Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [69]
‘Go steady there!’ he hissed as the men jostled for position behind him, growling bad-temperedly at one another. ‘Let’s stay in line, stop arguing, and keep an eye out for the real enemy, shall we?’
His words continued to have a placatory effect for now, but how long would it last?
All at once the corridor widened a little, and the track gleaming in the dim torchlight ahead of them cornered sharply to the left. Just before the bend stood a troll-like creature with glowing orange eyes, brandishing a luminous placard announcing: TURN BACK - SWAMP AHEAD. No sooner had Benton taken this in than he heard a commotion behind him. He half-turned, opening his mouth to deliver a few choice words - and someone blundered into the back of him, jabbering incoherently.
Benton was so surprised that he was caught off-balance and careered into the wall with such force that it jarred his shoulder and propelled him on to his knees. His torch went flying, landing with a crack, its beam remaining mercifully intact. Shuffling toward him was Corporal Burke, one of the youngest of his platoon, eyes wide and staring, a mumbled, incoherent stream of words trickling from his slack mouth.
He was dragging his rifle along the floor behind him. His right hand was scratching his chest and left shoulder so vigorously that he was probably drawing blood.
‘Corporal Burke,’ Benton grated, rising to his feet and stretching out an arm to steady the young soldier. ‘Corporal Burke, back into line this minute.’
Abruptly the young man’s face contorted with rage, he released a gurgling, animal-like cry and suddenly he was lunging at Benton’s face with his rifle-butt.
Benton swiftly twisted aside and the butt glanced off his already-bruised shoulder, re-igniting a white flash-fire of pain inside him.
Burke dropped his rifle with a clatter and ran past him as if he intended to engage the troll ahead in physical combat. He was almost there when something black and huge, moving with scuttling, breath-taking speed, appeared as if from nowhere and plucked the man off his feet like a spider snatching a fly.
The young corporal looked up into a face full of bristles and black spider-eyes and screamed. The creature’s tail whipped up over its back in a great arc and its scorpion-like sting speared through the back of the man’s neck, killing him instantly.
Benton gaped at the creature for a moment, unable to say or do anything, then recovering his wits, he shouted, ‘Fire!’
Instantly the small, confined space became filled with the shattering din of gunfire and a lethal, horizontal rain of bullets.
The scream was a jagged blade of sound, tearing through the very fabric of the walls. Tegan jumped out of her skin and grabbed the back of Mike Yates’s jacket. As the din was abruptly cut off, she said, ‘Please tell me that was just a sound effect.’
Before Mike could answer the air was filled with the cacophony of a hundred small explosions. Instinctively the two of them ducked, then almost immediately Mike raised his head. ‘Come on!’ he shouted and began to run towards the sound.
Until the shooting started, Turlough had begun to feel like the only person left in the world. He sat on the padded bench in the back of the jeep, gazing at the Ghost Train building until the images on its frontage blurred. The only sound to break the silence was the plaintive cries of seagulls. He stretched and wondered idly whether he ought to find some shade.
He yawned and tried to put aside the guilt he felt at sitting out here whilst the rest of his friends were monster-hunting inside. He was only following the Doctor’s orders, he told himself, and he had accompanied the Doctor into the heart of the Xaranti spaceship, so he was hardly a coward. He just didn’t throw himself recklessly into situations like Tegan did, that was all. He was more thoughtful, had a greater sense of self-preservation. That didn’t make him selfish, which was