Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [80]
Once again, she found herself scratching the rash that was now inching down her arm. She was all too aware what it signified and its creeping progress both angered and frightened her. More frightening still, was the way the infection was invading her thought-processes. Her mind kept phasing out like an unstable radio signal for a few seconds at a time, and she knew all too well that as the hours wore on, the tighter the Xaranti hold on her would become.
It was after re-emerging from one such period of blankness that Tegan looked wildly around her and realised she recognised the neighbourhood they were travelling through.
Gripped by a sense of urgency, she rapped on the back of the driver’s cab.
Mike leaned his head part-way out of the side window.
‘Hello.’
‘Mike,’ she said, ‘can I ask you a favour?’
‘Ask away,’ he replied magnanimously.
‘I have a friend who lives near here. No more than a couple of streets away. He was taken ill earlier today. Do you think we could check up on him?’
There was a pause, then Mike said doubtfully, ‘I’m not sure that’s wise, Tegan.’
Tegan felt a flash of anger, the result of the Xaranti infection inside her, which she managed to suppress. ‘Please, Mike, I’m really worried about him. He...’ She had been about to say, He means a lot to me, but was afraid that giving voice to such a level of commitment might make her more vulnerable than she wanted to be. ‘He lives on his own,’ she said after a pause. ‘He doesn’t have anyone to look after him.’
She heard Mike sigh, then reluctantly say, ‘All right, we’ll have a quick look. You’d better tell me where to go.’
Soon they were pulling up in front of Andy Weathers’s pleasant suburban house. The leafy street was quiet, the red-brick semis drowsing in the summer sunshine. Mike waited a moment before turning off the engine. Another pause before he got out of the driver’s cab and walked round to lean on the side of the truck.
‘I’ll go in,’ he said. ‘You sit behind the wheel. If you see anything you don’t like the look of, anything at all, drive away, don’t worry about me.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’d better take my gun. What’s your friend’s name?’
‘Andy,’ said Tegan, ‘Andy Weathers. He’s a policeman.’ She gave Mike the gun that she’d been clutching for so long that her hand felt cold and strange without it.
‘OK,’ said Mike, ‘I’ll be three minutes at the most.
Remember, if you see anything at all that makes you suspicious -’
‘I know,’ Tegan tried not to snap, ‘drive away. Don’t wait.’
Mike gave her a brief, reassuring smile, then turned and walked up the short driveway. It wasn’t until he was reaching out for the doorknob that he realised the door was slightly ajar. Caution tightened his grip on his gun and he listened at the door for a moment.
Before he could open it, Mike heard a shrill scream of terror, abruptly cut off. It came from next door, beyond a low wooden fence. Mike glanced up and noticed out of the corner of his eye that Tegan had opened the door of the truck and extended one foot to the pavement.
‘Stay with the Doctor!’ he snapped and jumped over the fence.
This front door was closed and locked, but four savage kicks encouraged it to yield with a splintering of wood. The right hand side of the hallway in front of Mike as he entered became a staircase; the left hand wall contained two closed doors. A third door stood open at the end of the corridor to reveal a split level kitchen made ethereal by a white glare of sunlight filling the window above the sink. Levelling his gun at face height, Mike pushed open the first door with his foot and entered swiftly.
There were bookcases full of Reader’s Digest publications, a long dining table stacked with knitting patterns, and a piano.
Mike’s gaze swept the room and he retreated.
He entered the next room just as quickly and found himself in a lounge with a draylon suite and French windows. Just beyond the oblong of light flooding in through the windows was what he was looking for. A Xaranti