Part 24 (1/2)

Joanna's face was awash with rosy heat as she was carried, fireman-style from the truck.

'Doctor, will she be all right?'

'Leela! Get down!' That voice breached even the barriers of her dazed mind.

Then she was thrown to the ground, cus.h.i.+oned in the soft snow, the Doctor a s.h.i.+eld above her. The explosion killed her hearing but lit up what little she could see of her surroundings. The Doctor was s.h.i.+fting again before the drumroll in her cars had faded.

'Doctor! The evil snow! It is in her hair!'

Suddenly the Doctor was up on his knees, his eyes looming over her like twin dark moons. Ill omens for Joanna Hmieleski.

Makenzie Shaw was rapidly running out of detours. It was as if the G.o.dd.a.m.n drifts were manoeuvring around him, fencing off his routes out of town. h.e.l.l, maybe they were. Except he couldn't figure why even alien ice would be wasting its time on him.

He put it down to the blizzard's natural ability to frustrate and antagonise. And he thought of Amber lying back in her hotel bed, unaware of the threads of unnatural ice that had carved new lines in the palm of her hand and burrowed their way inside. Like a parasite.

Christ. The kid was ten. Had a father that was - h.e.l.l, no, didn't even have a father any more. Where was the justice in the world?

Swearing at another s...o...b..nk meeting his beams head-on, Makenzie threw the truck into reverse then hit the brakes recklessly hard. Luckily he didn't pay for it - that time.

Except it made him think: don't go killing yourself. Aren't you supposed to be the justice round here, anyway? You owe it to Laurie, and you owe it to that girl, Kenzie Shaw, to do what you can. Which involves staying alive and finding the Doc.

Meanwhile, every delay biting great chunks out of his nerves, he had to know how Amber was doing. He reached for the mic clipped to the radio. Be there, little bro. Be there.'

In the midst of this poisonous winter, Melvin Village had come alive with action, civilians working with the troops to erect barriers and construct crude moats at key points.

Somewhere to the south, a pneumatic drill was busy chewing up the asphalt. Others were ferrying all the spare gas once intended for the evac to those defences, ready to fill the moats or soak the blankets that had been thrown over the barricades. Sergeant Kurzyk was distributing grenades to every soldier as they hurried past on some new errand for the defence, his grey Slavic features layered thick with satisfaction.

The only soul no happier for all this was the man who had set it all in motion: Captain Morgan Shaw. Possibly because he knew the town hadn't come so much alive as undead.

Living past the point of no return.

Morgan wondered cynically what - apart from a morale boost - he hoped to achieve here.

O'Neill called from inside the Command Vehicle. Morgan gratefully hopped in and took the mic. The static was bad.

but Morgan was skilled at filling in the blanks: 'It's Kenzie. Can 'It's Kenzie. Can you Just have one of your guys check in on Amber? It's real you Just have one of your guys check in on Amber? It's real Important.' Important.'

Morgan rolled his eyes: was that it? He went to the door.

'Hey, Kurzyk. Go check on the little girl will you? The manageress will tell you which room she's in.'

'Sir,' the Sarge's face paled, 'the mother drove off with her a while back.'

Morgan chewed on a curse or two. Running away must run in that family. 'Kenzie. did you get that? Your girlfriend drove out of town, took the kid with her. You want I should send someone after them? Repeat-'

'Okay.' Kenzie sounded mad. 'No, I'll turn back. Which way was she headed?'

Morgan looked expectantly at Kurzyk.

An age pa.s.sed, locked in ice. Snowfall was the only movement for miles around.

Martha shoved Amber around behind her, mind racing everywhere and nowhere. The veins of ice seemed to float in indecision, waving in the wind like impossibly delicate branches on trees of ice. 'It's afraid. Mom. It's afraid to cross the water.'

Martha shook herself awake. She spun her head round to stare at her daughter.

Amber backed up, scared. Martha realised her utter disbelief had emerged as plain anger.

Lips clamped tight, she dug at the back of her teeth with her tongue. Then nodded and braved a smile. 'Is that right, honey? Well, let 's see if your Mom can't scare it some more.'

Martha stood, glanced back at the sh.o.r.e, where the icicle tendrils had started to snake out again, forking here and there like slow lightning. A steady, predatory advance.

The Doctor's brisk examination was a race against the ice tracing erratic lines through the dark strands of Lieutenant Hmieleski's hair and extending roots down over her forehead to burrow into her face. Leela was a helpless spectator.

'Mild concussion,' the Doctor p.r.o.nounced, pocketing the slender torch he had shone in the patient's eyes. 'Slowing down the rate of growth.' Apparently this wasn't cause for any great celebration, and Leela could only echo - and amplify - the Doctor's anxious expression as she waited for him to do do something. something.

She had followed in his wake, arms up to s.h.i.+eld herself from the flames, and helped him shovel mounds of snow to force a parting in the curtain of fire. The Doctor had leaped through, opening the door with one hand wrapped in a length of scarf; and she had seen past him into the cab as he had hauled the Lieutenant clear of the truck. She had seen the monster that the driver had become - before the fireball had consumed the creature, the truck and the evil net of ice that had enveloped it all. The flames burned still, down the slope, setting the trees and hillside awash with the colour of sunset. Snowflakes fizzled and died, but the white night and Leela's fear starved the scene of any beauty.

'Neurological effects. Something to do with the transmission rate of neural pulses traversing the synapses, I expect.'

'Doctor, you speak the language of the Tesh,' Leela told him off. 'What does it mean?'

'Well, at the very least it means we have some time to slow it down even further.'

'Before you do anything, Doctor,' the Lieutenant suddenly insisted, her voice firmer and stronger than Leela would have expected, 'I think you'd better take these.' She tugged at the zipper on her coat and reached inside to pull out a sheaf of papers in a clear folder.

'I'll read them later if you don't mind,' the Doctor grinned, taking the folder and stuffing it into one of his implausibly deep pockets. 'But you get full marks for handing in your homework on time.' He tipped the woman's head slightly to aim her eyes straight into his own. 'Focus on my eyes, there's a good Lieutenant.'

'Doctor, what are you doing?'

'Leela! Shh!' The Doctor's hiss was as angry as the fires below.

Leela retreated a few steps, cowed and reverent, as the Doctor practised his dark arts. And she saw the Lieutenant's gaze empty of all light, as though he had bewitched her spirit from her body. Leela threw a hand up to cover her eyes, fearful her own spirit might succ.u.mb.

Then, unhappy with the protection that afforded, she turned away altogether and trudged back up the slope to where Kristal was-Leela powered herself into a sprint and dropped beside Kristal, panic taking hold of her as she craned to look into those eyes so full of wisdom. But the wisdom was gone. There was nothing beyond the dark hazel and their black centres were empty of life.

'Kristal!' Leela touched her friend's face, only to s.n.a.t.c.h back her fingers at the feel of dead flesh. 'Doctor! Come quickly!'

There was more she wanted to add to her cry, but she was stopped by the burn that locked around her throat like the lifeless metal hands of a Voc robot. Yet far, far colder.

Ordered around the far side of the truck by her Mom, Amber gaped around the front b.u.mper to watch the great drift topple like a gla.s.s tree, reeling in hundreds of its branches only to extend new skeletal limbs ever closer over the lake.

Her Mom nearly slid into the listing rear of the truck and now she was steadying herself, popping the trunk and rooting around inside. Amber watched her Mom's footing at the edge of the cracked ice. Panic rose in her throat but couldn't find any sound.

Oblivious, relentless. Mom hoisted out a tyre iron and skidded hard onto one knee.

Amber flinched at the impact, but her Mom advanced a few feet from the truck and just set at the ice, driving the iron in like a spike or swinging it like a sledge hammer. She hacked and hacked, hurling raw shouts at the veins pumping white blood through the air towards them.

'STAY AWAY FROM MY BABY, YOU b.a.s.t.a.r.dS! YOU COME GET ME!'