The Hungry Earth - Part Two
We made it over the hill just in time for everything around us to be bathed in a red glow. Rory led the charge around the houses where we found the Doctor holding his sonic screwdriver up to the sky, accompanied by an older man and woman, Toby and Nasreen, carrying various pieces of seismic equipment.
"Doctor, something weird's going on around here. The grave's are eating people," Rory said as Ambrose and Elliot exited their house to join us outside.
"Not now, Rory," the Doctor said dismissively, continuing to sonic the sky, "Energy barricade, invisible to the naked eye. We can't get out and no one from the outside world can get in."
"Couldn't we just use the Tardis?" Thomas asked, "It can go anywhere, right?"
"Technically it can, but the barricade might damage her," I said.
"Ginny's right. With a bit of time, maybe. But we've only got nine and a half minutes," the Doctor said. As he put his screwdriver back in his jacket, the red light of the barricade began to fade away.
"Hang on, nine and a half minutes to what?" Rory asked.
"We're trapped, and something's burrowing towards the surface," Nasreen said. Suddenly Rory started to look around frantically.
"Where's Amy?" he asked. A look of defeat flashed briefly across the Doctor's face before leaping back into action.
"Get everyone inside the church," he said, grabbing some of the equipment out of a wheelbarrow, "Rory, I'll get her back."
"What do you mean, get her back? Where's she gone?"
"She was taken. Into the earth."
Ambrose was leading a group up to the church while I hung behind to help carry some of the equipment. I tried to catch up to the group but Rory caught my arm in a strong grip. I didn't have the confidence to meet his gaze but I could feel it boring into the top of my head.
"Why didn't you tell anyone this was going to happen?" he asked, a righteous anger in his voice, "You knew this would happen and you didn't say anything! Why?!"
I started getting flashbacks to Starship UK; how angry the Doctor was with me for not sharing my foreknowledge. My heart was racing and I could feel myself beginning to shake. I tried to say something, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out. Tears started welling in my eyes as I stood there, frozen in guilt.
"I… I'm… I couldn't," was all I could really say before the Doctor wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
"Ginny isn't to blame for this, Rory," the Doctor said, "I tried to save her. I promise I tried."
"Well you should've tried harder!" Rory shouted.
I tried to just cry silently, but a sharp inhale gave my emotions away. I just started walking away from them despite the Doctor calling for me to come back. I put all my focus on looking calm and collected until I rounded the corner past Ambrose and Elliot's home. That's where I slid down onto a bench by the wall and sheltered my face with my arms as I cried. The Doctor tried to help me calm down but I wasn't having any of it.
"Just leave me alone!" I cried, not even bothering to look up from the ground. It took a few seconds, but I eventually heard him walk away. After a few deep breaths I calmed down enough to join everyone else in the church. I still couldn't look at Rory without starting to get emotional again though. So you can only imagine what was going through my mind when he and Thomas started walking over to me the moment I entered the church.
"I'm sorry I didn't say anything earlier but I didn't want to accidentally cause a paradox or something worse to happen, but you had every right to be angry with me because Amy's gonna be your wife so obviously you're worried about her and I promise you that she's alive and she'll be okay and–" all just came out like word vomit before Rory held up his hands trying to get me to stop.
"No, I'm sorry for lashing out at you," he said, "It's not your fault Amy was taken. I realize
that now. But I appreciate you letting me know that she's okay down there. Takes a weight off my chest, y'know?"
I laughed slightly, "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's Amy down there after all. She's probably making whatever took her seriously regret it."
Rory smiled and reached out a hand.
"Forgiven?" he asked. I took his hand and nodded.
"Forgiven. Now let's figure out what took her," I looked over to see the Doctor glancing
his watch, "Doc, what's the plan?"
He glanced over to us looking slightly concerned, but I gave a quick thumbs up and he smiled.
"We have eight minutes to set up a line of defense," he said, "Bring me every phone, every camera, every piece of recording or transmitting equipment you can find."
I snapped my fingers and grabbed Thomas's hand.
"We're gonna go grab my iPod from the Tardis!" I shouted on my way out the church's doors. We made the steep uphill climb rather quickly and just as I was about to enter the Tardis, Thomas tapped my shoulder.
"Who're those two?" he asked. I turned around and saw what he meant. On the horizon I could see two figures, the one on the far right jumping up and down while holding something over their head. I ran into the Tardis to grab my iPod and also grabbed a pair of binoculars that were hanging on the coat tree. I quickly tossed the iPod to Thomas as I fiddled with the dial on the binoculars. Once the image came into focus I shouted out in surprise.
"It's us!" I exclaimed, "It's us ten years from now!"
"What, really?!" Thomas asked, snatching the binoculars from me, "Holy crap, it really is
us! That's so cool!" He then seemed to focus a little bit more on something because of
how his posture changed, "Wait, why are you holding a speaker?"
I snatched back the binoculars to see that lo and behold, I was holding up a big speaker. I wondered if my sonic would get a signal through the barricade, so I held it towards future me and pressed the button. To my surprise, it picked up whatever was playing through the speaker and relayed it onto the screwdriver's smaller speaker. It was what sounded like a pop rock song; very upbeat and the lyrics sounded like a chorus.
"I know we only just met, so why do I feel invested? And do you feel it too? Do you feel it too? I could be your best yet. Future favorite regret. Do you feel it too? Do you feel it too?"
I nodded my head and smiled as I ended the transmission, making sure to save a recording. The song sounded pretty catchy and when all of this was said and done I wanted to look more into the band that performed it.
"Nice to know we've still got good taste in music in the future," Thomas said, still looking through the binoculars, "Oh and the fact we still know each other is pretty cool too, I guess."
I playfully punched his arm and laughed, "Oh hush, you!"
We walked back down to the church to grab some extra cameras, tape, and extension cords to keep everything wired together. Thomas and I split up to cover more ground, with him placing some audio recorders by the open grave and me taping my iPod to the bench I was sitting on earlier. While I was trying to get the electrical tape to adhere to one of the bench's armrests, something metal dropped onto the pathway. I turned around just in time to see Ambrose walking past with her arms carrying a massive pile of weapons. Looking down on the ground I saw that she must've dropped one of them. It was a small cylinder of metal,maybe four inches in length, with a keyring on one end and a tip of another type of metal on the other. At first glance it looked like a very nice ballpoint pen, but it likely wasn't one because when I tried testing it on my hand no ink came out. I pocketed the metal cylinder and went into the church to show it to the Doctor, figuring he might know what it is.
"It's contemporary," he said, spinning it a few times between his fingers, "Stainless steel body and," I grimaced when he licked the tipped end, "A tungsten tip. Where did you find this?"
He tossed it back to me and I promptly wiped it off with my sleeve.
"Outside while I was setting up a camera. I think Ambrose might've dropped it, but I'm not sure. Is it useful?" I asked.
"In the right hands anything can be useful," he said, "Hang onto it for now if you'd like,
but give it back to Ambrose next time you see her." I gave him a quick thumbs up and was about to walk out the church just as Elliot walked in with his map. It was very well detailed, featuring the church, the graveyard, and his house with orange highlighter dots symbolizing where each camera was. Going off his reaction, the Doctor was just as impressed as I was.
"Look at that. Perfect!" he exclaimed, "Dyslexia never stopped Da Vinci or Einstein. It's not stopping you."
He began to input some different commands into one of the computers. I glanced at one of the monitors to find a network of tunnels running under the church, and in three of the tunnels were three glowing dots; each likely representing a Silurian on its way up.
"I don't understand what you're going to do," Elliot said, also looking at one of the monitors.
"Two phase plan. First, the sensors and cameras will tell us when something arrives," the Doctor then grabbed his screwdriver from his coat pocket, "Second, if something does arrive, I use this to send a sonic pulse through that network of devices. A pulse which would temporarily incapacitate most things in the universe."
"Knock 'em out. Cool!" Elliot smiled, and so did the Doctor. He walked around to sonic the monitor I was watching and brought up a 3D image of the church.
"I wish I could've grown up somewhere like this. It's lovely," I said, glancing over at the church's stained glass window.
"Suppose," Elliot said, "I want to live in a city one day. Soon as I'm old enough, I'll be off."
"I was the same where I grew up," the Doctor said.
"Did you get away?"
"Yeah."
"Do you ever miss it?"
The Doctor paused for a moment. "So much," he said.
"Is it monsters coming?" Elliot asked. I nodded as the Doctor rose from his seat to stand by Elliot. "Have you met monsters before?"
"Yeah," the Doctor said.
"You scared of them?"
"No, they're scared of me."
"Will you really get my dad back?"
"No question," the Doctor and I said in unison. He smiled briefly at me before placing all
of his attention on the monitor in front of him. Elliot took a few steps backward towards the door.
"I left my headphones at home," he said. The Doctor gave a quick thumbs up, not looking away from the monitor as Elliot exited the church. I ran around to try to catch up to him.
"I'm gonna go with him. Make sure he stays safe, y'know?" I called back, but the Doctor was still very engrossed in whatever was happening on that monitor, so he gave me a quick thumbs up as well.
I made it all the way back to the bench by the time it started to get dark. Elliot was coming back out of the house with his headphones around his neck when he saw me.
"What're you doing down here?" he asked.
"I wanted to make sure you got back to the church safe," I said, getting out my screwdriver and using it like a flashlight, "We should hurry though, it's not safe out here."
Elliot nodded and we walked quickly up the paved path until he veered off into the grass to the right.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I know a shortcut," he whispered, "Come on."
While Elliot's shortcut through the graveyard was definitely a smaller distance to the church, it was much steeper and not nearly as well traveled. About halfway up the hill I began to hear rustling behind me, followed by a quick hiss. I turned around and saw two bipedal reptilians quickly duck behind some headstones. My blood, much like theirs, ran cold.
"Elliot, hurry!" I whisper-shouted, taking the boy's hand and hurriedly climbing up the overgrown hill. The hissing started to get louder as we reached the pavement outside the church entrance.
I backed my way towards the door as Elliot began to knock on it feverishly.
"Mum! Grandpa Tony! Let me in!" he cried.
"Elliot!" I heard Ambrose exclaim on the other side of the door.
I turned to face the door and tried to unlock it with my screwdriver, but for some reason the wood setting wouldn't work with the way the door was jammed. It must've only been a setting for wooden locks.
"Doctor, get the door open!" I shouted, trying to lodge the door open, "There's two of them out here!"
Elliot and I threw all of our weight into trying to break down the door, but it would barely budge.
"Push, you two! You've got to give it your all!" I heard the Doctor say on the other side of the door. I went to take a few steps back to give the door a running shove, but after a few steps I bumped into something; something that hissed when I made contact with it. I turned around quickly and shielded Elliot from the Silurian warriors in front of us. One was about my size and the other was a few inches taller with a bulkier physique. Their gray masks reflected menacingly in the flickering light above us. I raised my hands slowly in surrender.
"We don't want any trouble," I said, placing my screwdriver on the ground, "We just want the people you took from us back."
The Silurians gave no answer. The smaller of the two simply raised up their gun which began to emit a white odorless gas. I didn't have time to hold my breath so I crumpled to the ground coughing; the last thing I remembered before blacking out was that something picked me up and began carrying me away.