Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [71]
‘Get out of the way! I’m coming through!’ he shouted, his words emerging as a hysterical, screaming croak. He slammed the truck into first, released the handbrake, then floored the accelerator.
With a squeal of tyres, which kicked up a billowing wake of dust, the truck lurched forward. Turlough gritted his teeth and tried to thread the vehicle between the leading hybrid shuffling towards him up the centre of the aisle and a ‘Hook-a-Duck’ stall on the right.
The lead hybrid, a bushy-haired, bearded man in a white shirt and jeans so flared they covered his feet, raised his hands not in a self-protective gesture but a threatening one.
Before Turlough could take evasive action, the hybrid (whose black, bulging eyes could have been mistaken for large, round shades at a distance) leapt at the truck.
He hit it with a loud thud and immediately rebounded, cartwheeling spectacularly through the air, a red streamer of blood arcing after him. The truck slewed, but Turlough -
through a combination of terror and luck - managed to bring it under control, and tore out of the fairground at seventy miles an hour as the hybrids launched themselves after him in vain pursuit.
As soon as the shooting started, the Doctor left the Brigadier and his men without a word and ran towards the commotion.
He bypassed witches and warlocks, ghouls and demons, flapped aside limp-winged rubber bats that ambushed him as he skidded round one corner after another.
He did not exhibit any caution until he was almost upon the scene itself. He paused then to listen, trying to work out the position of Benton and his troops, and more importantly the direction in which they were shooting.
One thing he was able to deduce from the din was that beyond the next corner was some kind of open area - not exactly cavernous but with room to move around. This must be where the Xaranti had made its lair after squeezing through the narrow corridors of the Ghost Train. The Doctor took a deep breath, then crouching low to make himself as small a target as possible, crept round the corner.
The roar of bullets struck his ears, the careering torch beams and the tiny but myriad white flashes of gunfire reduced the scene to a rapid, confusing interplay of light and shadow. The Doctor tried to look beyond that, tried to adjust his vision to phase out the distractions.
This area must be the heart of the Ghost Train, the piece de resistance of the ride. It had been designed to resemble swampland, complete with a black, drooping tangle of fibreglass trees and vines which arched over the thread of track. To his right, against the far wall, the ‘ground’ had been built up to form a bank, beyond which lurked a mechanical serpent-like creature that was designed to rear up out of the swamp.
The serpent was probably effective as part of the ride, but compared to the Xaranti crouching behind it, legs drawn in like a spider under threat, it looked pitiful. The knot of UNIT
soldiers on the other side of the room were blasting away at the Xaranti - or rather at the fibreglass ‘nest’ in which it was huddled. The creature had been hit; as the Doctor’s eyes adjusted he saw some dark fluid - blood or ichor - leaking from several wounds in what he could see of its body. But most of the bullets were going astray, some hitting the walls and sending chunks of plaster flying in all directions, others reducing the sculpted trees to a debris of shattered fibreglass. Shards rained down on the mangled body of the soldier sprawled across the track like a man hit by a train.
The Doctor tried to attune his mind to the Xaranti thought-patterns and received a tumbling confusion of intense, savage emotions: delirium; abandonment; the desire to inflict pain, to kill. He soon realised these feelings came not from the Xaranti, but from the UNIT troops. Their trigger-happy attack on a creature into which they were gradually transforming must have pushed them over the