Doctor Who_ Longest Day - Michael Collier [38]
One twisted arm reached out and the bony digits held him by the ear. The other hand came up to his face, as if to caress him. He felt the sharp fingertip press against his cheek, then screamed again as he felt the tip slip through it. Other fingers began worming their way into his skull, then the bony foot lashed out and punctured his stomach before skewering him into the mottled surface of the cool blue wall.
You made your own future. Him and Vost, they must've brought this upon themselves. Everything suddenly darkened, but Vasid thought he could see Anstaar in the distance waving coyly at him. She'd been so impressed, really, with the new him, he could see it in her come-to-bed eyes. They burnt so brightly before the blackness swamped them.
***
The Doctor was driving the Beetle along the base corridors, alternating cries of 'Anyone there?' with long petulant blasts on the horn.
It hadn't taken long before one of the hideous hulking creatures came into view round a bend in the corridor. He stamped hard on the brake and jumped out of the car.
It was huge, but the Doctor suspected it could move quickly if it wanted.
The huge, brown, club feet were ragged with curling tongues of amber gum. The legs were glutinous treacle-brown, each calf resembling a bundle of femur bones tied up with thick white string and then wedged into place with sludgy industrial glue. The thighs were fat and wide, dripping with a sweaty liquid slopping down from the creature's midriff. Plastic sheeting was wrapped around the protruding groin, a pale blue, and the stomach was like a huge pile of roasted meat swept into a wet brown tub. Hardened breasts peered out from a bony ridge of muscle stretching from shoulder to pointed shoulder.
The upper arms were like great brute clubs, thick and tuberous, muscles glistening and crunching against the
restraining skin in apparently involuntary clenches. The forearms were slimmer, better defined. But the head. It squatted on a burnt brown neck, an enormous ovular skull becoming broader as it stretched to accommodate two huge, rolling saucepan eyes glowing a dull orange, nestling under a thick hood of bone. The jaw was hanging open above the thin pinched collarbone. The ears were like slush icicles drooping down from scab-like mounts at the base of the cranium. The nose was made up of two half-baked pockmarks placed crookedly on the orange-black face, and the tongue sloshed about in the creature's overflowing mouth like a living thing.
Another of the creatures rounded the corner. It looked more or less identical to its fellow, except that the plastic skirt was black. Did they denote differences in rank? Or sex? The faces were hard to read in the bony heads, but the six quivering fingers on each hand caught his attention. They seemed expressive, artistic even, so out of place against the ragged toffee bones of the rest of the body. He raised a hand of his own in greeting.
'Glad to be back in charge?' he called out. 'I'm the Doctor. I apologise on behalf of your squatters for the change in decor but I'm sure you'll soon have it looking really horrible again.' He rubbed a finger down the wall and grimaced as it snagged on some of the slime. 'Something in your lungs reacting with the oxygen in the air I take it. Splendid! Although you do realise the new tenants went to great lengths scraping your secretions off the property. Who are you?'
The creatures kept coming. The Doctor estimated they were maybe fifteen metres away. He held his ground, a pleasant smile on his face.
Suddenly Black Skirt spoke, its voice earthy and low. 'You are the last.'
"The last what?' inquired the Doctor, politely.
'Alive. At least, in any real sense.'
'It's the real sense I've always valued the most.'
Twelve metres.
'You killed Vasid?'
Blue Skirt's turn. Its voice was like rubble falling into a skip. 'You are the last.'
'Does that