Upon the Upland Road
by Meddow (LJ
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Art by Genie (LJ | e-mail | comment) and Matsujo9 (LJ | e-mail | comment)
Chapter Two: Tales of War and of Waste
They had just started running when the Toclafane descended from the sky to reap havoc upon London. It had taken a painfully long time to convince Chrissie that Sarah was not deranged and they actually did have to leave. Sarah had just hung back with Clyde and Luke while Alan and Maria had spoken for her. Alan has noticed that she always seemed to act like a guilty trespasser when Chrissie was around. Aliens never came up, they relied on her being a journalist in the end; some tip off from a source that all hell was going to break loose after the Toclafane announcement.
It was not a lie, she told him.
"We have to get Ivan!" Chrissie screamed as a building nearby burst into flames.
"We have to get my Mum," Clyde countered.
Alan looked to Sarah, and noticed all the kids else doing the same. She looked horrified, not at the monsters descending from the sky or the explosions around her, but at them.
"We split up then," he suggested.
"We could meet back somewhere," Clyde suggested.
"There's your caravan," Luke chimed in, wanting to be helpful. "We've been. We know the way."
"No. We stay together," Sarah replied firmly. "Clyde, do you know any back ways to get to your house, off the main roads?"
Clyde nodded and they were off, chasing after him as he ran through back allies and parks while buildings on the horizon burst into flames.
They didn't get far before the Toclafane seemed to swarm behind them.
They turned a corner, only to find it blocked off by a car that had crashed into the building, the flames still burnt intensely, trapping them.
"What do we do now?" Chrissie cried.
"Mum!" Luke called. Alan looked and saw Luke pointing to a window that was half open. If they could climb up into it, they could escape.
Sarah nodded and Luke moved towards it, followed by Maria and Clyde. Alan hurried Chrissie along, and then ran to join Sarah, standing by the corner and looking at her watch.
Sarah closed her watch as Alan arrived, and the pair of them peered around the corner. The Toclafane were headed straight towards them, and they were not moving fast enough.
Sarah looked to him. "You need a distraction."
Alan suddenly realised what she was thinking.
"No," he said, grabbing onto her arm to stop her from running, "we don't."
"You don't exist. None of you do," Sarah hastily explained. "Mr Smith wiped your records. But I do, and if they ever make the connection between you all and me you won't be safe. Without me, you stand a chance."
"No. We're not thinking like this," he tried to say, noticing a look in her eyes that suggested she had already made up her mind.
"Alan," Sarah replied. "Look after them."
"What? No!" Sarah pulled herself free from his grip.
For a moment, not thinking, he nearly chased after her. But Alan felt a hand on his shoulder. "What they hell does she think she's doing?" Chrissie asked.
"Saving us," he replied. Grabbing Chrissie's hand he ran for the window, only to notice Luke helping Clyde in the window, not seeming to have noticed his mother running off.
From around the corner, Alan didn't hear any screams. He suspected it was the best he could hope for.
Sarah's Toclafane detector was a strange thing to behold, a mixture of parts from a television remote, mobile phone, her watch and the Toclafane all packed into an empty peach can. On asking why on earth Sarah had picked a peach can, Donna was told that nobody was ever threatened by a can of peaches, and so it was unlikely that it would be taken off them while being searched.
It was all about looking harmless, Sarah told Donna. Being underestimated always left you with the element of surprise. Which was why Donna suspected Sarah's sonic device was hidden inside a lipstick canister.
"So Time Lords," Donna began, raising the question of the Doctor. Donna had never met somebody else who had known him. She had been left for months contemplating the strange man alone.
"Mmm," Sarah replied, concentrating on the final touches of her detector: an LED she'd nicked from a stereo.
"What are they about then? Are they all like the Doctor or are they all like Saxon."
"I suppose they're about as diverse as humans. To be honest, I haven't met many. Though the Doctor once described them to me as the ticket inspectors of time travel."
"The Doctor doesn't strike me as a ticket inspector."
"Well, the Doctor's always been different."
"How did you meet?" Donna asked, still not quiet sure what to make of Sarah.
"I was looking for a story, and, I suppose, found the beginning of my own. Stowed away aboard his TARDIS and ended up in the Middle Ages, actually. Then I travelled with him for a few years, and well...we parted ways."
"Thing is," Donna started, raising something she had noticed, "you haven't asked me about how I met him?"
"To be perfectly honest with you, I already know. There was a Christmas Star attacking people on the streets, I was hardly going to ignore it.
"I'm very sorry about your fiancé, by the way," Sarah added.
"You obviously don't know the whole story then," Donna muttered weakly.
"So who were you working for, then?" Donna quickly continued. "The amount of bloody people who hauled me in for questioning..."
"None," Sarah replied with a cheeky smile. "I hacked into their systems and read all their work."
"So what, you're an alien anorak computer wiz who just spends your days reading about this stuff."
"No, I do pretty much the same work all those agencies do -- it's just that I'm freelance. I don't have the resources myself, so I use theirs sometimes. So long as they don't know about it, and I send the odd little bone their way, there's no problems."
"So you're by yourself."
"Well, not really." Sarah paused for a moment. "Actually, it's very hard to explain without sounding like a completely irresponsible mother and neighbour."
"Try me."
Sarah explained as best she could Luke, Maria, Clyde and Alan, as well as Mr Smith and dropping in mention of K9.
"So, right, you, a bunch of teenagers and a single father investigate alien threats to the planet with a computer that's apparently your husband and on the odd occasion your pet robot dog...Twelve months ago I would have called you a nutter. Actually, you are a nutter, but I'm calling you one not because I don't believe in aliens, just because you seem to think this outer-space stuff is all brilliant and child-friendly."
"A lot of it's..."
Sarah was cut off by the sound of an alarm clock. Donna looked to the table where the peaches can was both ringing and flashing. Sarah rushed over, flicked a switch and dulled the sound.
"In here!" she whispered.
"Where?"
Sarah lifted up the window to reveal storage space. It seemed the owners of the house were conscious about making their storage space look inconspicuous. It then occurred to Donna that one of those DIY programmes they were always showing on the telly might just have saved her life.
They both hopped in. It was a tight squeeze as they were sharing the space with piles of linen. Moments later they heard a crash as the front door was blasted in.
They couldn't see a thing in the dark except the steadily flashing light on the peaches can. But Donna closed her eyes anyway.
Donna's heart pounded. It was the silence that was doing her in, she decided. For what seemed like hours, but was probably minutes, she tried to breathe as quietly as possible. It was only when the light stopped flashing that she allowed herself to exhale.
They clambered out of the linen storage and peered out of the window. A line of people were walking down the street, all in the same direction. All looking downtrodden and scared.
Suddenly the can started flashing again, and just as Donna and Sarah ducked down a Toclafane zoomed past the window. It didn't seem to notice them.
"They're herding them somewhere," Sarah whispered.
"Where do you think?" Donna asked.
"Camps, maybe."
"Camps isn't good," Donna replied, knowing deep down that camps was the optimistic option.
"None of this is good."
"We have to go after Sarah Jane!" Maria screamed as she struggled against him. Alan held onto her as if her life depended onto it. Quite possibly it did.
"It's not what she wanted," he replied. He looked over to Luke, sitting down in the corner. Clyde sat beside him with an arm around Luke's shoulders.
Chrissie stood not far away. Sarah running off had not seemed to bother her, but seeing Maria's distress seemed to have unsettled her deeply.
"No. She wouldn't just leave us like this," Maria continued.
"She'll have a plan," Luke said. "She'll have a plan," he repeated, more confident in his assertion this time.
"Yeah, she will. You'll see," Clyde added. Their faith in Sarah was evident.
Alan found himself nodding. "We have to keep going. Get somewhere safe -- the countryside. Luke, you said something about a caravan."
"Mum's got one in the country," Luke said.
"Good for stargazing," Maria added.
"Once we've collected my Mum," Clyde replied.
"And Ivan," Chrissie added.
They found it nearly impossible to continue on to Clyde's home. The air was filled with thick black smoke from burning buildings which caused them to cough and choke.
"At least the Toclafane can't find us in this," Maria said about it.
Clyde walked out front, clambering through rubble, knowing the way without being able to see more than a few metres in front of him. It seemed that the area close to his home had been particularly hard hit.
Finally they came to a dead end. "She's just through there," Clyde said of the inferno that stood blazed them. Alan couldn't imagine how anyone could survive.
"I'm sorry, Clyde," Alan said, putting a hand on Clyde's shoulder.
"No," Clyde replied, looking at him in disbelief. Alan noticed him scanning the faces of Maria, Chrissie and Luke to find no allies.
"The flames can't have gotten as far as..." he began to argue. Clyde couldn't finish his sentence. Chrissie screamed as a Toclafane shout out of the smoke.
"Everyone out of here!" Alan yelled. Maria grabbed her mother's hand and pulled her away, towards a nearby house yet to be engulfed. Luke followed behind. Alan began to reach for Clyde, but Clyde began to run in the opposite direction.
They all screamed his name as he ran towards the flames and the Toclafane.
There was nothing he could do. Once again Alan watched as another person ran off to their nearly certain death, while he ran away, like a coward.
Then he looked at the tears making lines in the ash on Maria's cheeks, and quickly grabbed a hold of Luke who was about to start running after Clyde.
As the hid behind a fence, they heard a large explosion. He pulled Maria, Luke and Chrissie into a tight hug.
No. He wasn't a coward. He was just needed.
Donna didn't like to think about what had happened to the family that owned the house in which she and Sarah took shelter, or spend much time looking at the photographs which lined the staircase, but she did feel greatly in debt to them. It was after all, their food that they had stolen and packed, a mixture of the parents' clothes that she had borrowed, and their camping and sports equipment that they were using to take off with. Donna didn't want to think she had collected them from dead people. She didn't want to take things at all. She didn't have a particular qualm about stealing except that it seemed to her to be giving into their desperation of the time, and she felt Sarah agreed with her on that.
But they needed supplies. Toclafane swooped down past the house at all times of the day, having them on constant alert. London was not safe. They had to head to the country, and Sarah said she knew of a safe place.
In all they spent two days in that house. And while Donna did not like to think of the family, she did decide to herself that if it ever ended and the world went back to normal, she would think of them, and she would thank them.
They never found Ivan. Eventually the Toclafane stopped their killing and started to act like sheep dogs. Knives protruding they herded everyone from their hiding places and into the streets, where the walked, slowly to an unknown fate.
Alan kept his arm around Maria as they walked for hours out of the suburbs and towards a large warehouse on the edge of the street. There they lined up, like everyone else. Hundreds of thousands of people slowly moving towards the one entrance like cattle.
The Toclafane did not care when the heavens opened up and the rain drenched them to the bone. They did not care that they had no food or water or toilets. They did not care about the old and sick, who could not go on. And they did not care that their slow progression stopped them from sleeping.
Finally, after hours, sore and exhausted, they were marched in with a group of twenty to where a man was sitting behind a desk, typing away into a computer. Guards waited nearby, eyeing the crowd.
Chrissie was pushed to the front.
"Name," he said.
"Chrissie Jackson."
"Occupation?"
"I'm a medical receptionist."
"Medical," the man said, and another man came over, and grabbed Chrissie by the hands, pulling her away.
"No! What? Wait! Where are you taking me?" Chrissie demanded as they dragged her away.
"Mum!" Alan had to hold Maria back.
"Alan! Maria! No! You can't do this! I want my daughter!" she called out as the door closed behind her.
Suddenly, Alan was struck in the arms by the butt of a rifle, breaking his hold on Maria. He was marched forward.
"Name."
"Alan Jackson, you arsehole," he spat out. The man behind the computer said nothing.
"Occupation?"
"Software engineer."
"Factories," the man replied in his monotone.
Alan was grabbed by guards who began to march away. Bigger than Chrissie, he could put up a bigger fight, though they were winning.
Meanwhile Maria and Luke were pushed forward. The man behind the desk took one look at them.
"Mines."
Alan struggled against the guards. "No! You don't understand. They're geniuses, the two of them. They can programme. I taught them how. They'd be much better use with me."
The guard looked at him suspiciously.
"We are," Maria asserted, following her father's lead. "We can programme."
"What's eight hundred and ninety three times five hundred and seventy six and then divided by two hundred and eighty one," the man asked, typing numbers into his computer as he did.
"One thousand, eight hundred and thirty point four nine one one zero three two..." Luke began, running the numbers off like most people would a shopping list.
"You can stop." The man narrowed his eyes.
"Factories then."
Alan stopped struggling and let out a sigh as the three of them were herded together. The guards let them go, and he put one arm around Maria and the other around Luke, determined they would not be separated.
They travelled though London by night. The street lights worked as always, coming on as the sun set. The power grid was still running and despite so much of the city being empty, nobody had bothered to switch them off.
Some areas of the city stood as they always had. Just houses left abandoned by their owners, as if whole streets had just decided to go on holiday for a while. Occasionally there were signs of looters -- broken windows by the doors. But Donna and Sarah never saw them. The Toclafane were swift.
In other areas all that was left were rubble. Bodies were found sometimes, animals and nature having done their work. Dogs, starving and neglected, roamed the streets -- loved family pets reduced to scavengers. Sometimes they would come across entire streets that had been destroyed, and either they would have to find another route or clamber over it.
That was how they had found Donna's sleepy street in Chiswick -- just burnt out rubble. Donna could not help but picture the bodies of people she knew crushed to death. She stood there for the longest time, not knowing whether to dig or whether to run and hope that she could forget it all if she did.
Eventually, Sarah took her hand and led her away.
At all times they were weary of the Toclafane. They could never travel through exposed areas - they always needed someplace to hide at a moment's notice. Sarah would grab Donna's arm and they would dive into the nearest building or shelter under whatever could be found.
Sarah kept her lipstick in hand at all times. Donna meanwhile had taken to a cricket bat, joking that the Toclafane were just begging to have a swing taken at them.
They did not talk much. Not much talking could be done. They spent the daylight hours alternating between sleeping and taking watch. At night they dared not risk it. The cities were not safe.
But city gave way to country and the countryside was a different matter. On the back roads, away from the motorway, everything still stood the same as it once had. Fields rolled on, one after another. Cows and sheep still grazed as they had done. Some of the towns had been left unharmed, although abandoned. Nothing seemed quiet as sinister. There were no tall buildings for the Toclafane to lurk behind.
It was then that Sarah started to relax, to the point where the two women finally began to talk.
"So, what have you been doing with your life since Christmas?" she asked one night as they were walking along.
Donna sighed. It was a loaded question, and a strange. It was the first time anyone who had even an inkling of what it had been like has asked it. "I've been trying to travel."
"Trying?"
"I made it to Egypt. And back. I suppose you know how it is. It's not the same. It's hard finding that...excitement. I mean, you're herded though museums and pyramids and all you can think about is how with a time machine you could meet those stuffy old mummies when they could talk."
"I've met mummies," Sarah replied as if it was an everyday occurrence. "Robotic mummies. They didn't talk though."
"Are they any relation to robot Santas?" Donna asked. "Cause I've met them and they didn't talk either. Anyway, I considered going back to school. University, maybe doing some history. Or geography. But I don't want to read about it. Besides, I'm already back to living with my mother which is," she stopped for a moment, and took a breath. Thinking about her mother's home was difficult without beginning to cry. "Was -- driving me mad and if I go back to school it'll be much more long term. Would have been."
"I've been reading though," Donna continued, picking the conversation up to stop herself from dwelling, "about us. Our planet. Problem being that there's so much. I don't know where to start -- nobody's really done a good book about everything there is to know about planet Earth that isn't as long as the Nile."
"Maybe you should write one," Sarah said. "Donna Noble's complete and comprehensive history of earth in less than one hundred pages. You could start with the Egyptians."
"Egyptians -- desperately needed make up tips," Donna started.
"Dinosaurs -- big," Sarah added helpfully.
"Cold War -- primarily a pissing contest."
"Middle Ages -- Dirty, smelly and misogynist."
"I think I'm going to get caught up when I try to explain the Earth was formed by a spaceship populated with giant spiders."
"I've heard odder," Sarah replied.
"You believing me isn't going to stop me from getting sectioned."
"Donna," Sarah began, any lightness in her voice changing. "When we first met you asked if I was Rose. You met the Doctor after Rose."
"Yeah."
"Did he...he didn't mention what happened to her. It's just that I knew her. Not very well, but I met her."
"He didn't really want to talk about her," Donna replied. "I asked."
"He didn't say anything."
Donna thought back to the motorway. "He said she was so alive."
Sarah stopped and smiled. "Really?"
"Yeah." Donna stopped to look at Sarah, who seemed for the first time since meeting her to be genuinely happy.
"What don't I know?" Donna asked.
"The Cybermen invasion, there was a battle between two races of horrific creatures, the Cybermen and the Daleks."
"Yeah. I was scuba-diving," Donna replied.
"People went missing that day, lots of them, and Rose..., Rose Tyler was listed among the missing and the dead. For the longest time I've thought...Well...I thought she was dead."
Donna put a hand on Sarah's shoulder. "Wherever she is, I think she's safe."
"Well, she's not here, anyway," Donna added. That had to be a safer place, she decided.
"It's not really a safe 'house' is it?" Donna said, wandering into Sarah's caravan, and nearly banging her head on the roof. "I mean, with not being an actual house so much as a safe tin box on wheels."
"I lived here. I did some of my best writing here," Sarah retorted sharply.
"So how come Saxon won't know to track you here if you lived here?" Donna asked. Out of curiosity, she began poking around, opening the cupboards of the small kitchen, while Sarah sat down.
"It's not owned by me, and I never had my mail sent here," Sarah replied.
Amongst old newspapers, Donna found files in brown cardboard folders marked 'Top Secret' like they had in old movies.
"You keep this in a caravan?" she asked, showing it to Sarah.
"I wrote a book here. UNIT -- Fighting for Humanity. The complete history of UNIT until 1995."
"I've never heard of it," Donna replied.
"Well, it didn't sell too well. And it wouldn't. With every mention of extraterrestrial life removed, it's basically just an account of the Brigadier's stationary orders and that time Sergeant Benton tripped over a badger," she replied with a hint of bitterness. "But, I'm sure when the declassified version is released in 2097, it'll be a best seller."
Donna kept on poking about when she found the jackpot.
"Best writing, huh," Donna said, waiving around a half finished bottle of vodka.
Sarah seemed to suddenly shrink. "Oh, I forgot about them," she said meekly.
Donna nodded, and instead of putting it away, removed the cap and took a drink.
"Hey, my son could walk in at any minute."
"So we'd better get rid of it."
"You're not an alcoholic are you?" Donna asked, suddenly realising to her horror that she might be being insensitive. "I mean, journalist, living in a caravan..."
"No, well...let's just say the early nineties wasn't the greatest time for me...Or the eighties," she muttered. "Or the late seventies, I suppose."
"But was certainly in control of my drinking," she added sternly, while Donna watched on.
"I just didn't see the point to moderation at the time. Of anything really."
"Space messes you up," Donna announced, her words slurring together slightly, as she stared up at the stars, wrapped in a blanket.
"Mmm," Sarah replied, not seeming to agree or disagree.
"I mean, before my wedding, when you said 'stars' to me, I thought: Brad Pitt," Donna continued. "God, I remember when he started sleeping with Angelina Jolie, you remember that?"
"Who?" Sarah asked.
Donna ignored her. "I didn't believe it. I thought that if any marriage worked, it would be Brad and Jen. And they're like that now. Not Brad and Jen, but everybody I know. That sort of stuff is what they talk about all the time. And now I don't care. All I can think about is staring out at the Earth. It was so beautiful, and we're all so bloody small, including Brad and Jen and Angelina Jolie -- and what the flaming hell does some bloody person I'm never going to meet's sex life matter to me. But that's not normal. It should matter. I don't know why anymore, but Brad Pitt's sex life should matter."
"Ah, but what is normal?" Sarah asked, engaging finally but seeming still to be only a few sentences away from falling asleep.
"What everybody else is," Donna replied.
"And what if everybody else is wrong?"
Donna considered this for a moment. "It doesn't matter does it? They're my friends and my family and the people I work with. And there's just more of them...was. Was more of them."
The sat there a bit longer, Sarah seeming to drift off to sleep, and Donna happy in a contemplative drunken stupor, until she noticed something moving in the dark. Donna leaned over to where the Toclafane detector was sitting. There was nothing. It was blinking as normal.
She gave Sarah a gentle shove to wake her up before standing up.
Donna could make out a person moving towards them. Sarah stood up next to her. "Who's there?" she called out.
"Sarah Jane?" The voice seemed to belong to a teenage boy.
"Clyde!"
Sarah rushed over, nearly tripping at one point, but made it to the boy and wrapped him up in a big hug. Donna followed slowly along behind, wishing the ground was a bit more stable beneath her feet.
"Where are the others?" Sarah asked.
"We got separated. I was hoping they were with you."
"Who are you?" the kid asked rudely while looking to Donna.
"Donna."
Sarah sat down. "Separated? How?"
"I went after my Mum and there was an explosion. So what do we do? What's the plan?"
Sarah said nothing. "What do we do?" Clyde asked again.
"I'm thinking," Sarah replied shortly.
"You're drunk!" Clyde exclaimed, pushing her away. He looked disgusted. "That's what you've been doing? Drinking?
"No. Yes. Clyde..." Sarah started.
"This is what you do without us? Sit by yourself and get drunk. I can't believe that I thought you were different. I came all this way by myself. For you. Because..." he stopped, seeming on the verge of tears.
"But you're just like everybody else," he started yelling. "No flaming clue and can never be relied upon!" Clyde stormed past them indignantly and towards the caravan.
"Clyde!" Sarah called after him.
"Oh, just shut up!" he yelled back.
He wandered inside the caravan, and slammed the door. It was the strangest setting for a teenage tantrum Donna had ever heard of, in a field at midnight.
Donna slumped down next to Sarah and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry. This is my fault. I shouldn't have..."
"No, he's right," Sarah replied. Donna got the impression Sarah wanted to be alone.
Donna left Sarah staring up at the stars.
"Where are you?" Sarah asked, staring into the night sky.
"What would you do?"