Part 28 (1/2)

'We are expecting company.'

'Who?' we asked.

'We can sense the approach...'

'Who? What can we expect?'

'We have bonded in order to protect us all from this oncoming threat,'

said the Spider d.u.c.h.ess.

'Oh, great,' said Iris.

At which point the flat stretch of ice between our huddled party and the Spider d.u.c.h.ess exploded upward and outward in a vast, chilling surge of water and ice. Great jagged plates burst apart and were flung through the air. A gigantic body was heaving itself beneath our feet and struggling to crash through the ice. The water boiled in fury, in billows and clouds of steam and all, for a few awful moments, was noise and confusion.

The creature beneath us threw back its grizzled head and roared. It surged out of the hole it had made.

'Uh, Doctor,' said Iris. She backed into the doorway of her bus. ”That large and horrible creature we've been expecting - I think it's here.'

It was a walrus, incalculably ancient, the size of three double-decker buses. Before we could even react it had hauled itself out of the crack in the ice and thrashed around, trying to get to us. It looked so ungainly on the ground, sliding about on great black flippers that were each the width of a Volkswagen Beetle. It was dragging the solid bulk of its body behind - those ma.s.sive haunches! I was spellbound by those fetid, yellow tusks, clagged with plaque, and the thick black whiskers that bristled from its jaw and round its jowls.

I yelled at everyone to get back aboard. They were stunned into confusion, scrabbling for purchase on the unsteady ground. Sam was shouting back at me: that if the ice cracked across we wouldn't stand a chance. Gila just looked ready for a fight.

But it was the Spider d.u.c.h.ess who came to our rescue. As the walrus got its bearings and roared and lumbered towards us, it was met in battle by that gleaming, now much less awkward composite being. Her legs were like tentacles, las.h.i.+ng out as she hurried towards it. She seemed almost to relish the sport of skittering and scampering around the beast, and throwing out cables of the thickest, stickiest web fluid you could imagine. Her legs bristled, flashed and jabbed at its leathery hide.

It thrashed and screamed at the webbing she tried to la.s.so it with. It even gashed its own flesh with its tusks in the attempt to pull it off.

The many eyes of the newborn Spider d.u.c.h.ess glowed a coruscating green. She bought us time to hurry back to the bus. I grabbed the blind Bearded Lady by both arms and brooked no rebuke, manhandling her back to safety as she bellowed and demanded to know what was going on.

The Spider d.u.c.h.ess was almost dancing with glee on the ice.

At last, it seemed, she had found a worthy opponent upon which she could try out her new self, her whetted, augmented powers.

The walrus groaned and shrieked and started to flail its ma.s.sive tail, making the plates of ice shudder and start to crack.

'Doctor...' Sam pulled at me, as if I had to sort this out. I turned to Iris.

She had already launched herself out of her wheelchair, and was ransacking her little armoury - the weapons cupboard under the stairs. I tried to warn her: don't use anything too heavy, don't break the ice...

There was a crackle of livid energy on the air and a scream of rending metal and we whirled to see the walrus sinking one of its tusks into the Spider's metallic abdomen. Her legs flexed and shuddered spasmodically. Sam swore.

Gila then decided to take matters into his own hands. He bolted back off the bus and hurried across the ice. Great spumes of frost and ice impeded him like a mini storm, but he ploughed on and we saw him whirling a cleaver he had fetched from Iris's a.r.s.enal. As the walrus stepped up its onslaught against the Spider d.u.c.h.ess, Gila sank that cleaver into the creature's unguarded, blubbery and wrinkled elbow. The walrus screamed. With a careless flick it knocked Gila on to his back, and stepped on him with one damaged flipper. The wind knocked out of him, Gila struggled there, pinned, and it was a moment or two before he could howl his outrage.

'Do something!' Sam shouted.

'Sam!' Iris shouted back at her, and dragged her over to her rusty cache of weapons.

I said something like, 'I'm not having her using your filthy old weapons,'

and I got knocked aside by the two of them. Underfoot the ice rocked and buckled once more. I couldn't even stand straight. Iris and Sam were breathlessly conferring.

Beside me Major Angela was fumbling with her fur coat, and produced the smooth gla.s.s jar in which the earliest Empress was kept. I was afraid she would drop it and Ca.s.sandra would be dashed to the ground.

'Maybe she can help us...' the Bearded Lady said.

'Don't count on it,' said Iris briskly, now bent over in the wheelchair at the door of the bus. Sam was helping her rig up some oddments from the armoury. They were hurriedly clicking together the legs of a tripod. I dashed over to see them a.s.sembling a rusted contraption and was in time to see Iris produce, from an old locker, the longest, nastiest harpoon you have ever seen.

'It's a harpoon gun!' Sam cried.

Outside there was more noise as, in one sudden swoop, the Spider d.u.c.h.ess lashed back into life and attack. She gripped hard on to the sea beast's leathery back, confounding it. It bucked and jounced and howled, inadvertently freeing the enraged Gila. The Spider d.u.c.h.ess was thrown around, yet held on, her legs and tatters of web whipping in the frigid air as a blizzard of ice swept up around them.

I saw Iris quite methodically fitting and snapping together the last of her harpoon gun. Sam was hanging back now, gazing in appalled horror at the contraption she had, up until a few moments ago, been helping that wily old devil to construct. She was wrestling with herself, I could see it.

She wouldn't help Iris any more, but she couldn't stop her any more.

Sam looked at me. Iris got behind the contraption. She wedged her body into position. She squinted down the sightlines. Sam saw where she was aiming and suddenly yelled out,'Tell the spider, tell her to get out of the - 'And Iris fired.

A whipping loop of metal cord shot out of the bus after the spear and the noise and the crack and the smell of the cordite was overpowering as Sam and Iris were thrown backwards across the gangway.

When the harpoon hit home there was an almighty wallop.

The screen fizzles and crackles into life. Lurching views of the interior of the bus. Glimpses of the panic and flurries outside. Iris has grabbed her camera again and is recording, gabbling into the microphone.

We see the Doctor's appalled face and Sam running for the doorway.

Then the viewfinder fixes on the view outside.We see the battle in its dying throes.

The Spider d.u.c.h.ess is still las.h.i.+ng itself with webbing to the creature's back. The walrus has a spike lodged in its fleshy breast and it thrashes against the ice. Its screams ring hollow on the soundtrack, blocking out everybody else's noise.

And we see Gila rolling and running free on the ice.

The walrus bleeds copiously down its leathery bib. It flails and tosses back that gargantuan head. The harpoon is stuck in it like a huge and silver thorn.

Gila is running towards us. His face is contorted.We see him heave on to the bus and he's wrenching the harpoon gun and rearming the device.

We hear the Doctor shout out in protest.

We see him run to stop Gila. Bodies cl.u.s.ter into view, jostling for control.

Iris is yelling loudest now, right into our ears.

The camera is dropped and we see, oddly enough, a fairly benign view of a table lamp, an Art Deco number of a bathing belle holding the shade.

When Iris picks up our camera again, Gila has won control. He is arming the gun with explosives. And he fires.