Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [73]
Blood geysered over the Indoni girl. Jamie stood up in the canoe, hands outstretched as if he could ward off the massive beast, the body of which crashed down onto the canoe, twisting and threshing viciously. A purple, plated beast, with a tail as long again as the four-metre body, and as thick as a man’s. The guerrilla clamped between the jaws attempted to batter feebly at the pointed head of the beast, but there were no soft points on this colossus, no eyes at all, just nostrils that spat sprinkles of water as it chomped. With a shrug of its head, it squeezed the guerrilla’s body like a tube of toothpaste and soon everyone in the canoe was red. Then the world was spinning 180 for Jamie, Santi, Drew, Ussman and the remaining guerrillas as the canoe revolved in the water and the beast was gone, dragging its prize with it under the surface. A widening stain of crimson, and the frantic former passengers bobbing in it.
A convulsion beneath them and then the empty canoe was bucking into the air, slapped by the emerging tail like a cricket bat hitting a ball for six.
‘Go back! Go back!’ screamed the Doctor, tugging at Tigus’s shoulders, ‘we must rescue them!’
Another guerrilla, thrashing in the water, his brown face an oval of horror inside his black fur balaclava, threw up his hands and then was gone, snatched below before Tigus even had a chance to answer.
Now he did, and it was not what the Doctor wanted to hear. ‘They dead. We go!’ He urged his oarsmen to work harder, standing up and aiming his rifle back the way they had come, as if its feeble pellets might be able to deter the beast.
‘No!’ cried the Doctor, scrabbling for a rope or something that would enable him to aid Jamie and the others. He could see the Scot bobbing in the water next to Ussman. Drew was making for the Doctor’s canoe with hard strokes, and Santi was just behind him.
The Doctor reached out, seized Drew’s hand. Santi was within feet of reaching the canoe, extending her arm to clutch the edge. Drew was panicking, his feet kicking out as the Doctor pulled him up and half over the side of the canoe. One of his feet clipped Santi sharply on the jaw and she sank beneath the water.
The Doctor paused in his rescue attempt, and leaned over the edge of the canoe frantically searching for the Indoni girl.
‘Hey!’ squawked Drew. ‘Help me! Help me!’
The canoe was already pulling away from the spot where Santi had disappeared. Wina joined the Doctor in peering over, and there was a look of anguish on her pretty face.
Jamie was making fast strokes towards the same spot when Santi’s bug-eyed face broke the surface again, gasping and spitting out muddy water.
‘Go back!’ the Doctor beseeched Tigus, ‘they’ll die if we don’t!’
Tigus wasn’t listening. He could see the wake left by the beast where the top of its flat head broached the surface, moving fast. It was Jamie and Santi bound, and there was no way he was going to risk his canoe for the sake of two hostages. He still had two left, not counting the useless Papul guides. And the Doctor seemed to be the most important of all.
‘Jamie!’ the Doctor bellowed. ‘Look out!’
Horror rooted him. There was absolutely nothing he could do. His dearest friend was thrashing in the water, an arm around Santi’s neck, struggling to make it towards the river bank. And the flat purple head was arrowing towards them.
The Doctor clasped his head in total dismay.
The river bank was ten yards away from Jamie.
The beast was seven.
The beast was six.
Five yards and closing...
Jamie did not look behind him as he continued to swim.
Maybe he wasn’t even aware it was so near.
The reptilian beast’s eyeless head rose slightly to allow its jaws to dear the water, and they were opening...
Chapter Eleven