Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [72]
Roz interrupted again. ‘Did you say years?’
The paunchy man looked up in surprise. Roz and Redmond were both staring at him. With their weapons and helmets and camouflaged jackets they looked like a pair of fierce apparitions in the moonlight. Norman Peverell blinked at them. ‘Sorry?’
‘You said years,’ said Redmond. ‘You said that people have been seeing this thing for years.’
‘Yes. Well, reports of strange behaviour among the dog population. Strange group behaviour, to be more specific.
Just anecdotes initially. Small silly-season stories in the daily newspapers and so on. But gradually the sheer number of reports snowballed and the security services, that is to say, people like myself began to take notice. Of course, we served D-notices.’
‘Bloody typical,’ said Redmond.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Roz. ‘D-notices?’
‘The Official Secrets Act,’ explained Redmond. ‘An English speciality. Supressing information. Muzzling the press.’
‘It’s not the press that needs muzzling,’ said Roz. She was remembering jaws open wide in the moonlight, the jagged ivory of fangs.
‘Well, the freedom of the press is a separate issue.’
‘To you, maybe,’ said Redmond.
‘In any event, we stopped the newspaper reports so as not to alarm the public while we looked into the reports ourselves. And as we began to dig deeper there were these other stories, rather disturbing stories.’
‘I’ll bet they were disturbing,’ said Roz.
Creed sat in the dim interior of the armoured car bent over the communications console, trying to puzzle out the computer manuals in the dim blue light. If he could familiarize himself with the operating system he’d be able to find a way around its security features and get a message to Amy.
Failing that, he would try reaching the Doctor.
Creed was glad he’d been left alone by the others. If they’d seen him doing this they would have tried to stop him.
Contacting the Doctor might be easier and anyway he needed to get in touch with him. The Doctor had said the situation was urgent. He’d said he needed Creed’s help.
What sort of help? And what was the situation? Perhaps he was already knee deep in it.
Creed was wondering about that when the alarm went off. He hurried back up the narrow aisle to the front screen.
The thermal-imaging night-sight showed something on the far side of the podium, at the rear of the armoured car.
A glowing mass moving like lava, flowing towards him from the maze of dark houses and gardens. Creed felt a tingling in the pit of his stomach, a ticklish sensation halfway between fear and excitement. He zoomed in on the undifferentiated lava-like glow and gradually the screen began to reveal the shapes of individual dogs.
Dogs.
So they hadn’t been kidding after all.
Creed quickly checked the status of the machine guns mounted on the rear of the armoured car. There were fewer than on the front, and they were of smaller calibre but Creed was confident they could cope with anything these animals could throw at him.
All the same, he was a little unnerved by the sheer number of the dogs. His eyes drifted back towards the screen that showed them coming towards him, wending their way between the shadowy houses in a slow, unending stream.
They kept coming, in extraordinary numbers, and there seemed plenty more still behind them.
Creed watched for over a minute and despite himself he felt a prickling of awe. The hairs began stirring on the back of his neck.
It was an unpleasant sensation.
Creed forced himself to return to checking the machine guns. He remembered with some embarrassment his remark about there not being enough dogs in London to create an emergency.
The weapons computer beeped. The rear-mounted machine guns were powered up and ready for use. Creed spent a few seconds practising how to rotate and aim them.
He could leave them on automatic, using motion sensors to choose their own targets and fire on them ‘at will’; odd terminology to apply to a soul-less machine.
His eyes drifted back to the main screen and the endless