Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [55]
There was no way of telling the speed it was travelling and no indication of how far it had gone up the inside of the column. ‘I have a young travelling companion,’ the Doctor said.
‘You mentioned it,’ Con muttered.
‘She instinctively doesn’t trust surprises,’ the Doctor went on. ‘I don’t trust instincts. Instinctively.’
‘And I’m the insane one,’ Con commented.
‘But. .’ the Doctor said.
‘But?’
‘But I have a bad feeling about this. Be ready.’
Con moved to the back of the lift. ‘A bad feeling about what? Be ready for what?’
Before the Doctor could think of a reasonably rational answer he felt the lift slow and then bump softly to a halt.
Because the lift shaft was in the centre, less than half of the circular Dockmaster Control suite was immediately visible when the doors opened. For a moment there was no indication that anything was wrong. The various workdesks were powered up and the displays were operational. Between the petal-shaped metal sections of the outer wall the clear reinforced plastic observation spaces were showing the dawning sky colouring up slowly. Apart from the fact that there was no one at any of the workdesks, nothing seemed out of place.
‘Where is everybody?’ Con whispered.
The whisper prompted the Doctor to notice what he already knew: not only was there nobody to be seen but he couldn’t hear anybody either. All he could hear was a faint keening of air, more than a draught but less than wind.
Con shivered. ‘Is it cold or is it me?’ he asked, still whispering.
The Doctor put his finger to his lips to tell Con to be quiet and then he stepped carefully out of the lift. His field of vision was increased so that now he could see more than half the suite and things still looked normal. Deserted but normal. He kept his back against the oversize tube which contained the lift shaft and moved slowly around it. Con had come out of the lift and was creeping along the wall in the opposite direction.
It was not until he had gone some way round the bend that the Doctor saw the first body. It was a man. He was lying on the floor with his head twisted at an impossible angle. His neck had obviously been broken with some force. The Doctor took two more paces and three more bodies came into view. Two of them were women. They were lying on the floor sprawled together in an untidy heap. All looked to have had their necks broken. The Doctor moved on, keeping close to the wall. On this side of the suite there was destruction, signs of a desperate struggle. A man had been flung against a workdesk and lay across it broken and bloody. Still nothing moved. It looked to the Doctor as though everybody in the suite was going to be dead. With the possible exception of course of whoever it was who had operated the lift doors. He walked further round the lift shaft housing and found Con standing with his back pressed against it. He was staring at two crushed bodies lying in front of a jagged breach in an outer wall observation space. One of the large workdesks had been wrenched from its mountings and smashed through the reinforced plastic. It was tilted up and hanging halfway out into the air six hundred feet above the ground. A thin breeze, driven by the suite’s air conditioning, was blowing out of the hole.
This is bad, Doctor.’ Con said. ‘This is very bad.’
‘You didn’t see any movement anywhere?’ the Doctor said as he went to look at the break in the plastic.
‘They’re all dead, aren’t they?’ Con said, not moving.
‘It certainly looks that way.’ The Doctor stepped past the two corpses carefully and peered out of the hole. Below the struts of the workdesk the drop was straight down. There was nothing down there on the ground as far as he could see though from that distance it was hard to be sure. Then he thought he saw something or someone moving, walking away from the tower. He leaned forward to get a better look. Behind him Con shouted, ‘Doctor!’ and there was a crash and something hit him hard in the back. He thought he heard someone saying matter-of-factly, ‘You are not