Doctor Who_ Illegal Alien - Mike Tucker [16]
In the ruins of a house it could hear the sound of movement, bricks and rubble being moved. It speeded up, its tarpaulin flapping around it like huge, ragged wings.
Old Josh had had better days. The mornings after the air raids had usually afforded him better pickings. He was out most of the time before dawn to avoid the police and the firemen. He scavenged through the bomb sites to gather enough food for the day. He never took from houses where there were bodies he could never have lived with himself stealing from the dead but if the houses were empty, their owners safely in the shelters, then he felt happier. If the houses were bombed out then the occupiers had more to worry about than a few missing tins of soup or loaves of bread. He never took valuables, only food, and then only enough for one or two meals. It seemed pointless trying to store anything because you never knew if your store would still be standing the following day. His current bolthole had proved more successful than most. He had found a way into the crypt of a church in Spitalfields. An empty sarcophagus had provided the most comfortable bed he had had in months.
Today had been a particularly bad day for him. One house had had a wellstocked larder, but the bombs had done too good a job. He had been through several houses in the street but none had had anything that was of any use to him.
The kitchen of this house looked promising. A few small fires still burned but the rain was starting to put them out. He was fairly sure that there were some tins under the rubble it was just taking him a little longer to get at them than he would have liked.
Josh stopped as he heard something move out in the street. He was usually well out of sight by now It was too light, but the fog afforded some protection, and the firemen were busy in the more elegant areas of town. He listened for a moment. There it was again, a shuffling, flapping noise. He peered through the smoke. There was something moving in the gloom. He abandoned his tins and made his way to the shattered back door. The flapping got louder and Josh began to get scared. He stumbled over the piles of bricks, trying to get to the gate in the back wall. He heard a crash from behind him and spun to see a huge figure in the doorway of the house.
Smoke curled around the tarpaulin wings, turning the figure into a huge angel of death. Josh felt his heart pounding fit to burst. 'Oh, Gawd, you're the Lurker, ain't you? The Limehouse Lurker.' He scrabbled desperately at the gate as the giant shambled towards him, rain dripping from its outstretched hands. 'I ain't worth killing, guv, honest I ain't...'
Josh's pleas were cut short as the two huge hands clubbed him to the ground. The tarpaulin wings curled around the two of them, muffling the screams of the old tramp as the Lurker tore him apart. The screams were mercifully short, and the Lurker stood, smearing as much blood as it could over its body, feeling the fires inside it subside. It stopped, suddenly, its twitching head on one side, listening. Ever since it had been in this place it had been aware that it was being followed. Something small and dogged and lethal that always hovered just out of range. Something that was not of this earth. It was near again. Gaining.
Scooping chunks of flesh against its chest, the Lurker pulled its cloak around itself again and shambled off into the ruins, looking for somewhere to hide.
In the back garden of the house, the sightless eyes of old Josh filled with rainwater, running like tears into the bloodsoaked earth.
signal detected> activate>
locate signal source> signal source moving> compensate>
analysis of terrain> uneven> many artificial structures> condition unstable>
compensate>
scan for hostile life forms> none> lock on to signal source>
follow>
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CHAPTER 5
Ace and McBride threaded their way through a city that was slowly coming alive around them. Ace was