Cover

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sophie Aldred has been working as a professional actress, singer and director in theatre, TV, film and audio for the last 35 years. She is best known as the Seventh Doctor’s companion, Ace, who beat up a Dalek with a baseball bat. She has presented a huge variety of programmes on TV and radio, and provides many voices for animations including Tree Fu Tom, Bananas in Pyjamas, Peter Rabbit and Dennis the Menace. Sophie lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and two sons.

Dedication

To the three men in my life who ARE my life; you anchor me and yet allow me to fly. Vince, Adam and William – this one’s for you.

PRELUDE

As far as Justine was concerned, it was almost as if she had been scooped up from her old life and deposited on some remote alien world – just like the girl in that corny old film The Wizard of Oz. Except that it was no magical Technicolor kingdom in which she now found herself, it was central London in January, and that was about as far from magical as you could possibly get.

It had been raining constantly for nearly three days now. The coat that she was wearing purported to be weather-proof, but she doubted that the manufacturers had ever expected it to be worn continuously for day after day as she had been doing, and with no chance of it drying out. Her boots were starting to suffer as well, and she didn’t want to imagine how uncomfortable she was going to be if she had to start trudging through the streets with wet feet. Thankfully she had managed to wedge herself into the doorway of a closed and shuttered newsagent during the worst of today’s downpours, so at least the spare clothes that she had bundled up in her rucksack would still be dry.

There were much better places to shelter from the rain, of course, but recent experience had taught her that the bigger and more sheltered the storefront, the more aggressively the security staff would move her on.

She sighed. When she’d imagined her escape to the capital it had seemed so vibrant and exotic, the images on her television showing her nothing but happy, smiling people hurrying through the dazzling displays of twinkling lights as they went about their Christmas shopping. Those lights were all gone now, and if there ever had been any happy smiling people thronging the streets then they had all been replaced by morose impostors. She had lost count of the number of times she had been shouted at or shoved out of the way in the last few days.

Still … it was better than being back at home. She’d take the sullen strangers over Adrian any day.

Adrian was her mum’s boyfriend. He said that he was involved with construction in the film industry – a carpenter or plasterer or something – but it hadn’t taken Justine long to realise what he really was. Every time they were alone he’d sit close beside her, make salacious comments that made her skin crawl. Justine had told her mum, but Mum refused to believe it: ‘You’re jealous. Trying to spoil this for me …’

Their house in Bristol had always been a sanctuary for her, a safe place where she could shut out the outside world, and surround herself with the things that made her happy. Adrian’s arrival had changed all that, and now, every time that she returned home to find his big, black SUV parked outside, the house seemed like the most dangerous place in the world.

Better the streets on her own than back there with him.

That had been over three weeks ago now. Pulling up the collar of her sodden coat, she heaved her rucksack higher onto her shoulder and set off through the sea of people hurrying though the rain-soaked streets. She wondered for the thousandth time if anyone was looking for her. Every day she was afraid of being sighted, and just as scared of staying lost.

It’ll get easier, she told herself, wondering if she’d ever really believe that.

She made her way east along the Strand, the crowds thinning out as she left the theatre district behind her, trudged past the law courts on Fleet Street and entered the quiet calm of the City of London. The financial district was bustling with people during weeknights, but at the weekends it was virtually deserted, and that suited Justine just fine.

She hurried on past the huge, historic buildings that still dominated this part of London – St Paul’s Cathedral, the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange – and made her way into the tangle of narrow passageways that wound their way through Cheapside. The ancient stone buildings now gave way to modern structures of steel and glass, and the Portacabins and heavy machinery of the construction sites that littered the roads at the foot of each.

She turned into another alleyway, ignoring the ‘road closed’ and ‘diversion’ signs and making her way towards the steel fence that had been erected at the far end. Checking that there was no one watching, Justine quickly scaled the fence, dropping nimbly onto the freshly laid tarmac on the other side. She hurried across the deserted building site, splashing through huge shallow puddles of rainwater to where a huge pile of air-conditioning ducting sat swathed in tarpaulins at the base of a towering construction crane.

With one last look around to check that she hadn’t been spotted, Justine lifted up the edge of the tarpaulin and ducked inside. This had been where she been sleeping for the last week. Most of the local construction sites were impossible to get into, but in the five nights that she had been here Justine had only seen one elderly security guard. She assumed that there must be some delay with the construction project as she hadn’t seen a single worker, or noticed any movement or goods either in or out. Whatever the reason she was just glad to have somewhere safe to sleep. The length of ducting wasn’t warm, but at least it was dry and relatively clean. The only real downside was that she occasionally heard rats scurrying across the top if it, their claws clattering on the metal.

Shrugging off her rucksack, Justine crawled further along the length of metal tube towards a bundle of blankets. They’d been handing them out at a church in Soho, and Justine had accepted a couple gratefully. The material was harsh and scratchy, not at all like the blankets on her bed at home, but at least they helped keep out the worst of the cold.

Outside she could hear the rain intensifying, the tarpaulin starting to flap noisily in the wind. Shivering, she pulled the blanket tighter around her. So long since she’d slept in a proper bed, so long since she’d eaten a proper meal, so long since she’d had a shower … Three weeks of rain, and cold and rats.

As if on cue, there was the clatter of claws on the metal of the ducting.

A wave of despair threatened to overwhelm her. Justine had never felt so unloved and pathetic in her life …

Suddenly there was a tremendous cracking noise, like a bundle of twigs being snapped, but so loud that it shook the metal of the ducting. Instantly, Justine was on her feet, trying to work out where the sound had come from. Her heart leapt at the sound of footsteps from the yard outside and moments later there was the rustle of plastic as the tarpaulin covering the mouth of the ducting was pulled aside.

Justine snatched up her backpack as two figures wearing filthy, hooded tops stepped into the tube.

Oh, God. She felt herself freeze, terrified.

‘No need to be scared, dearie.’ The leading figure’s voice was rasping and hoarse. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

Justine backed away as the intruders started to advance along the pipe towards her. ‘I haven’t got any money,’ she said quickly.

‘Money?’ The figure gave a wheezing laugh. ‘It’s not money we’re after.’

‘Got no use for it,’ chipped in the other. ‘It’s a donation, we want.’

‘A what?’

The first one giggled. ‘Charity begins at homeless.’

Justine had heard enough. The two were trouble, clearly off their heads. She turned to run, knowing that there was a way out at the other end of the ducting, but as she turned, her foot caught on the hem of her blanket and she crashed heavily to the floor.

Immediately the two figures pounced, gripping Justine’s arms and legs. With a scream of rage, Justine kicked out, her heel catching one of her assailants on the side of the head and sending him sprawling.

Snarling with anger, the other pinned her to the floor. Justine gave a gasp of horror. Beneath the hood there was something terribly wrong with her attacker’s face. The eyes were big and dark, the features misshapen.

With a hiss, the thing opened its mouth, baring teeth like rotten spikes. A vile animal spray splattered onto Justine’s face. She groaned, revolted. The smell was overpowering.

As blackness engulfed her, all she could hear was the chittering of rats …

Part One

2020

CHAPTER ONE

Dorothy McShane jolted from her sleep, lashing out at the creature that was reaching for her. But there was no creature. She was alone in her bedroom, her attacker nothing but a phantom from a nightmare.

With a groan, she slumped back onto the bed, the sheets rumpled, her arms and forehead slick with sweat. She closed her eyes again and lay motionless in the cool dark for a moment, trying to control her breathing and slow her heart rate. It had been the same story every night this week. The same nightmare, the same moment of sudden awakening, the same conviction that she was fighting for her life.

It was becoming tiresome.

As with all the previous occasions, she tried to recall the exact events of her nightmare, hoping that some remembered detail might provide a pointer to what might be triggering these dreams.

They always began in exactly the same way: feeling herself being drawn out of her body, watching her sleeping self recede into the distance as she rose higher and higher until she was floating far above the city, looking down on the patchwork of roads and buildings, lights blazing into the night. Then things tended to kick up a gear and she found herself moving faster, gaining altitude until London was no more than a smudge of light below her. Soon the planet itself was revealed – a globe of brilliant blue against the blackness, before that too receded, and she was flying through nothing but stars and blackness.

Dorothy always enjoyed this bit – she’d always enjoyed the sensation of speed. Bikes, cars, planes; she couldn’t get enough of them …

As dreams went, there was little that was unusual so far; dreams of leaving the physical form behind and of flying were common enough. Indeed, given her own past history, it might also be considered inevitable that she would have dreams of this type, but it was what happened next that was troubling her.

The exhilarating flight was always brought to an abrupt halt in the same place – a vast dust-scoured desert littered with razor-sharp rocks and shards of broken crystal, stretching out seemingly forever beneath a sky the colour of vomit. Every breath that Dorothy tried to take in this barren place seemed to sear the inside of her lungs, and with every step she took, the edges of the rocks threatened to slice though the soles of her shoes.

All around her she could see other figures making their painful way across the hostile sand, too far away to make out their faces, but close enough to hear their anguished cries. There were scores of them; men, women, children, all making their way towards a huge building on the horizon.

The structure was vast, its cracked and crumbling walls seemingly made out of rough, dark pumice. Huge chimneys rose from its centre, belching thick, oily smoke into the sick-looking sky and the sound of grinding engines reverberated from within. Fingers of lightning constantly tore from the clouds that roiled above it, and cracks of thunder echoed across the barren landscape.

It was a vision of hell itself.

Dorothy tried to force her subconscious to remember something useful, some face that she recognised, or a detail about the building that seemed familiar, but any memory that might help unravel the cause of her nightmare was always drowned out by the appearance of … the creature.

The event that tore her from her sleep each night was never exactly the same, but it always started the same way. The boiling clouds started to thicken and swell, the pale yellow of the sky darkening to a deep pus-like orange. Deep in the clouds a huge dark shape started to solidify.

All around people started to flee, and Dorothy fled with them, not knowing what it was she was running from, but knowing instinctively that it was the right thing to do. The razor edges of the rocks tore at her feet making her cry out in pain with every footfall. She dared not think what damage they would do to her hands and face if she lost her balance and fell.

From behind her there was a sudden crack of thunder, immediately followed by the sound of hoarse, animal breathing as something unseen bore down on her.

And every night Dorothy turned to face whatever the horror might be, only to find a fast, scabrous talon, its fingernails cracked and dirty, reaching out for her, engulfing her, snatching her off her feet and lifting her towards a face so terrible, so monstrous that she woke literally believing that she was fighting for her life.

Dorothy took a deep breath and opened her eyes. Her mouth was dry, and she knew from experience that there was little chance of her being able to get back to sleep. Pushing aside the sweat-soaked duvet she swung her legs to the floor and stood for a moment, naked in the dark, curling her toes in the thick pile of the bedside rug, luxuriating in the air-conditioned calm of her room. Reaching down, she snatched up a robe from where she had discarded it on the floor the previous night. She’d never been tidy as a teenager. Things hadn’t changed.

There was a rustle from the far side of the room and a black cat appeared, sauntering across the polished wooden floor towards her, its expression leaving Dorothy in no doubt that her exertions had woken it from its sleep.

‘Yeah, Sorin,’ muttered Dorothy. ‘Like you never have bad dreams …’

Sorin hopped up onto the bed, sniffing at the rumpled sheets disdainfully before curling up in a fold of the duvet. Dorothy gave him an affectionate rub behind the ear, then shrugged into her dressing gown, tied it and made her way down the stairs that led to the rest of her apartment.

As with every other morning, the view from her apartment lifted her spirits. The floor-to-ceiling windows, coupled with the fact that she was 18 storeys up, gave her an unparalleled view over London, and on a clear day she could see as far as the Chilterns. She always felt that early morning was the best time to see London. A scant few hours when the craziness of the clubbers and partygoers was over, and the different craziness of the morning commute had yet to begin.

In the summer she liked to watch as the first rays of the rising sun caught the spires of the churches and lit up the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, rising above the rooftops, making the grime-blackened stone shine as if glowing with an inner light. But this was January, and sunrise – if the sun did indeed manage to shed any light through the ponderous grey clouds – was still hours away. London would be dark for a good while yet.

Crossing to the window, she peered down at the ancient buildings that formed the Tower of London. Choosing this location for the headquarters of A Charitable Earth had amused Dorothy. She had been quite adamant about it when the building had been commissioned, despite the fact that there had been immediate and vociferous opposition to its construction.

She had known all too well what the basis for that opposition was, of course, and it had nothing to do with environmental concerns, or visual pollution, or any one of the other dozen or so reasons that had been put forward to try and impede the building’s construction.

The truth was that, nestled in the foundations of the Tower of London, had been the UK control centre for UNIT – the UNified Intelligence Taskforce – a first-line defence against alien incursions. No one had been prepared to admit that publicly, of course, and so the legal team that Dorothy had employed successfully overcame every other objection to the building’s construction, and now an elegant tower of glass and steel loomed over the ancient walls of flint and stone.

Dorothy’s reason for locating her headquarters here had been simple: it provided a clear view down onto the private roadway that led to UNIT headquarters. Being able to track the number of vehicles going in and out had given her early warning of any possible unusual activity. She had never imagined that just a few years later the entire organisation would be mothballed on the orders of Whitehall. The official protests from Geneva went on, but the fact remained that UNIT was over and the Earth less defended.

If Brigadier Bambera had stayed in charge of UNIT then perhaps things would’ve gone differently. But poor old Winifred was still listed as ‘missing in action’ following a Sea Devil attack on a classified military listening post just off the South Wales coast. Dorothy had set up a search protocol on her computer for any report mentioning Bambera by name, but if the brigadier had been located, then someone was keeping it quiet.

‘I should’ve set up in Cardiff,’ Dorothy muttered.

Turning away from the window, she made her way to the well-equipped open-plan kitchen and turned on the kettle. As soon as the water had boiled she made herself a cup of strong, black coffee, snatched up the remote that was sitting on the counter top and started to flip through channels on the wall-mounted TV.

It never ceased to amaze Dorothy that television companies could turn out so many hours of utter trash. It was hardly surprising that this stuff was relegated to the small hours of the morning schedule. As she clicked from channel to channel in search of something that could keep her engaged for an hour or so, a familiar face appeared on the screen and Dorothy gave a groan of despair.

Kim Fortune was a conspiracy-theory nut who hosted his own podcast – Kim Fortune’s Mysterious World. How the hell had he managed to get himself a broadcast slot, even on one of the less reputable cable channels? Ordinarily, Dorothy wouldn’t have given him the time of day, but Kim had proved himself to be a better investigative journalist than even he suspected, and several months ago one of his podcasts had got worryingly close to the truth. He’d suggested that there might be a connection between several unexplained events and herself – the elusive CEO of A Charitable Earth – and so Dorothy had agreed to be interviewed, figuring that if he was going to broadcast stories about her, then she might as well have some level of control over their contents.

To a certain extent that strategy had worked, and so far she had managed to steer his research away from the events of her past that might prove complicated to explain and into areas that were far less contentious. The downside was that he now took her willingness to be interviewed as a taciturn approval of him and his journalism, and barely a week went by when he wasn’t trying to contact her to present his latest theory about aliens, or government projects, or the Loch Ness monster … He’d even turned up at reception last month before security had politely and firmly informed him that Dorothy wasn’t available to meet him and escorted him from the premises. Even then he’d hung about on the street for nearly an hour before leaving. Dorothy was tempted to let him know about the former UNIT base under the Tower; that might divert his attention for a while …

Kim’s TV show appeared to be much the same as his podcast – with schlocky music and added dodgy CGI. He was presenting an exposé about alien abductions in the UK. There were interviews with parents claiming that their children had been abducted, and teenagers telling the stories of their lucky escapes. Dorothy was about to change the channel but then stopped as one of the interviews caught her attention.

The girl that Kim was interviewing must have been about 13 or 14. Flanked by her grim-faced parents, she described how aliens came to her house and tried to abduct her. Ordinarily Dorothy would have dismissed the claims as pure fantasy but, as the girl continued to relate what had happened to her, Dorothy began to realise that it was uncannily similar to her own dream.

Fascinated now, Dorothy turned up the volume and sat on one of the breakfast bar stools, sipping her coffee and listening intently to the girl describe her experience. It was extraordinary. The out-of-body experience, the sensation of flight, the hostile, searing desert … It was all exactly the same.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!