Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [62]
‘Ace..!’
‘No, Doctor.’ Brenda shook her head. ‘I can’t allow it. I’m sorry.
Perhaps if you and Phillip...’
‘Mr Garrett is going to be no help at all!’ snapped the Doctor.
The room fell silent.
‘What do you mean?’ There was panic in Brenda’s voice. ‘Where is he?’
The Doctor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break it to you like this. I don’t think that our friend Mr Garrett is quite himself anymore.’
‘Doctor, will you please stop beating about the bush and tell me what the hell is going on!’
The Doctor held his hands up. ‘All right! All right!’ He turned away, 120
pulling open the slatted blinds that covered the window and staring out over the battlefield that the sea had become.
‘The alien body that was stolen from the morgue is in Mr Garrett’s quarters. It has been partially eaten.’
‘Eaten?’
‘Yes. Eaten. And I believe that if the bite marks are examined they will prove to be human. At least, some of them will.’
There was a stunned silence. ‘You’re not suggesting that Phillip is responsible for biting chunks off the corpse?’ Brenda exploded.
The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘Look, I don’t have all the answers.
Not yet. But I’m sure Phillip Garrett is the root of a good many problems, including your so-called monster.’ He paused. ‘I also found a transmitter. The same technology as our dead alien was carrying.’
Brenda made to interject again but the Doctor cut across her.
‘I think that Garrett is working for a third party and I think it is they who need the weapon. Find Garrett and we find the weapon – and, I think, we find a way of stopping the Krill.’
‘And if the Krill have already got Garrett?’ asked Ace.
‘Then we’re all dead unless I can get to the TARDIS,’ said the Doctor.
In the service tunnels deep beneath the colony Garrett sat, hunched against a wall, his body shivering, sweat pouring from his skin. His head snapped up at the sound of gunfire and the screams of the Krill.
The Krill. With sudden clarity he knew that he shouldn’t be down here. He should be in... the control centre. Yes, the control centre.
With... Brenda...
He struggled to his feet, and staggered. Something heavy was slung over his shoulders. A cylinder. It glinted in the cold of the emergency lights. It felt unfamiliar in his hands. The weapon from the dig. Why did he have it?
Garrett’s face creased with the concentration of trying to remember what had happened to him. He was so tired. He rubbed at his face with his hands, and stopped at the touch of something unfamiliar against his skin. Slowly he drew his hands away, holding them out in front of him.
His skin was shimmering, blurring. The skin seemed to flow, one minute smooth flesh, the next gnarled, reptilian.
‘What is happening to me?’ he whispered.
He slammed the unfamiliar hands against the wall. His brain was in turmoil. Part of him wanted to scream and run; another part told him that the alien skin was right, proper. It was what he should be.
His head snapped up at the sound of more gunfire. Krill screams reverberated along the corridor, closer now Garrett began to back 121
away.
He stumbled over something on the floor. Something bulky and cold. He bent down.
A body was slumped on the floor. Tentatively Garrett turned it over.
The sightless eyes of a security guard stared up at him, the face bruised and bloody, the head lolling grotesquely on a broken neck. Garrett stared down at the livid marks on the man’s neck, and at the twisted claws that his hands had become.
With a sudden flash of clarity he could see himself rushing across the lecture room towards Brenda, see his hands around Bryce’s neck.
He could see himself killing this man. He had memories of standing under an unfamiliar sky, patches of oily vapour writhing around him, the rasping, breathy war chants of his comrades in arms filling the sky.
With a cry Garrett began to run blindly, in no particular direction.
The raging in his brain shut out all rational thought. He crashed off walls, slammed through doors, trying to get away from everything.