The engineer came at the yellow-eyed man with a hammer. It didn’t affect him in the slightest. Instead, the man slowly but inexorably moved against him, pushing the engineer towards the open side of the train, without apparent exertion.
‘Enough of that,’ said the Doctor, his eyes searching the train controls. He had seen already what was coming; and knew that they were powerless to stop it. He leapt to the front of the train and swung the handle but it could not engage; instead, he made the engine lurch to the left, quickly landing the engineer on top of the man.
The train bounced, one, two, three times. It was speeding up down the track.
And like a tiny dot in the distance of the encroaching dawn, the Doctor could just see the infamously tall and beautiful Viaduct 13, stretching 150 metres in the air, terrifyingly high and thin. Far away . . . but getting closer every second.
There was absolutely no way the runaway train could hold on.
‘Move,’ the Doctor shouted at the startled driver. Then he hauled both the man and the engineer up from the floor. The noise level was terrific; the train was chattering their teeth.
‘Stop it you two.’ He grabbed the man’s gun and hurled it over the side of the train. It took a very long time to fall, as they rattled on. ‘We have to save this train.’
He opened the connecting doors and ushered them all, engineer and driver too, back across the narrow divide – louder and more rattling than ever – and back through into the main set of carriages. Six volunteers came forwards and held the man with the yellow eyes back. As ever, he seemed completely unperturbed as to the turn of events.
Donna pushed her way forwards in her pyjamas. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked nervously.
The Doctor stared at her. ‘“Let’s not take the TARDIS,” you said. “People like coffee,” you said. “Let’s travel the world,” you said!’
Donna wasn’t listening: she was staring at the man. ‘Oh no, look at him! Was he an alien all along? When did you realise?’
‘Oh, ages ago,’ lied the Doctor. ‘Come on, everyone, back. Back!’
The Doctor glanced at the people standing there, then leaned out of the window. There was a steep drop below. The rising sun was shining strongly against the mountain side. The train bounced again, once, twice again, always faster, plummeting down the mountainside as people shouted and shrunk back.
‘What are you thinking? Parachutes?’ said Donna.
‘Rarely carried on trains.’
‘What if everybody took their bedsheets . . .’
A boulder shook itself free from the side of the track of the banging train and tumbled down the mountainside. It was an extraordinarily long way down.
The Doctor shook his head. ‘OK, everyone,’ he said. ‘Keep going back. Back.’ He ushered them away from the engine side. ‘Come on, come on.’
The passengers moved quickly to the back compartment of the train, silent and terrified. Many of them were elderly.
‘Can you stop it?’ said Donna.
The Doctor’s mouth was a thin line. ‘I don’t know. Move, everyone! You too, Donna. Move! Back of the train!’
The Doctor turned in the wooden corridor. They could hear glasses and bottles were falling from the bar, smashing up and down the train. It was bouncing higher and higher now, as if any moment would be its last one on the rails.
‘Come on, Doctor! Let’s see what we can do,’ said Donna, worried.
The Doctor ran back to the front of the train, with Donna right behind him. Then, just before he crossed the windy door to the engine, he turned round promptly, gave her a grin, and winked at the man with the yellow eyes.
‘I know you. I know all about you. And all I’m telling you, is that we need Donna, OK? We won’t get there without her. Do you see the logic in that? Do you see the sense in it? You need us. I need you. Hold her. Capisce? Ooh. Capisce. I like it. Capisce?’
The man shook off the people holding him and nodded, as if he were completely unconcerned – and, with a push, the Doctor sent Donna backwards into his arms.
‘What?’ she shouted, wriggling frantically. ‘Don’t leave me with this maniac!’
‘Sorry,’ said the Doctor. ‘Sometimes, the situation requires a maniac.’
And he slammed shut the door of the carriage, and headed alone back to the engine.
‘Wait for me!’ shouted Donna, kicking and struggling in the man’s arms. ‘Let me go! I need to help the Doctor!’
‘Yeah, in a minute,’ said the man, still sounding blithely unconcerned.
‘I mean, it, get your hands off me!’ said Donna in a tone of voice that would have given most people pause. The man did not move.
In the next instant she’d bitten his hand. Again, people would have jumped at that. The man simply tugged down, as if brushing off a fly. Next, Donna butted her head straight up. It connected – it would have hurt, surely. But the man showed no sign of pain whatsoever; he did not change his stance. She did it again. Again, no pain response.
‘What are you?’ she breathed.
‘I’ll tell you when we get to the back of the train,’ he grunted, dragging her across the connecting link of the great bouncing train into the rear carriages.
And then there was a terrible, terrible crashing noise.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
They froze. The other passengers started to yell. The man unfolded his glasses rapidly back on his face, and started pulling on Donna again. They ran back and back as the front of the train catapulted itself up, up in the air, everything beginning to slide down to the back.
Donna held on to the side with a panicky feeling in her stomach. She could feel it: the shift in the air as the wheels left the track. For a moment, they were floating. Everything fell still and very, very slow.
She stared outside at the great beautiful mountains beyond, shimmering in the pink of the early morning, feeling two things simultaneously; the oddest sense of being inside and outside herself looking in; so that even through the fear and panic she could hear herself thinking, ‘So. This is it girl. This is where it ends. This is where you’ll crash down. I wonder if they’ll find you? How will Gramps cope? How will he manage? Hopefully I won’t be too burned to get home. I wish . . . I wish the Doctor was here. I wish I could be holding his hand. That would . . .’
A memory suddenly flashed across her mind: a day not long before when the Doctor had made a quick side trip to a planet called Lafayette. She had not been allowed to go with him, and he hadn’t been long. When she’d asked, he’d merely said he was visiting somebody in hospital. She wondered now. She knew it was an old friend. She didn’t ask the prognosis.
He had been so sad afterwards, she’d had to tell him about the time she and Hettie had gone out with their skirts tucked into their knickers deliberately for a dare to see who would bother to let them know and nobody had cared except for a dog who’d followed them all the way in case they had sausages and they’d ended up buying him a sausage so at least somebody had a good day, and he’d finally thrown his head back and laughed, then he’d looked at her and said, ‘Oh, it is so much better for me when you’re here, Donna.’
And she hadn’t thought of it again until now: but now, she wondered.
When the hour came.
Did he?
And all of that ran straight through her head, in the short milliseconds it took, as the great locomotive’s front went up in the air, and down, down, down, and the entire train held its breath to see where it would land.
There was a great screeching and a screaming noise and sparks went up from the metal undercarriage of the train as it banged down again, once, twice. The noise of twisted metal was terrific.
Suddenly, there was a clang and, incredibly, the wheels found the tracks, found the groove. They bounced back down again, but they were still on the rails, still moving. As they hit a flat stretch of track, though, they were slowing, definitely slowing; the forward momentum had gone, had been dissipated.
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br /> Finally, with a smell of burning from the tracks, they stopped. He’d done it. The Doctor had saved the train.
Donna pulled away from the man and ran up to the front of the carriages to open the connecting door. But as she did so, the wind whipped in, and she saw to her horror that she was staring out onto the rail ahead: into empty space.
There was no engine there. The front of the train had gone.
They had been uncoupled, and she could see they had come to a stop just on the long flat run up to the massive viaduct shining in the distance. And, far ahead of her now, still speeding up, was the engine, flying faster and faster, completely out of control and completely unstoppable.
‘No!’ she shouted, but the sound of her voice was whipped away on the heavy, scented wind.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The Doctor was attempting to consider his options, at some speed.
There was no stopping 400 tonnes of rocketing engine with a screwdriver. He would make, perhaps, the bridge, without the dooming physics of the swinging tail of the train behind him – but beyond that was a town. A station, and a town – it would be an utter catastrophe. He had to stop it.
The bridge was approaching at punishing speed as the engine bucked and jumped. He glanced around. What had Donna said? That idea of hers that he’d ridiculed? Sure enough, there was a pile of old oilskins in the corner, presumably for the crewmen when it rained. There was a reason they called it the rainforest.
He looked at the handles on the train once again. Would it accelerate more? He started filling up the engine with coke, and pushed it to its full extent. It didn’t feel like the train could move any faster, but it did.
The Doctor grabbed the sheets. Then, with some effort, he moved every piece of machinery and bag of fuel to the left hand side of the train. He used his screwdriver to unfasten anything attached to the wall, and piled it all up on the other side. Sure enough, the engine started to list.
The train was now unimaginably fast. Good. It had to be. It couldn’t stay on the rails now. It had to come off. It had to stop, before it met an immoveable object in its way.
The train rocked dangerously now. The glorious, impossibly beautiful Viaduct 13 was dead ahead.
Carefully, keeping an eye on its undulations, the Doctor climbed up through the window and pulled himself up onto the roof of the carriage. Here the wind was incredible; he practically had to surf to stay upright. Beneath him was the viaduct, plunging down unimaginably deep into the canyon below. He let the wind roar through him, briefly closing his eyes.
The morning sun felt huge and bright and close overhead. Even though it couldn’t have much effect, he shifted his weight slightly from one side to the other, over on the left hand side to try and help it. The wheels were already lifting, just a bit, a tiny bit . . . and here came the bridge, here it came ahead . . .
BANG. They hit the first stone stanchion at full pelt, and the train lifted to the left, just a little, and BANG another one, and the Doctor felt the great magnificent engine beneath him, the welded mass of pistons and coils and pure power, lift up, finally, to the left. Once it had begun to tilt, gravity did the rest. It banged down again once, twice – but the third time it could no longer overcome its physical destiny. The train took off into mid-air, just as the Doctor dived over the right-hand side, leaping outwards as far as he could, holding the oil sheets up in the air, and hoping for the best.
For an instant they were both flying, the great engine plunging down. The Doctor’s descent slowed – but was it slowing enough? Was it nearly enough? To crash in the ravine below? He didn’t look, instead following his own mantra, the mantra of his life: don’t look down. Because he knew his descent was too fast. Far too fast.
And, as he cut through the air, all the things that fall pulsed through his head: a glorious downed pheasant on the wing; and a windfall apple in Lincolnshire; and a golden ball in Pisa; and a hammer and a feather on the moon; and a wall in the bitter east; and every passing snowflake and lonely airman and oh so many tumbling stars . . .
And he felt a part of all of these things.
The noise the train made crashing into the ravine made the mountains tremble.
Donna, watching a very small dot from several kilometres away – it took the sound a short time to reach her – stifled a horrified sob.
The Doctor, still falling, closed his eyes . . . and suddenly found, WHOOSH, a huge fireball erupting below him sent a mass of heat up into the air, lifting the oil sheet and blowing him far over, taking him upwards, lessening the deadly speed of his plummet. He opened his eyes and looked up at the bright pink sky in surprise and gratitude.
This quickly turned to action as he realised he had to plan his descent so as not to fall straight on top of the burning engine, which was already scorching the trees around it and looked set fair to cause a major conflagration.
He aimed, instead, for the pounding river that ran beneath the viaduct – the reason for its existence – and plunged deep into its mysterious waters. He let himself sink, as billowing black smoke from the engine filled the air above, making it thick and hard to breathe. He let himself drift downwards into ever darker water, surrounded by the strange animals of this deep jungle, who came to inspect this new intruder in their world. They coiled around him, and swam by in curiosity as he spun and tumbled deep in the water, patiently waiting for a while for the smoke to clear, then he left them behind.
He broke the surface of the water, as he burst through it into the sweet morning air, the pink sky reflecting off the water, a smile on his face.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
It was a bright new morning. The passengers and crew of the train got a little bonfire going in a clearing and were warming themselves on it waiting for rescue.
They’d all heard the explosion, seen the train going down and heard the great WHOOMPH from the exploding boilers. People were muttering about the Doctor’s extraordinary self-sacrifice in uncoupling the engine from the rest of the train. The stewards were dazedly making tea for everyone; maintaining, even now, their immaculate standards. There was nothing to do except sit and wait for rescue.
Donna sat apart, glaring at the man with the yellow eyes, whose fault all of this was – and who appeared to be completely untroubled by any of it.
Donna stood up. ‘Right, I’ll be off. Thanks for the tea,’ she said.
The man stood up too. ‘I’m coming.’
‘No you’re not.’ She glanced at the others. ‘Hold him back, he’s dangerous!’
The man didn’t say anything as the stewards and the rest of the passengers on board piled in and led him back to the train, locking him in one of the bathrooms.
He watched through the window as Donna launched herself determinedly into the thick Brazilian rainforest, an environment for which she was supremely ill-equipped and badly dressed. Then he simply smashed through the door, pulled some bottles of water out from under the mess and broken glass of the restaurant car, dropped lightly off the other side of the train, and took off quietly to follow her.
Donna was having an argument with herself. It went like this: she’d seen him get out of a lot of things, right? That was how it worked. When she was with him, there was nothing they couldn’t do. He always managed it.
But there was the little voice in her head. She hadn’t been with him then. Not at all. She hadn’t been there. Not at the end. Not when she thought he might have needed her. Not in the way she’d have needed him.
It was unbearable to think that way. But she kept seeing it in her head, over and over again, the tiny dot that was the train engine, watching it career along the great viaduct, bounce, tip and finally fall, sparking a massive explosion. She’d seen it all.
Still. Surely there was a chance. Surely.
The light fell through the thick green canopy ahead, and it wasn’t hard, at first, to see the great plume of smoke she was heading for. All she had to do was keep marching towards
it. That was all she was going to think about. As to what she would find when she got there, who knew?
But as she got further into the jungle, she started to worry. Firstly, the sun, from the cool of the early dawn, had turned punishingly hot and steamy. Condensation evaporated from her pyjamas. That was another thing she should have probably thought through, Donna realised as she continued. She was wearing her pyjamas. At least she had her shoes on. But she had stormed out of camp without another thought in her head apart from getting away from the alien, and finding the Doctor. The luxury of the air-conditioned train carriages, with their comfortable seats and waiter service, had lulled her into a totally false sense of security. This wasn’t a little jaunt in the English countryside; she wasn’t going to cross a stile and find a little café selling bacon sandwiches and local cheese.
This was the Brazilian rainforest. One of the most hostile environments on Earth. And the deeper she went in, the thicker the canopy overhead became, and the less of a fix she had on the column of smoke she was heading for, without the faintest knowledge of what she’d find when she got there.
Donna tried not to think about how stupid she’d been. She turned round to look at the way back, but it was simply a thick layer of plant and foliage coverage that looked exactly the same whichever way. She glanced up at the sky. The sun was . . . OK. If the sun rose in the east . . . Hang on, did the sun rise in the east in the southern hemisphere?
‘Geography!’ she thought again to herself crossly. Blooming geography with its colouring in and oxbow lakes and the way her teacher hadn’t bothered if she’d read Smash Hits at the back of the class. It was their fault, really.
She tried to quell her mounting panic and take stock. OK. Let’s say that the sun was in the east. In that case the smoke was coming north west. North north west. She felt quite pleased with herself for remembering that. It sounded like a film. OK. If she kept heading north north west, then she would get there, or at least she’d get near the wreckage. Surely it would have scattered quite far? And then maybe she would . . .
Doctor Who: In the Blood Page 9