Doctor Who_ The Taint - Michael Collier [110]
***
Lucy's laughter turned to choking, thick, heavy coughs ripping out of her, as a thick gout of blood erupted from the back of her head. Watson turned and saw her black hair frazzle to her scalp like a spark along fuse wire, her eyes fixing his with outraged accusation before they turned milky white and burst all over her face.
The girl fell from Lucy's grasp. As Mrs Kreiner shouted for her son, it was Watson's scream that took up where Sam's had left off.
***
The Doctor looked up to see Taylor and Russell staggering backward away from him, blood pouring from their heads and drenching their bodies, shouting incoherently in their pain and confusion. They gripped each other, convulsing and shuddering like wet dogs shaking water from their coats. Pushing past them, the Doctor sprinted up the cellar steps.
***
'Sam!'
She was lying face down on the floor, Watson hunched over her. He looked up at the Doctor's cry, trembling, less substantial now than his ghost had been in the cellar.
'Doctor -' he began, holding out his hand once more. Begging for help, this time.
The Doctor watched as Watson slowly toppled over, collapsing back on to Lucy's corpse. The captain's head hit the floor and shattered into dust.
***
Crouching by Sam, the Doctor rocked on his heels, listening to the heavy ticking of Roley's clocks marking the silence. Minutes stretched past. Wisps of foul-smelling smoke drifted about the hall.
'We apologise for the loss of usual cheesy wisecracks,' Sam whispered to the floorboards. Gently, the Doctor eased her round, into his arms. She smiled, her lips chapped and cracked. 'Normal service will be resumed...
probably...'
Sam fell unconscious, her head on the Doctor's lap.'Your leech had shut down,' he muttered to himself, sighing with relief.
There was a noise behind him. He turned as Fitz came to the top of the cellar steps, not looking anywhere but at the Doctor.
'Well,' Fitz said, rubbing the back of his head. 'That seems to have worked, then, doesn't it?'
Epilogue
They telephoned the police and they left; it was as simple as that. They never hung around anywhere for long. The Doctor was always ready to move on as soon as he could, and Sam always went along with it. This time, however, the Doctor had something he wanted to do before turning his back on the whole affair.
'And now?' he asked.
Sam squinted into the London sunshine of 2134, the sky still blue, half obscured by the colossal buildings reaching up to touch it. People dironged the pedestrianised streets, talking, laughing, going about their business as they had always done. No one seemed particularly bothered by a battered blue police box obstructing their way.
'Unless my sight's gone back to normal sooner than you reckoned it would... No,' Sam said, finally. 'No Beast on any of them.'
The Doctor beamed. 'I thought they'd have to have moved on by now. The Dalek invasion thirty years from now decimated humanity. The feeding needs of the Beast would've killed off the survivors, just as they did the Benelisans all that time ago.'
'But instead, our super fleas got all the energy they wanted and lived to hop another day.' She peered at him. "They've left you, too, by the way.'
'That'll be the TARDIS, I imagine,' said the Doctor. 'When we left 1963, we left the dimensional intersection behind us.'
He closed the doors and flicked a few switches on the console, sending the TARDIS on its way. Sam came over and stood next to him.
'And now there's a cuckoo in our nest,' she said.
'Really?' asked the Doctor, his head cocked to one side. 'Where?'
Sam rolled her eyes. 'You know perfectly well what I mean.'
The Doctor smiled. 'You're worried whether our newcomer fits in?'
'Stop dodging the issue with crap puns,' said Sam. Tentatively, she took his hand. 'Things won't