Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [134]
The Doctor felt the kindness of women’s hands upon him. Moriah’s grip on his throat was loosened, and he drew a rasping breath into his lungs. Only then was he sure that he was still alive.
He opened his eyes. He was in the middle of a crowd of veiled women. They swarmed around him, pushing past him, reaching for Moriah with clawed hands.
‘You shall not leave us,’ the women told their king in one voice. ‘You are ours, Moriah,’ they chanted. ‘Just as we are yours.’
The First King of Kr’on Tep struggled violently against the women who beat him with their fists and tore at his skin with their bare hands, but eventually the sheer number of attackers overwhelmed him. He screamed in terror as he was buried under their many pounding fists.
The Doctor scrambled over to where Jack sat, rubbing his jaw where Moriah had struck him. ‘Time to leave,’ he said.
The first explosions shook the building just as the Doctor and Jack reached the main hallway of the Institute.
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‘I think visiting time must be over,’ the Doctor shouted.
A huge crack appeared in the linoleum floor and the little man almost toppled into it. Jack had to grip the collar of his jacket and pull him back.
‘What’s going on?’
‘The bird/globe is disintegrating. The Vortex is leaking through the gateway.’
Around them, mannequins in orderlies’ uniforms staggered in confusion with no one to direct their thoughts.
Jack followed the Doctor as he edged around the yawning tear in the middle of the room. Kaleidoscopic light was spilling into the room from the underground chamber below, casting emerald butterfly shadows on the ceiling.
The building trembled violently beneath Jack’s feet. As the Doctor opened the front door, the brace gave way and the wall above the door collapsed into the doorway, and the little man disappeared beneath a shower of bricks and cement.
‘Doctor!’ Jack fought his way through the clouds of dust and found him lying unconscious, half-buried in hospital rubble. He cleared away the larger bricks and then pulled the Doctor free. The Doctor was covered in grey dust and Jack thought he looked like a partly demolished sculpture.
Lifting the Doctor into a fireman’s lift, Jack staggered out of the hospital.
Despite his small size, the Doctor was heavy and Jack only managed to put about twenty yards between them and the hospital before he collapsed, exhausted, on the gravel driveway. His mouth was full of bitter dust and he could feel his heart pumping madly in his chest. He never wanted to move again.
Jack turned back to the Institute and saw emerald light and smoke spilling out of every window of the tall, red-brick building. With a muffled crump, part of the roof collapsed in on itself.
That was when Jack heard the noise of a car. A black cab was racing towards them down the drive of the Petruska Institute, its headlights blazing.
Oh no, Jack panted, hardly believing his eyes. After everything he’d been through, this just wasn’t fair. He looked at the Doctor lying face down in the gravel, where he’d dropped him.
And Jack Bartlett, site wages clerk, decided that whatever happened, he wasn’t going to let the monster get the Doctor this time. He looked about him for a weapon, but there wasn’t so much as a fallen branch.
So he let out the most fearsome scream he could manage and started to run towards the approaching monster, waving his fists angrily and hopelessly in the air.
‘Come on then you bastard!’ he yelled, the dust he’d swallowed tearing at this throat. ‘Come on then!’
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It was only then that he noticed that the light on the taxi shone with a familiar orange glow.
The taxi skidded to a halt and Jack stood, frozen in its bright headlamps.
He squinted painfully at it, one arm still raised above his head.
‘Come on deahs,’ Tilda shouted as she leant out of the back of the cab. ‘The meter’s running. Get those lallies moving!’
Jack collapsed on the ground in front of the taxi, laughing uncontrollably.
He watched as Inspector Harris ran past him to collect the Doctor.