Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [52]
Ace opened her eyes. They were on the brow of a low hill with the slope of a higher headland rising in front of them. There were pine trees on the hillsides and these gave off a cool intense odour in the dying heat of the day.
Ace wiped the dust off her face.
‘Oh man,’ said Ray, from the back of the jeep. ‘I hope this was worth the trip.’
‘I think you’ll find it interesting,’ said the Doctor, fastening the brakes and hopping out onto the hillside. Ace joined him, breathing the cool pine-scented air and enjoying the sensation of walking on her own two feet again after the hours of jolting and bouncing in the jeep. The Doctor took her arm and guided her across the rocky ground covered with a soft blanket of pine needles. ‘Do you notice anything about that hill slope opposite us?’
Ace studied the area he indicated. It was a hill with trees growing on it, their shadows stretching like long black fingers as the sun went down. There were no signs of life or any indication that man had ever intruded on it. It was a primal scene that might have remained unchanged for millions of years.
‘Nope,’ said Ace.
‘Do you see anything in those shadows among the trees?’
‘Nope.’
‘Look more carefully.’ The Doctor sounded a trifle impatient. ‘Some of those shadows are in fact the mouths of caves.’
‘Caves?’ said Ray, coming up behind them, his feet crunching on the bed of pine needles. ‘Who lives in them, man?’
‘Oh, no one,’ said the Doctor. ‘Not for many, many centuries.’ His head suddenly jerked up as he looked past Ray, peering at something with an expression of bright interest. Ace followed the direction of his gaze and saw that three men had stepped out of the shadows of the pines behind them and were 93
coming down the hill, past the jeep, towards them.
They were all carrying guns.
‘Which is not to say, of course, that these hills are uninhabited,’ said the Doctor.
Butcher drove down the Hill along the winding rocky road, past the shadowed pines of Los Alamos canyon and the Omega lab, where Fermi maintained his reactor and performed dangerous experiments with plutonium.
By now the sun was declining steeply in the sky and the desert night was approaching fast. Butcher drove swiftly and efficiently but he couldn’t outrace the setting sun. Soon the lengthening shadows of the broken landscape had swallowed him and the jeep whole.
Butcher kept driving, belting along in the desert darkness, with a growing sense of futility. He’d had a pretty good idea of the Doctor’s initial route because he’d spoken to the MPs at the checkpoint who’d watched them leave.
He’d even managed to find the spot where the Doctor’s jeep had left the road.
The tracks had been too fresh to belong to any other vehicle. Butcher had already followed them for about ten rough miles of broken terrain.
But now, caught in the darkness, the only way to make progress was to hazard a guess about the other jeep’s direction of travel, drive for a half mile or so, stop, get out of the jeep and use a flashlight to check the ground and see if he could discern any tracks in the dirt. At first he’d got lucky, following them for another two miles. But then he’d lost the track and had to double back on himself, doing a sweep.
Now he’d lost the track completely. He was on the verge of throwing in the towel and heading back for the Hill, taking off his shoes, collapsing on his bunk and drinking half a bottle of whiskey. Then he saw the light in the distance, in the crevice of a line of hills whose dark bulk cancelled the stars hanging low in the night sky.
He pointed the jeep in the direction of the light, put his foot down