Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [49]
There was something there.
Something staggering through the trees behind her, mimicking her flight. Then she crashed into something solid, the impact tumbling her on to the sharp edges of the stones. Her arms at all the wrong angles to protect her from the ground, her head still twisted back.
She couldn’t believe she screamed.
‘Anji! Are you all right?’
Hands were turning her over, patting her arms to get her shape. She was relieved to realise they were in woollen gloves. Eleana was holding her under her shoulder now. ‘Can you stand? What is it?’
Then Anji sensed Eleana realising it too. The cold air harsh with the sounds of their breathing. And nothing else. No birdsong. No rustling in the undergrowth. No distant pop-pop‐pop of a gun. Pushing herself up with her elbows, taking the offered hand of her friend, Anji could feel their shared apprehension. She had thought – what little of her had been thinking – that catching up with Eleana would remove the irrational dread but now they were both afraid. Her fear had infected them both.
Looking beyond the anarchist’s shoulder, Anji saw something. Flickering, glowing, not quite flowing. Like a video playing frame by frame. She could see faint outlines by its light now, see Eleana’s head turning to look at what she herself was staring at.
‘Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look,’ she started chanting but too quiet, too slow. Eleana looked.
* * *
He glanced at his watch. 4 p.m. According to the Doctor’s instructions, it was almost time. Looking down into the town, he could just glimpse the busy central square, the antlike swarms of people gathered there.
The central church bell started to clamour.
There was the distant buzz of a plane, passing high overhead, the sound fading in and out as the breeze gusted across the wide valley. Staring up into the wispy clouds, Fitz glimpsed a dark shape, banking north of the town. Sasha joined him on the slope, handing over a pair of binoculars he had dug out from the supplies in the truck, pointing. Fitz eventually spotted the plane and got a clear view of its outline.
‘Heinkel, a one-eleven, I think. Scouting?’
‘Probably. The main retreat will be over the bridge at Rentería and up this road.’
The droning engine faded as the plane banked away towards the east. Maybe the Doctor had got the time wrong? Fitz looked back into the town square, taking the chance to use the binoculars. As he swung about randomly, trying to find something to focus on, he noticed townspeople re-emerging from the buildings. He grinned and focused on a young woman leaning out of an upper storey window, dragging her clothes in before they got smoky and unknowingly giving him a perfect view down her camisole top. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad mission after all.
Then he recognised the drumming background sound for what it was: bombers. He hadn’t spent all those years listening for the aero-engines, stuck in a Anderson that his mother was sure was not deep enough to protect them, without learning to recognise the heavier drone of bomb-laden planes.
Looking back into the sky, it took Fitz a moment to spot the planes, flying along the valley in single line formation instead of the wide V of a bombing wing. They were already starting to drop neatly down one after another. The first bombs exploded short of the Rentería bridge, sending up roiling clouds of smoke and fire. Some hit the river itself, the water pluming high. A moment later, the whine of the falling bombs and the dull crump of the explosions reached them on the hillside. The wind was blowing inland now, sending the sound their way and the airborne debris towards the town, obscuring the bridge completely.
Fitz hurriedly refocused on the unshuttered window but the girl had vanished. He passed the glasses back to Sasha and hunched himself into his coat, tucking his hands up inside