Part 6 (1/2)

She could hardly bring herself to think the word. But the image was there, clear in her mind. A whitefaced creature in ragged clothes. Peeling skin, vacant eyes, arms reaching limply for her as if they were worked by strings.

A zombie, straight out of Domnic's comic strip.

Rose shook her head to dispel the image. A leftover fragment of a dream, perhaps. But it stayed with her, itching in the back of her brain as she stepped out into the dreary hotel corridor and shut the door behind her.

Domnic's flat wasn't too hard to find. The roads were numbered rather than named, laid out in a grid system, and Rose was relieved to find she had only a few blocks to walk. She hadn't fancied trying to negotiate this world's public transport system without any cash and without the Doctor.

The lifts in Domnic's building were out, but fortunately he was only a few floors up. The bare concrete stairwell reminded Rose of the one in her own block, back home, but there was no graffiti. As if no one had anything to say.

She knocked on a flimsy wooden door for several minutes. She called through it, trying to rea.s.sure Domnic that she meant him no harm. She thought about kicking the door down, and would have done if she'd heard the slightest sound of movement from behind it.

He was probably at work. The call centre. She could have kicked herself for sleeping in, for leaving it too late.

What now?

She was trudging back to the hotel, deep in thought, when he leaped out at her from a table in front of a cafe. He'd been sitting, pretending to be engrossed in a newspaper in which the pictures seemed almost to outnumber the words.

'Domnic!' Rose squealed as he grabbed her arm and propelled her away.

He shushed her urgently. 'Just keep walking. They might be following you.'

Rose resisted the urge to look behind her. 'Who might be?'

'You've been to my flat. They've had cops patrolling all day, in plain clothes. I've been watching them. The same man, circling the block clockwise every three minutes. And there's someone in the flat across the road. I saw the sunlight flas.h.i.+ng off an ocular lens.'

Rose did look now. 'I can't see anyone,' she said dubiously.

Domnic was setting a brisk pace, weaving expertly through the crowd, and Rose was struggling to keep up. She kept b.u.mping into people. They reached a junction and abruptly he set off at a right angle. A moment later, he broke into a run and darted down an empty alleyway.

She caught up with him on the street at the far end. 'Look, I think it's OK,' she said. 'I don't think there's anyone...'

'They'd been in my flat,' said Domnic. 'I stayed last night with a friend and when I got home... They'd tried to put everything back as they found it, but I could tell. It was like everything was just... just a fraction out of place, you know? I came down the fire escape.'

'That's getting to be a habit.'

'Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I thought you were... well, I guess that was obvious. It must have been... The stress, the excitement, it must have made me a bit fantasy crazy. I realise now the chances of you being right there in that hotel room if you were... and, I mean, the police do lie to us, everyone knows that now, but the stories you were telling, they were too fantastic, unbelievable. They'd never...'

'OK, I get the point.'

'He was on again this morning,' said Domnic. 'Did you see him?'

'If you mean Hal Gryden...'

'Yeah,' he said excitedly. 'So you found him. What he was saying... I mean, this morning, I thought it was all over. You know, the police have my name they must have forced it out of someone in the group and I can't go home, but I know now it won't be for long.'

'Why? What did he say?'

Domnic frowned. 'I thought you '

'I only caught the last bit,' explained Rose.

Domnic was getting twitchy again, looking around them. His eyes narrowed and he took Rose by the arm again and pulled her down another alleyway. Paranoid, she thought, definitely paranoid. But maybe he had good reason. She was just pa.s.sing through, but this was Domnic's life that had been turned upside down. She remembered how she had felt that first time, when the monsters had come to her workplace, her home. Like nothing made sense. At least she'd had the Doctor. Who did Domnic have?

Who else but her?

There was a sc.r.a.ping sound. As if someone had knocked against one of the bin lids behind them. They turned in unison, then looked at each other.

'There's no one there,' said Rose, trying to persuade herself as much as she was her companion.

Domnic nodded, but didn't look convinced. They hurried on, back into the crowds.

'You were gonna tell me about Gryden,' Rose prompted.

Domnic's voice was quieter, more subdued, than before. 'A year ago, he was nothing, just a rumour. I didn't think he existed. Now...'

'You really think he can change things.'

'I know he can. People listen to him, and now they know the truth the real truth. And this morning... He's hinted about it before, but he's never actually come right out and said... A revolution, Rose. Hal Gryden says it's time for us to rise up and overthrow this police state. It's because we don't have a government, you see. There's no one to... to look at the way things are, to listen to us and to make a difference. So we have to form our own government! Gryden says it's time to repeal the antifiction laws, to demand our dreams and all the things they won't let us dream about. Yeah, those were his words... Rose, I think we're being...'

'I know.'

It was nothing she'd seen, nothing she'd heard. It was more a sense of dread, something lurking in the back of her brain. The sort of feeling she would normally have dismissed, but this time she couldn't. She was scanning the faces around her, looking for the one that would meet her eye.

And she gasped as she saw it, a halfblock behind them, standing at the junction, its eyes black and vacant, its skin white and peeling.

And then the crowd closed around it and parted again, and it was gone.

Domnic must have seen it too, because suddenly they were both running.

They cut through a large department store, where everything was in plain black, white or grey packaging. She was beginning to doubt her own eyes. A zombie? How could there have been a zombie, right there on the pavement? With people walking past it as if it was nothing, as if they couldn't even see it?

Onto the street again, where they came to a stop because Domnic was out of breath.

'Did we shake her off?' he panted.

'”Her”?'

'I thought you saw her. The policewoman.'

'Um, yeah.' Now Rose really did feel stupid, seeing monsters where there had been none. But she'd been so sure. 'Yeah, I think we must've.'

To her surprise, Domnic placed his hands on her shoulders and stared earnestly into her eyes. 'I want you to know, Rose, that if we get caught, I won't tell them a thing. I'll say that I... I lied to you to make you help me. That in all the time I was with you I never heard you say anything that wasn't the whole truth...'

'Shut up, Domnic,' said Rose.

He recoiled, looking hurt. She had that dreadful feeling again. There was something behind her. To the left. To the right. But everywhere she turned, there were just ordinary people, most of them ignoring her but some now staring at her clothes again? No, at the way she was acting. All twitchy.