Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [100]
Five yards.
With a jarring push I managed to dislodge it…
…and the pickaxe fell back inside the shed.
Harries’s clenched, iced fingers were ten feet from my face. I reached back into the shed with one arm and pushed the Doctor sideways with the other.
He almost fell, but he seemed to realise my meaning and half staggered, half ran along the side of the shed and round towards the front.
I ducked away as Harries’s arms lunged at me, barely aware that I was holding a shovel – I could feel nothing, my hands were so cold.
Harries took a short step backwards, the shovel’s head catching his arm – by chance rather than design – as I staggered after the Doctor. Harries paused, watching, then he started after us.
The Doctor was working on the padlock on the shed door with some sort of metal instrument. I shouted at him to stand away, that we hadn’t time for that. He seemed irritated by my interruption but nevertheless he stood aside and I swung the shovel. I shattered the padlock on the second blow, pulling open the door, and we fell inside.
I knew at once that this was a mistake – we were trapped in the shed, and there was no way to secure the door. Harries would be here in a moment, in the shed, with us. None of the tools I could see, mainly pickaxes and shovels, would stop the nightmare outside, or even slow it much. But the Doctor was immediately preoccupied with an innocuous-looking pile of wooden boxes in the far corner.
‘Don’t just stand there, give me a hand,’ he demanded, and I was too frightened, too cold, too helpless to argue. I got the shovel’s blade under the lid of the top box and levered it up. At that moment the first loud crash came from the door as Harries tried to pull it open over the blowing snow. He lacked the strength of raw desperation that the Doctor and I had had, but it would not take him longer than a few seconds to widen the gap enough to enter.
It took only one second to rip the lid from the box, and the Doctor snatched a handful of the small cylinders from inside while I thanked God that George’s workmen had not yet used them to excavate his proposed artificial cave.
The Doctor knew at the same instant I did that we had no means of igniting the dynamite, and at the same moment the door was savagely ripped fully open, revealing Harries silhouetted against the snow.
The light was behind him. We could see the figure clearly against the white, but Harries could not see us huddled in the dark, far corner. Even his eye, it seemed, needed a moment to adjust to the change in light. He stepped forward, his arms outstretched, feeling, clutching.
The Doctor crept closer. Close beside him, I could see the intent concentration clearly on his face. And if it was that clear…
Harries saw us as I pushed the Doctor towards the white opening. The Doctor tumbled past and Harries turned partially to see what was happening. I seized the moment and shouldered the cadaver at full tilt, wishing as my side struck his back that I had had the sense to use my undamaged shoulder. Harries was still turning – off balance – and he staggered sideways, tripping over the pickaxe, which had skidded across the floor when I pushed it back through the window. I continued my charge and narrowly missed the door frame, collapsing in the snow as the Doctor struggled to push the door shut.
We both knew that there was no hope of reaching the village, and without discussion we stumbled back the way we had come, towards the house, pausing only to allow me to relieve the Doctor of some of his cargo. He was stuffing dynamite into his pockets and I mimicked his actions. The wind was behind us now and we were almost swept along to the deceptive shelter of the trees.
As we plunged back into the woodland I saw Harries’s dead face watching us through the shattered window of the shed, framed by the splintered glass. After a second his splintered face was gone and I knew – we both knew – that he was still following us, chasing us for as far as we could go, with all the unyielding, untiring determination of