The Forgotten Army (5 page)

Only metres away from them, the mammoth raised its head, and its huge eyes looked right at them, its brutal tusks almost touching their legs.

Why did doing what the Doctor said ever seem like a good idea, Amy wondered. 'You know Doctor,' she said,

'I've never taken orders from a bloke before.'

The Doctor smiled. 'Ah, but then again, you never got to do this!' With a yell of: 'Geronimo!' he swung Amy off the window ledge, and the two of them landed straight on the back of the mammoth.

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Digging his hands into
the mammoth's thick white coat, the Doctor leant over and yelled in Amy's ear, 'Hang on! It's going to be a bumpy ride.'

Amy curled her fingers into the mammoth's hair and clung on as the beast thundered around the Grand Hall of the Museum.

'It's a bit like horse-riding,' the Doctor yelled.

'I've only been once, I broke my arm.’ she replied.

'Well let's hope you learned.’ the Doctor shouted back.

'Never went bullfighting, though.’ Amy yelled.

'Bullfighting?'

She pointed ahead, almost losing her balance. 'Looks like that's what he's doing!'

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DOCTOR WHO

In front of them, a man had stepped out into the hall. He was wearing what had once been a strikingly white blazer, which was now stained and torn. Amy recognised him from the footage of the mammoth breaking loose.

The Doctor had obviously recognised the man too, because he yelled in Amy's ear, 'Look, he's OK.'

Amy twisted round to see the man standing proud in the middle of the hall.

'Oh no,' the Doctor continued. 'I think he's trying to knock it out... with a wooden chair.'

The man was waving and shouting to attract the mammoth's attention, and was hopelessly trying to hide a chair behind his back.

'Oi, hairy!' the man yelled. Within seconds, the mammoth had changed direction and was heading straight for him.

'Get out of the way!' Amy cried, not quite able to believe the man was even attempting this. She saw him take the chair from behind his back and raise it above his head, all set to smash it on the runaway creature.

Acting quickly, the Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver and directed a quick burst at the chair, which fell apart in the man's hands.

'Why did you do that?' Amy asked.

'No point getting it any angrier.’ the Doctor replied.

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Weaponless and surprised, the man turned to run, but the mammoth now had a new target: the door to the rest of the Museum. It headed at full pelt for the locked door.

'Duck!' the Doctor yelled.

In an explosion of splinters and broken wood panels, the mammoth broke free of the Grand Hall and charged down a marble corridor. It roared as it raced through the hall of the Age

of

Man,

sending

the

skeleton

of

a

three-million-year-old woman clattering to the floor with a thrust of its tusks. Then it slowed to gaze at the vast diorama of Neanderthal man and a picture of a relatively small brown mammoth.

The Doctor was looking around with interest. 'This is the best way to see museums. It gets it over with so much quicker!'

He had ended up sitting behind Amy on the beast's back and was now hanging onto her waist as the white mammoth skittered round the marble floors, his legs flailing out to one side.

Amy shouted back, 'What you doing?'

The Doctor didn't answer - he was too busy trying to stop himself slipping off. Amy reached back and grabbed him by his braces, yanking him back up on top of the mammoth.

'Hah, I never thought I'd be thankful you're wearing those braces,' she said. "Thought you'd be OK sitting on this with those bandy legs of yours.'

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DOCTOR WHO

The Doctor looked rattled. 'What do you mean?'

Amy grinned at him. 'Haven't you ever looked in a full-length mirror? You could ride a horse between those!'

As the mammoth thundered along another corridor, the Doctor leaned forward as far as he could, and aimed his sonic screwdriver at the mammoth's ears.

'It's not working,' he yelled back to Amy. Hanging on with one hand, he fiddled with the device and tried again.

'What's not working?'

'There's a thing you can do to some animals, makes them relax, like stroking a dog, or turning a rabbit on its back.'

'And that was your plan, was it?'

If anything, the mammoth seemed to have become more erratic, not less.

"Thing is,' the Doctor explained, 'it should work on a mammoth. Something's not right.'

'What do you mean?' she asked.

The mammoth abruptly changed direction, and the Doctor began to slip again. Amy had to yank him back on. She looked back up to see that they were now heading full-pelt for a massive whale skeleton.

The Doctor had seen it too. 'Got to be able to steer this thing. I told Commander Strebbins we'd bring it out under control...'

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Amy was flabbergasted. 'There is no way you can steer a mammoth!'

The Doctor leant forward and put Amy's hands on the neck of mammoth. It felt warm and powerful under her hands. 'Just pull to the left and see what happens.'

'You are impossible!' Amy shouted. She'd imagined travelling around New York in style, and here she was trying to steer a prehistoric animal around the New York Natural History Museum.

Amy gripped the animal tight and pulled the mammoth's neck to the left with all of her might. The mammoth wailed in outrage, and spun rapidly to the right. They smashed through the blue whale's tail, sending bones flying through the air.

Amy wasn't amused. 'I think it's trying to shake us off.'

Increasingly enraged by its unwanted passengers, the mammoth was now heading for a replica cave. The top was so low the mammoth was barely going to squeeze through it...

'Can't you steer it away?' the Doctor asked.

7 am so going to get you back for this, thought Amy.

The Doctor yelled 'Duck!' and Amy flattened herself on the animal's back as it galloped through the cave. They made it through to the other side where the mammoth hurtled into a display of penguins, toppling them like dominoes.

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DOCTOR WHO

Amy blinked, her mind distracted, confused by something.

'Are there any Nile Penguins here?'

The Doctor stared at her like she was mad. "They don't exist, Amy. That's a myth. What made you think of them?'

Amy wasn't sure. For a brief moment, it had felt like a long-forgotten memory had burst urgently back into her life, but it had departed just as quickly, and she had no idea why she'd thought it was important. 'I just had such a weird feeling of déjà vu.’ she said.

'That's just echoes of memories.’ the Doctor told her cheerily. 'Reverberating down your timeline, nothing to worry about. Unless it's déjà vu of you wetting yourself. You haven't, have you?'

Amy laughed. The Doctor had an amazing ability to make the scariest things feel fun, and the worst times become the best.

She wanted to hug him, but realised they were about to hit another doorway.

Amy and the Doctor ducked down close to the mammoth's fur again. When they sat back up, they were in the glorious light of the Hall of Diamonds. Amy was dazzled. She'd never imagined such enormous jewels existed.

'Maybe this is a robbery?' Amy yelled at the Doctor. 'A very clever robbery...'

'I don't think so...' the Doctor replied.

He was still lying on the mammoth's back, and was listening intently to something. He gestured for 48

THE FORGOTTEN ARMY

Amy to bend down with him. 'Tell me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound like an animal to me...'

Am y couldn't tell for sure but, through the fur and warmth of the animal, she thought she could hear the click-click-click of cogs turning.

The Doctor took his sonic screwdriver out and pointed it at the mammoth's back leg. It whirred and the mammoth's leg gave way with a FATOO M! Amy clung to the fur as, for a second, it seemed like the creature was going to collapse.

With a mighty effort, the mammoth hauled its leg back up.

'That's interesting.' The Doctor was tapping at the mammoth's back. 'This is real muscle and real fur, held on in a real way.' He tugged a bit of white fur loose, and the mammoth wailed. 'See, it really hurts.'

Amy rolled her eyes at him. 'Well, durrr.'

'But underneath this real animal.’ the Doctor continued,

'there's a metal skeleton...'

'So we can switch it off?'

The Doctor looked worried. If the mammoth had been built, then this was going to get complicated... How could he know what was going to hurt the beast? Like a little boy, he desperately wanted to take it apart and see how it worked, but he couldn't be sure how much was machine and how much was animal.

With all four legs working again, the mammoth put on a burst of speed and they crashed past a 49

DOCTOR WHO

giant canoe, arriving back where they'd started in the Great Hall.

The doors had been hauled open, presumably so the Doctor and Amy could lead the mammoth out as they had promised. Seeing its chance to escape, the mammoth bellowed with triumph and charged for freedom...

Bursting out into daylight, the mammoth paused. It was built for arctic plains and vicious tussles with other bloodthirsty animals, but outside everything was concrete and brick and flashing lights. In that brief moment, the mammoth was hit with a barrage of tranquilliser darts.

'Will the tranquillisers work on it?' Amy asked.

There was no reply, and she twisted round to look behind her. The Doctor was sound asleep. He had been struck in the leg by a dart and had flopped onto the mammoth's back.

'Wake up!' Amy screamed at him in frustration.

The mammoth was about to tumble over and they were still on its back. Amy grabbed the Doctor and pulled him to one side as the mammoth staggered and then collapsed on the steps.

Surrounded by New Yorkers and live on TV, Amy stood beside the sleeping body of the mammoth, the Doctor in her arms - and heard a huge cheer. Smiling, Amy waved at the crowds. They'd only stopped off for a burger, but they'd managed to

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catch a mammoth. She slid down off the back of the beast, and several men clad in severe black clothes grabbed both of her arms.

Officer Oscar Henderson stepped up to her, a grim look on his face. He snapped a pair of cuffs around her wrists, and motioned for her to 'zip it' when Amy opened her mouth to complain.

'I think it's time you two came with us,' he said.

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Oscar Henderson had been
working for Commander Strebbins for six months, and he'd never seen her like this before. He guessed that she was feeling out of her depth. He knew she had spent twenty years in the Baltimore City Police, working her way up from foot patrols on the roughest streets, to become Chief of the entire district.

A new unit was being set up to deal with Serious Civil Unrest.

They needed a hard nut to run it, someone who wouldn't be scared by whatever the city had to throw at her - and someone who'd stay calm, whatever was happening. In the last two years, Strebbins had coped with riots on the streets, striking taxi drivers and bomb threats. But the mammoth was something new, and Oscar could

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DOCTOR WHO

see that Strebbins was absolutely fuming. She paced up and down in front of her lieutenants, barking orders.

'I want every single person in the Museum interviewed.

I want names, I want backgrounds, I want witness statements. If one of them so much as farts out of turn, send them to me! And most of all, get me the Man in the White Jacket!'

The other officers filed out of Strebbins's office, their mission clear, but Oscar heard his name and stepped back inside her office. Strebbins shut the door behind him, conspiratorial.

'Now we're alone, I need to tell you something.'

Oscar sat down but, seeing that Strebbins stayed standing, he awkwardly got to his feet again and stood in the centre of the room while Strebbins paced her office.

'I'm going to tell you about the man with the silly hair we let into the Museum. What I have to say must remain top secret. I'm telling you as you're being assigned to deal with him and his friend.'

Oscar couldn't tell whether this was going to be a good or bad thing yet. 'She's called Amy Pond,' he confided. 'Scottish police force.'

'She's nothing of the sort,' Strebbins snapped back. 'The man is called the Doctor. The code he used to gain access has been on record since 1932. The origins are vague, but I'm instructed to step aside to the bearer of the code, and allow them to

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pursue their actions. However harebrained those actions might seem.'

Strebbins paused for a moment. This obviously wasn't the kind of conversation she wanted to be having with a junior officer. Oscar usually saw her barking direct orders at them and going home to her dogs.

'That was actually in the wording of the command.’

Strebbins went on. 'However harebrained those actions might seem. Now, I'm in charge of this city's response to major threats. And I consider the intrusion of a mammoth to be one of them. It was a mistake to let the man in the tweed jacket into the Museum. I hold myself responsible, and I'm certainly not going to repeat it. I give my authority to no one. So I need a solution. Since this young man arrived in town, things have started to go wrong. I can smell trouble, but this time I can't stop it. Colonel Mace from UNIT is on his way here from Vancouver, and I want this wrapped up before he gets here. I start to need help in my own backyard, pretty soon we'll all be shut down. I want you to stay on their case. Wherever the Doctor goes, you go, whatever they do, I want you to be there with them.'