Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [83]
She felt numb, like she was watching her own life not living it.
From her car last night Trix had phoned a few family and friends, trying not to fear the worst if she couldn’t get through. Anji and Greg were alive. When she’d told Anji that Fitz was dead it was the first time she’d said the words out loud, and she’d had to pull over to the hard shoulder for a cry. She’d imagined Fitz sitting in the passenger seat, making some lame remark about a shoulder to cry on. Anji couldn’t think of anything to say, or any way to contact the Doctor, but gave Trix a few government and UN numbers to try. All of them had been engaged, but she’d try them again this morning.
Trix was crying again.
Another Vore skittered over the roof. There was a heavy storm under way, possibly the result of weather patterns disrupted by the second moon, possibly not. It had knocked out the electricity in the street. With so many dead there wasn’t even anyone to turn on the automated message at the power company, let alone send anyone out to fix the problem.
‘We shouldn’t just be cowering in here,’ Rachel whispered.
‘You’re perfectly welcome to try going back to your parents’ house,’ Marnal replied.
He’d spent the last hour writing his diary by candlelight, and he’d made it very clear he didn’t need any help from her. They were in his library. They’d barricaded the house, moved wardrobes and other bits of furniture to block the doors and windows. From time to time a black shape would pass by a window. She assumed these were Vore, but they could have been anything.
‘We should be doing something,’ she insisted.
‘What do you suggest?’
‘You’re a Time Lord. Don’t you have advice or skills you could offer to the government? You can’t leave investigating that new moon to NASA.’
Marnal laughed at that. ‘The human race will be dead long before they’ve mustered the rockets they need to do that. You do realise that planets don’t normally just appear like that?’
‘Of course I do. Do you know why it happened?’
Marnal’s full attention was back on his diary.
‘You do, don’t you? Are they in one of your books?’
‘No,’ he said, surprisingly quietly. ‘Once again, you can thank the Doctor.’
172
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
He wasn’t going to explain any further. Rachel had sat in the same spot for hours. But it was cold, and she needed the bathroom. She stood, very carefully, in case she made a sound and attracted the monsters.
‘What do you think is going to happen?’
Marnal finished writing a sentence before replying. ‘We may survive.’
‘We. . . the human race?’ she asked, hopefully.
‘You and I, personally, may survive. I hope to, and I will do what I can for you. After that, I don’t know. The Terran biosphere may have collapsed.’
‘The what?’
‘Earth may no longer be able to sustain life.’
‘Because the monsters will have killed everyone.’
‘The people don’t matter so much as the plants. If enough plant life is destroyed, it will affect the atmosphere.’
‘Like the greenhouse effect?’
‘Yes, but much more rapid.’
He returned to his diary.
‘Who are you writing that for?’
Marnal shrugged. ‘Possibly just for posterity.’
One of the Vore was moving outside, Rachel could hear it dragging something heavy. She tried to imagine what it could be, but couldn’t think of anything but a dead body. She’d watched a couple of them devouring an Alsatian yesterday from an upstairs window.
Rachel decided to stay where she was, just for a little longer.
Many American surveillance satellites had been destroyed or disrupted. The scientists were saying it was because of the disruptions to gravity caused by the presence of the second moon, rather than direct enemy action. The Vore had apparently not noticed, or weren’t worried about, the International Space Station.
The surveillance network had been designed to function even if a substantial number of satellites were put out of action. It needed a lot of retasking,