Back to the Doctor
Zombie in Z Minor Part 6
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was still mulling over the concept of time travel as he walked into the TARDIS and looked around the impossibly large room inside the tiny blue box.
"Doc, won't knowing all this stuff kinda mess him up?" Marty asked the Doctor quietly next to the consol, their long coats now hanging behind them on the rail.
"What? More than flesh-eating walking dead?"
"Just call them zombies."
"They have a type of radiation sickness, now stop bothering me I have many insanely complicated calculations to calculate in order to track the remaining zo- flesh-eating walking dead," he started to seemingly randomly grab at levers and push buttons.
"What makes you think there's still only one out there?"
The Doctor was silent. "All we need to do is get one live – well, you know what I mean – sample and from there I can figure out a cure."
"To… change them back to people?" Wolfgang snapped out of his daze and asked.
"No. I'm afraid those who have succumbed are beyond help now – but we can still stop them from infecting anyone else."
"I need a weapon," Marty muttered to himself and started rummaging through the TARDIS.
"I don't keep weapons."
"You must have something. Do you ever play sports?"
"Uh, take the stairs over there, three doors down. I keep a few sporty things."
"Jesus," Wolfgang held his hands up. "Just how big is this place?"
Marty didn't want to waste any time. He found the room and grabbed the first thing that looked like it could be of any use. The thing he grabbed looked like a bat that had been run over by a car.
"The hell is this thing?" Marty called down as he descended the stairs.
"It's a cricket bat," Wolfgang replied.
"Is this a Europe thing?"
"It's an anywhere but America thing," the Doctor was holding a strange metallic contraption that looked like a gun and a dust buster cobbled together with wires and duct tape.
"And that is?" Marty stopped in front of him.
"Going to get our sample."
Marty paused a second. "Well? You done your calculations?"
"What? Oh, finished those ages ago," the Doctor punched the consol and it started swaying.
Wolfgang grabbed onto a railing, looking around wildly as the TARDIS sound reverberated through the domed chamber.
"What's going on?"
"We're travelling."
"What? How? Where?"
"I've tracked down a high concentration of the radiation."
"High concentration? More than one, right?" Marty asked.
The TARDIS went still.
"Has something gone wrong?" Wolfgang looked around uncertainly.
"We've arrived," the Doctor stepped up to the young composer, grabbing his shoulders and staring him dead in the eye. "It would be best if you stayed here."
"What if you need my help?"
"I cannot stress the sheer importance of you remaining out of harm's way."
Wolfgang narrowed his eyes as he tried to dissect exactly what the Doctor was telling him.
"Marty," the Doctor called to his companion, running for the door.
"Right behind you, Doc," Marty rested his cricket bat on his shoulder. With a quick nod to the confused looking Wolfgang he ran after the Doctor.
The TARDIS doors opened to a large, dark room. They closed to door behind them and it took a moment for their eyes to adjust, and then Marty could only just make out the high arched ceiling and the detailed stone columns that reached up to it.
"The Salzburg Cathedral," the Doctor whispered.
"Great, we have to find a building with no lights."
"Don't need lights," the Doctor popped on his 3D glasses.
They moved through the dark cathedral. Marty hadn't even realized how late it had gotten. So little time had seemed to pass since coming to this godforsaken place. Why couldn't the sun have waited just half an hour longer?
The Doctor made his way to the altar, following an invisible path that led them around a corner, and there they both stopped as they found a figure standing in the dark, alone.
"One of them?"
"Oh definitely," the Doctor took his glasses off.
The figure was facing the wall, leaning against it, its head cocked awkwardly to the side. He tried to shuffle forward, but when he failed he let out a low moan.
"Careful," Marty muttered in a low voice. "Easy on their own, but if they swarm us we're finished."
"Who are you? Marty the zombie slayer?"
"Just a Romero fan."
"Figures," they started creeping towards the zombie and it only took a moment for it to react to the sound of their steps on the stones.
It slowly turned around, and they could see its stomach innards cascading down its black robes and its jaw hanging unhinged, its tongue wagging between its teeth, eager to taste their flesh.
"Jesus, it's a priest," Marty held up the bat.
"Don't do anything until I get my sample," the Doctor held out his tool, wishing he could have attached it to a stick. He wasn't too sure how close he wanted to get.
Suddenly the zombie lunged at them, hissing and gasping as it attacked. Marty stepped forward and wound up to bat it hit in the chest. It fell backwards, its arms still reaching out towards him.
"I need a live sample!" The Doctor sprung forward, jabbing his instrument towards the zombie's head. He needed a brain sample.
"Do it quick!" The Marty stood over the zombie, waiting for the Doctor to finish so he could finish off the walking dead.
The Doctor's device made a wet clicking noise as it extracted the necessary sample, just as the zombie lunged towards the Doctor.
"Done!" The Doctor fell back and Marty stepped forward, swinging out the bat and smashing the zombie's head into the stone floor. The skull cracked and brain matter spilled out over his shoes. Marty quickly turned towards the Doctor, not wanting to take the gruesome sight in a moment longer and helped his friend up.
They turned to run back to the TARDIS, but when they did they came face to face with face more zombies, slowly shuffling towards them, their bodies in various stages of decay, but all kept snapping their jaws at the two men.
"Oh, come on!" Marty held the bat up, thinking that maybe if they got one down they could squeeze through the opening and make their way back to the TARDIS without getting bitten. Then three more emerged and from behind them Marty could hear more moaning coming closer and closer… "Europe sucks. It truly and honestly sucks like no continent has ever sucked before."
"We can still make it. We can push through on the right, make a dash for it."
"Shit!" Marty called out and made a run for it, knocking over the zombie on the far right – a woman still clutching a rosary in her hand – and pushed through, the Doctor by his side.
The zombies reacted faster than they could have anticipated though, their slow lumbering suddenly turned into desperate lunges and bony fingers started clutching at their clothing and as the decaying bodies moved in, escape was suddenly cut off.
Marty started swinging his bat wildly, but every time he knocked one down another would fill its place. They just kept emerging from the dark corners of the cathedral.
One of the zombies grabbed the Doctor by his head, its jaws snapping at his ear, close enough to bite down-
"Doc!" Marty called out in desperation, helpless to do anything, when suddenly a war cry broke out in the cathedral and a small figure body check himself into the zombie holding the Doctor.
They all fell to the ground in a heap. There was struggling as the two men tried to escape the clutches of the undead and Marty heard one of them call out in pain, but the zombies were slower to react than the living and didn't get up as fast as the Doctor and Wolfgang.
"I told you to stay in the TARDIS!"
"Just run!" Marty called out, batting a zombie away and emerging from the crowd. The three of them took off a full speed towards the still open TARDIS door, a bright light at the end of the tunnel. The zombie's moans had grown into a thunderous symphony of undead behind them, but there was no way they could catch up at this point.
They made it to the TARDIS, slamming the door behind them and collapsing in a heap, trying to catch their breaths once more.
"You crazy bastard," Marty smiled at Wolfgang, who leaned against the railing, clutching at his stomach.
"I couldn't just stay."
"Are you all right?" The Doctor recovered faster, walking over to Wolfgang and looking him over like he really was a medical doctor.
"I'm fine," Wolfgang backed up, but winced in pain as he did so. "I think I sprained my ankle."
Marty looked at Wolfgang's leg and saw something dark trickling down.
"Oh my god, that's blood," Marty's eyes went wide. "You've been bitten."
To Be Continued…
(The cricket bat is not a reference to Shaun of the Dead so much as it is a reference to something quintessentially British – which is exactly why Shaun of the Dead used one, so it might as be a direct reference even though it wasn't intended as one. I'm sure that makes sense… One of the fun things about writing Marty with the Doctor is that there's no need for explanations on how time travel and the time continuum works – Marty already knows! It does worry me that some people reading this might not know, but in that case I recommend watching the Back to the Future trilogy and save me from having to shove in unnecessary exposition. To explain the title, "Dom" is Austrian for cathedral. So enjoy my multi-language pun there.)