Doctor Who_ Deep Blue Part 15

As soon as he saw Tegan framed in the opening lift doors the Doctor hastily said his goodbyes to the Brigadier and put down the phone. He hurried across the hotel foyer with a grin on his face, calling out her name as if she was the person he most wanted to see in the entire universe.

Then he noted how unhappy she looked, saw how tightly she was clutching his message in her hand, and his face fell.

'Oh dear,' he murmured, managing to inject such gravity into his voice that Turlough, who was behind him playing catch-up as usual, felt his heart sink.

Tegan held up the note, looking at the Doctor almost accusingly. 'Alien contamination?' she said. 'What kind of alien contamination?

'Turlough, would you be so kind as to order some tea?' the Doctor asked. He took Tegan's arm gently and drew her aside. 'Let's sit down, shall we?'

At first Tegan looked as though she might protest, but then she nodded glumly and allowed herself to be led. The Doctor escorted her over to where he had been sitting, a seating area bordered by tall, white pillars. The seats were all black squishy leather with chrome frameworks, the coffee tables low and gla.s.s-topped. Harry Nillson was piping from the speakers, lamenting that he couldn't live if living was without you. Didn't that guy know any other songs? Tegan thought irritably.

They sat, the Doctor leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his legs slightly splayed, white-booted feet turned inward. To Tegan he looked like a little kid who'd been told to sit quietly, but who really wanted to run off and play.

His eyes, however, were alert, full of wisdom, windows to the awesome complexity of his thoughts.

'Which was it?' he asked gently.

'What?'

'Did you swim in the sea or eat the fish?'

'Oh. I swam in the sea. Or at least I paddled. What's going on, Doctor?'

The Doctor sighed, and as Turlough meandered across to join them, began to tell her exactly what was was going on. He had just finished when their tea arrived. going on. He had just finished when their tea arrived.

'Ah, tea!' the Doctor exclaimed as if it was the answer to all their problems. As the waiter departed the Doctor reached for the teapot. 'Shall I be mother?'

'What's going to happen to me?' said Tegan miserably. 'Am I going to turn into one of these Xaranti things?'

The Doctor glanced at Turlough as if urging him to remain silent. 'I'm sure it won't come to that,' he said rea.s.suringly.

She didn't look convinced. 'First the Mara, now this. I'm sick of being taken over by aliens.'

'Yes, the novelty does wear off after a while,' the Doctor remarked dryly.

Tegan glared at him. 'Are you making fun of me?'

'Of course he isn't,' said Turlough.

Tegan thought that one day she ought to tell Turlough that being nice didn't suit him. Whenever he tried it, he simply ended up sounding oily and insincere. 'Isn't he?' she said curtly.

'Of course not. In fact, he's working on a cure even as we speak.'

'No he's not,' said Tegan. 'He's eating chocolate bourbons.'

The Doctor popped the remainder of his biscuit into his mouth a little guiltily and reached into the inside pocket of his coat. He withdrew a square, grey object that resembled a powder compact, though when he flipped open the lid with his thumb, Tegan saw that it looked more like a miniature laptop. 'There are various diagnostic programmes running in the TARDIS,' he told her. 'I can a.n.a.lyse the data on this. It gives me up-to-the-minute reports.'

He demonstrated by pressing a pinhead-sized b.u.t.ton and producing a scroll of figures and symbols across the screen.

Tegan held up a hand. 'All right, all right, I believe you.'

Suddenly the look of irritation on her face changed to one of dawning horror. 'Oh my G.o.d!'

'What is it?' asked Turlough.

'I've just realised what might be wrong with Andy.'

'Andy?' enquired the Doctor.

'Someone I met. My date. I've got to make a phone call.'

She leaped up and ran to the pay phones beside the main doors. The Doctor watched her with an intent expression as if he was trying to read her lips.

Two minutes later she was back, looking anxious.

'What's wrong?' Turlough asked.

'It's Andy. He's not answering his phone. You don't think...'

She couldn't go on.

The house seemed empty, though somewhere a radio was playing so faintly that Mike couldn't make out the song. The Mayburys' accommodation was on the landing below Mike's attic room. He and Charlotte pa.s.sed the room that Chris Maybury had never even slept in, and on to the one at the end of the landing that Charlotte's parents shared.

Before knocking, Mike offered Charlotte a brief, rea.s.suring smile. She twitched her lips back at him, though her eyes still retained that haunted, sunken look. He turned and rapped authoritatively on the door.

'Mr Maybury,' he said, 'Mr Maybury, are you in there?'

There might have been a groan, a vague movement. Mike imagined Charlotte's hungover father turning over in bed.

'Mr Maybury,' he repeated, raising his voice, 'my name is Captain Mike Yates of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. I have your daughter, Charlotte, here with me. We have something very important to tell you.'

This time there was a definite series of groans, though Mike got the impression that they were being made regardless of, not in response to, him. He turned again to Charlotte. 'I think we'd better go in.' Charlotte nodded and Mike pushed the door open.

He recoiled immediately. The smell was worse than the army changing rooms at the end of the annual rugger tournament. He looked around for its source, but could see nothing. Behind him Charlotte gagged and Mike said, 'I'll open a window.' Taking a deep breath, he plunged into the room.

As he threw open the curtains and fumbled with the window catch, he was only peripherally aware of Tony Maybury as a hunched shape beneath crumpled, twisted covers, tossing from side to side in his bed. The man was moaning as if in pain, and it occurred to Mike, as the catch came free and the bottom section of the cas.e.m.e.nt window rattled upwards, that Charlotte's father may have more wrong with him than a simple hangover.

Gratefully Mike gulped in several lungfuls of air that seemed as fresh as any he had ever tasted, then turned back into the room. From outside came the ubiquitous cries of gulls and the distant jingle of an ice-cream van.

'Dad,' Charlotte said uncertainly, taking a step forward, 'Dad, are you OK?'

Tony gave no indication that he was even aware of their presence. Charlotte glanced pleadingly at Mike, and he strode forward from the window to the head of the bed.

All he could see of Tony Maybury was his hair, a dark, sweaty clump poking out from beneath the sheets. Mike leaned forward. 'Mr Maybury,' he said loudly and clearly, 'can you hear me?'

Still no reply. Mike raised his eyebrows at Charlotte, who was standing at the foot of the bed, watching her father's writhing form with a mixture of deep concern and anxiety.

Then he reached forward and started to pull the sheet from the upper half of the man's body.

It did not come easily. It seemed to snag on the man's skin, and as Mike tugged harder he actually felt it tear in several places. Remembering the man in the mortuary, Mike suddenly knew what he was going to see before he saw it. He allowed the sheet to fall back over Tony and turned to Charlotte. 'Perhaps it might be better if -'

He got no further. At that moment the figure in the bed sprang to its feet with an agility that seemed unnatural. It whipped the sheet from its body and hurled it aside. As the sheet fluttered to the floor, Charlotte screamed.

Tony Maybury had transformed to such an extent that he looked terrifying, despite the ridiculous pale blue Y-fronts he was wearing. His entire body, including his face, was covered with quills identical to the ones Mike had seen on the man in the mortuary. Although he moved with the quick, predatory movements of a striking spider, Maybury was hunched over, two large, grotesquely s.h.i.+fting growths bulging on his back between his shoulder blades. His eyes were no longer human, but completely black, his eyelids peeling back from them, making his eyes look as if they were in danger of popping from their sockets.

Mike did not even have time to reach for his gun before the creature was upon him. It sprang at him, clamping lingers that had elongated to taloned claws around his throat. Hit by its full weight, Mike stumbled and fell backwards, banging his head on the floor. A white burst of light and pain exploded behind his eyes, and for a moment he felt as if he was sinking into a treacly black liquid, unable to do anything but wave his arms in feeble protest as the creature straddled his chest and rammed fingers like knife blades into his Adam's apple.

At first the creature's dead-fish smell was pungent in his nostrils, its slavering, hissing breath and the rustle of its quills echoing in his head. But as consciousness ebbed away, so Mike's senses seemed to recede, leaving only blackness to fill the gaps.

Mike's first conscious thought when he came round was that there was no longer a weight on his chest. His throat felt thick and dry, but when he tried to swallow, sharp, hot pain lanced up into his head and down his gullet, hitting his breastbone and fanning out across his chest like heartburn.

At least the pain brought him back to life. He sat bolt upright, and saw the creature writhing on the floor beside him, growling and holding its head. Standing above it was Charlotte, looking sh.e.l.l-shocked and clutching a hefty-looking standard lamp in both hands.

Mike had barely registered this before the creature twisted, rose in one fluid motion and smashed the lamp from her hands. It flew across the room, shattering against the corner of the dressing table. Before Charlotte had time to react, the thing was upon her, hands clamping around her neck, bearing her effortlessly to the ground.

Horrified, Mike leapt to his feet, reaching for the gun in its holster beneath his jacket. 'Leave her alone or I'll fire,' he yelled - or tried to; pain sawed through his vocal cords like a rusty blade and his voice emerged as a croak. The creature that had been Tony Maybury either didn't hear him or chose not to. Hissing like an enraged snake, it bore down savagely on Charlotte's throat, as if he was trying to crush the fine bones in her neck.

Mike aimed at one of its outstretched legs and fired. As the bullet struck, bone and flesh parted in an eruption of evil-smelling blood so dark it was almost black. The creature threw back its head and howled in rage and agony, then its head whipped round with a look of pure hatred. Mike braced himself for the attack, but after glaring at him for a second or two - marking him - the creature turned back to Charlotte.

Charlotte had neither made a sound nor moved. She lay pinioned, arms and legs splayed and limp. Either she was dead, or unconscious, or simply too traumatised to fight back.

'Let her go!' Mike croaked again, but the creature ignored him.

Calmly Mike raised his gun for the second time and shot Tony Maybury through the back of the head.

Black lumpy stuff flew in all directions, spattering the bed, the carpet, the wall, the mirror of the dressing table. The corpse toppled forward on to Charlotte's p.r.o.ne body with the floppy gracelessness of a tailor's dummy.

Immediately Charlotte began to make breathy little screaming sounds, her arms and legs pistoning frantically as she tried to push her father's corpse off her body. Black ichor-like fluid from its shattered cranium drooled on to her white skin and stained her pink top like melted liquorice.

Mike crouched down and shoved the corpse to one side. It rolled slowly over on to its back, quills rattling and rustling.

Charlotte scrambled out from beneath it, eyes bulging, her mouth a quivering moue moue of panic. She looked like an animal, terrified almost to the point of insensibility. of panic. She looked like an animal, terrified almost to the point of insensibility.

Mike grabbed her and held her tightly. 'Everything's all right now,' he whispered over and over, and gradually he felt her shaking subside. Cautiously he relaxed his grip a little and was about to say, Let's get out of here, Let's get out of here, when all at once she doubled over in pain as if someone had punched her in the stomach. when all at once she doubled over in pain as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

'What's wrong?' Mike asked in astonishment.

Charlotte looked at him with frightened eyes, her face suddenly deathly pale, almost grey. 'My baby,' she whispered.

'Help me please...' please...'

Then she pa.s.sed out in Mike's arms.

It was nice to get a break from the kids, but ever since arriving here on Friday June Goldsmith had felt nervous.

There was a funny atmosphere in the town; everywhere she looked people seemed unaccountably aggressive. It was the way they stood, the way they stared at you - as if you'd done something to offend them. And it wasn't just her imagination either - she had witnessed a fight between two men in a restaurant, had watched people (both male and female) squaring up to each other on the beach. There'd been some sort of incident on a fis.h.i.+ng boat out in the bay as well; no details had been released, but the rumour was that everyone on board had died in mysterious circ.u.mstances. And last night there had apparently been a riot in a town-centre pub in which one man had been stabbed to death.

The kids - Freddie, who was nearly five, and Dana, two and a half - ran her ragged, but secretly June would be pleased when the weekend was over and she and Terry were in the car, heading back to Sheffield. Terry had done his best to rea.s.sure her, to convince her that whatever weird thing was going on in the town had nothing to do with them, but June could tell the tension was getting to him, too; he'd become more irritable as the weekend had progressed, and had developed a rash on his upper arms which he kept scratching, much to her own irritation.

They were walking hand in hand along the beach now. A last stroll along the sand, Terry had suggested, before heading back to the hotel to pack. June had wanted to pack straight after lunch and reach her mother's in time to give the kids their tea and put them to bed, but she didn't want to get Terry's back up again this weekend so she had smiled and said, yes, that would be lovely.

Only it wasn't lovely, was it? It was every bit the ordeal she had been expecting. She gripped Terry's hand tightly, avoided eye contact with each person staring at her as she walked past, and concentrated on putting one foot firmly in front of the other.

Making a conscious effort to appear casual, June looked at Terry, who was walking closest to the water's edge, gazing out to sea. They had met ten years ago when they were both twenty-six, in a disco in Sheffield. It had been her best friend Millicent's hen night, and June had been very drunk. The following morning she had not been able to remember much about Terry, even though it had been the start of a relations.h.i.+p leading eventually to marriage, to their own house, to two beautiful children.

Ten years on, and looking at Terry now, June realised that she had never once regretted writing her phone number on a beer mat and thrusting it into his hand at the end of that riotous evening. Too many business lunches had thickened his girth and doubled his chin, and the thick dark hair that had once grown on his head now seemed to have chosen to sprout from his nose and ears instead, but none of that altered the fact that she loved him as much now - if not more - as she ever had.

She squeezed his hand, and when he didn't respond she murmured her pet name for him: 'Terribubble.'

He looked round, face slack.

'Hmm,' he said, managing to sound like the village idiot on a go-slow.

'I'm sorry,' she said playfully, 'was I keeping you up?'

'I was just... just... just thinking,' he slurred. Then a slight frown crinkled his forehead. 'What do you want?'

Part of her wanted to snap, 'Oh, never mind!', but it would be a shame to end the weekend on a sour note. I just wanted to tell you I love you,' she said.

There was a pause as if he was waiting for more. Then he said, 'Thanks. I love you too.'

She sighed, though not loud enough for him to hear, and they walked on. A couple of minutes later she said, 'Do you know what's strange?'

Again that slow reaction: 'Hmm? What?'

'It's a boiling hot day and yet most of the people on this beach are covering themselves up. I wonder why.'

He shrugged as if he couldn't see what she was getting at.

A few moments later he answered, 'Maybe they don't want to get sunburned.'

'No, I don't think it's that.' She frowned for a moment, lips pursed, then raised her eyebrows in a facial shrug. 'Oh, what does it really matter? We'll be home soon. This is just a peculiar place, that's all.'