Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [83]
‘You can fight, yes?’
‘Er...’
‘Bueno. Bueno. We need two more for the roof of the theatre.’
Fitz had looked at the man. Joaquín, he had noticed, was all pleasant smiles and firm grips. Earlier in the night though, there had been a commotion, some kind of brawl at the main doors, and Joaquín had been down among it in moments, his face like granite. Not a man to annoy.
So he had let himself be led in a dash across a sidestreet, ducking low to keep behind the still-rising barricade. Up tiny narrow steps, spiralling up inside the façade of a building. The roof was gently sloping, with a slightly raised wall at the edge. At the corners of the façade rose fake bell towers, the fronts adorned with sculpture. In each tower, a man sat crouched down into heavy layers of clothing. Their Mauser rifles propped through the narrow openings of the tower, pointing roughly towards the street below. Along the façade, a small group of men crouched or leant against the roof behind them. Seeing them arrive, the men moved slowly, carefully back from their positions. Joaquín had grabbed a gun from one of them. ‘We have no more weapons, comrade, you must leave this here.’
Then he had slapped the gun into Fitz’s unwilling hands.
He sighed, settled himself down in the tiny space. He hoped the Doctor and Anji were safer at the Hotel.
* * *
Her head was pounding. The mild nagging ache of the past few months had exploded as the streets had done, and now Eleana’s head was louder than the guns.
She’d been at her desk, writing up something or other – she couldn’t even recall what – when there was a yell that the phones were down. Almost simultaneously there had been crashes and gunfire from outside. Some of the windows of La Batalla’s main office smashed inwards. Not by bullets but by cobbles, hurled from outside. Then people were running, clamouring through the building. Some dived into the well of their desks, hoping to be protected. Eleana grabbed her rifle and was running for the door, trying to take in all the different yelling voices, the confusing demands.
La Batalla was under attack. Not the sort of press war that they had been engaged in, with sniping from editorial positions, but actual physical attack. In a way, she preferred it. All the complexities shorn away. Fight or don’t. She would fight. She would always fight. In the street, a lorryload of Asaltos were rushing at the offices. Their truck was skewed across the cobbles, giving them cover. From the first floor windows, a hail of bullets riddled it.
Over the course of the night, the assault had been pushed back. At one point, someone managed to set fire to the truck’s canvas sides and it had been abandoned as cover. The orange flames had sent black coils of smoke into the night sky, hidden much of the street from view. Eleana had stayed at a position by a ground floor window, her rifle poking through the shutters. She’d almost dozed at times, her aching head letting her ignore the outbursts of fire from outside. As dawn broke, they’d realised the attackers had retreated to the end of the street and set up a new position in a shop that commanded a view of the T-junction.
The staff of La Batalla who had fought before emerged slowly, using the shell of the truck for cover. Quickly, efficiently, they had started to build a barricade. Tossing the cobbles along a chain of men. With a covered way to the next building now rising, Eleana had decided to make her way to Las Rambles and find out what was going on. Maybe find somewhere with some medicine for her headache.
In the morning light, dashing from cover to cover, knowing almost instinctively which buildings would be possessed by which faction, she had made her way through the Barri Gótic. The previous