Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [33]
Keep the breathing even, do not move, do not twitch the eyelids.
Give no sign that you are awake. Then the litany of checks: think, listen, smell, feel, remember, think. One by one. Think: where is the danger? Listen: all the sounds, not just the ones that are close.
Smell: separate the scents, taste the faintest. Feel: the textures and the temperatures, the movements of the air. Remember: what happened at the moment before sleep. Think: where is the danger?
The danger was here, there was no safety where she was now There were the sounds of two people close by. Guards? They were awake and their slight movements and their breathing said they were alert but she could not hear any activity so they were watching and waiting so they were guards. Further away, muffled by walls, she could hear people and wheels and animals and machines. It was a settlement, a big settlement.
A background stench almost overwhelmed any other smells: it was mostly smoke and rotting vegetables and dead flesh and excrement. Closer she could smell the sweat of the guards and there were faint traces of another scent, this time artificial. It was the fragrance she had smelled on the woman who called herself Padil. It was not strong enough for her to be there but she had been not long ago.
As far as Leela could tell, she was lying on a padded bedroll on the floor. There were draughts but nothing more than you would expect at ground level in an ordinary well-built hut. There was no cooking fire. He knife was gone but she was not blindfolded and she was not tied up. The place itself must be secure or her captors were as careless as she herself had been.
She remembered the pain before the darkness. She remembered the voice. And if they don’t I will. She knew he was where the danger was. She lay waiting to fight, giving no sign that she was awake.
A door opened. A voice said, puzzled, ‘She’s still out?’
Leela recognised the voice at once. And if they don’t I will. It was that voice. It was him. She listened to his movement across the floor. She waited for him to come closer. Did he still have the weapon, the stun-kill? She concentrated on hearing the small sounds of such a thing being carried: the creaks, the taps and touches. She tried to smell the hot scent of it.
‘She shouldn’t still be out,’ the voice said.
‘She hasn’t moved a muscle,’ another voice, also a man and obviously one of the guards, said. ‘You want to try and wake her up?’ Yes, Leela thought, try and wake me up. Come here, come within reach and try and wake me up.
‘Maybe you fried her brain,’ a third man, the other guard, said, ‘and we’re wasting our time here. We’ve got better things to do than baby-sit a burnout.’
Leela heard them all moving. All three were coming over for a closer look. She concentrated on trying to locate their exact positions.
‘If we’re not going to revive her I say let’s finish her off and dump the body,’ one of the guards said. He was approaching on the left. Was he armed? She thought she could hear the tel tale sounds.
‘Yeah,’ the second guard agreed. ‘If she is a spy, end of problem.’ He was to the right. Also armed?
‘And if she’s not?’ that voice, the voice said. Slightly in front and between the other two. Not armed? How sure was she?
How clear was her picture?
‘Capel, humanity be in him, calls martyrs to the cause.’ The one on the right had stopped moving. Was he going to stay out of reach?
‘You think he wants us to provide them ourselves?’ The voice was still in the centre, still coming.
‘Don’t go getting pious on me. You’re the one who juiced her.’ The right-hand guard was definitely staying out of reach.
That was a threat which must be countered.
‘What choice do we have?’ The left-hand guard had stopped now too.
Only the centre, the voice, was left moving. He came closer.
She was almost sure he was not carrying anything. Closer. She smelt the odour of him, heard his half-crouch, felt the faint movement of his breath in the air as he leaned forward. She waited until she could hear and feel and smell his balance stretching to its limit,