Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [101]
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Travellers and villagers alike stared as one at the frilly man who dared.
Who dared.
‘Ragman…’ the Doctor said.
It was hand-to-hand combat now.The filth and the fury. And which was which, and who was who? Throats were torn out, eyes gouged. Corporal Hannah Robinson snapped the neck of a hippie from behind, leapt over his body and on to the next. She could see Benton wrestling with a green-haired good-for-nothing, a savage grin plastered on his face. Behind her she could hear the roars of the Brigadier in full, demented battle cry.
‘Take them all down!! By the gods, terminate the bloody lot of
‘em!!’
She laughed like a berserker as she ran for a fat-bellied oaf in a straining Hawkwind T-shirt. Wanna Silver Machine, freak?’ she spat, pulling her broad-bladed army knife from its belt and slamming it home through the gap-toothed bastard’s neck:Take a ride on that beauty!’
This was sheer heaven. Or if it was hell, then her sunday school teacher had got it badly wrong all those years ago.
Hell was a good-time place. she only regretted it had taken her so long to get here.
‘What can you do, frilly man? The Beasts of Anarchy have already escaped’
The mummer gestured at the hills surrounding the village and the field of stones. Huge, vague shapes capered and frolicked darkly against the slightly paler night skies. Ferocious howls reached the field faintly, and, just audible over the chaos, an insane, echoing piping, picking up where the band had finished off.
‘More illusions and falsehoods?’ the Doctor asked, stepping through the crowd that parted willingly enough. He felt the fierce, primal energy pulsing from the ley lines beneath his feet 239
and concentrated in the lodestone behind the mummer; reeled from the resulting vibe of utter antipathy that sparked from the people.
‘It’s what they want to see; it’s what they expect. Anarchy must have a form, Time Lord, even if it exists only in their heads.’ The crowd was silent, still gazing blankly at the Doctor. He saw Jo as he passed, and put out a hand to touch her cheek. She flung it away from him and he moved on, approaching the gaily clothed mummer.
The band waited for further instruction, their instruments drooping. The Doctor paused before the singer, then abruptly plucked the wraparound sunglasses from the shaggy head.
Maggots frothed from empty sockets, ghostly pale in the moonlight. The Doctor replaced the shades and walked past Charmagne, past Kane.
He reached the mummer. The piping continued, becoming louder as the cavorting creatures thundered down from the hills, prancing and dancing over the ruins of London as they came.
‘Civilisation’s end.’ the mummer said.
‘Reality-wound, to be exact.’ the Doctor answered matter of factly. ‘Bleeding from the open doors of your little perceptual vortex over there.’
‘Vain one, I could pluck your spine through your velvet trappings and fling it to the crowd,’ the mummer said, relishing his own words.
‘You could.’ replied the Doctor bravely. ‘So why haven’t you done so?’
‘Perhaps I enjoy the theatricality of duelling with you, egotistical one. I trust your Time Lord friends called for you across the gulf of space, and rescued you from your mental wanderings? Be they frightened of what I shall bring to their homeworld in time? ‘Tis well they are afraid. But first, there is you. Why have I not squashed you as yet? Perhaps I like to play fair.You are alone: slaughtering you alone would not be fair. Someone will be along to help you soon.’
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The Doctor turned his head briefly. He could see Yates staggering painfully across the field. He put up a hand to warn the captain away and the UNIT man paused.
‘You want fairness, do you, Ragman? How can that be, when you’re everything that’s foul? Let’s see you as you really are: drop the pretension that you claim to detest so much. Let your children see their real father.’
‘You be wise, despite your appearance, frivolous one.You have guessed the nature of my seed