Doctor Who_ Autumn Mist Part 3

He wasn't sure how much further south he had drifted before the current lessened enough for him to climb back out of the water, but he had eventually reached a bridge that was still in one piece. That was more than could be said for the houses around it, many of which had holes in the walls and collapsed ceilings. He found himself hoping the occupants had had the good sense to b.u.g.g.e.r off when the shooting started last night partly because he doubted they deserved to be caught in the sh.e.l.ling, and partly because he now needed to steal some dry clothes.

The main road through the town went straight over the bridge. As Fitz crossed it, shivering, he saw some American soldiers lounging around. There were a couple of Sherman tanks parked by a battered cafe, too. Fitz was tempted to ask them for help, but, after what had just happened, he wasn't sure they were genuine anyway.

All things considered, he felt, it would be best to just slip into an abandoned house and rifle their wardrobe. A sign nearby caught Fitz's eye. A tailor's shop. Dry, warm clothing. He almost whimpered.

He slipped down a narrow alley and found the tailor's door unlocked. It took only a few moments to confirm that the place was indeed empty. A fire was set in the living room of the small flat above, so Fitz lit it, and hung his leather jacket there to dry while he changed into slacks and shirt from the store below.

That done, he sat in front of the fire and wondered whether it would be able to warm him even if he sat in it.

The journey in the light truck was b.u.mpy, to say the least. Sam was beginning to wonder if shock absorbers had actually been invented in this decade.

She considered such small but fundamental advancements in the modern age, and wondered, not for the first time, if she might find, when she got back to her own time, that things she had done in past eras had made things any better.

She had once read a story about someone who changed the whole course of human evolution by treading on a prehistoric b.u.t.terfly, and thought about what it would be like to have ended famine or conflict in the nineties by the same method. She knew that hadn't happened, of course, but the part of her that was still a Coal Hill teenager continued to exercise its right to dream from time to time.

'You look troubled,' Charlie said from the driver's seat (she now knew his surname to be Daniels). He had apparently thought it would be more proper for her not to sit with the rest of the men. Sam had decided not to press the point, since the front seat was a d.a.m.n sight more comfortable anyway.

'Just wondering whether stuff I've done has made a difference.'

'To the war?'

'To anything.'

Daniels artfully guided the truck into another pothole.

'I guess only you could know the answer to that. I dunno what you've ' Shattered gla.s.s and flying blood surrounded Sam, as machine-gun fire ripped through the cab. Daniels's body shielded Sam from the bullets, but she found herself yelling as the side of his head was torn away and fragments of the windscreen lacerated her face.

The truck skidded, overbalancing even more as the soldiers in the back were thrown around. Half blinded by cuts, and still catching her breath, Sam grabbed the steering wheel. She narrowly averted hitting a tree head on, but sideswiped it instead. The truck finally ground to a halt jammed between two trees in the roadside woods.

As Sam steadied her breathing, she could hear shooting from behind her. By the time she scrambled free of the truck's cab, it was all over. Half a dozen Germans were lying scattered between the truck and the road, and only three of the Americans were still standing.

More accurately, perhaps, they were leaning, on the truck or on trees, looking as stunned and shattered as Sam felt. No, worse, she reminded herself. The men killed in the truck were their friends, and she hadn't even known them.

She couldn't think of anything she could say to them.

Fitz had managed to find some bread, jam and a bottle of red wine that tasted like vinegar. It was better than nothing, so he drank it anyway, and somehow still managed to feel better for it.

From the window of the tailor's flat, he could see the Americans at work below. There seemed to be some cause for alarm among them, as the engines of the two Shermans rumbled into life. Fitz immediately got the urge to leave, but some of the Doctor's curiosity must have been rubbing off on him, as he craned his neck for a better view instead.

Whatever was happening, it all seemed to be on the other side of the bridge, and Fitz had to move through to a cramped bedroom to get a clearer view of that area.

Dark shapes were moving along the road on the far side, occasionally visible between the buildings grey leviathans with caterpillar tracks and faded whitewash on their angular steel skins. Fitz recognised them vaguely as German tanks, but that was all he felt he needed to know. Pinning down the make and model was something he'd leave to the train-spotting brigade; all that mattered to Fitz was that they were something to stay the h.e.l.l out of the way of.

There was a sudden roar of engine power from the German side. Fitz looked over, startled, and saw the very last thing he wanted to. Two Panthers, which he recognised from comics of his youth, were lumbering at speed towards the steel and concrete tank traps on the bridge, their machine guns blazing at the defenders. The Americans weren't staying put to be shot at, and returned fire, though small arms were useless against the Panthers' armour.

An ant.i.tank round from a gun positioned in the shelter of a small ornamental fountain in the town square hit the lead Panther, catching the front of its tracks. Several steel links were blasted away, and the track began to unfurl, as a second sh.e.l.l hit the gun mantelet on the front of the turret.

For a moment, Fitz thought the artillery men had managed to stop the Panther, but fifty tons of tank travelling at over thirty miles per hour had enough momentum to smash through the tank traps with a tremendous cacophony. Flames licking at the front of its turret, the Panther collided with one of the Shermans. With one track gone, and thus no longer able to travel in a straight line, the Panther swung around, its nose shunting into the side of a second Sherman.

As the two Shermans tried to disentangle themselves from the Panther that was now trapped between them, the second Panther negotiated the path the first had made through the tank traps. It crossed the bridge speedily and paused at the end, just long enough to blast a 75-mm round into the nearer Sherman.

The Sherman lurched and erupted in sparks and white smoke. As the smoke darkened, the turret arced through the air for several dozens of yards, propelled by the exploding fuel and sh.e.l.ls within. Fitz's jaw dropped, amazed that such a heavy steel object could be flipped so far so easily. If he'd seen it in a film he would have laughed at how unrealistic it seemed.

The second Panther now gave covering fire while the crew of the first jumped down from their burning tank and took shelter. Small-arms fire erupted from a shopfront on the corner, and the Panther blasted it into a cloud of dust and rubble.

It revved up its engine, and pushed the burning hulk of its comrade off the road, keeping it between itself and the surviving Sherman.

Dan Bearclaw had no idea how he managed to work in all this noise and confusion, but he did. Somehow or other he was able to find a calm centre from which to aim the 57-mm ant.i.tank piece that he commanded.

Perhaps it was something to do with having three kids at home: if he could sleep through their running wild, then tuning out the cacophony of battle was no problem. Perhaps more miraculous was how the other two men in his crew were able to follow orders that they surely couldn't actually hear.

As he spun the wheels that traversed the gun, it occurred to Bearclaw that he could hit the stranded Panther again and kill its crew while they were exposed outside it. But what would be the point in wasting ammunition like that? They were most definitely out of the fight.

Besides, the other Panther was the greater threat. Already it was turning its gun towards their position by the fountain. 'Armour piercing!' Bearclaw called out. Someone slid the appropriate sh.e.l.l into the breach, and the gun fired.

It was too early, and the sh.e.l.l exploded into the wall at the edge of the bridge. 'd.a.m.n,' Bearclaw gasped. 'Run!'

The Panther fired and the ornamental fountain was ripped apart, the centrepiece statue of cavorting nymphs torn into dust.

Bearclaw slammed into the ground amid a shower of rubble and rolled aside. With a tremendous crash, the mangled barrel of his ant.i.tank gun ploughed into the street a few yards to his left.

His ears ringing, Bearclaw groaned and looked for the rest of his crew. One was lying in a b.l.o.o.d.y pool a few yards away. The other had vanished entirely and Bearclaw had no idea whether he was buried under rubble or had taken off.

Under cover of the dust and stone fragments that were still hanging in the air, Bearclaw bolted. n.o.body could say he hadn't done his part, and he wasn't about to stand up to Panzers while completely unarmed. If nothing else, he wanted to at least find a weapon.

If he should happen not to find one until he was in the clear, he wouldn't exactly be overcome with disappointment.

Fitz glanced back to the German side of the bridge, alerted by more metallic rumblings, and yells from below about 'Panzer fours'.

A column of about a dozen Panzers was advancing towards the bridge, their turrets swivelling from side to side as if to sniff out enemies. While a couple of them manoeuvred into position holding the far end, the lead tank led the others on to the bridge. Their turrets moved to cover the buildings flanking the American-held end of the bridge, and they began loosing pot shots into the riverbank buildings.

It finally dawned on Fitz that he too was in a riverbank building, and that it was close enough to the Americans for them to consider using it for cover. Stuffing his still-damp leather jacket into a bag, Fitz decided that legging it was definitely the better part of valour.

He left the way he had come in, and just in time. A sh.e.l.l tore off the upper corner of the building, raining pieces of wood and brick on him. The shock wave knocked Fitz down, and he rolled back to the riverbank at the very end of the bridge.

It was quite clear that the Americans were losing. Fitz sidled further down the muddy bank to the water's edge, hoping not to be noticed by the German troops that were crossing overhead in the Panzers' wake.

A dead soldier was there, his coal-scuttle helmet ripped open, just like the skull underneath. A disconnected pack of explosives was lying near his hand.

Searching for anything that would aid his survival, Fitz noticed that the corpse's outer clothing was a one-piece parasuit, worn over his normal uniform as camouflage. Fitz hastily pulled it off the body. So long as n.o.body asked to see a uniform underneath, it might suffice to disguise him well enough to get through this.

The shooting above was starting to die off and Fitz wondered if it was safe to emerge yet. When he started climbing back up the bank, an SS officer hailed him. 'You, there. Is the bridge mined?'

Fitz glanced around, then held up the pack that had been lying by the former owner of his parasuit. 'It was, but not any more.' Fitz sincerely hoped that the officer didn't mean he wanted the bridge mined.

'Good work.'

Fitz breathed a sigh of relief and carefully put the explosives down. 'Yeah,' he muttered to himself. Being trapped behind German lines in World War Two wasn't what he considered good work.

Bearclaw had found a jeep at the edge of town. There really was nothing more he could do here, unless it was stick around to get captured. At least if he got out now he could still fight again later.

So he took the jeep. It was actually quite relaxing to be driving again. He had rarely had the chance while on combat a.s.signment, and it soothed him a little. He had been a trucker before the war and, though the jeep was much smaller, it was enough to relax him.

He was brought out of his reverie by the sight of a small group of people at a crossroads a couple of miles outside of town. Bearclaw braked the jeep as a couple of GIs flagged him down. They looked the worse for wear and had themselves clearly seen some action this morning. Oddly, there was a female civilian with them, wearing jeans and stuff rather than a dress.

'Need a ride, fellas?' he asked.

They all nodded. 'Are we glad to see you,' one of them said.

'What's happening? I thought we were the ones under attack...'

The GI shook his head. 'The whole front's under attack. There's a Parachute Division pushing down the Losheim road; Lanzerath and Bucholz Station have gone under...'

'Jeez. Who's the civilian?'

The GI shrugged. 'A Brit. Long story.'

'The name's Sam Jones,' the girl said. 'But he's right, it's a long story.'

'Well,' Bearclaw said, starting the now fully laden jeep, 'we got plenty of time before we hit Ligneuville.'

There was only sporadic shooting on the outskirts of town now, but things hadn't got any more peaceful as far as Fitz could tell.

Chain dogs, the German military police in the field, were directing traffic. Trucks and Hanomag half-tracks were disgorging troops and equipment to set up camp in the area, while the tanks weren't waiting.

A couple of Panzer IVs, and the damaged Panther, were stationed to watch what Fitz presumed were vital junctions. The rest of the Panzers were forming up and moving out. Since they weren't heading back the way they came, Fitz could only a.s.sume their attack wasn't finished yet, and they were moving on to their next targets for the day.

Fitz had scarcely realised that the sounds of the tanks' engines were fading they were trundling away into the distance, after all. When his foot clipped a small pile of rubble, a few stones drifted down almost silently, and then he knew something was wrong.

He turned to look back at the end of the bridge. SS troops were clearing away bodies and setting up equipment, but there was something odd about it, Fitz thought. At first he thought his eyes were going funny, but then he realised that the light was fading in spite of the fact that it was still the middle of the day.

It wasn't actually getting darker: it was just becoming strangely fuzzy, as if neither light nor darkness really mattered. With a chill running down his back, he realised the troops indulging in hard work were moving slowly, unnaturally slowly.

Fitz was torn between wanting to run, in case something nasty happened, and wanting to go closer and see what the weirdness was about.

He almost jumped out of his skin when a hand grabbed his shoulder. He spun round, biting off a curse that could have got him shot, and found an officer looking almost as surprised as he was. 'What are you standing around for? Don't you have anything to do, or shall I give you something to do?'

Fitz glanced back towards the end of the bridge. Everything was normal again, or at least as normal as a street could be in the immediate aftermath of a battle. 'I thought I saw a flash in that window, sir,' he said, pointing to the nearest upstairs window across the road. 'Like the lens on a telescopic sight. It's probably nothing, but I was just about to go and check.'

The officer squinted up at the window, and nodded. 'Go ahead.' He turned away, immediately switching his attention to whatever he considered more important than Fitz's gawking.

Fitz was only too happy to oblige, though once he was inside the house he simply sat on the stairs and patted the pockets of the parasuit he had borrowed. He had hoped that there would have been cigarettes in one of them, as he could definitely use one after getting into this mess. Unfortunately he seemed to have looted the body of the only soldier in the war who didn't smoke. b.l.o.o.d.y typical of his luck.

He grimaced at the thought of having taken coveralls from a corpse. But what else could he have done? Better to benefit from the dead than to join them, wasn't it?

But no matter how many times he told himself that, it didn't make him feel any better. What was he going to do? The Doctor and Sam weren't having as bad a time here as he was, he knew it. He'd just hope he'd see them again so he could tell them so.

Wiesniewski was glad to see the slightly more familiar surroundings of Bullingen. On each side of the road into the village was a small airstrip for spotter planes. Further up a side road, under the nearby trees, he could make out activity around the fuel dump that nestled there.

His first thought was to get to a company commander and call in his report, but then he noticed that the little spotter planes were beginning to start their engines. All of the ones on the 99th Artillery's airstrip were readying for takeoff at the same time, and that was odd. Wiesniewski hung on tightly, seeing explosions and smoke rising from the town centre. The sound of tank guns was clearly audible and he could make out five or six Panzers manoeuvring themselves across the railway lines at the junction on the far side of town.

There was some sort of activity on the far side of the 99th Division's airstrip, too, and Wiesniewski realised with a shock that it was gunfire. A group of half-tracks, led by a single Panzer, were crossing the other road towards the airfield. As he watched, despairing of the hope of reaching safety and getting his act together, a bazooka round hit the tank with no visible effect.

'Uh oh,' the Doctor vocalised, as he was waved aside by men crewing a roadblock. He swung the jeep off the road, heading across a short scrubby area of field towards the 2nd Division's airfield.

Wiesniewski's expression hardened. Now he had something real and concrete to think about, and in a lot of ways it was a blessed relief.

Fitz had fallen asleep for a bit, much to his own surprise. Just like a real soldier, he supposed; he'd read tons of books that said they were able to sleep anywhere.

He ventured outside again, hoping for an opportunity to slip away without being noticed. Of course, he'd have to ditch the parasuit when he crossed the lines, but that was becoming an increasingly attractive idea anyway, in any conditions.

All the German troops seemed busy with whatever they were a.s.signed to do, and for once Fitz was glad of that stereotyped image of efficiency. With any luck they'd a.s.sume he was on some important errand himself and not bother him. So long as he looked confident instead of furtive, he should be all right.

Hoisting the bag with his jacket over his shoulder, Fitz walked out into the street and headed back towards the main road.

It was easy. All he had to do was keep walking. 'You there,' someone called. 'Halt.' Fitz stiffened. He had no real reason to a.s.sume the call was directed at him, but he was used enough to his own luck that he just knew it was meant for him.

He stopped and turned to find an officer looking at him. 'Yes, sir?'

'Where's your weapon?'

Fitz groaned inwardly. He should have expected that a soldier without a gun might be suspect. 'It backfired, sir,' he replied quickly. 'I was just on my way to requisition a new one.'

'They're setting up a temporary quartermaster's in that bakery,' the officer said, peering at him closely, then pointing back towards the bridge. 'You can get one there.'

'Thank you, sir,' Fitz said dutifully, wishing he could tell the officer what to do with himself Instead, he turned round, and walked back in the direction indicated. As he neared the erstwhile baker's shop, three eight-wheeled armoured cars rolled over the bridge at speed.

There was something unusual about these armoured cars. It wasn't that they were a type Fitz had never seen, since there were plenty of things here he had never seen before. It was, perhaps, the antennae mounted on top of them. He had seen the 'clothes-rack' type of antenna on some other vehicles during the day, but there was something far more sophisticated about the ones on these. They had much finer wire woven between the bars and a strange mounting that looked as if it could be used to alter the antenna's position, so as to focus on things better.

No doubt the Doctor would instantly recognise whatever they were for, but Fitz had to settle for that gut instinct.

He didn't recall speaking to anyone in the baker's shop, but he knew he must have done, because someone shoved a sub-machinegun into his hand and made him sign for it. He sighed. Perhaps it was just as well he hadn't got out of town. Some instinct told him that the Doctor would want to know more about these mysteriously sophisticated vehicles if they met up again.