Doctor Who: Drift (3 page)

Kristal hit a drift where the yard was buried. She stumbled forward but her feet were planted deep enough to steady her.

She followed right through with a crouch, spun around to take in the windows. They were framed in snow, like on the Christmas cards. By contrast the panes were dark, forbidding.

A shotgun blast blew a shower of glass out among the snowflakes.

For one eternal second, Curt imagined he‟d never left on this nightmare drive. He was back working the oilfields in Oklahoma, out amongst the hammer and grind of the pumps. Then his eyes fought their way open and the throbbing stepped inside his skull. Creedence had perished in the crash.

His lips resisted parting and he licked away the stickiness there, tasting blood. The wheel was pressing hard into his forehead. Lifting his head, the ache only got worse.

Every part of him was sore and some of the blood around his face was still wet. Plus the car was leaning, butt in the air, nose in the ditch. Great. Sorry, baby. Daddy‟s gonna be a bit late but he‟ll get there. Curt stopped his laugh dead, afraid he was losing it.

Straining his eyes through heavy log, all he could see was snow. Snow and trees. And another car blocking a lonely, hostile road. Jesus-H! What was the driver thinking of?

Damn near killed him.

Realisation dawned more painfully than consciousness: the other car looked like one of those Indian burial mounds, showing only a glimpse of wheel-arch and radiator; if there was any driver in that car he‟d surely breathed his last by now. Past the lead vehicle, Curt made out the contours of others, a line of traffic, buried in the snowfall. He thought of a whole line of mourners scattering dust over a row of coffins.

Suddenly Curt was scared. Maybe those other drivers had done the same. Maybe they‟d stayed put, been buried alive.

Forget the pain and get the hell out!

He lashed out with an arm. He was trapped in here. But no, he hit the catch and the door dropped open. „Daddy loves you, honey.‟ His voice a whimper. Then a warning: „Lord, you let me see my girl.‟

A shiver from outside took a hold of him and dumped him into the snow. The air whistled around him, blew flakes in his face and bit at his skin. Up on his knees, he hugged himself tight and muttered prayer after prayer to stave off the jitters. He‟d prayed hard every time his Daddy came at him with that belt, the buckle he took such care to polish; Curt never prayed scared, he focused on that shiny buckle and prayed plain angry. He thought of his bourbon,
almost
the colour of that buckle, rolling around under the dash. He turned to fetch it.

And a shadow crossed the corner of his eye.

„Oh Christ, good Christ, Jesus Lord.‟ He was just putting words to the shivers. He hauled himself to the side of his Buick, and turned his head, aching muscles slowing the move as much as honest fear. It was freezing and the sweat was pouring off him.

A coyote drooled at him. Head down, it looked starved and mangy.

There were others - shapes was all - trailing out from the trees like wisps of grey smoke, low to the ground. And now his arm was hooking back into the car, but what he wanted was in the glove box. A mile out of reach.

The coyote, depraved eyes fixed on Curt, hadn‟t moved.

Curt‟s fingers closed on the bottle; then slipped. He swore.

Then he had it again and hurled it at the coyote‟s face. The devil-animal snarled and jumped back, baring its fangs. The bottle shattered on the road, in one of the Buick‟s skid-marks. Maybe the alcohol stung its eyes, maybe the noise had it rattled. Either way, it backed off some more. Not far enough.

Curt didn‟t dare budge. If he lunged, so would the animal.

Think.

The snarling of that one coyote filled his head as it padded back, smelling the sweat. Curt focused on its eyes: those twin sharp points of brightness.

Then his prayers were answered. In a bad way.

Up along the road, something stirred in the pack. The grey shapes milled about, agitated, like the smoke had been fanned. The leader caught the scent, and suddenly it was as if Curt wasn‟t there. The animal‟s ears pricked up, it sniffed the air and glanced about. Spooked.

Suddenly, it was on the run, across the road and into the trees on the downward slope. Off towards the lake. The rest of its pack followed, pouring into the woods, never looking back. Leaving Curt very alone.

Curt lunged inside the car, stretching for the glove box. He snapped it open and dug inside for the pistol. An old .38

automatic. His numbed fingers fumbled as he racked the slide.

Curt scrambled to stand with a new determination. All that sweat had turned chill under his clothes and he had to get moving. Those damn coyotes had scattered, run for their lives. Curt‟s precious bourbon hadn‟t done that. No, sir.

„Daddy‟s safe, baby. Daddy‟s okay.‟

Woozy like he‟d downed twenty bourbons, Curt staggered and had to take a breather leaning against the car. His eyes scoured the woodlands ahead, up the slope and down, where the coyotes had disappeared. He couldn‟t see a thing. Too much white.

The hairs on his neck stood like that coyote‟s ears. There was a whisper of motion, like the softest footfall on snow.

Behind him.

He spun, backed himself into the nearest tree.

Somebody there? What in
hell
spooked those curs? What kind of Godforsaken hole have you brought my baby to, Martha, you bitch? I swear, I‟ll... He clutched the gun tighter for comfort, aimed it at nothing. „Daddy‟s not gonna die, not now, honey.‟

He flinched as the cold stung his face. Like an icicle splinter. It stung so bad, he had to touch his cheek for a moment to test for blood.

Nothing. Only a cold fire.

He ignored it and carried on scanning all around him, his back pressed to the tree. The cold closed in and the snows spattered on his jacket. He aimed the gun this way and that, searching along its sights. Nothing. Nothing he could see.

„Who‟s there? Goddamn you, who‟s there?‟

„Could these soldiers have scared the wild dogs, Doctor?‟

For a while there was no answer, but Leela was used to the Doctor‟s ponderous silences. „They could have, but I doubt it.

No, I rather think these are just men with less sense than the coyotes.‟

Leela felt warmer, pressed close to the ground, her breathing almost painful after their uphill march. The Doctor was very like the hero in the elders‟ tale sometimes, charging on and ignoring the protests of his loyal warriors. „Like us,‟

she reminded him.

They were huddled down at the edge of some silver-white trees. The branches were all bare, but the visibility was very poor and Leela felt their cover must be adequate at this distance. A bank of snow had gathered at the foot of the trees and tumbled down into a shallow basin, across which they could see a lonely red building, half buried in the side of another rise with more trees beyond. Soldiers moved swiftly in on the house from numerous angles.

They were difficult to pick out, in their white armour. Leela suddenly felt unhappy with the furs she had exhumed from the TARDIS wardrobes. She wanted armour like the soldiers wore, so she could move unseen in this colourless land.

„The soldiers are well-armed. If there is an enemy here then they are right to stand and fight.‟

The Doctor shrugged, gave a tilt of the head. „Well, we can debate that with the coyotes when we catch up with them.

He patted her arm and started to move off. Leela lifted herself stealthily, but hissed after him, „Where are we going?‟

„To introduce ourselves. Now stay down and stay quiet and follow me.‟

And with that the Doctor was leading her on a weaving course between the gaunt trees, closing in on the house. The crack of gunfire threatened the fragile air and Leela wondered how the Doctor could be so sure none of the shots were aimed at them.

His current thirst for danger was beginning to worry her.

All hell could have broken loose, but Captain Morgan Shaw wasn‟t going to stand for that. He sent Hmieleski chasing after Kristal to see if she was hurt; had his snipers pour covering shots into the front windows and ordered Marotta to stay put until the all clear. Then he moved the rest of them up in the formations he‟d decided on before this became a shoot-out.

By the time he‟d made the porch, the gunfire and the screams were an echo. Nothing more, nothing less. Morgan nodded to young Landers who moved in to bust the door open with the butt of his M4. The guy, with his black goatee and weathered eyes, gave him a look like he knew what to expect.

Morgan knew too: a bloodbath. Had to be. Some religious cult sees itself as a modern-day Masada. Tries to make him out to be the bad guy. If only.

As boys, Morgan and Makenzie had never got to see the interior of the house. But this was the way it must have looked in a young boy‟s nightmares. The old doc was the local spook and he had to live in a place like this, light from the iced-over windows creeping across the floors in shafts, afraid to rouse the ghosts sleeping under the boards. The
spirits.

They swept that house in standard two-by-two. All Morgan could hear, upstairs and down, was the breaking of doors and the shouts of „Clear!‟, all to the rhythm of his own beating heart. Swinging his SMG around another chipped and peeling doorframe, it got to be so he wasn‟t sure any more what they were searching for. A tunnel? A secret passage?

Landers burst in on the dining room, sent a chair scraping across the tiles. Morgan swept in after him, SMG arcing left to right. „Mary Mother,‟ hissed Landers.

There had been a firefight in here. They‟d all heard it, straight after Kristal had nearly caught one; the shots and the screams of victims. Gunsmoke lingered in the air, mingling with their steamy breaths. A few weapons - pistols, shotguns, an automatic rifle - lay on the floor, along with a scattering of spent cartridges. The papered walls were pitted and splintered all to hell. There were even spots of blood on the table.

But by now Morgan knew they wouldn‟t find anything.

Nobody; no bodies. The house wasn‟t that kind of empty. The shadows, the darkness in here, were frozen solid.

This place was empty like a recently vacated grave.

Colder than a cemetery out there. Melvin Village had never looked so dead.

Painted wood, white the colour of preference, the buildings should have vanished altogether on a day like today. But from where Makenzie Shaw was parked, out front of the store, only the outskirts of the village were properly invisible.

Ordinarily you could see it all: more trees than houses, the church in the middle of it all, that white spire a head or two shorter than the trees, and the lake behind. Pretty as a picture, all right.

Every day Makenzie woke up and drove down from his cabin to make his rounds, and he never really noticed any of it. Except sometimes, when he wasn‟t carrying a heavy load on his mind. Which, now he came to think of it, was never, these days.

Winter. Jesus. When had it been this bad? He couldn‟t remember. Probably never.

Never this dead. And that was the real funny part: ordinarily the town lived the whole year round. Summer or winter, everybody flocking to the lake like geese, to fish, swim, sail - sunbathe even - or to head for the hills and climb, trek, ski, get lost. But the truth was, with all those folks passing through week after week, Makenzie‟s town was never left to just
be.
She was doing all her living for everybody else. Between seasons there was even the motorcycle festival around Winnipesaukee; brought a horde of bikers through - like a Biblical plague, Hal Byers said every year.

Today there was nobody.

So now here she was, Melvin Village, alone at last. And not only was Hal praying every night for visitors, customers for his store, but the one time the town could live for herself and just
be,
well, the place was past death. Like God had cut off her blood supply.

Makenzie caught a movement out of his quarterlight.

He reached over to open the passenger door as Laurie came round. She sidled into the truck, bursting his bubble of warmth and silence and bringing a few breaths of snow with her. She deposited a couple of Styrofoam cups above the dash and heaved the door to, before she was ready to offer a smile.

„Look like you wish you‟d stayed home today. Chief,‟ she said.

Makenzie grabbed the nearest cup, and let his face soak up the steam for a moment. „Tell you what, I‟m going to be kind today, not even let you know how wrong you got that.‟

„Trouble up on Walton Mountain?‟

Makenzie had to laugh halfway through blowing on his coffee. Laurie‟s favourite joke, now there was a woman and a kid in the Chiefs life. He stole a glance at his deputy: skin the colour of winter, long hair the colour of fall. Laurie Aldrich.

Now there sat a mistake he would gladly have made if Martha hadn‟t happened. Fact was that he‟d been on the point of making it when he‟d been called out to the trailer park, a bunch of wasters from Wawbeek creating trouble outside of Martha‟s trailer; baiting the Southerners.