Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [52]
The dogs would begin getting through.
So when the Styer AUG was empty, that was it.
Time for the bayonet.
But then the sound of the armoured car became deafening and there was a great rippling shearing noise as tall panels of glass snapped and shattered behind her. A rumbling crunch as masonry and plaster gave way.
Roz didn’t dare look round; she had to concentrate on the dogs charging towards her. But she heard the screech of tearing timber as the armoured car ploughed through the sitting room wall and on into the sitting room itself. She fired a final burst at the hallway then risked a quick glance round.
The armoured car was snouting blindly forward across the wreckage of the small sitting room. The Persian carpet vanished under its churning wheels. A coffee-table with a family of ceramic elephants marching across it disappeared under the big vehicle with a crunching sound. A crystal chandelier was jammed against the ceiling by the high roof of the vehicle, and dragged shrieking until it shattered.
Roz heard Mrs Woodcott’s pistol and she turned back to join in the holding action, only using single shots now, to preserve ammunition. The dogs were breaking through from the hallway, running across the bodies of their fallen comrades. Single shots weren’t fast enough to nail them all.
They were starting to slip through into the sitting room.
But it didn’t matter because the smell of diesel was intoxicatingly heavy. Suddenly Roz could feel the slow-moving vehicle like a big gentle beast behind her, pressing warmly at the back of her legs.
With Mrs Woodcott beside her she scrambled over the bumper and up on to the sloping blunt face of the armoured car, as it crawled slowly forward into the sitting room.
The dogs had been hesitating, clearly frightened of the big metal beast they saw rolling massively towards them. But as soon as they observed Roz and Mrs Woodcott climb aboard their hostility overcame their fear.
They launched themselves at the two women clinging to the front of the armoured car. Roz shot one and then the Styer AUG clicked, empty.
Mrs Woodcott shot one and then her revolver clicked.
Three more dogs threw themselves snarling into the air.
Behind them came three more.
They were all blown out of the air by a sustained burst from one of the machine guns mounted on the roof of the armoured car. The second machine gun swivelled on its angled pivot and swept a stream of flame up and down the hallway, slaughtering the shadowed mass still trying to press into the sitting room.
Roz looked up at the blasting machine guns pivoting above her, and that was when she knew that Redmond must be alive.
The engine note changed and the armoured car began to back out of the sitting room. Small chips of masonry and clouds of dust rained down on them as the vehicle rolled back out through the hole it had made. Suddenly they were outside in the cool night air.
‘This is a bit more like it,’ howled Mrs Woodcott jubilantly over the machine gun noise. She’d begun reloading her revolver as soon as the machine gun started and now she fired one final defiant shot at the retreating mass of dogs.
Roz took a last look back into the sitting room as they backed away. Through a savage gash in the wall she could see the total wreckage of the stewardess’s small, tidy home.
Moonlight shone in through the gaping hole. Dogs of every size, shape and breed lay scattered and broken in the ruins. A few twitched and limped, but most of them lay still.
There was a messy slopping sound as one of the armoured car’s tyres wallowed through what had once been an ornamental pond, and then the vehicle was back through the hole in the brick wall. The engine note changed as the vehicle began reversing out of the garden across the reverberant bare concrete of the podium.
‘Come on, let’s get inside,’ yelled Roz. But Mrs Woodcott needed no urging; she had already climbed up on to the roof of the armoured car and was holding the hatch open.
She slithered into the vehicle and Roz was following her When she heard a cry from inside, then a