Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (16 page)

Together they pulled again. Harris felt something give. At first he thought that the cab had released the Doctor’s arm. Instead the strange vehicle had released whatever it used for brakes, and was simply allowing them to drag it along the road behind them. It was impossibly light, not like a real car at all. They must have cut an absurd picture: the three of them pulling the large vehicle effortlessly along the road.

‘I suspect a rethink may be in order,’ the Doctor commented. ‘This isn’t 87

getting us very far at all.’

Harris grunted and let go of the Doctor’s arm. He was relieved when Jack removed his arms from around his middle.

The Doctor yelped and hurried past them. It took Harris a second to work out what was happening. Despite them all having stopped when they realized that they weren’t going to be able to free the Doctor’s arm simply by pulling, the cab hadn’t stopped with them. Instead it had continued to crawl forward, eagerly swallowing the Doctor’s arm as it went. The Doctor was now frantically backtracking down the road, the cab clamped to his upper arm. It swung left and right as the Doctor tried in vain to shake himself free.

Harris froze. Over two decades of policing the Capital had left him woefully ill-equipped for moments such as this. He had no idea what to do at all. The cab was like a fish, and the Doctor’s arm a line. But the fish was too strong and now the angler was being pulled in. Oh Christ, a shark. That was what the strange vehicle reminded Harris of. Thrashing as it bit down on its victim.

The Doctor had backed all the way to the edge of Wardour Street. Even after midnight there were still a few cars on the road. Harris shouted a warning and the Doctor whirled around to check the road for himself. As he did so the cab was swung out on a wide arc. The Doctor must have seen his chance because he continued to spin on the spot, describing a circle with the cab on the end of his arm. He spun three hundred and sixty degrees, the huge shape of the taxi pulling impossibly on the end of his arm.

The Doctor looked like a shotputter, only he was preparing to throw a car.

A whole bloody car!

The Doctor spun faster like a figure skater, carving out a delicate manoeuvre on the ice. Illuminated in the unnatural green light of the cab’s roof light, the Doctor looked like a leprechaun twirling in the eye of a hurricane. In the eerie light, Harris could see the lines of concentration etched deeply into the Doctor’s face.

A small man in a tweed jacket spinning a monster on the end of his arm.

‘Get away,’ the Doctor cried. ‘Get off the street.’

Harris climbed on to the first few steps of an office building. Jack hurried further down the road, until he reached the iron fence which bordered the gardens of Soho Square. The young lad hauled himself over the railings and then, anxiously, turned back to watch the Doctor.

Unable to compete with the centrifugal force, the cab slithered down the Doctor’s arm, hung on to his wrist for a few moments and then was flung from him, like a stone out of a catapult.

‘Bombs away!’ The Doctor cried. The huge box-shape of the cab hurtled straight down the middle of the road –

– and passed through the railings of Soho Square like a boiled egg through 88

an egg-slicer, swallowing down a surprised Jack Bartlett in a single gulp.

The Doctor fell to his knees and let out a cry of a single word. ‘No!’

Chris trudged through the forest, pulling the gurney behind him. Patsy was supposed to be pushing the other end, but he couldn’t feel her contribution.

The going was hard and every time the trolley became stuck in the under-growth, he felt anger rise in him. What the cruk was going on? What the hell was he doing liberating English mental patients? He was about to turn on Patsy, vent some of his pent up feelings, but he didn’t get a chance.

Pop let out an unearthly scream and collapsed. Chris whirled round to see blood erupting from his neck. The old man toppled forward; a long twin-pronged spear was protruding from the back of his neck. He blinked several times and opened his mouth, trying to speak, but only succeeded in vomiting volumes of thick, dark blood.

‘Oh shit!’ Patsy yelled and backed away from the fallen man. She took one look at the spear, swore again, and then turned and sprinted away through the trees.

Chris shouted after her, but if she heard him she didn’t reply. A wave of anger rose up inside him at Patsy’s desertion. Roz would never have –

Stop it, he told himself. Just stop it. Don’t start making comparisons.

He hurried over to Pop, keeping low, and scanning the surroundings for any signs of the attacker. There was nothing.

The old man was awash with blood. The wounds at the base of his neck were deep. Even if Chris had some field dressings, which he hadn’t, he doubted that he could do anything to help unless he could get the old man to a hospital.

A second spear thudded into the rotten wood of a fallen tree inches away from where Chris stood. It was clean, shining silver in the darkness, like a surgical instrument.

There wasn’t time to think. In one fluid movement, Chris threw himself forward into a well-practised dive. He cursed himself for leaving his armour and his gun in the TARDIS. He was going to have to face his attacker with his bare hands.

Weaponless and alone. He was an Adjudicator’s nightmare. If you’ve no partner then you’ve no back-up. You’re vulnerable. Exposed.

He came out of the dive in a fighting stance, facing the direction in which the spear had come, and praying to the Goddess that he was going to be lucky.

Something hit him in the face. Hard. The force of the blow knocked him backwards and off his feet. He felt himself crash into something metal and heavy – the hospital trolley. It toppled over, straps breaking, sending its occu-89

pants flying. One of its sharp metal edges dug painfully into the small of his back, making his eyes water.

He was clambering to his feet, blinking away tears when the second attack came. His knees crumpled beneath him. It felt more like being run over than being punched.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

Gotta get up, gotta get away, gotta run. But the pain in his head was completely disorientating. His body would only allow him to lie still and take shallow breaths.

Something rolled him on to his back. Chris opened his eyes and it swam drunkenly into his vision. It was crouched over him, its blank face only inches away from his own.

Blank face. No features. Just flat cream flesh.

Blank hands reached for his face. For his throat. Smooth pale fingers with no fingernails.

Blank.

The Doctor scrambled to his feet, scraping his hands on the tarmac in his desperation to get after the cab. He was sure of only one thing. That he wasn’t going to lose anyone else. Not tonight. Not ever.

It had been a terrible risk to use Jack as bait. Secretly it had terrified him.

If he’d been better prepared, if he’d had more time, then he could have put together a tracking device. He could have hunted it down alone and put a stop to its macabre work. But he hadn’t been able to find a trace of the vehicle. He hadn’t been able to find a solution on his own. As ever, he needed people to help him put his plans into action. People who trusted him, who were willing to risk themselves for his plans to succeed.

Fragile companions to lure the monsters out of the shadows, while the Doctor activated the trap.

But there hadn’t been a trap tonight. Tonight he’d been improvising. And the show wasn’t working out the way he’d envisaged it.

He barely noticed the iron railings as he jumped them. Soho Square was in darkness. The light from the streetlamps was heavily filtered out by the tall, overgrown trees.

‘Come on,’ he hollered, standing in the city garden. ‘Show yourself!’

Nothing. There was a small structure in the middle of the square. Fake Tudor beams and a pointed roof. Its place in the architectural history of the planet escaped the Doctor for the moment. He circled it, hoping to find the creature on the other side.

No luck.

Was it possible that the cab had left the square? No. It couldn’t have passed 90

through the railings with Jack inside it. Not if it planned on keeping him in one piece. The Doctor grimaced. Best not to follow that line of thought.

He still knew nothing about the nature of the creature. His arm was coated in a thin film of grey slime, which smelt faintly of aniseed and hospitals. An anaesthetic perhaps? Or was that just wishful thinking? Was he just clutching at any sign that Jack might still be alive inside that creature?

He had one trick left. The oldest in the book. It never failed with power-mad conspirators hell bent on ruling the Universe. Time to see how it worked on monstrous cars.

‘Scared to come out and face me?’ The Doctor goaded, filling his voice with as much contempt as he could manage. ‘Scared of a man with only an umbrella to defend himself?’

Silence. Perhaps the creature was cleverer than it looked.

A voice called out to him. For one crazy moment he thought that it might be the creature itself. It was Harris. The policeman was still on the other side of the railings, pointing excitedly to the other side of the gardens. The Doctor set off at a run, his battered spats making slapping noises on the path.

It had been hiding in the shadows of the trees which lined the perimeter of the gardens. The creature must have seen the Doctor racing towards it, because its headlights suddenly blazed and it moved off towards him, picking up speed.

This is what happens when you don’t make plans, the Doctor told himself.

When you don’t cheat the future by leaving messages for yourself. When you chuck away the hint file and don’t take a peek at the answers page.

Then it’s just you and the monsters.

Sorry Roslyn.

The cab was almost upon him. The Doctor took a deep breath and launched himself into the air. For a second he was blinded by the bright lights of the car and then he felt the chill darkness envelope him as the creature welcomed him inside itself.

The blank-faced creature jerked suddenly, its arms flailing in the air, and then it crashed down on the ground next to him, lifeless.

Chris looked up from the brink of unconsciousness to see Patsy standing over him. She was holding the brake of the gurney in her hand.

She’d come back.

‘What?’ she asked, catching sight of the expression on his face.

‘Nothing. How’s Pop?’

Patsy just shook her head. She tossed the metal bar away. ‘We need to get out of here. Quickly. Can you walk?’

‘Do I get a choice?’

∗ ∗ ∗

91

‘Doctor!’

The cab swung around hungrily at the sound of Harris’s voice, searching him out in the darkness. For a moment he thought that it had missed him, but then it turned towards the iron railings where he stood.

Oh no.

Harris let go of the railings, turned and ran, not daring to look back. He couldn’t help imagining what would happen to the Doctor and the boy if the car decided to repeat it’s egg-slicing trick with the railings.

Its headlights illuminated the road beneath his feet. His shadow appeared in front of him, a giant stick figure stretching out wildly as the car caught up with him. He didn’t have a hope of escaping it. How could you outrun a car?

He glanced over his shoulder and gasped. The vehicle was at the edge of the gardens, racing towards the iron fence. Harris winced; he really didn’t want to see this.

And then just before it hit the fence, the creature lifted itself off the ground, and jumped the railings with the casual confidence of a prizewinning race-horse.

Harris was too stunned to move. The cab shot down the road towards him. At the last possible moment, it swerved around him, took the corner of Wardour Street at a casual fifty miles an hour and was gone.

It hadn’t wanted him. Harris was left standing alone on the suddenly quiet street.

The black cab was a solid lump of thick, dense jelly. It had invaded his body through his nose and mouth, forcing its sleepy fingers down into his lungs and stomach. Jack had tried to struggle against the antiseptic sweetness that swept through him, but how could you fight something that encased you completely?

He allowed himself to lie suspended in the gelatinous mass of the black cab.

Floating in jelly, like a sliver of orange rind in ajar of marmalade.

Give up. Just give up and let it have you.

He’d seen the monster hurtling towards him and he’d frozen, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a lorry. He hadn’t even tried to get out of its way.

Maybe he hadn’t cared enough to. Eddy was gone. They were going to put him away for the amount of money he’d stolen to pay off Gordy Scraton.

That’s if the Law got the chance. If Gordy Scraton and his psycho brother didn’t get to him first.

Better just to let the monster have him. Why not?

Because there’s work to be done, Jack Bartlett. Unfinished business that needs
attending to.

Strong hands gripped his wrists through the thick swamp.

92

‘Doctor!’ Jack tried to shout out his new friend’s name, but only succeeded in vomiting up some of the goo inside of him. The Doctor had come for him.

He felt soft lips press against his own.

Doctor?

And then the Doctor blew a lungful of sweet, life-preserving air into his body, expelling the invasive material from his chest.

Sleep,
the Doctor’s voice said, somewhere deep in Jack’s mind.

So Jack slept.

‘Piss off,’ Patsy told the man in the bowler hat. ‘This compartment’s full.’

The man turned scarlet at the insult. For a moment he looked as if he were about to launch into a tirade of middle class outrage, and then he caught sight of the two sleeping figures in loosened straitjackets on the floor of the carriage and hastily made his exit.

‘Thank you,’ Patsy said to the retreating figure, her voice full of syrupy sweetness.

They hadn’t returned to the guest house to retrieve their luggage. Although Patsy had bemoaned the loss of her favourite cocktail dress which was in her suitcase, Chris had been adamant that he wasn’t going to face the wrath of Mrs Hardly, not with two escaped inmates from the local asylum in tow.