FIC Doctor Who: Restless
Mar. 24th, 2006 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zouzounakiTitle: Restless
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghanistarkiller (Mrs Peel on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind Fanfic Archive)
Summary: The Doctor, Jack and Rose arrive in an eerily abandoned city only to find that the real puzzle lies within the walls of a drastically fenced in settlement. Just exactly what is the mysterious "illness?" What happened to make the citizens so frightened of being outside the fence after dark? And just what -or who- is dying to get in there?
Rating: R
Genre(s): Horror, Mystery
Characters: The Doctor (9th), Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler
Warnings: Mixed (mostly gen/het), Swearing
Where figures from the past stand tall,
And mocking voices ring the halls.
Imperialistic house of prayer,
Conquistadors who took their share.
That keep calling me
-Joy Division
2.
Inside the settlement proved to be equally as puzzling as the outside, offering a few buildings that had the style or refinement of the city beyond the fence but, mostly, it consisted of lower, broader, quickly assembled tenements, businesses and row housing lit by gaudy neon in blue and red and purple. The streets were teeming with people, merchants with stands calling out advertisements for their goods, whether they be earthly or less than. It was like a permanent outdoors market, complete with attractions for amusement and wares to be purchased.
“S’pose this is where we say our goodbyes,” the young woman clapped her hands together with finality. “Listen, couldn’t have worked it without you, so, thank you. Least I can do is buy you supper, yeah? There should be a diner around here somewhere, there always is. What say my treat?”
“Sounds fine,” the Doctor smiled, nodding, sincerely grateful. “Though it would be nice to have something to call you by, eh, Ms. Roosevelt?”
She snorted cheerfully. “Well, my badge says I’m Eleanor,” she proudly though playfully displayed the plastic emblem clipped to her breast pocket flap. “But you can call me Fuchsia or whatever name you find suits me best,” she grinned impishly. She probably would have waggled an eyebrow lightheartedly if she had had one, but they could see now in the dimming light of evening that her brow was smooth and wan, freckled like the rest of her face.
“So, why couldn’t you get in yourself, if you had all the papers and things?” Rose asked Fuchsia as they strolled through the crowded road, bundling her blonde hair into a clip so she could feel the cool breeze of twilight upon the nape of her neck. “They looked all right, very authentic,” she said, silently chiding herself for not knowing an genuine permit on Celestial City 4.7 from a Christmas cracker novelty.
“The best there is,” bragged Fuchsia. “Cost me for it, too. But they don’t usually let the halfies in, we’re considered high risk, don’t you know? The sickness, they say we’re more vulnerable to it. Truth be told though, I think it’s just another reason to keep us on the outside, not that pure bloods have it much better,” she glanced around.
“Thressian, am I right?” Jack guessed and gave a triumphant whoop, pumping his fist, when she nodded in the confirmatory.
“My granddad on my mum’s side was Thressh,” Fuchsia told them. “It’s the eyebrows, isn’t it? That always gets ‘em! The hair, they assume it’s colorant but the eyebrows, generally considered unsettling. Doesn’t matter much, though, in a place like this. A halfie is a halfie; might as well be part Martian for all they care. Not that I blame ‘em, the conditions they live under, they‘ve got other things to worry on about. Oi!” she protested as a burly man brushed past her, knocking her shoulder without even giving her a backwards glance. She jumped out of the way of the second and third.
As the fourth passed, the man actually turned to her and smiled apologetically. He was large, sturdy as the rest of his group with warm, dark skin and eyes almost completely black, like glinting onyx. His long, spiked ebon crew cut complimented the half-beard that surrounded his mouth and dusted his chin. His worn duster hid his impressive musculature as well as the automatic strapped to his shoulder and hanging at his side. He put his knuckles to his forehead in a casual salute as he walked backwards, then placed his crooked fingers to his lips. “Ladies,” he spoke smoothly in a thick accent, dipping his head at Fuchsia and Rose.
“Ah, come along, Valentine,” the first man addressed the last in a whining tone. He quirked a half smile at them and swivelled to rejoin the rest of his team, taking in hand a pair of nasty looking repeating pistol.
“Gentlemen,” Jack regarded them with admiration and a bit of envy. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” he said emphatically, hooting his approval. Whether his emphatic appreciation was for the alarming range of casual to heavy armaments the civilian soldiers carried, sharp stylish-grunge fashion sense or the strapping men themselves was subject to debate.
“Easy there, Captain Hero,” Fuchsia warned, pursing her lips. “Or you’ll find yourself an involuntarily volunteer for the patrol. They’re always looking for new recruits because the other ones, they don’t last very long.”
“Shame to waste a bit of that!” Rose observed, biting her lip as her stare lingered to where Valentine had offered her the promise of a kiss. Jack shared the sentiment, cocking an eyebrow devilishly as he watched them leave. “So, what are they, like, the local militia or something?” asked Rose. “ I mean, what would anyone need that many guns for?”
Before Fuchsia could respond, an earsplitting klaxon sounded, strangely quieting the surging crowd for an instant as if time froze in that one fearsome second as all faces turned to the fence to watch the flashing red lights swell and roll in the dreariness of the gray twilight. The swirling warning lamps were placed at measured intervals along the enclosure and, everywhere, the sound of lockdown could be heard. The moment was over and the residents all went back to what they had been doing as Fuchsia commented, “Early. The natives must be getting restless.”
“The regs, the regulators, they‘re really just a bit of pompous, the officious gits. Sure, they‘ve got official martial training and many fought in the civil war but you won‘t find a lot who are willing to go out there after dark,” Fuchsia explained as they followed a local’s directions toward a small greasy spoon -Vrex’s Place, as the sign in the window flamboyantly announced. They took a booth in the corner and Fuchsia slid her ident badge across a little scanner built into the table; she had to wipe its surface free of grime first with the sleeve of her pink shirt before it accepted the card. She urged her three companions to do the same. “It’s so they know you’re clean,” she clarified.
“The patrol, they’re something different though, aren‘t they?” the Doctor said steadily, giving the impression that he was speaking as an afterthought and his true attention was focused on the menu that had glided out of a slot in the wall. “They’re the real muscle, yeah? The ones with the true authority. ‘Cos, the way I reckon, you’re all the way out here, on the fringes of an overstretched, overburdened empire divided upon itself, so you won’t be looking to the government for relief anymore, are you? Frontier rule, eh?”
“Cheer us up, why don’t you?” interjected Rose dryly with a uncomfortable chuckle as she studied the menu, realizing that you had only to touch the picture of the meal you fancied on the thin plastic sheet and the price and a notice of confirmation would appear on the sheer slip, complete with her specified colony designation. She picked something that looked similar to a burger and chips. “What exactly do they patrol, anyways?” she inquired and the Doctor grinned. Always asking the right questions, Rose was.
“Some of them keep to the wall,” Fuchsia jerked her thumb in the general direction of the fence, “some go out in raiding parties. There are still supplies out there, on the outside, medicine, clothes, anything they can carry back, anything Elysium corp. left behind when they turned tail. Like you said, Doctor,” she looked at him frankly, “frontier rule.” She was holding something back, the Doctor could sense it, though she was hardly being subtle about it, like it was a subject she just didn’t want to talk about, something no one around here wanted to talk about.
“And the sickness?” the Doctor prompted solemnly. “You did mention it. What’s that about then?”
Fuchsia shushed him, looking about furtively to make sure no one had overheard; the patrons were all too busy chatting and going about their own business to be bothered with four strangers. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Like I said,” the Doctor smiled, “travelers just passing through. Tourists.”
“Strange choice for holiday. Anyways, the citizens like to ignore it; leave it to the patrol and everything’s all right, you know? It started right after the civil war, people, they just started getting in a bad way, yeah? And then it just sort of… sorted itself out. No bother,” she shrugged. “That’s what they thought, at least. But the illness, it kinda had unexpected consequences.”
“Is that why the city’s abandoned?” Rose queried. “Because of this… disease?”
Fuchsia scoffed. “Abandoned? Is that what you think? I think you’ll find, now that the sun is down, the cities are anything but. Listen, I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’ve got someplace to be,” she said as she stood, checking her wristwatch, “ a friend I’m meeting. Go to the wall, yeah? I think you’ll find what you’re looking for there. Don’t worry about the food, I’ve already paid. Generous tip, too; make sure you get good service! You got a place to stay?”
“We’ll get by,” Jack assured her with a swaggering sort of lopsided grin. “We always do.” She said her goodbyes, shaking each of their hands in turn. Jack caught her fingers in his powerful grip and raised her knuckles to his lips.
She leaned in close to him, her lips inches away from his ear, her breath tickling the delicate shell. “By the way, flyboy,” she ran her tongue along corner of her upper lip, the heat from her mouth blazing against his skin, “I’m quadruple-jointed and you have no idea what I can do with that.” She patted him on the shoulder as she turned to leave.
Jack craned his neck conspicuously as she walked away, his eyes sweeping her form up and down and settling on her arse. “Fantastic from the front, but divine from behind.”
“And here I thought you were going to behave yourself,” the Doctor joked wryly, digging into the bowl that had just arrived at their stall of what looked to Rose like ramen noodles with lumps some sort of greenish tofu or something mixed in. She looked down at her own plate suspiciously and, sniffing at one fried, bluish chip, decided it was a bit of all right. “Eat up,” encouraged the Doctor and Rose could feel his eagerness, “I want to take a look at the wall.”
“So, Thressian, that’s alien, right?” Rose said as they walked along the wall, as Fuchsia had called the great fence, looking for an opening big enough to gaze out from. “Fuchsia’s, like, an alien?”
“Sort of,” responded the Doctor, his eyes following a metal mesh footpath some ways up that ran parallel to the fence. “The Thressh were some of the first humans to settle the habitable outlying systems when the outward expansion came. The threshold, y'see. And then they started to change, evolve apart from the rest of mankind, unique to their conditions. It happened on other planets too, creating different races, different, well, everything. Humans, the ones who considered themselves uncontaminated, they didn‘t like the transformation at all…”
“Yeah, I remember,” said Rose, recalling the Lady Cassandra O’Brien and her xenophobic viewpoint that had led to homicidal tendencies.
“Right,” the Doctor nodded, motioning to Jack as he discovered a way up, testing the curved iron bars with his hand, shaking it to ensure it was secure. He began to ascend even as he spoke, “That’s what companies like Elysium were established on: The ideal that they were building safe, antiseptic outposts like this. Everything catalogued, sterile, in other words, dull.” He reached the first scaffold and signaled to Jack to follow.
“Give me a hand up, yeah?” Rose called as she pursued her two companions, glancing up the ladder at the base of a turret that the walkway was attached to on both sides. Jack reached the first platform and turned to proffer her his arm. He clasped her wrist tightly as he helped her up along the rungs. “Ta,” she told him, sliding her backside up upon the steel surface of the lower dais, pulling her legs up after.
She looked up, not too keen on the idea of climbing all the way up to the second tier; they‘d already gone up a good four metres, she figured, enjoying the breeze the night afforded her away from the throngs of inhabitants. But there was something else up here, removed from the living odor of the crowds, the hint of a rank stench. “Oh!” she exclaimed, putting her hand over her mouth and nose. “What is that?”
Jack had gone rigid, staring off into the distance, over the fence. His expression was sober, even grim, enough to make Rose fearfully vigilant. “I think maybe,” he said in a low, quiet voice, “you have to see this one for yourself.” The two of them joined the Doctor, who was standing erect, stiff, only about a foot or so from the fence wall, his long fingers curled about the steel railing. He was gazing out onto the deserted city. Except, true to Fuchsia’s word, it wasn’t deserted anymore.
“Are those…?” Rose chocked back a heave.
“Yup,” the Doctor told her sullenly.
“But I mean, they can’t be,” Rose asserted, glancing from the Doctor to Jack and then back towards the outside plaza that, only hours before heaving with civilians impatient to get in. She understood why now. “Can they?” she asked tentatively.
“You tell me,” the Doctor answered.
In the square below shuffled about thirty or forty men and women in various states of putrefaction, dragging their dead and rotting limbs as if with effort. Some, depending on their degree of decomposition, had bits and pieces missing or barely still hanging on. Their continual, low groans sent a chill down Rose’s spine, their bones, exposed by their sagging decaying flesh clacking and scraping against each other as they moved their heavy arms and legs, their jaws clicking where skin had fallen away, mouths opening and closing to let out guttural, unnerving sounds.
In the light of the waning moon, the city beyond was illuminated, its odd structures glowing with a kind of ghostlike radiance. And its population, Rose could see them moving in shadows, hundreds of them. “There are so many,” Jack observed in rapt absorption, articulating Rose’s own thoughts. “So many.” The draft that had felt so sweet against Rose’s skin now raised gooseflesh along it, carrying as it did the soft, ominous moaning of the wretched creatures, the stink of their mouldering.
“Oh my God,” Rose said, her voice slightly squeaky with alarm. “They’re, I mean, they’re… the zed-word.” And, with that, she could no longer hold back her queasiness; she doubled over and vomited, on her hands and knees, onto the platform.
“The natives are restless,” the Doctor said somberly.
Peace, Ghani
Author:
ghanistarkiller (Mrs Peel on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind Fanfic Archive)Summary: The Doctor, Jack and Rose arrive in an eerily abandoned city only to find that the real puzzle lies within the walls of a drastically fenced in settlement. Just exactly what is the mysterious "illness?" What happened to make the citizens so frightened of being outside the fence after dark? And just what -or who- is dying to get in there?
Rating: R
Genre(s): Horror, Mystery
Characters: The Doctor (9th), Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler
Warnings: Mixed (mostly gen/het), Swearing
Where figures from the past stand tall,
And mocking voices ring the halls.
Imperialistic house of prayer,
Conquistadors who took their share.
That keep calling me
-Joy Division
2.
Inside the settlement proved to be equally as puzzling as the outside, offering a few buildings that had the style or refinement of the city beyond the fence but, mostly, it consisted of lower, broader, quickly assembled tenements, businesses and row housing lit by gaudy neon in blue and red and purple. The streets were teeming with people, merchants with stands calling out advertisements for their goods, whether they be earthly or less than. It was like a permanent outdoors market, complete with attractions for amusement and wares to be purchased.
“S’pose this is where we say our goodbyes,” the young woman clapped her hands together with finality. “Listen, couldn’t have worked it without you, so, thank you. Least I can do is buy you supper, yeah? There should be a diner around here somewhere, there always is. What say my treat?”
“Sounds fine,” the Doctor smiled, nodding, sincerely grateful. “Though it would be nice to have something to call you by, eh, Ms. Roosevelt?”
She snorted cheerfully. “Well, my badge says I’m Eleanor,” she proudly though playfully displayed the plastic emblem clipped to her breast pocket flap. “But you can call me Fuchsia or whatever name you find suits me best,” she grinned impishly. She probably would have waggled an eyebrow lightheartedly if she had had one, but they could see now in the dimming light of evening that her brow was smooth and wan, freckled like the rest of her face.
“So, why couldn’t you get in yourself, if you had all the papers and things?” Rose asked Fuchsia as they strolled through the crowded road, bundling her blonde hair into a clip so she could feel the cool breeze of twilight upon the nape of her neck. “They looked all right, very authentic,” she said, silently chiding herself for not knowing an genuine permit on Celestial City 4.7 from a Christmas cracker novelty.
“The best there is,” bragged Fuchsia. “Cost me for it, too. But they don’t usually let the halfies in, we’re considered high risk, don’t you know? The sickness, they say we’re more vulnerable to it. Truth be told though, I think it’s just another reason to keep us on the outside, not that pure bloods have it much better,” she glanced around.
“Thressian, am I right?” Jack guessed and gave a triumphant whoop, pumping his fist, when she nodded in the confirmatory.
“My granddad on my mum’s side was Thressh,” Fuchsia told them. “It’s the eyebrows, isn’t it? That always gets ‘em! The hair, they assume it’s colorant but the eyebrows, generally considered unsettling. Doesn’t matter much, though, in a place like this. A halfie is a halfie; might as well be part Martian for all they care. Not that I blame ‘em, the conditions they live under, they‘ve got other things to worry on about. Oi!” she protested as a burly man brushed past her, knocking her shoulder without even giving her a backwards glance. She jumped out of the way of the second and third.
As the fourth passed, the man actually turned to her and smiled apologetically. He was large, sturdy as the rest of his group with warm, dark skin and eyes almost completely black, like glinting onyx. His long, spiked ebon crew cut complimented the half-beard that surrounded his mouth and dusted his chin. His worn duster hid his impressive musculature as well as the automatic strapped to his shoulder and hanging at his side. He put his knuckles to his forehead in a casual salute as he walked backwards, then placed his crooked fingers to his lips. “Ladies,” he spoke smoothly in a thick accent, dipping his head at Fuchsia and Rose.
“Ah, come along, Valentine,” the first man addressed the last in a whining tone. He quirked a half smile at them and swivelled to rejoin the rest of his team, taking in hand a pair of nasty looking repeating pistol.
“Gentlemen,” Jack regarded them with admiration and a bit of envy. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” he said emphatically, hooting his approval. Whether his emphatic appreciation was for the alarming range of casual to heavy armaments the civilian soldiers carried, sharp stylish-grunge fashion sense or the strapping men themselves was subject to debate.
“Easy there, Captain Hero,” Fuchsia warned, pursing her lips. “Or you’ll find yourself an involuntarily volunteer for the patrol. They’re always looking for new recruits because the other ones, they don’t last very long.”
“Shame to waste a bit of that!” Rose observed, biting her lip as her stare lingered to where Valentine had offered her the promise of a kiss. Jack shared the sentiment, cocking an eyebrow devilishly as he watched them leave. “So, what are they, like, the local militia or something?” asked Rose. “ I mean, what would anyone need that many guns for?”
Before Fuchsia could respond, an earsplitting klaxon sounded, strangely quieting the surging crowd for an instant as if time froze in that one fearsome second as all faces turned to the fence to watch the flashing red lights swell and roll in the dreariness of the gray twilight. The swirling warning lamps were placed at measured intervals along the enclosure and, everywhere, the sound of lockdown could be heard. The moment was over and the residents all went back to what they had been doing as Fuchsia commented, “Early. The natives must be getting restless.”
“The regs, the regulators, they‘re really just a bit of pompous, the officious gits. Sure, they‘ve got official martial training and many fought in the civil war but you won‘t find a lot who are willing to go out there after dark,” Fuchsia explained as they followed a local’s directions toward a small greasy spoon -Vrex’s Place, as the sign in the window flamboyantly announced. They took a booth in the corner and Fuchsia slid her ident badge across a little scanner built into the table; she had to wipe its surface free of grime first with the sleeve of her pink shirt before it accepted the card. She urged her three companions to do the same. “It’s so they know you’re clean,” she clarified.
“The patrol, they’re something different though, aren‘t they?” the Doctor said steadily, giving the impression that he was speaking as an afterthought and his true attention was focused on the menu that had glided out of a slot in the wall. “They’re the real muscle, yeah? The ones with the true authority. ‘Cos, the way I reckon, you’re all the way out here, on the fringes of an overstretched, overburdened empire divided upon itself, so you won’t be looking to the government for relief anymore, are you? Frontier rule, eh?”
“Cheer us up, why don’t you?” interjected Rose dryly with a uncomfortable chuckle as she studied the menu, realizing that you had only to touch the picture of the meal you fancied on the thin plastic sheet and the price and a notice of confirmation would appear on the sheer slip, complete with her specified colony designation. She picked something that looked similar to a burger and chips. “What exactly do they patrol, anyways?” she inquired and the Doctor grinned. Always asking the right questions, Rose was.
“Some of them keep to the wall,” Fuchsia jerked her thumb in the general direction of the fence, “some go out in raiding parties. There are still supplies out there, on the outside, medicine, clothes, anything they can carry back, anything Elysium corp. left behind when they turned tail. Like you said, Doctor,” she looked at him frankly, “frontier rule.” She was holding something back, the Doctor could sense it, though she was hardly being subtle about it, like it was a subject she just didn’t want to talk about, something no one around here wanted to talk about.
“And the sickness?” the Doctor prompted solemnly. “You did mention it. What’s that about then?”
Fuchsia shushed him, looking about furtively to make sure no one had overheard; the patrons were all too busy chatting and going about their own business to be bothered with four strangers. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Like I said,” the Doctor smiled, “travelers just passing through. Tourists.”
“Strange choice for holiday. Anyways, the citizens like to ignore it; leave it to the patrol and everything’s all right, you know? It started right after the civil war, people, they just started getting in a bad way, yeah? And then it just sort of… sorted itself out. No bother,” she shrugged. “That’s what they thought, at least. But the illness, it kinda had unexpected consequences.”
“Is that why the city’s abandoned?” Rose queried. “Because of this… disease?”
Fuchsia scoffed. “Abandoned? Is that what you think? I think you’ll find, now that the sun is down, the cities are anything but. Listen, I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’ve got someplace to be,” she said as she stood, checking her wristwatch, “ a friend I’m meeting. Go to the wall, yeah? I think you’ll find what you’re looking for there. Don’t worry about the food, I’ve already paid. Generous tip, too; make sure you get good service! You got a place to stay?”
“We’ll get by,” Jack assured her with a swaggering sort of lopsided grin. “We always do.” She said her goodbyes, shaking each of their hands in turn. Jack caught her fingers in his powerful grip and raised her knuckles to his lips.
She leaned in close to him, her lips inches away from his ear, her breath tickling the delicate shell. “By the way, flyboy,” she ran her tongue along corner of her upper lip, the heat from her mouth blazing against his skin, “I’m quadruple-jointed and you have no idea what I can do with that.” She patted him on the shoulder as she turned to leave.
Jack craned his neck conspicuously as she walked away, his eyes sweeping her form up and down and settling on her arse. “Fantastic from the front, but divine from behind.”
“And here I thought you were going to behave yourself,” the Doctor joked wryly, digging into the bowl that had just arrived at their stall of what looked to Rose like ramen noodles with lumps some sort of greenish tofu or something mixed in. She looked down at her own plate suspiciously and, sniffing at one fried, bluish chip, decided it was a bit of all right. “Eat up,” encouraged the Doctor and Rose could feel his eagerness, “I want to take a look at the wall.”
“So, Thressian, that’s alien, right?” Rose said as they walked along the wall, as Fuchsia had called the great fence, looking for an opening big enough to gaze out from. “Fuchsia’s, like, an alien?”
“Sort of,” responded the Doctor, his eyes following a metal mesh footpath some ways up that ran parallel to the fence. “The Thressh were some of the first humans to settle the habitable outlying systems when the outward expansion came. The threshold, y'see. And then they started to change, evolve apart from the rest of mankind, unique to their conditions. It happened on other planets too, creating different races, different, well, everything. Humans, the ones who considered themselves uncontaminated, they didn‘t like the transformation at all…”
“Yeah, I remember,” said Rose, recalling the Lady Cassandra O’Brien and her xenophobic viewpoint that had led to homicidal tendencies.
“Right,” the Doctor nodded, motioning to Jack as he discovered a way up, testing the curved iron bars with his hand, shaking it to ensure it was secure. He began to ascend even as he spoke, “That’s what companies like Elysium were established on: The ideal that they were building safe, antiseptic outposts like this. Everything catalogued, sterile, in other words, dull.” He reached the first scaffold and signaled to Jack to follow.
“Give me a hand up, yeah?” Rose called as she pursued her two companions, glancing up the ladder at the base of a turret that the walkway was attached to on both sides. Jack reached the first platform and turned to proffer her his arm. He clasped her wrist tightly as he helped her up along the rungs. “Ta,” she told him, sliding her backside up upon the steel surface of the lower dais, pulling her legs up after.
She looked up, not too keen on the idea of climbing all the way up to the second tier; they‘d already gone up a good four metres, she figured, enjoying the breeze the night afforded her away from the throngs of inhabitants. But there was something else up here, removed from the living odor of the crowds, the hint of a rank stench. “Oh!” she exclaimed, putting her hand over her mouth and nose. “What is that?”
Jack had gone rigid, staring off into the distance, over the fence. His expression was sober, even grim, enough to make Rose fearfully vigilant. “I think maybe,” he said in a low, quiet voice, “you have to see this one for yourself.” The two of them joined the Doctor, who was standing erect, stiff, only about a foot or so from the fence wall, his long fingers curled about the steel railing. He was gazing out onto the deserted city. Except, true to Fuchsia’s word, it wasn’t deserted anymore.
“Are those…?” Rose chocked back a heave.
“Yup,” the Doctor told her sullenly.
“But I mean, they can’t be,” Rose asserted, glancing from the Doctor to Jack and then back towards the outside plaza that, only hours before heaving with civilians impatient to get in. She understood why now. “Can they?” she asked tentatively.
“You tell me,” the Doctor answered.
In the square below shuffled about thirty or forty men and women in various states of putrefaction, dragging their dead and rotting limbs as if with effort. Some, depending on their degree of decomposition, had bits and pieces missing or barely still hanging on. Their continual, low groans sent a chill down Rose’s spine, their bones, exposed by their sagging decaying flesh clacking and scraping against each other as they moved their heavy arms and legs, their jaws clicking where skin had fallen away, mouths opening and closing to let out guttural, unnerving sounds.
In the light of the waning moon, the city beyond was illuminated, its odd structures glowing with a kind of ghostlike radiance. And its population, Rose could see them moving in shadows, hundreds of them. “There are so many,” Jack observed in rapt absorption, articulating Rose’s own thoughts. “So many.” The draft that had felt so sweet against Rose’s skin now raised gooseflesh along it, carrying as it did the soft, ominous moaning of the wretched creatures, the stink of their mouldering.
“Oh my God,” Rose said, her voice slightly squeaky with alarm. “They’re, I mean, they’re… the zed-word.” And, with that, she could no longer hold back her queasiness; she doubled over and vomited, on her hands and knees, onto the platform.
“The natives are restless,” the Doctor said somberly.
Peace, Ghani
