Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [42]
Dawkins’s first shot went clean between them, off into the night. Both discs swerved to avoid it, and shot over his house without getting in an attack.
He heard the car start and opened up the garage door with one hand, keeping a firm grip on the neutron rifle with the other. The door was stiff, but swung up. Kim was in the car, ready to go.
Faster than he’d been expecting, the Deputy appeared above him, swooping low, firing a machine pistol, blowing chips from his driveway. Dawkins stood his ground, as the cold air gusted past him, but his shot went wide, blasting a hole in the roof of his house,
Prefect Zevron had always been a little slower. As his disc appeared over the rooftop, Dawkins got a shot in. It hit the disc, not the man, but it was enough. The disc was knocked off course, and Zevron tumbled off, down the roof, and into a pile of snow in the front garden. One more shot disintegrated the disc before it could hit anything else.
There wasn’t any more time. Dawkins threw the garage door open. His wife drove the car out. Miranda slept under a blanket on the back seat. He tried to get in, but the passenger door was locked.
His wife leaned over, fumbled for the lock.
He could hear the Deputy’s hoverdisc coming back towards him. ‘Go!’ he shouted. The Talbot surged down the drive and smacked into the gate, throwing it open. It was already through, turning on to the road.
The Prefect was on his feet, but too dazed to do anything about the car’s escape.
Dawkins turned to face the hoverdisc.
It was coming for him at sixty miles an hour.
The Deputy had a sword in his hand, held horizontal at his waist. His eyes were cold, grey, full of malice.
The blade was coming straight for Dawkins, and there was nothing he could do.
* * *
Chapter Nine
The Last Battle
The Doctor wasn’t stopping at the junctions. The car sped along the hillside path, passed snowbound fields and dark woodland.
‘We have to get to the Dawkinses’ house.’
Helpless, Barry looked out of the back window. The robot was chasing them, catching them up with each step. It had one arm raised, and there was a rocket launcher on its wrist. It flashed, and he actually saw the missile heading straight for them. But the Doctor put on another burst of speed, and accelerated away. The blast lifted up the back of the car for a moment. When they’d slammed back down, Barry turned back to check the speedo. One hundred and twenty miles an hour. He could hear the engine straining.
‘What have the Dawkinses got to do with anything?’ Barry asked. He’d met John Dawkins once – he’d come round to fix their wiring.
His wife looked over her shoulder at him. ‘They’re here to kill Miranda Dawkins.’
‘What? A kid? A little girl?’
‘A ten-year‐old girl,’ Deborah confirmed. ‘There are two men – those two that you saw flying past.’
‘They won’t stop until they’ve killed her,’ the Doctor said, almost matter-of‐factly.
‘Then we go there and we stop them,’ Barry told them. ‘That’s what we do.’
‘We have to keep that robot away from populated areas,’ the Doctor said.
‘No,’ said Barry ‘We save the girl.’
His wife gave a laugh, her looking-down‐at-him laugh. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask who they are?’
Barry smiled back. ‘No. I don’t care who they are. I just want to stop them killing a little girl. If you’ve chickened out, you take me there, and I’ll stop them.’
He could see the Doctor looking at him in the rear-view mirror.
‘You’re right,’ the Doctor said, turning the car around.
The road ahead of them exploded in a cloud of black rubble. The Doctor yanked the steering wheel to the right, swerving to avoid it, then pulled the car left.
‘Excuse me,’ the Doctor called, as the Cortina swerved past the robot.
Deborah glanced back. ‘You’ll damage the engine,’ she squealed.
‘So will Herbie there,’ Barry reminded her, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.
The Doctor threw the car around a corner, making the tyres smoke. Out of