Doctor Who_ St. Anthony's Fire - Mark Gatiss [56]
Thoss craned his neck, his jaw dropping open as he took in the majesty of the night sky and the brilliant, blazing rings. Soon it would all be gone. Forgotten.
His head snapped sharply back as he felt a low, low rumbling beneath his feet. The ground suddenly convulsed and he was sent toppling headlong into the mud. He felt the acidic soil sting his eyes and impact into his mouth and ears.
Getting up, Thoss found the ground trembling all around him. In the jungle, dozens of trees crashed noisily to the ground. With a startling boom of shattering rock, a great fissure opened up in the battlefield, mud and soil vanishing as sediment stabbed like broken fingers from the earth.
The ground was shaking violently now and Thoss had to spread his legs wide in an effort to remain standing. He looked across towards the shuddering jungle and gasped.
From out of the cleft in the earth, a huge yellow ooze was belching into the atmosphere, threading its way through the jungle and around the swaying trees like a restless ghost. It sped through the mud, whorling into a vortex, leaving a mucoid essence which sparkled like a snail’s trail.
Thoss gawped at it and teetered backwards.
With sudden purpose, he began to struggle back towards the dug‐out. The earth‐tremor ceased as rapidly as it had begun but as Thoss ran over the battlefield, the yellow ooze began to rocket towards him, sloshing over the bodies of the fallen soldiers and pulling them into its core.
Thoss tripped, fell and was at once on his feet again, his exhausted old limbs humming with pain.
More corpses disappeared into the yellow ooze, their uniforms flapping and shredding. Thoss could see them swirling round inside, as though being digested within the sparkling, membranous interior.
The old man reached the lip of the trench and managed to clamber down the ladder. He shivered involuntarily as he hit the icy, stagnant water but waded on desperately towards the dug‐out entrance.
His leg hit something and he recoiled as Maconsa’s body rolled, belly‐up, into view. The luminescent ooze poured over the edge into the trench and scooped up Maconsa’s body like so much driftwood.
Thoss whimpered in terror and bolted through the door of Grek’s quarters, attempting to slam it behind him. The ooze pressed against the woodwork and Thoss rammed his body at the door.
As it shut, he caught one last glimpse of the thing. What he saw within the ooze made him scream out loud. He was still screaming when two Cutch soldiers found him and dragged him out, through the Number Seven ladder‐hole, to the conference room.
* * *
High above the jungle canopy, Bernice found herself lulled into sleep by the trill of the copter’s brass rotor blades. She had wrapped her feet and hands into the leather straps which hung just inside the fuselage and felt comforted by them.
When she awoke, she could just make out Liso’s broad back as he steered the craft through the bleary dawn. She prodded Liso and he turned round.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
‘Is it?’ queried Liso, then, grasping the meaning of the greeting, smiled.
‘I’m sorry about Porsim. Truly I am,’ said Bernice with feeling.
‘Thank you.’
The wind streamed past them as they descended and hovered low over the steaming green jungle.
‘Do you know what might have happened, Liso? What that… that ship was?’
The Portrone did not look round but his grave whisper was audible above the noise of the engines. ‘It is the Keth. There can be no doubt.’
Bernice cocked an eyebrow. ‘The what?’
‘They devastated this world an eternity ago. The Faith always said they would come back.’
She considered this. ‘I see.’
Something made her turn round in her seat and a frisson of terror leapt up her spine. ‘I don’t want to worry you, Liso,’ she said, ‘but I think the Keth may be coming back sooner than you thought.’
Liso turned his head and squinted with his solitary eye.
A few miles behind them,