Doctor Who_ The Bodysnatchers - Mark Morris [101]
He was almost at the window when the light was blotted out by something vast and dark that rose up from beneath the sill.
Jack stepped back, unable to believe what he was looking at. It was an enormous rolling eye, surrounded by reptile skin whose individual scales were as big and shiny as silver shields. The eye seemed to regard him for a long moment;Jack saw blood vessels thick as rope pulsing in the whites.Then it swooped upward and was replaced by a huge mouth filled with row upon row of savage teeth.The mouth opened wide and a bellowing roar filled the room, almost splitting Jack's head and causing the floor to tremble beneath his feet.
He staggered backward, his only thought being that the creature, ten times larger than the one he had encountered in the factory, had come to seek revenge for his part in burning the factory to the ground last night.'I'm sorry,'
he bleated,'I'm sorry.' Then he darted across to the bed and clamping his hand around the arm of the woman, who was still asleep and snoring despite the commotion, yanked her to her feet.
'Come on, you old slattern, get up,' he ordered, slapping her across her boil-encrusted face to rouse her.
The woman staggered, mumbled, her bleary, bloodshot eyes flickering open.Then she saw what was outside the window and suddenly she was wide awake.
She went rigid, letting loose an ear-shattering scream.'Be quiet, for mercy's sake,' growled Jack, and swinging a lazy arm, punched her in the face, breaking her nose. As the woman began to gag and splutter, her nose streaming blood, Jack dragged her over to the window. 'Here, dragon,' he shouted, 'take her, not me.' He shoved the window open, then grabbed the woman's legs and lifted her up, intending to shove her head-first through the window into the creature's jaws.
Realising what he was trying to do, the woman retaliated, snarling and spitting and clawing at his face with filthy nails. Undeterred, Jack hit her again, snapping her head back. The woman went limp, all but unconscious, and Jack heaved her on to the windowsill. 'Here, dragon,' he called again, and gave the woman a shove. Her body fell fifty feet to the cobbled ground below. The monster pounced on it immediately.
Hoping its meal would distract it enough for him to make his escape, Jack turned and fled. He flew out of his room and down the stairs, trampling on a child who was sleeping on the landing. The monster was at the front of the building, and so Jack ran out of the back, into a yard and then down a filthy alleyway where the sewage was ankle-deep.There was a high wall to either side of him, and Jack began to laugh a little hysterically as he sloshed down the narrow passage between them.
'You'll never catch Jack Howe,' he panted, 'not in a hundred years. I'm too damned clever for the lot of you.' The end of the alleyway was in sight now.
Jack knew it led to a wider road, which offered him ample opportunities for escape. He was no more than twenty feet away from it, his head down as he ran, when a shadow fell across the opening. Jack plodded to a halt and looked up.The shadow edged forward into the alleyway, behind which Jack glimpsed a flash of silver.
'Merciful Lord, no,' he murmured as the flash resolved itself into another monster, this one smaller than the one at the front of the building. Jack knew, however, that although this creature was no more than twenty feet long from nose to tail, it was just as lethal.
The creature spied him and seemed to grin, showing him a mouthful of teeth like jagged knife blades.As it squeezed into the alleyway and came for him, its clawed feet scrabbling on the slippery cobbles, Jack turned once again and ran back towards the house. He was snivelling like a child now, terror causing his heart to crash in his chest,