Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 24

She was cramped and in darkness, curled in a ball on a cold stone floor. Walls hemmed her on three sides, a door on the fourth.

He'd put her in a b.l.o.o.d.y cupboard. Furious, she kicked out at the door and didn't stop until the lock gave and she tumbled out into the corridor.

'Now you jus' better stop doin' that.'

Jimmy was approaching in a not very straight line. A half-smile, half sneer played about his mouth. He looked drunk.

'Why won't you jus' stay put?' he chided. ''Stead o' smashin' all our doors down.What'm I gonna do with you now, missy?'

'Where's McBride?' Ace snarled.

5 See Doctor Who: Illegal Alien Doctor Who: Illegal Alien 119.

'Oh, you wanna go see your private d.i.c.k? OK, fine by me. Let's go!'

He grabbed Ace by the wrist and hauled her to her feet.

'You're dogmeat for this mate, she spat. 'You'll wish you'd never been born. When the Doctor gets here geddoff me!'

He ignored her protests and dragged her along the empty corridor.

There at the end of it was the cage.

'McBride!' she called. 'Cody!'

'Ace?'

'You want to go in there with lover boy, huh?'

'No,' McBride yelled. 'There's something in here, Ace!'

Jimmy let out a whoop. 'Somebody turned the monkeys on!'

The place was aglow with flickering orange light. Ace could see huge, indistinct figures shambling about. From somewhere in their midst McBride was calling. 'I'll try and get to you hang on!'

Jimmy threw Ace against the bars.

'I was gonna give these to you last night,' he drawled, 'but I figured it would spoil the surprise.'

He clamped a metal manacle around her wrist and pushed her arm through the bars.

'Now hold still, w.i.l.l.ya?'

Handcuffs.

The other bracelet snapped closed. Ace pulled back hard. The linking chain clunked against the cage.

'Why are you doing this, Jimmy?' Ace demanded. 'What am I supposed to have done?'

'Aww babe...' Jimmy drawled, 'you know I love ya, dontcha...'

He nuzzled up close and tried to kiss her. He reeked of booze. Ace tore her head away.

'Take your G.o.dd.a.m.n hands off her!'

McBride slammed against the other side of the bars.

'Yeah,' Jimmy sneered. 'What you gonna do, Mr Private d.i.c.k?'

'Let me out of here and I'll show you.'

Jimmy smiled.

'Ain't the monkeys cute?' he said. 'You wanna see them play?'

He opened what looked like a fuse box on the wall. Behind it was a row of large k.n.o.bs and dials. He turned a k.n.o.b.

'They ain't barely woke up yet,' he said. 'You wait.'

And with that he shambled off, fumbling for a cigarette.

Ace tore against her chain.

'Wait!' she shouted.

Jimmy didn't look back. He just raised a hand and wiggled his fingers.

120.

'You OK, kid?' McBride asked.

'Yeah. You?'

'So far, but I don't like what's happenin' in here.'

They were apes... Ace could see that now. Fitted with...

The ceiling suddenly erupted in a violent shower of sparks, lighting up the room.

It seemed to agitate the apes. A chorus of squeals and shrieks struck up.

'Can you get me out of these cuffs?' Ace shouted above the din.

McBride tugged at the chain.

'Careful! Those are my hands in there.'

'Sorry kid. These are tricky...'

The apes were screaming now A fight had broken out. A gorilla with grafted-on arms like metal coffins was squaring up against what seemed to be a square-ish knot of struts and wires on twin caterpillar tracks, and surmounted by two shrieking baboon heads, set lopsidedly next to each other. The gorilla pounced. The other thing which seemed to have a single metal arm on each of its four sides spun on its tracks, using its arms like flails, catching the gorilla in the chest and sending it flying straight towards them.

'Cody!'

McBride dived to one side as the ma.s.sive ape crashed into the wall beside him.

The thing on the tracks closed in. The other apes followed, jumping and howling.

'You got to get out of there!'

'You don't say, kid,' said McBride from the floor.

The baboon-thing made a grab for the gorilla. The gorilla slipped under its lunge and closed its arms around its foe, and with a deep grunt lifted it off the floor. Its twin heads screamed at one another. The gorilla pivoted and threw the thing hard.

'Cody!'

McBride rolled away into the shadows as the monster landed, cracking the concrete.

Ace was desperate. She tugged vainly at her handcuffs. She glanced at the electrical box on the wall, much too far away...

There was a noise from somewhere far off up the corridor, she was sure.

'Help!' Ace yelled, hoping she could be heard over the din.

Ace craned her neck around. Someone was coming, moving slowly down the dim corridor.

'Help! My friend is locked in there!'

121.

She recognised the uniform of a zoo-keeper.

'Hang on, she called to McBride. 'Someone's corning.'

She craned again.

'Hurry up!' she called.

He was old probably going as fast as he could.

The primate fight raged on behind the cage door. She could no longer see McBride.

'Oh, dear,' a soft old voice said. 'We are in a pickle, aren't we?'

Ace's blood froze. Her head reeled. She recognised the voice.

'You!'

George Limb.

'I suppose it would be facile to ask how you are,' he said.

It couldn't be...

'The Doctor said you were dead. Scattered through time.'

'I'm afraid even the Doctor can't be right all the time,' he said.

Of all the people she'd met on her travels with the Doctor, all the enemies they'd fought, she hated George Limb more than any of them.

It was because she'd taken to the old man so warmly at first. He'd wound her round his little finger not just her, the Doctor too. Then he'd betrayed them without a second thought to the n.a.z.is.

It wasn't that he was evil, he just... didn't care.

'I have a key for those,' he said. 'Somewhere.'

He fumbled in a pocket of his zoo-keeper's jacket.

'Here we are.'

He reached up with an unsteady hand and undid one of her manacles. In an instant Ace sprang away from the bars and spun around, tensed, ready to fight.

The old man turned slowly. It was him. A bit older, a bit frailer, but definitely George Limb. He was pointing a pistol at her.

'When did you turn into Johnny Morris?'

'I'm sorry, my dear,' said Limb. 'I don't understand the reference.'

He c.o.c.ked the trigger.

'You gonna use that?' Ace said, trying to sound contemptuous, angry at the uncertainty in her voice.

'I'm afraid I have no choice, my dear,' said Limb. 'The Doctor expects it of me.'

He appeared to hesitate.

'I don't suppose this will make things any easier for you, but you have affected my young friend Jimmy quite profoundly.'

'He's got a funny way of showing it,' Ace spat.

'He is behaving like a drunken brute at the moment because he is in pain. His sense of duty and patriotism is in conflict with his heart.'

122.

'He's off his rocker but hanging around with you, I'm not surprised.'

'I really am sorry about this, you know,' said Limb.

The last thought to strike Ace was what McBride had said. Her lover Jimmy was James Dean...