Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [54]
‘The cactus that chiefly preoccupies them,’ said the Doctor, ‘is Lophophora williamsii – the hallucinogenic peyote cactus.’ They had now reached the foot of the opposite slope and were starting up it, after Black Eyes, Scar and Sun Runner, none of whom seemed particularly inclined to wait for the laggards falling behind them. ‘I’m not sure its needles would be suitable for your purpose, although you might find that its buds, or buttons as they are called, have a profound effect on the music you hear.’
‘I’ll bet, man, I’ll bet,’ chuckled Ray. The sun had now faded to a last red glare banked against the deep blue of the sky in the west. The air was fragrant and chilly in the slanting shadows of the pines. Ace was watching the three Apache men move through the shadows when suddenly they disappeared. For a moment she felt a thrill of fear, then she remembered what the Doctor had said about caves. They’d simply stepped into a cave mouth. The truth of this supposition was confirmed a moment later when the young man came out of the shadows back into view and began gathering fallen tree branches from the ground.
‘Isn’t that considerate?’ said the Doctor. ‘Sun Runner is preparing a fire for us.’
Major Butcher steered his jeep through the desert darkness towards the distant light. He had turned off his headlights as soon as he glimpsed it, not wanting anyone to see him coming. The going was rough, driving through almost total blackness, bouncing across rutted ground, and finally he had to slow down to a crawl. If he busted an axle out here it would mean a long walk back to the Hill and, worse, missing out on any chance of catching up with the Doctor and his cronies and discovering what they were up to.
The engine throbbed turbulently and the jeep lurched. Remembering the two changes of fan belt that afternoon, Butcher slowed down even more.
The terrain under the tyres was sloping steadily upwards and soon he found 96
himself on the rim of a hill, driving around in a big circle. There didn’t seem to be any way up onto the hill, at least no route big enough for the jeep, so he killed the engine and sat there, listening to the ticking and smelling the cooling of hot metal, pondering what to do next. There was a certain amount of moonlight now so Butcher got out of the jeep and walked carefully around, trying to get a mental picture of where he was in relation to the surrounding terrain. He was going to have to leave his vehicle behind, and he wanted to be able to find it again and possibly get out of here in a hurry. Securing a line of retreat was something he’d learned in the Pinkertons long before he’d joined the army. He considered leaving his flashlight on the hood of the jeep, switched on, as a beacon to guide him. But the batteries would burn out in a few hours and he might not be back by then. Then there was the fact that he might need the flashlight and, more importantly, it might reveal the position of his jeep to the others.
He set off somewhat reluctantly up the hill into the darkness, feeling cut loose in the night, adrift, as the shadows absorbed the jeep behind him.
Butcher found the going fairly easy on foot, only occasionally bruising his shin on some rock or tree stump invisible in the intermittent moonlight. Now and then he turned on his flashlight, but sparingly, less to conserve the batteries than to conceal his position. The light at the top of the hill came and went according to the angle of his approach and the intervening terrain, but it always appeared again, a beacon.
Soon the flickering yellow light was close enough to be identified as the flames of a campfire high on the opposite hill. Butcher was staring at it with such fixity that he walked straight into something at waist level, something hard and unyielding, and was flung flat across it. He grunted with the impact and fumbled with his free hand, feeling dusty metal that still had some residual trace of warmth. It was the hood of a jeep. The Doctor’s jeep. Butcher smiled with satisfaction. Even if he couldn