Doctor Who_ Wetworld - Mark Michalowski [50]
Wherever there was. All around her, sticking up out of the mud, were buildings – dirty, grubby buildings that looked familiar and yet strange. She struggled to concentrate on them, to understand what they were. But the whispering voices at the back of her head kept distracting her and her awareness kept slipping away. Images of water, sensations of hunger and impatience kept nipping at the edges of her consciousness, like irritating little dogs, eager for her attention.
She felt slightly – though not pleasantly – drunk, drifting through this strange world on autopilot. Again, she tried to work out how she’d gotten from where she’d been before (where was that?) to here. A sudden flickering montage of images crashed into her head: things, biting at her legs, scratching her. Screams. People crying. And then the dark of the night and the sounds of stumbling through the forest. And then she was down at the edge of the water, and the water was moving, swirling. . .
And then. . .
Nothing.
She was here. Around her, like sleepwalkers, other people drifted like ghosts. Some of them carried things in their hands. Others just shuffled, like clockwork toys that someone had wound up and let go.
What were ‘clockwork toys? The thought came and went like a fish in a river, just a shiny sliver of memory, uncatchable, unholdable.
Something in her head told her which way to go.
She moved.
Candy found herself hanging back a little as the three of them reached the rise beyond which lay the start of the old settlement. She could smell the wet and the damp from the flooded river plain ahead, and memories of the evening before, when she’d found Col, came trickling back.
I should have told them, she thought. I should have said something. . .
The little voice had been niggling away inside her ever since she’d returned and told Ty what had happened. She’d been surprised, to be honest, that Ty hadn’t pressed the point more firmly: what had Col been doing at the One Small Step? Why had he gone out there on his own, without telling anyone?
But Ty’s shock at what had happened to him seemed to have swamped all that, and Candy was glad.
The poor man’s dead, thought Candy. Let him rest in peace. What use would it be to tell them?
‘You OK?’
It was the Doctor. He was looking at her strangely, as if he could read her mind. She forced a smile and nodded.
‘Just tired,’ she said. He nodded as if he understood. ‘Maybe you should go back,’ he suggested. ‘Have a bit of a kip.’
Candy shook her head.
‘I’m fine, honestly. What’s the plan?’
The Doctor grinned down at her.
‘Step one: we find out where they all are. Step two: I use the sonic screwdriver to stun the otters. And step three: we move in and get your people out as quickly as possible.’
‘What about the slime creatures?’ asked Ty.
‘I suspect that they’re not going to be much of a problem. So far, they’ve kept to the water – or pretty close to it. I suspect they’re mainly aquatic, and they’ve used the otters as their hands and eyes and ears –
at least until now. So I don’t think we have to worry too much about them. Not yet, at any rate. But any sign of them and we leg it – got that?’
Candy and Ty nodded. They dropped to all fours as they reached the crest of the rise. The Doctor glanced back and grinned.
‘Let’s take a look, shall we?’
On his hands and knees, the Doctor crept to the brow of the hill. Ty glanced nervously at Candy and gave her a tight smile.
‘They’re there,’ the Doctor hissed.
Candy scuttled alongside him.
Down on the mud flats she could see about half a dozen of the settlers. They were drifting in and out of the technical services unit, carrying bits and pieces, plans, wires. They looked like zombies, robots.
And amongst them, stationary, like little brown statues, were the otters.
‘Why aren’t the otters moving?’ whispered Candy.
‘Probably been given orders just to watch your people. They’re the ones that the slimeys are concentrating on.’
‘So this control. . . ’ It was Ty. ‘How does it work? The slimeys put instructions in their