Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [108]
A plane passed over head, his eyes tracking it across the sky. Explosions started close to the station. Even as he let his eyes fall, he saw the Absolute dart away, down towards the market square. The creature roared and moved after him.
‘He just never stays still, does he?’ the Doctor said as they set off after him. He glanced at his watch as they ran down the slope, through empty streets. Five minutes since the first plane. They didn’t have long. Down in the market square, Enrique was glancing at all the different exit routes, deciding which path to take. Someone emerged from a shelter, saw the creature and screamed, bundling back down the steps.
Four Heinkels roared overhead, their bomb bays open. The high explosives smashed into the buildings, sending up a roar of flame. Faint screams could be heard above the sudden noise, as the people who had ventured into the street after the first wave were caught in the flying debris and shattering glass. Clouds of smoke roiled along the streets. The Doctor glimpsed Enrique and ran after him, into the chaos of the central square. A horse screamed, caught in burning stables, then jerked sideways and fell into the flames.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ the Absolute screamed. ‘You promised me an escape!’
‘I promised you a way out, Enrique. A way out of your insanity. Look at this place!’
There was the deeper thrum of the huge Junkers now, flying low over the town. The Doctor was yelling, but could barely hear his own voice. He had lost sight of the creature in the smoke and dust. ‘You changed this, made people believe a version that suited your causal linear history more. Look about you, Enrique, you’re denying all this happened, denying these deaths any meaning.’
There was a roar, a wall of heat, as a building gave way, its front crumbling like icing, sliding downwards and across the street. The noise was reaching higher and higher, a wall of screams and prayers. The Doctor dodged to one side as a bullock lumbered past, wall-eyed, its trailing rope harness on fire. There was the crackle and pop as incendiaries began to rain down, exploding like firecrackers in the streets and buildings. Another building tumbled, its rubble blocking the entrance to a refugi. The fire was building its own walls now, impenetrable walls of heat. From somewhere there was the rat-tat‐tat of machine gun fire.
The central square was red now, glowing. The Doctor could make out shapes in the fire, dark blobs of people. Enrique stood amongst it all, clear against the blood-red fire, unbuffeted by the waves of heat blasting through the square. The Doctor edged towards him.
‘Don’t you see? You removed the debate, didn’t let people make up their own minds. You suggested this doesn’t matter, but it does. You can’t alter the world this way. You don’t have the right!’
There was a roar within the flames and the creature flung itself out, grabbing both the Doctor and Enrique, tackling them to the ground. The air displaced, the whine of a falling bomb. Right above them. The Doctor stared up, as he felt the two parts of the Absolute meld and contort. At least Fitz had survived the trip to Salamanca. He had no idea how he was going to escape the firestorm.
‘Don’t you get it?’ he laughed as he felt the tug of the System on him, and the heated air blasting past, ‘I’m restoring anarchy to history!’
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
La Darrera Banda De La Ciutat
Anji flinched backwards but the physical blow never came. She was smarting though. Burton or Blair or whatever he was really called was just standing in front of her, staring at her. She stood up, furious. It didn’t matter what they did, she realised, she was going