Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [41]
Ten minutes later, the car reached the warehouse. It was part of an old Ministry of Defence station, all high fences and barbed wire, sprawled over several acres. Oddly enough, the main gate was open when Llewis drove up to it, and there were no signs of any guards. When Llewis slowed the car to a halt, he realised the gate was hanging from its hinges, the metal horribly mangled.
Should he go back? Call somebody?
No. Stupid.
He drove the car through the gates and into the complex, the three unmarked vans pottering along behind him. Right, Llewis told himself. This was it. No messing about, straight down to business. The Cold would be loaded into the vans, and taken back to the office, where Peter Morgan and the others would give it the once-over, probably just to see if Llewis had done his job properly. Guest would invoice them by fax, and payment would be sorted out later. In and out, thought Llewis. Don’t hang around here, don’t wait to see if any UFOs turn up.
The second he steered the car into the warehouse, however, it became clear that things weren’t going to be so simple.
* * *
The cupboard under the stairs had been dark. But the darkness had grown a face, and that face was the gas mask. When you walked into the cupboard, you couldn’t make out any of the details, except for the huge round eyes and the great big snout. You could just see the outline, a head pushing its way through the dark, trying to bite its way free. The circle of the snout had looked like an enormous mouth, set into a permanent scream.
In his attempts to retrieve the soldier dolls without looking at that face, Alan had often tried closing his eyes. But closing his eyes had never helped. He’d still been able to see the gas mask, even through his eyelids. In fact, when his eyes had been shut, it had screamed even more loudly. Alan hadn’t known why.
* * *
There were holes in the warehouse, that was the first thing Llewis noticed. Bits had been eaten out of the floor, great chunks of concrete torn from the architecture for no obvious reason. Those parts that were still intact had been showered with splinters of glass, or what looked like glass. There were several hundred cardboard cartons in the warehouse, presumably containing the Cold, but many of them lay scattered around, torn and half empty.
Llewis suddenly figured out where the missing parts of the floor had gone.
In the middle of the warehouse, several pieces of bright silver machinery had been set up in a loose ring, and at the exact centre of that ring was what looked like a screen. A large, flat, rectangular screen. Llewis took it to be some kind of television, but it couldn’t have been tuned in properly, because it was buzzing with static. It was only when he got a little closer, and pulled the car to a stop just in front of the machinery, that he realised the truth.
It wasn’t a screen. It was a hole. And there were people gathered around the hole, working on other pieces of machinery. Llewis didn’t recognise any of the workers, but there were about half a dozen of them, all dressed in uniform. No, all dressed in different uniforms. The costumes seemed to be colour-coded, though Llewis had no idea why.
Llewis opened the door – having to pull at the handle several times, as his sweaty hands kept fumbling it – and got out of