CHAPTER 4 - The Quiet Streets of London -------------------
The Doctor couldn't bring himself to speak. He just stood, on the spot, not daring to move, the people in "The Boar's Head" all silent following the smash of a woman's glass, and the audible gasp that followed.
Outside, clouds were gathering in the sky. Rain was falling, a little at first, gathering volume, trickling down the windows of the old pub. Occassionally the sky lit up, and thunder echoed all around. Inside, a glowing fire flickered in the wooden room, warming and cozy, contrasting with the calamity outside.
The stare Jackie Tyler levelled at The Doctor conveyed an array of innumerable emotions, from fuming rage to loving calm, stultifying shock to awesome relief. It was, The Doctor found, as if cowering in the presence of a wrathful god, yet towering over a petty schoolgirl. Always the mothers...
She slowly moved towards him, every footstep resounding in his chest, in time with the beating of his hearts. "Please," she begged in a strained tone, "please tell me...tell me you're not some projected image...tell me it's you...tell me you're here...tell me it's...it's..." she gulped, "tell me it's for Rose."
Pete Tyler moved up behind his wife, placing his arm on her shoulder, stopping her. Jackie's eyes never left The Doctor, and Pete's shortly joined hers. "Doctor," was all he said.
When you've lived for 900 years, when you've travelled the universe, when you've fought terrifying creatures, seen impossible things, it's a fear unlike any other when you're rendered helpless. With no plan, no defense to fall back on, it was one of those incredibly rare moments The Doctor was utterly speechless. Emotion of a strength he'd not felt since the Time War now coarsed through his veins, threatening to engulf him. Here stood the mother and father of the girl he...parents who'd probably had to endure some hardships, who'd had to watch their daughter's heart break. And he had the power to make them happy again, to make that all change. And he couldn't.
"Jackie, Pete, I..." he began, knowing full well his eyes were moist and he, too, was having difficulty speaking. There was a pause as he thought on what to say, his eyes darting around the room, body shaking with the effort of keeping himself under control. Pete looked sombre, and Jackie, The Doctor knew, was holding back tears. She would have to cry. "I'm sorry," was all he could muster in the end.
Jackie's eyes flickered something, but she continued to stare. "We're not the ones you should be saying that to," she said quietly.
And then a scream.
Outside, a tall woman stood, her face pale, petrified, staring at a man's body on the ground, blood pouring freshly from it.
The Doctor started for the door when there sounded the shattering of something. He stopped, looking outside for any indication as to what it was, and then there came another shattering. And another. He noticed on the ground pieces of what appeared to be glass, but glass falling from the sky? That was wierd, even by his standards. Then it clicked, the only obvious solution there could be - ice. "Come inside!" he shouted to the woman out front, who madly dashed for the door.
Once she was inside, the Doctor looked back out - the ice was falling faster now, the smashing noises becoming deafening. But this was no ordinary storm. He'd thought, perhaps, that the man who'd collapsed outside had just been unlucky, and fallen victim to a particularly terminal hailstone, but that was not the case - the hailstones falling were in no way 'stones'. They were icicles, thin and razor-sharp, raining down and knifing through all beneath them.
"D-Doctor..."
He turned round, a worried Jackie gazing back at him, her eyes showing confusion and fear. She made as if to speak, before her eyes widened in horror at something outside, and she turned away in shock. The Doctor pivoted on the spot, looking back out, his face grim. She had seen a woman and her child pinned down by the storm. He darted round the room then, drawing all the blinds and curtains therein, avoiding having to witness the massacre in the streets.
What was happening...and why?
Lucky for him, the TARDIS was nearby. Hoping Martha had made it to safety, he dashed for the door.
"Doctor!" Jackie called after him. But he didn't stop, and he didn't look back.
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Martha had watched Lloyd fall.
She was running to catch up to him, to apologise for the Doctor's behaviour, but also to demand one from him regarding his. She'd called his name, and he'd stopped dead in his tracks. She'd no idea that was literally.
He had just stood there for a moment, all his muscles tense, still as a statue. He wasn't facing her, so she'd approached him, about to put her hand on his shoulder, when he'd fallen to his knees. She didn't quite understand, and had nearly laughed at how stupid it'd seemed, before she'd seen the blood dying his blond hair a thick, crimson red. She didn't move, confused, shocked and terrified.
That had saved her life. Inches infront of her, something crashed into the floor from above, shattering into pieces. Martha shot a look up, an ominous black cloud in the skies over London. But it wasn't a normal rain cloud. There was something...different about it, a concealed malice.
She dared not spend time to think on it, and sprinted into the nearest building as more shatterings sounded all around her.
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Rose had jumped when the lightening had struck the tower's pylon. She'd also jumped when the lightening had struck it again. And again.
By what had to have been the twentieth strike, however, she was too wrapped up in thought to pay the gargantuan noise any notice; what the hell was going on?
Following the first strike, she'd gazed up out of the window, heart racing from the shock, to check the skies above. Sure enough, a big fat raincloud hung over half of London. After giving the cloud a "thank you" for the jolt, Rose had closed the window and sought out her raincoat. "Nothing like a nice shower while you walk home," she'd sighed. But, as soon as she'd retrieved it, there came another. This one had caused her to close her eyes, cover her ears and scream audibly in shock, dropping her raincoat. Embarassed, unknowing if anyone else had been in the room, she'd quickly corrected herself and gone back to the window. Thankfully, no one else had been present. "S'pose that old myth about lightening never striking the same place twice can be laid to rest then..."
What had worried her was how there had then been a third and fourth strike in quick succession after that. Not only had they made her jump (again), but it was just so uncanny. "Okay, maybe I heard it wrong. Lightning doesn't strike in the same place *thrice*. Or four times..."
Of course, there then came a fifth, sixth and seventh.
Sitting down at her desk, deciding not to brave the walk home, she stared outside at the streets below, worried, utterly confused, yet alert for the next strike. Common sense told her this weather was just a little odd, but only when she focused her gaze on the unusual rain outside did she realise just how wrong it was. "That's not rain..."
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The streets below were littered with bodies. Person after person, child after child, cat after dog - they all fell under the deadly rain, their howls of terror and pain resounding through the many alleys and down the many roads.
Buildings had all very quickly become sanctuaries.
Massive pile-ups of vehicles formed as an unlucky driver would fall victim to an ice bullet, crashing through their windscreen, and then through them. Pylons sparked as they were knocked out, collapsing into streets, and any air traffic in the skies above was sliced up (along with its passengers), only to come roaring down to Earth in pieces.
As bloodied ice melted on the streets, water began flowing in rivulets down slopes, and puddles collected here and there. Still, death rained down from the sky, as if desiring to-no-end the extinction of all life below.
And as every shard of ice raining down from above collided with the surface water, a splash of blood red was there as greeting.