Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [44]
‘We were going to call a fighter to take the Cold back home,’ Mr Blood-Red explained. ‘But we can tell the pilot to launch a suicide attack if you like.
‘Fighter?’ the first of the van drivers said. Then his jaw dropped, and the cigarette tumbled out of his mouth.
There was something coming through the window. Llewis could see its outline, big and dark and heavy, pushing against the static from the other side. And now the static was tearing, the thing ripping it open, forcing a sharpened black nose into the air above the complex. For some bizarre reason, Llewis started thinking about gas masks.
The next four seconds passed very, very slowly, and many strange and interesting things happened.
For example:
The static window split down the middle, the black thing finally pushing its way through the haze.
The van drivers turned back to their vans, their mouths still hanging open.
The black thing began to dive. Towards the warehouse. Fast.
Some of the aliens started to mumble in a generally concerned fashion.
The black thing hurtled out of the sky and through the warehouse entrance, faster than Llewis could follow. Free of the static, it was moving at full velocity, its undercarriage scraping the concrete floor.
For the briefest of all possible moments, Llewis managed to focus on the thing, on the perfect lines of its body, on the black metallic skin stretched across its fuselage. It was roughly triangular, he could see that now, its surface unmarked, its underside ribbed with what looked like bone.
Somebody said, ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’
There was a screaming, wrenching sound, as the bottom of the fighter ploughed along the warehouse floor. Its flank impacted against one of the vans, shunting the vehicle up against the wall. One of the drivers, who’d been perilously close to the van at the time, started screeching something about not wanting to die.
Llewis turned away, his body moving much, much too slowly, his beer gut lurching as he spun around. He felt himself stumble forward, towards the aliens, who were standing around with gormless looks on their faces as the fighter tore towards them.
There was another big crunch, as a second van was pushed aside by the fighter. Towards the other wall this time.
Llewis focused on the thing behind the aliens. The other window, the smaller one. All of a sudden, he couldn’t see anything but blue fuzz and flickering pictures.
Another crunch. So much for the Fiat.
And Llewis threw himself past the aliens, his weight knocking them aside, his own body fat forcing him to keep running or fall over, Some part of his brain telling him that, realistically, he had only the one chance.
The screaming got worse. The fighter was tearing up the floor.
Llewis hit the static.
* * *
Every now and then, the gas mask had followed Alan out of the cupboard, and all the way home. Not that his grandmother would ever have taken it down off the wall, of course: that would have dishonoured her late husband’s memory, somehow. But sometimes, when Alan had climbed out of bed in the middle of the night to use the toilet, there’d been a cold, wet feeling under his skin, and he’d been careful not to look out of any windows on the way to the bathroom.
It had been dangerous to go too near the glass, to get too close to the night outside. He might have seen the gas mask there, pushing its way through the darkness. The bed had been safe, because Alan had kept the transistor radio underneath it, and he’d switch it on if ever the gas mask got too close, letting the room hum with the sound of the BBC, the World Service and the shipping forecast. The babble would ward off the darkness, like an old wizard chanting to keep away the living dead. Safe in the grip of the transmissions, Alan had been able to sleep.
* * *
Llewis didn