The Forgotten Army (16 page)

Joe nodded, impressed that the Doctor was treating him like a grown-up. 'What about my parents?'

'They'll be better off indoors. So come on, coat, boots, whatever else you think you need to wear. Then I need you to round up everyone in your class. You're going to be my eyes and ears, Joe.'

As he clambered onto the fire escape, Joe looked at the Doctor with the awe of a private addressing a general. 'Why do you want me? Couldn't any of the others do it?'

The Doctor grinned. 'I asked Miss Vernon who was the best-behaved boy in her class, and that so wasn't you. I need someone naughty, a natural leader.'

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Joe wasn't sure whether this was a good thing or not but, ready for adventures, he set off with the Doctor and his friends.

As they walked away from the building, the boy talkin g excitedly to the Doctor and Sam, Polly quietly asked Amy,

'So are you two dating?'

Amy scoffed at the question. 'Me and the Doctor? No way!'

Polly smiled. 'It's just you looked so together.'

Amy was shocked. She had no idea they looked like that.

Polly went on, 'You know, always laughing at his jokes, and the way you look at him like you think he's going to save the world every time he opens his mouth.'

Amy denied everything. 'Nah, he just needs me to keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't get stolen by any tin y aliens again. I'm more of a Brad Pitt kind of girl. I'm not really one for all that floppy hair.'

Polly smiled at Amy. 'Nice try!'

They walked on in silence, until a thought struck Amy.

'Doctor, you know the story of the Trojan horse. What happened at the end? I can only ever remember the start of it.'

'They murdered everyone in Troy, and let the barbarians in through the gate,' the Doctor told her softly.

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'Oh.’ said Amy. 'I was always told we could learn from history. Fat lot of good that was. I may as well have slacked off on Friday afternoons.'

The Doctor grinned at Amy, 'Are you telling me you didn't?'

After walking in his bare feet and boxers for what felt like hours, Oscar made it back to base. With the lift out of action, he climbed all twenty-three storeys and swung open the door to an empty office. Everything was dark and quiet. His first thought was that the Vykoids had taken everyone, but it all seemed too neat. There were no signs of any kind of struggle at all. Oscar walked back into Strebbins's office and saw a handwritten note left on her desk:

"To whom it may concern. All units are on patrol. Investigating reports of missing officers.'

Oscar hit the desk in frustration. This was exactly what Amy had told him to stop. If the Vykoids took Strebbins and everyone she'd taken with her, they'd soon have every officer in New York tied up in the Subway. Not only that, but every armoured car and armed response unit in Manhattan would be out of action. New York would be cut off from the world and without defence.

On the other side of the city, the Doctor was standing in Polly's tiny apartment on Bleecker Street in Soho, talking to a group of thirty 10-year-olds. All of them

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had seen the mayhem caused by the Vykoids, and had emerged from their apartments eager to help the mysterious man and his friends.

Joe had told his class that the man was called the Doctor, and he was probably a bit like Bruce Wayne. Two of the boys had come out dressed as Batman, keen to take their places as protectors of the city.

'Let me tell you a story. Long ago, in the frozen Arctic wastes, an alien army landed. Only now, thousands of years later, it isn't a story. And the army is ready to attack.' The Doctor looked round at them all seriously. 'And you are the last line of defence for New York. You all saw the mammoth come to life, and everything that has happened today is because of the mammoth. The aliens are called Vykoids, they are seven centimetres tall, and they move so fast they are almost impossible to see. There is a high-intensity chronactic-delay vortex affecting the city.'

Amy nudged him in the ribs and he turned to her. 'What?'

'In English, Time Lord.'

'Ah, yes, sorry there is a Time Freeze in place over New York. Somewhere in the city, the Vykoids are broadcasting a signal that is slowing everything else down. While we're moving so slowly, they can do what they like to us. Amy saw them steal a policeman's trousers and draw glasses on his face.'

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guess it was quite funny of them, but never mind that. If we can find the source of their signal and turn it off, then they will be powerless to take us. They want to take every single adult on Manhattan and make them their slaves. Out on the streets you will see some things that will scare you, but don't be afraid. They are only here to take the biggest and the strongest. As long as you do as I say, you will be safe.'

The Doctor divided them up into pairs. 'You and you, and you and you go together. You need to stay in the shadows and keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. All power is down, so any light, and sign that something is strange, you come straight back here. We need to be quick.

Take the city block by block.. .Now over to Polly....'

Polly stared at him, caught out. She whispered to the Doctor, 'What do you mean?'

The Doctor explained 'Ah, should have told you, I need them to spread out and check every tall building in New York, go right to the top, and if they see anything that shouldn't be there, they need to run straight back here, to tell us about it.

We won't be able to move far, the Vykoids will be on to us...'

'But there are hundreds of tall buildings in this city. That's impossible.'

Amy interrupted. 'They need to start at the tallest first.'

'But it'll take ages,' Sam agreed.

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The Doctor joined in. 'Then I'm glad I've got the best team in New York. OK, who's for the Empire State Building? Off you go. Who's taking the Bank of America Tower? Right you two. And Batmen, I need you both on top of the Flat Iron. Take one of these each - you know what you need to do!'

They all yelled back 'Yes!' and scuttled off pair by pair, creeping like well-practised superheroes.

'What did you give them?' Amy asked.

'Fireworks! They're going to need to let us know where they are.'

'And where did you get fireworks from?'

"This is New York, Amy, you can get anything here. New Year for someone all the time, remember?'

Polly was looking worried. 'Are you sure they'll be safe?'

The Doctor answered straight away. 'The Vykoids have no interest in them. Just make sure you stay out of sight yourself. Whatever happens, don't leave your flat.' He leapt up. 'Right, off to the Zoo!'

'Come on,' Amy told Sam. 'It's your turn to be helpful.'

'Don't worry.’ the Doctor said to Polly. 'We'll be barely a few minutes. Well I say minutes. We'll actually be a couple of hours, maybe even longer. But whichever way, I'll come back for you, don't forget that.'

Outside, the Doctor asked Amy to pick a car. I’ll put it back. I didn't do anything to the other one.'

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Sam was appalled. 'You can't just take someone's car!'

'Tomorrow I'll be the saviour of the city. That guy can lend me his Dodge for a few minutes.'

Amy had another question on her mind. 'How come it's not safe for Polly to be on the streets, but it's fine for me?'

The Doctor smiled. 'You're with me. Now come on, Sam.

It's time we took a proper look at that mammoth of yours...'

Sam Horwitz had never broken into anywhere before, so he felt particularly naughty getting out of a stolen car and then clambering over the hastily repaired service gates of the Zoo.

He'd spent most of his time studying long-dead animals, so the sounds of the Zoo at night were strange and frightening to him. Unlike the rest of New York, the animals were loving how dark the sky was, and how quiet the Zoo had become.

Passing through the happily squawking enclosures, Sam went straight to the mammoth's cage. Once inside the enclosure, Sam felt incredibly sad. The mammoth he had spent months slowly defrosting and caring for was split into two pieces. While the top half still looked like an animal you'd find in a school textbook, the lower half was a cyberpunk fantasy of metal and technology. Sam squatted down and gazed with the precision of a 179

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scientist at the inner workings of the man-made beast. He was puzzled by how they'd managed to make it look and feel so real, and pulled at the join between the metal.

Urrgggh! He stopped. The muscle was real. Some kind of lab-grown synthetic meat, perhaps. It had oozed as he'd pulled it back. Seen from the inside, the fur was obviously fake. Everything about the hairs seemed real, but just under the skin, was hard, flexible armour. The Vykoids had made the mammoth far tougher than any other creature it might meet.

The Doctor finished examining the tusks, and moved on to the eyes.

"They did beautiful work here. A real cornea, plus technology. It's not surprising you didn't spot it was a fake.

Now, Sam, as much as I love your approach, it's time to get brutal. We need to make a bit of room in this thing. Can you smash all of that out?' He was pointing to the gracefully constructed central section of the mammoth.

Sam started carefully dismantling the Vykoid living quarters that took up most of the beast.

'Er, Sam, tick-tock, tick-tock, time is the one thing we don't have a lot of.'

Amy stepped in to help. 'I think what he means is do it more like this...'

Kicking with her boots, Amy smashed a delicate level of the Vykoid ship, sending the hand-crafted 180

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construction skittering to the floor in tiny pieces.

Taking care to leave the controls in the head of the mammoth untouched, Sam set about his work with a vengeance. This was the mammoth that had ruined his career, and he'd suddenly realised he was going to enjoy taking it to pieces.

'Does he do this a lot?' he asked Amy.

'Well, I've never seen him with a mammoth before,' Amy answered.

Sam loved that Amy had such spirit. Before he'd met th e Doctor, Sam had been ready to hide from the world for ever, content never to show his face in public again. But now he was gleefully breaking into the City Zoo and dismantling an alien spaceship. 'I meant, does he just not tell you what he's planning to do,' he clarified.

'I know,' said Amy with a quiet smile.

'I guess he's doing this so the Vykoids can't leave,' Sam suggested.

'Maybe. But it's more likely he doesn't know what he's doing yet. Just has a kind of feeling for something...'

Sam wasn't entirely reassured by this.

His doubts grew even stronger when the Doctor stood back from the mammoth, and asked, 'Enough room for a man inside there yet?'

Sam told him there was, and the Doctor nodded. 'Go on then.'

'Excuse me?'

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'In you get, Sam Horwitz.’

Amy watched Sam carefully. She could see him struggling with his instincts. There was something so compelling about the Doctor, she was fascinated to see the effect he had on people.

'You want to shut me in there, don't you?' Sam guessed.

'No, that would be silly. I just want to see what happens when you get inside.' The Doctor smiled at Sam. 'Of course, now you say it, shutting you in for a bit could help us learn a lot.'

Amy nudged Sam towards the door. 'Come on, in you go, no time like the present.'

'You'll be out soon,' the Doctor assured him. 'In fact, th e sooner you're in, the sooner you'll be out again.'

Unable to resist the lunatic logic, Sam found himself doing something he'd never imagined. Putting his head up into the chest of the mammoth, he hauled his body up on the metal innards, nicking his legs up inside the space he'd smashed out.

Below him, the Doctor and Amy took one side of the mammoth's belly and lifted it high into position. Sam heard a quiet click as it shucked into position. From the outside, he guessed, the Polar Woolly Mammoth once again looked very, very real.

But inside the dark of the mammoth, Sam was growing increasingly angry. The Doctor had promised he'd be out soon, but minutes were

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crawling past. He was hot, he was suffocating, and he was furious that they had tricked him like this. Sam banged on the metal belly, determined to smash his way out.

But nothing would budge. He shouted for them to release him from his curious prison, but he heard no sounds outside.

For all Sam knew, they had left him there at the mercy of the Vykoids. His mind raced at a hundred miles an hour, and his anxiety spun out of control - what if the Vykoids came back and found him in their ship? What would they do when they saw what he'd done to it?

Finally after ten nervous minutes, Sam heard another click, and the belly of the mammoth was disconnected. Sam was so eager to get out, he stamped down on the metal, and fell out in a sprawling mess, landing heavily on the floor of the Zoo enclosure.

The Doctor and Amy were astonished.