Doctor Who_ The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin [28]
Her records showed that Amy was nothing more than a kissogram from a small town in England. She had no connections to UNIT and there were no records of her working with the Doctor, yet she had thrown herself into the action at the Museum like a seasoned professional. She was definitely hiding something, and Strebbins suspected it would lead to the heart of the matter.
Amy was impressed with the speed at which Oscar had been able to summon help. As she waited on the pavement, he was talking earnestly to another police officer, who was mid-handover of an excitable Alsatian.
As Oscar signed some papers, Amy gazed again at the New York skyline, glowing brightly in the night sky. This was a place where so many people had come to find their dreams and start their lives all over again. Perhaps it was true, and if Amy could make it here, she'd be able to make it anywhere. Oscar seemed a good start for the Pond Gang, if a 108
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY
bit quiet. He had a disconcerting habit of noting down everything Amy said, but as long as he was on her side she didn't really mind.
She'd thought of recruiting the new officer who had turned up, but he'd been decidedly grumpy, and she could do without that. Amy heard the dog van's engines start up, and pull off to reveal Oscar, fully kitted up, and a bouncy Alsatian by his side. Her team was in place. She smiled, and said out loud, 'Bring it on, New York!'
Then, one by one, the skyscrapers' lights started to go out.
First the Empire State Building changed from a beacon of light to a mere silhouette, then the Bank of Manhattan became a slab of black granite. New York was losing power and flickering like cameras at a concert, the entire skyline changed to black.
Am y stared up Fifth Avenue as a wave of Upper West Side's grand buildings all receded into darkness. The streetlamps that marked out the grids of the city so neatly lost their sodium glow and, block by block, New York became as dark as the heart of the rainforest...
Am y looked around her in horror. New York had been blackened by an accumulation of night. She wasn't scared of the dark, but dark in a city was a different kind of feeling. The buildings around her now looked like tombstones, mere ghosts of skyscrapers, casting dark blots and angles
109
DOCTOR WHO
against the sky. Manhattan felt smaller, and more dangerous. Only the island of Manhattan had lost power, and the orange spill of Queens and New Jersey marked the edge of the blackout zone. But rather than reassure Amy, it made the city feel even darker, totally enclosed.
All around her, office buildings were emptying early for the night. People were starting to pile out onto the streets, laughing and cheering; grinning late-shift workers, delighted to be released from a night of hard work stuck to their computers. She was sure she could see a firework going off above Harlem. New Yorkers loved a party, and this looked like it was going to make Saturday night a whole lot more fun.
Wandering near her, a girl was struggling with her phone.
'Hello? Dan? Are you there? I don't know how I'm going to get home.'
Amy called out to Oscar. 'Check your phone.'
He gave the answer she was expecting: 'It isn't working.'
As Amy listened, she heard a kind of quiet that hadn't reached the city in decades. Nothing was working. Bars were shutting their doors, restaurant kitchens were closing, the Metro lines were down, as all the things the city relied on had simply stopped.
When she was a child back in Scotland, they'd sometimes had blackouts that lasted for hours -
110
THE FORGOTTEN ARMY
technology briefly beaten back by snow, or floods, or just by a car hitting a pylon. But there were twelve million people here, and Amy knew the lights weren't going to snap on any time