The Forgotten Army (19 page)

Amy felt happier at the wheel. After all, she'd meant their trip to New York to be the time when she stopped being bossed around, and here she was, about to drive a mammoth down Broadway. She gave the controls a gentle pull, and the mammoth

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rose to its feet. Then, with another subtle shunt from Amy, it started to walk forward, the machinery whirring as its steps landed heavily on the tarmac.

The mammoth walked slowly out of the Zoo, past the elephant enclosure and out of the main gates.

'I'm going to see if I can get this moving a bit faster.’ the Doctor decided. He took out a pen and started tapping at the tiny Vykoid controls. Lights started flashing all around them.

'What have you done?' Amy asked. That looked pretty random to me.'

The Doctor looked hurt. 'As if I'd be so— Whoa!'

While he was speaking, the mammoth had crouched low to the ground, pushed off with its left feet, and rolled over onto its back.

'You were saying, Doctor?' Amy yelled, her head squashed up against the floor.

The mammoth kept rolling over, but when it came back to horizontal it just kept on going.

'Can't you stop it?' Amy demanded.

The Doctor was bent double, his gangly legs waving in the air.

Amy leant forward and yanked the pretzel-wheel. It came off in her hands.

From behind, Sam came tumbling in and collided with the Doctor. As the mammoth turned over and over, their arms and legs flailing around the mammoth's head. The Doctor's arm hit a minuscule lever, and the mammoth stopped.

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'Finally!' Amy dusted herself down. 'I told you to let me steer...'

Sam pointed through the window. They had come to rest in the partially drained Central Park Pond.

Amy wasted no time. Winding the controls around the pretzel again, she got the mammoth to leap to its feet and stagger out of the park. Early risers walking their dogs in the park saw a soaking wet and mud-splattered mammoth appearing from the pond and fled.

Amy steered the beast to Fifth Avenue, and soon found it was easier to step over cars and rubble than to walk around.

Going through the Pulitzer Fountain, she paused by Bergdorf Goodman's and swung the mammoth's head to get a closer look.

'Oops! Didn't mean to do that.' She'd smashed the department store's window with the mammoth's tusks. She hurriedly put the mammoth back on course.

Amy pressed forward down the wide Fifth Avenue, and the mammoth started to pick up speed. Past the Bank of America and Tiffany's the mammoth galloped, so fast the buildings became a blur. Clutching the pretzel-wheel, Amy stayed focused on the road ahead. From the left eye she could see security guards turning in her direction, but they moved so slowly that they didn't even see her before the beast had sprinted past.

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'Remember they can't actually move out of the way.’ the Doctor said. He pointed ahead at a group of people crossing the road so slowly they looked like the cover of the Beatles'

Abbey Road album.

'Got it covered, Doctor.’ Amy assured him. She leaned back in her seat, and the mammoth reared up and leapt over the people's heads, spraying them with muddy water.

Racing past Macy's, Amy had arrived at the junction with Broadway when the Doctor yelled 'Stop!'

He pointed to the left. Madison Square was filled with NYPD troops, and Strebbins was marching up and down, barking out orders.

Hundreds of Vykoid soldiers were gathering, setting up for the next stage of the operation. Their tiny jeeps were parked up on the curb, and they seemed to be synchronising their watches. For the first time since the Time Freeze had started, Amy could see the Vykoids moving at normal speed.

The little aliens started to run over as soon as they saw the mammoth, and she tensed up.

'It's OK.’ the Doctor reassured her. 'They're no faster than us now.'

The Vykoids were looking very alarmed, and started making calls on their tiny walkie-talkies.

'On we go!' the Doctor said, and Amy steered the mammoth away from the Vykoids and down Broadway.

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A breathless Sam stuck his head up into the mammoth's neck and asked: 'Shouldn't we have hidden from them?'

Amy and the Doctor burst out laughing.

'We're in a mammoth on Broadway.’ Amy pointed out. 'I don't think subtlety and camouflage are among our strengths!'

As they headed into downtown New York, Amy gazed at the vast city around her. There were NYPD officers at the corner of each block. To a girl from Leadworth, the casual display of guns was shocking. And Amy knew what they were going to use them for. Passing City Hall, she saw a crowd of people waiting on the steps.

'The Vykoids are sealing all the doors to keep everyone out in the open,' the Doctor said.

'Talk about mean streets... How long do we have?'

The Doctor looked around. 'They'll wait until they get it at the busiest time. Everyone in Manhattan will go to work and end up as a mining slave...'

High above Manhattan, General Erik gazed out of the crown of the Statue of Liberty and saw the city waking up. Pretty soon, he would instruct his men to use the police on the streets to lead everyone in New York onto Broadway.

General Erik's Vykoid soldiers had worked through the night to lay teleport signal amplifiers 212

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along its length and, when the tarmac was packed to bursting, he would send the first shipment back. If the NYPD

did their work as planned, they would slowly empty the city, forcing everyone to march onto Broadway and go to his hometown.

At moments like this, General Erik wondered if he'd aimed too low. He was already confident in his success, and was seriously considering extending the campaign to round up the entire East Coast of America. He'd get promoted for this operation, he was sure.

More than anything, General Erik loved that he'd been able to do all this, with none of the humans suspecting anything was happening until the very last minute. With any luck, he would take Manhattan without a single loss of life.

A nervous private interrupted General Erik's thoughts.

'Sir, the mammoth is on the move. And Sector 9 is reporting the non-human we encountered called the Doctor was not part of the Puppet Programming Operation.'

General Erik dismissed the private, and turned back to the window. He felt unshakeable. There was nothing one man and a mammoth could do now.

With the children safe at Polly Vernon's, Oscar stepped back into his squad car. Ever since he'd seen Amy stride off into the Subway, he'd been determined to prove himself. He couldn't bear to

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watch his fellow officers turned into Vykoid slaves.

Hardening his heart to the task ahead, he told himself that his only option was to find Commander Strebbins and take the alien controller from her head. Taking out his mobile, he dialled the private number Strebbins had given him.

On the other side of the city, walking stiffly out of the TV

Studio, Commander Strebbins picked up her phone.

'I am ready to report on the Doctor,' Oscar told her.

Sitting in the command chair on top of her head, the Vykoid Lars grinned and waggled his levers to make Strebbins answer. 'Of course, I'll be at Madison Square. Meet me there.'

Sitting in his car, Oscar's hands shook with nerves. He'd never thought being a police officer would lead him to this.

He drew out his gun and loaded it. He wasn't going to let New York go down without a fight.

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Their mad dash across Manhattan had worked, and Amy stopped the mammoth in the shadow of the World Financial Center. The waters of the Hudson lapped at the quayside in front of them. The dock was thronging with boats, and New York ferries. Amy was eager to get out of the mammoth and leap aboard.

'Hang on a minute, Amy.’ said the Doctor, then yelled back to Sam: 'Is this thing waterproof?'

Sam appeared, ruffled and shiny from being cooped up in the back end of the mammoth. 'It should be, yeah. I mean, it kept the ice out for all that time.'

The Doctor knocked on the walls, 'Built of rare Vykoid alloys. I reckon it'll float, even with us inside.

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Oh don't look at me like that, Amy, that's the slowest ferry you'll ever see. It'll be like the open bus tour of Leadworth.

This way, we get to find out one of the lost secrets of prehistory... Can a mammoth swim?'

Amy turned the mammoth away from the ferry, and headed south into Battery Park. In front of her they could see Ellis island, where twelve million immigrants had once arrived for a new life in America and, standing proudly in the bay, the Statue of Liberty itself.

Joe and the other children had been right. Even in the morning sun, Amy could see the pulse of alien light on the Statue. Sparks of green energy arced between the spikes of the crown, and the top of the statue crackled like a circuit waiting to discharge.

'OK, I'm ready.’ Amy said. 'Though I'd like to point out you never said it was going to be "Goodbye Leadworth, hello drowning inside a hairy elephant".'

The Doctor smiled. 'Being trapped inside friendly monsters is all part of the fun.'

The mammoth picked up pace, going faster and faster until it reached the water's edge. Amy pulled back on the pretzel-wheel, and the giant creature soared forward.

Barely a metre away from the quay, they landed in the water with a massive splash and, for a disconcerting moment, the entire mammoth sank down, down into the murky waters of the Hudson.

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As water rose up past the eyes of the mammoth, Amy saw an astonished school of fish blinking in wonder at the hairy beast.

Amy looked around her nervously. 'Er, how exactly do you know Vykoid metal floats?'

'The skin is holding tight.’ the Doctor reassured her. 'Look, no water's leaking in. So come on - teach this thing to swim!'

Amy kicked out with the mammoth's feet, and it sprang off the silty riverbed and bobbed back up to the surface, its massive tusks jutting out of the water.

As the head broke the surface of the water, a slow-moving seagull flapped its wings lazily and took to the air. The Doctor grabbed the pretzel-wheel and yanked the controls to one side.

'We're going a bit faster than them, too - they can't move out of the way.’ he explained.

The seagull narrowly avoided being impaled on the fast-moving tusk and splashed back down in the water, perturbed by the hairy beast wallowing in the Hudson.

'Full steam ahead!' the Doctor yelled.

Battling through the waves and currents the mammoth was swimming directly towards Liberty Island. It lurched side to side with the swell and was beginning to gather all the rubbish from the water in its long coat.

'This is fun, isn't it?' the Doctor said to Amy.

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'Maybe we could keep this in the TARDIS when we're done?'

Amy was too busy keeping the mammoth afloat to pay him much attention. 'I so should have made Rory take me to New York. I go with you, and end up inside a giant moose.'

Oscar walked into Madison Square Park with a sense of trepidation. He'd come here to pull off the greatest act of marksmanship since William Tell. He was going to shoot the Vykoids off the top of the heads of every NYPD Officer in the city. It was the only way he could think of to free them from their controllers.

But something felt wrong. Madison Square had emptied of troops, and Commander Strebbins was standing alone in the middle of the park. Oscar sensed a trap but, committed to the task ahead, marched solemnly forward.

He stopped ten metres away from his boss. 'Commander, I need to know if you've been compromised.'

As he spoke, his eyes scanned the ground around her feet.

He could see blurs of movement and hear quiet, high-pitched chattering. She was surrounded by the Vykoids.

This time, Oscar addressed his words to them: 'I know who you are. And I will not let this happen to our great city.'

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Strebbins looked interested.

Oscar continued. 'The situation has changed. This time you've given me a target. And I'm not afraid to take her down.'

He took his pistol out and aimed at Strebbins. 'If I shoot her, then this whole thing falls apart...' He felt a tap on his shoes and kicked four Vykoids away. 'I feel one more of you on me, and she dies.'

For a moment Oscar sensed the silence of the park. He felt immune from the sirens and noisy chatter of the city streets. This was just him and Strebbins.

Tut the gun down, officer. You will do as I say.'

Up until that point, Oscar had felt sure he could go through with this. But that was the voice of Jackie Strebbins, a sound he'd come to respect and fear. He told himself there was an alien under her hat, and steeled his resolve.

'This isn't you, Commander, and I am ordering you to stop.'

Commander Strebbins's face went blank for a second.

Oscar guessed that the Vykoid under her hat was radioing back for advice. Oscar could see the Vykoids were moving to circle him. If he did shoot Commander Strebbins, he knew he would quickly be made into one of their puppets.