Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [24]
‘Well, at least we know he was here. Can’t you remember anything?’ she hissed, tossing the tracker aside as she bumped arms with Fitz. Their torch beams crissed and crossed over each other as they danced around the undergrowth. She poked experimentally at a bush with her stick, tensing herself in case she disturbed something.
‘I remember leaving the TARDIS with the Doctor,’ Fitz said wearily, ‘and I remember following him. And then. . . ’ His voice tailed off. ‘The next thing was you poking at me and telling me to wake up.’
‘So no idea what it was that attacked you? I mean, it would be useful to have some idea of what might be waiting for us, Fitz.’
42
Fitz didn’t answer – as a low grumble, like a tiger purring, rumbled around them.
‘Something like that, perhaps?’ he said.
If she could have done it without looking like a coward she’d have very firmly suggested that they go back to the TARDIS and wait. But Fitz’s ‘accident’
seemed to have inspired a bravado in him that she hadn’t noticed before, and she didn’t fancy the idea of being reminded, for ever more, that she had been the one to bottle out.
‘Doctor?’ called Fitz experimentally.
‘You there?’ Trix added.
But there was just silence, and the flitting pools of light from their torches.
‘This is stupid,’ she said eventually. ‘He could be lying a few feet away and we’d never find him.’
‘You’re probably –’ Fitz stopped sharply, and Trix swung the beam of her torch up to his face. He was frowning, listening intently to something. He ignored the light shining in his eyes. ‘Can you hear that?’
Over the gentle rustling of the bushes and trees in the breeze, Trix realised that there was something else: a fizzing, hissing sound, and she was reminded of the sound of the foam in her bath back in the TARDIS, popping in her ears.
Trix swung the torch around, pushing out long, spindly shadows from the branches around her.
‘Trix!’ hissed Fitz, drawing her attention to where he was shining his own torch – down towards the ground in the direction of the copse.
A wide swathe of vegetation was undergoing a weird and horrible transformation: a metre’s width of the ground, stretching left and right out of view, was covered with a seething, bubbling grey goo. The stumps of twigs and plants poking through it seemed to be softening, melting into the muck that covered the grass. Trix pulled a face and peered closer, but Fitz grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.
‘What is it?’ she asked, squinting at it.
‘I don’t know,’ said Fitz, ‘but it’s moving. Look.’
Fitz was right – the edge of the gooey band was creeping towards them slowly, almost imperceptibly. As it crawled, the vegetation it encompassed began to break down, submerged in the slime. Tiny bubbles popped and fizzed, and the air was filled with an almost electric crackle.
‘What if the Doctor’s in there?’ Trix suddenly said, gesturing at the bushes.
Fitz shook his head slowly, thoughtfully.
Suddenly, there was a thunderous crashing in the bushes, a few yards away, and before she knew it, Trix was running for her life, staggering backwards as she felt Fitz grab her hand, dragging her away. She dropped the stick as his fingers slipped into hers, and only just managed to keep a hold on the torch.
43
And as a deep roaring started up behind them, drowning out the gentle hiss of the grey goo rolling across the countryside, the two of them ran and ran and ran.
44
Chapter 6
‘What do you know about our mystery woman?’
‘So no one studies history?’ asked the Doctor, as Calamee poured them more tea. She poured some into a saucer for Nessus, but he sniffed it disdainfully and went snuffling under the flowers. ‘Earth history, I mean?’
Roberto gave a shrug. ‘We go through trends: one minute it’s fashionable, the next it isn’t. It never lasts. There are only a few of us interested in trying to keep the old stuff alive. And sometimes, I’m not even sure that I’m doing the right thing. Maybe the founders were right. Maybe we should let sleeping dogs lie, learn to make