“Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!”
In a lair somewhere beneath central London, a malevolent alien intelligence is plotting the end of humanity. Shop window dummies that can move – and kill – are taking up key positions, ready to strike.
Rose Tyler, an ordinary Londoner, is working her shift in a department store, unaware that this is the most important day of her life. She’s about to meet the only man who understands the true nature of the threat facing Earth, a stranger who will open her eyes to all the wonder and terror of the universe – a traveller in time and space known as the Doctor.
Russell T Davies is one of the UK's foremost writers of television drama, creating ground breaking shows such as Queer As Folk, Bob & Rose, Casanova, Cucumber, The Second Coming, and in 2018, A Very English Scandal for BBC One. He has been Head Writer and Executive Producer of Doctor Who since it returned to the BBC in 2005 and has written many of the new series’ most memorable episodes. He was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to drama. He divides his time between Cardiff and Manchester.
Dedicated with love to Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner
Bernie Wilson was a guilty man.
It had all started out so well. He’d been a good, loyal worker all his life. He’d joined Henrik’s department store in 1968, starting as a lad in Kitchenware, then rising to Household Appliances, until an unfortunate incident with Miss Forsyth at the 1973 Christmas party resulted in his demotion to the basement as Junior Subordinate Caretaker.
It was a dark, windowless warren down there, a low-ceilinged world of corridors and pipes, weighed down by the oppressive hum of the boilers and the whine of hydraulics from the lift-shafts. Above, Henrik’s greeted the shoppers of London with smiles, music and perfume. Below, a subculture bristled, seethed and muttered, with cleaners, maintenance staff and security guards waging bitter, pointless wars in a dozen different languages.
But over the years, Bernie had made this world his own. He used the cleaners to smuggle in cigarettes and booze from abroad, to sell in the local pubs. He used the maintenance crews to pilfer from the stocks upstairs, a black market of LPs, then VHS tapes, then DVDs. He fed the suspicious security guards enough false information to keep them permanently spinning, like magician’s plates, so they didn’t notice little Bernie Wilson slowly taking charge of the entire kingdom.
His rise to power became official in the summer of 1989 when he was elevated to Senior Caretaker. ‘Bernie, the Troglodyte King,’ said Miss Forsyth, that day. The same day she found her car vandalised with an elaborate scratch.
And that would have been fine. He liked his subterranean empire. He should have stopped there.
But Bernie went too far.
‘It could be you!’ cried the brand-new Lottery in 1994. The staff upstairs formed syndicates, and within a year, £120 was leaving Henrik’s every week. When the Lottery introduced a Wednesday draw in 1997, the money doubled. So when Bernie suggested taking charge, everyone agreed, and it became his responsibility to buy the tickets twice a week.
Except he didn’t. He kept the money instead.
Not all of it. Bernie wasn’t a fool. Anyone relying on fixed numbers had to be guaranteed a ticket, in case of a win. But the invention of the Lucky Dip allowed Bernie a dangerous freedom. If people didn’t know their own numbers, he thought they deserved to be robbed for being so trusting.
He didn’t make a fortune. The money declined over the years. And he was clever enough to invent wins every so often, £10 here, £50 there, and one Christmas he pretended Bedding had won £300, just so he could share a celebratory cup of wine with the Head of Department, Miss Forsyth. But mostly the con was a steady trickle of cash, enough to supply Bernie with whisky and Sky and the odd little trip to Thailand every few years.
But he’d grown careless. Last month, February 2005, he’d spotted a silver Mazda 323 Hatchback on sale, so he’d started hoarding the cash a little more fervently. And this week, Bernie had secured the sale, so what the hell, he’d kept all the money and paid the deposit.
And then Lydia Belmont won.
Lydia. Daft, dyed-blonde Lydia Belmont, a cook in Henrik’s Third Floor Green Glade Café. She was in charge of the Catering syndicate and had used the same numbers for years, a combination of her house number and various birthdays, including Chris Rea’s, the fourth of March.
She’d won on the Wednesday draw. But no one had noticed. Everyone assumed Bernie would have told them if there was good news. But bad luck is ingenious; that Friday was Chris Rea’s birthday, so Lydia’s thoughts had naturally turned to her Lottery numbers, and she’d dug yesterday’s paper out of the bin to check the results …
Uproar in the Green Glade! Tears! Hugs! Envy! An impromptu little party was held in the food preparation area, to which Bernie was summoned. He was told that Lydia Belmont had won the rollover jackpot of £16.2 million.
‘Amazing!’ said Bernie. ‘Blimey! Wonderful!’ And then, ‘Goodness me!’ He added that he hadn’t got round to checking the ticket because there’d been that leak, in the basement, of oil, which was tricky, obviously, but never mind, her ticket was safe and sound, locked away, in his office, don’t you worry. ‘Let’s go and get it!’ cried Lydia, but Bernie said no, it was actually inside the safe and that was the best place for it, because if she had it in her hand now, oh, she’d wave it about and rip it and get it wet and lose it, and anyway, he added, with a sudden burst of inspiration, the safe was on a timer and wouldn’t open till 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, so that left her free tonight to get drunk and be merry, and then on Saturday, at 8.01 a.m. precisely, he could hand over the ticket, perhaps in a little ceremony of sorts, and then Lydia’s new life could begin, how did that sound?
A string of lies, to buy Bernie Wilson one more day. And he would use that day well.
He’d burn down the shop.
Friday night. Bernie was alone. He knew what to do; like any British employee, he’d spent many hours working out how to raze his workplace to the ground.
First, he had to get his story exactly right, and one thing kept bugging him. Would a ticket inside a safe survive a fire? Would the metal melt? If not, would the temperature inside become high enough to ignite paper? Or merely bake it? And what did baked paper look like, would the numbers still be legible? Hmm. Interesting. Okay, he’d have to burn some papers and place the ashes inside the safe, and then lock it, so that, if the safe survived, it would look as though the lottery ticket had disintegrated. That worked, didn’t it? Yes, thought Bernie, he was getting good at this! What next?
Staff. The basement corridors were crawling with his troglodyte citizens. He’d need to hide from witnesses, but once the fire started, he didn’t want anyone to die—well, he could think of one or two people he could toss onto the flames, three or four perhaps, plus Big Eric from the car park, of course. But this was only the start of his criminal career, and he was not quite ready for murder, so he’d have to sound the fire alarm and hurry everyone out. Bernie realised he could be a hero. He imagined Miss Forsyth seeing his face in the papers, the saviour of the store. She might congratulate him. She might kiss him. She might finally succumb and become his Troglodyte Queen.
But to his surprise, there was no one around. The corridors were deserted. Strange, thought Bernie, maybe there was some sort of training course tonight. Maybe he’d missed a memo, he’d been so busy plotting, he hadn’t checked his inbox or pigeonhole. But hey, good news, this would make arson so much easier.
So what else did he need?
Kindling. Plenty of it. The whole basement was stacked with cardboard, wood and plastic. An electrical fault, that’s what his Health & Safety courses had taught him, fires were often started by electrical faults, so he would stack the kindling underneath the junction box in Storage B then rip out a few fuses to make it look like the box had blown. Not that forensics would find much; the low concrete walls would turn this place into an inferno. He imagined air being sucked down the lift-shafts to make the flames boil and roll, soaring upwards to engulf the store above. The racks of clothing billowing like burning ghosts, bottles of perfume popping in the heat to release a thousand scents, the fire spreading up, up, up towards Miss Forsyth’s beloved Bedding, where duvets and pillows and sheets would ignite, white feathers spiralling in the toxic black smoke …
Bernie was grinning. Lips wet. This was fun!
Then he heard a creak.
He looked around.
No one.
Only a wall of abandoned, half-dressed shop-window dummies, staring at him with blank eyes.
So Bernie turned back to the fuse box. He prised open the grey metal covering. And then his entire life changed, shortly before its end.
The inside of the box was … alive.
The fuses couldn’t be seen, buried beneath … fingers. A thousand long, thin, writhing, pink fingers. They swayed and poked the air as if someone had spread a sea anemone across the box with a knife. Bernie leaned closer and the protuberances moved en masse, shrinking back from him. He realised they were growing somehow, visibly thickening as they began to spill over the edge of the metal. Bernie reached out to poke the centre of the mass …
And then he knew something was very wrong, because he had never felt anything like it before. The squirming mass felt hot and cold, dry and wet, smooth and spiky, fleshy and yet sort of … plastic.
It felt like nothing from this world.
He pulled his hand back in shock, and his mind was thundering now, taking in many things at once. The feel of that thing on his fingers. The slurp of the tendrils as they surged out of their nest. That he’d never sent that letter to Erica Forsyth, the one in his bedroom drawer, written and hidden 20 long years ago. And that someone was now standing behind him, far too close.
He turned around to see some bloke dressed as a shop-window dummy, with a plastic mask over his face, wearing 501s and a bright yellow T-shirt. He was raising his hand up above Bernie, his palm flexed wide open as though preparing for a karate chop.
Nothing in that moment made sense. The fuse box. The fingers. The dummy. And yet, in the last seconds of his life, Bernie Wilson gained a sort of wisdom, as he realised something that very few people ever know. He saw that our stories are only part of bigger stories, and that the stories around us are so vast, we will never know our place in them, or how they end.
Then the arm swung down.
Rose Tyler woke up on the most ordinary day, not knowing that her life was about to change forever.
She would often wonder, many years later, standing on the shore of a different universe, whether she had missed any signs on that day, long ago. Presentiments of the dangers and joys to come. A lowering sky, perhaps. Distant lightning. Dogs barking at thin air. A fearful old woman staring at her from across the street.
But no. It was simply a Friday. Her alarm went off at 07.30. She got up. Showered. Had a yogurt. Argued with her mum about the electricity bill. Went to work.
She was a retail assistant at Henrik’s department store, at the western end of Oxford Street. Rose had joined Female Clothing 12 months ago. All of her friends thought the job was amazing. ‘£6 an hour!’ said Shareen. ‘That’s £1.20 more than me. And they put you up to £6.90 when you’re 21!’
But right now, at 19 years of age, 21 felt a long way off. Rose was grateful for the job. Lots of her mates had worse, or none. But it was stultifying. Henrik’s made her cover the teenage range, but no one of Rose’s age bought clothes in a shop like this. At best, your rich aunty came here once a year to buy you a Christmas blouse you’d never wear.
So Rose waited. She waited as she waited every day. She folded jumpers and arranged the jeans in order of waist size and waited some more. She waited for her boyfriend Mickey to come and buy her a sandwich for lunch. Then she waited for the end of the day. And she waited for so much more, except she never knew what.
She felt as if she’d gone wrong. Life had taken a detour when she was 16. She’d abandoned her exams and chucked in Mickey to go out with a lad called Jimmy Stone. Tall, sly, slim Jimmy, two years older with lovely stubble and his own car. It had taken her so long to see what an idiot he was that she’d never got back on track. She’d dropped out of Sixth Form College and mooched about on the dole for six months. When the Henrik’s job came along, it looked like the opportunity of a lifetime.
Now here she stood. Folding jumpers.
Waiting.
There was a flurry of action late in the afternoon, as a woman from the Green Glade Café passed through, hurried along by giggling mates. Rumour had it, she’d won the Lottery. But she scampered along the far end of the floor, by the lifts, so Rose only caught a glimpse of her, then the woman was gone, her laughter echoing down the stairwell. Typical, thought Rose, all the fun is over there, far away from me.
‘Fantastic,’ she muttered.
She’d been promised this year would be better. A promise made on New Year’s Eve. She’d been heading across the estate when a man, some drunk, had called out to her from the shadows, by the bins. He’d asked her what year it was. It had just chimed midnight, so she’d told him it was 2005. His face was lost in darkness and snow but somehow she heard him smile. He said, ‘This year is going to be great.’
Yeah. Sure.
Never trust a drunk in the dark.
But the funny thing was, she did trust him. That stranger. There was something about his voice, the way he said it, like he was saying it only for her. Somehow, out of all the nonsense she had ever heard from drunken men, she remembered his words.
So Rose Tyler kept waiting.
Six o’clock! Freedom. Rose signed off at the till, stuck her time sheet into the blue folder and headed for the door. She could have a pint with Mickey—it was football night, so she’d lose him to the lads later in the evening, but there might be time for a quick drink and some chips. Those lovely big fat chips from the Olympus Bar, heavy with the salt—
‘Your turn!’ said Lee Lin. He’d caught her, just two metres from the door to the outside world. He held out a brown paper envelope filled with £1 coins.
The Lottery money.
Every week, the staff in her department chipped in £2, a quid for the Wednesday, a quid for the Saturday. And every week, it was someone’s turn to brave the Henrik’s basement where Bernie Wilson, the Troglodyte King, lived. He had a reputation for getting too close, for grinning too much, for breathing a little too hard. But Rose could handle him. She’d been to Sweeney Street Comprehensive; any trouble from Bernie and he’d be fundamentally extracting those pound coins for the next fortnight.
She got into the lift and pressed B for Basement. As the doors closed, she knew her mission was pointless. That woman from the Green Glade had already won the Lottery, making it statistically impossible for Henrik’s to have two wins in the same week.
What a waste of time, thought Rose.
And the lift went down, down, down.
She called out Wilson’s name but there was no reply. She tried again: ‘Wilson, are you there?’
She’d knocked on his door, then checked the smoking room, but there was no sign of him. He could be anywhere, this place was a labyrinth, and dark, thought Rose. Why were so many lights off? And where was everyone else? The cleaners, the maintenance guys, the bolshy security guards?
‘Wilson, I’ve got the Lottery money!’ she called, as she looked into Storage A, but no one was there. She walked down the west link corridor. Far off, a tinny radio was playing, some Irish comedian’s voice echoing in the dark. Then there was a crunch. As though the radio had been dropped or punched or stamped upon, leaving only silence, save for the low hum of pressure from the pipes.
‘Wilson?’ called Rose, as she walked into Storage B.
Oh God, the dummies.
Here they stood, the shop-window dummies, frozen in a display no one could see. They always seemed to be waiting, paused, poised, anticipating a next moment that never came. Rose shivered. They were unsettling enough in the glare of a tableau upstairs but down here, in the dark, they were creepier than ever.
She called out, ‘Wilson, where are you?’ as she walked further into the long, low room. So many dummies. This was the main storage area for the design department, so dozens of dummies were stacked in the dark, standing three or four deep. Some were in the latest fashions. Some were naked. Some had been bisected, a top-half plonked on the concrete floor next to its own legs. Some were male, some were female, some were …
Moving.
A dummy moved.
A dummy turned and looked at her.
A plastic dummy turned its head to look at Rose, and as her heart surged and hammered, she laughed, in shock, she said, ‘Wilson! Is that you? Don’t be so stupid, you scared me to death!’
Wilson said nothing, just taking a single step forward, a lurch, in his mannequin disguise. Rose thought, This is offensive, tricking a female member of staff, all alone, here in the dark, except, hold on, Bernie Wilson’s short, he’s about five foot three and this mannequin is six foot tall, so how …?
Another dummy moved. And another. And another.
They jerked as if they had never moved before. Creaking with the sound of plastic joints being tested for the first time. Five dummies, six dummies, seven, all their heads turning to face Rose. Eyes blank, not eyes at all, just curves in the plastic. And yet somehow …
They could see her.
Rose was scared, and furious. ‘All right, that’s not very funny, whoever you are, now stop it!’ But her voice seemed to provoke them, activating a wave of movement across both walls, a crowd of dummies jerking into life. Her mind was racing, trying to rationalise this; there must be, what, 30 people dressed as dummies, 40, but even if the entire downstairs staff had ganged up on her, they still couldn’t gather a flashmob on this scale, so how, and why, and who …?
The top-half turned its head to look up at her.
The naked female bisected top-half. Three feet tall, punky black wig, lips painted scarlet. It looked at Rose. It craned its head to one side as though considering her.
And then the legs. The separated legs tottered, steadied, then turned in Rose’s direction.
Remote control, thought Rose. Whoever had planned this, they had remote control, and strings, and wires, and levers, they’d spent money on this. Okay, this would make a great display upstairs for Hallowe’en. But why here, why now?!
Blood was thundering in her head, fear and fury and the shame of being tricked, and she went to storm out of Storage B—
But a gang of dummies lurched into action, with a surge of creaks and clicks and clacks, coordinated now, as though rapidly learning how to move. They blocked the way out.
This wasn’t a joke. This was intimidation.
‘You’re in so much trouble. All of you. If you’re doing this, Wilson, I can tell you right now, I’m reporting you.’
One of the dummies stepped forward. The ringleader. A male dummy, in 501s and a bright yellow T-shirt.
It walked towards Rose.
‘Okay, so who are you? Come on, stop kidding around. I told you, you’re in so much trouble.’ But as she spoke, it kept advancing and she shrank back against the wall. Trapped.
The dummy came closer. Behind it, the ranks of mannequins stepping in the same direction. The bottom-half legs tip-toeing with a delicate tac-tac-tac on the concrete floor.
As the dummy advanced, it raised one arm. Its hand flexed open, as if preparing for a karate chop. Rose saw a glint of light on the hand, a reflection of dark liquid, perhaps oil, perhaps …
Blood?
She looked up in horror as the hand reached its full height, and the dummy stared down with its terrible blank face.
Then a man reached out of the darkness and took hold of her hand and said, ‘Run.’
They ran!
Rose found herself being pulled along a long, dark corridor by a tall man in a leather jacket.
Behind them, the dummies were learning to run. Jerking, creaking, lurching, lolloping, but gathering speed, they began to give chase.
The man cannoned into the goods lift, pulling Rose with him, and stabbed the close-door button. The dummies were getting closer. He stabbed the button again and again and the doors began to slide shut. But the foremost dummy, a tall tennis-outfit male with a skull shaped into a yellow crest, ran faster, reaching out. The doors closed on its outstretched arm.
The doors should have re-opened but Rose heard a shrill whirring; the man, the stranger, was holding a thin metal device, making it vibrate against the lift’s control panel. He seemed to have jammed the doors. The dummy was stuck, its arm still inside the lift, thrashing and grasping at the air, trying to reach her. To strangle her. Behind the tennis player, a crowd of dummies pushed forward, filling the gap in the doors with their impassive plastic faces.
The man stepped forward.
Grabbed hold of the dummy’s arm.
Yanked, with such force, Rose thought he was going to break the man-dressed-as-a-dummy’s arm.
She cried out. ‘Don’t,’ but he heaved again and—
Pop!
The arm came off.
He’d pulled a man’s arm off.
As the doors closed, he threw the arm at Rose. Still in shock, she caught it, expecting a horror-show of blood and bone, but …