by Mark Morris
Benton gaped at the creature for a moment, unable to say or do anything, then recovering his wits, he shouted, ‘Fire!’
Instantly the small, confined space became filled with the shattering din of gunfire and a lethal, horizontal rain of bullets.
The scream was a jagged blade of sound, tearing through the very fabric of the walls. Tegan jumped out of her skin and grabbed the back of Mike Yates’s jacket. As the din was abruptly cut off, she said, ‘Please tell me that was just a sound effect.’
Before Mike could answer the air was filled with the cacophony of a hundred small explosions. Instinctively the two of them ducked, then almost immediately Mike raised his head. ‘Come on!’ he shouted and began to run towards the sound.
Until the shooting started, Turlough had begun to feel like the only person left in the world. He sat on the padded bench in the back of the jeep, gazing at the Ghost Train building until the images on its frontage blurred. The only sound to break the silence was the plaintive cries of seagulls. He stretched and wondered idly whether he ought to find some shade.
He yawned and tried to put aside the guilt he felt at sitting out here whilst the rest of his friends were monster-hunting inside. He was only following the Doctor’s orders, he told himself, and he had accompanied the Doctor into the heart of the Xaranti spaceship, so he was hardly a coward. He just didn’t throw himself recklessly into situations like Tegan did, that was all. He was more thoughtful, had a greater sense of self-preservation. That didn’t make him selfish, which was what Tegan had called him on several occasions, merely...
careful.
The scream from inside the Ghost Train shattered his thoughts. Turlough sat bolt upright in his seat, half-expecting the doors to burst open and disgorge either a fleeing line of terrified soldiers or the Xaranti creature itself.
It struck him that if the creature did appear ahead of anyone else, he would be its only possible target. With this in mind, he stood up, intending to shift into the driver’s seat for a quick getaway if necessary.
As he stood, two things happened simultaneously. He registered slight movement some distance behind him and a sudden eruption of gunfire exploded from within the building, of such duration and ferocity that it sounded like one long, unbroken roar.
Turlough hunched his shoulders and glanced in that direction. As yet there was nothing to see. He turned and looked behind him. What he saw made his stomach clench, his throat tighten and his legs turn to water.
About twenty Xaranti hybrids, in various stages of transformation, were shuffling towards him. At their head he recognised the UNIT sentry - Corporal Manning - who had been on the gate. He was still in the early stages of transformation, his eyes staring, his expression zombie-like.
Behind him was a policeman in uniform, his eyes black and starting to bulge. A young man in a pair of denim shorts displayed a chest and shoulders covered in Xaranti spines; a girl of no more than thirteen had a hump on her back swelling and squirming beneath a pink Osmonds T-shirt.
They were all moving slowly as if in a trance. It was if they were being summoned, drawn towards the Ghost Train like metal filings towards a magnet. They seemed oblivious to their surroundings, which Turlough hoped meant they would be oblivious of him too.
Part of Turlough wanted to stay still in the hope that the hybrids would not notice him. However, the greater part - the cowardly part, Tegan would have said - wanted to put as much distance between himself and these... these things as possible. He took a deep breath and jumped to the ground, little clouds of dust puffing up around his feet. The instant he moved, the hybrids reacted, as he had feared they might.
The girl in the pink T-shirt hissed, her head darting to follow his progress with an almost snake-like swiftness. Her back bulged more intensely, and then, with a ripping of cloth and a wet tearing of flesh, burst open, to release a thrashing, bloody mass of glistening crablike legs.
Turlough made an involuntary whimpering noise in the back of his throat. He didn’t want to see any more. Panic made his movements jerky as he ran to the driver’s side of the jeep and wrenched open the door. He threw himself inside, the smell of hot leather mingling with his fear to make him feel sick. For an awful moment it struck him that the driver of this vehicle might have taken the keys with him, but no, there they were, dangling from the ignition. He leaned over, grabbed the handle, slammed the door shut and locked it. He turned the ignition key and the engine revved into life.
Only now did he look up through the windscreen. He had had a vague idea that he could escape down the route dead ahead, but his heart sank as he saw a crowd of hybrids approaching from that direction.
His stomach turned over and his mouth went dry.
Desperately he looked to his left, praying that the aisle directly opposite would be clear.
It was not. The leading hybrid approaching from this direction, no more than twenty yards from the back of the truck, had black, thorn-like bristles sprouting from his face, and was already hunched over and propelling himself grotesquely along on his newly-sprouted Xaranti limbs.
Again, Turlough’s panic seemed to intensify the hot claustrophobic stink of leather inside the driver’s cab, making him feel faint and nauseous. If he didn’t want to be either ripped apart or infected with the Xaranti virus, he had no alternative but to drive forward and hope that the hybrids would move out of his way. He couldn’t be half-hearted about it either. If he drove too slowly the creatures would merely scramble up on to the back of the jeep; either that or smash his windows and drag him out.
‘Get out of the way! I’m coming through!’ he shouted, his words emerging as a hysterical, screaming croak. He slammed the truck into first, released the handbrake, then floored the accelerator.
With a squeal of tyres, which kicked up a billowing wake of dust, the truck lurched forward. Turlough gritted his teeth and tried to thread the vehicle between the leading hybrid shuffling towards him up the centre of the aisle and a ‘Hook-a-Duck’ stall on the right.
The lead hybrid, a bushy-haired, bearded man in a white shirt and jeans so flared they covered his feet, raised his hands not in a self-protective gesture but a threatening one.
Before Turlough could take evasive action, the hybrid (whose black, bulging eyes could have been mistaken for large, round shades at a distance) leapt at the truck.
He hit it with a loud thud and immediately rebounded, cartwheeling spectacularly through the air, a red streamer of blood arcing after him. The truck slewed, but Turlough -
through a combination of terror and luck - managed to bring it under control, and tore out of the fairground at seventy miles an hour as the hybrids launched themselves after him in vain pursuit.
As soon as the shooting started, the Doctor left the Brigadier and his men without a word and ran towards the commotion.
He bypassed witches and warlocks, ghouls and demons, flapped aside limp-winged rubber bats that ambushed him as he skidded round one corner after another.
He did not exhibit any caution until he was almost upon the scene itself. He paused then to listen, trying to work out the position of Benton and his troops, and more importantly the direction in which they were shooting.
One thing he was able to deduce from the din was that beyond the next corner was some kind of open area - not exactly cavernous but with room to move around. This must be where the Xaranti had made its lair after squeezing through the narrow corridors of the Ghost Train. The Doctor took a deep breath, then crouching low to make himself as small a target as possible, crept round the corner.
The roar of bullets struck his ears, the careering torch beams and the tiny but myriad white flashes of gunfire reduced the scene to a rapid, confusing interplay of light and shadow. The Doctor tried to look beyond that, tried to adjust his vision to phase out the distractions.
This area must be the heart of the Ghost Train, the piece de resistance of the ride. It had been designed to resemble swampland, complete with a black, drooping tang
le of fibreglass trees and vines which arched over the thread of track. To his right, against the far wall, the ‘ground’ had been built up to form a bank, beyond which lurked a mechanical serpent-like creature that was designed to rear up out of the swamp.
The serpent was probably effective as part of the ride, but compared to the Xaranti crouching behind it, legs drawn in like a spider under threat, it looked pitiful. The knot of UNIT
soldiers on the other side of the room were blasting away at the Xaranti - or rather at the fibreglass ‘nest’ in which it was huddled. The creature had been hit; as the Doctor’s eyes adjusted he saw some dark fluid - blood or ichor - leaking from several wounds in what he could see of its body. But most of the bullets were going astray, some hitting the walls and sending chunks of plaster flying in all directions, others reducing the sculpted trees to a debris of shattered fibreglass. Shards rained down on the mangled body of the soldier sprawled across the track like a man hit by a train.
The Doctor tried to attune his mind to the Xaranti thought-patterns and received a tumbling confusion of intense, savage emotions: delirium; abandonment; the desire to inflict pain, to kill. He soon realised these feelings came not from the Xaranti, but from the UNIT troops. Their trigger-happy attack on a creature into which they were gradually transforming must have pushed them over the edge. The Doctor wondered whether in fact the Xaranti as a species had planned this little episode from the outset, had been willing to sacrifice one of their number in order to hasten the recruitment of many more.
Recalling how his attempt to communicate with the Xaranti in their own craft had effectively thrown a spanner into their mental works, the Doctor summoned all his willpower. He took a deep breath and stepped boldly out, not exactly into the line of fire, but certainly into full view.
‘Stop!’ he shouted, raising his hands and instantaneously transmitting an intense telepathic command to the same effect. The result was startling; the firing ceased abruptly. For a few moments the only sound that could be heard was the stertorous breathing of the wounded Xaranti. The Doctor looked at the troops, who gazed back at him, their eyes glittering in the half-light.
He shifted his attention to the Xaranti, turning his head slowly like a man in the midst of dangerous animals who had been instructed not to make any sudden moves.
Concentrating hard he adjusted the message to envelop the creature in a soothing balm of comforting, reassuring thought-waves. Several moments later he sensed the creature relaxing slightly and sent a feathery tendril of enquiry probing deeper into its brain. He gained access with such disconcerting ease that he could only conclude the Xaranti mind operated on similar frequencies to his own. At last he touched upon a few vestiges of human thought and emotion, struggling feebly like a fly ensnared in the sticky secretions of a carnivorous plant. He sensed confusion and fear, plucked out a name: Guy Elkins. Even as he accessed this information he could sense it dissolving, melting down into the substance destined for the controlling mind of the Xaranti queen.
The Doctor moved slowly towards the creature, shards of fibreglass crunching underfoot. Slowly, shakily, the Xaranti unfolded its legs and raised itself up. The Doctor sensed that the gesture was not a threatening one, but was a display almost of trust, of wary greeting. He continued to sluice the creature in a steady, soothing telepathic tide, speaking gently to it as he did so, like a vet trying to calm an injured dog.
‘Hello, Guy. It is Guy, isn’t it? Now don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you if I can...’
Vaguely he became aware of some kind of kerfuffle behind him in the ranks, but tried not to let it distract him. He would have to rely on Sergeant Benton to sort it out - if he still had enough presence of mind to do so, that was.
Next moment, however, he heard rapid footsteps behind him, accompanied by a warning shout: ‘Get down, Doctor!’
His concentration all but broken, the Doctor half-turned and saw Mike Yates skidding to a halt a few feet behind him, levelling his gun at the Xaranti.
‘No!’ shouted the Doctor, but it was too late.
Two shots rang out. The first hit the Xaranti in the abdomen, fluid spurting out of the wound to spatter on the floor. The second glanced off one of its legs and ricocheted away into the darkness.
The Doctor felt the delicate telepathic link he had established with the Xaranti snap like frayed elastic. The creature opened a flap-like mouth and bellowed like a bull elephant in rage and pain. It reared up into a fighting stance, its legs rigid, back arched. Then, so fast it was almost a blur, it whipped its tail over its head in a huge arc and buried its sting deep into the soft flesh above the Doctor’s collarbone.
Part Four
Changing Times
The thickening fog in the Brigadier’s mind was closing in on all sides, obliterating the landscape of his thoughts. The barrage of mathematical questions which the Doctor had been bombarding him with, and his responses to them, had been like a torch beam lighting his way, preventing him from straying off the path.
Even with the Doctor’s help, however, the torch batteries had been steadily failing, the light growing weaker the closer they came to the heart of darkness. The Brigadier might well have succumbed completely if it hadn’t been for the gunfire.
Although not as swiftly as the Doctor, the Brigadier had been able to do nothing but react to it. To him the sound denoted action and danger, but most especially duty. Duty to his men, to his country, to his world.
The fog receded a little. Now that the Doctor was gone, duty was the Brigadier’s torch, lighting his way. Hoping that the light would stay with him for as long as he needed it, he set off at a shambling lurch, ignoring limbs that felt stiff and awkward. His heart was heavy as a rock in his chest, and within seconds he was drenched in sweat, gasping for breath.
However, he forced himself on through sheer, bloody-minded willpower.
And then the shooting stopped.
The sudden silence threw the Brigadier into a momentary state of exhausted confusion that almost caused him to blunder off the path, straight into the fog. He thumped to a halt, heart labouring, head pounding.
Then, faintly and hesitantly at first, he heard a voice in his mind, and he realised that his sense of duty; his driving force, had not deserted him, after all.
There might be men dead or injured, the voice told him; men who needed his help, his guidance. He couldn’t abandon his duty; he had to lead by example, had to be seen to be counted.
‘Yes,’ he muttered, ‘yes.’ He set off again, duty lighting his way once more. When he was almost at his goal he slowed down, allowed his soldier’s instincts to take over. His semi-automatic clutched in his hand, he crept along, his back to the wall, towards the place where the track took an abrupt left turn. He wanted a vantage point where he could recce the situation, but before he could do that two further shots rang out, followed by a vast inhuman bellow of rage and pain.
It provoked a deep, almost primeval response in him. For a moment the fog swirled and eddied around him again, threatening to extinguish the light...
Then the enraged roar faded and another sound replaced it
- a further cry of pain, from a smaller pair of lungs, but no less agonized.
‘Doctor!’ the Brigadier yelled. He ran around the corner, gun raised.
The scene before him had frozen into a kind of tableau, lit by a spotlight of torch-beams. Taking centre-stage was a creature from a nightmare, a hideous, giganticised conglomeration of bull, spider, crab and scorpion. Standing rigid before this creature, skewered by its great, ridged arc of a tail, was the Doctor, blood shockingly red on his cream coat, face twisted in agony. Between the Brigadier and the Doctor stood Mike Yates, frozen with horror, mouth agape, gun forgotten in his hand.
Without hesitation, the Brigadier marched forward, barged Yates out of the way and fired six shots point-blank into the creature’s face.
Its head disintegrated, spattering the Brigadier with warm, brown fluid. The Xaranti’s legs ga
ve way beneath it and its body slumped like a deflating hot-air balloon. Its tail drooped aside as it collapsed, dragging the Doctor over with it. The creature’s body twitched and jittered for a few seconds with involuntary muscle spasms and then became still. For a moment all was silent.
Then the Brigadier began to sob.
He couldn’t help it. He had killed before, many times, but this time, even as he had pulled the trigger to fire his final shot, an overwhelming wave of horror, revulsion, shame and, yes, even grief, had swept through him, sapping his strength, forcing him to his knees. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, but now he couldn’t stop. A few feet away from him the Doctor was lying unconscious, the Xaranti sting still buried in his flesh.
Then someone moved into the Brigadier’s line of sight and crouched over the Doctor. Mike Yates. Yates glanced at him, and in a split second, even through his tears, the Brigadier was able to read so much in his captain’s face. He saw Yates’s shock and confusion at his superior officer’s display of emotion. And he saw Yates’s own mental anguish at having failed to take action, even though one of his friends and colleagues was in deadly peril. Then Yates looked away and turned his attention to the Doctor once more. He grabbed the base of the dead Xaranti’s tail, and, with an angry gesture, he wrenched the sting from the Doctor’s shoulder.
For a while after that things became a little blurred. The Brigadier remained kneeling on the floor, head bowed, trying to pull his emotions back on to an even keel while everything happened around him. He was vaguely aware of Yates taking charge, organising the men. At one point he saw the Doctor being carried out on a makeshift stretcher, his face waxy and composed, some kind of padding - a jacket perhaps - bound tightly against his shoulder to stem the bleeding. He heard Yates barking orders at Benton; heard the voice of the Australian girl too, but rather than words he heard only her emotions - the brashness of her anger, the strain of her shock, the muted tones of her concern.