The man stood there grinning like an idiot with the torch illuminating his face. He looked like he’d just climbed out of Hell to do the devils bidding.
It was too much for Simon. “That’s it, I’m off,” he said with a wave of the hand, turning back the other way.
“Wait, Simon!” said Roxy. She turned back to Holly. “I’ll go after him,” and she disappeared into the night after Simon. A few moments later she was back, her finger held up to the man with the torch. “She knows karate, Doctor Strange. You touch her and you’ll never touch anything ever again.”
Holly smiled. “I’m fine, Rox. You go.” She didn’t know karate.
Roxy nodded, pointed at the Doctor again and then disappeared into the night.
Holly looked at the Doctor who had now stopped grinning and was looking intently at her.
“I saw you this morning at the graveyard near the factory.”
“Yes, I recognised you from the funeral you had attended,” he said. He extended a hand. “Your name?”
“Holly Dangerfield,” she said, cautiously taking his hand and shaking it.
“A fantastic name, Miss Dangerfield,” he said, shaking her hand vigorously, “but it’s way too dangerous for your to be out here. No pun intended of course.”
“What’s going on?” she said, realising that, although this guy was a stranger, this was her opportunity for answers. “What’s happened to Simons mum? You said you were hunting the dead.”
“Maybe best if you don’t know,” said the Doctor with a weak smile. “What you don’t know can’t kill you.” He chuckled to himself.
She frowned. “Simon used to be a friend of mine. I think I have the right.”
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak when there came a scream from somewhere over the fence and into the depths of the darkened cemetery.
“Lilly!” said the Doctor, frantically looking over and trying to shine the light. The beam only illuminated the fence in front of them.
“The blonde girl?” said Holly. “Is she your friend?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “She went around to the other side to check the gates. She must have gone in for some reason.” He looked down. “It’ll take me another 10 minutes to work my way around to get inside.”
“There’s a gap in the fence,” said Holly. She pointed her torch towards the broken slats. “You can get in that way.”
“Thank you, Holly Dangerfield,” he said, shaking her hand and jumping into the ditch.
“I’m coming with you,” said Holly, clambering down to join him.
“No, you go home. Follow your friends. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerfield’s my name, danger’s my nature,” she said with a smile, and then suddenly realised how cheesy that sounded.
He held out a finger. “Go back.”
“You’re not the police, are you?”
He frowned. “No, of course not.”
“Then you have no right. Come on, let’s get in.” She held out her hand in a defensive gesture. “I know karate, remember?”
He sighed, shook his head and then made for the loose slats.
Roxy found Simon walking along the pathway beside the motorway, intent on getting back home. She finally managed to catch up with him and grabbed his arm.
“Just go back to Holly,” said Simon.
“She can take care of herself. It’s you I’m worried about,” she said, trotting alongside of him.
“I’m just not ready for anything like this. It’s why I left the group all those years ago. I wanted to settle and live a normal life.”
“Nothing’s normal about a loved one coming back from the dead.”
“Exactly,” said Simon, stopping and removing his glasses. “I just want normal back.”
“Have you thought that maybe your mother needs you?”
“It can’t be mum. Mum burned to death in our house. It just can’t be.”
Roxy touched his arm and smiled at him. His eyes were wet and he’d obviously been crying. She opened her mouth to say something when she suddenly felt a searing pain across the top of her head. It felt like someone had pushed a hot poker into her temple - a rusty one - and had pulled it out the other side.
She fell to her knees, her eyes quivering in their sockets.
“Roxy!” said Simon, kneeling down in front of her. “Roxy! Roxanne! What’s wrong?”
She was trying to mumble something, her lips trembling. “Car…car….carnage.”
And then she passed out.
The Doctor and Holly had made their way into the cemetery, the Doctor flashing the torch around, frantically trying to find any sign of his friend, Lilly. Since the first scream they had heard nothing else and this obviously concerned the Doctor.
Holly could barely keep up with him as he raced between the gravestones, illuminating names of the long, gone dead and eroded angels faces as they loomed over them in what Holly was sure wasn’t meant to be a menacing fashion.
“I’m all disorientated,” said the Doctor, scratching his chin and shaking his head.
“You said she went to the other gates?” said Holly. “Which ones? There are three entrances to this place, not including the hole in the fence.”
“She went right around the other side.”
“Right, in that case it’s the Saxby Road entrance, which is over there towards the Victorian area.”
“Thank you. Come on!”
They made their way down a pathway under the tall trees and past the graves of the people killed during both World Wars. Holly wasn’t sure if this felt right, but she was feeling quite excited. The adrenaline rush had taken over. Then she grabbed a hold of herself. She remembered that someone was out here and in possible danger.
She thought she saw something moving in the shadows, but didn’t stop moving. She already knew something odd was going on here, no matter how strange it was. She certainly didn’t want to lose sight of this Doctor. He seemed to know what was going on, even if he was keeping quiet about it.
“Lilly!” cried the Doctor as his torch shone down on the girls prone form, lying down on the ground, a cut to the side of her head.
“Is she okay?” said Holly, crouching down beside him as he checked her over.
“She’s just unconscious,” he said. He got up and paced around on the spot, clicking his fingers, his eyes closed. “Come on. Come on. What am I missing here?”
“A zombie must have attacked her?” suggested Holly, realising how daft that sounded.
“They’re not zombies,” said the Doctor, crouching back beside Lilly. She was starting to stir.
“But if the dead are walking -”
“They’re not zombies,” said the Doctor again. “A zombie would eat Lilly. Well most zombie’s would eat Lilly. Not all zombies. In fact that‘s a myth.”
“True,” said Holly, remembering watching numerous zombie films back when she was at college.
“Doctor…” groaned Lilly, her head turning side to side, her eyes fluttering open.
“How do you feel?” said the Doctor. “Can you stand?”
“Give her a chance,” said Holly.
“We don’t have the time,” said the Doctor. He helped Lilly to sit up. “What did you see?”
She put a hand to the side of her head and winced in pain. “It was a man. Dressed in a suit and covered in dirt. Looked to be in his 50’s. I came around to check the gates when I saw him staggering around. I know I shouldn’t have, but I went to see if I could help or gather some more info.”
“And he attacked you?” said the Doctor.
“Yeah,” she drew her knees up to her chest, her eyes staring ahead, remembering. “He was scared though. He lashed out and everything went black.” Lilly got to her feet with a wobble, assisted by the Doctor. “What are we missing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Holly felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. It was Roxy. She answered it. “Roxy, are you alright? How’s Simon?” She frowned. “What? Where are you now?” She nodded. “I’m on my way, Simon.”
“Problems?” said the Doctor, scratching his chin.
“It was Simon. Roxy took a funny turn. He’s managed to get her home, but she’s asking for me.”
“You better go,” said the Doctor.
She turned to leave, stopped and then turned back. “What about you two?”
“Forget about us.”
“No,” said Holly. “I want some answers. If you don’t tell me I’ll go to the police.”
“Holly…”
“Please.” She was genuinely pleading with him. She couldn’t let this go now.
The Doctor tapped on his chin and then turned to face her. “Meet you at 9am tomorrow at the fountain down the road.”
Holly smiled and nodded. “Disco 2000?”
The Doctor looked completely lost.
“Never mind,” said Holly with a shake of her head. “See you tomorrow.”
Lilly watched Holly disappear through the open gates and onto Saxby Road. She turned to the Doctor.
“Okay, Miss Galloway?”
“Forget about me,” she said. “Do you really think we should be involving her?”
“I don’t see why not. She’s got an inquisitive mind.” He smiled. “She may be of some use.”
“She may be of some use,” said Lilly, “but I can’t see her becoming one of us.”
When Holly found her way to Roxy’s flat in the centre of town she felt her stomach rumbling - she was getting hungry. She passed a fish and chip shop, but resisted the urge to go inside. She needed to check on Roxy.
She knocked on the door and Simon answered, leading her up the stairs to her flat above the corner shop on Westfield and Critchen Street.
The flat was quite sparsely decorated in cream and red and Roxy had very little furniture.
She was lying on a sofa in the living room, a cold, wet flannel pressed onto her forehead.
“What happened?” said Holly.
Simon shook his head. “She was fine one moment, then she started mumbling something about ‘carnage’ and then collapsed.”
“Carnage?” frowned Holly.
“That’s all she said. I carried her for a bit and then she woke up and helped me to get her back here. My arms are killing me,” he said, rubbing his forearms.
“Hey!” said Roxy. “I’m not that heavy.”
Holly knelt down beside the sofa and Roxy turned to look at her friend.
“What happened?”
“What happened?” said Roxy. She shook her head. “I can tell you what happened, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Go on then,” said Holly.
“I felt like I was having a seizure or something. I saw flashes of things - images - in my mind.”
“What kind of images?”
“Flashes of a dead world. That’s the only way I can describe it. Flames and buildings crumbling. I felt so frightened.”
“What about now?” said Simon. “How are you feeling now?”
“Oh, Foxy,” smiled Roxy, “don’t worry about me, sweetheart. I’m fine now. I don’t know what it was.”
Holly turned and sat on the floor, her back against the bottom of the sofa. “This day just gets weirder and weirder.”
“Why?” said Holly, forcing herself to sit up and slide down the sofa next to Holly, “what happened out there?”
“The blonde girl and the Doctor - she was knocked unconscious.” She turned to Roxy. “Something very odd is going on, Roxy, and we need to get to the bottom of it.”
Richard Hicks was a normal enough bloke. He worked on the fruit and veg stall on the market, went home every night, saw his kids and wife, maybe watched a bit of TV. Then he’d go to bed, get up the next morning, and it’d start all over again.
It was a pretty monotonous life, but he enjoyed it. The days and days of things being the same were interspersed with the occasional trip to the pub with his wife or friends, or a day out to the beach with his kids.
He was sat on the sofa watching EastEnders whilst his kids - Molly, 6 and Liam, 8 - were upstairs playing. His wife was in the kitchen doing the dishes and he was sat with a beer in his hand.
Normally he would only drink at the weekend, but as it was him and his wife’s seven-year anniversary, Cheryl had forced a bottle into his hand. They didn’t really have enough money to go out celebrating, but this was all he needed. The love of his wife, his kids and a nice, stable home.
Today hadn’t been entirely normal though. Since leaving work he’d been getting a mild headache in his forehead. It hadn’t bothered him though, and he had taken an paracetemol to make him feel better. But now it had returned and he found himself squinting at the TV screen.
“You alright, love?” asked Cheryl as she walked into the room with a cup of tea.
“Just a bit of a pain in the head,” said Richard.
“Have you taken anything for it?”
“Yeah,” he said, turning the volume down on the TV, “took a tablet when I came home.”
“Maybe you should lie down.”
“No,” he said, getting up and crossing over to her and guiding her to sit on the sofa, “this is our night. I don’t want to ruin it.”
He leaned in to kiss her and then recoiled in pain, his balled up fists to his head.
“Richard!” yelled Cheryl, dropping her tea and leaping to her feet.
Richard screamed out in agony and then suddenly stopped. His eyes opened and he looked from left to right and then at Cheryl, confusion on his face,
“Richard, are you okay?”
He didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at her. And then he looked around the room. He looked scared and worried.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” said Cheryl.
“Who are you?” said Richard, just as she grabbed the phone.
“What do you mean? It’s me. Cheryl.”
“Cheryl who?”
“Your wife. Cheryl Hicks. We met when we were at school, remember? It’s our anniversary.”
Richard shook his head. “The only Cheryl I remember from school died years ago. Cheryl Noone.”
“That was me. My maiden name before we married. But I’m not dead, Richard, I’m here.”
Richard shook his head again. “But the world isn’t like this any more. Not for a long time.”
Lilly found the Doctor sat on the curb of the road, behind him was the dark park. He had his knees drawn to his chest and he was counting on his fingers, mumbling to himself and writing in a small notepad in his other hand.
“You know it’s nearly midnight, yeah?” said Lilly, sitting down beside him.
“And?”
“And you really need to get some sleep,” she said. “And it’s bloody cold out here.”
“You go inside then,” he said, jotting something else down. He shook his head. “We’re missing something. We’re missing something. It’s so frustrating!”
“What are we missing?”
“Something. Something.”
Lilly smiled. “Okay, old man,” she said, taking the notepad off him, much to his annoyance, “we’re getting you inside. You can have a nice nap and then we’ll meet that Holly girl in the morning and we can have a nice, English breakfast and discuss this. Although why you need her, I’ll never know.”
“Because,” said the Doctor, getting to his feet, “she has an inquisitive side to her.”
“You already said that, but we shouldn’t be letting her get involved,” said Lilly. “You know what happened last time.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” said the Doctor, as he wandered off into the darkened trees.
“Again,” exhaled Lilly under her breath.
To be continued...
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