Chapter One

22nd November, 1989, Colwyn Avenue, Perivale, London, England, Earth.

A man is washing his car in the road whilst a black cat with piercing yellow eyes watches from atop a brick wall. His mother calls out from the terraced house. "Dave, your dinner's on the table!"

"All right, Mum!"

The black cat hisses. A wind starts to blow. Dave turns around and looks up then begins to run down the avenue, still clutching the soapy sponge and looking over his shoulder, until he trips over his own feet. "No!"

Flash! and the avenue is empty. His mother comes out of the house. "Dave?"

The cat leaps off a car parked on the drive at the end of the avenue and runs away just as the TARDIS materialises on the corner with Bleasdale Avenue. The door opens.

"You had to pick a Sunday, didn't you?" Ace complains. "You bring me back to the boredom capital of the universe, you pick the one day of the week you can't even get a decent television programme."

"As I recall, Ace, we came here at your request," replies the Doctor.

"I just said I wondered what the old gang was up to, that's all. You didn't have to bring us here. You could have dropped me up in town. I could have phoned. I just wanted to see what my old mates were up to. You didn't have to have the guided tour."

The Doctor picks up the bucket that once contained soapy water and raises his hat to Dave's mother.

"Come on, Professor." Ace begins trudging along Horsenden Lane.

"So what's so terrible about Perivale?" asks Nita, following her.

"Nothing ever happens here."

In someone's back garden, there is a lot of mewing and shaking of plants. A prim middle-aged lady in horn-rimmed spectacles and blue suit opens her window. "Wretched cats! Get out of my garden! Go on, out! Out! Shoo! Shoo!" The black cat flees.

The Doctor, Nita and Ace reach the top of Horsenden Hill, a large open space overlooking the whole area.

"This used to be a hill fort," remarks the Doctor.

"How long since I was here?" Ace asks.

"You've been away as long as you think you have," replies the Doctor.

"I feel like I've been away forever."

"Any particular reason for coming here?" asks Nita.

"It's Sunday," Ace replies. "Some of the gang always comes up here on a Sunday."

"What for?" asks the Doctor.

"Oh, I don't know," Ace replies. "Light a fire, muck about, you know."

The Doctor yawns.

"Well, I told you it was dull," Ace says. "You don't have to hang around here. I'll meet you back at the TARDIS if you want."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll find something to interest me," says the Doctor.

"Maybe they don't come up here anymore," Ace says. "There's no one around, is there? Nothing but tin cans and stray cats."

The Doctor sniffs a tin can, then examines a print in a muddy area. "And horses."

"Horses? In Perivale?" Ace scoffs. "Don't be stupid."

A little way away, four boys are playing catch with a rugby ball. The black cat sits and watches from the hedge line.

The Doctor and Nita are by the notice board when the boys run off home with their ball. Ace has been using the public telephone box.

"No one home," Ace complains. "Are you really fed up?"

"Mmm," Nita replies.

"Do you mind if I just try down to the youth club?" Ace asks.

"Mmm," replies the Doctor.

The trio make their way back down Horsenden Lane, across the bridge, to the youth club, which is empty.

"Where is everyone?" Ace cries. "Look at this." She taps the notice board, which has been put up over the closed sliding window of a servery. "We used to have the coffee bar here. What's happened to the coffee bar? I mean, it always was a dump, but at least you could meet people. Where is everyone?"

The Doctor opens a door to reveal a gym. Lots of punch bags and floor mats, and boxing match posters around the wall. A moustachioed Army type is supervising a pair of lads wrestling.

"Girls?" the Doctor beckons them over to the doorway and they look inside. One boy has the other in a painful arm lock.

"Come on, lift his arm!" urges one of the boys standing around watching them.

"Well, go on. Go on, lad," urges their supervisor, in a Scottish accent. "What are you waiting for?"

"I've beat him, Sarge!" objected the boy who was on top.

"Oh, you think we're playing games, do you? Let's pretend, eh? Is that it? Is that what you're going to do to help some villain, some mugger? Help him up, dust him down, shake hands? Go on!" mocks the Sarge.

The other boy gets slammed to the mat.

"That's better. That's it," The Sarge praises the boy who won, then checks on the defeated boy, who is still lying on the floor. "You all right, son?"

"Yes, Sarge," replies the second boy.

"You sure? On your feet, then. You okay?"

"Yeah," says the boy, getting to his feet and rubbing his face.

"Right, you go get cleaned up." He notices the Doctor. "I'll be with you in a minute." He turns back to the boys. "Okay, lads, shake hands and we'll see you next week, okay? Bye now."

The boy who won comes up to the Sarge.

"What?" asks the Sarge.

"I'd already beat him, Sarge!"

"Oh, you think I'm too hard, do you? Pushing you too hard, am I? Have you ever heard of survival of the fittest, son, eh? Have you ever heard of that? Life's not a game, son. I mean, I'm teaching you the art of survival. I'm teaching you to fight back. What happens when life starts pushing you around, son, eh? What're you going to do then?"

Paterson's jabbing finger finally provokes the lad into swinging a clenched fist at him. The Sergeant grabs his arm easily. "That's better. You all right now, eh? You all right?"

"All right, Sarge."

"Good. Off you go, then."

All the boys leave.

"Survival of the fittest," remarks the Doctor. "Rather a glib generalisation, don't you think? Survival for what, Mister er?"

"Sergeant Paterson. You show me a better way of surviving, and I'll give it a go."

"Where's everyone else?" Ace asks.

"Who you looking for, luv?"

The Doctor walks out of the gym. Nita follows him.

"Everyone!" Ace cries. "Everyone used to hang around here on Sundays. This was the only place you could get out of the house and out of the weather."

"No, it's self-defence every Sunday afternoon now."

The Doctor stops by a poster for the musical Cats, and thinks.

"I don't know what happened to the waste," Patterson says, still in the gymnasium. He looks closely at Ace. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"I don't think so," Ace looks away uneasily.

"Oh, that's right," Patterson says, remembering where he's seen Ace before. "The police let you off with a warning, didn't they? You were lucky."

"Listen, I'm just looking for my friends, okay?"

"I don't think you'll have much luck, then."

The Doctor and Nita see the black cat sitting outside the entrance. It hisses at him.

Paterson and Ace walk out of the gym.

"I think you'll find most of your crowd have moved on."

"Moved on to where?"

"Well, I think you'd have a better idea of that than me, luv, eh? Where've you been hiding yourself?"

"Around."

"Your mum had you listed as a missing person. You don't give a toss, do you? I dunno. Four kids gone missing just this month. Vanished into thin air. It's the parents I feel sorry for. Doesn't cost much to phone, luv. Ten pence, that's all."

"Come on, Doctor." Ace leaves.

"I wouldn't be that age again if you paid me, would you?" Patterson asks the Doctor.

"I can't remember. It's too long ago."

They all walk outside the Youth club. The black cat disappears around the corner.

"What a world to be young again in, eh?" Patterson says. "I reckon the only thing you can do is teach them to fight. That way, they'll fight or go under. Half of them go under anyway around here. Can't save 'em. Wasters."

Paterson unpadlocks his bicycle.

"Tell me Sergeant, do you have a problem with strays?" asks the Doctor.

"Stray what?"

"Cats."

"I wouldn't know. It's hardly a priority around here."

"Come on, Doctor!" Ace says, walking away.

"Doctor, eh? You're not in the best of shape yourself though, are you? You want to build yourself up. You know, I give a class down here Monday nights for the older men."

"I've got to see a man about a cat."

"Remember, keep fit and self-defence. One finger can be a deadly weapon!"

The trio make their way down Horsenden Lane, past Perivale Industrial Estate and Ealing Sports Ground, to Medway Parade, where there are some shops. The Gazette poster outside of Medway News proclaims "Local Woman Still Missing Police Abandon Hope". Nita, Ace and the Doctor walk down the row of shops.

"Still looks the same. Dead," Ace says. "We were the only life there ever was around here."

They come to the Drayton Court pub. "I should have tried in here first, right? I wasn't thinking. Back in a sec." Ace goes inside the pub.

The Doctor and Nita enter the general store, which is under new management. The the shopkeeper and his assistant are working in the store.

"Take this Sunday opening? Do you think I wanna do it?" asks the shopkeeper.

"Do you think I wanna do it?" asks the moustached assistant. "Do you think I want to give up my one day of rest to come in here and stand behind a cash register?"

"Standing behind a till all day can do your back in. I saw something about that on the news the other night."

"Yeah. Law of the jungle, though, right?"

"Yeah. Survival of the fittest, mate."

"I mean, all these other shops are open, aren't they? Where'd you think we'd be if we didn't join in?"

"Down the plughole. Down the plughole without a paddle, mate." The shopkeeper notices the Doctor and Nita. "Can I help you?"

"Yes," says the Doctor, looking at cat food. "Which do you think they'd prefer?"

"What?"

"Well, these brands. Which one do you think our feline friends will find particularly irresistible?"

"Well, if you believe the advertisers, this is the one preferred by your cat connoisseur," replies the shopkeeper. He hands the Doctor two cans of Furry cat food.

"And that one has a taste all cat owners, who really care, put in the dish," says the assistant, handing Nita a can of Feline food.

"Whereas these ones have the smell that drives a tabby cat wild."

"No, no, no. That's an aftershave ad."

"Is it?"

"Or is it for cars?"

"All I know is, my Tiger prefers cheese."

"Cheese!" cries the Doctor. "Ah, yes." The Doctor and Nita wander off to the dairy section.

"It's the law of the jungle now, mate, innit?" says the shopkeeper.

"Hmm. There are these two blokes, right? In a tent, in the jungle," says the assistant.

"You got another one for me, ain't you? Go on, then, go on."

"It's really dark, and they hear this terrible noise outside the tent. This terrible roaring noise. And one bloke turns to the other bloke and he says, do you hear that?"

"What?"

"I said, did you hear that?"

"Oh, right, yeah."

"That was a lion."

The Doctor and Nita start to pay attention to the anecdote.

"And the other bloke, he doesn't say anything. He just starts putting on his running shoes. And the other bloke turns to him and says, what are you doing? You can't outrun a lion. The bloke turns to him and says, I don't have to outrun the lion."

The shopkeeper gives a feeble laugh. "Don't get it."

"He doesn't have to outrun the lion, only his friend," says the Doctor.

"Then the lion catches up with his friend and eats him," says Nita.

"The strong survive, the weak are killed. The law of the jungle," says the Doctor.

"Oh yeah. Very clever," says the shopkeeper.

"Yes, very clever, if you don't mind losing your friend," says the Doctor. "But what happens when the next lion turns up?"

The cat is watching the Doctor.

"What next lion?" asks the assistant.

The black cat burst out from behind the shelf of cat food and runs out of the shop.

"I think you'd better get your running shoes on, gentlemen," says the Doctor.

Ace is waiting at a table outside Drayton Court pub. The Doctor and Nita walk outside with armfuls of cat food.

"Ah..Doctor?" says Nita, looking between him and the shop doorway.

"Did you find your friends, then?" asks the Doctor.

"No one even remembers them," Ace replies.

"I'm sure I've forgotten something," says the Doctor.

"Oi, haven't you forgotten something?" asks the shop assistant, coming out of the shop.

"Yes," replies Nita.

"Money," says the shop assistant.

"No, it wasn't that," says the Doctor.

"I got lucky on the fruit machine," says Ace, gesturing to a pile of coins on the table in front of her.

"Lucky?" asks Nita.

"Well, they're all fixed anyway, those machines," Ace says.

The Doctor pays for his cat food, and then the trio move further along Medway Parade. A miserable looking girl is shaking a Hunt Saboteur collecting tin outside the second hand shop.

"Ange!" Ace cries.

"Oh, hi, Ace. I thought you were dead," Ange says.

"What?"

"That's what they said. Either you were dead, or you'd gone to Birmingham." Ange notices the Doctor and Nita. "Who are they?"

"Oh, friends of mine."

"Oh. So you back to see your family?"

"No."

"So what you doing here? You're well out of this dump."

"I just wanted to see my friends, catch up a bit."

"Oh."

"So where is everyone?"

"Who?"

"Jay?"

The Doctor and Nita browse the old books on a trestle outside the shop.

"Dunno. Moved over west someplace. Think he's doing window cleaning, that's what I heard."

"Stevie?"

"Oh, he's gone."

"Where are they all coming from?" the Doctor mumbles to himself.

"Flo?"

"Married Darth."

"Darth Vader, the brain-dead plumber? Flo?"

"Yeah. Makes you think, eh?"

"What about Shreela?"

"Oh, she's gone."

"Midge?"

"He's gone, too."

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"

"I don't know. Gone. Vanished."

"People don't just vanish."

"You did."

"Yeah, well, that's different."

"Is it?"

"Yeah. So when did they go?"

"Dunno. Last month?"

"What?"

"Well, Midge and Stevie went last month. Shreela went last week. They had to scrape her mum off the ceiling. Funny though, I always thought she got on well with her family."

"This doesn't make sense."

"That's what I said. Know what I reckon?"

"What?"

"UFOs. They whisk 'em off and do experiments on them like we do on animals. I wouldn't fancy cutting Stevie up to see what's inside, would you? Come on, give us ten pence, then."

"Not a very efficient way to hunt, is it?" says the Doctor. "All that noise and pantomime just to slaughter one little animal. No, if you're going to hunt, you stalk your prey. You observe it, so you can take it by surprise, and then you don't kill too many. Cover your tracks, so you don't leave a smell. Can you smell that?"

"Can't," Ange says. "Hay fever."

"What are you talking about, Professor?" Ace asks. "Is something going on here?"

"Not sure."

"Is he?" Ange begins.

"Professor!"

"When is a cat not a cat?" asks the Doctor. "When it builds its own cat flap."

He takes a can of Feline Food from his plastic carry bag. "Bait, Ace. Bait."

"Hang on, Professor!"

Ace and Nita followed the Doctor up Barmouth Avenue, past the sports ground, up to Woodhouse Avenue.

"I can't believe he said that, you know," Ace says, referring to Patterson. "That T.A. twit. I reckon that was well out of order. Ten pence. I mean, even if I could've phoned, which I couldn't really, do you think anyone would've listened to me?"

Nita nodded in understanding. She was in the same position, really.

"Tin opener," says the Doctor.

"It was just that time," Ace says, sitting on a low wall. "Just the whole crowd. We had a really good laugh. I can't believe they've all just disappeared."

The Doctor opens various packets of cat food, including Sheba, and puts them on the pavement.

"Professor?"

"Tin opener."

Nita gets one from her jacket pocket and he opens the tin of Furry.

"Professor?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you listening to me?"

"Quiet, Ace, I'm concentrating."

Ace walks off as he spoons the contents onto the ground and then he and Nita hide behind the nearest garden fence. First on the scene is a tabby.

"No, you're not the one I'm after," says the Doctor.

The lady of the house knocks on the window. "What are you doing?" she mouths through the window.

The Doctor waves at her to be quiet. "Shush. Be quiet," he mouths to her. He turns back to the cat. "Shoo!" The cat runs off.

"I'm going to find Ace," Nita says quietly, heading to the playground at the end of the street. She finds Ace sitting on a slowly moving roundabout with the black cat nearby. She goes over to it, picks it up and sits on one of the swings. The cat hisses and wriggles out of her arms. The wind blows on her back.

"Look out!" Ace cries. Nita turns to see a Cheetah sitting on a rearing horse, but she doesn't run.

"Wow!" gasps Nita.

The Cheetah snarls at her, and then she runs, using the playground slides and other equipment to keep it away from her. Ace tries to create a diversion.

Back on Woodhouse Avenue, the Doctor hears Nita's voice. "Doctor!"

"Nita, Ace!" The Doctor runs out of the garden and down the avenue.

At the playground, Ace and Nita are inside the climbing frame with the Cheetah circling them.

"Doctor!" Nita yells.

They make their break and run for their lives. Flash! and Ace and Nita are at the top of a slope. They run to the bottom and fall amongst bleached bones.

A purple sky hangs over active volcanoes in the distance. Ace and Nita run over to where a group of cats are around the body of Dave the car-washer then the feline horse rider appears on the ridge. The chase is on again.

Ace and Nita are managing to keep ahead of the horse and rider, but finally they fall and the rider dismounts. Then the lad from the Youth Club shouts out.

"Go away! Get away from here! Get away from here!"

The Cheetah chases him instead, and quickly fells him. Ace picks up a rock but the Cheetah runs past her, knocking her down, and mounts its horse again. It puts Stuart over the pommel and leaves. A young Indian woman comes out from the forest edge.

"Ace!"

"Shreela!"

"Ace, you shouldn't have run. They always go for you if you run."

Shreela takes Ace and Nita back to hercamp. A small fire has been lit in a clearing. Two young men in leather jackets are lounging by it.

"Midge!" Ace cries.

"Hi, Ace. Long time."

"Is Stevie here, too?"

"He was," replies Shreela.

"Stevie?" asks Midge. "He's cat food, isn't he?"

"Stop it!" orders Shreela.

"This is Derek. He's doing very well. He's been here three weeks. Only got flesh wounds."

"This is Nita."

"We'll have to move on soon," says Shreela. "They hunt at night sometimes."

"They can see in the dark," Midge says. "You can't see them, just their eyes."

"Just as well I'm here," Ace says. "You need sorting out, you lot!"