Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [53]
‘Course, he could be dead,’ Bass offered, pulling a cigarette from its perch behind one ear and lighting it with a battered Zippo. He crashed the Zippo shut again dramatically.
Pan glared at him with irritation. You’re too cool for your own good, maaan.
‘He ain’t dead, Clown was sure. ‘He just ain’t found the target yet.’
Twist flung the cruiser into a sharp loop and they all cursed as personal items dropped and rolled. Smoke filled the view port.
Tigus raised his head as he heard the buzz of the cruiser overhead. The machete paused before its ultimate downward chop. The smile was still there on his face, the lips curling back crazily from his teeth.
The Doctor closed his eyes and hunched his head back into his shoulders. ‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ he moaned and waited for the blow to fall.
A cry came from one of the guerrillas.
Budi was making a break for it.
He had seized the moment, as the guerrillas froze in confusion, their attention distracted by both their leader’s fury and the cruiser in the sky above. The Indoni trader dashed forward, zigzagging across the grass in case one of the guerrillas took a shot at him with a rifle. He was small and thin, and not that substantial a target. If he could make for a clear spot free of smoke maybe he could signal for the cruiser.
It had to belong to the Indoni army, and they were probably searching for them, he thought with shaky logic as he ran, smoke spiralling around him, flames rushing up into the sky ahead, a fierce orange wall of heat.
He was thinking of his old father, back in Batu, probably mithering about his waster of a son to his mother, as he dropped that morning’s load of fish down on the rickety table before settling himself in his favourite chair, while the chickens clucked and squawked outside the little but by the sea and his mother with her wrinkled prune face said nothing, rolling up her sleeves to strip the fish, and Budi could actually smell those fish – and he could smell his old father’s feet too as he stretched them out with a satisfied sigh after his long morning out on the choppy sea.
Something ploughed into him from behind. He hit the turf with everything knocked out of him. He forgot his father, his mother, the chickens, even the damn fish in sickened despair.
Hands seized his hair from behind, dragged him up in a kneeling position.
He looked up, blinking in fear, and saw Tigus’s face framed against the blue sky, a blue sky momentarily free of smoke, and surely the cruiser which Budi could still hear would appear in the clear space any minute now and would see them all down below.
‘You want this?’ Tigus roared in English so that everyone could understand. ‘Is this what you want?’
The machete chopped down at the back of Budi’s exposed neck. The blow left a raw pink slice inches deep that immediately welled with blood. The machete went up again.
Down, with tremendous force. The thunk of flesh giving way to steel.
There was a stunned silence from the group of hostages.
The Doctor, still on his knees, could only stare, appalled, as Budi’s body toppled face forwards into the grass, twitched and was still.
Tigus stood above the corpse, panting.
Santi began to sob.
It was a pitiful, miserable sound, and it carried with it all the meaningless horror of the act the group had witnessed.
Wina had her hands over her mouth as if she would sob too, if she only could remember how... Ussman wobbled forwards a few steps, reaching out for his lost friend, then fell to his knees in grief, closing his eyes, awaiting the same fate to befall him too. Tigus was marching towards the Doctor, the bloodied machete held out as if its appetite was still not sated. Wina’s mouth dropped open in horror, waiting for the Doctor to join Budi outstretched in the grass, leaking red blood into green.
Tigus stood over the Doctor again, breathing hard and fast.
He looked elated, mortified, crazy and sad all at once. He glared at the Doctor as if not sure who or what he was. Then he looked at the red machete, and his hand shook slightly. He wiped it in the