Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [57]
Please leave.’
‘Is that your last word?’
Last word. What a strange idea. Where were these people from? He frowned. ‘I do not wish to continue speaking with you.’
‘Then I’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘Tameka?’ she added, gesturing to someone – the pretty girl? – behind him.
He whirled around just in time to glimpse the young woman who had led him to the room push him forcefully towards the bed. She kicked his legs out from under him and he fell forward, his face buried in the sheets. He felt her grip hold of his hands and then felt rough cord against his wrists.
They were trying to bind his hands together! Bind him like an animal.
He began to struggle, scraping his shoes down the front of her shins. He heard the girl curse, and then pain lit up the back of his head as she struck him. Someone, he didn’t know who, yelled at her. He managed to wriggle one arm free and lashed out with it. The girl with the painted face cried out. He felt several other people hold him down and his legs and arms were tied. She swore angrily and then someone hit him again and he didn’t remember anything else after that.
Bernice sat in the passenger seat of the ambulance as Tameka concentrated furiously on driving the unwieldy, steam-powered vehicle through the busy streets. Her long dark hair was tousled from the fight and she was chewing slowly on her bottom lip. Bernice had screamed at the girl for hitting the surgeon.
The silence sat between them like an accusation.
The cab of the ambulance was open to the back. She could see Emile and Scott sitting next to each other in silence. Emile was peering out of the back window absently watching the city go by.
Scott was staring straight ahead. She couldn’t read the expression on his face.
They had bound the old man on to a trolley in the end. The surgeon was glaring defiantly at Scott. Suddenly Bernice understood why Scott’s face was so fixed. He was studiously avoiding catching their prisoner’s eye.
Tameka cursed and slowed the ambulance to a crawl. The street ahead ended in a junction with a main road. Uniformed crowds were lining this street, completely blocking the road they were travelling on.
‘Stay here,’ Bernice ordered Tameka and hurried out of the vehicle. Away from the engine noise Bernice quickly realized that the crowds were entirely silent. The presence of so many people standing together without speaking was powerful. They were all looking in the opposite direction, towards the main street. She stepped between them, slipping through the loosely packed crowd, until she could see what they were all staring at.
A convoy of military vehicles was winding its way through the streets. The vehicles were low and matt-black. Chunky blocks of armoured metal. Figures stood motionless on the flat roofs, staring straight ahead. Bernice didn’t have any trouble recognizing the now familiar sight of the Sunless. The road curved away in both directions, so she couldn’t see either end of the convoy, but she lost count after fifty vehicles. All she could hear was the breathing of the crowd and the low growl from the vehicles’ engines. It was a harsher, more aggressive sound than the spluttering hiss of the steam-power ambulance. She imagined the line of vehicles twisting through the city like a snake in short grass. The threat was so tangible she could almost taste it in the air.
A middle-aged woman standing next to her in a single red-striped uniform began silently to cry. In other circumstances Bernice would have gone over to her, comforted her, perhaps made a friend, but the fight at the hospital and the argument with Tameka had left her feeling unsettled and disconnected.
The final few vehicles carried Ursulan members of