Doctor Who: Festival of Death: 50th Anniversary Edition (33 page)

‘Yeah, thanks for that, Harken.’

‘When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, you tend to spot these things.’

Retreating, Vinnie felt the cold metal of the necroport pressing into his back. Harken pushed against him on one side. The zombies were now only metres away, forming a circle, their skinny, white
arms
clawing at the air, their mouths and eyes dribbling clotted oil.

A sudden panic gripped Vinnie. He dived towards the platform and climbed up, hoping to find a way through the horde of undead. Instead, he found himself trapped on the small stage, icy hands grabbing at his heels, other zombies lurching up the steps towards him.

He looked to Harken, and then felt clammy fingers grip his throat, tight. Vinnie flailed around, desperately struggling to pull himself free, but it was no use. He tried to scream, but all he could hear was the blood pounding through his ears.

A flashing light punctured the darkness as the TARDIS materialised in one corner of the necroport chamber. The Doctor emerged and grinned. ‘About five minutes past midnight. I think that is a remarkably accurate piece of time travel. Well done, Doctor.’

Romana pulled the police-box door shut. ‘Yes, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I’m sure, given the chance, you would pass your basic time travel proficiency with flying colours.’

‘Basic, pah! I could get double alpha plus honours at the advanced level.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. You still haven’t mastered realigning the synchronic multiloop stabiliser yet.’

‘I think the subject of my qualifications is rather academic now, anyway,’ said the Doctor. Romana followed him over to the three coffins. They were just as they had left them; the left and middle caskets were unoccupied, and the female Arboretan lay in the third. Her eyes were closed, her arms folded peacefully across her chest.

‘She’s dead,’ announced the Doctor. He coughed politely. ‘The psychotemporal strain must have killed her.’

‘The poor thing,’ said Romana with little conviction, keeping her distance from the casket. ‘So the Beautiful Death has just taken place.’

‘Yes.’

‘With the Arboretan providing a channel between the tourists and the afterlife.’

‘Well, the realm of the Repulsion.’

‘So whilst all the tourists are enjoying a trip into its reality, it uses the necroport to take over their bodies.’

‘Yes!’ said the Doctor. ‘How dreadfully cunning!’

Romana strolled over to the instruments. The dials were flickering wildly, and indicator lights flashed The ground throbbed beneath her feet. ‘Doctor,’ she said. ‘Why is the necroport still running?’

‘What?’ The Doctor dashed over to the instruments, and quickly digested all the readings. He slapped his forehead. ‘Of course!’

‘What is it?’

‘The Repulsion. It can only operate the zombies upstairs by remote control. But it wants to enter this universe, and the only way it can do that…’

‘… is to replace those tourists with passengers from the
Cerberus
!’

‘Exactly! It is using the passengers as hosts to carry its spirit into the land of the living.’

‘Of course.’

‘Of course. And the only way it can bring them here is by creating a temporal breach…’

‘The time distortion.’

The Doctor pretended not to have heard her. ‘A distortion in time. And to do that it still needs to use Nyanna here…’ He returned to the coffin and patted it, ‘… as a temporal medium.’

‘So she’s the conduit for the time disruption?’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor vigorously. He strode back and forth, as if chasing his train of thought around the room, chewing a thumbnail. ‘Yes, through her, it punctures the fabric of time, creates a simultaneity, and then replaces the zombies with passengers from the
Cerberus
, each containing an element of its consciousness. Ingenious.’

‘But she’s dead,’ said Romana flatly.

‘Ah yes,’ frowned the Doctor. ‘But what was it you mentioned earlier? About there being more than one way of being dead?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No, but I think I’m beginning to.’ The Doctor wiped his nose, and brooded over Nyanna. ‘The secret of the Arboretans.’

‘What is the secret of the Arboretans?’ Romana asked.

‘I don’t know.’ The Doctor broke into a smile. ‘It’s a secret –’

He was interrupted by a sudden, terrified scream. It seemed to come from directly above them.

‘What was that?’

The Doctor darted over to the ladder, and started to climb, hand over fist.

Above them, a muffled but familiar voice cried out, ‘Help me! Will somebody please help me!’

Harken kept his eyes screwed shut and waited for the end. His back was pressed up against the necroport. The zombies surrounded him and he could feel their hideous claws pulling at his coat. It wouldn’t be long now.

Without warning, the necroport behind him gave way. Harken flung his arms to either side to stop himself falling backwards and, blinking his astonished eyes, found he had been resting against an entrance hatch that had swung inwards. Inside was a pop-eyed lunatic with a wild grin, a bouffant hair style and far too much scarf.

‘Quick, don’t just stand there gawping… Inside!’ shouted the lunatic. Harken didn’t need to be told twice. He almost fell over himself in his eagerness to get into the necroport, scrabbling breathlessly down a narrow, metal ladder.

The lunatic heaved the hatch shut, and waved an electronic pen at it. The door bolted with a reassuringly final clang and, for the moment, they were safe.

Romana helped Harken Batt down from the ladder. He stared at her incredulously and then staggered into the necroport interior. He took in the police box, the coffins and instruments, and turned back to Romana. ‘I don’t believe it.’

Romana offered him a hand and smiled. ‘Hello. I’m Romana.’

Harken looked at her palm for a few seconds, and then shook it.
‘Romana
. Right.’ He looked around. ‘Where am I?’

The Doctor jumped down the last few rungs. ‘The interior of the necroport.’

Harken blinked at him. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Did I? Oh yes. Think nothing of it, I do that sort of thing all the time.’

‘I thought I was done for back there. I mean, I’ve had some pretty hairy encounters in my time, but that was the closest shave to end all closest shaves.’ Harken tugged his coat into place and offered the Doctor a hand. ‘Harken Batt. You probably know me from my documentary work.’

‘Of course, of course, yes. One of the galaxy’s leading insect-on-the-wall documentary-makers. I am so pleased to meet you at last.’ The Doctor patted Harken on the back and turned away to confer with Romana.

Harken hurried after him. ‘I’m sorry, and you are…?’

‘The Doctor,’ said the Doctor. Romana was examining the instruments connected to the necroport, and in particular one rising dial marked Psychothermal Capacitance. ‘You were right, Romana. Paddox is using the necroport to accumulate vast reserves of psychothermal power.’

‘They killed Vinnie, my holocameraman,’ said Harken, joining them. ‘Poor lad. Not the best at his job, it has to be said, but he meant well.’

Romana and the Doctor ignored him. ‘But we still don’t know what he intends to do with it. Or what it has to do with the Arboretans. Or the Repulsion.’

‘“Redemption”,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘I wonder. I wonder. If we can work out what this is all for…’

Above their heads there was a dull, metallic banging. Harken yelped in alarm. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh, nothing to worry about,’ Romana told him. ‘It’s probably just the zombies trying to break in.’

‘What?’ shrieked Harken.

‘They’ll give up in a minute,’ said the Doctor. ‘They’re under strict
instructions
that the necroport shouldn’t be damaged, you see.’ The clanging suddenly stopped. The Doctor nodded. ‘There you are.’

‘They’re going away?’

‘Yes. They’ll be clearing the Great Hall now, off to commit mayhem elsewhere.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Harken. He considered. ‘No, that’s not good, is it? Wait a moment. How do you know all this?’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t time to explain,’ said the Doctor, returning his attention to the instruments.

Harken stepped in front. ‘As an investigative reporter, it’s my job to demand answers. What happened up there? There’s two hundred dead people wandering around, what do you mean they’re operating under instructions, and what are you doing here anyway?’

‘Look,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s perfectly simple. The entity that is controlling the zombies is doing so using the necroport, right?’

‘This place?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s acting as a psychic relay –’ began Romana.

The Doctor interrupted. ‘And what me and my friend here are trying to do is to work out a way of stopping it. Is that clear enough for you?’

‘I see. You’re going to rescue the G-Lock from certain and terrible destruction?’

‘Yes!’ said Romana, exasperated.

Harken inhaled, ready to ask another question. ‘But –’

‘Oh, do be quiet!’ Romana snapped.

Harken shrank back and mooched over to the far corner of the room.

The Doctor watched him go, and then turned back to Romana. ‘Right. Now I want you to tell me exactly what was happening when you found me lying dead.’

It was ironic, thought Harken. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to salvage his career and he was stuck down here. He should be up there, in the G-Lock, reporting on the destruction as it happened. If
only
he had some way of recording what was happening.

Of course. He would have to find Vinnie’s holocamera. It must have been dropped during the blackout, but with any luck it would still be functioning.

Harken looked across the room. The lunatic and his girlfriend were busy examining the coffins.

Weighing each tread carefully, Harken made his way over to the ladder, and climbed. At the top he activated the hatch-opening mechanism and held his breath as it creaked open.

The Great Hall was empty. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could make out the rows of coffins – and, thankfully, there wasn’t a zombie in sight.

Harken climbed out of the necroport and crept over to the collapsed stage.

Trying not to look at Vinnie’s twisted corpse, he searched the surrounding floor. It was covered in broken glass. But there, just beneath the stage, was the holocamera.

Wiping the lens, Harken lifted the camera and checked the viewfinder. It was still working! He straightened up, pressed ‘record’ and panned around the Great Hall, taking in all the vacated coffins and zooming in on Vinnie’s crumpled body. Keeping the camera held to one eye he advanced through the hall, picking out the caskets, the sputtering wires, the flatlining life monitors.

He made another sweep of the hall, and spotted some pale figures on the stairway leading to the control room. For a second, he had a rush of terrified adrenalin, but then he realised that the zombies were too busy attempting to break into the room to notice him. He brought them into focus; there were a dozen of them, hurling themselves against the door and flattening their hands on the windows.

After capturing a couple of minutes’ worth of action, Harken lowered the camera and headed for the main doors.

‘So I was in here…’ The Doctor pointed to the middle casket, ‘… and I was connected to the necroport with one of those colander things?’

Romana nodded.

‘And you say Paddox announced that he finally had sufficient power and was about to bring off the greatest scientific achievement of all time.’ The Doctor shrugged. ‘It’s a pity he didn’t explain what that was. I much prefer it when villains boast about their plans, it’s far more helpful.’

‘Doctor.’ Romana nursed him back on track.

‘And Nyanna was where she is now, and Harken Batt was tied to the wall there.’ The Doctor indicated the empty space next to the TARDIS. ‘And that’s everyone?’

‘Yes,’ said Romana. She stared into the empty left-hand casket. ‘Gallura!’

‘What?’

‘Gallura. He was in this coffin,’ Romana remembered. ‘He was connected to the necroport too.’

‘Gallura! Of course! When we first visited the necroport, he was lying there…’ The Doctor turned around, ‘… and there were charred corpses in the other two coffins.’ He stared bleakly into the middle coffin, as though picturing himself there. ‘Oh, my prophetic soul. I was one of those charred corpses. Or rather, I will be. “Oh grave, where is thy victory?”’

Romana rolled her eyes despairingly. ‘Oh, don’t be so… so morbid.’

‘Morbid? What do you mean “morbid”?’

‘I mean this obsession you have with the manner of your own death. It’s not very helpful.’

‘Helpful?’ The Doctor rounded on her. ‘I don’t know if it has escaped your mind, Romana, but I am going to die whilst defeating the Repulsion. And at the moment I don’t have the foggiest idea how I’m going to do that, and the only way I’m going to find out how to do that is by discovering what I was doing when I died defeating the Repulsion.’ He glowered. ‘And besides, I’ve got, what, two hours left to live, and if you can’t be morbid when you’re about to die, when can you be morbid?’

Romana was tempted to point out that the idea of the Doctor
deducing
how to defeat the Repulsion by finding out how he had already defeated the Repulsion was absurd, but decided to let the matter pass. ‘Perhaps we should go and find Gallura?’

‘Yes,’ agreed the Doctor, his mood brightening. ‘He’s down in the cells. Come on!’

As she turned to leave the necroport, Romana realised they were missing someone. ‘Doctor…’

‘What?’

‘Harken Batt. He’s gone.’

The corridor was littered with wreckage and the corpses of tourists. Harken zoomed in on a discarded black party hat, and pulled back to reveal the whole, distressing scene. It was absolutely perfect. This would be the greatest documentary of his generation. They would never be able to ignore him after this.

He panned around and the viewfinder was suddenly filled with a grey blur. Moving left, there was another grey blur. Harken adjusted the focus settings and the grey blurs resolved into two gaping faces, their mouths oozing with oil.