Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [142]
Bregman looked up. At the top of the stairway (or, more accurately, at the point where the stairway vanished into the darkness), things were moving. Person-shaped things, shambling down the steps, muttering among themselves as they descended. Without thinking, Bregman took a step backwards, and almost lost her balance.
More of the dead. You could tell by the way they walked. But these moved with a purpose, and you could see, even through the shadows, that they had some traces of identity left in them. The zombie elite, Bregman guessed. The chosen ones of Mictlan. One by one, the shapes staggered into the light, their eyes fixed on the Doctor.
The first of the dead men was black. He wore a brilliant red flower on his lapel, and there was a sharp white grin cut into his face, but it was a corpse’s grin, the grin of someone who no longer had any need for a sense of humour.
Behind him, there were two figures dressed in dark designer suits, their faces pale, their hair cropped in a military style. Both wore sunglasses, which hardly seemed appropriate here, and both had their hands tucked into their inside jacket pockets, fondling the handles of concealed firearms.
Two more humanoid figures stumbled into the light after them. Bregman thought of the slimy drug dealers you used to see in programmes like Miami Narcs. The men had tanned skin and greasy hair. Their teeth were sharpened to points, and they wore gold medallions around their necks, although Mictlan had worn down the metal until it was almost as grey as the stairwell itself.
Next came a short, square-shouldered man, his hair slicked back and greying at the temples, his eyes points of black in a flabby white face. He looked like every Godfather figure in every gangster movie ever made, and his head was almost lost in the enormous fur wrap he wore around his neck. The wrap was wriggling on his shoulders, needle-sharp teeth snapping at each end. A fashion accessory that wanted its own back.
The last two figures were both alien. The first was jet black in colour, covered in a carapace much like a beetle’s, its arms ending in enormous lobster-like claws. Two steps above it stood a shape dressed in an ornate golden robe, a huge semicircular collar raised behind its head. Bregman got the feeling the robe was supposed to be a parody of a much more elegant style of clothing.
The eight figures, Mictlan’s finest, marched down the steps in perfect time, until the nearest of them wasn’t more than a metre or two from the Doctor. Then they stopped.
‘The agents of the Celestis,’ the Doctor mused. He didn’t seem worried, and he hadn’t backed away while the dead had been advancing. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Kathleen. They’re only puppets. Stand behind me, you’ll be quite safe.’
Bregman hopped down a couple of steps anyway, but she didn’t take her eyes off the dead. ‘Safe how, exactly?’
‘You’re not really here, remember. Your mind is in Mictlan. Your body’s safely back on Earth.’
‘And what about you?’
The Doctor cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid I brought my body with me. I didn’t really have a choice. Ah. Mr Trask.’
A ninth figure had appeared out of the darkness. Bregman almost choked. It was the thing... the person... the man... she’d met in the ziggurat, just after she’d arrived in the Unthinkable City. The one who’d made her throw up.
And he was still smiling.
‘Not true,’ the creature told the Doctor.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Not true. Not safe. Her mind is here. So we can mark it. Make her one of ours.’
Bregman had no idea what this meant, though she saw the muscles tense up all over the Doctor’s body, so she guessed it wasn’t nice. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said.
‘We could. We won’t. Not the way we work. Never mark agents against their will. Never.’ Trask indicated the figures around him with a stiff, mechanical wave. ‘Us. All of us. We chose this. Chose to serve the Celestis.’
Bregman tried to focus on the man’s face, but failed, the same way she’d failed the last time she’d seen him. Like most of the dead souls in Mictlan, he’d lost everything