3

The Doctor stepped out into the street, Chan behind him. He scanned back and forth with his torch. Threads of black goo criss-crossed the tarmac, fanning out from the humps of mostly dissolved bodies and stripped carcasses; threads seeking each other – converging.

‘The individual colonies of biomass will attempt to join each other – to pool their mass together. The more of this stuff comes together in one place, the more ambitious the constructs it will try to produce.’

‘It can make bigger things than crabs?’

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. ‘Much bigger.’

They made their way slowly down the still, silent street. A gentle breeze stirred the night, sending a rooftop weathervane spinning with a clack-clack-clack. A wind chime on the porch of a hardware store gently played solemn, random notes. The wheel of an overturned child’s tricycle spun slowly, the bearings clicking like the aluminium balls of a Newton’s cradle.

‘We’re looking for a pattern – a significant convergence of fluid, threads feeling their way towards a central hub. It will look like a starburst pattern, like dozens of rivers all flowing into a lake.’

‘A central hub?’ Chan looked at him. ‘The brain?’

He nodded. ‘And that, Evelyn, it will most definitely want to defend.’

They made their way past a medical centre, a tangle of cars parked erratically outside, log-jamming the street. It looked like many of the townspeople had been attempting to get to this point, some of them dying before they could even reach the door.

‘My God,’ Chan whispered. ‘It must have been awful. It must have –’

She stopped dead, raised her gun and dropped to an army-trained firing stance.

‘What?’

‘Movement. Over there. Between the cars.’

The Doctor swung the beam of his torch in the direction she was aiming. The cone of light reflected off the dusty windscreen of a farmer’s truck and the wax-polished hood of a Chevrolet.

‘There’s something there,’ hissed Chan.

The smooth, rounded surface of something dark shifted under the harsh glare of the light.

‘Ah yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘I see it.’

Movement again. A black shape, the size of a large dog, with jointed, spider-like legs and covered by a hard, spiny carapace, leaped on to the bonnet of the Chevrolet. The car rocked gently under its weight.

Chan squeezed the trigger and her handgun kicked. The shot cracked through the creature’s organic armour and strings of dark matter spurted out. The creature – dark and glistening – collapsed and spasmed.

‘Rather good shot, that. Well done.’

Chan breathed heavily, fogging her mask. ‘A lucky shot. I-I haven’t used a f-firearm since basic training.’

Another creature emerged from the cluster of cars. She swung her arm and fired. A windshield imploded beside it. She fired again and they heard the dull eggshell crack of impact and the sound of goo spattering against the side panel of a nearby Honda. The creature disappeared from view.

But four more scuttled into view to replace it.

Chan fired at the first one and missed.

She fired several more times as yet more of them appeared. Then the gun was clicking uselessly as her fingers impulsively worked the trigger.

‘Oh no … I’m out.’

There were a dozen of them now, creatures the size of Rottweilers. Dark, glistening, hunched low on insectoid legs, headless, eyeless – a beetle-like menace. They advanced slowly.

Chan whimpered as they closed the gap. The Doctor grasped her arm and pulled her back, then stepped in front of her.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Just a thought,’ he replied quickly. He approached the horde slowly and spread his arms. The beetle-like creatures hissed and clicked in response … and stopped where they were. ‘Yes. What I expected. It’s begun the query stage. It’s waiting for contact with an intelligent life-form. It’s ready to talk. Ready to ask its question.’ He looked back over his shoulder at Chan. ‘But it won’t wait around for that forever. You understand? We have to find it quickly.’

Chan nodded nervously.

The Doctor swung the beam of his torch. ‘Those constructs are gathered here to guard the brain. It must be very close. Look, Evelyn. Look around. Can you see anything?’

She shone her own torch around, following the criss-crossing, snaking dark threads on the road as they converged into thicker tributaries. One particular strand seemed to have acquired the role of main artery, attracting others towards it, like moths to a candle flame. It wound up the street, broadening into a thick leathery trunk, like a fireman’s hose, which pulsated and quivered as a steady flow of organic soup travelled up inside it.

Chan’s torch beam tracked it as it slunk its way towards the rear of a delivery truck parked fifty metres up the road, across a small town square where several dozen stalls had been erected. It looked as if Fort Casey had been preparing for market day when the Spore decided to come to town.

The leathery artery curled up to the rear of the truck, then seemed to spread out across its open loading ramp and disappear inside the vehicle.

‘That looks promising,’ said the Doctor under his breath. He edged away from the creatures and rejoined Chan. ‘I suggest we make our way – in an exceedingly unthreatening manner – towards that vehicle.’

She nodded. They backed up from the creatures and slowly made their way up the street towards the vehicle.

Nearer now, the Doctor could read the logo emblazoned on the side of the truck’s container: Bernard and Sons – Poultry Supplies. Carefully, he stepped over thickening tributaries of the viscous matter, all heading towards the rear of the truck.

All roads lead to Rome.

Finally, they stood at the base of the ramp and Chan shone her torch up. Inside, she could see dozens of stacked wire-mesh cages. Feathers littered the floor of the container like snowfall. Bones and beaks and scaled claws in every cage, the other remains of what had once been hundreds of battery chickens now rendered to black liquid dangling from the cages in sheets of pulsating goo that lined the interior walls of the container. Thick tendrils swayed from the sheets like sightless serpents sniffing the air.

At the far end of the truck, the liquid had converged into a lava-lamplike mass that glistened wetly in the light of their torches – shifting, bulging, extruding bubbles and occasionally larger, firmer shapes that momentarily resembled the torso and legs of a human … the head and neck of a horse … the muzzle of a dog.

‘What’s it doing?’ asked Chan, swallowing hard.

‘I imagine it’s testing out the constructs it can make from the DNA it has so far acquired.’

Smaller, less ambitious creatures scuttled around the floor, creatures that looked like the impossible offspring of crustaceans and rodents. The beam of the Doctor’s torch picked out dozens of them clambering over each other, a seething mess of hard-shelled legs and claws, sharp spines, carapaces and grey fur. He suspected if the creatures turned and swarmed them, their sharp claws would pick them clean of flesh within minutes. He needed to communicate quickly, before the Spore decided it felt threatened and instructed its army of defenders to surge forward.

‘Hello?’ he said softly.

The liquid mass at the back of the container pulsated in response to his voice. It quivered for a moment, then one tendril quickly began to thicken and lengthen, drawing substance from the central mass as it snaked its way towards the Doctor.

‘Doctor,’ whispered Chan. ‘Watch out!’

‘It’s all right. This is it saying “hello”.’ He looked at her. ‘I hope.’

How do I communicate with this thing?

The Doctor dredged long-forgotten details of the Gallifreyan experience of this entity from the dark recesses of his mind. One thing stood out: a single scientist had allowed himself to be infected, had allowed the cells of this thing into his body, and at some microbiological level a connection had been made.

Taking a deep breath, the Doctor stepped slowly up the loading ramp and into the truck. ‘I’m here to talk to you.’

The black tendril glided towards him, rose up and hovered in front of his face, swaying from side to side like a cobra preparing to strike.

‘That’s right, I’m not a threat,’ the Doctor cooed softly. ‘I’m here to talk.’

Its movement slowed. The tip of the tendril began to grow, producing a bulbous end. From that, a tiny whisker-like tentacle began to emerge. It grew towards the Doctor’s face, thin and flexible as a wire, feeling its way across the air between them. The Doctor suppressed an urge to recoil. He knew the Spore wasn’t going to be able to infect and assimilate him – his inherited immunity prevented that – but that didn’t make the idea of allowing it inside him any more pleasant.

The fine tentacle lightly touched the tip of his nose. Testing it. The gentlest, tickling caress. Then it began to explore his cheeks, his brow, curling round the side of his face and exploring the curves of his ear.

The Doctor fought the urge to pull back. The Spore ‘knew’ how the enquiry stage worked. He was going to have to let it steer negotiations.

The tentacle returned to his face, resting against the side of his nose. He felt a tiny sting as small barbs attached it more firmly to his skin. Then he felt something tickling the rim of his left nostril. He wanted to reach up and scratch his nose. It tickled in an entirely revolting, invasive and unpleasant way.

He felt the tentacle curl inside, a cool liquid sensation sliding slowly up inside his nasal passage. Then a strange tingling spread between his eyes, moving further backwards, past his visual cortex, into his temporal lobes, and on, deeper into his cranium …

It’s attempting to locate a connection to my brain.

The unpleasantly cool sensation inside his nose began to fade. The tentacle was adjusting its temperature to match that of his own body. To make the connection more comfortable for him, perhaps? A reassuring thought if that was the case.

Then …

Then …