Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [84]
‘What’s up? Are you following us?’
He grinned weakly, in between twitching. ‘I guess I am. I guess I just want to see how all of this comes out.’
‘How’d you find us, anyway?’
‘Police radio,’ said Mondy brightly. ‘You just ask if anyone’s seen the vehicle you want. They do all the work for you.’ He quit twitching and gave me a ‘you idiot’ look. ‘Wait, I have to blow my nose.’ Mondy reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of tissues. He extracted one of them and handed it to me. I uncrumpled it reluctantly to find three words written in thick black marker pen.
SWAN IN BACK, said the note.
Swan emerged from the back door carrying a shotgun. If I had thought fast enough, I could have slammed the door on her. But I didn’t. Which meant I was on the business end of the gun a couple of seconds later. I’d been there just once before in my life, when I was fifteen years old and caught with a farmer’s daughter. The same instinct possessed me then as it did now: I froze and shut up.
‘You know what I want,’ she told me.
I must have hesitated. Or maybe Mondy made a move she didn’t like, I don’t know. Swan turned and gave the Escort both barrels. The windscreen burst inwards, showering the front seats with glass. ‘Holy crap!!!’ announced Mondy. He shot out of the passenger side door and disappeared into the trees at the side of the road. His car rolled forward until it bumped into the Travco and idled there.
Swan cracked the gun to reload it. I grabbed the barrels, burned hell out of my fingers, and snatched them away. She flipped the shotgun closed as though she’d done it a thousand times, laughing as I blew on my fingers.
She gestured at the Travco, moving the gun in a small oval from me to the campervan and back. ‘Open it up,’ she said.
I did it, moving in slow motion, partly so she could see everything I was doing, partly to give the Doctor and co a chance to react. I had caught a glimpse of the Doctor watching in the rear view mirror, but I didn’t dare look back there now in case Swan took it the wrong way.
Nobody, but nobody, stopped to see what was going on. I don’t think anyone even slowed down.
I opened the narrow side door. Swan peered in at this sitting on the bunk bed, clutching the Savant like a dozing four-year-old.
‘Hand that over or I’ll blow your frigging head off,’ she told him.
‘ Que to jodan,’ he said, clutching the Savant so tightly I was worried it couldn’t breathe.
‘You know I’m not joking,’ said Swan. ‘You know just how I feel. You can either hold onto that thing and lose your skull, or you can give it to me right now.’
‘You don’t feel!’ Luis was weeping. ‘You’re not attached to this thing as though it was your own arm or your own hand.’
I said, ‘For God’s sake, man, hand it over. It’s not worth your life.’
‘Maybe we can work together,’ he begged her. ‘I could come with you. I’ll look after it for you.’
‘You know that won’t work,’ said Swan.
‘You’ll kill it!’ screamed Luis. He folded up around the Savant as though his own flesh and bones could save it from a shotgun blast.
That was when the Doctor hit the button.
The Savant didn’t make a sound. It froze in position, one of its stubby hands still clutching half a Rubik’s Cube.
Luis didn’t make a sound. He was already half-slumped on the bunk bed. He just sank down further, like a child falling into sleep. The Savant slid from his lap like a living statue.
Swan screamed her head off.
The Doctor was out of the Travco with incredible speed.
He slapped Swan’s arms as she fired the shotgun, the pellets flying off wildly, the explosion turning the world silent for a long ringing second – punctuated by Peri screaming in the passenger seat.
The Doctor and I both grabbed for the gun, and found ourselves grabbing each other instead as the length of metal spun around in our grip. Swan had darted into the side of the Travco to grab the Savant. The Doctor pounced on the little yellow body. But she didn’t even look at it. She grabbed Luis and dragged him onto the gravel like a side of meat.
And Luis had