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Everyone at UNIT knows the radio code to ask the higher-ups to call the Doctor, but we all know that none of them want us to use it. You can tell they find it a slight on their ability to handle anything the universe can throw at us, and to be honest, from how the reports read, the Doctor doesn't generally seem that keen on working with us anyway. And the paperwork involved every time the Doctor shows up. It's all designed to make the prospect as unappealing as possible.
So that's why we didn't call in the Doctor.
It started on a routine training exercise out on the moors. Orienteering, wild camping, all that stuff that would get used in promo videos for UNIT if we actually advertised for recruits in public. It was late summer; shrubs were starting to show a bit of brown in places, though it was still early enough that hiking around with a tent and several days' worth of food on your back would work up a sweat.
I'm Marshall, by the way. Not like Field Marshal; it's just my surname. Scott Marshall. My group that day was myself, Kim White, Layla Rafiq, Robin Gabriel, and Jess Millford. We'd all joined around the same time; headhunted for whatever qualities UNIT decided they needed (and I still haven't managed to sneak a peak at my records on that matter).
The sun was getting low in the sky and we began to look around for a good spot to set up camp. We took a path through some gorse, almost thick enough to be a hedge maze, with its tiny yellow flowers all in bloom. We were heading towards a woodland, where we hoped to find a nice sheltered clearing.
Millford took in a deep breath, and sighed happily. "God, I always forget how great the gorse smells this time of year."
"Yeah, it's really strong this time too," Gabriel agreed. "I usually can't smell it much at all, but I'm really getting the coconut this evening."
"All right, you two," White said, in a patient-sounding voice that, knowing her, we all recognised as bordering on hangry. "You can stop and smell the flowers once we've made camp. I want to get a hot meal in me soon."
We rounded a corner and a deer, taken by surprise, leapt up and skid away from us, white tail flashing at us until it disappeared around the curved path again. A few seconds later, over the gorse hedges, I saw it jump some kind of obstacle at a line of trees.
"Just behind those trees should be a clearing," Rafiq said, looking at her map. "Ought to be good enough for us tonight."
We reached the line; it looked like an old earth bank or fortification line, about my height, now covered with roots from the trees that had seeded at the top. Easy enough to clamber over. I started up.
"Wait." White's voice had enough of an edge to it that I stopped in my tracks. She was already half-way up the embankment, crouched and looking at something in the area beyond it.
Millford, apparently missing the tone of caution in White's voice, climbed up next to White. "What is it—" she started, then her voice dropped to a whisper. "Oh gosh. Code Apricot."
I switched on my body cam immediately, and saw the rest follow suit. Code Apricot is, essentially, an alien encounter—or ideally as little of an encounter as possible. I raised myself up to peek over the embankment.
There was indeed a clearing in the gorse; a roughly circular area ten metres or so in diameter, with the edge of some pine woodland at the far edge. Near the centre, a deer, presumably the one we'd just seen, was collapsed, laying on its side and—I hope—dead.
Crouched over the deer was a creature that was undoubtedly extraterrestrial. Puffy, hairless skin covered most of its body. It was the colour of cheap, processed ham, though there were also patches of yellow all over it; at the time I theorised that they might be infections of some sort. The surface was stretched like a custard skin over an almost balloon-shaped body that, to my human eyes, looked bloated and swollen. Around its neck was a white "collar" similar to that of a pigeon, and there was some kind of colourful plumage at the front.
Two large green eyes protruded, frog-like, from the front of its head, which was dipped down behind the deer. It appeared to be feeding on it. A moment later, it lifted its head, and we could see a maw of a mouth masticating the meat.
It didn't seem to have seen us yet.
"Confirmed. Code Apricot." I sent a radio message back to our Lieutenant and broadcast my camera feed on the encrypted channel, so he could watch from the minibus where he was set up at our trailhead, twenty or so klicks away.
"Look at how it's eating that animal," Millford whispered. "It's munching through it as if it were fudge. Do you think it has teeth, or perhaps it's doing something to the flesh before biting it? I wonder if I can get a better look from around the other side."
"Come on, Millford," White whispered back. "You know the protocol. Record what we can, don't get detected, retreat and let HQ make the next call."
"I know, but...," Millford trailed off. She'd always been fascinated by exobiology. She started moving around the embankment to the right, clearly hoping to get a better view. Meanwhile, the creature finished the mouthful of deer and swallowed, making an otherworldly sound as it did so, like air gurgling through a viscous liquid. The head, with its huge, green, dome-like eyes, swivelled around, and I instinctively ducked down. Cautiously, I looked again, but it looked like we hadn't been detected yet.
Millford hadn't been so cautious, and, now about 90 degrees around from us, was peering out from some shrubs. In my radio earpiece, she said, "Guys. There's something attached to the deer's neck. I think—oh fuck, I think it's seen me."
The creature stood up. I'm sure you've seen the still photos by now, but if you haven't seen the video, there's nothing quite to describe how this thing moved. While roughly humanoid in shape, if it had bones they must have been gelatinous. It had the rubberiness of a balloon animal and yet it made a high-pitched metallic groaning sound as it stretched up to its full height, well over two metres. It focussed its huge eyes—forward-facing; those of a predator—squarely upon Millford. Another of those half-metallic, half-liquid squeals emerged from the mouth, which curved into what looked to me like a clown's smile. Red blood from the deer outlined its mouth like lipstick.
"Run!" I hissed into the radio.
I had no idea how fast that creature would be able to move, but I didn't waste any time. The rest took my lead and we legged it back the way we'd come through the gorse. Moments later, a scream came through our radio. Jessica Millford. We never saw her again.
It's not like we carry weapons out with us on a training exercise. It's a public area, after all.
I kept running as long as I could. The rest of the troop stuck with me, and we eventually came to a stop along an old quarry railway path, gasping for air. The route was used as a footpath now, and was wide enough to get maintenance vehicles down. I took off my backpack to get out some water and, since the sun had set while we were running, I grabbed the torch and hooked that to my belt too. White had shed her rucksack at some point to keep up with us; she gladly accepted another canister of water from me, before looking at the map with Rafiq.
"There ought to be some abandoned iron mine shafts along here somewhere." White gestured into the hillside on our right. "They'll probably be boarded up but it'll be somewhere to hide."
"Shouldn't we just keep going?" Rafiq countered. "It hasn't caught up, so we can clearly out-run it."
"We don't know that. It might just be busy with Jess," Gabriel pointed out, grimly. "Or there might be more of them around." They started to walk off, shining their torch around the hillside.
"We can find somewhere to shelter and I'll call in our location," I said. "With any luck the Lieutenant will be able to get the minibus along this track to us pretty quickly."
The others considered this for a moment, then nodded. I sent a coded message over the radio with our location and a request for extraction. "On my way," came the reply a moment later. "ETA 1 hour."
"Guys," Gabriel called. They were a little further down the track, and it was dark enough that I could see they'd pointed their flashlight at the hillside. "Found an entrance."
We picked up our packs again and walked along to the mine entrance. It had been boarded up a long time ago, but not well enough that Gabriel was having any trouble removing the half-rotten planks of wood with a bit of grunt work.
"Watch out for bats," I said, as we entered the shaft, throwing my torch light around the roof. There didn't seem to be any, so I moved further into the cave.
"Keep an eye out at the entrance, too," White said. "I don't want to get trapped in here."
I shone the torch back around to the entrance. That was a good point. In my mind I'd imagined the entrance would be a little bigger. "I wonder if there's another way out," I wondered out loud, and shone my torch back into the cave.
And froze.
I was face-to-face with a Weeping Angel.
I staggered back with a cry of surprise, falling to the floor. I must have blinked because the Angel shifted forward too. Its stone face was scowling at me, fangs bared.
"Everyone against the left wall," Rafiq shouted, recovering from the shock faster than I could. "Keep your eyes on the Angel."
All the flashlights were pointed onto the statue and I scrambled back using my hands, legs splayed out in front of me, until I felt my back hit the wall. I stood up and felt White's hand next to mine, and held it. Our torches started to flicker.
"Anyone got a mirror to hand?" Gabriel asked, hopefully. Something in our rucksacks would do, no doubt, but nothing on our persons.
"There's another one," Rafiq said. "I'm looking at it now."
"I'll see you all in the past, then, I guess." I took a deep breath, calming myself. As deaths go, it could be worse.
As I inhaled, a strong scent of coconut filled my nostrils.
That horrible gurgle sounded from the direction of the cave entrance.
"Christ," Gabriel said. Out the side of my watering eyes I saw a torch beam move around to the entrance. "That thing just got here, too."
"Well, I'm not going to look at it," I said. "I don't want the last thing I see in 1990 to be that."
"Yeah," Rafiq said. "I'm going to close my eyes now. See you all soon, I hope."
Silence, except for the metallic grating of the alien, sounding like it was muttering to itself. Eventually Rafiq spoke again:
"Why am I still here? I thought I was the only one looking at this Angel?"
"Okay, everyone turn off their torches and close their eyes on three," said White. "One. Two.
"Three."
Eyes closed. Darkness behind my eyelids.
How would we know when we'd been sent to the past to die?
Then we heard how Angels shriek.
High pitched and echoing around the artificial cave, and unmistakably a cry of agony and anguish. I couldn't help myself; I turned back on my torch to see what had happened.
The Angel nearest the entrance was curled up on the floor, frozen in a fetal position in a way that agreed with my assessment that it was in pain. It had grabbed the monster—I'll call it was it is—yet somehow of course it was still here, in the present. It also had a large lump on its neck, about the size of a teacup, that looked perfectly smooth rendered in stone. I'm sure that hadn't been there before. The other was covering its eyes, in mid-stride running towards its companion, presumably to help.
The stone clasp of the first Angel had trapped the monster. It was looking down at its manacled leg in apparent confusion.
"Let's get out of here," White said, shakily.
We edged around the wall, keeping our eyes on a mix of the monster and the two Angels. The monster, just a couple of metres away from us, now looked up at us curiously as Gabriel, Rafiq and then White moved past it. The clown grin continued to unnerve me, but I happened to glance down to one of the yellow patches on its torso, which had turned from a smooth shiny circle into an engorged pustule with a bright green pellet, the same colour as its eyes, on the surface.
Before I could say anything, the monster somehow ejected the pustule from its body and it flew like a spoonful of mashed potato flung across a canteen, splatting onto White's exposed neck. She made a gargle of disgust and tried to wipe it off, but it seemed to be covered in a gelatinous outer layer and wouldn't budge.
"Ew, fuck, what is this?" She cried with horror.
"Never mind that," I said, "Let's get out of here and clean you up when we're clear."
We carried on to the exit, keeping our eyes on the Angels because, after all, they were currently keeping us safe in their petrified form. The colour was gone from the shrubbery outside and a full moon was casting long shadows across the landscape. Inside the mine entrance we could see the monster, and Rafiq and Gabriel were keeping their torches on it. I could still smell that sickly sweet coconut scent it seemed to emit. Just after we'd crossed the threshold, White collapsed to the floor, sounding like she was gasping for air. I knelt down beside her and took a look at her neck.
The yellow pustule and its green nucleus seemed to be somewhat bioluminescent, and cast an eerie glow over White's neck. I threw off my rucksack again and pulled out a rag from the top, not wanting to touch it directly. The surface was coated with a slimy clear gel, and it seemed to have bonded with White's pale skin at the base, lifting it with it when I tried to shift the mass.
"It's doing something to me, Scott," White said to me through gritted teeth. "I can feel my arms and legs getting heavy."
"It'll be okay, Kim," I told her. "The Lieutenant will be here soon. We'll get you to Medical in no time."
She coughed. "Kinda wish the Angels had got me instead. Urgh, it feels horrible and numb. I—" she coughed, and her second cough turned into a horrible, phlegm-filled gargle.
"Hold on, Kim," I took her hand, and it felt puffy, inflamed. I looked again at the pustule, and the skin around it had turned that horrible pink colour. I touched it with the rag, and it felt soft, like marshmallow. I held back a gag.
"Scott… Scotty…"
I looked back up to her, trying to keep the revulsion off my face. Hives had broken out on her face now, too. She looked at me, and her eyes had taken a soft, de-focussed look.
"Pretty boy… I would marry you," she said, high-pitched, in a childlike manner.
"Kim!"
"Will you play with me?"
"Kimberley!"
Her eyes focussed back on me momentarily, and then I lost her again.
"I'm—" her words were interrupted by a wet belch, and a hiccup. "Blerbp. I'm—blorp! I'm… blobb—eeee—"
Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her head lolled to one side as she lost consciousness.
"Kim!" I cried out again. "Jesus fucking Christ." I reached for her shoulders to shake her, but when I grabbed them, they just caved in. Like squeezing a marshmallow. A strong scent of coconut rose from her corpse.
I stood up shakily and ran to the bushes as I felt the bile rising in my throat, and emptied my stomach. Then I sank to my knees and howled. A part of me realised I sounded like how the Weeping Angel had when the monster had got its companion.
"Marshall," Rafiq said, interrupting my thoughts. "Look. It's doing something."
The three of us looked at the monster in the cave. It was repositioning itself, and as it did so the gurgling intensified. The shin that was caught started—and I can't think of a better word for it—deflating. The mass rippled through its skin like a jelly being vibrated, and the thigh inflated as the rest of the leg withered.
With an elegance that was almost comical in its daintiness, it lifted its foot through the ring the Angel's hand had created, and put it lightly down on the floor. The leg then redistributed its weight again, sounding like gunge rushing through a sluice.
It looked at us, and started leaping forward, bouncing from one leg to another, like an astronaut on the moon, arms outstretched.
We ran.
A couple of minutes down the dirt track and I could have wept when we saw the unit's minibus appear at the top of the gentle slope we'd been climbing and move quickly towards us. It stopped a few metres ahead and Lieutenant Edmonds jumped out of the driver's door.
"Okay, what the heck is going on—" he bristled, then focussed on the path behind us. "—and what the heck are those?"
I looked behind us for the first time since leaving the site of the mine entrance. The monster, yellow spots and green eyes bioluminescent in the dark, was about a hundred metres away, and accompanied by a similarly bloated figure.
A blobby figure wrapped in the stretched remains of a UNIT uniform.
It hadn't eaten her.
Oh God.
It barely seems a footnote at this point, but the remaining Angel was also in pursuit, another fifty metres further back. After the monster this time perhaps, looking for revenge for its comrade. What had been keeping it? Did the monster have eyes in the back of its head? I couldn't cope with that idea.
"We'll explain later," Rafiq told the Lieutenant. "Turn the bus around."
"Yeah…" Edmonds agreed. "Okay."
Gabriel had meanwhile opened the back of the minibus and pulled out a couple of cattle prods. The monster and the transfigured Kimberley White were nearly on us and Edmonds was only in the middle of a three point turn. Gabriel chucked a cattle prod to me and kept one for himself. He jabbed it out at the monster and it hissed, throwing up a puff of smoke that smelled like burning sugar.
The monster stumbled back, surprised, then bounced forward again. Gabriel jabbed at it again, and this time it stayed down, moaning gently.
"Watch out for spores," I said, wielding my own prod at the Kim. The green nucleus had gone from the spore on her neck, and instead her left eye was now shining, swollen, with that strange green light.
"Sorry, Kim," I said, stabbing the prod forward at her and wincing at the same sizzle Gabriel had elicited from the original monster.
Like the original, she also recoiled, and blinked her puffy eyes a couple of times in what I realised was momentary recognition. She grabbed the live end of the cattle prod and pulled it from my grip with an easy, strong motion, then plunged it into her chest. She screamed, a horrible boiling-kettle whistle, but kept it there until she screamed no more.
Lieutenant Edmonds had finished turning the minibus around, and Rafiq called to us to get in the back. We jumped in and she called to Edmonds to drive away. The original monster had stood back up by now, and as we closed the back doors, a splat sounded on the outside of the chassis, and then a loud clang, and then we were away. I looked out the back window; the monster had collapsed forward onto its face and I hoped it was dead, mortally wounded in its encounter with Gabriel.
Rafiq and I sat in silence on the back seat while Gabriel manoeuvred into the front passenger seat to bring Edmonds up to date. In turn, Edmonds told us how we'd been lucky this dirt path had run off a small tarmacked road nearby, so he'd been able to get to us on public highways rather than driving the whole distance cross-country. He radioed into HQ and confirmed that a "processing" team would be sent out to the area immediately. By the time he finished that conversation, we were back on the country roads, clear of the moors.
Edmonds asked Gabriel and Rafiq to compile some footage from the body cams to show to HQ when we got back, using the equipment stowed under my seat. I guess Edmonds knew I'd been the closest to both Millford and White, so I swapped places with Gabriel and tried to rest and process what I'd just seen.
I must have dozed off because I was woken by the raised voices coming from the back of the van. I looked at my watch; only twenty minutes or so had passed. We seemed to be on a motorway now; with occasional white lights zooming past us on the other side of the crash barriers.
"It's my turn with the computer," Gabriel was complaining, grabbing at the keyboard Rafiq had perched on her lap. She pulled it away from him.
"No I'm not done," she harrumphed.
"You're poopy!"
"You're poopy!"
Edmonds took a quick glance in the rear-view mirror. "What the fuck is going on back there?"
"Layla won't share!"
Edmonds shot me a weary look. "Go sort it out."
"Sir."
I climbed back over the passenger seat and stooped down the small aisle to the bickering pair. "Hey. What's got into you two?"
"Layla's been mean," Gabriel said, and blew a raspberry at Rafiq.
"Yeah, well, Robin started it," Rafiq retorted.
"Layla smells of stink and perfume," Gabriel snorted.
I sniffed the air and, oh shit, there was a slight coconut fragrance in the air.
"I'm going to tell my mum on you," Rafiq squealed, like a schoolchild.
Pretty boy… will you play with me?
How did I not realise this before?
I grabbed first Rafiq, then Gabriel, and looked at their necks, arms, and everywhere else I thought a blobby spore might be able to attach. Nothing.
"Hey Gabe," I asked. "What's five times six?"
"Your MUM." Both the cadets giggled.
Something was draining their brainpower and it wasn't attached to them.
"Lieutenant," I called to the front. "What's five times six?"
"What're you talking about?" Edmonds called back.
"It's important. Five times six."
"Forty."
I paused, and thought. Five... ten... fifteen? Shit, it was starting to affect me too, but not yet Edmonds up front.
"Gotcha," Edmonds continued. "It's thirty, of course."
I moved forward in the bus, to the seat directly behind Edmonds.
"Lieutenant, I think there's something draining brainpower, like what happened to Kim. And it's strongest at the back of the bus"
Edmonds thought for a moment. "Might be one of those blobs you mentioned stuck to the rear door."
I remembered hearing the splat as we drove away from the monster. And the loud clunk.
Looking back, maybe we should have stopped the van, but the urgency of getting back to HQ combined with the brain drain clearly stopped that thought. Instead, I opened up the roof hatch, and stood on a seat to boost myself up into the cold air whisking past us. I looked to the back of the van, where I saw the cause of the earlier clunk.
It was the second Angel.
Thankfully I wasn't face-to-face with it this time. It was quantum locked, frozen in a low crouch on the roof with its head leant over the back of the minibus. I blinked a few times and it didn't seem to be me that was causing it to petrify.
Against my better judgement, I crawled out onto the roof, gripping the ruts along the top tightly whenever the minibus went over the tiniest of bumps in the road, until I was alongside the Angel and could peer over the back too.
As the Lieutenant had predicted, there was indeed a spore attached to the back. I realised why the Angel was quantum-locked too: the nucleus of the horrible gelatinous blob has turned into a full eye, complete with pupil and what looked like thick black eyelashes on one edge. It had been focussed on the Angel, which looked like it was gearing up to claw at it like a cat, but my appearance had made it look away, directly at me. It must be at least sentient enough to turn an Angel to stone, then. I hoped to God it wasn't self-mobile.
The Angel, released from the spore's narrow gaze, hadn't attacked me and I could feel it watching me out the corner of my eye. Our interests, in this case, were aligned.
"Go on then, kill it," I said, but all I got in return was a couple of hisses. The blob, in the meantime, seemed much more interested in me than the Angel. Perhaps humans were more compatible than Angels. I shuddered.
The spore made a motion that squeezed its middle in and released it, three times quickly in succession. A high pitched screeching came from it as it did so, forming half-words:
"Blobby blobby blobby!"
The Angel made a couple more hisses, twice in quick succession, right next to my left ear. I always imagined Angels to be wraith-like when they weren't stone, and this wasn't doing much to put those thoughts at ease.
Hiss. Zzzzt.
Then it struck me. It wanted the cattle prod. And that made sense, because touching the blob would presumably be as bad for it as it was to its friend earlier.
"I'll get the cattle prod. You, uh, stay here, and stay out of its sight."
By the time I'd gotten back into the minibus, I'd half-forgotten what I was doing. Rafiq and Gabriel had fallen asleep, curled up peacefully on the seats. Rafiq was sucking her thumb.
They looked comfy and I wanted to join them. But I had to get the thing. For the thing.
"Mr Driver," I said, "where's the pokey stick?"
"What's that?" Mr Driver asked. His voice was slurred, and he had the look of concentration on his face like a man who knew he shouldn't be behind the wheel, but thought it would be okay if he tried extra hard.
"Gotta go zap zap on Mr Blobby."
Then I saw it, propped up against the side door of the minibus, a metre-long pole with two metal contacts at the top end. It seemed sensible to test they were working, and after I recoiled in pain, I picked it up by its leather strap instead, and raised it up through the howling roof hatch. I covered my eyes and something grabbed hold of it, yanking it from my hand, and I heard thuds coming from above me as the Angel, presumably, made its way back to the back of the minibus.
Some loud clangs sounded through the chassis. A few moments later and the fog surrounding my mind lifted. The Angel must have either got a lucky throw in at the spore, or rigged up some way to attack it without it looking at it. I'd never know.
I lifted my head one last time through the hatch to see what was going on. The Angel was kneeling on one knee upon the roof, defying the wind, and was looking at me, its hand held up to its chin. I blinked a few times, and got the stop-motion version of a gesture in sign language.
Thank you.
I closed my eyes. "My pleasure. And thank you."
I opened my eyes and it was gone.
It was over.