Doctor Who_ The Bodysnatchers - Mark Morris [41]
A soft orange glow suffused the room.
Emmeline turned - and a shock so great it stopped the scream in her throat slammed into her.
It was her mother sitting in the armchair, after all. Or rather, not sitting, but slumped. The reason for this was not because she was sleeping but because she was dead. Emmeline could tell that from her ghastly pallor and glaring eyes, the look of awful terror frozen on to her face.And there was something else too, something that Emmeline's spinning, horror-filled mind could make no sense of. In her mother's throat were several ragged puncture wounds, out of which was dribbling not blood but a viscous green slime.
Emmeline backed away on legs so rickety it seemed they would snap like dry sticks at any moment. Still unable to scream, she was making breathy, high-pitched mewling sounds. She dropped the box of lucifers, which struck the hearth and burst open, scattering its contents. The long velvet drapes covering the window billowed as though buffeted by a strong wind.
Then a figure stepped from behind them.
It was her father, his hands reaching out as though to draw her into an embrace. Only it was not her father at all, for his eyes were burning with a hideous orange light. Emmeline looked at his hands, and saw that on his palms were a number of suckers, like small puckered mouths, from which protruded long thorn-like spikes. From the tips of the spikes green slime was oozing, the same green slime that was leaking from the holes in her dead mother's throat.
Awkwardly, moving like a child learning how to walk, Emmeline turned and blundered from the room. She wanted to scream, not only in terror of her life, and in horror at what she had seen, but also to rouse the servants, procure help. However, shock still clamped the sound down inside her somewhere, refusing to let it out.With hands that no longer seemed part of her, she grabbed the door as she exited the room, slammed it behind her, then raced along the corridor towards the front door. She had no plan, no strategy: she just wanted to get away, get out of the house.
Behind her, she heard her father give a hideous hissing gurgle that did not sound even remotely human. Then he ripped the parlour door open and came tearing down the corridor after her.
***
'Cyborg,' said the Doctor.
'I beg your pardon?' replied litefoot.
'That was what attacked us.A cyborg. Part animal, part machine.' He leaned back in his chair and smiled. 'I've always found biotechnological species fascinating.'
Sam looked at him almost with resentment. Here they were, barely an hour after having almost been gobbled up by some massive monster with metal teeth, and the Doctor was sitting back, perfectly relaxed, talking about their ordeal with all the boyish enthusiasm of a schoolkid discussing an earthworm experiment.
Though she tried to hide it, Sam was still furious with herself for having frozen back there at the factory. What was more, she couldn't stop the shiver of reaction deep in her belly, which was still juddering away like a little motor despite her having drunk two brandy-laced coffees.
She wondered if she ought to bring the subject up with the Doctor, apologise or something, assure him that it wouldn't happen again, that her behaviour back there had been nothing more than a momentary aberration.
She wanted to be an asset, not a liability; she'd hate it if the Doctor thought he had to protect her all the time.
Maybe later, when the time was right. For now, trying to sound smart, she said, 'That was why the sonic screwdriver was able to scramble its synapses.'
The Doctor nodded. 'I gave it a brainstorm, though the effect was only temporary. I suspect these creatures have a built-in protective response to sonic attack.'
Litefoot was looking from Sam to the Doctor, trying in vain to hold on to the conversation. 'I'm afraid you've lost me,' he admitted. 'Do I take it, Doctor, that the animal that attacked us was built , that it was some