Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [86]
Victoria’s scream was lost under the crack of rifle shots.
Three soldiers fell, two more staggered under the impact of arrows, joined their colleagues in the grass. The rest whirled, firing their pulse rifles in the perceived direction of the attack.
Trees flashed into flame, but still the arrows and bullets came.
Another soldier fell against Victoria, sliding down her body, his arms embracing her, an arrow shaft jutting from his right eye. She shook him off and ran for the far side of the clearing, followed by three surviving soldiers.
A man came out of the undergrowth to meet her. He was white, dressed in combat fatigues with a sleeveless jerkin. He clutched an old-fashioned rifle in one hand, aimed it almost lazily, picked off one of the soldiers behind Victoria, while he held out his other hand to welcome her. An arrow streamed across the clearing from the far side to drop another soldier, and that left one. He fired his pulse rifle at the white man, who didn’t even try to dodge. The pulse went wide, igniting a palm behind him. The man smiled and loosed off a shot which caught the Indoni soldier in the chest, digging up a rose of blood and propelling him back into the grass.
Victoria stopped running, unsure what to do, but deciding it was probably time to stop screaming too.
More white men were emerging from both sides of the glade. They’d obviously been hidden securely enough in the jungle to avoid the erratic firing of the Indoni soldiers. They were a bizarre-looking group. One all in black, carrying a bow, with a shaven head and piercing eyes; another fat and sweaty with a bullet belt over his shoulder and a chainsaw strapped to his waist. He was also equipped with a bow and sheath of arrows and Victoria’s gaze was drawn inexorably to his left eye lodged horrifically halfway down his cheek.
Behind him came a man dressed in leather and white lace with long luxurious dark hair and eye make-up. He bowed mockingly at Victoria as he ejected spent shells from his ancient-looking rifle. The man who had appeared first clapped her arm heartily. He was tall with saturnine features and the most evil eyes Victoria had ever seen. He smiled, and it was the uneven yellow-toothed smile of a wolf. Next to him, two more: a good-looking man with raw cheekbones, slicked-back hair, a cigarette tucked behind one ear and a rifle tilted on his shoulder, and lastly an untidy-looking psychotic with long straggly hair and lost eyes, plucking absently at the string of his bow as if eager to use it again.
‘Welcome to your nightmare,’ the saturnine man said.
Some of the others laughed. The fat bearded man looked at her intently and began rubbing his crotch.
She had fallen into bad company.
The river journey was over.
The canoe was gliding across the surface of an extensive lagoon, the sun hot upon the tops of the travellers’ heads. It was like no lagoon the Doctor had seen before, and he paused in his rowing, fascinated. The water was tinged with purple, and now and again volcanic burps broke the surface, and wisps of steam rose lazily above the lake. But the most striking thing about the swamp was the silence. There were no birds; the twisted trees around the shore were empty of jungle wildlife. The lagoon itself was studded with black flowers seemingly floating like lilies upon the water. The Doctor prodded one of them with his oar, and lifting it slightly, uncovered a clump of purple fungus connected to the flower, membranous and buoyant. It resembled a pickled human brain, and was certainly the same growth the Doctor had already encountered, a piece of which had been lodged on the spinal column of the mummified chieftain in Akima.
‘Curious,’ he said aloud, narrowing his eyes mysteriously as he turned the growth over on his oar to examine it more thoroughly. A bulbous-headed fish broke water beside his oar, watched him malevolently with its one eye and proceeded to clatter its teeth around the wooden oar, as if hoping it was edible. The Doctor shook it free with a cry and the fungus fell away too. He sat back hastily,