Se Hæleþes Ġiedd

Rose

"Blimey."

"Yeah."

"Those're Vikings."

"Yep. And they're zombies."

"Mmm…"

"I feel like maybe the time vortex is playing a practical joke on you," Martha said. Rose shot her a glare. "What? Oh, come on. This is ridiculous."

"You're pregnant with an alien superhero baby," Rose pointed out sharply, "I don't think you're one to talk when it comes to what is and isn't ridiculous."

At present, they were both crouched behind a stone wall observing the goings on in a small and abandoned village they had been led to by Rose's extra-natural gifts. The wall was mossy and damp, and they knelt in dirt and mud on the other side, in the graveyard they had been told to visit, full of empty graves and mounds of wet dirt. The storm had let up to a fine drizzle. They tried to ignore the smell of corpses as they peered over the wall.

They were certainly zombies, though; wandering around in that typical, zombie-like gait, shuffling to and fro like their limbs were frozen solid. Many of them were grotesquely injured, one of them had a sword stuck through his metal helmet right down to the hilt – though the top half of the blade was broken off – giving him the appearance of having horns.

"Hey," she nudged Martha and pointed this specific shuffler out, "Maybe that's why people think Vikings have, like, horned helmets."

"What? Because of one bloke with a sword in his head?" Martha asked incredulously. Rose shrugged.

"Maybe?"

"It's probably just people getting confused between ancient Persian helmets, they were sort of similar, and they did have horns," Martha explained, then went back to observing the zombies while Rose stared at her. Martha noticed this, growing self-conscious. "What?" Rose said nothing. "Shut up. I saw a documentary about the Persian empire on BBC Four."

"Eurgh," Rose said, visibly disgusted, "Who watches BBC Four?"

"It was just on – I had a really bad hangover, this was ages ago. Let's just focus on the zombies, yeah?"

"Speaking of the one with the sword through his head, though," Rose said, lowering herself back down behind the wall so that she couldn't be seen by the zombies, who were all mingling in the centre of the village around the largest building, a wooden hall or tavern or something. But apart from the zombies it seemed to be a ghost town, no sign of this other 'child of time' the Zuar had bade them to find. Rose was halfway convinced they were going to run into Jack. "I always thought that removing the head or destroying the brain killed the undead."

"First of all, you've seen Shaun of the Dead too many times-"

"Classic film," Rose muttered.

"-second of all, his brain might not be destroyed."

"There's a sword sticking out of it."

"You'd be amazed what kind of injuries come through A&E. Bloke with a kitchen knife stuck his head after getting a fight with his wife, drove himself to the hospital, said he couldn't feel a thing. And he survived, basically fine. Plus, there was this really famous bloke we learnt about in med school called Phineas Gage, who had an iron rod driven through his entire head and his brain and survived but had his whole personality drastically changed. He turned into an arsehole. Really opened up a lot of debates about physiological psychology. Carried the iron bar around with him for the rest of his life."

"What a weirdo." Martha made a noise of agreement. "I bet he watches BBC Four."

"Well he lived in the Nineteenth Century."

"So did everybody else who watches BBC Four."

"Look, they're all swarming around that one building, maybe there's something in there?" Martha suggested, "Like this time traveller we're looking for."

"How are we supposed to know a time traveller when we see one?" Rose asked.

"Dunno, suppose they could be wearing tons of makeup and a tracksuit?" Martha suggested mock-innocently.

"It's comfortable." Martha rolled her eyes. "Look, we need a way into that building, there has to be something interesting in – oh my god, that one's eating a dead body." There were two young zombie children huddled around a gigantic, bloated soldier's corpse, riddled with muscles, but now with his innards being pulled apart like spaghetti Bolognese by two youngsters. "We have to get weapons. Where's your gun? I swear you used to have a gun."

"I got rid of it when Oswin made us those stun guns."

"So where's the stun gun?"

"I don't think it would work on zombies."

"Let's try it."

"It's not here. Guns are rubbish against zombies anyway, you need a blunt instrument."

"You mean like a cricket bat."

"Stop thinking about Shaun of the Dead."

"The Doctor used to play cricket! He must have a cricket bat! I'll just nip back to the TARDIS and-"

"What!? You'll leave me here!? Me and the baby!?"

"Oh, okay, so when you don't want to talk about it it's just an embryo, but as soon as you think a zombie might attack you and try to eat it, it's a baby? You're full of double standards," Rose argued.

"If you abandon me with these zombies, I will kill you. I'll rise from the grave and rip you apart."

"Ugh. Pregnancy hormones are not a good look on you."

"Pregnancy hormones!?" Martha exclaimed, a little too loud. They paused, froze, turned to look over the wall again at the ambling zombie hoards. But unfortunately, the volume of their conversation had been steadily escalating, and without realising they had drawn the attention of the two-dozen members of the undead lurking in the village.

"See," Rose hissed, "Now you've got the zombies after us. You've got baby brain already." Rose knocked on Martha's head and Martha, furious, hit her hand away. Sparks flew from her fingers at the same time. "This is bad."

"Oh, really!?"

"Well it's your fault!" Rose argued, but the zombies were advancing, groaning. Rose, annoyed, stood up from behind the wall now that the zombies had seen them and their already-poor cover was completely blown. "Look, just… come on…" Rose began to edge away, and Martha followed her, sticking close, backing into the graveyard. "Nice zombies! You just… stay over there, yeah?" The zombies continued to amble towards the wall.

"I don't think that's working."

"Shut up, Martha," Rose said, glancing around for anything she could use as a weapon apart from her fists, because she didn't really want to get close enough to the zombies that she had to resort to hitting them. What if one of them bit her? Maybe the Zuar did say it wasn't technically a virus (like Shaun of the Dead), but she still didn't think that being bitten by a zombie was something she should just be okay with happening. Or bitten by anybody.

"Seriously, can't you do anything? Make them just cease to exist?"

"And can't you start throwing fireballs?"

"I haven't got any practice," Martha said, "I don't know how to do that. Plus, we're in a forest."

"A damp forest."

"I don't want to risk burning down an entire forest because I don't know how to control this pyrokinesis!" Martha argued angrily. And then the closest zombie, the one with the sword through his helmet halfway across the mossy wall into the graveyard, exploded. Well, his head exploded. Gore went everywhere, Martha and Rose jumping back to escape the spatter. "See!? I told you I can't control it."

"He's still moving!" Rose exclaimed, "But removing the head or destroying the brain is supposed to work! Oh my god, what are we going to do?" She was getting frantic.

"Uh… during the Miracle when nobody was dying they burned them in big incinerators."

"Burning! Great! Do your thing," Rose entreated.

"You do yours! Vaporise them!"

"No! Make fire!"

"I just told you, I can't-"

"HEY, FUCKERS!"

An object sailed through the air from a now open wooden-shuttered window on the large, central building the zombies had previously been gathering around, an object which looked distinctly like a glass bottle with a rag in the neck in the few seconds Rose actually got a glimpse of it. It crashed to the ground in the middle of the hoard and shattered, creating a moderately-sized firestorm.

"What was that!?" Rose exclaimed.

"A petrol bomb," Martha said, then she saw an arm in the window beckoning them, and she dragged Rose in the opposite direction of the zombies. They fled through the graveyard while the zombies began to burn – lucky dead bodies were so flammable, especially when doused with alcohol – sneaking behind some huts. The undead had terrible peripheral vision and barely noticed them scurry away as they wailed in the flames, darting around the buildings until they had looped through the very small village and back to the main building, where one of the other windows was un-shuttered.

"Get in here," their IED-armed rescuer ordered. Rose climbed through the window first and then helped Martha through second, though Martha glared at her and said very firmly that she didn't need any help climbing through a simple ground floor window even if she was carrying a tiny foetus. "Block the window, block the window!" They dragged a large rack covered in weapons to block the shutters again (though it was mainly Rose) and could finally take in the appearance of this stranger, the other 'child of time.' Suffice it to say, he was as dressed for the period as they were. He was practically covered in fluorescents – leg warmers, arm warmers, head band, t-shirt, and then some random looking bits of chainmail, a sword, a backpack, and a vortex manipulator on his wrist. A time agent.

"You look ridiculous," Rose said. He was immediately affronted, and – Rose couldn't help but notice, not that she was looking or really thinking about that at all because she was getting married in four days – very good-looking. "Aren't you time agents supposed to blend in with your surroundings?" And then, at the worst possible moment, her phone rang. Her phone which was not on silent, and now played Bleeding Love at full volume. Martha frowned.

"Is that Leona Lewis?" she asked. Rose shushed her and got her phone out of her pocket. It was a text message, from Amy. "Amy says have I deleted her recording of Bargain Hunt from the holobox. I can't believe she watches Bargain Hunt."

"I did it," said Martha.

"Why?"

"Well… just…" she mumbled, "Okay, fine, One Born Every Minute was on and I didn't want to watch it while everyone was in there in case they started asking questions." She crossed her arms huffily. Rose shook her head and ignored the text completely, putting it back in her pocket. "And Bargain Hunt's rubbish." The time agent had his hands on his hips, looking them very judgementally.

"Seriously? And I'm in trouble for not blending in?" he questioned them. Rose looked around the room: it was in a state of immense disorder. Blood on the walls, tables and chairs and stools pushed against the doors and walls to keep out the zombies. It didn't look like there were any other survivors apart from the Viking zombies. The settlement had been decimated.

"You're practically glowing you're wearing so many fluorescent things," Martha snapped.

"I'll have you know this was a last-minute assignment, I just got back from the 1980s where I had to go undercover in a performance of Starlight Express. Which I was amazing in, thanks for asking. I had to be there on the exact same night as a very specific Coca-Cola executive in 1985 so that I could convince them that New Coke was a disaster and to drop it. Do you know how hard it is to convince Coca-Cola executives to do anything? I gave the Greaseball performance of a lifetime. Tony-worthy"

"Could've been worse," said Martha, "Could've been Cats."

"What's Starlight Express?" Rose interrupted.

"It's that musical," said Martha, "You know, with the trains."

"The trains?"

"They're all trains." Rose had never heard of this.

"Toy trains," the time agent interrupted, "They come to life and compete for the affection of a beautiful stage coach. Though in reality, she was a huge diva. It was an enormous acting challenge to pretend to be interested. Anyway, I did that, and I came back to the office and immediately they're saying – 'DeLacey, there's a stray Zuar and reports of the undead in the Eleventh Century, we need you over there.' Did I get time to change? No. Only time to pick up this cool asteroid sword and a few Molotovs."

"Wait, what?" Rose asked, "Did you say 'DeLacey'?"

"Yes, sorry – it's been a long few days, there's no hair gel in this century. I'd be a lot more amiable if I wasn't worried about my quiff or my roots showing through," he complained, "Anyway, where are my manners. I'm DeLacey. Emmett DeLacey." He held out his hand for them to shake, and that was when it hit Rose where she had heard his name before: from Jenny. Emmett was the name of her enormous spike-gun, and DeLacey was the name she gave to her mob associates.

That was the moment she had another of her time vortex visions, which almost always normally happened in her dreams, one of Jenny in an icy cave wearing only furs waving a dead, alien creature in the face of a bartender and then this young man, Emmett DeLacey, sitting at the bar and watching her; and then a second vision arrived of Emmett bleeding to death in the co-pilot's chair of a spaceship after being shot in the chest with a crossbow bolt; another vision of Jenny with his corpse floating in the water of a swamp and an alligator looming nearby; Jenny burning his body on a pyre; Jenny and an urn filled with ashes which Rose could have sworn she had seen before on the TARDIS.

All of this information reached Rose's consciousness in a split second, less than that, as though she had known it all along.

"Are you okay?" Emmett DeLacey asked her when she didn't reach to take his hand. She clenched her jaw and then forced a smile.

"Yep," she said rigidly, "Just, uh… heard your name before. That's all."

"Oh, really? Where from?"

"Dunno. Got a friend who's a time agent. Was a time agent, once," Rose shrugged, "Or maybe I've heard of you from that train musical."

"A train musical you hadn't heard of until a second ago?" he asked incredulously. Speaking of things they had heard of, the noises of the zombies groaning outside was getting louder again.

"Maybe it's just déjà vu." Emmett seemed unconvinced, and then went to retract his hand – which he had still been holding out – at which point she made a mad grab for it and forgot about her superstrength. The same superstrength that had prevented her from hugging Martha earlier on. Emmett flinched, gasped, and buckled when she touched his hand, shaking it much too hard.

"Rose!" Martha exclaimed.

"God, sorry," Rose let go and left the boy staring at marks on his hand, "Don't really know my own strength."

"There's not knowing your own strength and then there's breaking my fingers."

"I didn't actually break them, did I?" Rose said, "I could probably heal them for you, if-"

"Shhhst," Martha ordered her. She shut up immediately.

"What did you say? Heal them?" he questioned.

"Nothing, forget I said that," Rose said, waving a hand in front of his eyes like Obi Wan Kenobi. Martha looked at her like she was being utterly ridiculous, but Martha didn't know that Rose's newest trick – wiping memories – actually worked. It was coming in very handy when she was planning a wedding to an alien with a stolen credit card, she had to keep twisting the minds' of the contractors so that she didn't get arrested for fraud and Ten didn't get shipped off to some laboratory (though she wished he was in a laboratory sometimes; it was a nightmare planning a wedding with the Doctor.)

"Like I was saying, I'm Emmett DeLacey," he reintroduced himself, giving Rose another opportunity to really very gently shake his hand in what she thought was the world's limpest handshake, but which still made him wince. "Crazy handshake."

"I get that a lot." Martha was amazed Rose's Jedi mind tricks had worked. Rose didn't understand why – the Doctor was always messing around wiping people's memories, as were Torchwood "So, you're here to deal with the Zuar? We met her."

"Itrux? She's sweet," said Emmett, "A novice. I've met older Zuar before – they live for, like, fifty-thousand years – and they're just… mysterious. Don't like to tell you what they're doing. Anyway, you're not time agents, why are you here?" he questioned, crossing his arms.

"Heard there was a witch," said Martha, "You know, in history. And stuff."

"History," Rose repeated for emphasis.

"…Yeah, okay. It's fine. Don't tell me. I run into all kinds of you freelancers. I really don't care how you got here as long as you're here to help me. And again, sorry for the attitude – I'm still hungover from the musical. Had to be drunk to get through it and then complex Coke politics. Difficult business to manipulate. They would've kept New Coke if it wasn't for me. And then there would we be? With two brands of Pepsi?"

"This might be hard to believe, but I really don't care about Coca-Cola," said Martha, "There's a hoard of zombies outside and this village is probably going to burn down because you threw a Molotov into the middle of them."

"Relax – the rain is so bad the fire won't take to the wood out there. Dead bodies are a lot harder to burn than people think," said Emmett, whose dead body was destined to be burned, "If the temperature isn't high enough you just get barbecue. Barbecue zombies." But the zombies were clearly not dead, they were back to trying to break into the hall.

"Well, great," Rose grumbled, "Now I'm hungry. Maybe we should have our sandwiches." She took the rucksack from her shoulders and began to search through it for food. Martha thought this was a terrible time to eat sandwiches, but she was desperate for the tuna.

"Here's the thing," Emmett began, "I've talked to some of the neighbouring villagers before I went to to see the Zuar, and everything unusual can be tracked to a mysterious explosion which destroyed a giant area of trees about a mile away from here, which I suspect was made by an unusual kind of meteor, and – is that a Kit-Kat?" It was a Kit-Kat, Rose had just removed from her bag. "Hey, I haven't been able to eat anything since I got stuck in this room two days ago, do you think-"

"Depends on Martha," said Rose.

"Why?" Martha asked.

"If you want the Kit-Kat. He can have it as far as I'm concerned, but if you want it-"

"I'll just have my sandwich." Rose tossed the Kit-Kat to Emmett.

"Why does she get food priority?" Emmett questioned.

"Because I'm having a baby and I'm stuck out here being attacked by zombie Vikings, that's why," Martha snapped, unwrapping her tuna sandwich from the foil, "Go on, keep talking. Explosion, asteroid."

"I think something's reanimating the dead," Emmett said, then quickly added, "I mean, obviously – but bodies are just vessels for energy. If something else is forcing energy into them, then they'll get up and start walking around."

"That's what happened to Esther," Martha said, wolfing down her tuna sandwich ravenously. Rose hadn't been able to find any mayonnaise to put on it because Clara was hoarding all the mayonnaise in her room like the freak she was. Rose was enjoying her run-of-the-mill cheese sandwich, though not with nearly as much vigour.

"Esther doesn't eat people alive, though," said Rose, "Otherwise Sally would definitely be dead. But look, he's right, I've seen this kind of thing before. More than once. The Gelth were controlling dead bodies and using them as vessels, so were those gas mask zombies, in a way. They weren't eating anybody, but… look, there's a lot of people who want to do freaky stuff with dead bodies and would probably love a zombie outbreak." Like Nios's secret new almost-sort-of-girlfriend Rose absolutely wasn't supposed to know anything about but, again, the time vortex whispered all kinds of irrelevant information to her. She also knew that Amy Pond switched the labels on her hair products to pretend they were much more expensive than they actually were, and that Adam Mitchell secretly sang Busted songs (surprisingly well) when he showered. Completely useless information.

"Okay, so, you, me, and Greaseball here will go to see this meteor crater and take it from there," Martha said, "If it's not any kind of infection then it must be technology or evil aliens. And I'd rather have those than a plague outbreak."

"Good plan. I mean, what if the baby-" Martha glared at Rose, mouth full of tuna. "Fine. What if the embryo got the zombie disease, and then it turned undead and ate you alive from the inside? Like spiders?"

"Sorry – how pregnant are you, exactly? To be out here? With the zombies?" Emmett asked. In the background, Rose was dully aware of the zombies getting louder and louder, more and more frantic in their efforts to tear the wood and from the walls and raze the village's only intact building to the ground.

"I don't know, maybe seventy percent pregnant," Martha said sarcastically.

"There's percentages of how pregnant you can be?" Rose asked, eating more cheese, wishing she hadn't sacrificed her Kit-Kat.

"Are you joking?"

"…Yes," Rose lied. She hadn't been joking, hadn't picked up on the sarcasm, and she really wasn't the most maternally knowledgable person.

"I took a course in midwifery, that's why I'm asking," Emmett shrugged, "The Time Agency, they run these things sometimes. It was midwifery or sword-fighting."

"But you're carrying a sword right now," Rose pointed out.

"Yeah, because they wouldn't let me bring a gun. But it's fine, I know loads about sword-fighting. I've seen all thirteen Pirates of the Caribbean movies."

"I feel comforted," Rose muttered.

"A month," Martha answered him, "Only a month pregnant. And I'll be fine. Plus, I'm a doctor, so-"

The worst happened.

Well, not the worst, Martha's stomach wasn't ripped open by a monstrous, alien baby, leaving it to Rose to don a Sigourney Weaver-esque persona to defeat the offspring in a giant mech, but still quite bad. But still, quite bad.

The Viking zombies, furious from being tricked and then set on fire (and maybe enticed by there now being three fresh humans plus 'embryo' for them to devour), finally broke through Emmett DeLacey's carefully crafted barricades. Rose nearly dropped her sandwich, it was that dire.

"I think that's enough lollygagging, don't you?" Martha said, backing away from the broken-through window, right at the moment another window was smashed to pieces by a dead, burned hand right next to her. She shrieked and threw a fireball at it out of nothing more than reflex, jumping away. "I think your Molotov just made them even angrier!"

"Did you just shoot fire!?" Emmett exclaimed.

"Long story! Too many zombies!" Rose said.

"Right," he said, then he drew his sword, which had a purple blade (somehow) and was just as ridiculous as the rest of his outfit. "We'll fight our way out."

"Or you could just, you know, use your vortex manipulator and just teleport us away?" Rose suggested.

"Teleportation without a capsule!? With a baby!?" Martha exclaimed, "I'm not doing that."

"Fine then!" Rose shouted as zombies were crawling through the windows on all sides, blocking their every escape route. Except for one last escape route. "This asteroid crash – you said it was a mile away?"

"Yep," Emmett said, "North-west." He slashed his sword and hacked off a zombie arm, and to their horror the arm kept moving and crawling along the ground towards them while the stump leaked thick, black blood. Rose nearly screamed.

"Alright, well," she picked up her rucksack and slung it over one shoulder, grabbing Martha's elbow and then Emmett's shoulder, "I suppose we're taking the express route. Or, the Starlight Express route."

"Just teleport us!" Martha shrieked as a zombie Viking lunged for them. Rose Tyler did exactly as she was told.