Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [58]
The mood of the crowd changed as the people on the streets recognized the collaborators. A few people began to jeer and spit on the roadside. They were quickly joined by others. The people on the floats suddenly looked scared, huddling together in the middle of the armoured vehicles.
A male collaborator was struck by a half-brick, and he was knocked from the vehicle and fell into the road. The crowd sensed their moment and surged towards him.
Bernice was jostled by people as they tried to get to the part of the road where he had fallen.
Bernice turned and tried to push her way back against the tide of tired, bitter and angry faces.
She slipped and fell, and for a moment all she could see around her were uniformed grey legs and dusty boots stumbling towards her. Someone stood on her hand and she yelped.
She had suddenly fallen into the middle of a nightmare.
Get up, get out of here, Benny. Get away. She didn’t want to be on the street if a full-blown riot started. She forced herself up on to her feet. As she was struggling through the crowds she caught sight of a familiar face.
A red-haired woman in a collaborator’s uniform was staring down at her from the roof of one of the vehicles. It took a moment for Bernice to remember where she had seen the woman before. It was a shock to recognize a face on a planet full of strangers, and when she did remember she felt a little queasy.
It was the woman who had been on Jason’s arm in the holo the Trans-System detective had pushed under her nose back on Apollox 4. How had the detective described her? His accomplice?
But how had this woman come to be here, on a prohibited world? A collaborator?
Bernice desperately wanted to speak to the woman. Maybe she knew where Jason was. If anyone on this planet knew it was going to be her. But there were more than a hundred people between them. Even as Bernice started to make her first steps towards the woman, she saw the smooth coordinated movement of Sunless heading towards the disturbance. She saw the young woman climb down through a circular hatch into the belly of the vehicle and then she was gone.
There could be no doubt that it was her. Benny knew that she had to find her. Find her, find Jason. And then get everyone back home.
The crowd around her started to back away as the Sunless arrived. Anger turned to panic and fear. Feeling frustrated, Bernice turned and fled the scene.
The man was dying. Jock didn’t need to have spent a lifetime healing the sick to tell that. The skin on the man’s face had been terribly burnt by some kind of hot liquid plastic, which now hardened into a half mask. It would be difficult to remove. The eye beneath had probably been destroyed by the heat. The wounds on his legs were deep and infected. He’d lost a lot of blood. Several of his ribs were broken. It was likely that one of his lungs was grazed, possibly punctured.
Jock had explained all of this quietly to his captor, the woman who had introduced herself as Bernice Summerfield. She had pointed over at two boxes of medical equipment they must have brought with them from the hospital. ‘Please,’ was all that she had said.
Her use of the word was obscene. The captor imploring the captive. A year ago he wouldn’t have even understood what being captive meant, but since the Sunless had come, it had become a way of life.
He had wondered whether he might be able to surprise her, overpower her quickly and be gone before her accomplices in the other room realized anything was wrong. But he was an old man and she was young and looked strong.