Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [50]
‘It’s a nice thought,’ said Roz. She kept an eye on the kitchen window but nothing seemed to be moving outside.
‘But I was wrong. If the armoured car was coming it would have been here by now.’
That was when they heard the knock at the front door.
That was what it sounded like. Someone knocking. They looked at each other.
Roz was the first to speak. ‘Could a dog make that noise?’
‘Exactly what I was wondering, dear.’ Mrs Woodcott leant out of the kitchen and peered down the short hallway towards the front door. She held her gun ready.
There was nothing to see. Just the front door in darkness, moonlight slanting in through the strips of pebbled glass that looked out on to the street.
Roz peered into the kitchen. Nothing stirred outside the window. Maybe the dogs had gone away. Roz opened her mouth to say as much but at that instant there was another knock on the door.
‘Who’s there?’ called Mrs Woodcott brightly. There was no reply.
The hallway was silent. Roz forced herself to look back into the kitchen again, to keep her eye on the gaping window.
‘Is someone out there?’ called Mrs Woodcott. ‘Yoo-hoo.’
In reply there was the knock again.’
Mrs Woodcott looked at Roz. ‘I don’t like this at all,’ dear.’
‘I’m going to see who’s out there.’
‘I don’t think you should, dear.’
‘You keep an eye on the kitchen window.’
‘Don’t go, Roz.’
‘It could be help. Reinforcements. The police.’
‘Then why don’t they reply,’ hissed Mrs Woodcott. Then she bellowed, ‘Oi, you out there! Say something! You at the door!’
There was silence, then the knocking again.
‘I’m going to see who’s there,’ said Roz.
‘Don’t. For God’s sake.’
‘It could be the police.’
‘I never heard of a policeman who couldn’t talk.’
‘I never heard of a dog who could knock on a door,’ said Roz, and started down the hallway.
‘Careful, dear.’
‘Keep an eye on the kitchen window.’
Roz was at the door now. The small windows set in the wood were pebbled glass, deliberately opaque. All Roz could see through them were amorphous patterns of shadow and moonlight.
But in the centre of the door there was a peephole, an old-fashioned lens on a cylindrical barrel, drilled through the wood.
She put her eye to it.
The lens distorted the world outside in order to give the maximum image. In the moonlight everything was clear despite the circular distortion of the fish-eye effect. Roz stared out and saw it on the door step.
The white dog.
The rest of the pack seemed to have fallen back to make a path for the dog. She could still see the route the animal had followed as it approached the front door. Now it kneeled panting on the front steps staring up at Roz.
Roz realized that the dog was white because it was old.
It had a starved angular look to it, bones seeming to jut from its skinny body. It was the oldest dog Roz had ever seen, a walking skeleton, almost.
But there was still stringy muscle under the pale fur. And behind the shaggy white fur of the muzzle the dog’s eyes blazed like coals.
The dog stared up at Roz. She had the disquieting feeling that it knew she was there. The dog shook himself and raised his trembling furry muzzle in the air.
All the other dogs seemed to be watching him. The old white animal raised his nose as if smelling the air. Then his throat pulsed and he gave a short, harsh bark, barely audible to Roz through the wood of the front door.
Immediately, as if in reply, Mrs Woodcott began shouting in the kitchen.
‘Bastards. Get out.’
Roz was already running back into the kitchen when she heard Mrs Woodcott begin to fire her gun.
As Roz came in, the window was swarming with dark wriggling shapes. Mrs Woodcott was blasting away and Roz realized that she had been counting the shots without even knowing it because as soon as Mrs Woodcott fired the sixth and final round she stepped forward and took over, firing the Styer AUG in a long burst.
For a moment the window was swept clear but then more dogs began to force their