Earth Who by Douglas Neman

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Chapter 9

The ZED was sitting on one of her crates. On the ground in front of her lay the remains of Julia's gear, which she had hidden earlier by the fire. Twice, Julia had tried to pass out. The ZED wouldn't let her.

"What technology did you find that enabled you to rescue the boy?" she asked for the 20th time. The question was the same every time, asked in exactly the same way. It was the equivalent of Chinese water torture.

Julia didn't fall for it. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the pain in her leg. The pain that crawled up towards her stomach.

The waiting was awful.
She heard the ZED get up, and braced herself for another kick. But it didn't come. She opened her eyes.

The ZED was facing away from her, up the mountainside. She bent to pick up her gun, then said simply, "Don't run off. I'll be back as quickly as I can."

Julia had thought she couldn't feel any worse. She was wrong. The horror that stabbed through her was ten times worse than the pain of the bullet and her aching body. The fools! she thought. I'm not worth rescuing! No!

But the tiny woman was gone like a ghost, up the mountainside.

She had to do something. No pain in the universe mattered. Not now.

Trembling -- with the effort, or the realization of what she had to do, she wasn't sure which -- Julia pulled out her knife.

It was so odd. Back in her medical school days, someone had actually asked her, "If you were in a tight spot, and had to operate on yourself -- without anasthetic - - could you do it?" And laughing like a young fool, she'd said, "Not no, but hell no!"

It wouldn't be the first time she'd been wrong. Sobbing slightly, bracing herself for what was about to happen, she gingerly felt along her own leg, feeling for the bullet, realizing that she didn't even have the luxury of getting it over with quickly.

Do it, she thought -- now!
She sliced open her own leg.
She reared her head back and screamed.

The ZED heard the scream. She turned to look back briefly, then continued on.

The Doctor heard the scream. His body shook with the force of it, his eyes squinting in thought and compassion.

Devon, Danziger, and Alonzo dimly heard the scream from far down the slope. "Julia!" Alonzo cried. He jumped up and ran downhill. Devon was close behind.

"Wait -- dammit!" Danziger exclaimed. He ran after them both, practically leaping down the mountainside. He then turned sideways and rolled, letting gravity do the rest. He took both of them off their feet. Everyone sprawled.

"Quiet!" he hissed, sitting up before either of them could say a word. "This isn't the way to help anyone!" He grabbed Alonzo by the shirt front. "I know you love her, man, but this isn't the way to help her!"

Alonzo just sat, breathing hard, then finally nodded his head. He squeezed his eyes shut in agony as Julia screamed again. Danziger, too, grimaced at the anguished cry. He turned to Devon --

And saw her running down the mountainside below them, headed for Julia.

"Dammit, Adair!" Danziger spat quietly, shaking his head.

He watched her go. His heart said to run after her. His head said to wait right where he was.

He sighed. Then he turned to Alonzo. "We're going," he said. "But we're going slowly and carefully, no matter what -- got it?"

Alonzo just nodded.

Julia had her jacket around her leg, soaking blood. Crying, she reached inside, feeling her own muscles, trying to get slippery, numb fingers around a bullet which was still burrowing forward. The pain had actually receded. Just like noise can't sound any louder once it reaches a certain volume, even if it still rises, so had the pain reached a crescendo, and actually backed off into a kind of dreamy, throbbing numbness. Her head spun.

Then there was something hovering in front of her face. She squinted to see what it was. It was a bullet. She started to smile a crazy, delerious smile. The bullet was being held by a bloody hand. Was it hers? She followed the arm down to her own shoulder. After a moment, she realized it was indeed her own hand. She'd gotten the bullet out of herself.

She tied her jacket around her leg, feeling the tight pain shoot up her body and keep her awake, just for a moment longer. After binding the wound, she lay back on the ground, resting, despite herself. The bullet lay on her chest.

Don't pass out, she thought, don'tShe passed out, twitching and groaning into a nightmare world.

Awake again. Coming and going. How long? she thought. She checked her watch. She hadn't been out for more than a few minutes, possibly a few seconds. Bless the Council and their training, she thought ironically, and laughed a little at the thought. She felt blackness overtake her again.

She fought it off. Just one more thing, she thought. There'll be all the time for rest in just a few minutes. Just please, God, let me do this one last thing...

She barely had enough energy to roll over, much less throw a bullet more than six inches. Slowly she dragged herself around the smoldering fire, wincing as her leg protested the movement. Hauling herself inch by inch over to the ZED's crates, she picked up her sedaderm. Her face fell, and she almost gave in to despair.

The vial had been cracked. The sleeping drought was gone, spilled away.

She lay there for a second, breathing hard, then did the only remaining thing she could think of.

She fumbled down by her leg in her jacket pockets, and pulled out her remaining empty vials from the basic supply she usually kept on herself. She had three. Pulling them out, she saw two were cracked. The third was still intact.

Her hand trembling with the effort, her fingers stiff and bloody, she gingerly picked up the bullet and tried to drop it in the vial. She was shaking so hard, she missed twice, dropping it. Crying in frustration, she finally got it in. It fit -- barely.

She capped it and attached it to the sedaderm, then fell back, resting.

The sedaderm was designed to inject any sort of substance into the human body, and the pressure could be adjusted accordingly. At most, the sedaderm could actually inject marrow or a healer vaccine into a person's bone.

She adjusted the sedaderm to maximum now, and let the pressure build up inside. She gazed up the mountainside, puzzled as to why she couldn't hear anything. She hoped this was good. Maybe the ZED had been drawn away by a diversion. Maybe...

The mountainside was becoming lighter, lit by the two moons rising high in the sky, over the mountain's crest. She couldn't see anyone up there. She nodded, assured that Devon and Danziger wouldn't be so stupid as to commit suicide by going one on one with a ZED. Alonzo? He might, the big lunk. She smiled briefly at the thought.

She held the sedaderm in one hand, with the vial pointing up the mountainside, and her knife in the other. Stop shaking! she thought. Stop it! You only get one shot at this -- now do what you have to do!

Breathing in and gritting her teeth, she flashed the knife down and snapped off the vial's cap.

And the bullet shot up the mountainside, away from her. She fell back, relieved. By her reckoning, it would explode in a few minutes.

The ZED would never go near a hostage who was about to blow up. But if she could lure the ZED to her, or even near her, Julia reasoned, she might catch her anyway.

Because when the bullet exploded, it would create a landslide, and landslides covered considerably more ground than explosions did.

And maybe -- just maybe -- if she could get the ZED near enough, she could catch her in a landslide created by her own bullet.

Even if that landslide took herself, as well.

The ZED had stopped, considering. She had heard the commotion farther up the hill, when Danziger had tackled Devon and Alonzo. She didn't know what to make of it. It was obviously a diversion of some sort. She was obviously meant to follow one party while the other moved in to rescue the woman. However, since more people would die in order to accomplish this, the ZED didn't quite know what to make of it. Her logic told her that there must be some complicated plan going on here, all the parts of which she didn't see yet.

So she would not do anything expected of her -- keep the enemy guessing.

She silently climbed a tree. She could take them all out with worm bullets if she wanted to, but she didn't. If possible, she wanted to find out more about this strange technology before doing anything, or else she couldn't fight it.

She waited.

The Doctor silently walked on through the trees. He glanced at his pocketwatch, worried. Time was running short for Julia, and the ZED had not appeared. What was going wrong?

He stopped, thinking, and lowered the sonic screwdriver, his arm beginning to ache. He scanned the mountainside below him, now becoming lit by the two moons rising higher in the sky, over the mountain's crest. Nothing moved.

He turned and looked above him. As soon as he did, the ZED dropped out of the trees behind him and flipped him onto his back. He landed with a yell.

As quick as lightning, the koba threw a thorn straight at the ZED's face.

And as quick as lightning, the ZED snatched it out of the air, two inches in front of her cheek. She held it there perfectly, poised between thumb and finger.

The Doctor's hearts raced.
The koba didn't do anything else. The Doctor looked at it, and realized the animal was going on pure instinct. Probably no koba in history had ever had to throw more than one thorn. It had used its weapon; now it was patiently waiting for the ZED to fall. It didn't know that that wasn't going to happen.

The ZED placed one foot on the Doctor's chest and aimed her gun straight down.

"Do you have any statement to make before you are killed?" she asked.

The Doctor silently reached over with his hand and picked a flower. He slid it into the gun's barrel.

"That plant will not stop a bullet," the ZED stated. "I'm not trying to stop the bullet," the Doctor replied. "I'm trying to stop you."

"If you wish to live, tell me about the blue box." "What's your name?" the Doctor asked. "I'll tell you all about the blue box, and how to make one yourself, if you can just tell me your name."

Silence.
"It doesn't even occur to you to make up a name, does it?" he asked. "A person would have, you know. A real person -- one who thinks for herself instead of living an automated death, enslaved to another. What's your name? What did you do before you became a ZED? Were you a bank robber? A terrorist? Or maybe you just spoke out once too often against the wrong person, for the right reasons, and someone thought it would be ironic to turn you into this twisted travesty I see before me. Maybe you were a nice schoolteacher, a mother, a wife, a florist, maybe you were anything! Anything at all. Tell me," the Doctor whispered, his voice soft, a sigh like the warm breeze, "who were you before you became a ZED? What did you do? Whom did you love? Tell me. What was your name?"

The ZED didn't move. Not a muscle, not a blink, not a quiver.

But her eyes moved. Somehow, although they didn't budge, they moved, shifted focus, and for a second, the ZED wasn't seeing the Doctor. She was seeing something else, something...

"Final statement recorded," she said. "Death to take place immediately due to the fact that I already have a hostage."

"ZED unit!" called a voice from down the mountainside. It was Julia.

The ZED paused.
"ZED unit, if you can hear me, please come quickly!" she yelled. "I'll tell you everything! Please! I don't want to die!"

Julia was looking up the slope in desperation, hoping she'd timed it right. What if she was off by a few minutes either way?

"Julia!" a voice hissed.
She turned. "Devon?"
And there was Devon Adair running into the camp. "Julia, come on, we've got to get you out of here!" "No, Devon! Go! Run now! As fast as you can!"

The ZED stood poised over the Doctor, finger on the trigger, but looking intently in the direction of Julia's voice. Slowly, the Doctor shifted his body, stretching his fingers for his sonic screwdriver, lying just inches beyond his fingertips.

Then the ZED's enhanced hearing caught the sound -- the beeping noise made by the worm bullet before detonation.

But the sound was wrong, somehow. She tilted her head, listening. Yes, that was it -- it came from a different direction than the hostage's voice.

In that moment, she knew she had lost her hostage. Reilly had told her not to underestimate Eden Project.

"I will have to take a new hostage," she stated. "Prepare yourself." She shifted her aim to the Doctor's right thigh.

The Doctor snatched his sonic screwdriver and pulled the cylinder down hard. Soundwaves split the air.

And the ZED's cybernetic cirtuitry adjoining her right eye burst in a shower of sparks. She screamed once, dropping her gun and clutching her face.

Then the bullet exploded.
And the mountainside began to move. Devon and Julia looked up in horror. Danziger and Alonzo watched in shock as the orange blossom split the night, a mere fifty yards below them. They shielded their eyes, then watched the land below the explosion begin to slide away.

"Julia..." Alonzo breathed.
"Mom!" Uly yelled, and ran out the TARDIS. The koba, head whirling in alarm, zipped up a tall tree as high as it could go.

The ZED took one look at roaring wall of dirt, trees, and shrubbery bearing down on them, and she was gone, sprinting with superhuman speed off to the side, trying to get out of its path.

The Doctor, shaking his head to clear his ears of the blast, looked up just in time to see the mountainside wash over him like a breaking wave. He tumbled helplessly along in a swirling, choking darkness, buried deeper each second.

The tree holding the koba was felled, and down it went, the koba yelling the whole way down. But it was so tall that by the time it hit the ground, the worst had passed, and the little animal landed on top of the rubble, sliding downhill, scared but unharmed.

Devon and Julia, however, were dead center in its path. They yelled and clutched each other desperately, then 500 tons of rubble slammed into them and swept them away.

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