Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [17]
‘You’re a bit bright and early, aren’t you?’ asked Candy.
‘Got woken up by all that fuss with the stranger,’ Orlo explained.
‘Thought I’d make an early start on getting Professor Benson another one. Feisty little beggar.’ Candy pulled the sacking back – to reveal an otter in a cage, much like the ones at the back of the room, only smaller. It pulled back its black lips and hissed at them, incisors gleaming in the light. ‘Something’s got ’em spooked,’ Orlo added.
‘Maybe it’s the Doctor,’ Col ventured.
‘A spaceship landing out
there’s bound to scare ’em a bit.’
He leaned in towards the cage – and a small, dark paw shot out through the wire mesh, razor-sharp claws extended, and slashed at him.
‘Whoah!’ he cried, jumping back. ‘See what you mean, Orlo.’
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Candy quietly, peering at the otter. It glared back at her viciously and let out a low, throaty growl. ‘Something’s seriously wrong.’
Martha tried not to look at the skeletons, but they drew her gaze to them. Even when she screwed her eyes shut so she couldn’t see their grinning faces, they were still there. In her head. Screaming.
She felt sick and realised she was shivering. Not because it was cold, but because, no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t help but think that these skeletons – these people – had been brought here like her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had plenty of experience of skeletons and bodies and the mess and gore that the human body was capable of producing. After all, she was almost a doctor – and she’d seen enough death travelling with the Doctor. But she usually knew the histories of the people and bodies she’d examined, dissected. At the very least, she knew how they’d died. The fact that these had met their end on an alien planet, in an animal’s nest, alone and probably terrified, made all the difference. Maybe this was a taste of her own future.
The growing light had revealed the chamber in more detail. At the other side was a small hole, through which a constant stream of otter-like things came and went, growling and grunting to themselves.
They all looked the same, and Martha couldn’t work out how many of them there might be. Occasionally, they would sit up on their back legs and watch her, their tiny eyes black as pitch. Sometimes, one or two of them would descend to the bottom level of the pit where black water slopped and swayed – as if there were something just under the surface, moving slowly. Usually, though, they just stared and growled. She couldn’t just sit here, she realised. Maybe that’s what had happened to the others – they’d just sat there until they’d died, and then the otters had stripped the flesh from their bones.
Suddenly, the two by the edge of the pool jumped and scampered up onto the top level. They reared up on their back legs, squeaking and muttering.
Only then did Martha hear it: a deep sucking, slurping sound from below. Flecks of orangey-pink light, streaming through the canopy overhead, danced on the surface of the black water. And then it parted and slid aside as something reared up out of the pool.
Martha drew herself back against the wall of soil behind her. She cried out, instinctively, and saw the otters flinch.
It was as though the inky waters themselves were rising up. A tentacle, starting out thinner than her wrist and quickly growing to something wider than her waist, reared up in front of her. Water streamed and dripped from its glossy surface and it waved around in the air in front of her. Martha was reminded of a snail’s eyestalk as it probed the air in the chamber, turning around, seeking, hunting.
Hunting her.
Slowly, it extended further, and Martha could see tiny granules streaming inside it as it came