Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [34]
Repressing a ridiculous urge to knock, she kicked the door in and went spilling into the narrow hallway, gun ready.
The vision enhancement on the helmet immediately showed body warmth in the next room, so she went through the hallway into a small sitting room.
The dog registered on the thermal display as a blaze of energy, a jagged red flame.
The flame twisted and surged abruptly, knifing towards her out of the darkness, barking madly.
But there wasn’t a problem, because Roz had the Styer AUG ready and it was on semi-automatic fire, and she got it sighted and locked on to the dog as it jumped towards her.
But then Roz saw something out of the corner of her eye and suddenly there was a problem.
Because on the helmet’s display there were now two other sources of body heat, only registering a pale pink, but definitely human-shaped. Standing upright, and moving around.
Two people, alive, in the garden outside, standing beside a ladder. Only the thin glass between them and the sitting room. They were right in the line of fire. Even if every bullet hit the dog dead-centre, they’d still have enough residual velocity to go through the glass, into the garden, and slaughter the people outside.
Roz realized this as the dog was still in mid-air. Her mind pulsed swiftly with alternatives for a fraction of a second. No way could she shoot.
So she dropped to the ground in a kneeling stance, and braced the stock of the gun against the side of her combat boot. The wicked bayonet of the weapon was pointing in the air at a steep angle.
This was the way African warriors had once hunted lions, Roz knew. A braced spear with a crossbar on it, so that the lion can’t fight its way up the length of the spear and slay, in turn, the warrior who has just slain it.
There was no crossbar on the Styer AUG, but its magazine stuck out of the side of the gun at an angle and it was this that stopped the dog. He was still slashing at the air with his fangs, jaws working in a mad fury, when his shattered ribs finally locked against the magazine of the gun.
The dog’s momentum stalled and his wildly cutting teeth gradually stilled as the gleam faded from his eye.
When she was sure he was dead Roz stood up, struggling against the weight of the impaled dog. She shook the gun, working the lifeless body free of the bayonet with her foot.
The dog’s corpse slammed on to the floor with a heavy wet sound. Roz walked forward into the sitting room, keyed up and ready for anything. Beyond the French windows she could see the people in the garden. They were quite clear; the image system in the helmet was working on light intensification now and the moonlight was enough to render the figures unmistakable.
Roz felt the hair stir on the back of her neck. She was looking at two women, both of whom she knew. It was the stewardess from her flight, and the creepy Woodcott woman who had press-ganged her at the airport. She was banging on the window and waving at Roz.
‘Nice to see you again, dear,’ Mrs Woodcott smiled.
‘What a good job you’re doing.’
Roz didn’t reply. There was a voice speaking in her left ear, on the tiny headphones fitted in the helmet. Redmond’s voice.
‘Roz, get out of there immediately.’
‘Redmond, I’ve found them. Survivors. Two of them.’
‘Bring them with you, then.’ His voice was terse and urgent. ‘But in any case, get out now.’
Roz slid the French window open and gestured for the stewardess and Mrs Woodcott to come in. ‘What’s wrong?’
she said, activating the helmet microphone as she led the women quickly up the hallway.
‘Never mind what it is,’ said Redmond’s voice. ‘Don’t think, just haul arse.’
‘I can think and haul arse at the same time,’ snapped Roz. ‘Update me on the situation.’ As she ushered the women out of the front door she heard Redmond sigh.
‘The surveillance computers have locked on now,’ he said in her ear. ‘I’m getting readings from the buildings all around you, Roz.’
She led the women into the street. ‘And what?