"No. No," he cried to himself. "Not yet. Not yet!"
He looked up at a torn poster plastered to the wall. It read:
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES IN THE STREET.
Seeing the poster almost spurred the man to continue walking on. He clambered to his feet and made his way to the side door of the former department store he was standing beside. He hammered on the door.
After a few seconds the door opened a crack and a woman's face peered out. "Richard?"
"Let me in Chloe."
"You have the plague. I can't," said the woman, brushing her sort dark hair away from her sweaty forehead.
"You have to let me in. Please."
"The antidote hasn't reached this far yet. We can't risk the rest of us getting infected."
"Let me speak to Peter. He'll understand."
"Peter won't risk the rest of us," said Chloe. "I'm sorry, Richard."
She closed the door and Richard began hammering on it. "Please! Please! I don't want to die!"
Behind the door the woman, Chloe, leaned against it and closed her eyes. “Nobody wants to die,” she said quietly to herself.
She could hear - and feel - Richard pounding on the door behind her. She sobbed to herself, straightened herself up and then walked down the dark corridor towards the shop floor.
After a while the banging stopped. She felt guilty. She felt bad, but she had even worse things to fel bad about.
She emerged into a dimly lit, but rather grand looking, shop floor. Most of the rails of clothes were clear - the survivors had utilised them for themselves - and there were make shift beds all around.
"Who was it?" said a tanned-skinned woman.
"Richard," said Chloe solemnly.
"Is he-?"
"He's about ready to, yeah, Edith."
Edith forced back to the tears and took a sip from her plastic cup of tepid water.
Chloe leant against a pillar and breathed out. "Where's Peter?"
"Up top?"
Chloe nodded. “I need to speak to him.”
She made her way through the shop floor and towards the dead escalator. She climbed up them and up another set until she reached the top floor. She made her way through the underwear section until she reached a fire exit which led out to a brick corridor. Following that she climbed some stone steps until she emerged onto the roof.
Sat in a deckchair with a pair of binoculars was Peter White, looking out across the town.
"Hey, Peter," said Chloe.
Peter turned and smiled. "How's it going?"
"Bad," said Chloe. She crouched down on the floor next to him. "Richard's dying."
"Richard Sanderson?"
Chloe nodded.
Peter shook his head. "Why was he even out there?"
“He went out the other day. He was looking for more supplies from down the road.”
"We know everything has been cleaned out now," said Peter. "Sam and Winchester have been all over the town. There's nothing left."
“You know Richard. Never one to listen to anybody say ‘no’.”
“And now he’s gotten himself infected.” Peter sighed. “If Richard’s infected, then how long before it reaches us?”
"Maybe we need to move locations." She looked up at Peter. He didn't react. "Yarathorpe might be-"
"We're not going to Yarathorpe."
"It's a short drive-"
"It's a ten minute drive. Ten minutes that might result in us all being killed."
"We can move in small groups."
"Cars attract attention."
"Then we can walk-"
"It's a 45 minute walk."
"Then how about-"
"Enough Chloe!" said Peter, raising his voice slightly. "We can't risk it."
She folded her arms and got up. "Then we all die."
Peter sighed as she walked away. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was getting nowhere fast. Chloe was always a little hot headed, but he worried that if he didn't reign her in soon she might start tempting people to follow her.
They had been holed up in here for months now. At first it was fine; they had all the food they needed, but that soon ran out. When Peter had gotten to Thornsby with Molly and Sam it had been chaos. Meteorites had fallen everywhere. And then the news of the plague came, the destruction of New York, the occupation of London, and one by one people began to contract the disease and die.
And so they holed themselves away in a department store. Just a handful of them.
And then they came...
Peter was distracted by a sound coming from towards the church. He grabbed his binoculars to see, but buildings obscured the view. But it was a sound he had heard only a year ago...
The day Martha had died.
They day they had come to Earth.
The Doctor was standing outside of the TARDIS looking up at the structure that towered above them. Maxus and Tylaya emerged and both of them gazed up to what the Doctor was looking at.
"Amazing," said the Doctor, feeling the tiny sprinkling of raindrops fall onto his bald head.
"What is? It's a church, isn't it?"
"Yes," said the Doctor, "but the last time I was here the church had been blown to pieces. Hundreds of years of history just destroyed in seconds." He walked across the grass to the base of the church. It was clearly newer stone, but it had been rebuilt in almost exactly the same way. "It's strange to think that this is nearly 150 years old now."
The last time the Doctor was in Thornsby, he had been travelling with his companions, Danny and Caroline. The pair of them had opted to stay on Earth whilst he left and eventually ended up in Little Pebblesford, where he met Alice.
Alice…He felt sad again.
"So when were you last here?"
"2012." He looked around the area, sadness in his eyes. "That's the trouble with time travel; I suppose everyone I knew from back then are long gone."
"Sorry for interrupting, Doctor," said Maxus, "but we really do need to get out of the open. The Daleks could be just around the corner."
"And we need to move the TARDIS as well," said Tylaya.
"No," said the Doctor. "I've set it's perception filter to the highest level. I doubt whether it'd even register on their scanners."
"But they might see it," said Maxus.
"It's a perception filter," said the Doctor in a manner which made Maxus sound like an idiot. “They won’t even notice it. Nobody will unless she is specifically pointed out to them.”
"Alright, you two," she said. "Let's get moving. Do you have everything you need?"
The Doctor patted his heavy satchel, which was stuffed with equipment. "I removed the time drive from under the console. That's all I need to fix. Shouldn't take more than a few hours at the most."
"Good," said Tylaya.
They made their way around the corner and into the Old Market Place. The place was deserted, cardboard boxes and rubbish being blown around by the light breeze, the rain making some of them stick to the pavement in a soggy mush. They continued down Victoria street.
"So you heard about the invasion in your history books then?" said the Doctor.
"Yep," said Tylaya. "They first sent meteorites loaded with a plague in around 2157. After they'd wiped out half the population they began landing."
"They destroyed New York," said Maxus. "Took them nearly a century to rebuild it all."
"Hmmm," said the Doctor grimly.
"Nearly ten years they occupied us," said Maxus angrily. "Ten years! If it wasn't for the resistance we might not be here now."
"When did you hear about it?" said Tylaya to the Doctor.
"Oh, I was there," said the Doctor. "A long, long, long time ago. I was there at the end."
"So this must be pretty weird for you then?" said Tylaya, marvelling at the wonder of time travel.
"I suppose," said the Doctor, as they headed down East St. Mary's Gate and towards the entrance to the shopping mall.
"We could stop them now, you know?" said Maxus. "The Daleks."
"No," said the Doctor. "We can't change history."
"But you changed it just by being there 9 years from now."
"I didn't change it," said the Doctor. "I was always a part of it."
"And you're always a part of this here and now."
"Yes, to fix my TARDIS," said the Doctor, becoming exasperated, "not to change what I've already done and bring an early close to the invasion."
Maxus sighed and shook his head. "I'll never understand time travel."
"Don't try," said the Doctor under his breath.
They reached the former-automatic doors of the shopping centre and the Doctor and Maxus managed to force them open. The inside strangely didn't smell stale. Clearly people had been camping out here. It had been used quite recently.
They were about to head down the entrance mall when they heard a sound.
"Quick!" said the Doctor, as they ducked into a smashed shop window and clambered to the back to hide in the shadows.
A few seconds later the familiar site of a Dalek came gliding past. This one was silver from top to bottom, adorned with blue hemispheres around its skirt. Its base made it stand taller than most Daleks seen previously and on it's back was a small dish which collected and stored up power to allow the machine to move. A Dalek at its most primitive. But even at it’s most primitive was enough to kill anything in sight.
Tylaya remained as still as she could as it glided past. If it's head swivelled in their direction it's night vision in its eyestalk would surely spot them.
Thankfully it went on past, just squeezing through the doors they had opened on their way in.
"That was close," said the Doctor. "We need to stay out of sight."
"Is this the ideal place to be hiding then? Surely we could have just waited it out in the TARDIS?"
"What? In the dark?" said the Doctor to Maxus. "I told you I needed to shut down all systems and that means life support as well."
"But a full sized mall?"
"We'll find a smaller unit to work in. Somewhere further away from the entrance."
They clambered out of the shop front and made their way back along the mall entrance until they reached the turning the Dalek had come around.
The Doctor held out his hand to stop them going any further and they cautiously peered around the corner.
The coast was clear and so they continued through the main part of the mall, passing broken computer information screens, rubbish strewn across the floor and smashed glass and scorched walls.
“Looks like there was some sort of battle here,” said Tylaya.
“Bet you the Daleks won,” said Maxus ominously.
“Quinn…”
“If you don’t have anything constructive to say, Mr Maxus, then please don’t say anything at all.”
“Yes, sir!” said Maxus, giving a mock salute.
Tylaya rolled her eyes. Although the friction between him and the Doctor had eased quite a lot, Maxus still tried his best to not get on with the Doctor.
A sudden sound made the Doctor stop dead in his tracks, his arms outstretched to stop his two companions from going any further.
“Run?” suggest Tylaya.
“Where?” said the Doctor, realising that all the other shops in the vicinity were lit from the sun shining through the skylights that lined the roof of the shopping centre. They couldn’t hide in the shadows this time.
“Good point,” said Tylaya.
There was something shuffling at the bottom of the mall. A doorway was wrenched open, the bottom of it scraping against the floor. The three of hem braced themselves for the emerging Dalek…
And instead a young girl of about 5’1” with long dark hair, grey top and army-green combats emerged, blinking in the sunlight.
She turned to look at the Doctor, Maxus and Tylaya and then looked worried.
“Hello,” said the Doctor with a smile. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Don’t be afraid.”
“Are you…Robomen?” said the girl nervously. She was quite well spoken.
“Do we look like Robomen?” said the Doctor. “We aren’t wearing any head apparatus.”
“Right…” said the girl, nodding as if working it all out in her head.
“So what’s your name?” said the Doctor, this time edging forward a little.
“Do you have the plague?” said the girl, a little more confidently this time.
“We’re not sick,” said Tylaya with a smile. “We just arrived in town today.”
“Are you-?”
“For god sake!” said Maxus loudly. “We’re not Robomen. We don’t have the plague. We’renot murderers or assassins or child snatchers!”
The girl jumped, reached behind her back and drew a huge, futuristic looking gun.
The time travellers froze.
“My name’s Molly Hasthorpe,” she said confidently, “and you’re my prisoners.”
The Doctor and his team had been escorted by the teenager through a department store until they reached an area where a group of about fourteen people gathered. There was a man with black hair and a beard who immediately ran to Molly and guided her away. Then there was a woman in her late twenties with short black hair, dressed all in black, and the other prominent person was a slightly older man with white hair and a bit of stubble. He wore a blue shirt and tan coloured trousers and put a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles on.
The Doctor had explained to them that they had recently arrived in Thornsby and were looking for shelter until they moved on.
The man, Peter White, had accepted their story and had welcome them into their group.
“So, she’s your daughter, yeah?” said Tylaya, nodding at the man who had introduced himself as Sam Hasthorpe.
“That she is,” said Sam, giving her a hug, “although I’d quite like to know what she was doing outside the store.”
“I wanted to see the Dalek,” said Molly glumly.
“Why the hell would you wanna do that?” said Maxus, taking a sip of some lukewarm water he had been handed.
“Because she’s never seen one before,” said the woman, Chloe Carpenter, who came and sat beside them, putting her arm around Molly.
Molly shrugged her away.
“How is that even possible?” said Tylaya. “The town must be crawling with them.”
“It is,” said Sam, “but we haven’t left here for a year.”
“A whole year?” said Maxus.
“We saw what the Daleks were doing in the cities. There’s not as many here, but we knew we couldn’t risk being out there. Every now and then we’ll leave and gather supplies from nearby shops, but most have been looted now and we’re running out of places to look.”
“Molly just never went outside,” said Sam, suddenly remembering the need to answer Maxus’s question. “I wasn’t going to risk my daughter out there.”
The Doctor was fiddling with the time drive; a small device really. There was a glass, square core running through the centre with metal rivets running around its circumference every two centimetres.
“What’s that box of tricks?” said Peter as he came and sat beside the Doctor.
“Just a device to…defeat the Daleks,” lied the Doctor.
Peter laughed. “If the world government can’t fight the Daleks, then what hope do a couple of old men have?”
The Doctor smiled sadly. Peter was getting on and it’d be another nine years until the Daleks were defeated by himself, an old man, in his first incarnation. Peter might not even live to see that day. He hoped he did, of course.
“We have to have hope,” said the Doctor. “It’ll end one day.”
“It’s only just begun,” said Peter darkly.
The Doctor frowned. “You know there was a Dalek just out there?”
“They haven’t found us yet,” said Peter. “We’re building a community here.” He looked proud. “We have to try and survive somehow.”
The Doctor smiled. “You’re the ones that the world will need when this is all over.”
“Not me,” sighed Peter. “I don’t have much longer left. I don’t know if I want to be here for much longer.”
The Doctor frowned. That was a strange comment coming from someone who was supposed to be a leader.
Peter noticed the Doctor’s confusion. “My wife died in the meteorite attack. I’d rather be with her right now.”
Up on the roof, Chris Feathers was keeping watch. He thought he spotted something. Something metal gleaming between the alley ways. He frowned and took out his binoculars. By the time he had focused on his target it was too late
The last thing he saw was a bright white light flashing across his vision. He felt the world around him melt aware and all of his nerves burning one by one. And then nothing.
Chris Feathers was dead.
In the street below a dozen Daleks began to converge around the front of the department store. They had found the survivors.
Next time: A safe house is found, and the Doctor meets the resistance. Coming Saturday 16th August 2014.
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