Doctor Who: The Christmas Invasion by Jenny T. Colgan

Author:Jenny T. Colgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

12

Angels We Have Heard on High

It wasn’t just all over the country. It was all over the world. Desperate families were running beside blank-staring, zombified men, women and children, all of them taking stairs, or escalators, or pressing into lifts, heading in the same direction—up.

From the Tower of London to the Coliseum in Rome, from the Taj Mahal to Sydney Harbour Bridge: as if hypnotised, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters walked steadily onward, all pursued by their increasingly desperate and hysterical loved ones. If pulled to the ground, they would fight back with superhuman strength, until they made their way free, then simply carry on. If they were locked in rooms, they would break out; if locked in cells, they would walk in the same direction, banging their heads off the walls, scraping their fingernails down to nothing trying to get out. Babies were abandoned by the side of the road or, if screaming to reach one direction, picked up and carried along with everyone else. The mothers were frantic.

They marched, a great, hypnotised silent, eerie army of humanity; from every town, from every village and city, to the highest point near to them. They were heading for their nearest high-rise building. Anything with stairs, anything with steps. Fire escapes. Towers. Castles. Skyscrapers. Onwards, they marched relentlessly, onto the roofs; slow moving feet clanging on fire escapes. Right to the very edges of the roofs, poised on a hundred million precipices.

And then they stopped.

Llewellyn followed Sally up to the top of the Tower of London, the city spread below. She stood there, in a line with all the others, frozen, like a robot. A policeman was reporting just below them. ‘They’ve gone right to the edge. They’re going to jump. They’re all going to jump!’

Daniel didn’t pull or grab, but he very gently took her hand. She did not feel it, or if she did, she gave no sign. It felt as cold as ice. He looked at it.

‘Sally, just listen. Just stop,’ said Llewellyn in his calmest voice. ‘It’s Daniel Llewellyn. Danny. Sally, just concentrate. Listen to me. We need you. Stop this, Sally!’

Daniel’s phone rang and he stood back to answer it, unable to take his eyes off the girl, her hair streaming in the wind; not looking quite human any longer, but like something feral waiting to take flight.

Alex from downstairs was calling. His voice was scared and low.

‘According to reports it’s a third. One-third of the world’s population. That’s two billion people ready to jump.’

Llewellyn looked at the girl on the ledge, and he didn’t have to even think of all the people balanced on top of the pyramids of Egypt; the people teetering on the windy fretwork of the Eiffel Tower; he didn’t have to think about everyone. He had to think about one person, and he didn’t hesitate.

‘We have to surrender, then,’ he said. ‘Surrender or they’ll die.’

Rose and Mickey stood at the very top of their building. They stared out, taking in

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