Apocalypse Rising (Book Two)

The Christmas Invasion

Mickey Smith worked on a car when he heard a familiar wheezing noise. He sat up straight and gestured to his friend. "Hey, turn that down," he ordered. "Turn it off, Stevo. Turn that off! John, shut up!"

He listened closer to the noise, and he brightened, jumping up and running out of the garage.

***

Jackie Tyler was setting Christmas presents under her tree when the wheezing echoed through her house, too. She looked around, smiling. "Rose!" she exclaimed.

***

"Mickey!" Jackie shouted as she ran out of the flats, meeting Mickey.

"Jackie, it's the TARDIS!" Mickey told her gleefully.

"I know, I know! I heard it! She's alive, Mickey! I said so, didn't I? She's alive!"

Mickey held up a finger, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. "Just shut up a minute."

Jackie looked around expectantly. "Well, where is it, then?"

The TARDIS suddenly appeared right above them, hitting the flats around the block, narrowly avoiding a post office van, and it finally crashed into a few waste bins. Mickey stared at it in shock. Was the Apocalypse trying to get Rose killed?

The door to the box opened, and Mickey jerked back when an unfamiliar young blonde woman, her hair tangled and matted, poked her head out, eyes glittering sapphire, dressed in the same clothes as the Apocalypse. "Here we are, then!" she announced in an American accent. "London, Earth, the Solar System! We did it!" She looked around before grinning at the. "Jackie! Mickey!" she cheered, running over to them and wrapping her arms around their shoulders, Mickey looking at Jackie and mouthing "Who's this?" Jackie merely shook her head. "Blimey!" She backed away suddenly. "No, no, no, no. Hold on. Wait there. I've got something to say - " She blinked. "Wait a minute. What was it?" Mickey opened his mouth, but she shook her head. "No, hold on! Hold on! Hold on. Shush, shush, shush, shush." She concentrated before brightening. "Aha! I know!" She grinned at them. "Merry Christmas!"

And she fainted on the spot.

Jackie and Mickey quickly ran forward and caught her, her head narrowly missing the ground. Rose ran out of the TARDIS, eyeing the blonde in worry. "What happened?" she asked. "Is she all right?"

"I don't know," Mickey replied. "She just keeled over. But who is she? Where's the Apocalypse?"

"That's her," Rose answered. "Right in front of you. That's the Apocalypse."

Mickey stared down at the blonde in shock. How was this the Apocalypse?

Jackie apparently had the same thoughts. "What do you mean, that's the Apocalypse?" she asked. "Apocalypse who?"

***

Rose rubbed the back of the Apocalypse's hand with her thumb as she looked down at the woman, now in white pajamas. The woman was out cold, lying in one of their bedrooms. "Here we go," Jackie whispered to Rose as she entered with a stethoscope. "Tina the cleaner's got this lodger, a medical student, and she was fast asleep, so I just took it. Though I still say we should take her to hospital."

"We can't," Rose told her. "They'd lock her up. They'd dissect her. One bottle of her blood could change the future of the human race." She put the stethoscope in her ears but glared at her mother when she was about to talk. "No! Shush!" Jackie held back obediently, and Rose listened to both sides of the Apocalypse's chest, and she sighed in relief. "Both working," she reported as she took the stethoscope out of her ears.

"What do you mean, both?" Jackie asked.

"Well, she's got two hearts," Rose replied with a shrug.