Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [105]
He turned and wandered past a small group of women being stuffed, half‐hysterical, into another lifeboat. No sign of Ace. He wondered if she had taken a seat in one of the little boats, not wanting to risk being aboard when the ship went down. There was perhaps forty minutes left before that happened.
Just for a moment, he caught a flash of her multicoloured jacket in the thick of the crowd. ‘Ace!’ he shouted, but the crowd jostled him away from her. If she answered back, he couldn’t hear her over the cries of panic and the shouting of the sailors. He snarled in frustration, trying to fight his way back up the tilting deck.
* * *
Somewhere below decks, Benny leaned against the wall, trying to get her breath back. The Doctor was surprisingly light, but he had to keep stopping to rest. He didn’t seem aware of his surroundings.
At least, not until they passed through a hallway where the band could be heard distantly, playing a sweet tune. ‘Song d’Automne,’ he muttered, incomprehensibly. ‘I knew it.’ Benny threw his arm back over her shoulders and staggered on.
‘Hey,’ said an English voice, ‘do you need a hand with him?’
A sailor had come out of a connecting corridor. His face was smeared with soot and sweat.
God yes. Help me. I don’t know whether I’m going the right way, I don’t know if I can carry him much further, and we could save you. Take you off the ship.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Tell me your name.’
He told her. She remembered it. She kept going.
* * *
Cristián fought his way below decks, pushing through little groups of women being led to the boats. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped in horror. A huge crowd of third class passengers were milling about anxiously. While the boats were leaving, these people didn’t even know the ship was being evacuated.
They shouted questions at him, questions he couldn’t answer, and he raised his hands as if to fend off their frightened voices. But a hand caught at his sleeve, and he found himself facing an elderly woman, sobbing, holding something out to him.
‘Please,’ she said brokenly, ‘please.’
He asked her what the matter was in Spanish, but she just shook her head, pressing the little bundle into his grasp. ‘Please,’ she said again.
He hadn’t been able to find Ace. There was no time left, no time, no time to make decisions. Dear God, this was wrong, he mustn’t do it, he mustn’t!
Cristián cursed the saints and nodded, clutching the object to his chest. He turned away from the crying woman and ran for the TARDIS.
* * *
1.53 am
Benny found herself in the coolness of the storage room, at last. She took the Doctor’s torch out of his pocket and flashed it about the cabin.
Oh God! Where was the TARDIS?
It was right where they’d left it, disguised as a crate. She bit her lip, letting her hammering heart slow down.
They’d left the door ajar. Her searching fingers found its edge, pushed it open. She carried him the last few feet into the sudden brilliance of the console room, squinting in the alien light. Home. Safe.
They were alone in the room. She put him gently into the big wicker chair in the corner. He sagged into it gratefully, his eyelids flickering slowly. His face was worryingly pale.
Huitzilin was dead. It ought to be over.
Benny peered back out into the dimness of the cargo room, anxiously. Should she go and look for them? No, it made more sense to wait. She shouldn’t even have let Cristián go off by himself.
Cristián! He was battling through the darkness, in tears, shouting her name. She grabbed him as he stumbled into the TARDIS, exhausted and terrified, clutching something to his chest in a death‐grip. His teeth were chattering.