The Story of Martha Read online

  Martha gripped Aleesha’s hand firmly and led her through the arch onto the court. Aleesha’s trainers made no noise, but Martha’s heels clacked. Stupid, stupid!

  She stopped, pulled them off, and ran with Aleesha, in her socks, towards the neighbouring block.

  They weren’t going to make it all the way. The upper court, with its raised flowerbeds and skateboard ramps, was too wide to cross in one go with the men behind her. Martha dragged Aleesha into cover behind some wheelie bins. They hid.

  Hiding, Martha thought, is what I’ve spent most of the last two weeks doing.

  The howling dog was nearby. It had become frantic, perhaps picking up their scent. Martha and Aleesha cowered behind the foul-smelling bins.

  The men appeared, fanning up onto the court, weapons raised. They exchanged gestures, nods, and shakes of heads. They spread out.

  Martha knew they were going to find her and kill her. Worse still, they were going to kill a little girl who was only in this fix because she’d seen Martha’s earrings. A grown woman and a little girl: just a meaningless footnote to the awful catalogue of deaths recorded in the last fortnight. Just two more names on a list no one would ever care to read.

  Martha took a deep breath. She was totally, strangely focused. She wasn’t going to allow this tiny crime to happen. The Doctor had trusted her. He had trusted her.

  ‘Stay here,’ she whispered to Aleesha.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Aleesha whispered back in great alarm. She wasn’t about to allow the only adult who had noticed her in two weeks to go away.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ Martha whispered, ‘but I need you to stay here, and hide. Can you do that?’

  Aleesha nodded, and then said, ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘Could you look after my shoes, Aleesha?’ Martha whispered. ‘Could you? And my earrings?’

  Aleesha nodded again. Martha handed her shoes and earrings to the little girl. Aleesha closed her fist tight around the glittery studs.

  ‘Stay here,’ Martha whispered firmly.

  She got up. The UCF agents had spread out wider across the court area. Martha could smell their sweat and the oil of their guns. Checking her key, she stepped out from behind the bins.

  ‘Someone’s here, chief,’ said Bremner.

  ‘I know it,’ replied Griffin, circling on the spot, his weapon raised. ‘Stay alert.’

  Padding forwards, Martha crossed between two of the wary men. They didn’t seem to see her.

  She slipped behind another of the men, the one the other gunman had referred to as ‘chief’. He was the biggest of them, with a memorable scar across his face. If she could get past him, and reach the other side of the court, Martha intended to make some kind of noise, cause a distraction, anything to lead the men away from the little girl.

  She took another step.

  ‘You smell that?’ asked Jenks.

  ‘What?’ asked Rafferty.

  ‘Perfume. That’s perfume. A real sexy girl number,’ Jenks said.

  Griffin shook his head.

  ‘I smell it, chief,’ said Bremner.

  Griffin narrowed his eyes. ‘She’s right here.’

  Martha froze. She was out in the open. They were going to see her.

  The man with the scar began to turn around.

  There was a sound of breaking glass from the neighbouring block.

  ‘Go!’ Griffin yelled, and the men ran.

  Left behind, Martha sucked in a huge breath and ran back to Aleesha.

  The little girl was still clutching Martha’s shoes.

  ‘Come on!’ Martha said, gripping her hand.

  Griffin’s team scrambled up the stairwell of the tower block.

  ‘Second floor!’ Griffin yelled.

  They started to smash open doors, aiming weapons. There was movement behind the fourth door they kicked down. Jenks and Handley opened up. The automatic fire splintered the door frame and shredded furniture inside the flat.

  ‘Cease! Cease fire!’ Griffin yelled.

  ‘It’s just a dog!’ Rafferty blurted. Just a dog, famished, trapped in the flat. The dog had somehow managed to overturn a DVD stand, which had broken the balcony window.

  The gunfire had missed it. It was cowering, whining, behind the shot-up sofa, covered in flecks of upholstery padding and chips of glass.

  ‘Damn, I was so sure we had her,’ Griffin murmured. He knelt down beside the dog and stroked its head. ‘Easy now, easy now, boy. That’s it. Yeah, that’s it.’

  Petting the whimpering animal, Griffin unholstered his Glock.

  * * *

  Martha and Aleesha heard the pistol shot ring out over the court. They fled back the way they had come, across the street where the big Humvee was parked, and then down a breeze-way behind another residential block. They kept going until, five streets away, they couldn’t run any more.

  Panting, Martha picked a basement flat with an open front door. They darted down the steps from the street. Martha bolted the door and put the chain on. She smiled at Aleesha and winked. It took some effort to smile for the little girl’s benefit.

  ‘We’ll be safe here for now,’ she said.

  Aleesha nodded, but she was clearly scared. Martha began to search around the flat for food or anything else they could use.

  ‘I know you’re frightened,’ she said, ‘but it’s going to be all right. We will get through this.’

  ‘Will we?’ asked Aleesha. In two lonely, scary weeks, Aleesha had seen no evidence that anything was going to be all right.

  Martha realised that the little girl was really shaken. She sat down beside her on the settee and took her hand.

  ‘I tell you what, Aleesha,’ Martha said gently, ‘Would you like to hear a story?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Aleesha.

  The Weeping

  The storm screamed in across the frozen sea, its howling throat full of snow. As night began to yield to a sickly grey dawn it settled over the desolate city. And, yet, through the brutal roar of the storm another sound could be heard, distant, desolate and chilling. A broken-hearted howl which reverberated between the forsaken ice-coated buildings and which finally reached the ears of the two fleeing figures.

  It signalled only one thing to them.

  They were coming.

  If her heart didn’t burst inside her chest in the next two minutes, Martha would be downright astonished. Sweat glued her T-shirt to her back, and advanced in a glistening sheen across her brow. Her muscles screamed for energy but there was little left to give.

  She continued to stagger on through the frozen cityscape, supporting the almost deadweight of the old man hanging off her shoulder. She stopped for a moment, heaving him upwards to get a better grip.

  ‘Come on,’ she screamed. ‘You’ve got to keep moving!’

  The old man looked weakly up at her, his bluish lips parting in what Martha assumed was meant to be a smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ he croaked, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Glancing backwards, through the swirling veils of snow she caught a glimpse of a hunched, misshapen form which darted into a doorway, lost from sight almost immediately. A surge of panic rose in Martha, her mouth dry and acidic. They had to reach the TARDIS, and quickly.

  ‘Stay conscious… you’re going into shock… you have to stay awake!’ she yelled at the old man. But she was losing him. His body sagged in her arms, his weight dragging her to her knees in the powdery snow. She lay there, her arm protectively thrown over the old man’s frail, tissue-thin body. Her mind raced. She had to get up, had to keep going, had to reach the sanctuary of the TARDIS. She had the will, the spirit for fighting. But there was little more she could do as the last vestiges of her energy ebbed into the all-embracing snow. She tried wiggling her fingers. Nothing. Was it frostbite? She’d read about it in textbooks when she was still an everyday medical student. Before her life changed for ever. Back at the Royal Hope Hospital… Royal Hope. That’s all she had left – hope…

  She desperately
tried to focus her mind… Hypothermia, come on, what are the three stages of hypothermia? Stage one, she thought… maybe she should have paid more attention in lectures. What she needed was a doctor. There was irony. Never around when you needed him.

  ‘Doctor,’ her voice crackled and broke, as she struggled to stay conscious. ‘You said you wouldn’t leave me.’

  Then, through blurred and stinging eyes, she saw a tall figure stalking towards her, almost lost in the blizzard. That enormous brown coat billowing, flapping behind him in the wind, his face etched with concern. His eyes seemed to pierce through the snow storm, finding Martha, connecting.

  She felt a swell of warmth rush through her body as adrenalin dumped into her failing system, and she stumbled to her feet, trembling hands outstretched in front of her.

  The Doctor stumbled urgently over to her, relief washing across his face. His hands grasped her arms, supporting her, and he grinned.

  ‘Aw, Martha Jones. Where did you get yourself to? Eh? I’ve been looking for you!’

  Martha smiled weakly, wishing she had the energy to think of some pithy and amusing comeback. But then came the exploding red and blossoming black, and somewhere far off the sound of someone falling to the ground.

  Then silence.

  Four hours earlier by Martha’s watch, before the storm swept across the surface of Agelaos, a blue box spun through the iridescent shimmer of the Vortex, buffeted on all sides by the time winds.

  Inside the blue box, the impossibly vast organic chamber was suffused with a greenish light that emanated from pulsing circuits rammed higgledy-piggledy under a metal grilled floor. And either side of the jumbled central control console were two figures – Martha Jones and the Doctor.

  ‘So, it’s a warning, then?’ Martha ventured.

  With a flourish of his right hand, the Doctor tipped a switch upwards, snorted, and peered anxiously at the scanner mounted on the console… Glasses now on, he rapped the screen with his knuckles.

  ‘Sounds like a warning to me,’ she said.

  ‘Nah!’ the Doctor retorted. ‘Nothing like a warning!’

  An incoherent babble of distorted voices crackled from an ancient speaker grille near the scanner.

  The Doctor tugged an ink pen from his inside suit pocket, and began scribbling furiously on a note pad. ‘Well, it’s not a mayday, and it’s not junk mail. Come on, come on, what are you?’

  The symbols he scribbled were strange, spidery, and archaic, like alien shorthand.

  ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, straightening up and beaming his best toothy grin, ‘Got you!’ He hopped backwards onto one of the two pilot’s seats at the edge of the console, swinging his long legs back and forth underneath him.

  ‘That’s brilliance, that is, Martha Jones. An unknown alien language deciphered in less than, what, ten seconds.’ He waved the pad under Martha’s nose. ‘Oh yes!’

  He grinned, and then realised that Martha was staring at him, unimpressed.

  ‘What?’ And then his voice notched up a touch: ‘What?’

  Martha looked at him. ‘It’s a warning, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, a touch shamefaced.

  Martha laughed, and poked him in the ribs, ‘What did I tell you? Not just a pretty face, eh?’

  The Doctor leaped from the seat, buzzing with pent-up energy. ‘I never pay attention to warnings, Martha. Paying attention’s for cats! I’m more your golden retriever type, just blunder straight in there all happy and excited! Never got me in to trouble yet… not once in 903 years… well, not quite “not once”… well – sort of all the time really, but you get my point!’

  And with that, those long legs powered him round the console, and he was sliding levers, flicking switches.

  ‘Don’t you just love this bit?’ he enthused. ‘Goose pimples, look!’ He rolled up the sleeve of his jacket proudly. ‘The tingle that goes with the thrill of discovery. We could be anywhere and any when. Isn’t that brilliant?’

  ‘Warnings are meant for a reason,’ she said levelly.

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Martha Jones!’

  With a very gentle sideward lurch the TARDIS stopped moving.

  The Doctor vaulted the safety rail onto the lower section of the console room floor, and snatched up his fallen brown overcoat. As he tugged the sleeves over his arms, he dashed to the doors.

  ‘Coming?’ he said, his hand on the door latch.

  ‘Try and stop me,’ and Martha ran down the ramp to join him.

  ‘Are you sure this isn’t the Antarctic?’ Martha nudged the Doctor gently in the side.

  The two of them were standing outside the TARDIS staring at an expanse of ice and snow, as far as the eye could see, rippled and folded into incredible gravity-defying swirls that spread towards the distant curved horizon.

  ‘Not the Antarctic, Martha,’ the Doctor stuffed his hands deep into his trouser pockets, and craned his head to peer round the side of the TARDIS.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, nodding with dawning realisation. ‘Try that way.’

  ‘What?’ Martha said, hugging herself against the biting wind.

  ‘Agelaos,’ he declared.

  Martha carefully poked her head around the edge of the TARDIS. Ahead, in the middle of the ice floe, was a city. Huge bony spires rose thousands of feet into the crisp indigo sky, domes and skyscrapers, bridges and sheer walls of glass, all covered with a dense layer of snow. It looked forgotten, empty, as though it had been swept into a corner and gathered dust.

  But most astonishing of all was the sky. Martha was utterly blown away by the beauty of this frozen planet. Above her, shimmering and arcing majestically were aurora borealis; and beyond them shooting stars, flaring, bursting, dissipating; and distant ion cascades, a palette of unimaginably delicate colours suspended in the clear cerulean sky.

  And on the distant horizon, hanging just a fraction above the city skyline, burning like a magnesium-white flare was… a sun? No, it was too low, thought Martha, too close to the planet… And, as she peered closer, the white empty space was pulsing, as though breathing. Could black holes be white, she mused? Surely it would destroy everything nearby. So, not a black hole then, but what?

  ‘A wormhole.’ The Doctor seemed to guess what she was thinking. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Your descendants came here to try to harness the energy of that wormhole. A gateway into the Vortex. That’s how we got here.’

  ‘But that’s mad. Surely it would have, you know…’ She struggled to articulate her thoughts.

  ‘Destroyed them? Nah!’ The Doctor locked the TARDIS door. ‘Fancy a walk?’

  ‘Aggy-what?’ she queried, trotting to keep pace with the Doctor’s enormous strides.

  ‘Agi-lay-os,’ the Doctor pronounced. ‘One of the furthest outposts of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. The planet was colonised by a group of 2,000 pioneers from Earth. They terraformed it, or started to.’ He scratched his head, ruffling his brown, spiky hair.

  ‘Something happened here?’ Martha posed.

  ‘Mm.’ He frowned, but forged on regardless.

  ‘What did the warning say?’ she persisted. ‘Doctor?’

  He stopped, swivelled to face her.

  ‘Give or take the odd vowel: “Stay away”.’

  ‘From what?’

  He started walking again. ‘That’s the million credit question.’

  To Martha it looked like the city had been deserted for years.

  At her side the Doctor was chattering on. ‘For many centuries they lived on the lip of the wormhole using its energy to power their society. The side effect, though – now, get this, Martha, it’s brilliant – the side effect of living so close was that the population began to develop a certain degree of psychic ability.’

  Martha raised an eyebrow. ‘What? Tea leaves and palm-reading type of psychic?’

  ‘They developed the ability to see strands of future time… that’s all being psychic is.’ He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, and
Martha virtually cannoned into him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shush!’ he held his hand up for silence.

  ‘What?’ Martha hissed.

  The Doctor bought his lips very close to Martha’s ear, and whispered, ‘When I say run… run.’

  Martha felt her skin crawl, and her head suddenly flicked around, her eyes searching the darkened buildings looming over her. She could see nothing, absolutely nothing.

  ‘Run!’ yelled the Doctor, grabbing her hand tightly, and yanking her suddenly to the left. Her feet skidding on the snow, she stumbled after him into the shattered shell of a nearby building.

  And that’s when she heard the weeping…

  It was mournful, plaintive at first, but then grew into something more sinister – an animalistic roar that reverberated in Martha’s gut. Not the roar of any familiar animal on Earth, nor even any alien she’d ever heard, but something so totally wracked with agony that it chilled her blood. And it was angry.

  Worse, it was very close.

  The Doctor dragged her through the devastated building, jumping fallen snow-covered girders, pushing aside bundles of cables.

  Behind them, they could now hear the panting and snarling of something fast and savage. More scuffling footsteps joined it. They were being hunted by a pack.

  As they ascended a fractured set of steps, a creature lurched from the shadows above, only metres ahead of them. Skidding to a halt, the Doctor and Martha turned, ready to hurtle back down the concrete stairs, but found themselves staring, intrigued, at a jumble of creatures below – an illogical mismatch of different species. Insectoid heads, with reptilian arms, or arachnid eyes, or humanoid legs, or gills… the variations were endless. Their lips rode up over cruelly sharp, needle-like teeth, and saliva cascaded in silver torrents across their chins, signalling the intention to kill. And then, hot breath steaming from their open mouths, the creatures all began to wail, a hissing, mournful weeping.

  The Doctor clutched Martha’s hand tightly, pulling her behind him.

  ‘Cover your eyes! Now!’

  From nowhere, what seemed to Martha like a very powerful camera flash went off, searing her eyeballs, leaving her blinking to rid herself of the red flare ghosting in front of her eyes. She clutched her face, burying it in the Doctor’s side.