Doctor Who_ Loving The Alien Part 39

'We're no use here. Collins, get the chopper fired up.'

And so had followed the most terrifying ride of Bill Collins's life.

The pair and their pilot had taken off from Horseguards' Parade, keeping below the roof-line, skimming the tops of snarled-up, stationary, mostly abandoned cars. Most of the drivers were simply running.

'You ever fly down the Grand Canyon, Collins?'

'Yes, sir. But we weren't being shot at.'

Miraculously, they'd made the hospital in one piece, actually flying underneath Westminster Bridge to keep out of sight of a sleek grey wedge of a ship that hovered silently nearby.

'I need men I can rely on,' Crawhammer had insisted. 'My boys'

Besides, there was an armoury in the hospital bas.e.m.e.nt.

The men were way ahead of them and they'd landed to a volley of heavy machine-gun fire. Just in time. A group of heavily armed enemy soldiers had launched a fast and furious attack on the main hospital gates.

The general was standing on one of the brick gateposts now, firing his revolver at the retreating foe and letting out the occasional whoop.

They were driving them back.

The thunder of their gunfire subsided as the invaders sought cover.

'Well done, General.'

Collins and Crawhammer spun around at the same time. The Doctor was standing behind them. 'But I'm afraid it won't hold them off for long.'

188.

'OK mister, what'll Ivan do next?'

'Didn't you hear the broadcast, General? They're not Russian.'

'Commie propaganda. Lessen the culture shock.'

The Doctor sighed. 'Why won't you trust me, General? I'm the only person here who knows what is going on, arid I'm offering to share that knowledge with you. Free, gratis and without your having to stick probes into me or cut bits out of me.'

Crawhammer stuck a half-smoked cigar b.u.t.t between his jaws and chewed slowly on it, scowling at the Doctor.

'OK,' he said. 'Shoot.'

There wasn't time. There was a squeal of brakes and a huge white van tore down the road towards the gates. Crawhammer's pocket army spun, machine-guns raised. The Doctor threw himself forward, knocking Collins's gun out of the way with his umbrella.

'No! Wait, wait!'

'G.o.dd.a.m.n it!' Crawhammer bellowed. 'Get him out of there!'

Collins reached for the Doctor's collar, but his hands closed on empty air. The Doctor danced through the line of soldiers and stood defiantly in front of the van. 'I hardly think that an invading army from another dimension is going to be using a removal van with 'London Zoo' painted on the side to mount a major offensive, do you, General?'

The throaty diesel rumble of the truck cut out suddenly and the van door creaked open. A very nervous-looking Cody McBride peered out, hands raised.

'Jeez. Not quite the reception I had in mind.'

The Doctor beamed at him. 'Cody, what a pleasant surprise!'

The pa.s.senger door opened and Davey O'Brien got out. 'And Captain O'Brien!' the Doctor beamed.

Crawhammer pushed through his troops. 'O'Brien!' he barked.

'What the h.e.l.l's goin' on?'

'Ah, General Crawhammer,' the Doctor chirped, 'I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, Cody McBride, private investigator. Cody, this is General Crawhammer of the American military.'

Collins had to stifle a laugh. The general looked as though he was going to explode.

'And what in the name of G.o.d is Cody McBride, private investigator doing here?'

The Doctor c.o.c.ked his head on one side. 'Yes, I did rather think that I'd asked you pair to stay with Drakefell and Sarah?'

McBride looked awkward. 'We sort of had an idea, Doc.

Reinforcements. O'Brien guessed you'd come here, seeing as all the regular barracks are pinned down.'

189.

'Not quite my reasoning, but I'm very glad to see you both, nonetheless.'

'What about these reinforcements?' Crawhammer barked. 'What have you got in there, sonny? The Mounties?'

The Doctor tapped his lips with his umbrella. 'I rather think that Mr McBride has brought us something more useful than that.'

Captain Frank Williams of the Imperial Welsh Guards raised his thermal imaging binoculars and scanned the street ahead. Fires flared brightly though the viewfinder and the device whined softly as the software compensated for the high levels.

Williams frowned. He had been expecting resistance, but there was seemingly nothing. For fifteen minutes they had been holed in the lobby of the hospital by a torrent of gunfire, then suddenly, nothing.

He lowered the binoculars and waved his men forward. They were jumpy and on edge. He couldn't blame them. The world they had dropped into was a mirror image of their own and about as alien as they could possibly have imagined. Oh, the structure was the same, the buildings, the layout, but there was a feeling that was wrong, all atmosphere.

And a smell.

That had been the first thing that had hit Williams as they had come through the gate. This world smelt different. It smelt warm, organic.

Animal smells and vegetable decomposition. They had been told about it at the briefing: all his troops knew what to expect, but the reality of it was almost overpowering. They had been offered additional augmentation before the mission. Nasal filters or full artificial replacement. Williams was beginning to regret turning it down.

A scuffle from the darkness brought his mind sharply back into focus. He took a deep breath and sent a 'spread out' pulse to his squad, wincing at the pain in his temple. He'd have to see the MASH unit when they had secured the city: some of his circuitry hadn't liked the trip through the gate.

Williams tightened his grip on the b.u.t.t of his gun, tensing a muscle to unlock the safety catch. He could hear something echoing in the gloom of the entrance lobby. He concentrated. It sounded like breathing, and the animal smell that pervaded everything was stronger here, muskier.

The three soldiers at his shoulder were tense, watching him, waiting for orders. He indicated the staircase with the barrel of his gun.

'Wallace, Trim, you take the staircase. Evans you're with me.'

Stooping low he darted through the deserted reception, Private Evans 190 close behind him. Swinging double doors loomed in front of them.

Evans eased them open gently. 'Nothing, sir.'

Williams shook his head. Something was wrong. Why had they been held back so ferociously only to suddenly be allowed this freedom? He turned to where Corporal Wallace and Private Trim were approaching the stairs in time to see something huge drop from the first-floor landing.

Trim didn't stand a chance. The thing landed squarely on his shoulders, the crack as his back broke echoing around the lobby like a gunshot. Wallace barely had time to raise his gun before he was clubbed to the floor.

The thing threw back its head and bellowed with rage. Williams's jaw dropped. It was a gorilla. A gorilla with huge metal hands, its head a tangle of wires and cables.

'Jesus.' Evans was shaking his head. 'They've got augments, Captain. They've got b.l.o.o.d.y augments.'

The gorilla swung its ma.s.sive head towards them, bared rows of vicious steel teeth, and bellowed. Other creatures' voices joined the clamour. Primates of all shapes and sizes erupted into the entrance way, screaming at the soldiers, bounding down the central staircase.

Williams could hear gunfire echoing throughout the building, the cries of men and the howls and shrieks of the animals. Evans brought his gun up and unleashed a barrage of bullets. He was screaming something in Welsh. Williams could barely hear him above the din.

The implants in his skull were swamping him with data, all of his squads trying to report in at once. He reeled, staggering and crashing onto his knees. Evans caught him by the arm. 'Captain, we've got to get out of here! NOW!'

Williams forced himself to concentrate, trying to channel the data as they had trained him to. 'Sir?' Evans was shaking him. The babble in his head started to subside. He looked up at Evans and nodded. 'I'm OK, Private, I'm all right.'

Williams's eyes widened with horror as a semi-mechanical monstrosity loomed out of the shadows. Private Evans barely had time to turn before the ape ripped his head off.

Williams dived to one side as blood-soaked paws crashed into the floor, shattering tiles like gla.s.s. He rolled and came up firing, the stream of bullets practically cutting the ape in two. It crashed to the floor, foam gushing from its chest unit, blood and hydraulic fluid spraying everywhere.

The young captain desperately sent out a pulse. Withdraw and regroup. Withdraw and regroup. He wiped the blood from his eyes. He 191 could see the doorway across the reception hall, if he could just make it outside.

He tensed augmented muscles and threw himself forward. Five metres, four metres, three metres.

Something caught him across the midriff with a blow that sent him skidding across the floor. He crashed into a wall, struggling to draw breath. Huge shapes were converging on him. He scrabbled frantically for his gun, oblivious to the shards of gla.s.s that lacerated his fingers.

His hand closed on something cold and metallic. He looked down to see crude metallic fingers grasping his own. There was a wrenching pain as he was hauled to his feet. The creature that had caught him was scrutinising the circuitry in his arm, poking at him with clumsy artificial fingers.

All around him were apes of different sizes and shapes, each of them uniquely and crudely augmented. Steel teeth loomed closer and closer, hot animal breath wafting over him. Williams's final thought was a sudden memory of a visit to the zoo when he had been five, then everything went mercifully black.

The Doctor winced at the sounds of gunfire and screams that echoed from elsewhere in the building. The enemy had broken through and were driving the soldiers back.

McBride caught his eye and gave a weak smile.

'It's not like we have a lot of choice, Doc.'

The Doctor shook his head and turned back to his task. The baboon stretched out on the bed was inert, the thin metal rod that acted as its power collector dismantled. Wires and cables curled inelegantly from the back of its skull.

A door crashed open and Captain O'Brien entered. Behind him Jimmy struggled into the room, staggering under the weight of the heavy car battery clasped to his chest.

'Where do you want this one?' asked O'Brien.

'Oh, here, please.' Limb scurried forward, a screwdriver clasped in his hand.

Jimmy let the battery drop onto a hospital trolley with a clatter.

Limb frowned. 'Is that it?'

'We're clearing out all the cars we can find. The general's not going to touch any of the army vehicles though.'

'Oh, what a shame.' Limb pouted like a disappointed child. 'We've still got so many of our friends to revive. A sudden thought struck him.

'Is there still a battery in the van that you and Mr McBride...

appropriated?'

192.

O'Brien nodded. 'I think so.'

'Then we'll have that one too, please, Captain.'

'Hey, I might need that!' McBride looked concerned. 'You guys may not have noticed but London ain't exactly the most fun place to be at the moment! Having a vehicle that still runs might be an advantage.'

'You'll be leaving with us, McBride, don't worry about that.'

O'Brien tapped the breathless Jimmy on the shoulder. 'Come on, soldier. Battery for Mr Limb.'

'Great.' McBride watched them go and lit a cigarette. 'Suddenly we're workin' for the military again. And there was me thinking I was nicely independent.'

'Oh really, Mr McBride,' Limb tutted, 'we all have to make sacrifices in wartime you know.' He peered down at the tangle of wires. 'Now then, Doctor, let's see if we can get another of our simian allies running about under his own power shall we?'

'Do you have to enjoy this quite so much?' snapped the Doctor.

Limb stared accusingly at him. 'I seem to remember that this particular solution was yours...'

'Yes, I know...' The Doctor s.n.a.t.c.hed the screwdriver from Limb and started making the modifications that were needed to get the augmented apes running on battery power.

McBride and Jimmy had arrived with thirty of the augmented apes in the back of the truck. He and O'Brien had driven to the zoo, hot wired a truck and loaded as many of the big apes as they could into the back.

The Doctor had converted a ward up on the third floor into a makeshift surgery, the inert bodies of the apes stretched out on the stark metal-framed beds. It was a bizarre sight. Apes of all shapes and sizes lying in neat rows, limbs tangling across clean linen sheets, the Doctor and Limb scurrying around them like consultants. It had only been when he had started a careful examination of the Cyberprimates that he had realised what a dangerous and crude experiment they had been. All of the augmentations had been designed to run on static electricity, the apes fitted with power collectors like obscene dodgem cars. It had been a simple matter to convert them to run off battery power; vehicle batteries had seemed like the obvious choice. They were plentiful, they would last a considerable length of time and the apes were perfectly capable of carrying the weight.

What the Doctor hadn't counted on was the awesome savagery of the creatures once they were revived. His eyes flicked to the twisted shape lying in the corner of the room and the smaller body laid out on a stretcher next to it. The first ape that they had revived, and the first victim of that folly one of Crawhammer's men, his throat ripped out 193 before he could even scream. It had only been Bill Collins and his submachine gun that had prevented a ma.s.sacre. After that they had revived the primates once they were outside the room, watching as they shambled off down the stairwell. An indiscriminate weapon.

The Doctor closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For the moment he had no better ideas. He needed a breathing s.p.a.ce and the apes were providing it. It would at least give the invading troops something to think about. No, at the moment his problem was Crawhammer. The general had nuclear blood-l.u.s.t in his eyes and the Doctor was frightened. History was tearing itself apart at the seams and he was right at the epicentre. Things would have been difficult and dangerous at the best of times, but with Limb here they were almost unmanageable. The Earth as he knew it was in danger of ending here in the 1950s, and the shockwave was liable to fracture the entire web of time.

Aware of Limb watching him, he tightened a connection and wiped his hands on the lapels of his borrowed suit. 'This one's ready.'

'Right, Doc.' McBride stubbed out his cigarette and pulled on a set of thick gloves. He, O'Brien and two of the soldiers heaved the baboon off the bed and dragged it across the linoleum towards the door.

The Doctor watched as they manhandled the brute into the corridor, unwinding a length of twine that led to the creature's chest as they did so. That had been the Doctor's suggestion, a switch that they could activate remotely, like pulling the pin on a grenade... or a can of Nitro Nine. The Doctor smiled humourlessly. He doubted that Ace would approve of his methods. Or his allies.

With the ape safely locked out in the corridor, McBride pulled on the twine. There was a second's silence, then a savage roar. The doors shook violently. Then there was silence.