Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [123]
‘Trix,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Trix, come on. Don’t die. Come on.’
He laid her on her back, ignoring Nessus who’d started to crawl towards them, and began cardiac massage. Her sternum creaked ominously under his hands, and he felt a trickle of warm sweat run down his back.
‘Come on, Trix, come on,’ he urged, leaning forwards and pinching her nose, ready to try breathing life into her. As the Doctor lowered his mouth to Trix’s pale, cold lips, he felt something pulling at his sleeve. It was Nessus, sitting on Trix’s motionless stomach.
‘Get off her!’ he snapped, raising a hand to slap the creature away. But Nessus just looked up at him.
‘Let me help,’ the creature said softly, in a voice that the Doctor recognised instantly – as Tain’s.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Calamee in alarm, as around them the plants began to wilt. Tree branches flopped, bushes began to lean at weird, drunken angles. It was as though someone had let the air out of the countryside. The 223
mounds and clots of maggots that had been swarming over the plants just a few minutes before were suddenly still, like piles of rice.
Fitz’s mouth was dry. He just shook his head.
‘Let me see,’ said Calamee, trying to get a look at the flycam remote. Fitz handed it to her gladly, not sure what he was supposed to do. He had no idea whether Tain had understood what he’d been trying to say. The Doctor certainly hadn’t. Even he hadn’t been sure. He didn’t even know if it was possible, if Tain could do what he’d hoped he would. But what other option was there?
His head buzzed like his mouth was full of wasps, ready to burst. Pandora’s Box, rattling with the hum of a million insects, a million ills, just waiting to be unleashed. As the bushes and trees around them, the extremities of Tain’s body, sagged like a deflated balloon, there was a gentle sighing, a rustling that reminded Fitz of autumn. His eyes felt gritty and the scars on his body itched like mad. But not nearly as much as the ones in his head.
And in a silent church tower, at the edge of Saiarossa, Father Roberto knelt and prayed as a wall of sparkling smoke slid towards the city.
Rationally, he knew that it must be some natural phenomenon – a freak electrical storm, he had heard it said. But, somewhere inside him, he felt certain that this must be how the Egyptians had felt as they’d chased the Israelites across the bed of the Red Sea, only for the wall of water, held back by God, to tumble down on them. Were the Esperons really so undeserving of God’s mercy? After all these centuries of trying to follow in His son’s footsteps, was this how it was all to end?
Roberto fingered his rosary, his lips flickering. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary, the Virgin Mary had promised. Now, if ever, thought Roberto, let it be true. He looked up as some almost subliminal change in the wall caught his eye.
Spots of dark, clear transparency were beginning to form in it, pulsing and growing, spreading like raindrops on a window. They merged, over and over, growing larger as they ate into the curtain, leaving it a tattered filigree of grey.
And then suddenly, without a sound, it vanished.
The beads slipped from Roberto’s fingers as tears ran from his eyes.
The Doctor had to fight back the urge to push the new Nessus away, to throw him against the wall. Everything was happening too fast: first Fitz’s cryptic message to Tain, then Nessus speaking in Tain’s voice. And now the mokey was wrapping itself around Trix’s face, its body distorting and surging oddly.
The creature’s arms wound sinuously around the sides of Trix’s head. If she 224
hadn’t already stopped breathing, he would have thought that Nessus was trying to suffocate her.
But then he saw Trix’s chest begin to rise; moments later it fell, and he realised he’d been holding his own breath. Nessus was breathing for Trix.
The Doctor, still on his hands and knees, crawled around to look: Nessus’s mouth