Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [36]
63
Chapter 8
‘With a zed.’
Trix had never felt so conspicuous, so looked-at as she did at the moment. It was as if having the Doctor around normally wove a spell, a sort of glamour about them that made them all-but invisible, and now, without him, they were exposed as bizarre freaky aliens. The fact that the few people they’d seen so far, without exception, had been black or Asian, made her feel even more conspicuous. And if there was one thing that Trix didn’t like, it was feeling conspicuous. Anji would have blended in seamlessly, she thought – which didn’t help.
Fitz, annoyingly, hardly seemed to notice, although Trix did wonder if he were still suffering the effects of his attack. He seemed a bit distracted, not his usual self. Trix quickly realised that repeatedly asking him if he was OK
was not going to make what could well be a long walk any easier, so she shut up, and concentrated on trying to learn what she could about the planet from what little she could see.
As they’d raced away from the oasis, the sounds of the creature still echoing across the countryside, Trix had headed straight for the TARDIS. But, as she’d fumbled for her key, Fitz had grabbed her arm.
‘What’s the point?’ he’d said.
‘Survival, Fitz, that’s the point. You heard that thing.’
‘So, what, we hide out in the TARDIS and wait for the Doctor to come and find us? Where’s your spirit of adventure?’
‘If we’d stayed there any longer, it would have been in my pants, Fitz. Did you hear that thing?’
‘Of course I heard it. But if the Doctor’s still there, waiting in the TARDIS
isn’t going to do anyone any good. And if he’s not. . . well, maybe he’s somewhere else. I survived whatever attacked me. Maybe he did too. And maybe he’s wandered off, injured. And maybe that goo did something to him.’
‘So why didn’t he come back to the TARDIS – assuming the goo didn’t get him?’
Fitz shrugged, barely visible in the starlight.
‘Maybe he got lost. Maybe he got hit on the head and lost his memory, like me.’
65
‘How likely is that?’
‘How likely is any of this? Besides, don’t you want to find out where we’ve landed? Do a bit of exploring?’
‘Yeah, Fitz. Exploring is the first thing on my mind at the moment. We could be stuck here forever. Forever, Fitz. Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘All the more reason to have a look around.’ He paused and Trix saw him craning his neck to look over her shoulder. ‘Like over there, for instance.’
She turned, not sure what he was looking at. And then she saw it – a vague, nebulous glow from behind the hillock in front of which the TARDIS stood.
‘Lights,’ he said. ‘City lights if I’m not mistaken.’
‘And that’s never happened, has it?’ she said drily.
‘Oh ye of little faith – come on.’
He slipped past her, and with a sigh, Trix pocketed her TARDIS key and set off after him. Not, she told herself, that she believed that they might find the Doctor there, but because, in his absence, a city might be the only place that could offer them a way off this planet. She glanced back at the TARDIS. She’d just started to really think of it as home, and it looked like she could well have been evicted.
It came as a pleasant surprise, then, that as they rounded a little hillock just beyond the TARDIS, Trix realised that Fitz was right about the lights – a thin, orangey smear of them, filtered through distant trees. Proper lights, thought Trix, trying not to get her hopes up too much. Electric ones. Like back home.
Of course they weren’t back home, but when you’re (probably) hundreds of light years from Earth and (probably) in a totally different time period, it was surprising how comforting little things like city lights could be.
And, even better, they looked close (although, she reminded herself, not quite so close as the source of the growling noises and the grey slime).
The two of them stumbled across the grassland, trying not to trip in the darkness – until Trix remembered she had a torch in her hand. Unfortunately,