“Are we in a Wal-Mart?” Blaine asked, sticking his head out the door of the TARDIS and looking around.
Kurt joined him at the doors and looked out, “It looks like it, if those Wal-Mart forklifts are anything to go by.”
Blaine elbowed him gently in the ribs and Kurt laughed.
“Why’d you bring us here?” Blaine asked, looking over his shoulder at the Doctor who was messing with something on his console.
“After what happened to you not that long ago, Blaine, I thought you should probably take a bit of a break from huge excitement.”
“So you took us shopping?” Kurt bounced on the balls of his feet excitedly. “What are we waiting for then, let’s go upstairs and look around.”
“I thought you once told me you would never be caught dead shopping in a Wal-Mart,” stated Blaine as the trio made their way out of the storage room and up a flight of stairs.
“For clothes, Blaine,” he corrected, “I would never be caught dead shopping for clothes in a Wal-Mart. No one can deny that they have great prices for movies, CDs and things like that.”
As they stepped into the main part of the store they were met with a strange sight. There were large boxes placed all around the allies of the store with clear packing tape around each of them. Employees hung near the boxes, making sure no one ripped into the plastic and security guards were gathering in places.
“Oh, God,” groaned Blaine, “it can’t be.”
“I think it is,” Kurt’s smile widened.
“Can’t be what?” asked the Doctor.
“You’ve landed us in the middle of Black Friday.”
“I’m sorry, what’s Black Friday?”
“The sales right after Thanksgiving,” Kurt explained. “They cut down prices on more of the expensive things in the store to draw in people trying to save money on their Christmas shopping.”
“It’s insane,” said Blaine. “People are lunatics around this time. Shoving each other out of the way and yelling unnecessarily at random strangers.”
“Please, Blaine, you enjoy coming to these sales just as much as I do.”
“Not just as much…but close.”
“Didn’t you tell me you got punched one year and yet you still came back?”
Blaine looked sheepish, “Yes.”
“I think it sounds like fun,” announced the Doctor, “Having an adrenaline rush while shopping is an interesting concept.”
“Are you saying we can stay?!”
“Why not—as long as Blaine thinks he can handle it.”
“After nearly becoming snack food for dragon chicks, Black Friday will be nothing.”
The Doctor clapped his hands together, “Wonderful. I’ll follow you, boys, show me what to do.”
“We need to find out what the doorbusters are first,” said Kurt, “and then find out where everything is.”
Kurt led them to the front of the store where the ads were kept in a stand near the front doors. There was an old man passing out maps of the store to customers trickling in and Kurt accepted one.
They wandered over to the wall of the store to look over the slim booklet and the trio scanned the pages.
“Are you sure you should be participating anyway?” asked Blaine. “You are a struggling college student after all.”
“I think I can afford a few things,” Kurt replied, running his eyes over the items on sale. “I can get Rachel a digital picture frame for Christmas. They’re marked down to eleven dollars, see?”
“I have a holographic picture frame that cost less then that,” interjected the Doctor. “I should take you boys to where I got it. It’s the largest shopping center in the universe. I have a feeling you would like it if this place excites you.”
“Would you?” Kurt’s eyes filled glee at the thought.
“Hey, look at that,” Blaine pointed to a corner of the last page of the ads. It was a red circle with white lettering: Ask about the free gift with every purchase! It demanded.
“Free gifts?” Blaine was incredulous. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, have you?”
Kurt shook his head.
“What are you two talking about?” the Doctor inquired, “All gifts are free.”
“Not on Black Friday,” explained Blaine.
“Let’s go ask about it then,” said Kurt.
The trio moved into the store, looking for an employee. They flagged one down near the men’s section and Kurt showed her the page.
“Oh yeah,” she didn’t sound particularly enthused. “Every place is doing that this year. Apparently some private company is having a promotional this year and we’re supposed to hand those things out.”
“But what are they?” asked Kurt.
She shrugged, “I could show you one.”
She brought them up the registers and rummaged around behind one, pulling a box out and setting it on the conveyer belt. She undid the straps on side of it and opened the lid of the long parcel.
The object nestled inside the white tissue paper was cylindrical and made of what looked like burnished, bronze metal with orbs running up and down all sides of it.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know what they’re called.”
“What’s it supposed to do?”
“Search me.”
“What company did you say gave you this thing?” demanded the Doctor, eyeing the thing suspiciously.
“I don’t know. Some private company, I don’t think they every said who they were.”
The Doctor moved his jaw back and forth, his fingers flexing as if wished to grab the thing and was having trouble restraining himself.
“You give them to everyone with every purchase?”
“Yes…”
He reached over and grabbed a pack of gum, slamming it down on the conveyer belt. “There, I’d like to purchase that gum. I can keep this now, can’t I?”
“I don’t think—you know what, I don’t really care.”
She grabbed the gum and ran the barcode over the scanner.
“That’ll be ninety-nine cents,” she said.
“Blaine, give me some money.”
“Don’t you have money?”
“Blaine, I am a time-traveler. The only payment I get is the thrill of adventure.”
Blaine rolled his eyes, but pulled out his wallet and paid for the gum, picking it up himself when the Doctor ignored it, wandering away from the till with the box in his hands.
“Doctor, what is going on?” asked Kurt.
“I’ll explain once we get back to the TARDIS.”
They made their way past the growing crowds, no one really paying any attention to them as they positioned themselves around whatever items they had their sights set on.
They snuck past harried employees as they reached the TARDIS and the Doctor ushered them inside. Once he had the doors shut, he plunked box with the strange object down on a chair and turned to face them.
“So, what is it?” asked Kurt.
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the object, “Dalekanium.”
“What?” Kurt and Blaine said simultaneously.
“Dalekanium, created by the most terrible creatures in the universe,” he said in a low voice.
“Republicans?” questioned Kurt with a slight smirk.
“The Daleks.”
“Sorry, what are the Daleks?” asked Blaine.
“My oldest and most bitter enemy,” replied the Doctor. “If they’re here then it can only bode ill for the human race. Their sole purpose in life is to destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek. We need to find them and stop them.”
“That’s going to be pretty hard,” observed Blaine. “This place will be packed in only another few minutes.”
“A Dalek will be easy to spot in any crowd. Let me show you what they look like.”
The Doctor tapped something into his controls and an image flickered onto the screen, presenting them with a picture of a metal creature that looked like a salt shaker lined with the same sort of orbs as the item. A long pole was mounted to the top of the creature while a gun made up one of its ‘arms’ and something like a plunger stood in for the other one.
“Wouldn’t people run away if they saw something like that coming after them?” asked Blaine.
“Blaine, these are humans we’re talking about—no offense. If they see a creature like that, they’ll stop and take pictures on their phones and then send it to everyone in their contacts list.”
Neither Blaine nor Kurt argued, knowing perfectly well how true that was.
“Now, let me get something for you to defend yourselves with in case we get separated.”
“You have spare sonic screwdrivers?” asked Blaine.
“No…though come to think of it that’s not such a bad idea. No, I’m talking about these.”
He opened a hatch in the TARDIS floor and produced two paintball guns, handing them over to his companions.
“Paintball guns?” asked Kurt skeptically. “What good are these going to do against those things?”
“These guns are filled with a gel that hardens like cement when it hits something. Just make sure you aim for the eye stalk.”
“Uh, I don’t think the store will allow these…,” said Blaine.
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll be with me.”
“Yeah, because that will make it seem okay,” muttered Kurt.
Blaine snorted as the Doctor led them back outside and to the main area of the store. They ducked into a restroom, holding the door open just far enough to see outside.
Blaine checked his watch, “Black Friday should be starting any minute now.”
“Then keep your eyes peeled.”
Suddenly, the sound of packing wrap being torn open sounded all around the store as the employees gave the all clear to rip into the boxes and grab the merchandise.
It wasn’t until twenty minutes after the start of the event that anything happened. The place fell eerily silent and lights flashed outside like lightening.
The Doctor pushed the restroom door open and slowly made his way outside with
Blaine and Kurt following close behind.
As they stepped out from behind the wall and saw a disturbing sight. All around them were people frozen in place, eyes blank and staring straight ahead of themselves.
“What happened to all of them?” whispered Kurt, staring at them all in shock.
“It looks like they’ve been hypnotized,” answered the Doctor.
“Hypnosis fully functional and human-puppets ready to further the cause of the Dalek race!” a halting, mechanical voice echoed off the walls of the store and the trio froze, backs straightening at the horrible sound.
“Back, back,” the Doctor hissed, shoving the boys back behind the wall to hide them.
The trio peeked around the corner to see a Dalek gliding along between the rows of people, looking back and forth as they went on their way. Two more came gliding along after the first and one of them paused, leveling its eye stalk where the trio had been looking around the corner, having ducked back as soon as they realized the Dalek was looking in their direction.
They stood perfectly still until they saw the shadow of the creature pass by. The Doctor looked around the corner before telling them the coast was clear and they moved out from behind their hiding spot.
Cautiously, they approached the hypnotized people, Kurt and Blaine waving their hands in front of their faces as if that would do any good.
There was a buzzing sound behind them and they turned to see the Doctor scanning them with his screwdriver.
“Does it say anything?” asked Kurt.
“They’ve been hypnotized.”
“Well we know that. Does it say what caused it?”
The Doctor shook his head, an angry look entering his eyes.
Blaine glanced down as he noticed a pulsing blue light near his feet. His eyes flicked a few feet up as he followed the path of the light, his eyes coming to rest on its source.
“Guys, look.”
The palms of the unwary shoppers were glowing with soft blue light as if they were robots.
Tentatively, the Doctor reached out and took the wrist of the nearest shopper, turning it over gently so that he could take a look at the palm. He scanned it with his screwdriver.
He looked at the readings and his jaw clenched, “It was the Dalekanium.”
“How can that be? These people wouldn’t have touched it.”
“I don’t think touching had anything to with it. That light…it must have come from the Dalekanium and affected everyone within its field. We were unaffected because of the walls between us.”
“How do we reverse it?”
“We need to destroy the Dalekanium.”
“All of it?”
“Maybe not…let’s get back to the TARDIS and destroy the one we have on board. That might be all we need to do.”
As the trio headed back for the time/space machine they heard a noise from
behind and a flash of light suddenly hit the wall next to them, blowing apart the plaster.
They spun around just in time to see two more Daleks glide up behind the one that had just shot at them.
“Exterminate the intruders!” commanded the first one, the laser arms of all three swiveling around to aim at each of them.
The companions leapt into a side aisle, falling on their stomachs painfully. They flipped onto their backs as the Daleks drew closer, proclaiming extermination as they went.
Kurt and Blaine leveled their paintball guns at the Daleks and pulled the triggers, green balls of gel the creatures on their domed heads. As they continued firing, the domes were soon fixed in one spot as the gel solidified and it made it impossible for the creatures to move their heads.
The Doctor aimed his screwdriver at one of the shelves, loosening the hinges and causing it to fall on the Daleks, the monsters soon being covered with towels and obscuring their view.
“Run!”
The Doctor’s command was unnecessary as Kurt and Blaine had already gotten to their feet and was making a break for housewares.
The trio ducked behind a display of dinner plates as the Daleks shot at the towels obscuring their view. The Dalek that was still free to move its eye stalk around, did just that as it looked for the trio.
“Activate the puppets!” one of them shouted, “Tell them to find the intruders!”
A low drone filled the air and the hypnotized people glowed with the blue light as
they began moving towards the trio.
One of them spotted them and it lifted its hand, a laser shooting out of its palm and blowing up a plate near their heads.
Blaine, Kurt and the Doctor ducked out of the way as ceramic shards flew through the air, ricocheting of shelves and boxes. The Doctor grabbed a plate from the shelf and hurled it at the advancing puppet like a discus, hitting the man in the stomach and knocking him to the ground.
“I hope he can forgive me for that.”
“Not the time to get sentimental, Doctor!” yelled Kurt, grabbing his wrist and pulling him along as they continued for the TARDIS.
They stopped short as more puppets came from the path they were taking and they were soon surrounded from all sides.
“Hold the intruders!”
Three of the puppets grabbed the trio and restrained them as the three Daleks glided through the crowd and halting in front of the trio.
“Hello, Daleks,” said the Doctor, almost calmly.
“The intruder knows our name!”
“How is this possible?!”
“Oh, we are not people you want to mess with, Daleks,” answered the Doctor. “We know everything about you and we’ll make sure to defeat you.”
“No one can defeat the Dalek race!”
“I’ve done it before,” snapped the Doctor. “Every time you’ve ever had your plans ruined it was because of me.”
“Who are you?!”
“I am the Doctor, last of the Time Lords!”
“The Time Lords are all dead!” protested the Daleks together.
“Not me.”
“You will soon join them, Doctor!”
The Daleks aimed their lasers at the trio, ready to fire and would have succeeded in killing them if it were not for the fact that a frying pan suddenly smacked the one of the Daleks in the head.
The three of them turned their attention to the saleswoman who had shown them the Dalekanium, the woman gripping the handle of the frying pan so hard her knuckles were white.
Kurt, Blaine and the Doctor wasted no time in kicking the legs of the people holding them and managed to wriggle free. The Doctor aimed his screwdriver at the lights and plunged them into near darkness—it was interrupted only by the blue lights radiating from the puppets and the Daleks’ eye stalks.
“Come on!” shouted the Doctor.
Kurt, Blaine and the saleswoman ran after him, keeping pace as he led them back to the TARDIS.
The livid voices of the Daleks followed them as the monsters glided their way through the aisles in pursuit.
They made it to the TARDIS and ran inside, the Doctor rushing over to the controls to throw a force field around the time/space machine.
“That was awesome!” declared Blaine.
“Yeah,” agreed Kurt, “you saved our lives!”
“But why didn’t the hypnosis affect you?” inquired the Doctor, scanning her with the screwdriver. “Do you have some sort of psychic energy that protected you from it?”
“I had went outside for a smoke break,” she answered, clearly unnerved by the Doctor blinking the screwdriver in her face. “When I came in, everybody was like that.”
“Ah, so you weren’t in the building at the time the hypnosis took hold. That explains it then.”
“Explains what?”
“Why it didn’t affect you. Try to keep up, um…”
“Janet.”
“Janet.”
“Um, what are those things out there?”
“They’re called Daleks.”
Blaine picked up the box which still contained the Dalekanium and handed it over to the Doctor. “So how do you plan to destroy that thing?”
“First I need to figure out how it works.”
He scanned the device and read the findings, frowning slightly.
“Ah, well that might not be so good.”
“What is it?”
“Uh, it looks like it’s controlled by a mainframe…which isn’t in here. Oh, why can’t everything just be connected so that it doesn’t matter which one you destroy?”
“Can we get to the main one?”
“Of course we can, Kurt. We’re in an anywhere-you-can-think-of-going machine.
Getting to the mainframe will be no problem.”
The Doctor typed in coordinates into the consul and the TARDIS de-materialized from the store. It re-materialized somewhere else and the Doctor flicked a control to show them what lay outside.
“Are we on a spaceship?” asked Blaine.
“Yes…a Dalek ship. You three stay here; let me take care of it. If anything happens, I’ve set it so the TARDIS will take each of you back home.”
“You don’t know where I live,” Janet protested.
“No, but the TARDIS will be able to find your home.”
Janet looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of where to start.
“Let me have one of those guns,” said the Doctor.
Kurt handed his over and the Doctor slipped out the door.
They watched from the screen as the Doctor stepped out and headed towards a huge computer that took up one side of the ship. He slung the gun over his shoulder as he began to type furiously on the keyboard, searching for someway to override the hypnosis.
As Kurt and Blaine watched the Doctor, the soft blue light overtaking Janet went unnoticed by them.
After a few more minutes, the Doctor rushed back into the TARDIS.
“I know how to stop them. There’s another Dalek back in the store that’s been trusted with protecting the main Dalekanium. If we destroy that we—,” he suddenly stopped talking, catching sight of Janet staring at them from a corner.
Kurt and Blaine turned to follow his gaze and took a step back as they saw her.
“The intruders will not stop the plan from happening,” the eerie voice of a Dalek
sounded through Janet.
The Doctor took a step forwards, placing himself between Kurt and Blaine.
“Janet?” he asked slowly, “Is there any part of you still in there?”
“Janet ceased to exist early this morning. She has been our puppet for as long as you have known her.”
“Then I won’t feel bad about doing this,” whispered the Doctor, aiming his sonic screwdriver at her.
Janet shirked and clapped her hands over her ears as she fell to the ground, blood pooling out of her ears and nose. Her body gave a violent shudder and then fell still.
Kurt slapped his hand over his mouth like he was about to be sick. Blaine just stared at the body in shock.
“I’m sorry, boys,” whispered the Doctor, placing a hand on either of their shoulders and guiding them to turn away from the sight. “There was nothing else we could do for her.”
The Doctor cleared his throat uncomfortably and typed something into his keyboard. The TARDIS de-materialized, re-materializing back inside the Wal-Mart.
“So…where’s this main Dalekanium?” asked Blaine, his voice was quiet, still trying to get over the shock of what he had witnessed.
“In storage of course,” replied the Doctor, leading them through the empty halls.
“What happened to everyone?” muttered Kurt.
His question was soon answered as they passed the doors and saw the hypnotized people out in the parking lot, the mechanical voices of the Daleks shouting something at them that sounded a lot like was commands.
They made their way into the storage area.
“Make sure you keep those guns ready,” the Doctor told them as they proceeded into the stacks of boxes and crates.
A soft blue light illuminated the back of the place and they soon came upon a larger version of the free Dalekanium with a Dalek situated in front of it, gliding back and forth and turning its eye stalk in a sweeping gesture as it watched for enemies.
The Doctor held up a fist, holding up a single finger until he got to three and signaled for the boys to shoot at the Dalek with their cement paint. The Dalek’s angry protests filled the storage area as the boys captured it in the cement paint, keeping it from moving and hitting it square on the eye stalk, blinding it.
“Good job, boys,” the Doctor praised, thumping them on the backs as he strode up to the pole of Dalekanium.
He removed part of the panel with his screwdriver and stuck the green-lit tip straight in the wires inside the pole and knocked the sonic waves the highest they could go. The pole shook and caught fire, burning up from within before melting the rest of it.
Screams could suddenly be heard from outside and they rushed to the doors to see panicked people running around the parking lot, trying to get away from the three Daleks now acting very erratically as though they couldn’t control which direction they wanted to go.
Their lasers fired all around, most hitting the building and destroying it.
“Get back to the TARDIS, I’ll be there soon!”
Kurt and Blaine wasted no time in following his directions. They rushed past Janet’s body lying hidden in the boxes and into the TARDIS.
It was not long before the Doctor joined them and they quickly left the chaos behind.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The fire trucks arrived at the scene of the fire twenty minutes into it being discovered. They put in out fast enough and had just finished searching the building for anyone unfortunate to be trapped inside when the news cameras began rolling.
“A tragic night here at the Black Friday sales,” said the newswoman. “As the body of a Wal-Mart employee was found in the fire. They are not yet disclosing her name.
“Now we go to the manager Jack Ruth to talk to him about what happened here tonight. Mr. Ruth, have they said what started the fire?”
“No source for the fire has been found,” answered Ruth, “but we feel that it is connected to these things that we can only assume were part of the promotional Black Friday was a part of this year.”
He directed them to one of the Daleks, the creatures having died with the destruction of the Dalekanium.
“We don’t really know what they are and the company who made them has yet to come forth to explain their sudden appearance or meaning. Rest assured, we will let everyone know more about this promotional as soon as we know anything.”
“There you have it,” said the newswoman, “we will keep everybody updated on the events of tonight if anything new should come up. Back to you Ian.”