Doctor Who_ The Dying Days - Lance Parkin [10]
'You've found someone alive?' Bernice was clambering in, bringing up one of her long legs for leverage. The helicopter rocked a little as it tried to cope with her moving around it. Once inside Bernice needed a moment to compose herself in the face of so much death, but she was soon looking around the compartment.
She located a plastic box with rounded corners, the size of a small suitcase.
'Could you pass me your sonic screwdriver when you have a moment?' she asked, clearly not wanting to interfere with his first aid attempts. There was little more that he could do for the moment but stay with the injured man. The Doctor tried to keep one eye on his patient and one on what Bernice was doing.
A couple of well-aimed squirts of ultrasonic energy released the clasps. Bernice opened up the case.
'Test tubes,' she announced, lifting up the case to give the Doctor a better look. 'Full of red stuff. I can't see any hazard warning stickers, but if you don't mind, I'm not going to unstop them.'
'Soil,' Caldwell croaked.
The Doctor could hear a siren outside. 'An ambulance is coming,' he said.
Bernice was closing up the case and heading for the door. 'I'll go down and tell them,' she said, jumping down.
The Doctor squeezed Caldwel 's hand. 'You're going to be fine,' he assured him.
Caldwell gurgled his relief.
Car doors were slamming outside. He could hear Bernice saying something, then male voices replying.
After a moment, a uniformed policeman was poking his head through the doorway. 'Good morning, sir,' he began in a gruff voice, 'The young lady says that you have a survivor in here.' He was a craggy-faced man somewhere in middle age.
A policeman, presumably.
The Doctor pulled himself over to the door, holding out a hand. 'His name is Caldwell.'
The policeman shook his hand, but was looking past him. Not at Caldwell, but at the plastic case that contained the test tubes.
'If you could get clear, sir, we'll see to him now.'
'He's got a broken leg and he's in shock. He's almost certainly got concussion, too. Try not to move his neck.'
'No need to worry, sir, I'm fully-trained.'
He helped the Doctor back down to the ground. Bernice was standing half a dozen yards away by the police Range Rover, her arms folded over her chest. The Doctor crossed over to her. Most of the smoke from the crash had dispersed now.
There were only two policemen. The gruff-voiced one beckoned over his colleague to give him a leg-up into the helicopter.
'Stay here,' the other officer said, flicking his half-finished cigarette to the ground, 'we'l need to talk to you.'
'Well, he could have said please,' the Doctor remarked, grinding out the cigarette butt with the heel of his shoe. It wouldn't do to start a forest fire. He turned to Bernice and smiled. She smiled back, weakly. She looked different to the way he remembered her. It wasn't the face: the high cheekbones and wide mouth were just the same. Her eyes were still blue, her hair was stil black, cut in a close crop.
The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtful y. 'Have you shrunk? You don't seem as tall as I remember.'
'You grew,' she replied impatiently.
The Doctor considered the answer for a couple of seconds. 'That would certainly explain the discrepancy,' he decided.
She handed him back the sonic screwdriver. 'Can we go now?'
He pointed over the helicopter. The first policeman had disappeared into the cabin, the other was talking to his colleague, with his back to them. 'That gentlemen asked us to stay.'
'Before you came over he was threatening me with the Official Secrets Act. Do you fancy trying to answer a set of awkward questions? "Who are you?", "Where did you come from?", that sort of thing.'
The Doctor broke into a grin. 'When you put it like that, no. I think we've done all we can.'
12
They strolled away, trying not to look back, quickly reaching the edge of the woodland. Over a low hedgerow was the field between the orchard and the house.
'There