by Doctor Who
‘Tell me about it,’ Rose muttered. She peered out from beneath the van and saw a police officer being comforted by a female colleague.
‘Had to get to her sister, she said. Nothing else mattered.’ He shook his head. ‘She ran the blockade and then. . . ’
Rose pulled herself from under the van and hurried for the cover of a nearby ambulance. But halfway across she got what they were talking about, and a sick feeling gripped her stomach.
The tail end of a double-decker bus was sticking out from the Thames’s dark waters. Little police boats circled it like sharks. A huge hole gaped in the wall beside the river where it had ploughed through.
‘What’s happening?’ the policeman went on. ‘As fast as we block their way to the river, they break through.’
The woman squeezed his shoulder. ‘Leave it to the soldier-boys. If they’re so keen to deal with it, let them.’
Yeah, that’s the spirit, thought Rose darkly, flitting between the parked vehicles, her way lit by blue flashes from their siren lights.
She had to reach the river’s edge without being seen – easier said than done, given the number of coppers and squaddies roaming about, arguing over who did what. Then her spirits rose a little as she recognised one of the boats moored to the wharf. Or rather the big tool kit 115
and blanket on its deck, which were clearly PC Fraser’s. Better still, there was no sign of anyone about. If he could only help her find Vida before it was too late. . .
She hurried down the steps to the small jetty. It was darker down here. The moon was just a faint circle half-buried by dark clouds.
By its feeble light, Rose saw the twitching bodies of a pair of soldiers on the jetty, clutching at their throats, mouthing in silent gasps.
So much for no one about.
She felt the hairs standing up on the back of her neck, turned to the boat. ‘PC Fraser?’ she called. ‘You there?’
A dark shape appeared from inside the cabin, crossed the deck.
‘Hello?’ Rose said uncertainly. ‘Fraser, you’ve seen someone, haven’t you?’
‘My mate, Fisky.’ It was Fraser all right. She couldn’t see him, but his voice sounded hoarse and strained. ‘He couldn’t tell me where the bodies were, ’cause he’d gone to join them.’
She walked steadily towards him. ‘Let’s talk about this, yeah?’
‘He was my mate.’ He turned, ducked out of sight. ‘I’ve got to help him.’
The sound of the hefty splash tore through Rose like an explosion.
‘No!’ she shouted, as she bundled on to the boat. ‘Whatever you saw, it wasn’t him!’
She peered over the rail. Where was he? It was so dark, surely he couldn’t have gone under already. . .
Then a blinding light bleached out the scene, as powerful floodlights were trained on the sunken bus from the river’s edge. She flinched, lost her balance. Plunged head-first into the freezing river.
She turned a somersault in the water, kicked up with both legs to break the surface. Gasping and choking, she pushed her hair from her eyes, tried to blink away the water. This is the Thames. What the hell am I gonna catch from being in here?
Or what’s gonna catch me?
Even as the grisly thought occurred to her, she felt something tug at her trainer. It pulled her down beneath the surface before she could draw breath. She kicked out, tried to free herself, but it was no good, 116
she was being dragged down. Something bumped into her back –
Fraser? Yeah, it must be Fraser coming to help her – he was a policeman after all, he would have heard her shouting to him. . .
Something sharp punctured the back of her neck.
Rose flailed furiously in the freezing water. But her lungs were already bursting, and a blood-red light was pressing in on her vision.
At first she thought it was in her head. Then she realised a shifting landscape was resolving itself from the gloom, that vague and horrible shadows were drifting at a distance, all around her.
Terrified, she fought harder, and finally she kicked free of whatever it was dragging her under. Her clothes were weighing her down but she swam upwards, ignoring the steady throbbing at the base of her skull. She thought of nothing but propelling herself upwards, away from the red light, away from the things. She had no breath left, every movement hurt and dizzied her, but somehow she kept going.
She had to get away. . .
For Mickey, the night did not improve.
He drove the Doctor and Keisha around for hours but there was no sign of Rose or Vida anywhere. And all the roads down near the river were blocked off with barricades and soldiers, so they couldn’t even get to the most likely places. He drove past a hospital in Westminster and wondered if he should go in and ask about new arrivals. But stuff was clearly kicking off there. People were swarming round the entrance like flies round rotten fruit. The Doctor wasted no time poking his nose in and found that the number of dehydrated people was on the increase – but no sign of Rose and Vida.
‘Our ghosts are keeping busy. But what do they want, besides a quick glug?’ He turned to Keisha. ‘You haven’t seen Jay again?’
‘No,’ she said, and sounded so sad about it. She kept quiet for the rest of the ride. Shame she couldn’t have watched her mouth when it really mattered.
Don’t go over that again, Mickey told himself.
There was a definite uneasy atmosphere brewing in the city, he could feel it. The endless sirens, people spilling in and out of hospi-117
tals, wanting answers, getting nothing. And blocking off the river only fed the rumours of disappearing people. The sight of so many soldiers on the streets didn’t help matters – it implied the police couldn’t cope, that some sort of national emergency was in progress. But listening to the news there was no statement, no announcement. No one knew what the emergency actually was, just that it was going on around them.
Now here they were back on the estate, with the dawn breaking.
Mickey kept wishing and wishing in his head that they would find Rose safe and sound at Jackie’s place. They had to find her, and she had to be OK. The thought that something bad had happened to her straight after hearing about that night – the night he couldn’t even remember. . .
Mickey walked Keisha up the stairs to her flat in silence, while the Doctor waited for them in the car. Keisha fumbled for her keys.
‘I didn’t know this was gonna happen,’ she said, pushing open the door. ‘How could I have known?’
Mickey shrugged. ‘Just find whatever stuff you need, and start writing your note. I wanna get off to Jackie’s.’
She nodded. ‘I need to find her too, Mickey. I’ve gotta talk to her.’
‘Ain’t you said enough?’
‘I’ve got to. ’Cause. . . ’ Keisha took a deep breath. ‘’Cause. . . it never happened.’
He frowned. ‘What?’
‘Us. That night.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘It was me who tried it on, not you. But you didn’t want to know. You crashed out, and I let you think we’d. . . ’
‘You made it up?’ Mickey stared at her, conflicted, wanting to believe her but not daring to let himself off the hook. ‘Serious?’
‘I ain’t used to it, Mickey. Rejection, I mean. Getting boys is the one thing I can do.’
‘But Rose is your mate. One of your best mates.’
‘I know. I ain’t proud of what I –’
‘Which is why you put the blame on me,’ he realised.
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‘I know you never liked me. That’s sort of why I wanted you.’ She snorted. ‘I know it was stupid, but you kept going on about how she’d pushed off and left us all, how she didn’t care and was never coming back, and that hurt me, Mickey, just like it hurt you. That she could just go off like that.’
He shook his head, incredulous. ‘And what, you wanted to get back at her by copping off with me?’
She looked at him at last. ‘I dunno what I wanted.’
/> ‘But you knew it made you feel like dirt,’ said Mickey. ‘Which is why you had to punish me for what never happened.’ He could feel his anger building. ‘The bricks through the window, the stories you spread, the blokes you got to rough me up – all ’cause of nothing?’
Keisha walked over to the cluttered dining table, started writing her note on the back of an envelope. ‘So how come you told Rose that rubbish?’
She kept on writing.
‘How come?’
‘’Cause I ain’t forgiven her, Mickey,’ she snapped, slamming down the pen. ‘She’s my mate and I love her, but she’s changed. She’s like a different person now she’s with that Doctor.’
‘And you wonder why you drive people away!’
‘You can see she’s changed. You know it.’
‘Maybe I do,’ he said. ‘But I still love her, whoever she is.’ He slumped down on her sofa. ‘Now go on, finish your note,’ he said more quietly. ‘Go pack whatever stuff you need. Then we’re out of here.’ He should have felt elated, he supposed, or mad with anger.
But he just felt tired. Tired and scared, because that nagging voice that kept telling him he would never see Rose again was growing louder and louder.
He jumped as the tinny little tune of a mobile phone broke the heavy silence. ‘That ain’t yours, is it?’
‘Like it would be,’ she said. ‘Oh, God. It must be that old woman’s.’
‘Her name was Anne,’ said Mickey, and picked up the chunky hand-set. ‘Do I answer?’
‘I dunno.’
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He bottled it, and let the phone ring on. But as the tune stopped dead, he noticed the display: 23 MISSED CALLS.
‘Someone’s off their head with worry,’ he murmured. She had a stack of voicemails waiting, and he found himself dialling the answer-phone number as prompted.
‘You have fourteen new messages. First message:. . . ’
A woman’s voice spoke softly in his ear. ‘Anne? It’s your sister, I’ve just seen you but. . . Oh, Anne, it can’t be you, can it? You can’t be under the Thames.’
Mickey felt the mother of all chills mess with his spine, put the mobile on speakerphone.
‘It’s a trick, it must be,’ Anne’s sister went on, halting, clearly trying not to cry. ‘Tell me it’s a trick, Anne. When you get this, tell me you’re OK.’ She paused, then rang off.
‘Anne’s one of them too.’ He looked at Keisha. ‘she’s turned into a ghost-thing like Jay.’
‘She can’t have,’ said Keisha. ‘She was never on the Ascendant.
How –’
A man’s voice came on the line next, reedy, agitated: ‘Anne, it’s David. The weirdest thing just happened, I saw you – thought I saw you, anyway, in my front room – and you told me you. . . Well, it’s stupid, I know, but it was so real. I can’t get hold of you at home.
Please, when you get this, call and let me know you’re OK.’ A pause.
‘See, this image I saw, it said something about the drowned, and I know you’re still raw from poor Peter going –’
Mickey killed the call. ‘The same thing’s happening. They drown, they come back, they trick more people into drowning. First the ship’s crew, haunting the people they love. Then those people haunt the people they love. Sort of like a cycle – don’t you get it? That’s why London’s so mad tonight – the effect’s spreading. It’s gonna keep spreading!’ He stood up. ‘Come on, we’ve got to tell the Doctor, let him hear this.’
But Keisha was staring past him, at the doorway. She was trembling.
He turned. It felt as if he was moving in slow motion.
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Rose was standing there. Large as life, picked out in pale colour.
She looked scared half to death and dripping wet.
‘Oh, Mickey, Keish, you’ve got to help me,’ she said, her lips out of synch with the words. ‘Say you’ll help me.’ She gave them an encouraging smile and a trickle of water ran from her nose. ‘Help me before the feast.’
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The water washed away from Vida and her senses began to return.
She was in a dank, dark hole. The ground was wet and hard, rocking gently beneath her. The ceiling rustled above her; it was a piece of thick canvas, stirred by the wind. A rasping, shushing sound, like pipes gurgling, added an eerie soundtrack.
Other things were stirring around her in the darkness. She could hear slithers, dragging sounds, but the weird acoustics offered no clue as to where they were actually coming from.
‘Who’s there?’ she whispered, trying to stop herself shivering.
‘You are unharmed?’
She started. That sounded like Crayshaw’s voice. ‘Where the hell am I?’
‘I believe this was once the Ascendant’s storeroom. You are in a part of the aft section, towed here by the tug.’ He chuckled softly.
‘Crayshaw would think of it as a Trojan Horse. He had an appreciation of the classics.’
‘You creatures were hiding inside the Ascendant,’ she realised. ‘Used it to get yourselves brought here.’
‘Humans enjoy puzzles. They have such inquiring little minds.’
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‘What are you? Where are you from?’
‘Ah, the names. How you love to know names and dates and places, to pin down facts and arrange them in neat order.’ Crayshaw paused.
‘We have no name. Our history is irrelevant. We live, and we spread.
We are of the waterhive.’
‘So you dismantled the Ascendant under water just to intrigue us?’
She nodded, reasoning it out. ‘And I suppose Commodore Powers told you it was coming your way – he’s your advance scout, right? Thrown back from the sea to prepare the way for you. Ensuring that the pieces of the ship would be taken straight here to a key naval establishment, a secret stronghold. And then you could use that secrecy against us.’
A deeper chill sounded in his voice. ‘Your intelligence is sound, Miss Swann.’
‘Unlike your body, I’ll bet. After 250 years it must be wearing a bit thin.’ No reply. She went on, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘I suppose Powers fixed you up with a fake personnel file, as well as helping to put you in charge of this mess.’
‘It is a pity you were not killed when you tried to leave this place with the Doctor,’ said Crayshaw.
She heard more scuffling in the dark, wondered if this thing could see how scared she must look. ‘Are you after the filament tracers on board the Ascendant?’ He didn’t answer her. ‘Have they been poisoning your sea water? Or do you plan to use them against us somehow?’
‘We can manipulate all moisture as we choose. Your technology means nothing to us.’
‘Without it we would never have learned you were here,’ she realised. ‘No wonder you wanted me out of the way.’
‘We suspected your department knew something of our activities,’
Crayshaw agreed. ‘But Andrew Dolan knows so very little, while you know a great deal.’
She shut her eyes, though it made no difference to the blackness.
‘You took him when you saw him.’
‘And drowned him.’ A soft chuckle. ‘He is ours, now. He was to have dealt with Vice Admiral Kelper on our behalf. Now he is being put to a different use, and you will meet Kelper in his place.’
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‘What have you done to Andrew?’ she hissed.
As she spoke, a ghostly light stole into the room. The stooped, brittle form of Crayshaw was revealed, standing just in front of her.
And now, swelling from the centre of the supernatural light, she could see Andrew, his full, proud features just as dear and familiar as if he was sitting in his office chair. But he was so pale, and when he spoke the image seemed to ripple like a puddle at the end of a rainstorm.
‘Help me, Vida,’ he breathed. ‘Save me, before the feast.’
‘You’re not real,’ she whispered, fear clawing at her guts.
‘Only you ca
n save me. You must come to me.’
‘No!’ she shouted.
He looked stung, affronted. Then he smiled. Water gushed from his nose and eyes as he seemed to glow brighter.
And now Vida could see what else was with her in the shadowy belly of this piece of the ship. The gurgling sound wasn’t pipes. It was people, rasping for breath, slashes in their cheeks and neck quivering like little mouths. She saw the real Andrew among them, shuffling on the spot, moaned in horror at the sight of the dark lines of blood trailing slowly down his face.
And there was Rose Tyler, her face just as ghoulish, staring sight-lessly with shiny eyes.
‘Are. . . are they dead?’
‘Our creatures must acclimatise,’ Crayshaw explained. ‘They were herded here along the river bed. Soon they will learn to draw their oxygen exclusively from water. The gills we have grown for them will serve them well. Perhaps now you see why poor Mr Dolan cannot meet the vice admiral?’
It was sick, horrible. ‘ You can live on land easily enough, why can’t he?’
‘The trauma to his body is too fresh, his new anatomy not yet stable.’ He gestured to himself. ‘Total mastery of the human body and its appearance as you see here is only possible after years of cellular integration.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she hissed. ‘And why is Kelper so important to you?’
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‘For the same reasons he is important to you, my dear,’ said Crayshaw blandly. ‘His authority, his office, the fleets he commands.
These are necessary to us.’
‘Don’t you think the naval brass might notice he’s grown gills and pearly eyes? You just said it took years to look even as normal as you do!’
‘His voice on the phone. His codes on a computer. These are all we require.’ He nodded. ‘And you will help us to procure them.’
‘Only if you make Andrew better,’ she said. ‘Him and all these people. Make them normal again.’
‘Oh, we could do that,’ Crayshaw agreed, ‘as easily as doing nothing at all.’
‘Turn them back and I. . . I promise I’ll help you.’