Sarah collapsed into a chair, out of breath. Tommy poured her a gla.s.s of water from a pitcher on the table. She gulped the liquid down before relating what had happened to her. "The police are evacuating people, but there"s something wrong. It"s as if somebody is controlling the police, like pulling the strings of a puppet!"
"The monster," Tommy stated, matter of factly.
"You think so?" Jack asked.
"It"s all too much of a coincidence that thing yesterday, then the smog coming down, now this with the police. The creature is making a move for the East End maybe for the whole of London!"
"What are we going to do?" Sarah asked.
"Any of the old bill come round here trying to evacuate us, they"ve got a shock in store. n.o.body gets the better of Tommy Ramsey n.o.body!"
"What about the people being evacuated?"
Tommy thought long and hard before replying. "Right now, I ain"t got the men or the firepower to take on all the old bill at once. By tomorrow morning I could have two or three times as many men, if the other firms come on board. For now, we just have to wait."
Sarah was furious. "I thought you were supposed to be the East End"s protector? I don"t see you protecting anybody but yourself!"
Tommy grabbed her by the throat and threw her against a wall. "Shut your mouth! Shut it!" He let go of Sarah, who slid down to the floor coughing. "I"ve put up with a lot from you but don"t think you can take liberties! I decide when I"m ready to strike back, not some girl!"
He stormed out of the room, following by a grinning Jack.
Sarah rubbed a hand around her neck ruefully. She wondered how the Doctor was doing in his efforts to persuade the Xhinn to leave. Right now, there didn"t seem much hope of anybody else saving the day...
Rose and Frank Kelly were huddled in a corner. They had been herded into this empty room along with everyone else offloaded from the vans. That had been nearly a hundred people, leaving s.p.a.ce and privacy at a premium. The police said they would soon be moved on to a safer place and apologised for the overcrowding. Not long after another flood of evacuees were being driven into the room, followed by a third wave. The room had no ventilation, no windows and nowhere to stand. If any more people were added, the crush would begin to suffocate those already trapped inside.
"I don"t like this, Frank," Rose said, biting back tears. "There"s too many people in here. Why are there so many people?"
"I don"t know love, I don"t know." He hugged her closer, but that just pushed them closer against the wall. Frank could feel his ribs bending under the pressure of the crowd pressing against him. "Somebody open a door, for the love of G.o.d! My wife"s suffocating over here!" he shouted.
But the only response was a hissing noise above them. A panel opened high in a wall and a walkway extended across the room. But it was far too high for any in the crush to reach. One man clambered on to the shoulders of others and made a desperate leap upwards. He missed the edge of the walkway and fell back to the floor, toppling several people. The crowd collapsed inwards on the fallen, crushing them underfoot.
Frank put his hands over Rose"s ears to block out the screams of pain. "It"ll all be over soon, love," he said soothingly.
"You"ll see."
High above them the Xhinn floated forwards along the walkway, followed by the Doctor. He looked down with horror at the crush below. "You"re killing those poor people! What possible reason could you have?" he demanded.
"We are testing them," the creature replied, projecting its words directly into the Doctor"s mind. "How else could we decide whether this species is worthy of being offered the salvation the Xhinn brings? They could also make a basic foodstuff, once the bodies have been sufficiently rendered down."
Voices cried out in agony and anguish from below. The Doctor forced himself to look at the faces, trying to remember each and every one. n.o.body deserved to die like that, but at least they could be remembered. "That does not excuse such barbarity.
Why, it"s "
"Inhuman? You forget we are not human. Neither are you.
What do you care for the fate of a few hundred savages from a backwards species?"
"Life is life. Just because a sentient being does not match your own, that does not permit you to torture and kill."
"We would hardly call these creatures sentient." The Xhinn moved onwards, already leaving the chamber behind. "Besides, there are plenty more where they came from. This whole planet seems to be swarming with them."
The Doctor closed his eyes. "How many more must die?" he whispered to himself before following the Xhinn. "How many more?"
Rose died first, her breathing stopped but her eyes stared gla.s.sily up at Frank. He was glad she was out of pain now. He had caused her so much in their time together. He had been no sort of husband to her. Rose had deserved better than him. But at least she was out of pain now.
Frank threw back his head and gave a last, agonised scream as the crush snapped his ribs one by one. He felt the breath leaving his body and then a warmth flowed over him, gentle and giving like a lover"s embrace. He surrendered himself, his arms still holding the only person he had ever loved...
Sarah found Brick up on the roof. He was wrapping little hoods of hessian around the heads of his pigeons. Before putting each hood on, he poured a drop of whisky over the fabric.
"What are you doing?" Sarah asked quietly.
"They"re dying. They can"t breathe," Brick replied, tears streaming down his face. "I thought if I gave them sort of gas masks, it might help. The fumes from the alcohol might keep out the worst of the smog."
Around him the roof was littered with the bodies of his dead pigeons. A few still fluttered their wings feebly, but most were already gone.
"I tried to set them free earlier. Once I realised the weather was only going to get worse, I tried to set them free." Brick couldn"t bring himself to look at her. "But they just kept coming back. They couldn"t fly anymore. Couldn"t breathe, I suppose."
Sarah hugged the mountain of a man, his huge body racked with sobbing. "I"m sorry Arthur. I"m so sorry."
The white Rolls Royce was creeping along Old Street, only travelling at a few miles an hour. The driver had been forced to open his window to lean out to see. The windscreen wipers had seized up from the strain of trying to keep the front window clear. Steve MacMa.n.u.s shook his head angrily.
"I must have been mad to come out in this weather," he fumed. A familiar face loomed out of the smog by the gangster"s side window. He called to the driver to stop, then opened his door. Detective Bob Valentine got into the car.
"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo there"s a policeman in my roller!"
MacMa.n.u.s exclaimed, laughing at his own joke. The two bodyguards laughed along dutifully, but the crumpled detective did not smile. "What"s wrong lost your sense of humour?"
Valentine just stared at him. MacMa.n.u.s stopped grinning.
"I"ve been paying you plenty to feed Tommy Ramsey false information. Now it"s time you gave me some true facts. What"s he really up to? He gave me some story about killer creatures that shoot lightning out their arms. I don"t believe a word of it.
So why don"t you tell me what"s really going on?"
Valentine smiled. "You want to know what"s really going on?"
The detective pulled a pistol from his pocket and shot both the bodyguards in the face. Blood sprayed across the shocked face of Steve MacMa.n.u.s. The driver struggled to pull a gun from inside his jacket. Valentine turned and shot the driver through the head. Then he trained the pistol at the gangster.
"Now who"s lost their sense of humour?"
At St Luke"s Church, Father Simmons had been praying for guidance. After more than an hour on his knees in front of the altar, inspiration struck. He painfully got to his feet and went to the telephone in the sacristy. He dialled the number for one of his parishioners.
"Mrs Potter? It"s Father Simmons at St Luke"s. I"m calling around all the most influential members of my congregation." He really meant those with the biggest talents for gossiping, but all talents had their uses. "I"m holding a special service tomorrow morning, to pray for relief from this terrible smog."
He listened to several minutes of impa.s.sioned anecdotes about the effects of the weather, before politely interrupting. "I know, it is shocking. I was wondering if you could help me spread the good word. The service will start here in the church tomorrow at ten o"clock."
It took him another five minutes to end the conversation and start his next call. At this rate, Father Simmons was worried that he might still be calling people when the service was due to begin tomorrow!
"Now, what"s this all about, Bob?" Steve MacMa.n.u.s was using his friendliest voice, smiling at the detective opposite. The gangster was painfully aware of the blood still dribbling from the corpses of the two bodyguards on either side of him. Unless he played this very carefully, MacMa.n.u.s knew he could be joining them in the hereafter.
"Do you believe in Heaven?" Valentine asked.
"You what?"
"Heaven. Pearly gates. Playing the harp. Sitting on clouds. All of that."
MacMa.n.u.s was worried now. Having a conversation about the afterlife with a man pointing a loaded pistol at you was never a good sign. "I hadn"t really thought about it."
"Tsk, tsk in your line of business? You should have done.
But then, let"s face it, you"re going to be spending eternity in the other place, ain"t you? Hard nuts roasting on an open fire, Lucifer prodding you with his pitchfork."
"Like I said, hadn"t really thought about it."
"That"s a shame." Valentine started laughing. "You know what I find the funniest thing of all? The real rib-tickler?"
"No..."
"You thought you were controlling events. Getting Jack the Lad to run your errands, using me to send Tommy Ramsey jumping to all the wrong conclusions. You honestly believed you were the man." The detective leaned forwards, careful to keep his pistol just out of MacMa.n.u.s"s reach. "You were well wrong. And all those times you humiliated me, all those times you treated me like I was nothing, like I was less than nothing...Well, now they"re all coming back to haunt you, ain"t they? Goodbye, Steve." Valentine shot his remaining bullets into the gangster.
"See you in h.e.l.l."
Soon after Frank Kelly died, small grates appeared high in the walls of the chamber. Yellow gas tumbled downwards on to the survivors, stealing the final breaths from their twisted bodies.
Everyone was dead within moments.
The doorway reopened and expressionless policemen began to drag the corpses out, one by one. They put each body on to a conveyor belt outside the doorway. Once on to the belt, the corpses rumbled away into darkness.
Elsewhere inside the Xhinn vessel, the Doctor was standing amidst the triumvirate. The three creatures floated around him in their random patterns, but each examined the visitor with remorseless intensity. The Doctor returned their gaze with interest, refusing to follow them with his eyes. Instead he stared at each member of the triumvirate as they pa.s.sed him.
"Why have you come to this world?" he demanded.
"To a.n.a.lyse."
"To investigate."
"To decide."
"Decide what?" the Doctor asked.
"If it is ripe."
"Ready for colonisation."
"Ready for the Xhinn."
"But surely Earth can be of no strategic importance to the Xhinn?"
"It has resources."
"A wealth of resources."
"It will be a valuable a.s.set."
"Your experiments how can you justify such horrors?"
"We need not justify."
"We are the triumvirate."
"We are the Xhinn."
"You are avoiding my question," the Doctor replied, exasperated. He found talking with this three-voiced ent.i.ty hard work. Time to try another line of attack. "You are a scouting force?"
"We are missionaries."
"We are sent to educate these primitives."
"If they will not learn, they will be swept aside."
"So, if everyone on Earth embraced the ways of the Xhinn, they could all live happily ever after?"
"We do not care for their happiness."
"We want their obedience."
"We expect their worship."
"Mankind should worship at the feet of the mighty Xhinn, is that it? And when"s all this supposed to happen? You like to consider yourselves omniscient, but you didn"t predict the need to accelerate your plans, did you?"
"Unfortunate."
"But nothing more."