Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [103]
Charmagne thrust him aside with one hand. The roadie spilled at the Ragman’s feet like a toy flung away by an impatient child.
She grinned in her rage, feeling the newly acquired alien strength garnered from the lodestone. She swung the pitchfork up and rammed the tines through the alien’s grey neck in one agile movement.
The crowd moaned.
Trickles of dust sprang from the wounds as Charmagne withdrew the pitchfork. The Ragman backed away a step, teetering slightly as he felt the pull from the stone behind him.
His mouth worked vilely, and again he beckoned. This time a young woman stepped forward from the crowd and wordlessly approached Charmagne. The Doctor recognised her immediately.
Sin.
The Chinese girl stood in front of the Ragman, facing Charmagne defensively. The Doctor opened his mouth to call out to Nick’s erstwhile lover - but the name froze on his lips because it was already too late.
Charmagne hardly noticed this new barrier to her fury. The pitchfork went back, then forward with brute, alien-spawned power. The long tines passed easily through Sin’s chest, impaling her against the Ragman. Blood mingled with the dust pooling at their feet.
Sin’s eyes opened wide. Wider. Her hands flew up to grasp the pitchfork sunk deep inside her. Now her eyes were filled not so 243
much with pain, but with realisation, and loss, and the horror of true regret. Her mouth opened. Blood blossomed from her perfect, sensuous lips. Her head swung painfully to one side as she searched for something... someone. Maybe she found what she was looking for. Maybe she didn’t.
She said one word, so quiet, surely no one could hear it. She said: ‘Nick...’ And then she died.
From the crowd a scream.Jo’s.
The Ragman backed away one more step. Sin’s body slumped to the grass.
Charmagne stared, without understanding, at what she had done.
Then the night lit up and the air screamed.
Yates had arrived.
His aim was not good, however, due to the impedimental effect of his wound and the grenade that was destined for the Ragman only reached as’ far as the band, still waiting immobile and silent.
After the blast, the singer and the bass player picked themselves up as if they’d been hit with pillows rather than highly concentrated explosives. The bassist had lost his shades upon the impact, and one arm. He didn’t look too bothered, but then he had no eyes to express much emotion. His instrument lay at his feet. Yates collapsed on the grass, near-unconscious from pain.
The crowd was stirring. Bewildered cries arose. Faces were shocked and afraid. The roadies stumbled towards the band as if waking from a dream, not knowing what should come next. One of them seized the guitarist, shook him slightly. The Ragman laughed gutturally, dismissively. Immediately, the guitarist wilted and the roadie was holding an empty minstrel sleeve. Beneath the pile of deflated mummer clothes, filling the leather boots - dust, and nothing more. Dust and shades. The guitar stuck up out of the dust dune like a flag. Behind it, the drums bore drifts of grey particles, the stool supported tatters and nothing more. The bass player was gone, drifting in the night breeze, not even bones to mark his fall. The singer remained. He tottered forward, seized the
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roadie by the neck, barked with mad laughter, and tore his throat apart as effortlessly as if he was ripping open a crisp packet.
‘Join the Unwashed,’ he croaked, ‘Join the Unforgiving...’ His shades tumbled from his eye sockets as his face fell inwards.
Then he was boots, codpiece and a heap of dust on the grass.
Dust and no more.
The Doctor witnessed the scene without making any moves. If he was surprised by the Ragman’s callous dismissal of his resurrected punk mummers, he didn’t show it. If the act was one of defiant perverse bravado, it didn’t impress him. Nor did it seem to impress the crowd. A shout went up from a punk:
‘Freak!’
Others rallied to the war cry until it became