Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [33]
Agat was awash with blood.
Civilisation had been discarded. Primitivism was restored.
All the trappings of a modern world imported from Javee and Batu and even the worlds beyond were consigned to the flames of atavism. And while the clothes, the books, the papers burned and the technology fell apart under repeated blows, the bodies continued to collect. Indoni dead were everywhere; scattered like unwanted toys on the plankways; floating in the filthy waterways beneath. But there was one detail that wasn’t right about the corpses, and it wasn’t until Father Pieter peered towards the police but that he realized what it was: the small building was now guarded only by the Javee officer’s severed head nailed to the door. A chilly wind played through him. All the heads were missing of course, apart from the special gift awarded him earlier – and this one, left behind like a trophy, like a warning to the authorities to ever dare enforce regulation on savagery again. Further along the main plankway, the Indoni traders’ stalls were still manned by their prosperous owners, but now they were propped against their shelves of wares as if they were sleeping off a particularly heavy drinking spree – the blood marking their skin and clothes the only signs that all was not as before; that and the absence of their heads. The fruit trader’s severed hands were stacked alongside the papaya– like vegetables he had sold for such extortionate prices; the couturier from Batu was crucified in the doorway of his shack, his dismembered wife scattered beneath his hanging feet, along with the tatters of the imported clothes they had sold. Bagire, the hunchbacked Horrakbil bird, pecked amongst the bloody debris.
Blood stained the mud beneath the walkways.
Thirty years of education, culture and endeavour wiped out.
Thirty years of Christianity...
Gone.
Father Pieter could see it all. He would lose his mind for looking; he would lose his life if he stayed here. They would fmd him. The attic! Hide from this obscenity Julius had been only the first; madness had spread like a virus through the once peaceful shanty town. The usually amiable and even rather docile Papul had become ravenous monsters, ripping away the clothes they had once been taught to be proud of, tearing away the layers of civilization Pieter and his fellow missionaries had spent so long insulating them with.
What had happened to the Word of God? Was it then so fragile to be rejected so suddenly, so savagely? A belief system refined and sophisticated was being butchered, and its initiator could do no more than cower and weep.
The way had been opened to barbarity. The jungle had reclaimed its children. Brutal gods reigned once more over their heathen domain.
How long would it be before They came looking for him?
Wemus and Kepennis looked terrified.
The aggressive-looking figures held machetes to the throats of the guides and shouted at them in a guttural local tongue. The Doctor made an attempt to communicate with the warriors, who were obviously Papul from what could be detected of their features under the fur balaclavas. A battered-looking rifle barrel stopped his progress.
‘Oh, I see...’ he said ruefully, raising his hands with a worried expression on his face. ‘Jamie, don’t do anything silly,’ he added, as the Scot began to protest vociferously behind him
The warriors encircled the little group of tourists, their faces hard and uncompromising. Santi and Wina stood together, and the Doctor tried to smile encouragingly at them, guessing what would be going through their minds: they were two attractive Indoni girls trapped in the middle of the Papul jungle by a group of hostile guerrillas. It didn’t take a great imagination to guess their possible fate.
Kepennis and Wemus turned around to confront the Doctor. The warrior who had spoken so aggressively to them now ushered them to communicate with the group they had led into such peril. His balaclava was of black fur and he wore a necklace of bullets and a bracelet of bone. His eyes were malevolent