Doctor Who

by Russell T Davies

A dummy moved.

  A dummy turned and looked at her.

  A plastic dummy turned its head to look at Rose, and as her heart surged and hammered, she laughed, in shock, she said, ‘Wilson! Is that you? Don’t be so stupid, you scared me to death!’

  Wilson said nothing, just taking a single step forward, a lurch, in his mannequin disguise. Rose thought, This is offensive, tricking a female member of staff, all alone, here in the dark, except, hold on, Bernie Wilson’s short, he’s about five foot three and this mannequin is six foot tall, so how …?

  Another dummy moved. And another. And another.

  They jerked as if they had never moved before. Creaking with the sound of plastic joints being tested for the first time. Five dummies, six dummies, seven, all their heads turning to face Rose. Eyes blank, not eyes at all, just curves in the plastic. And yet somehow …

  They could see her.

  Rose was scared, and furious. ‘All right, that’s not very funny, whoever you are, now stop it!’ But her voice seemed to provoke them, activating a wave of movement across both walls, a crowd of dummies jerking into life. Her mind was racing, trying to rationalise this; there must be, what, 30 people dressed as dummies, 40, but even if the entire downstairs staff had ganged up on her, they still couldn’t gather a flashmob on this scale, so how, and why, and who …?

  The top-half turned its head to look up at her.

  The naked female bisected top-half. Three feet tall, punky black wig, lips painted scarlet. It looked at Rose. It craned its head to one side as though considering her.

  And then the legs. The separated legs tottered, steadied, then turned in Rose’s direction.

  Remote control, thought Rose. Whoever had planned this, they had remote control, and strings, and wires, and levers, they’d spent money on this. Okay, this would make a great display upstairs for Hallowe’en. But why here, why now?!

  Blood was thundering in her head, fear and fury and the shame of being tricked, and she went to storm out of Storage B—

  But a gang of dummies lurched into action, with a surge of creaks and clicks and clacks, coordinated now, as though rapidly learning how to move. They blocked the way out.

  This wasn’t a joke. This was intimidation.

  ‘You’re in so much trouble. All of you. If you’re doing this, Wilson, I can tell you right now, I’m reporting you.’

  One of the dummies stepped forward. The ringleader. A male dummy, in 501s and a bright yellow T-shirt.

  It walked towards Rose.

  ‘Okay, so who are you? Come on, stop kidding around. I told you, you’re in so much trouble.’ But as she spoke, it kept advancing and she shrank back against the wall. Trapped.

  The dummy came closer. Behind it, the ranks of mannequins stepping in the same direction. The bottom-half legs tip-toeing with a delicate tac-tac-tac on the concrete floor.

  As the dummy advanced, it raised one arm. Its hand flexed open, as if preparing for a karate chop. Rose saw a glint of light on the hand, a reflection of dark liquid, perhaps oil, perhaps …

  Blood?

  She looked up in horror as the hand reached its full height, and the dummy stared down with its terrible blank face.

  Then a man reached out of the darkness and took hold of her hand and said, ‘Run.’

  2

  Enter the Doctor

  They ran!

  Rose found herself being pulled along a long, dark corridor by a tall man in a leather jacket.

  Behind them, the dummies were learning to run. Jerking, creaking, lurching, lolloping, but gathering speed, they began to give chase.

  The man cannoned into the goods lift, pulling Rose with him, and stabbed the close-door button. The dummies were getting closer. He stabbed the button again and again and the doors began to slide shut. But the foremost dummy, a tall tennis-outfit male with a skull shaped into a yellow crest, ran faster, reaching out. The doors closed on its outstretched arm.

  The doors should have re-opened but Rose heard a shrill whirring; the man, the stranger, was holding a thin metal device, making it vibrate against the lift’s control panel. He seemed to have jammed the doors. The dummy was stuck, its arm still inside the lift, thrashing and grasping at the air, trying to reach her. To strangle her. Behind the tennis player, a crowd of dummies pushed forward, filling the gap in the doors with their impassive plastic faces.

  The man stepped forward.

  Grabbed hold of the dummy’s arm.

  Yanked, with such force, Rose thought he was going to break the man-dressed-as-a-dummy’s arm.

  She cried out. ‘Don’t,’ but he heaved again and—

  Pop!

  The arm came off.

  He’d pulled a man’s arm off.

  As the doors closed, he threw the arm at Rose. Still in shock, she caught it, expecting a horror-show of blood and bone, but …

  The end of the arm was a flat, solid oval. Like the detached arm of an actual mannequin. But it had been moving, she’d seen it; the fingers had been flexing. She felt them now, as the man pressed the ground floor button and the lift began to rise, but the fingers were stiff, fixed, solid, plastic.

  And now Rose felt overwhelmed. She was scared and furious but most of all she felt ashamed of herself. She’d always imagined that she’d cope in a crisis, that she’d be clever and calm and insightful. She’d even had a secret hope that she would be magnificent. Instead, she’d been cowed and stupid and helpless. ‘Okay then,’ she said, ‘very funny, who are they, students?’

  ‘Why would they be students?’ said the man—what was that, a northern accent?

  ‘Because only students would be stupid enough to dress up and think that was funny. And you’d only get students in that many numbers, what is it, Rag Week or something?’

  He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. ‘That makes sense. Well done. They’re not students.’

  God, this man was condescending! ‘Whoever they are,’ Rose said, ‘when Wilson finds them, he’s gonna call the police.’

  ‘Who’s Wilson?’

  ‘The caretaker.’

  ‘Wilson’s dead.’

  The lift doors opened and the man ran into the ground floor maintenance corridor, Rose following. He spun around on the spot and applied that little whirring stick to the lift controls. The panel burst into flames with a cascade of sparks. The lift doors stayed open, locked, blocking any pursuit from the basement.

  ‘That’s not even funny,’ said Rose.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Saying that about Wilson.’

  ‘Why are we still talking about him?’ said the man, mystified, as he darted over to a junction box on the wall. He whirred his device against it, and the hinges popped off, the cover clattering to the floor, revealing …

  Fingers? Rose stared. Fronds? Tentacles?

  The wiring inside the box had been swamped by a thick, pink, molten mass, extruding its surface into a thousand waving fingers. Like someone had melted a bucket of plasticine into the pipes, except … this was alive, surely?

  ‘We’ve uncovered a nest,’ said the man, delighted. He leaned in, the waving fingers reaching towards him. ‘I thought this shop was just a relay. But it’s more than that. They’ve advanced! The invasion must be close.’

  She stared at him, this man. His glee. He was about 40 years old, tough, hard as nails, she reckoned, lean and fit, with a brutal buzz-cut, dressed in a battered brown leather jacket, tight black clothes and big sturdy boots. And now he turned to face her, his blue eyes glittering with delight, strong cheekbones hollow in the steep fluorescent light, his head bracketed by two splendid ears. He said, ‘That’s living plastic,’ and even though he spoke nonsense, Rose found herself transfixed. ‘It’s worse than I thought, it’s infested the infrastructure of this entire building, which means I’ll have to blow the whole place up. With this.’

  And he reached into his pocket and took out a bomb.

  At least, it looked like a bomb, it was literally l
ike a bomb from 24, a metal box with a red digital number counting down: 80, 79, 78 …

  Rose felt numb now, too many shocks rendering her speechless and passive as the man shoved open the fire door onto Vere Street, propelled her out, then stepped back inside to stand on the threshold of the shop, holding up his bomb as if this happened every day and saying quite matter-of-factly, ‘I might well die in the process but don’t you worry about me, you go home and have your lovely beans on toast, off you go, and don’t tell anyone about this or you’ll get them killed, bye!’

  And he pulled the door shut—slam!

  Rose stood there, bewildered.

  What the hell?

  Then the door opened again. And now the man was beaming. ‘I’m the Doctor, by the way, what’s your name?’

  ‘Rose.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!’

  And, slam! He was gone again.

  Rose turned around, finding herself on a cold night in a perfectly ordinary London. Specks of rain in the air. Very little traffic, just the sound of a bus rumbling through Cavendish Square. She walked towards the main road, thoughts spinning. That was a trick, obviously. A trap, a con, a stunt. But in a basement where no one could see it? What for? And those special effects, like the top-half dummy, and the little waving fronds, that must’ve cost a fortune, let alone paying all those people to dress up and act the goat, why would anyone waste money like that?

  She thought of many things as she walked onto Oxford Street. Above all, she thought of the man’s bright blue eyes. She was so lost in thought that it took her a moment to realise she was still counting under her breath: 29, 28, 27, 26 …

  The bomb!

  Rose broke into a run, hurtled to the other side of the road, dived around the corner of New Bond Street and turned to look back round at the shop as—

  Henrik’s exploded.

  All five storeys expanded for a split-second, like a concrete balloon, then the surface tension broke as every single window shattered and the walls flew outwards, powered by a vast ball of fire swelling to fill the entire street. Rose ducked as huge slabs of concrete smashed into the shops opposite and enormous tumbling flanks of burning brickwork cascaded down New Bond Street, inches from where she was standing. She crouched into a ball as rubble and blackened white goods and shards of glass rained down. She could hear screams, alarms, the screech of brakes, the night on fire.

  Rose stayed for an hour, watching the ruin of Henrik’s burn. She phoned her mother, said ‘I’m fine,’ then hung up. She’d thought herself trapped in her alcove, stuck behind a brand new hillside of metal, stone and junk. But there were gaps. She slipped through a doorway—it had once been the entrance to Henrik’s first floor men’s changing room, now lifted up and dropped down across the street and yet still standing, at an angle—and climbed over the rubble to see her former workplace looking like footage of the Blitz, skeletons of walls silhouetted against bright yellow flames. The contents of the store had been scattered in all directions. Shirts and trousers and dresses draped across far-off lampposts, on fire, boxes of burning curtains, broken sofas, tables and chairs, a row of battered washing machines with their doors hanging open in a startled ‘O’. And from the depths of the fire, Rose could hear glass bottles popping, the smoke laced with the smell of musk, amber and patchouli.

  She saw the police arrive, and the fire engines. They sealed off the street, but Rose stood behind cross-hatchings of broken rebar and went unnoticed. She watched from her barricade, thinking of Wilson, the security guards, the cleaners, the sheer number of people who must have died in there. Killed by that man, she thought, the Doctor.

  After a while, she saw that Lottery woman from the Green Glade Café being held back by police. The woman was drunk, furious, yelling, ‘We’re having a ceremony! At 8.01 precisely!’ Then she sank to her knees, sobbing. Two policemen lifted her to her feet and led her away. Rose thought she should run to the police, she should tell them what she’d seen. And yet …

  Don’t tell anyone about this or you’ll get them killed.

  She watched the wall that had once separated the Food Hall from Cosmetics collapse into flames and dust. And then, dazed, tired, starving, bursting for a pee, she stepped down from the rubble and became aware that all this time, ever since the lift, she’d been holding the dummy’s arm. She should get rid of it, she should throw it away, she should chuck it onto the flames, but …

  She held on to it. And Rose went home.

  3

  Life at No.143

  Voices rang out across the Powell Estate. ‘She’s back!’ ‘She’s alive!’ ‘She’s here!’ Neighbours stood in their doorways to look over the railings as Rose wandered home, their cries echoing up and down the concrete gullies and canyons. Rose smiled, embarrassed but delighted, gave a little ta-daa gesture as she reached the central square and laughed out loud as five or six people applauded her. She gave them a wave with the plastic arm. Questions hailed down: What happened? How are you? Who’s to blame? But they sank into background noise as a woman in double-denim burst out of the Enoch Tower and raced towards Rose like a little blonde missile. Rose flinched, wondering if she was going to get a hug or a slap—

  A hug, of course, whoomph! Her mum grabbed hold of her and squeezed her tight. Jackie Tyler, five foot nothing, age not relevant, karaoke champion of the Spinning Wheel, life and soul of the party but a monumental lightning storm when angry, now sobbing and laughing and then, somehow, finding a reason to give Rose a punch on the arm.

  ‘You stupid girl!’

  ‘Why am I stupid?’

  ‘You just are!’

  And then she hugged Rose again. She wrapped an arm around her daughter and led her inside. More neighbours clapped and cheered and Jackie waved as though she had singlehandedly rescued Rose and brought her home to safety.

  The Powell Estate had been built in 1973. Two towers of sixteen floors, with six flats per storey, rising above a squat quadrant with shops on the ground level; a chemist, a newsagent, Dev the Bookie’s, Chicken Shack & Rack and a shop which failed and changed every six months, currently cards and gift-wrap. One tower was unofficially called Enoch, the other Powell, in the mistaken belief that the MP Enoch Powell had christened the estate, when in fact it had been named after the developer’s wife’s mother, Mary Jane Powell, a socialite and drunk who died falling off a balcony in 1951. The Tylers lived in Enoch, on the fourteenth floor, No.143. A bright red door opened into a narrow hallway lined with photos of Rose’s father, leading to a lounge with a big TV in one corner opposite a hatch and doorway which separated off the tiny, cluttered kitchen.

  The flat was never quiet at the best of times, but tonight it was open house. ‘Wartime spirit!’ cried Jackie. People came to and fro to hug and kiss Rose, as if to convince themselves she was truly alive. Jackie kept the kettle boiling and the beers flowing, and when Mickey arrived—a huge hug for Rose, ‘I thought I’d lost you, baby, don’t ever do that to me again!’—he was dragooned into providing refreshments, Jackie giving him £5 to go and buy crisps. Mrs Jayasundera came round with a tray of baked apples. Ru and Bau from No.136 knelt on the floor in front of Rose and wept, holding her hands in prayer. Howard from the market brought round a bag of Cox’s Pippins, and even two of the Corcoran kids—no one liked the Corcoran kids—came round to check that Rose was okay. In the background, on the television, Friday night programmes had been suspended, the BBC carrying live news from the site of the terrorist atrocity in Central London. Footage of Henrik’s, all rubble and flames, glowed on the screen.

  Rose watched it all with a faint dazed smile, thanking everyone politely, eating both an apple and a baked apple. Then she shushed everyone as the TV news reported a miracle of sorts. It turned out that a series of fake memos had been sent that afternoon, dispatching security guards, cleaners and basement staff to the Henrik’s depot on Armitage Lane West, so they weren’t inside the building when it blew up. Whoever had planted the bomb had taken care
to evacuate the site, although there was still no sign of the Senior Caretaker, Bernard Wilson.

  The babble went on around Rose—Jackie on the phone declaring to cousin Sue, ‘She’s here now! She looks a wreck! Skin like an old bible, I swear, if you walked in here now you’d think I was her daughter,’ while Mickey asked if anyone minded, switched off the news and channel-surfed to find the football—but she sank into her own thoughts. So the Doctor wasn’t a murderer, after all. He’d said that poor old Wilson was dead, and he’d sounded heartless, ruthless … but not guilty.

  And yet. What about the other people? Dressed as dummies? Surely the police would have found their bodies? Unless they’d found … well, plastic. Cold, hard plastic, lying in the ruins. But those mannequins had moved, they’d walked, they’d run. Living plastic, the Doctor had said, but how can plastic be alive …?

  Enough, she thought, enough, and she slapped the dummy’s arm into Mickey’s hands. ‘Take that. Take it and get rid of it.’

  ‘Well, good thinking, yeah,’ said Mickey, with that gleam of an idea in his eye. ‘Cos what you need is a good drink inside you. My treat.’

  ‘I’ve got a cup of tea.’

  ‘No, you need something stronger, let’s go down the pub, you and me, right now.’

  She smiled, knowing Mickey all too well. ‘You want to see the match, don’t you?’

  He looked horrified. ‘No way! It’s finished, it’s over, we missed it, this is all about you, babe. Although …’ He couldn’t help breaking into a grin; Mickey Smith had the most disarming smile. ‘I could still catch the highlights.’

  ‘I knew it. You daft sod. Go on then, go, don’t worry about me, I’m knackered, I’m gonna go to bed,’ said Rose, and she tapped the plastic arm. ‘Just make sure you get rid of that thing.’

  He leaned in, kissed her, said quietly, ‘D’you want me to stay the night?’ But she smiled at him, no thanks, and he stood up and crossed the room. He paused in the doorway to pretend the plastic hand was strangling him—Rose could’ve bet ten quid he’d do that—and then he gave a goodbye wave with the arm and sauntered off with a cheery, ‘See ya!’