Disclaimer: Continuation of "The Unquiet Dead" by Mark Gatiss. While most is directly from the episode there are many alterations and additions. No offense intended, or money gained.

Many thanks to my lovely hard-working Beta JKW.

CHAPTER 8: ZOMBIES


Previously on Doctor Who...

Moments later a hand reached around her face and something was pressed against her mouth and nose- smothering her. She could smell the distinct smell of ether, which was sure to put her to sleep, and she did her best to fight off the stranger, but it was no use. Then everything went black as she passed out...

D*W

The Doctor turned to Rose and noticed her heading out after an old man and a young woman who had hold of an elderly lady. Knowing Rose could look after herself he called out, "Be careful!" and jumped up on the stage to talk to the man who had been performing when the specter had appeared.

"Did it say anything? Could it speak? I'm the Doctor, by the way," he said. The Doctor was very curious about this creature; he'd never run into anything like it. And after 900 years, it was getting a bit harder to find things he had not encountered before.

The Doctor watched the creature float around the room and then go into one of the lamps that was along the walls.'That's it!' he thought. "Gas. It's made of gas," he said aloud.

He jumped off stage and ran outside to tell Rose what he had discovered- and to make sure she hadn't gotten herself into too much trouble. When he made it outside and down the steps he looked around for Rose, only to see the couple that she had chased after loading what was obviously an unconscious Rose into their carriage. He was furious, but more than that he was extremely worried.

"ROSE!" he yelled after them.

He had no idea who these people were or what the wanted with his Rose. But they had better not harm her, or they'd face the full fury of the "Oncoming Storm". He noticed the sign on the carriage said "Sneed and Company Undertakers". If he did lose them, he might be able to track them down, not that he planed to let them get away, mind you.

"You're not escaping me, sir. What do you know about that hobgoblin, hmm? Projection on glass, I suppose. Who put you up to it?" The man who had been performing prattled on beside him. He was really starting to annoy the Doctor. Rose was in trouble and this man was worried about his interrupted show? And placing blame? The carriage was getting away and the Doctor was looking around for some means of following at speed.

"Yeah, mate. Not now, thanks," the Doctor finally cut him off. Spotting another carriage the Doctor headed for it. "Oi, you, follow that hearse!" he yelled as he climbed in, not giving one whit about whose carriage it belonged to.

"You can't do that, sir" said the driver.

"Why not?"

"I'll tell you why not-," chimed in the man from the stage, who had apparently followed the Doctor. "I'll give you a very good reason why not-because this is my coach!"

"Well, get in then!" yelled the Doctor, pulling the annoying man in. He was worried about Rose and didn't want to waste any more time arguing with the man. "Move!" he shouted to the driver. Luckily for both the driver and the kidnappers, he obeyed.

As they chased after the hearse, the Doctor fretted about Rose and tried to distract himself from all the things that could happen to her. He loved traveling with people, but it was dangerous and things could happen to those who chose to travel with him. He had lost people before. Over the centuries, people had come and gone for many reasons.

Most often people chose to leave for good reasons, they got out before it was too late. They had realized that if they didn't leave then they wouldn't ever leave. Or they realized that if they stayed much longer, they'd wind up dead. Living through so many dangerous scrapes you start to think you're invincible, and that was dangerous. However, once or twice someone had died for him or the cause of the day. He didn't ever want that to happen to Rose.

In his attempt to distract himself he discovered that one of his favorite human authors was sitting right next to him. How fantastic was that? He loved Charles Dickens! Well, he loved his books, so far the man himself had been annoying, but he was somehow slightly less annoying now that he knew who it was. They talked about it as the drove. It was a small distraction, and that helped- slightly.

Finally they arrived at 'Sneed and Company Undertakers'. Charles Dickens and the Doctor hopped out and proceeded to knock on the door. A young servant girl answered and tried to tell them that they were closed.

"Nonsense," said Mr. Dickens, "Since when did an undertaker keep office hours? The dead don't die on schedule. I demand to see your master!"

"He's not in, sir" she tried again, moving to close the door.

"Don't lie to me child!" Mr. Dickens shouted. "Summon him at once!"

"I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Dickens, but the master's indisposed," she said. It was then that the Doctor noticed the gas lamp flickering behind her. The gas creature was here. Perhaps it had even come from here, started off here at this house.

"Having trouble with your gas?" he asked.

A faint voice could be heard from within the depths of the house. "What in Shakespeare's going on?" Charles asked.

The Doctor ran inside, without bothering to be polite about it anymore. He knew Rose was here, and so was that creature, and he didn't know if they were friendly or not. He ran to the wall with the gas lamp that he had seen flicker and put his superior-hearing ear to the wall, listening. He could hear whispering of the creatures in the walls.


D * W

When Rose awoke she was quite groggy, and it took a few seconds to clear her head. After a minute her head had finally cleared up a bit, though she still had a bit of a headache. She figured that wasn't going away anytime soon, and she'd just have to suffer until she could get her hands on some good 21st century medicine.

Rose had thought she was alone in the room when she woke, but she suddenly heard a low moaning sound. She turned to her left to see what appeared to be a corpse-or a man playing a corpse, she wasn't quite sure which-sitting up in a coffin. A bluish cloud surrounded his head, similar to the specter they had seen earlier at the theater. She wasn't entirely certain what was going on. Was this something alien, or a joke, or what? But it was creeping her out.

"Are you all right?" she asked the man.

The man made no intelligible reply. All that she could hear where low groans and similar noises. He reached his arms around the coffin clearly making a move to get up. What really freaked her out about him is the fact that he never, not once, took his dead eyes off of her.

"You're kidding me, yeah? You're just kidding me?" More guttural moans and groans.

"You are, you're kidding me, aren't you?" She asked yet again. But by now she had a really bad feeling about him, and he was standing up and moving very stiffly towards her-like he had no joints. "Okay, not kidding," Rose rolled away from the zombie and ran to the door.

Of course it had to be locked. Whoever had put her in here was in for a slap to make her mum proud when she got out of here. She kept trying the door and pounding on it, knowing the Doctor would be on his way soon. She had no idea how long she had been out for, as she hadn't worn a watch.

Her jimmying of the door handle proving fruitless, Rose turned to face the room, so as not to be surprised by the zombie. She was startled when a second corpse, that of the old woman she had chased after, also sat up. Now she was staring down two walking corpses.

She grabbed a vase and threw it at the male zombie-thing. It stumbled back several steps. She quickly turned around, while it was catching up, and banged on the door. "Let me out! Open the door!" she screamed, scared. She didn't know exactly what the walking corpses would do to her, but whatever it was, she didn't think it would be very good.

At the front of the house, after having barged in to listen to the walls, the Doctor heard the screams coming from further inside the house. His hearts skipped a beat, and he then sped up in worry. What had they done with his Rose?

"That's her," he said. He quickly sped off in the direction her voice was coming from as she continued to bang on the door of the room she had been locked in and pleaded to be let out. 'I'm coming, Rose. Hold on, I'm coming.' he thought. He ran toward her paying no one any mind, pushing anyone he came across out of his way, in his rush to go to Rose's aid.

Rose continued to bang futilely on the door, praying someone would come before the zombies were upon her. By the looks of things, there wasn't that much time before that happened. "Open the door!" she shouted, yet again. She had lost count of the number of times she had shouted that. She banged on the door twice more.

Then the zombie came from behind her and grabbed her, its hand clamped over her mouth and dragged her away from the door. She was terrified now, what would happen to the Doctor if something happened to her here?

The Doctor heard her scream change to high pitch and then go muffled as if someone put their hand over her mouth. He pushed his legs to go even faster; he had to get to her in time. Finally, he reached the door; he knew this was it despite the lack of banging. He could somehow sense Rose's presence behind that door, in spite of her lack of telepathic talent. He didn't know how that was possible, as he didn't have any telepathic link with her ('yet' Six said). But he hushed all those thoughts as unimportant and fairly irrelevant. What was important was that he had gotten to Rose in time.

He kicked the door open. Rose was being held by what appeared to be those Gas creatures possessing corpses. "I think this is my dance," he said. Any other time his voice might be flippant with that line, but with a dear friend in danger, his voice was actually quite deadly. He reached past the animated corpse's arms and grabbed Rose, pulling her safely to his side, where she belonged.

Charles Dickens was nattering on about how this must be a prank, couldn't be real, and dozens of ways this could have been pulled off. "We're under some mesmeric influence," he cried.

"No, we're not. The dead are walking," the Doctor stated plainly, calmer now that Rose was safe, or at least at his side. "Hi," he said to her, looking down at Rose, to reaffirm her presence.

"Hi. Whose you're friend," she questioned him, noting the man behind him.

"Charles Dickens," he said, excitement back in his voice.

"Oh, okay," Rose said. She guessed that she might end up meeting more people like that if she stayed with the Doctor. That's not what she had come for and that is not why she stayed with him. But that wasn't a bad benefit. 'Charles Dickens! I'm in a room with Charles Dickens.' she thought. She turned back to the zombies.

"My name's the Doctor. Who are you, then? What do you want?" he sounded so commanding right then, Rose noted. And while the zombies had ignored all of Rose's attempts to question them, they answered to the Doctor.

"We're failing-open the rift- we're dying. Trapped in this form. Cannot sustain. Help us," and then the creatures released the corpses and the bodies fell to the floor.

The entire group made their way to the house greeting room. The servant girl was ordered to fetch some tea, calm everyone's nerves. When Sneed refused to talk, Rose had a go at him. "First of all you drugged me, then you kidnap me-and don't think I didn't feel your hands having a quick wander, you dirty old man!" she shouted at him.

The Doctor loved to see her standing up for herself like she was. She refused to be cowed in anyway, shape or form. No one took advantage of Rose and got away with it. But hearing that that old man had put his filthy hand on his Rose without her permission nearly tested his own restraints. He was lucky that Rose was busy taking the mickey out of him, or he would have probably smacked the man himself.

"I won't be spoken to like this!" Mr. Sneed spoke up from the chair he sat on, while Rose yelled at him.

Rose wasn't having any of it. "Then you stuck me in a room full of zombies! And if that ain't enough, you just swan off and leave me to die! Some come on, talk!"

"It's not my fault. It's this house!" He shouted at her. Really, who raised this man? Weren't people of this era taught not to raise their voice to ladies and things like that? "It's always had a reputation. Haunted. But I never had much bother until about three months back, and then the stiffs... the, um, the dear departed, started getting restless."

"Tommyrot," said Dickens.

"You witnessed it!" Sneed cried. "Can't keep the beggars down, sir. They walk. And it's the queerest thing, but they hang on to scraps."

The Doctors attention was momentarily drawn away by the girl who gave him a cup of tea, with two sugars, just the way he took his tea. What struck him as odd is he had not told her how he took his tea before she gave it to him. That was most unusual. He pondered on that while sipping his tea and turning back to Mr. Sneed.

"...Just like the old lady going to your performance, sir. Just as she planned." Mr. Sneed finished explaining.

"Morbid fancy," Dickens declared.

At this point the Doctor had enough of his denials of the truth staring him in the face. If idiots did that, it was one thing, but when really intelligent people did that it really drove him mad! "Oh, Charles, you were there!" he said, rolling his eyes.

"I saw nothing but an illusion," Dickens stated firmly.

"If you're going to deny it, don't waste my time. Just shut up," the Doctor snapped. He hated when smart people chose to be stupid, stupid and small. It was one of the wonders of the human race. They were forever brilliant they were, but they were also incredibly thick and stupid.

He turned away from those thoughts and back to the situation at hand. "What about the gas?" he asked Sneed.

"That's new, sir, never seen anything like that,"

"Means it's getting stronger, the rift's getting wider and something's sneaking through," the Doctor explained out loud.

"What's the rift?" asked Rose, hearing the term for the second time tonight. Those creatures had mentioned a rift too, but she wasn't up for trying to get them to talk-they hadn't listened to her before. But she was eager to understand the situation and knew the Doctor could explain it her so she could grasp the concept.

"A weak point in time and space. A connection between this place and another. That's the cause of ghost stories most of the time," he explained turning to Mr. Sneed at the last bit.

"That's how I got the house so cheap," he said. "Stories going back generations. Echoes in the dark, Queer songs in the air, and this feeling like a...shadow passing over your soul." While Sneed talked, Charles had stepped out of the room. Apparently, he had enough of the "ghost" talk.

"Mind you, truth be told, it's been good for business. Just what people expect from a gloomy old trade like mine," Mr. Sneed confessed. Rose could see that. A haunted undertaker house? Who wouldn't try that?

D*W

After Mr. Sneed finished his story, Rose pulled the Doctor aside for a quiet word. She hadn't wanted to call him out in front of the whole room, but she felt he had been far too hard on Mr. Dickens. She knew the man had to be annoying him, but that was no reason to behave so childishly himself. He needed to go apologize to the man and help him expand as an individual.

"Doctor, you should go find Charles and apologize for snapping at him like that. Not everyone is as good at accepting strange happenings as you and me; you can't fault him for that. Now why don't you go find him before he runs into trouble, yeah?" Rose said, giving him a stern look usually reserved for toddlers throwing tantrums.

"Oh, alright. I suppose I was a bit hard on the man. I just don't like it when intelligent people choose to be thick. But, I suppose I could try to explain it again, have a bit more patience," he responded, smiling at her, before heading off to find the writer.

He found Charles in the room Rose had been locked in, the viewing room. He was leaning over one of the bodies waving his hand. When that failed to produce any result, he began to check the box, running his hands along the sides.

"Checking for stings?" the Doctor asked from his spot at the doorway.

"Wires, perhaps," Charles replied, with an almost desperate note in his voice, the Doctor now noticed. Rose was right, the man just had all the rules of his world turned upside down, at his age (for a human, anyway) that was no easy thing to accept. He wanted to remain in his comfortable world where he knew the rules, understood the game. But the Doctor was determined that he bring him out into the open see the truth and be that much greater for it.

"There must be some mechanism behind this fraud," Charles continued.

"Oh, come on, Charles," the Doctor said, pushing away from the doorway and approaching Dickens. "All right. I shouldn't have told you to shut up. I'm sorry," he really was, it wasn't just Rose making him apologize. "But you've got one of the best minds in the world. You saw those gas creatures-,"

"I cannot accept that," Dickens attempted to interrupt. But he failed to understand that interrupting the Doctor was a lot harder than it looked.

"AND," the Doctor talked louder to be heard over Dickens, "What does the human body do when it decomposes? It breaks down, produces gas. Perfect home for these gas things- they can slip inside use it as a vehicle. Just like your driver and his coach," he explained to the man.

"Stop it. Can it be that I have the world entirely wrong?" Charles asked.

"Not wrong. There's just more to learn," the Doctor told him. Can't fault a 19th century human for not believing in aliens and ghosts. Alien were not often seen on Earth in this century.

"I've always rallied against fantasists. Oh, I loved an illusion as much as the next man, reveled in them, but that's exactly what they were, illusions! The real world is something else. I dedicated myself to that-injustices, the great social causes. I hoped that I was a force for good. Now you tell me that the real world is a realm of specters and jack-O'-lanterns. In which case, have I wasted my brief span here, Doctor? Has it all been for nothing?"

"No, Charles. The universe is far more complex than either of these explanations. No one knows how much good they've done. I've spent my life helping humanity out but could they have been better off without me, learning to fight those things without my help? I'll never know. Is all my "interfering" more beneficial or useless in the end? I may never know." With that the Doctor left to find Rose.


D*W

Rose meanwhile had been talking with Gwyneth, the servant girl. She had knowledge of things she shouldn't- couldn't know. The fact the Rose's father was dead, for example. She had been thinking about him the last few days, she was thinking about whether to ask to go see him at some point. She also knew about life in 21st century London, the cars and planes and clothes. Even Rose's traveling with the Doctor.

"I'm sorry. I can't help it, Miss. Ever since I was a little girl. My mum said I had the sight, she told me to hide it," Gwyneth said.

From behind them the Doctor's voice came, startling both girls, "But it's getting stronger, more powerful, is that right?"

"All the time, sir," she said. "Every night...voices in my head."

"You grew up on top of the rift. You're part of it; you're the key,"

"I've tried to make sense of it, sir. Consulted with spiritualists, table rappers, all sorts," Gwyneth said.

"Well that should help," he said. "You can show us what to do."

"What to do where, sir?"

"We're going to have a séance," he replied.

After a bit of explanation from Gwyneth, some more arguing from Charles who was still reluctant to go along with what appeared to be fantasy and ghosts to him, and finally some guidance from the Doctor, they called up the gas creatures to figure out what they wanted. Turns out they were yet another victim of the Time War, and they had lost their physical forms. That bloody war, would he ever hear the end of it? He had to help these Gelth if he could.

As soon as the Gelth spoke of a time war Rose had turned to look at the Doctor. He had mentioned a war had killed his planet, and his people were known as the Time Lords, naturally she thought there might be a connection between them and a Time War. The Doctor only met her eye for a second, but she knew this Time War had to be the all-painful war that had cost him everything.

Rose objected to giving the Gelth the deceased bodies in 1860. The Doctor objected to her objection. Before they could continue fighting about it the connection closed and Gwyneth collapsed. Rose ran over to tend to her, pretending she wasn't running from the fight with the Doctor.

Rose had the guys bring Gwyneth over to the couch and lay her down while she collected some clean cloths and water to put on her head. Gwyneth woke up and Rose place her hands on her shoulder to keep her from trying to get up. "It's all right. You just sleep," Rose told her.

"But my Angels, Miss. They came, didn't they? They need me?"

"They do need you, Gwyneth. You're their only chance of survival," the Doctor answered for her.

"I told you, leave her alone," Rose snapped. She couldn't say why, besides that whole giving them recycled corpses thing, it felt so wrong, but she had a really bad feeling about it. They only had the Gelth's word about how many of them there were.

"She's exhausted and she's not fightin' your battles!" Rose continued. "Drink this," she turned back to Gwyneth, handing her some tea. Behind her she heard Sneed ask the Doctor to explain the situation to him again, not understanding the problem.

"They can only test drive the bodies for so long, then they have to revert to gas and hide in the pipes," she heard him finish explaining.

"Which is why they need the girl," Charles spoke up, throwing in his two cents.

"They're not having her!" Rose snapped.

"But she can help. Living on the rift she's become a part of it. She can open it up, make a bridge, and let them through," the Doctor told her. He didn't understand why Rose was being so difficult on this. It would save lives, war victims at that. Why was she fighting this?

"Incredible-ghosts that are not ghosts but beings from another world who can only exist in our realm by inhabiting cadavers," Charles said.

"Good system, might work," the Doctor replied.

"You can't let them run around inside of dead people," Rose objected again. This time she got up from tending to Gwyneth to march over to confront the Doctor.

"Why not? It's like recycling," he claimed. Why couldn't she get this? He had to do this; he had to help these people that were paying for his mistakes. The Daleks had run lose because he had been too much of a coward to stop them when he had been ordered to go back to their creation and stop them from ever being created. He had gone, but had not gone through with his mission. If he had, the War would never have had to take place at all.

"Seriously, though, you can't,"

"Seriously, though, I can,"

"It's just... wrong! These bodies were living people, we should respect them, even in death." He tried not to roll his eyes at her. 'Dead bodies over living victims? Really Rose?' he thought.

"Do you carry a donor card?" he asked her.

"That's different- that's my choice, Doctor," Rose said. His argument almost made sense, and if she had a little less backbone she might have been cowered by it. But she had chosen to sign up for organ donation* and was fully informed. The people who were now corpses here had no idea that they may be used to host an alien entity.

"Is it your choice to save the rotting corpse over the living beings?" he asked her, eyes almost accusing. Rose didn't know what to say to that. Surely there must be another way to help the Gelth?

"That's not what I meant," she said, softer now under his accusing eyes.

"You're right, it is different. It's a different morality-get used to it-," he only just stopped the words that tried to topple out of his mouth as if she were any old companion. '"Get used to it or go home."Did I really almost say that? No! Rose can't go home! I can't lose her! Too important! Must make her see. Should talk to her about the war after this...'

Softening his voice he put his hand on her arm. "You heard what they said- time's short. I can't worry about a few corpses when the last of the Gelth could be dying," he explained to Rose, gently this time as he tried to make her understand.

"I don't care. They're not using her," Rose said. She had seen the way it had worn out Gwyneth before, how bad would it be to establish a bridge to let a dozen through? And if they were lying and there were more, would there be any stopping them?

"Don't I get a say, Miss?" came Gwyneth's voice behind her.

"Look, you don't understand what's going on," Rose tried to tell her.

"You would say that, Miss. 'Cause that's very clear inside your head-that you think I'm stupid," Gwyneth said.

"That's not fair," Rose said. She didn't think the girl was stupid. She wasn't, maybe undereducated by Rose's modern standards, but not stupid.

"It's true, though. Things might be very different where you're from, but here and now I know my own mind, and the angels need me. Doctor, what do I have to do?"

Rose wanted to scream, 'They are not angels,' but she kept quiet. Gwyneth was right; she did have the right to make her own choice, whatever Rose thought of it.

"You don't have to do anything," Rose was relieved to hear the Doctor tell her. He hadn't been acting like himself this trip. Then again, Rose had just met him; it was hard for her to be sure.

"They've been singing to me since I was a child, sent by my mum on a holy mission. So tell me."

"We need to find the rift. This house is on a weak spot, so there must be a spot that's weaker than any other. Mr. Sneed, what's the weakest part of this house, the place where most of the ghosts have been seen?" The Doctor asked.

"That would be the morgue," Sneed said.

"No chance you were gonna say 'gazebo', is there?" Rose said. It figured. They had to go to the morgue of all places to enact this creepy plan. This just got worse and worse. But Gwyneth had made up her mind to help them, even if she mistakenly thought of them as angels, Rose had no right to tell her what to do. And Rose was going to stay with her and the Doctor and help any way she could.

T.B.C...


*Organ Donation: Speaking as someone who has personally had to take advantage of this LIFE Saving measure at 21, I thank everyone who has taken that step to donate your organs. For those of you who haven't, please sign up! Thousands die every year cause there are more people waiting than there are donating.

For future reference: Rose has 2 common smiles. Her cheeky tongue in teeth smile, and her wide all-teeth showing grin. Cheeky smile/ Wide grin. Got it?

About my capitalization of the TARDIS: I am aware that it is supposed to be all capitalized. However, I decided that it was faster and easier, (and more commonly used in other fics) to only capitalize the T in Tardis. I only capitalize all letters in certain circumstances, such as when the Doctor told Rose what the letters stood for.