Holly was up bright and early. She had met Roxy - who was looking decidedly better - at the corner of Fothering St, and they had both made their way into town.
“What are you expecting from this meeting?” said Roxy.
“No idea really. Some answers maybe. I’m surprised you’re not as eager.”
“Oh, I’m eager,” said Roxy. “Anything to brighten the dull monotony of life, but you’re not even connected to this. Simon is. I am cause of that weird seizure -”
“You should still go to the doctors about it,” interrupted Holly.
“He’s a doctor, isn’t he?” said Roxy with a smile. “Plus he’s cute. Weird, but cute.”
Holly rolled her eyes.
“So why are you doing this?”
“I’m doing it because of you and because of Simon. You’re my friends. I want to help the both of you.”
Roxy smiled, put her arm around Holly and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. “Ah, you old softie.”
“Easy,” said Holly, pushing her way with a laugh.
The Doctor and Lilly were waiting by the fountain in the main square when Holly and Roxy turned the corner.
“Just you,” said the Doctor. He nodded to Roxy. “What’s she here for.”
“Nice to see you again too, sweetheart,” said Roxy.
“She’s here because of what happened to her last night,” said Holly. “I think you need to hear about this.”
They made their way into a café near to the square and sat down at a table in the corner. After ordering four full English breakfasts, Lilly returned to the table.
“I’m starving,” said Roxy.
“About ten minutes,” said Lilly with a forced smile.
“Right,” said the Doctor, bringing his notepad out again, his pen nib close to the pad. “So what happened to this young lady?”
“I had a seizure,” said Roxy.
“A tumour, perhaps,” said the Doctor.
“Nah,” said Roxy, shaking her head.
“How can you be so sure?” said the Doctor.
“Because I’m pretty sure brain tumours don’t make you see flashes of different worlds.”
The Doctor wrote in his pad furiously and then looked up at Roxy, excitement in his eyes. “Tell me more, Miss…?”
“Just called me Roxy. Or I’ll let you call me Roxanne if you behave.” She winked at him.
“Come on, Roxy, be serious,” said Holly. “She had a seizure and saw flashes of a destroyed world. Buildings and flames and things like that.”
The Doctor threw his pen down as the breakfasts arrived and looked away. “Another missing link.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Lilly, touching his shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Why don’t you tell us all you’ve seen so far and maybe we can help,” said Holly hopefully
The Doctor looked at Holly and then Roxy and sighed. “We detected some kind of…energy reading a few weeks ago so came to investigate. The signal doesn’t have a source though. It’s all around. Like it’s something in the air.”
“There are spikes though and, if we’re lucky, we catch them. We picked up one spike in a graveyard on the outskirts of town and went to investigate it,” continued Lilly.
“We found a lady in her 50’s wandering around, disorientated. She wasn’t able to communicate with us properly so we took her back to our TA-”
“Home,” interrupted Lilly. “We’re…scientists. We have a lab at home. Anyway the lady didn’t last long. She soon passed away so we put her back in the ground.”
“But it kept happening and happening,” said the Doctor. “Every time we found a spike we’d find a person, but the person would soon die again and we’d have to rebury them.” He pulled out a device with a handle and two prongs on the head. On the front was a screen with a wavy, green line. “The signal is getting stronger though.”
“What about Simons mum?” asked Holly.
“Mrs Fox has expired again. She’s been kept in cold storage. She’s a really interesting one. The coroners report at the time said she was extremely badly burned, yet her body looks as fresh as anything…more or less. Very strange.”
“Then there’s Roxy here,” said Holly. “Isn’t that weird?”
“Yes. Again, another missing link.” The Doctor leaned in and looked at Roxy, their eyes looking into each others. “There’s just no connection at all.”
Cheryl wasn’t really sure what she should have done with her husband. After she had put their kids to bed she had come back down to find him staring out of the bay window, his eyes full of wonder as he surveyed the street beyond.
She had guided him back to the sofa and had called the out of hours GP Unit at the hospital. The nurse had advised her to make him comfortable and for him to get a good nights sleep, and if he was still the same in the morning then she was to take him to the doctors.
Cheryl had made him a cup of hot chocolate and it hadn’t taken long for him to fall asleep. It was like he was exhausted. He hadn’t been able to say much more to her. He had continued to mumble about the world being different.
As she lay there in bed, turned on her side watching him breath deeply she began to cry. What had happened to Richard? Had he had an injury at work. He hadn’t mentioned anything. Then she wondered if he had had a stroke or something. None of it made sense.
When the morning came her eyes opened with a start to find Richard stood by the bedroom window gazing out into the street again.
He turned to her and smiled, but he still looked confused. “I’m sorry…?” he indicated with his hand.
“Cheryl,” she said.
He nodded quickly. “Yeah, Cheryl. I don’t know…I don’t quite know what’s happening to me, Cheryl, but something is very wrong.”
“You’re telling me,” she said. She had slept in her clothes last night. He looked like her husband, but at the same time he felt like a stranger. “Did you hurt yourself or something?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, not recently.”
“Tell me what you remember?” she said, guiding him back to the bed to sit him down.
He swallowed. “I remember the world not being like this. I remember fire and carnage and death. Since being a teenager. The world used to be like this, but then it changed.”
“But none of that happened,” said Cheryl. “Look,” she said, pointing towards the window. “The world isn’t like that.”
“My world is,” he said.
Cheryl’s friend, Anna, had collected their children and taken them to school that day. Cheryl had made Richard some toast and cereal and he had eaten like he hadn’t had a decent bit of grub in weeks. He guzzled down three mugs of coffee and then asked for more.
After his eighth round of toast he finally leaned back in his chair and smiled. “That was good.”
“I need to take you to the doctors,” said Cheryl.
Richard nodded. “I understand, but there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s this world that’s wrong. Or right.”
Cheryl sighed. “What do you remember about me?”
Richard frowned.
“Cheryl Noone. Remember? You knew me at school you said?”
“Yeah,” said Richard, nodding and smiling. “But you died.”
“I can’t have,” laughed Cheryl. “I’m here. Right here.”
Richard shook his head. “You were killed in the first wave.”
“Wave?”
“When they came.” He looked scared.
“Who are ‘they’” said Cheryl, exasperated.
“The Riders. The aliens.”
The Doctor, Lilly, Holly and Roxy stood by the entrance to the cemetery. It was another misty morning and it was cold. For a moment Holly wondered what she was doing standing here with two strangers and a girl who had had a seizure the night before. She had bunked off work and felt like a naughty schoolgirl and was hoping that none of her co-workers would see her.
Holly pulled her coat tighter around her and shivered, zipping the front right up to the bottom of her chin.
The Doctor turned to Lilly. “Take Holly to the east side of the cemetery. Roxy can come with me.”
Roxy smiled. “No funny business, Doctor.”
“No promises,” winked the Doctor.
Lilly shook her head. “Stop playing with her, old man.”
“Let’s go, Roxanne,” said the Doctor, hands deep in his jean pockets as he marched through the gate and to the west side of the cemetery.
Holly and Lilly walked in silence for a little while as they made their way under the archway of the small chapel that sat in the middle of the entrance road. They turned to their right and walked past the stone angels and continued up until they reached the newer part of the cemetery, next to the fence where they had gotten in the night before.
“So,” said Holly, breaking the silence, “here’s my theory.”
“Go on,” said Lilly.
“I reckon there’s someone out there controlling the zombies. Bringing them to life.”
“Okay,” said Lilly, slowly. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Holly, kicking a small pile of stones. “Maybe because they can.”
“Well, as much as I’d like to believe that the dead can come back to life, I seriously doubt they have been brought back by some mad scientist.”
“Okay then,” said Holly with a smile, “what’s your theory.”
“I don’t have one,” said Lilly blankly. “I have absolutely no idea. No clue. Zip.”
Holly frowned. Not once did she meet her gaze. She looked bored. “You’re from Scotland aren’t you?”
“In a round about sort of way,” said Lilly.
“Have you known the Doctor long?”
“A fair while. We’re good friends.”
“How did you meet?”
“How did you wind up tagging along with us?” said Lilly, shooting her a glare.
“Okay, okay,” said Holly, “I was just asking.”
“Don’t bother,” said Lilly. “The Doctor likes to have people tag along with him. He likes to surround himself with idiots so he can make himself look clever.”
“Number one: I’m not an idiot. Number two: that’s a nice way to talk about your friend.”
“You don’t always have to say just nice things about your friends, you know,” said Lilly, stopping and crouching down beside a grave.
Holly folded her arms and sat down on a nearby bench. This Doctor seemed alright, but so far Lilly had come across as a right frosty cow.
Across the other side of the cemetery Roxy was trotting alongside the Doctor, her hands behind her back as he flitted from gravestone to gravestone, a small, metal device with a glowing orange bulb at the end in his hands. He kept waving it over the more recent graves.
“So,” said Roxy, “where do you come from? You sound Scottish.”
“I might sound Scottish, but it doesn’t mean that I am,” said the Doctor, leaping over some upturned ground, crouching and running the device along it. “No…not here.”
She knelt down beside him. “I visited Scotland once. It was…nice.”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, leaping to his feet and heading further up the gently sloping cemetery.
Roxy sighed and followed him. “You and that Lilly - are you seeing each other?”
“I see her every day,” said the Doctor.
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” He turned to face her and frowned.
“Are you…seeing her. I mean she’s a little young for you. What is she? Nineteen? Twenty? You look in your mid-30’s.”
The Doctor frowned, and then his eyes widened before he burst into a huge belly laugh that echoed around the cemetery.
“What?” frowned Roxy. She wasn’t normally caught off her guard, but she felt like it this time.
“I assure you, Roxanne, that Lilly and I are nothing more than travelling companions. She needed help. I was there to help her.”
“Oh good,” smiled Roxy.
The Doctor leaned in closer to Roxy, their noses almost touching. “You’re a lovely young woman.”
“Thank you,” said Roxy, feeling a little flustered.
“But I have business to attend to.” He flitted away again, waving the metal device.
Roxy breathed out and closed her eyes. She stood for a moment beside on of the graves. It was then that she heard the sound. The squelching, shifting sound from somewhere near the ground. She leaned in to take a closer look at one of the graves.
And then a hand burst out of the ground, grabbing her around the throat.
Roxy screamed.
To be continued...
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