Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [41]
Chick liked Ace. She smelled of danger and excitement. When he’d seen her climb into the road beast he’d felt his pulse quicken with the promise of adventure. So tonight he’d waited for the beast’s side to open up and he’d jumped in too. He was accustomed to riding inside the road beasts, so much so that he no longer needed to travel in a basket when he went to the place of many animals to receive the beneficial prick of the thorns.
That was why he’d howled such a scandalized protest when the man with the yellow hair had opened the road beast and taken him.
Now he wished the yellow‐haired man would let him out so he could stalk the frogs and admire the moonlight shimmer on the pond. He wanted to stretch his muscles and hunt and celebrate the night. He hoped the man would let him out of his basket soon and leave the stupid dog trapped in hers. Chick was no longer a kitten. He had no need of baskets, especially now the journey in the road beast was over.
If the man freed him he wouldn’t stray far. By the smells and sounds from the buildings nearby he understood that he had once again been brought to a place of many animals. So why should he flee? He knew that if there were any sharp thorn jabbings they would only be for his own good.
He knew that no one meant him any harm.
* * *
Ace made Shell and Jack follow a few paces behind her as they went downhill towards the lab complex. After the first minute she’d almost ordered them to go back to the Volkswagen and wait. They’d been stumbling and clutching each other, chuckling like a couple of kids raiding an apple orchard. But all it took was one glance from Ace and Jack had got the message. Now they were moving slowly and carefully, almost as quiet as Ace herself.
She made them lie down as they approached the perimeter of the lab complex. In the moonlight Ace had seen something she’d missed from the hilltop. The front approach to the buildings was blocked by a low stone wall that ran between the hedgerows. But the wall appeared purely ornamental. It was low enough to step over and not even topped with broken glass. Centred in the wall was a swinging wooden gate like a farm sty, swung back to permit road traffic. It didn’t look like it had been shut in months and its hinges might even have been rusted open. In fact the whole place looked wide open.
Now Ace lay on the damp grass in a depression seven metres from the gate. From behind her and to her left Shell whispered, ‘Now?’
‘Give it another minute,’ she whispered back and Shell obediently fell silent.
Ace was trying to think like the lab people. Possibly they were genuinely casual about security, in which case she could just walk in. Alternatively they might want the place to look friendly and inviting, which made sense from a public relations point of view. The happy farm image made it hard to believe that any kind of scientific research was going on there, let alone brutal animal experimentation.
But if it was just a façade there might be some solid security behind it. If Ace was guarding this place she would use motion sensors, set at regular intervals along the top of the wall and in the hedges.
Now she carefully studied the hedgeline and stone wall from where she lay. She needed to test for those alarms.
In the grass all around her there were small stones of a useful size and heft. Of course, a stone wouldn’t set off the alarms. An object that small might be a passing bird and you didn’t want your alarms going off every time a bird visited your garden. No, the security hardware would be smart enough to stay quiet unless it saw something of a decent size go over the wall.
So Ace had taken off her jacket, emptied her pockets and filled them with stones. Then she’d swung the weighted cloth like a bolas, whistling through the night air in a swift circle. As Ace spun around, swinging the jacket, she’d begun to feel dizzy, intoxicated almost. It was good to be back in action. With excitement adding to her giddiness, she’d finally let go and tossed