He helped her to her feet and pushed her back inside.
‘You two had better stay in there. We don’t want you affected too.’
The Doctor shut the door firmly behind him as he re-entered the cottage. He raced up the stairs towards Benton.
‘All right, Sergeant. That should keep them unconscious for a while. We’ve done all we can here. I think it’s time we helped the Brigadier out.’
None of them noticed that Noah Bishop had slipped outside and was running towards the unconscious body of his father.
Whistler pulled against the ropes that bound him to the chair. He cursed and tugged again, the harsh fabric cutting into his wrists. He had let himself down. Badly. That Master fella had bamboozled him into revealing his secret. Though quite what they wanted with his good-luck charm, he couldn’t begin to tell. The point was he had failed as an officer and a gentleman. And now it was up to him to make amends. The first thing to do was get the hell out of the aerodrome.
The ropes were refusing to budge. Whistler struggled to his feet and lifted the chair bodily. Just across the room, the crescent shape of Bliss’s desk still glowed with light.
He shuffled closer to the desk, his gaze flicking over it for any sign of something useful. In turning itself over, the crescent of the desk had exposed what appeared to be quite a sharp metal surface. The old man made straight for it, grunting with effort as he carried the bulky chair behind him.
He banged against the desk and swore as he cracked his wrist against it. Then he manoeuvred himself so that the ropes which bound him were flush with the sharp edge of the half-moon and began to rub them swiftly against it.
With agonising slowness, the fibres of the rope began to unravel.
Whistler bit his lower lip. Sweat dripped from his forehead at the combined effort of keeping the chair off the ground and leaning against the desk. Just as he felt one hand coming free, the door opened and Captain McGarrigle stood there, his big, dark eyes glowering at him.
The old man realised at once that another of the vile creatures had found a home within the Captain.
With the speed of a panther, McGarrigle strode across the room towards Whistler.
In a searing flash of memory, Whistler saw the Captain attacking him outside by the perimeter fence.
As the younger man leapt at him, he pulled one hand free and swung the chair round, catching him a brutal blow on the side of his head.
The Captain crashed to the floor but rolled over at once, bringing his fist up and punching the old man in the stomach.
Whistler cried out and fell backwards against the desk, his spine connecting painfully with the hard metal.
In a second, the Captain’s broad hands were on his face and Whistler knew at once what was happening. Fingers flashed to cover his nostrils and a warm palm was suddenly clamped over his mouth. McGarrigle was trying to suffocate him.
Whistler was no longer a young man. He had no hope of defending himself against an adversary like the Captain, six feet of sinewy muscle possessed by an alien intelligence. But as he struggled under his opponent’s deadly grip, rapidly losing consciousness, he knew that he owed it to the traditions by which he had lived his life not to go down without a fight. He still had his wits. And his wits told him that the Captain always carried a pistol in his belt…
The alien’s hands were clamped firmly across Whistler’s face, strong and implacable. The old man struggled violently, almost convulsing himself beneath the Captain’s grip, and his hands thrashed at McGarrigle’s belly, raining ineffectual blows on the wall of hard muscle. But then he found the gun, felt its cold presence and struggled to release it from the belt.
The strength was draining from his limbs. The room, already dark, was swirling into a deeper, everlasting blackness and there was a roaring in his ears
. Then something else came back to him. The interrogation. Bliss’s interrogation. The lamp. She had reacted to it as though scalded. There was a black lead by the side of the desk. He knew there was. With one hand still struggling to release the gun, Whistler made a final effort and slapped his other hand hard against the side of the desk. He found the cable at once. His fingers slid down its length and came upon a bulky rectangle fixed into it. He clicked on the anglepoise lamp.
The Captain reeled back, hissing like a reptile, his hand flying from Whistler’s face to cover his eyes.
Whistler gulped air into his bursting lungs and shook his head to clear the explosion of red dots that was bursting before his eyes. He knew he only had seconds.
His opponent was already recovering. His hands flew to Whistler’s throat. The old man tugged at McGarrigle’s belt. A press stud opened and the gun clattered to the floor. Whistler grabbed it, took aim and pumped six bullets into the Captain’s chest.
The alien was slammed back against the desk, his head hit the metal with a sickening crack and he slid down, blood smearing the elegant blond wood behind him. The lamp fell to his chest, throwing its harsh light on his face. Whistler saw the Captain’s huge dark eyes dilate and then something hideous stirring beneath the skin of his face.
Getting shakily to his feet, Whistler didn’t need to see any more. He pulled the gun belt from the corpse, reloaded the pistol and raced from the office.
CHAPTER THIRTY
SIEGE
The ring of black-uniformed Legion troopers outside the aerodrome’s perimeter fence had been boosted by some new arrivals.
The Brigadier watched as Mrs Toovey and Jobey Packer emerged from behind the soldiers, taking their place in the human barricade, both smiling. Soon after, they were joined by Graham Allinson and Anthony Ayre.
‘They’re using pensioners and boys now,’ said the Brigadier bitterly. ‘It’s like they know we won’t attack.’
Yates nodded. ‘What I wouldn’t give to be facing a gang of straightforward monsters right now.’
The Brigadier gazed steadily at the enemy. ‘But that’s what they are, Yates. Inside them, anyway. Hostile invaders.’