Doctor Who - Nuclear Time (12 page)

The tarpaulin covering of the vehicle flapped loosely at the edges, and the Doctor examined the figure in the brief shards of sunlight. Grey hair, grey eyes, a dirty brown tie that matched a dirty brown-checked shirt, crumpled beneath a grimy lab coat that must surely once have been white. This man had been through hell.

Realisation dawned slowly on the Doctor, as the previous exchange between his companions flooded his mind. Albert.

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'Oh,' he said slowly. 'Oh dear.'

He stood there for a minute, unsure what to do.

Without any means to communicate he was at a loss, but Albert looked at him with a mournful familiarity that made the Doctor assume he might come to know him better. He certainly hoped so.

'All right, budge up, then.' The Doctor shoved his hands in his jacket pockets as he slid the man across the bench so that he could sit down. 'Oof, that's better.' He wiggled his boots out in front of him. He hadn't realised just how cramped his feet had become during the long walk. He turned to his companion. 'Right. Er...

Right,' he finished limply.

He let the motion of the truck wash over them for a while, gently rocking from side to side and watching as the grey shapes of buildings dawned on the horizon through the open rear of the truck, like a film in a darkened movie theatre. Finally, he decided he could stand the tension no more.

'Oh, c'mere!' he said to the scientist, wrapping his arm around the man's thin shoulders and hugging him tightly to him. 'Thanks. Thanks for helping my friends escape. If you did. I'm sure you did.' He choked and looked at Albert with eyes that were tired of looking at death and turning away. 'And thanks for being here, so that I could tell you that.'

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There was a grinding squeal and the Doctor broke away from the scientist, turning to discover that the truck had halted. Huge corrugated iron doors loomed ahead, blotting out the light, and he realised that they had arrived at the military outpost.

The gates began to shudder, the noise swiftly drawing into a loud clang and they began to swing rapidly open at the hands of a group of soldiers who began chaining them to hastily erected posts. The Doctor could hear the accompanying trucks reversing into position around him, and he pushed carefully through the static bodies until he reached the wooden panelling at the rear of his own vehicle. A swift hop and he was over the side, crunching to the ground with ease.

In response, the soldiers lazily drew their weapons up to their faces, aiming at the Doctor down the barrel of a series of large and intimidating rifles.

'Oh dear,' said the Doctor. 'What will I do now?'

He was cut off by what he assumed was the loud barking of orders, no doubt to enter the truck he had just exited.

'Yes, yes. I complied, I went quietly, no problemo, relax.'

He walked forward, into the shadow of the
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compound, keen eyes examining the handful of men who backed away in front of him, guns still trained, and he realised that they were shaking.

'I have a very bad feeling about this.'

The Doctor pulled his jacket tighter. Something at the back of his mind was beginning to panic about the dust and grime that had started to coat the tweed as he patted the material down. He ignored the clanging from behind him as another squad of soldiers began to unload the cargo from the truck; docile citizens lined up and were carefully unticked from a checklist.

The vista in front of him was much more terrifying.

As they edged backwards, in time with his steps, the Doctor could see that his guards were seriously injured. One of them could barely walk, staggering whenever weight was applied to his right foot, dark patches on his torn trouser leg, flapping over a seeping bullet wound.

The man in the centre was no better off; slowly unwrapping a bandage from around his head. And the other soldiers, their faces blackened and bruised, their uniforms crumpled and torn; all of them had suffered horrendously.

The Doctor refocused his gaze to his surroundings, dreading what he knew was coming into focus as his eyes adjusted to the low light.

Sprawled all over the compound, great pools
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NUCLEAR TIME

of crimson soaking the sandy ground around them, were the bodies of over three dozen dead soldiers.

131

Colorado, 28 August 1981, 2.00 p.m.

'Yes, yes. No, sir. We're working as fast as we can.'

Geoff screwed up his face in frustration at the tiny voice of authority that crackled through the speaker of a huge plastic mobile phone he had awkwardly stuck between his shoulder and his ear. In one hand he held a very large wad of papers bound in a pale blue folder with a biro jammed between two of his fingers, while his free hand scratched idly at the balding pate beneath his itching official hat.

'Look, sir, speaking freely for a moment, it frankly doesn't make a difference what's going on over there; it's impossible to move any quicker
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than we're already doing. The paint's still drying on the houses for God's sake, and we can't afford enough electromagnetic emitters to move the androids any quicker without risking a trigger. There are too many dead zones they have to pass through as it is, and we have no idea if the village will actually work.'

He scratched one last time then tore the cap off in frustration, hurling it at the thick glass of the observation window. There was a soft bang and it ricocheted onto the large foldout table that was pushed up against the wall. Pinned roughly to the unvarnished tabletop was a large map, the majority of which was almost completely blank - there was just a large red felt-tipped 'X' scrawled in the middle of it, surrounded by a village plan printed in faint blue rectangles. Even the grey contour lines of the tediously

flat

landscape

seemed half-hearted,

taking a back seat to the compass lines and trajectory maps that had been imposed precisely and brutally over the top.

Geoff slapped his folder roughly onto the map and, with a swift movement of his knuckles, brought the biro into his thumb and forefinger to write a humourless
You are here
in the lower corner of the diagram.

'No, no,' he continued into the phone. 'There
were
the funds. You just didn't want to allocate
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them to a project that was terminating.' Another pause.

'I am fully aware of how much a nuke costs, but that wasn't my decision, so you can either have this done quickly or you can have it done safely. I don't need to remind you of the security risks involved if it goes wrong.'

The voice on the other end of the phone increased in volume, and Geoff winced, hurriedly reaching up and pulling the handset away from his ear.

'These are my men, sir! I'm not going to put their lives in any more danger than I have to!'

A lower, more threatening tone accompanied the response.

'Yes, well, a lot of things will probably happen after this is over, but they
are
my men for now, and until I am relieved of the responsibility I will do it my way. Yes, sir. Goodbye.'

There was a dull thud as the mobile was slammed down onto the table, closely followed by Geoff's elbows as he slumped into his chair and sunk his head in his hands. The folder was jammed underneath his left arm and he elbowed the wad of papers onto the floor to clear himself some space. He hadn't eaten all day, but his stomach was now too painful for him to even consider filling it.

He rocked backwards, pushing his palms up and over his face into his hair and playing with
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the wispy strands over his bald spot once more. His ashen face was bathed a warm orange by the daylight from outside, tinted through the safety glass. The sun might have been hidden by the slanted corrugated roof that overhung the view, but he could still feel its warmth in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the room.

The observation tower stood three storeys high, tall enough to look out over the huge, barbed-wire-topped walls that marked the boundaries of the compound.

The desert glow beyond resembled a sickly orange fog and Geoff screwed up his face in disgust.

Without looking, he reached down to his belt and unclipped his walkie-talkie, turning his head slightly to speak into the grated microphone. 'Albert, I don't care what you're doing, I want you up here now!'

There was a crackle, then a response. 'What's the problem?'

'Don't ask what the problem is, just get up here and I'll tell—'

Geoff's attention was diverted once again by the view through the glass. Was that a man on a bicycle riding into the desert? He shook his head and looked again.

'Hello? You broke off?'

Geoff blinked and it was gone. 'Too twitchy,' he
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growled. 'Gotta stop doing this.' He thumbed the button again. 'Just get up here.'

'Lord. This is a bit dramatic, isn't it?'

Geoff spun around at the sound of Albert's voice as the scientist gestured to the orange observation glass.

'It's to stop us going blind,' he responded. Albert nodded slowly. 'Does it stop us getting cancer, too?'

Geoff gave a harsh laugh. 'Cancer's too long-term for the government to take the blame. They'll no doubt tell us it's our diet when we're all on life support in ten years.'

Albert yanked a half-eaten sandwich from his pocket and took a large bite. 'What's the deal then?' he asked between chews. 'Is the mood lighting making you feel all urgent again?'

'Yeah, you won't be joking after you hear this.' 'Ruin my day.'

'There's a Russian spy plane just passed over the west coast, heading our way. They've obviously heard something's going on.'

'I thought that was the point.' Albert took another mouthful.

'Yeah, well let's not even start on the political mess we've been stuck in the middle of. They were meant to arrive after the nuke went off. Now
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they're early, so Command wants us to get a move on.'

Albert didn't look as agitated as Geoff had hoped. 'Did you tell them it's not like we've been sitting around here doing nothing all morning?'

Geoff didn't reply, instead flicking his gaze to the scientist's sandwich and back. He raised an eyebrow.

'What? I'm not meant to be doing everything myself! Things don't stop just because I have something to eat.'

'I didn't say anything.'

'You didn't need to.' He went to toss the crust into a bin. 'I'm not hungry now, anyway.'

'Whatever.' Geoff reached for the radio again. 'I'm telling the men to start putting the androids on the trucks.'

Albert's face fell for a second, and he quickly disguised his look of dismay with a cough and a fumble in his pockets. He brought out a pen and clicked it a few times before realising that there was nothing for him to do with it and put it away again. 'Er, really? Now?' He choked for a second.

Geoff looked at him suspiciously. 'Yes. That's not going to be a problem is it?'

'I just... I just had some things I wanted to do.' Albert thought of something suddenly. 'Besides the EM field hasn't been set up in the courtyard.'

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'They've been in the transport fields long enough; it'll take them at least half an hour to come out of reset - plenty of time to load the trucks. Just make sure the soldiers don't say anything stupid.' He paused, reluctant to talk budgets with Albert. 'You do know that the EM generators cost about three times as much as the village? At least this way we'll be able to scrape a few nickels back on the parts if we don't set them up. To be completely frank with you, we need the brownie points with command. Our futures aren't looking good.'

Albert opened his mouth as if to protest, but decided against it. He nodded sullenly.

Geoff turned back to the radio. 'Action stations. Action stations. All personnel to the courtyard. We're going to load the trucks. Watch your mouths out there -

there's no EM field, so the less the androids hear, the more likely it'll be that we all live through this.'

A scattering of 'Yes, sir' responses came crackling back, and the colonel returned his attention to the scientist who stood hunched in his lab coat by the door.

'You will tell me if there's something wrong,' Geoff said, his voice hinting at a softer undertone. 'This operation is too delicate to have you going rogue on me.'

Albert smiled. 'Oh I'm not going anywhere.'

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Suddenly the walkie-talkie screeched once more, and Geoff rolled his eyes. 'Is there a problem, Post Five?'

he snapped. 'Need a diagram?'

'Uh, no, sir,' the timid sergeant responded. 'Just thought I'd inform you that we have a houseguest.'

Geoff looked puzzled. 'A houseguest?'

'Yes sir. Seems to have come from Apple- er, I mean the village.'

There was a pause.

'On a bicycle,' the sergeant finished sheepishly.

The relief Geoff felt for discovering that he wasn't hallucinating was overshadowed by the surprise Geoff felt for discovering that he wasn't hallucinating.

'A bicycle?' he echoed.

'Yes, sir. And that's not the only strange thing about him, sir.'

'Surprise me.'

'I think he's foreign. He can't speak properly and he walks all... funny.'

Geoff sighed. 'He sounds like the worst spy I've ever heard of.'

'But he's not a spy, sir.'

'No?'

'He has an American Health and Safety Pass —

Access All Areas.'

'Sergeant, such a thing doesn't even exist. Who
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NUCLEAR TIME

ever heard of a Health and Safety officer with complete military clearance? You know what? Don't answer that. Just bring him up.' Geoff released his thumb from the call button angrily and dropped the walkie-talkie into a nearby paper bin. It rattled satisfyingly in the tin container. 'I am surrounded by idiots,' he said, almost sadly.