A/N: Okay, so I didn't reply, but I WILL THIS TIME! :o
Chapter 23: Survival
I know you can hear me, so listen. Wherever you are and whatever's happening to you, just stay there and hold tight. We're coming. We love you.
The Doctor woke up, with a scream of pure agony.
He gasped, his eyes wide and his hands clasped to his stomach, unable to breathe or move for what felt like hours and hours of pure, undivided torment. The pain felt like he'd been stabbed eighty times around his belly, and the blood he could see out of the corner of his eye told him that maybe he wasn't a million miles away.
He tried to move, but he couldn't for fear of making it even worse. He forced his endorphins to start their work, anything to stop it, anything to …
It stopped.
The Doctor blinked, surprised. That couldn't have been his endorphins. They only took the edge off, but right now he couldn't feel any pain at all.
He tentatively sat up, for the first time registering his surroundings.
'Forest,' he said aloud to no one. He thought better when he talked to himself. 'By the species of tree, it's probably humans, they love taking their flora with them when they colonise.' He looked up at the cloudy sky through the tree branches. 'It's about four o'clock in the afternoon. Maybe November.'
He paused. He didn't have much else to go on at the moment. He'd been in the Enigma with Leah, and then … Things were somewhat of a blank.
He finally plucked up the courage to look down at himself. The middle of his shirt and jacket were covered in blood, as were his hands. There was also a red pool under him, staining the autumn leaves.
He took a steely breath, and pulled back his jacket and shirt. Revealed was a lot of blood, but through it - just about - he could see a wide tear of his skin like a ring around him, with the surrounding areas severely bruised in a fashion that indicated internal bleeding.
He recognised the pattern of injury, but to be sure he checked his joints. As he'd theorised, he had dislocations to his right knee and left shoulder. Nothing seemed fractured.
'At some point I was in a malfunctioning transmat, or I was interrupted during transit,' he said to himself. 'Probably the latter, else I'd still be on the Enigma. I was pulled in two directions during transit like a Christmas cracker. Nearly ripped me in half. I should be dead.' He then looked around, confused. 'But there's no transmat here. So … someone interrupted my transit and dumped me here.'
Leaving him bleeding with a huge tear in his stomach? They probably expected him to die, he thought. The laceration to his midriff was so deep that it looked as though it had ripped through to his hypodermis in places. He needed medical attention. It had stopped bleeding profusely now, but every breath he was taking was exerting pressure on it, causing a little more blood to dribble out. Due to the amount, he could deduce that he'd cut one of his iliac arteries, at least. The artery or arteries seemed to have healed itself whilst he was unconscious.
He looked around for something that could help. He was lying around twenty metres from a fairly dilapidated wooden hut with some logs and wooden planks stacked next to it. He was presuming no one lived there, because firstly, it looked on the verge of collapse, and secondly, he was sure the volume of which he'd been screaming would have drawn anyone within a two mile radius to him.
However, the hut may have supplies, he reasoned, and maybe, if he was lucky, some medical supplies. He quickly did up his clothes and stood up, struggling momentarily with his balance. He leant on the closest tree to steady himself. Suddenly the pain came back like a shot.
He screamed and was immediately on his knees. Yet more pain burst through his dislocated knee joint and he ended up falling sideways to land right back where he'd started.
With his arms wrapped around his stomach, curled in on himself, he started kicking the ground, screaming. He forced more endorphins in, and, eventually, the pain reduced slightly.
He breathed deeply for a few moments, his eyes closed. After a few minutes, he forced himself to his knees. More deep breaths. Then he was up, and hunched over. The pain was still unbearable.
He started to move. He tried to focus solely on his objective - get to the hut. He reached it, lifting his bloodied hand to the handle. The door creaked open easily, and he stepped inside.
At first glance it was one bed, a cooking pot over a burnt-out fire, some rotted drawers, and a chest, along with one very mucky mirror. There was also a table which had a plate with food on it, rotten and rancid and covered in maggots.
Whoever had lived here had left in a hurry.
He moved to the drawers. He checked each one. There were a myriad of objects, and to his shock and relief, he found medical supplies.
From it, he ruffled through until he found some saline in a bottle, pads, a needle and thread, and bandages. He retrieved the mirror, and dropped it all on the bed, just as the pain suddenly stopped again. Whatever was causing it was of little concern to him now - he had to put things back into sockets before the pain came back.
'Here we go,' he said to himself, tentatively putting some weight on his leg to test it. No pain. This was his chance. He jogged over to a sturdy-looking metal pole, and gripped it with his left hand. He then pressed down on the crease of his elbow with his right hand, and abruptly put his full body weight behind his arm. He could feel the bones inside him moving back into position, but absolutely no pain was occuring. He then twisted his arm, and finally everything moved back into place.
'Doctor!' Rose's voice suddenly flashed through his head, full of pain and desperation. Alarmed, he stopped dead, looking around.
'Rose?' he tried telepathically.
No reply.
He'd figure it out later. He still had to put his knee joint back in place before the pain came back. He quickly retrieved the rope and lifted his leg to the pole, tying his foot to it. He then hopped backwards just until his leg was taut. He placed his hand on knee, pushing down, and again put his entire weight against his leg.
Rose's scream increased in pitch inside his head. Just as the bone shifted back into place, he nearly fell over.
'Rose!' he tried again. She was crying in his head. 'Rose, can you hear me!?'
Nothing.
'It hurts so much!' she sobbed. 'Doctor!'
A kind of dark realisation came over him. The pain wasn't just suddenly disappearing. It was moving, somehow, to Rose. Like some sort of co-consciousness, or some co-physical connection.
He'd just realigned his elbow and knee joints without anaesthetic, and Rose had felt every bit of it. Quite why this was occurring was an unknown factor, but he lacked the capacity to care too much about that right now.
'I'm sorry!' he said telepathically, but he was pretty sure she couldn't hear him. Whilst he had no pain, he hopped to the bed and laid down, trying not to move any areas of his body that Rose was feeling. After a few seconds, the pain returned.
He groaned, and looked at the saline and bandages. He was going to have to do this the hard way to make sure whatever pain Rose felt wasn't the worst of it.
He sat up, all the time combating the pain in just about atom of his body. He positioned the mirror, took hold of the saline, and started.
He had to stop a few times when the pain disappeared back to Rose. After around thirty minutes, he'd cleaned the wound, stitched every part he could reach, and covered it all up. He then partly splinted his knee and elbow. He needed the movement too much to completely immobilize them.
Next on the agenda, he'd have to clear his temporary residence of everything unpleasant, and take an inventory of what resources he had. So he intermittently did that during the pain spurts, making sure Rose would be okay. Even so, every now and then he heard her moaning, groaning, and otherwise sobbing quietly.
He hated that.
He threw out all of the rotten food, which was everything but two potatoes and some rice grain. After that he took stock. Rope, a lighter and lighter fluid, some blankets, an axe, a pickaxe, a bow and arrow, some string, a bag, some empty bottles, nails and a hammer, a knife, cutlery, a plate, some cups, and general pots and pans. After he removed a sheet from on top of a table, he discovered a very old, but very promising-looking communication system.
It was dead, but he ran the sonic over it, and it burst into life in a myriad of beeps and lights. He turned the frequency knob and picked up the communicator.
'Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is …' - he checked the call sign on the desk - 'Alpha Hotel One. Stranded in forest, in need of medical assistance. Come in. Mayday.'
Static.
'Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Alpha Hotel One. Come in. Mayday.'
Nothing. He assisted the frequency, trying again, and again. Still nothing. He changed frequency to try one last time, and then suddenly there was a voice:
'1,209,459 … 1,209,458 … 1,209,457 …'
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something, but quickly realised it wasn't a person. It was just an automatic voice.
'1,209,456 …'
'Counting down in seconds,' the Doctor mused out loud. 'I hate countdowns.'
He'd seldom heard a countdown that had ended in anything good.
He thought a little more. '1,209,456 seconds is around fourteen days,' he said. 'So … what exactly happens at the end of fourteen days? Don't think I want to find that one out.'
He told himself there and then that he had two weeks to get off of this planet. Surely the others were bound to find him before then.
Anyway, he couldn't really do anything about it. For now, he had to make sure the hut wouldn't fall down, and create a safe space so he could go into a healing coma. Biting his lip and steeling himself against the inevitable pain, he took the axe, nails and hammer and limped outside. There was the pile of wood - both planks and logs. He winced as he took a plank, and got to work.
He spent the remaining hours of daylight reinforcing the hut. He'd also detected a water source with the sonic and travelled the mile there and back to get some from a stream. By the time it got dark, he was in a considerable amount of pain, but he had three bottles of water to cook with and drink. He boiled one of his potatoes and half the rice for a small meal, before dropping to lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The strain he'd put his body under really began to show as the pain increased and the aching kicked in.
He couldn't go into a healing coma, but he could sleep lightly.
The countdown on the communications system was still going when he checked it the next morning. Thirteen days to go.
He tried more mayday calls in the hope he'd get a reply, but there was nothing but the countdown. He'd even tried using his sonic to try and get through to the TARDIS, but there was nothing from that either. The TARDIS was too far away to activate any kind of emergency protocol that would help him.
Every now and then, he was getting snippets of Rose's voice in his head. Little things. Sometimes it was her directly trying to talk to him, telling him that they were looking. Other times it was some of her fleeting thoughts. His pain was still coming and going, and he made sure whenever it went to Rose he stopped moving, which made everything he was trying to do around ten times slower than it should have been. She'd figured out he was doing that, as she told him not to worry about her in his head. He ignored her.
The bad news was, because Rose was telling him where they were going and what they were doing, he knew that they weren't looking in the right places. She kept talking about places that would be likely to have transmats that were capable of interrupting his original transit, and currently they were trying a black market ship. That was logical and sounded very much like Brax's idea, but hardly helpful to him. He knew that they were searching the wrong places, but he couldn't tell them that.
Quite how he'd ended up here was a question still yet to be resolved, but his theory that he'd been dumped by someone seemed the most likely option. Yet, even if that were true, who were they, and why dump him?
He sighed. He hated not being able to work things out, but he didn't have many clues to go on.
His body was still screaming from the physical activity he'd done yesterday, and he decided he had to spend today making his hut a safe space for a healing coma. After he treated his wounds, he spent the daylight hours making traps around the perimeter to deter the wildlife he could hear. In the evening he used the other potato and the last of the rice for a meal, and practically inhaled it as he was so hungry. The human eating ritual he'd adapted to from living with humans all the time was starting to bite. Hunger was beginning to gnaw at him from inside from doing so much work, and having so little food.
Finally satisfied with safety, he settled, and finally let himself drop into a healing coma. With the reinforcements and traps, he was fairly confident that if he was about to get eaten by a wild animal, at least he'd wake up to see what it was before he was digested.
Eleven days left on the countdown.
He'd slept through a day and woke up at noon, feeling very, very hungry. He knew he had nothing left to eat, and was going to have to go and scavenge, including hunting, if he could remember how. He took his now empty water bottles with the axe in the bag, as well as the bow and arrows.
As he made his way to the water source, he stopped talking to himself and kept his eyes peeled for any possible vegetation that he could eat. He reached the water, took a few grateful swigs, and kept going forward. It had been quite a while since he'd had to hunt, but it came back quite easily to him. He found a spot that had evidence of animal activity, and took up a position in cover, ready with the bow and arrow. Fairly soon what looked like a kind of rabbit bounded up. He fired just one arrow, and killed it immediately with precision aim.
He retrieved it, and went back to the hut. Dearly hoping the meat was actually edible, he made a meal with some leaves and assorted edible greenery. It didn't really satisfy his hunger, but it was now too dark to do anymore hunting. Another mayday attempt proved fruitless.
He went to sleep.
Ten days left on the countdown, and the Doctor woke up to the sound of water, very, very close. He opened his eyes and realised immediately that his hut had sprung several leaks from rain. He sacrificed his stockpile of wood by using the tarp and some clothes to bung the holes.
In his head, Rose told him she could feel his hunger, and that they were now searching a galaxy transport station. He wondered if that was any closer to him.
Despite the fact it was still raining, he was so, so hungry, so he went out to hunt. Five hours later, he came back with nothing.
Nine days remaining, and it continued to rain.
The hunger he was now feeling was intense. It felt as though it was gnawing at his insides. He was beginning to get pretty desperate for something to eat. The vegetation wasn't cutting it at all - he was still in an energy deficit from his healing coma. For his body, he knew it wasn't particularly bad at the moment - although he'd become used to eating like a human, his gallifreyan biology would be absolutely fine for another four or five days before he got anywhere near ketosis.
The pain was now going away and coming back much more often. It was almost a relief when he could feel it, as it helped to suppress the feeling of hunger.
He tried hunting again, but the rain was keeping everything in hiding.
As he'd done every day before, he tried more mayday calls. He received absolutely nothing back.
Eight days left on the countdown, and he was getting very fed up. The hunger was persistent, and it was still raining. As well as putting all the animals into hiding, the rain was making everything damp and cold, which only increased his pain. After some medical maintenance and some ineffectual mayday calls he headed out to hunt again and got nothing for his efforts.
He was beginning to get irate from the complete lack of sustenance, so when Rose told him they were now visiting every hospital in the galaxy, his frustration boiled over and he made the regrettable move of kicking the chest at the end of the bed with his bad leg.
After spending some time on the floor groaning and lamenting having done that, he spotted a small book he'd not seen before under the bed. He retrieved it, and discovered it was a diary.
He went to the last few entries immediately.
5th November
Weather: Cloudy.
As I told you, the allotment hasn't been so good this year, but it's nothing I can't salvage. They're forecasting a storm on Saturday, so I've reinforced the hut. Don't want a repeat of last year.
Regarding national news, that dispute I told you about is still going on. I'm listening to the army's radio through mine and I don't really know what to make of this whole situation. I don't see how they can sort this out.
9th November
Weather: Rain. No sign of that storm, yet.
Sam came to see me today. I'm surprised. Didn't think outdoor life was his thing. I guess he just wanted to see his dad - it's been two years. And I'm always happy to see him, of course. Even if he does think I'm crazy for packing it all in to go and live in the woods. Though frankly, with the world as it is, I'm very happy to stay here.
Speaking of, the world situation doesn't seem to be improving. They're just making each other angrier, all the time. I hope someone resolves this, fast, because I can see a war about to erupt.
14th November
Weather: Storm!
Finally, it arrived. Nearly ripped the hut apart. I'm going to have to spend Christmas doing major repair work.
I've lost my communication system so I'm not sure what's going on in the outside world. But it's dead quiet here now the storm's passed. Very peaceful. You'd love it.
16th November
Weather: …
When I woke up, the sky was black, and it still is, at 1pm in the afternoon. The sun's being blocked out. It's getting harder to breathe. I don't know what to do.
I need to find Sam, but I don't even know where he lives, now. Will he find me?
I'm scared, Janey. I wish you were here. You always knew what to do.
That was it.
The Doctor considered what he'd just read, and the state he'd found the hut in. Food left mid-meal, and this diary - the man writing wouldn't just leave it behind. It was too important for that. The person he'd been writing to - dead wife? - was too important to him. The man had upped and left, fleeing for his life, leaving behind everything he held dear for survival. The Doctor hoped he'd escaped from what he'd been running from.
Something had happened, some sort of conflict. Some weapon had been fired, perhaps, that proved so lethal that it had covered the sun and possibly caused breathing difficulties. Whatever this man had seen was no longer there, anyway.
All in all, it made this countdown begin to look even worse than he could have imagined.
Seven days to go.
The rain finally stopped, and he was out hunting again. Finally the animals were emerging, and to his utter delight, he saw a deer lingering near to the hut.
He approached it cautiously, taking up a position and holding it, but he didn't have a confident shot, and he was damned if he was going to let it get away. It eventually wandered.
He was so desperate for something to eat that he stalked it for a mile. He made absolutely sure before he took his chance, and shot a precise arrow.
The animal dropped to the floor. He couldn't help but let out a cry of joy at his success, and despite his constant pain, he practically ran to it.
As he reached it, it twitched and died. Then it dawned on him. Of course, in his hastiness in trying to find food, he'd forgotten to account for how exactly he was going to get it back to the hut.
He could go back to the hut and fashion some sort of sled, but his somewhat feral tendencies of late compelled him to hold onto his new food source, and never let go. That worried him slightly, but his primal instinct was quite a bit more influential over him right now than his rational, well-educated, reasoned Time Lord mind. That made him laugh a bit.
So, he grabbed a leg, and started dragging.
It took him three hours as he had to keep stopping. When he got back to the hut it was dark, and the only thing that gave him enough energy to prepare the meat was the thought of not eating anything at all. Eventually he managed it, cooked it, and finally was able to sate the hunger.
He then dropped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, every cell in his body aching.
'Sorry, Rose,' he muttered as the pain went away again. He took the opportunity to jump into bed, and closed his eyes, and was out like a light.
'November Foxtrot Eight, November Foxtrot Eight. This is November Foxtrot Six, come in. Over.'
The Doctor jerked awake with six days left on the countdown to the sound of a voice. He was so confused, for a moment he just lay there, wondering if it was just part of a dream, when the man spoke again.
'November Foxtrot Eight, November Foxtrot Eight. This is November Foxtrot Six, come in. Over.'
The communication system, he realised. Someone was there.
Quicker than a flash, he threw back the blanket, pivoted on the bed, and launched himself upright, ready to run over. However, mid-stride, his legs suddenly seemed to collapse from beneath him and he hit the floor with a rather ungracious thud, chin first.
'Ow,' he moaned, and tried to get up, wondering what he'd tripped on. But to his utter shock, he couldn't seem to move anything.
'November Foxtrot Six, this is November Foxtrot Eight, go ahead, over.'
'Supplies are loaded and we're preparing to launch. ETA four minutes. Asking for star map. Over.'
He could do nothing but lie there, paralysed, listening as his chance to finally communicate with someone slowly dribbled away.
'Roger wilco. Over and out.'
After around ten more seconds he finally was able to move. He got up, staggering a little, and nearly crashed headlong into the comms system.
'Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Alpha Hotel One! Come in! Mayday!' he yelled into the radio.
Pause.
'Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Alpha Hotel One! Do you copy? Mayday!' he tried again.
'I copy, Alpha Hotel One, this is November Foxtrot Six, go ahead. Over.'
'Stranded and in need of medical assistance and evacuation. Over.'
'Roger, Alpha Hotel One. Please state your coordinates. Over.'
'Unknown. Over.'
'Roger. Stand by. Over.'
The Doctor waited momentarily before he got a reply.
'Alpha Hotel One, are you located at the base of your call station? Over.'
'Affirmative. Over.'
'How many in your party? Over.'
'One. Over.'
'Roger. Stand by. Over.'
The pause was this time excruciatingly long.
'Transmat log states that you are an undesirable. Terminating communication. Over and out.'
The Doctor blinked, shocked. 'November Foxtrot Six, do you copy? Over.'
Nothing.
'November Foxtrot Six! Come in! Over!'
Nothing.
They'd just cut him off?
'November Foxtrot Six! Do you copy? Over!'
'Alpha Hotel One, this is November Foxtrot Six, you will clear the comms immediately. Over.'
'Why!? Over!'
'Clear the comms, Alpha Hotel Six. Over and out,' the man repeated.
'Talk to me! Over!'
No answer.
The man was a brick wall, the Doctor realised. He was going to get absolutely nowhere.
'Okay, okay. I understand you won't come and get me. But I have one question. Please. Then I'll leave you alone. Over.'
'Go ahead. Over.'
'What's the countdown until? Over.'
'Planetary demolition. Over and out.'
The Doctor sighed. Of course. Of course that would be it. Seconds later, he heard the distant sound of some kind of rocket. He went outside and looked up, watching as a rocket launched, and disappeared into the sky.
'Thanks!' he yelled sarcastically towards it.
He couldn't stay here. He had six days to find some way of getting a message to Rose and the others before the whole planet was destroyed. But without a communication system or a phone, he had absolutely nothing to do it with.
He decided that his best chance was to get out of this forest and find a city. There, maybe he could find either people, or a more sophisticated communication system that would be able to reach the TARDIS, or perhaps both. But the distance of the rocket's launch hadn't been promising - the nature of the sound of the rocket, its predictable size, and factoring in an exclusion zone for the launchpad, he was probably looking at around about 120 miles to the nearest identified populated area. That would take him around four to five days to get to in his current state, if he really pushed himself. If he was lucky, he might come across a population before that, but his luck had been somewhat lacking recently, so he wasn't going to pin all his hopes on that.
There was nothing for it. He'd have to stockpile some food and resources to take, go into a healing coma for twenty-four hours and hope that however he came out on the other end meant he'd be able to get there with time to spare.