Doctor Who_ The Gallifrey Chronicles - Lance Parkin [90]
The home secretary went on air to tell an interviewer that if everyone carried ID cards, establishing who was alive or dead and informing the families would be so much easier. Knowing where this kind of mentality would lead, actually knowing because she’d been to the future and seen it, she shouted at the radio. She imagined Fitz telling her to calm down, and she calmed down a little.
Driving through London had rarely been so painless. There was more litter around than usual, but no traffic. There was, of course, still a congestion charge. From time to time Trix would hear gunfire, and this usually meant a roadblock ahead. The last one had been manned by soldiers just back from Basra. She’d joked and flirted her way past them, once she’d proved she hadn’t stolen the car. They were letting the Vore walk and fly around – fire on them, the soldiers told her, and the creatures swept in to retaliate.
The streets, then, were all but empty. It matched her mood. She felt numbed by it all. No. . . She had to be honest with herself. She felt numb that Fitz had gone. The countless millions of other dead. . . well, they were just statistics. Brutal, but true. It was impossible to process what had hap-187
pened, and the lack of levelled buildings and piles of rubble made it harder to accept that anything had happened, now all the bodies had been cleared away. Were they in mass graves or in cold storage? A rather morbid thought, but practical, and it had only just occurred to her. All the bodies had to have been taken somewhere. Were the Vore taking them? She was going to have to start thinking like the Doctor. He would have asked questions like this.
She was thinking about him in the past tense. Trix had noticed it first about an hour ago, on the outskirts of the city.
This, now, was where the trail for the Doctor ran out: a street full of Victorian town houses in north London. There was nothing to distinguish it from any of the other streets around here. Trix stayed in the car for a moment to assess the situation. Plenty of monsters, but they were going about their incomprehensible business showing no sign of interest in her car. For the moment. They could turn on her instantly, relentlessly. They were nestling all around one of the houses, in a way she hadn’t seen before. The numbers here suggested it was interesting to them. Was that because the Doctor was around? There was a detached outbuilding – a garage? – that was practically submerged in a mass of Vore, all crawling over each other.
Time to put her theory into action. Trix got out of the car, and opened up the boot. She’d picked up a dead Vore, one just lying on the side of a country lane, possibly even road kill. Now she pulled it out. It seemed far lighter than before. She dragged it to the front gate and propped it up. The Vore nestling on the garage exhibited what could have been mild curiosity, but nothing more. Most of them angled their heads and craned to get a look, but none of them took as much as a single hop towards her. Nervous, even so, about outstaying her welcome Trix took a box of firelighters she’d bought out of the glove compartment, stuffed about a third of them under the dead Vore and, after a couple of tries, set light to one with matches. Once she was sure the flames had caught she retreated to the car and waited.
The burning Vore gave off thick smoke with a green tinge to it. It took a minute or two, but then Trix could smell it even