Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [68]
Bernice left Emile dancing and scrambled gracelessly over in her high heels to where Tameka was standing. She turned the music off and suddenly the crowds could hear Tameka’s voice clearly.
‘Up the Sunless!’ Tameka was screaming. ‘More rules!’ Her curly brown wig had slipped back on her head and she was hanging on to it with one hand. ‘Collaborate and survive!’
An ugly murmur swept through the crowd. They clearly hadn’t been expecting this.
Bernice joined in. ‘Sunless and Ursu together for a bright new future!’ She glimpsed the faces in the crowd – bemused and increasingly angry faces. The young bald-headed man she had spotted earlier, who had been running alongside the bus, had stopped clapping and was now shouting something at her which she couldn’t hear.
‘Wear more grey!’ Bernice screamed. ‘Support your local coup!’
A window on the bus shattered noisily. That’s more like it, Bernice congratulated herself. The crowd surged around them. People were thumping violently on the metal panels on the side of the coach. Even Emile had got the idea now and was stamping his feet and shouting slogans at the top of his voice.
Michael pulled the bus parallel with the gates, and they toured past the guards. Tameka and Emile began, on cue, to scream for the guard’s assistance. Bernice waved frantically at the uniformed figures. The guards tracked the coach, keeping themselves between it and the building.
Bernice almost lost her footing as Michael accelerated, leaving the hordes of protesting Ursulans in their wake.
The service gates at the back of the building were less ornate than those at the front, but no less sturdy. They were also closed. As the coach headed towards them, guards in collaborators’
uniforms waved them back. Behind them, a crowd of Ursulans chased the bus, while others stopped to lob stones at them.
Michael leant out of the coach and waved his identification papers at the guards. ‘They’re after us! Open the gates!’ he cried.
‘The building’s closed for the party,’ the nearest guard yelled.
‘We’re supposed to be in there,’ Bernice yelled from the roof. ‘We’re the entertainment!’
The fastest protesters were almost at the back of the bus. The two guards on duty at the gate saw them and their faces lit up with fear. Michael had climbed down from the driver’s booth and had handed his papers through the gate. The nearest guard glanced at them, frowned as if he was uncertain of something and then nodded. He looked up at Bernice. ‘Where are yours?’
Bernice pointed downwards. ‘In the bus.’ She made a show of looking behind her. ‘But . . .
there isn’t time.’
And that was when the crowd reached them. Sticks rattled against the side of the bus. More glass was smashed. A few people started to climb up the sides. A young woman made a lunge for Emile’s foot and he cried out, hoisted up his skirts and scampered down the centre of the coach.
Bernice stared at the angry hordes who surrounded them. If this didn’t work they were going to be lynched.
‘They’re after me,’ Emile squealed and leapt from the front of the bus, landing on the top of the gates. ‘Save me from the enemies of the New Administration!’
That boy had a whole new career in amateur dramatics just waiting for him.
‘Hey, you shouldn’t be . . .’ The guard yelled, staring up at Emile who had already straddled the gate. ‘Get down from there!’
Tameka followed Emile’s example. Bernice was trying to pluck up the courage to leap across, when she saw an old woman running towards the bus with a flaming bottle in her hand.
Oh no.
The home-made bomb hit the back of the bus. A sea of burning liquid swept towards her along the roof. She somehow doubted that her dress was flameproof.
‘Frocks away!’ she screamed, her dress billowing around her as she leapt through the air, landing on the top of the metal gate. She had scrambled over before she knew what she was doing, landing next to Emile and Tameka and the two guards.
‘Thank you! Thank you so much!’ she cried, breathlessly, neatly stepping in front of her students. ‘They were going to kill us!’ She straightened