Doctor Who_ Grave Matter Part 25

The shock of the sudden cold water over the tops of her shoes caused Peri to cry out in surprise and alarm. She pulled her feet up on to the seat, sitting angled sideways, clinging to the spluttering motor. The boat rocked again, and she was pitched off the seat and on to the floor, landing with a splash.

The boat was low in the water and getting lower. The motor had been skewed sideways and was driving the boat in a circle, churning it through the same water again and again. In the middle of the white water, the shark's fin moved with deceptive laziness through the mist.

As the boat came round for the third time, getting lower with each lap, Peri fancied she could make out a dark shape in the distance. An island. What she did not know was whether it was the main island she had been aiming for, or one of the other smaller islands. Perhaps it was Sheldon's Folly again.

But she hardly cared. It was land.

She watched for the shark to be at the furthest point away, then jumped. Peri hoped - prayed - that the motor would distract the shark from any noise that Peri made in the water.

She broke the ice-cold surface, spitting and coughing water, checked her bearings and struck out towards the dark ma.s.s in the distance.

Behind her the boat chugged to an uneven halt, shipping water, sinking.

The engine cut out.

She was lucky in two ways, Peri decided as she waded ash.o.r.e. Three if she counted the fact that she was actually on the right island and not far from Cove Cottage - she could see the church spire standing proud against the night sky.

The first piece of luck was that the shark seemed to have lost her, or given up, or been distracted by the death of her boat. The second was that she had discovered that swimming no longer tired her anything like as much as it used to. The Denarian had not yet taken control of her mind, but it was sorting out her body. She put her hand to her face, feeling for the cuts and scratches where the owls had attacked her. Sure enough, there was just the hint of a ridge of healing skin.

So it was in a mood of something close to elation that Peri made her way through the deserted village, past the church, towards Cove Cottage. She was shivering from the cold, upset almost that she still felt it. The back door of the cottage was unlocked, and Peri fully expected her luck to hold. From now on it had to be easy. Get the phone from the desk, call for help, sit back and wait. The Doctor would have found a way to escape the villagers, she was sure of that. Everything suddenly was going to be fine.

Except...

Except that the phone was not in the top left drawer of the desk.

It wasn't in the top right drawer either. Or any of the others. By the time Peri had emptied the entire contents of the desk on to the floor and sifted through them twice, she was frustrated to the point of tears. She spent half an hour going through the kitchen and bedrooms, even the cellar. She checked the living room again, turning out every drawer and cupboard. Nothing.

In a final desperate rush of inspiration she went through the pockets of Sir Anthony's coats, hanging on pegs by the back door. Still nothing. The phone was nowhere in the house, she was sure.

And with that knowledge, Peri sat down in the middle of the mess that had once been inside the desk, and cried.

To the Doctor's well-hidden amazement, the door had sprung open as he touched two wires together more or less at random and in barely disguised panic.

He had bundled Sir Anthony into the room, grabbed Sheldon by what was left of his collar and hurled him after Sir Anthony. For a moment he had wondered whether it might not be best to leave Janet outside. The villagers would not harm her after all. But no, he decided, he needed her help and she was not yet quite fully under the alien influence. He pushed her after Sheldon. Then he pulled the wires apart and ripped one of them right out of the wall to prevent anyone else hitting on the same lucky combination.

He hesitated just long enough to see the door to the room begin to topple forwards, to make out the shapes of the villagers behind, to see Trefoil wielding the sledgehammer, before he followed. The Doctor slammed the door shut, relieved to hear the lock click into place as it closed. He leaned back against it for a few moments, eyes closed, hoping that Peri was all right.

Then he pushed himself away from the door and looked round to see just how much trouble they were in.

Actually, he decided as he surveyed the equipment in the lab, they were surprisingly well off. A well-equipped workbench in the middle of the room with high stools round it.

Plenty of gla.s.sware - always impressive, that, he mused. There was even a huge plastic tank full of, he guessed, pure water in the corner of the room.

And since the Doctor had both Sheldon and Janet with him, there seemed to be no shortage of alien material, whatever specimens might be stored in the large fridge in the corner. There was another upright cabinet next to it. Time to explore that later. The only important question now was whether he could come up with a suitable solution and produce it. In quant.i.ty. In time. Effectively.

'Right,' the Doctor said with a bravado and confidence he did not, in all honesty, quite feel. 'Let's get started, shall we?'

As she sat sobbing in the ma.s.s of papers and letters from the desk, it came to her. Peri's mind was going back over events, wondering how things could have worked out differently, how they could have come to a different conclusion. How she could have escaped sitting on the floor, crying, out of touch with the rest of the world while alien material that infected her began to take hold. She found herself playing through the different moments when she and the Doctor could have just left. Could have decided that there was nothing of interest happening here after all and simply returned to the TARDIS.

One of these moments was when it became apparent to them that they were in the twentieth century not the nineteenth or earlier. And as she considered this, as she remembered how she and the Doctor had thought they had spotted anachronisms in the environment and the att.i.tude of the people, Peri recalled stumbling across the tide tables and the satellite phone in the pub.

She sat for a minute more, her mind numb from the shock of realisation. Then she hauled herself to her feet and ran from the cottage.

The mist parted for her as she raced down the main street of the village towards the pub. Her feet clattered on the cobbles and several times she slipped but managed to catch her balance. It was a good five-minute run to the pub, but she was barely out of breath when she arrived. The door was standing open, and she stepped inside.

It was dark. One gas lamp was burning above the bar.

Otherwise the main lounge was unlit. The entrance to the hall was a dark outline, the door standing open. Peri made her way carefully towards the dark area, arms stretched out in front of her. She hit a table a glancing blow and caught her foot on a chair leg, making the chair sc.r.a.pe noisily on the stone floor.

Her steps became more hesitant. It seemed to take an age to reach the doorway.

Then suddenly, it seemed, she was there. She stepped out into the hall. A light was burning somewhere upstairs, so there was a pale glow of illumination in the hall. Enough to make out the door to the room where the phone was.

Enough to make out the shape of the figure coming down the stairs. Enough to see it was Liz Trefoil, her hair glowing like fire in the dim light.

Enough light too that when Peri turned she could see that Dave Madsen's bloodied head was all but healed, the bone at the back of his skull knitted together in a jagged binding of white that zigzagged through his matted hair. He stepped towards her.

Peri did not stop to think. She slammed the door to the bar shut, felt it connect with Madsen on the other side, heard him stumble backwards and fall against a table or chairs.

Liz was coming down the stairs fast, racing Peri for the door to the private room. She got there first, turning in triumph, smiling. Her teeth caught the light, almost glowing, as Peri put her head down and barged into her. Peri's shoulder hit Liz in the stomach. The wind went out of her in an explosion of breath and Liz sagged.

Peri pulled her away from the door, scrabbling for the handle as Liz slumped to the floor. Peri opened the door.

But Liz had a hand on her ankle, squeezing, pulling, dragging Peri down as Liz struggled to get up. Her smile was fixed on her face. Her eyes were wide ovals of white staring blankly up at Peri.

Peri slipped, her leg pulled from under her. She was face down, head and shoulders through the doorway, struggling to crawl forwards, towards the phone, she could see the phone.

Her hands scrabbled on the stone flags, her nails clattered on the floor. Liz was crawling over her, dragging herself up Peri's leg, nails biting into the flesh through her clothing.

With an effort, Peri managed to roll herself on to her back.

She could see the woman clawing her way up towards her face. She shook her leg, trying to break free, but without success. And behind Liz she could see the door to the bar opening again as Madsen came to help the young woman.

Desperate, frightened, and with a renewed sense of urgency, Peri pulled back her free leg. Then she kicked violently, viciously, at Liz's face.

The smile broke, blackened holes appearing in it as Peri kicked again. And again. The grip on her leg loosened and Peri rolled clear, her leg bloodied from the nails, and from the cuts and gashes in Liz's freckled face.

As she pulled herself inside the room, Peri kicked the door shut. She leaped to her feet, feeling the pain in her left leg as she put weight on it. There was a bolt at the top of the door, and Peri slammed it home. She dragged the table in front of the door. The single oil lamp gave enough light for her to see the box that contained the phone, and Peri slumped down beside it as the hammering on the door started.

She lifted the handset. The readout on the box that housed the phone lit up to read: 'Dial'. Peri stared at it for a moment.

She considered dialling 999. Or would it be 911? And what would she say and who would believe her? No, better to stick to the plan and call Sir Anthony's former PA. She would at least know who to contact.

The paper on which Sir Anthony had written Madge's number was in Peri's pocket. She scrabbled for it, aware that the hammering on the door now sounded more hollow, sounded as if the wood was beginning to splinter. She looked round as she fumbled for the paper, wondering how she could get away once she had made the call. The window was an obvious route. It looked like it opened. Diamonds of gla.s.s held together by strips of lead. She dragged the phone over so that she was sitting under the window as she finally found the piece of paper and pulled it out of her pocket.

She had folded it in half, she remembered. Now she stared at the paper in horror and disbelief. It was rough to the touch, a single thick sheet sealed by the water when she swam ash.o.r.e. The number was somewhere inside the ma.s.s of pulp.

Peri hardly noticed that the hammering at the door had stopped. She desperately, delicately tried to prise the layers of paper apart with her broken nails. Or could she recall the number? No way - she had barely glanced at it.

The pain in her leg had subsided, the bleeding stopped.

She could feel the muscles knitting back together, and shuddered as she thought about how Madsen's skull had also knitted back together. But with no brain inside, just a cavity. A hole. But she could not wait for her nails to grow back, she thought as she tore at the paper.

Finally she managed to lift a layer away, to reveal the scrawl of instructions and numbers below. The ink was faded and had run, but if she angled the paper she could just about make out Madge's number.

'Dial' the phone still demanded.

Was that an eight or a nine?

She dialled. Must be an eight.

'Connecting' the display on the phone read and Peri sighed. There was a series of rapid clicks from the handset's earpiece. Then, suddenly and mercifully, a ringing tone. Come on, come on.

When the phone was answered, after about a dozen rings, Peri realised she had no idea what to say.

'h.e.l.lo?' said a sleepy voice in her ear. A female voice, at least. Had to be the right number.

'h.e.l.lo?' Peri stammered back. 'Is that - is that Madge?' A pause. Was it Madge?

'Yes. Yes it is. Who's calling, please?'

'You don't know me,' Peri said. She stopped. Why had the hammering at the door stopped? Had they given up? Never mind. Concentrate... 'My name's Peri.' Not important, get on with it. 'I'm sorry about getting you up, I'm a friend of Sir Anthony Kelso.'

'Oh?'

'Yes. I'm here on Dorsill with him. He asked me to call you.' At last, getting somewhere. Her brain was working again.

'Is he all right?' The woman - Madge - asked. There was concern more than tiredness in her voice now. 'Nothing's happened to him, has it?'

'No, no. That is -' Peri sighed, tried to gather her thoughts.

'No, he's fine. Really. Don't worry.'

A sigh of relief from the other end of the phone. 'Thank G.o.d. I've been so worried. How is he getting about?'

Peri's brain froze at the question. Tried to decipher it.

'Getting about?' she asked, even as part of her brain was telling her to ignore the small talk and get on with it.

'Well, on the island. There can't be many roads or paths.'

Peri's mind was a fog now. She tried to concentrate on what the woman was saying, tried to focus. 'No, not many.'

'So how is he managing? You know - in the wheelchair?'

Peri's hand tightened round the phone. The fog had lifted from her brain now, and her mind was racing through the implications. Leave it, she decided, leave it and get help.

Worry about it later.

But even as she came to this decision, even as the woman's voice was calling again in her ear, 'h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo, are you still there?', the window above and behind Peri exploded.

Diamonds of gla.s.s scythed through the air in a tortured wrenching of leading. Several of the tiny panes exploded as they hit the floor. Peri screamed. The woman was shouting down the phone, asking what was going on, the hands were reaching in, down, for the phone.

The handset was ripped from Peri's hand as she tried to shout back. The curled wire connecting it to the box that housed the main body of the phone ripped free, dangling by Peri's face as the hands reached in at her. Madsen's face loomed close to hers, upside-down, lopsided as he leaned down through the shattered remains of the window.

Chapter Fourteen.

Under the Influence The appearance of Madsen's face, upside-down, flecked with dried blood clinging like rust to his forehead and cheeks, galvanised Peri into action. As his clammy hands grabbed for her through the shattered window, Peri sprang away, half rolling and half crawling across the room. She kept going, a bundle of frantic movement, until she collided with one of the uprights of the fireplace.

She sat with her back to the fireplace, watching in shock and horror as Madsen levered himself through the remains of the window. Slowly, she pushed herself upright, her back pressed against the fireplace. Madsen's head and shoulders were inside the room now as he fed himself through, negotiating the ma.s.s of tangled leading that clung like a fisherman's net to the window. As she stood upright, Peri's shoulder connected with the mantel shelf. She gave a small cry of surprise and slight pain. Something fell to the floor, landing at her feet with a thud. At the same moment, Madsen finally flopped forwards into the room. He made no effort to break his fall, mirroring the cardboard box as it fell. The lid sprang off on impact.

Madsen was getting up now. Was starting towards Peri.

The box at her feet.

The lid off.

The flare pistol inside, dull metal lit by the flicker of the distant oil lamp.

Peri grabbed the pistol as she ran for the door and dragged the table away. She had no idea if it was loaded. She had no idea how it worked. She had no idea if she could - or would - use it.

Behind her, Madsen's footsteps were heavy on the bare boards of the floor. As she dragged the table clear, Peri turned.

And found Madsen close behind her, reaching out, leaning towards her. The lamplight washed round his image so that he shimmered, almost unreal.

When she brought the flare pistol up, that was unreal too.

As unreal as the pressure of her finger on the trigger, as the click of the hammer, as the whoosh as the gun fired, as the thudding jolt of the recoil.

The flare hit Madsen full in the chest from just feet away, knocking him backwards, hurling him across the room in a staggering, stumbling backward run. He collapsed in a heap, hands battering at his chest as the orange-yellow tail of the flare bored into his clothing. Then abruptly his whole torso erupted into a red fireball that burned into Peri's retina. She closed her eyes tight as she turned away. But she could see the imprint of the last image, could still see Madsen's flailing body engulfed by the waves of fire that rippled and ran across and around his body.

The astonishment and horror were also burned into Liz Trefoil's eyes. She was waiting behind the door as Peri pulled the bolt and swung it open. The girl was paused, arms outstretched, fingers grasping at air as she stared past Peri at the burning figure now slumped on its knees as the flames pooled round it. The red of the flare made Liz's hair glow like fire as Peri reached out, grabbed it, and dragged the young woman into the room. She kept dragging, then pushing, hurling Liz across the floor towards the pool of fire.

Peri did not stop to see how far Liz travelled before regaining her balance. She was out of the door in an instant.