Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [40]
Together Roz and Mrs Woodcott fought their way back to Jessica’s house.
There was nothing they could do for Jessica. Roz had blasted away the dark shape that was crouching on her chest but that didn’t help the stewardess. She was instantly buried under a mass of dogs who descended from the wall. Others were pouring out of a garden gate towards Roz and Mrs Woodcott.
Roz realized that nothing could save the stewardess now. She concentrated on saving her own life, and Mrs Woodcott’s. They fired into the mass of approaching dogs, causing them to howl and back away momentarily as several of the pack dropped dead.
Roz and Mrs Woodcott retreated slowly. As they backed away along the pavement, Roz put her foot down on something and heard a crunch and then a tinkle of breaking glass. She didn’t look down but she knew what it was.
The picture. The one Jessica had gone back for.
Everyone in the picture was dead now. The thought flashed through Roz’s mind as she backed through the garden gate and up to the front door of the house.
Mrs Woodcott was with her every inch of the way, occasionally loosing a well-aimed shot from her heavy silver revolver. Roz fired short dense bursts from the Styer AUG.
They both walked backwards, slowly and carefully because they knew if they stumbled and went over they were through.
They backed slowly towards the safety of the house, along the garden path and up the front steps.
The pack followed them.
A thousand glittering eyes, ten thousand wet teeth.
Flowing forward whenever it saw an opportunity or sensed a weakness. Retreating with howls and snarls as bullets lashed at its fringes. The night seemed to have taken on faces. All Roz could see was a solid wall of these furred inhuman faces. Damp snapping muzzles, hungry for her blood.
Roz and Mrs Woodcott inched their way up the steps and through the front door of Jessica’s house. Roz fired a final wide burst on full automatic, and then they slammed the front door.
Outside the house the pack did not retreat. It remained standing, as if waiting for something.
Then, as if at a signal, they began to howl.
Chapter 15
Justine remembered surgical instruments. She remembered the light gleaming on them, and the cool dry touch of a hand in a surgical glove as it touched the inside of her thigh, and spread her open. She remembered the smell of beer and the flash of blue eyes above a surgical mask as the man prepared to kill her baby.
To kill Ricky.
Justine had been pregnant when she met Creed.
She had been pregnant with Ricky. Her belly fertile and swelling. And then Paulie Keaton had decreed that her baby must be aborted. Dry surgical hands on her inside thigh.
Smell of beer. Flash of surgical instruments.
But Creed had rescued her. He had saved her baby’s life. He had saved Ricky.
She hadn’t told Ricky that.
She wished she hadn’t told him anything.
In her most unhappy moments with Creed, Justine sometimes cynically wondered about the way they’d met. Her romantic saviour. She had fallen for him like a ton of bricks.
But as the years passed she’d come to wonder how much of that had been love and how much just the hormonal surge of pregnancy.
But she’d been happy enough with Creed all these years.
She’d never regretted leaving Vincent and after the statutory two year waiting period she’d signed her divorce papers without a qualm. Ricky had become Creed’s son by then.
He’d never met his real father. In fact, he had no idea that he existed.
Until a few hours ago, that is. When Mrs McCracken had told her about seeing Creed in the parking lot of the school.
Talking to that little blonde.
Now Justine lay on her bed, feeling her heart pumping with fear. She’d been angry. That’s why she’d done it. For months now Ricky had been nagging at her. He knew there was some half-buried family secret that concerned him and he pursued it like a pig rooting after truffles.
Creed and Justine had an unspoken agreement not to tell the kids