"Fine, change the subject," she said with a sigh.
"Shouldn"t it be quickly? Kiss me quickly? Is it funny now?"
"Never mind."
"Kick me quick. Now I can see how that might work. Kick me quick... appease me slowly."
Clara marched across the console room, doing her best to keep calm.
"I just thought you might like to see where I"m from. That"s all. My home. I thought you might like to visit it."
Once upon a time, she thought bleakly, you would have. And we"d have had such a wonderful time. And you"d have loved that d.a.m.n hat.
"A "black pool". Right. Good things very seldom come out of black pools in my experience. Oozing things do. Scuttling beastie type things."
"Well, I did."
"That"s why you scuttle so much."
"I do not scuttle! I..."
"Flounce?"
"Glide!" Clara tried again. "We"ll go up the tower! See the ballroom! And the illuminations! And I"ll make you eat candyfloss!"
There was a very long pause. The Doctor"s face was stern. Then he turned round, slowly.
"I love candyfloss."
The TARDIS wheezed to a halt. Dressed in a black top and mini-skirt, Clara ran delightedly to the door.
"Home!" Then she turned round and regarded the Doctor. "You"ll have to take that coat off."
The Doctor looked up, surprised. "Well, I don"t think so."
"It"s Blackpool. n.o.body ever wears a coat."
"Oh dear. A deal breaker." He turned back towards the console display.
"You always get like this when you"re doing something nice," shouted Clara cheerily as she headed for the door. "I just ignore it. Mind you," she went on, almost to herself, "Blackpool in November... maybe we can let you off just this once."
Then she stepped out of the TARDIS into a steaming hot jungle.
The vines hung heavy in the trees, which were weighed down with strange brightly coloured fruits. The air was damp and sweet with the scent of rotting vegetation. Underfoot were fallen fronds and burst pomegranates, decaying where they lay.
"Oh no," said Clara, looking round, her hands on her hips. "This isn"t Blackpool. Stupid TARDIS."
The Doctor popped his head out of the door, then glanced back at the console readout. "It most certainly is," he said as he stepped out into the lush green landscape. "Oh, it"s lovely! You should have said!"
"No!" said Clara. "This is a jungle! Blackpool has a Ferris wheel. And a beach! And..." She looked up. Overhead, the great wrought iron structure of the Blackpool Tower was slightly tilted. It had oxidised, and great vines twisted their way through the gaping holes in its structure. Brightly coloured birds swooped round the top. In front of them was what remained of the Golden Mile. Smashed lightbulbs crunched underfoot from the ruined illuminations; the promenade was completely overgrown, and high black waves lapped right across the cracked tramlines. In the distance, through the broken-down struts of the Big One rollercoaster, she saw, stilting along awkwardly "...giraffes?" Clara whipped round to face the Doctor. "Giraffes? What"s happened to my hometown?"
The Doctor took out his pocket watch. "Oh. Yeah. Bit late."
She glanced at the writhing greenery. "Is this the trees doing a thing again?"
The Doctor shook his head sadly. ""Fraid not. This is here to stay. It"s 2089. It"s climate change. The real deal. Looks like all those Bags for Life you bought didn"t quite do the trick."
Clara stepped forward, horrified. "The Golden Mile, the sand... it was already eroding in my time, you could see it. But they built these sea defences..." She looked at them. The concrete barriers were overwhelmed with water; crumbled away.
Horrified, Clara started to run down the promenade, broken gla.s.s crunching under her feet. The pier sagged heavily into the high seas, bent and twisted into cruel shapes, dripping vines. Past the pier, a spit of black sand remained, in front of the ruins of the fish and chip shops; upturned plastic ice cream bins bobbing up and down in the water; a shipwrecked tram. She stopped and stared, mouth open.
Hurtling across the sand at full pelt, their heads and manes tossing in the warm wind, their hooves galloping in the rushing water, was a herd of wild donkeys. They looked beautiful and strange, outlined against the dark seas.
Clara"s hand went to her mouth.
The Doctor came over, casually eating a handful of grapes that stained his mouth. "This place is amazing... What?"
"The donkeys! They"re running wild!"
"Beautiful..."
As they watched the animals gambolling in the surf, suddenly, as if out of nowhere, came a flashing, buzzing noise. A jagged silver disc, smaller than a frisbee, zipped through the sky, and embedded itself in the side of one of the donkeys, which immediately whinnied in distress and collapsed on the beach.
"Oh no!"
Clara darted across the sand towards it, as the herd left the creature behind. The wounded animal was tossing and writhing in pain, and she couldn"t get close for the thrashing hooves.
"That projectile was about the size of a CD," said the Doctor, coming up behind her. "I wonder what it was. Simply Red? I mean, I can understand the urge to throw..."
The donkey was grunting and screeching as the Doctor moved closer, his face taking on an expression, Clara thought, rather gentler than the one he habitually wore when dealing with creatures on two legs.
"Sssh," he said. He knelt down away from the animal"s pistoning limbs, and put both hands either side of the donkey"s head.
The flailing, terrified creature was immediately soothed at his touch, and quietened its terrible keening and thrashing.
"Sssh."
The donkey and the Doctor regarded one another, as the Doctor very carefully and steadily, making no sudden movements, took one hand from the creature"s head, and slowly pulled the jagged silver weapon from the donkey"s side, hurling it away. Then, without breaking eye contact, he took out his sonic and quickly sealed and cauterised the wound.
The donkey"s muzzle relaxed in the Doctor"s hands, and it made a quiet braying.
"There, there."
Clara looked around. She screwed up her eyes against the sun.
"Who did that? Who was it?"
Bang. The next silver disc missed the Doctor"s boots by inches. He jumped up, patting the donkey briefly on its flank.
"Don"t worry, Meghan. We"ll get this sorted, OK?"
Pow!
The disc shot straight across the black sand. The sun poured through the canopy of overgrown bushes on the promenade, as Clara and the Doctor backed away rapidly towards the water.
"The donkey"s called Meghan?"
"She"s not called anything... Thought she might like Meghan."
They splashed through the black water and crouched behind a twisted stanchion, as the Doctor pointed towards a distant window in an overgrown boarding house. A tumbled sign read "The Arnold Guest House"; Clara remembered it well. It had already been nearly derelict when she was a girl.
Now, the jungle had grown straight through it. Thick vines had broken through the tiles of the roof, so it looked like the guest house had come down from the sky and landed on a tree, rather than the other way around. Every empty window frame was a ma.s.s of twisted greenery. In one of the upper windows, Clara suddenly caught sight of a flash of light; and in the next instant, a buzzing silver disc shot right over their heads.
The Doctor grabbed her by the hand and they splashed deeper backwards into the water under the eerie blackness of the skeletal pier. Clara blinked as, from the waves, a shoal of flying fish leapt up, their strange yellow webbed fins glinting in the spots of light; then they splashed back underwater.
"Whoa!"
Together they spied an abandoned pedalo; flotsam, bobbing underneath the pier. They glanced at one another.
"I don"t think so," said the Doctor.
"Pedalos are cool," pleaded Clara. "It"ll be fun!"
The latest disc bounced off the top of the water.
"It"s not a day for fun!" said the Doctor.
"Yes, well, that"s becoming clear," said Clara.
Instead, they waded across to the other side of the pier, out of range, then splashed full pelt over the esplanade wall that was covered in broken gla.s.s from the shattered lights. They ducked across the tramlines, faded and dull underwater. Then they circled round and backed up Pleasant Street, looking out for the sniper. Clara noticed in pa.s.sing her old favourite chippie, but all she could smell now was thick green vegetation, heavy and exotic fruit.
The Doctor opened the rotting wooden back door of the Arnold with a swift kick.
"Hey!" he shouted loudly. "Sniper boy! We"re completely unarmed and you"re playing "Now That"s What I Call Chopping Up a Donkey Volume 1", so how about you come down and we have a wee chat about that?"
There was silence. The ancient carpet beneath their feet was brown and moist, but in here, amongst the damp creepers, Clara could still sense something of the many, many old breakfasts, the bacon and the sausage and over-stewed tea and HP sauce. She found it comforting.
There was no noise. The building was large, with many creaking, chipped old doors opening off a long corridor, covered in peeling fire exit signs.
"Third floor, fourth window from the left," whispered the Doctor. They stopped and listened.
Suddenly, overhead, there came a footstep steady, heavy in tread then another.
"Come out, you big feartie!" shouted the Doctor "What if he comes down and shoots us with his silver frisbee thing?"
"I"ll talk him out of it with my friendly wit and charm."
"So we"re doomed, then."
There was a creaking of a vine, and a large pineapple bounced down the stairs straight past them. Clara jumped, and glanced at the Doctor, whose face was impa.s.sive.
The footsteps continued slowly, and Clara found she was holding her breath.
"h.e.l.lo?" she shouted. The staircase, wound around with vines, headed upwards into darkness.
The footsteps stopped over their heads. Then, very slowly, a foot appeared at the top of the twisted stairwell. It was wearing a very worn, grubby sheepskin slipper, over a pair of very baggy tan-coloured tights. The Doctor and Clara watched as another leg continued down, revealing a matching slipper: but the leg in this slipper was a skeletal steel.
"Are you going to shoot us?" said Clara, trying to sound brave.
"It"s after 9 a.m.!" came a harsh metallic voice. "No guests in the guest house after 9 a.m.!"
Clara backed away. The figure continued to descend. It was half a very old woman, swathed in layers of nighties and a huge filthy floral patterned housecoat. Ancient rollers were wrapped in thin dead wisps of hair, under a dirty headscarf. The other half of her face, where the wizened skin had been worn away, was metal.
The half-woman, half-machine brandished a large silver circular launcher at them.
"What is she?" asked Clara.
"Most horrifying creature in G.o.d"s creation," whispered the Doctor. "A landlady!"
That got the half-woman"s attention.
"No guests in the guest house after 9 a.m.!"
The Doctor moved forwards. "I"m sorry to disturb you, madam. We were hoping to rent a room for the night?"
"Off-season! No guests in the guesthouse after 9 a.m.!"
She blinked very hard suddenly, looking slightly confused, and Clara wondered if she knew what she was.
"Where did everybody go?" asked Clara gently.
"Off-season! Off-season!" Her voice was sounding more robotic. She lifted up the blaster. "No guests in the..."
Clara moved towards her.
"No, wait!" said the Doctor, trying to stop her. But Clara shook him off.
"Are you all right?" she asked gently. The woman"s face suddenly looked more human than robot, and Clara felt very sorry for her.
The woman looked down. "I don"t like it when it gets dark," she said. "The animals make noises."
"What are you doing shooting animals?" asked the Doctor in consternation.
The woman"s face turned still and her voice took on a metallic tinge again. "Got to have sausages for breakfast! Guests need sausages! Sausages and out by 9 a.m.! But you"re not guests, are you? Are you sausages?"
The woman moved forward suddenly, incredibly swiftly, and opened her mouth. The scream, when it came, was horrifyingly loud.
"NO GUESTS!" she screamed, advancing with the blaster. "NO GUESTS!!!!!"