Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [5]
The surviving tourist backed away and tripped over the green-fleshed corpse of his friend. But the Mumi seemed to have finished its macabre attack. The villagers were on their knees before it now, quaking in terror. Others had emerged from the huts upon hearing the screams and chattered animatedly in their fear, staring from the scattered bodies to the Mumi, unmoving once again on its stool.
And then it spoke to them.
Hollow, echoing tones, as if dragged down the dusty halls of centuries, it spoke and then was quiet again.‘ Children of the Papul. You are free. Free to kill. Free to regain what you have lost.’
The head slumped forward on the skinny knees. From the jungle a bird shrieked endlessly.
Chapter Two
Jamie couldn’t help smiling. He had just walked upstairs into Heaven.
Women everywhere. Gorgeous women everywhere. Jamie had never seen such exotic, beautiful creatures. Brown skin, perfect figures, long black hair, flashing eyes, white, white teeth glowing in the special lighting. Dancing, dancing. Jamie was looking, looking. He didn’t know where to look next.
There weren’t many men with brown skin in the bar, only those who served the drinks, but there were a few obviously alien men with white skin, some with yellow, and one or two with scales that they’d obviously tried to tone down with foundation cream, now beginning to evaporate in the sweat of the nightclub.
Jamie leaned against the bar and wondered what to drink.
He could see what looked like a bottle of whisky on a shelf above an array of fearsome-looking beverages, at whose alcoholic content he wouldn’t even dare to make a guess. He gestured at the bottle and the barman pulled him ‘a wee dram’.
The barman took the coin Jamie offered him and frowned at it. Jamie frowned too. Then the barman shrugged and tossed it into his till.
Jamie turned and watched the girls dancing. Thanks Doctor. He raised the glass to his absent companion. He’d actually done something right for a change and brought them somewhere decent. He wished Victoria were here so he could tease her about the lovely lasses cavorting around the dancefloor.
Cavorting wasn’t the word. These girls knew how to dance. The music was unfamiliar to him, maybe a marriage of Earth-type rapid beats with more exotic alien instruments –
och, he was no expert – but he had to admit it formed a perfectly potent backdrop to watch the ladies perform their gyrations.
He sipped the drink and was even more satisfied to find it really was whisky.
He caught one of the girls, who was dancing like no-one Jamie had ever seen before, looking at him. She saw him notice her attentions and flashed the Scot the loveliest smile.
He choked on his whisky, then regained his composure enough to smile back. The girl continued flinging herself around, almost flying, she was that agile.
Paradise.
Jamie felt more contented than he had in a long time. He couldn’t take his eyes off the lithe girl on the dancefloor. She wore black trousers with a provocative, deliberate slit on one thigh, allowing a glimpse of smooth brown skin. She was wearing a tight black top, albeit more modest than most of the revealing clothes the other girls were sporting, and perhaps that was what drew his attention to her more. Her bare arms shone under the subdued lighting as she twisted. Her long dark hair flung itself around her face as she smiled at him again, and then she was beckoning to him.
Come and dance, Jamie, you gorgeous hunk of a Scot.
That’s the message she was giving him; Jamie positively smirked back, drinking in her perfect features, the long face with cheekbones that made him ache, the dark, dark eyes promising delights that made the whisky glass shake in his hand. He put out one leg, lured by her, then withdrew it as selfconsciousness returned to mock him. He couldn’t dance to this stuff. He’d just make a show of himself. This wasn’t clan music. He wouldn’t know what to do. The girl would end up laughing. Just like Victoria always did.