Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [105]
Jo lifted her head away from the Doctor’s frilly chest, and her eyes fell first of all upon Sin’s body, and then upon Nick’s hunched against a standing stone as if waiting for the sun.
‘What have we done?’ she thumped the Doctor’s chest ineffectually. ‘How did it come to this?’
The Doctor stroked her head but said nothing. There wasn’t an awful lot he could say.
A grey, dismal dawn found Brigadier AlaistairLethbridge-Stewart striding through the battlefield that was Stonehenge. Probably for the first time in his life, he was wondering why he had become a soldier.
Bodies were strewn everywhere. Between the bluestones, on top of each other, draped over UNIT jeeps.
Everywhere.
UNIT troopers, hippies, punks - the numbers of the dead were 247
roughly equal on both sides. The living staggered away from the site of so much hate and fury, eyes locked and strange.
Dazed and confused.
The Brigadier paused in the centre of the ancient monument, surveying the carnage. At his feet lay Corporal Hannah Robinson, eyes wide and scared, mouth frozen in a hate rictus. Her hands were fastened tightly around the throat of the chief roadie, whose hands in turn were clasped around a knife buried deep in the corporal’s chest. The Brigadier heard a scuffle of boots and glanced up.
Benton stood dishevelled and bleary beside him. The Brigadier found he could not meet his sergeant’s eyes, and dropped his glance. Another first. Benton stumbled away, his right sleeve ripped and soaked with blood.
The lawless survivors - hippies and punks, Rastas, bikers, outlaws and outsiders - staggered away from the stone circle, and towards an uncertain future.
Cassandra found herself unable to leave the standing stone. Her right hand played softly over its uneven surface, as if trying to trace an outline. An outline of a face.
‘He’s still there,’ she said to nobody. ‘I can see him.’
Jo was bandaging Captain Yates’s shoulder, but paused to look up. She wondered who the strange dark-haired beauty was, and what she thought she could see in the lodestone. It was just a rock.
Nothing to see.
‘He was so full of hate,’ Cassandra said, stroking the rock more passionately.
‘The summer of hate’s all over now.’
Cassandra turned, tears tracking down her cheeks. The Doctorsmiled kindly at her, then addressed the travellers who were still milling around the field, shocked and horrified and above all very, very confused.
‘You can all go home now,’ he said.
248
The travellers stared stupidly back at him.
The Doctor rubbed his chin, realising what he had just said. Jo joined him, putting an arm around his waist, seeking comfort in her loneliness. He smiled sadly at her...
‘I know exactly how they feel,’ he said.
Overhead, storm clouds were gathering blackly. The first few drops were already beginning to fall.
On the distant hillside, the white horse waited patiently for the rain.
249
Acknowledgements
To Mum and Dad for putting up with me when I was bad, for NOT
disowning me when I was 12, and for everything really. It can’t be fun to pick up your son from a police cell,Dad, but you were great about it. But am I still good for nothing, Mum? Two books out doesn’t change that, surely? Lazy Bones sitting in the sun...
To Tash: Sorry. For everything. But your mum always said I was no good. Thanks for standing by me.
To Justin Richards for his incredible enthusiasm and great suggestions.
To Aleanna Mason for the brilliant cover design inspiration.
To Johnny R for the attitude, and to Sidney for showing me the mayhem.
To the Anti-Nowhere League for being an uncontrollable Beast of a band, and for giving me beer when I was young and alone.
Jesus giving water to Ben Hur ...? Okay, perhaps not.
To the Damned, of course, for 20 years of anarchy, chaos and destruction, and for finally writing new songs.
To syd for showing me how to Flame, and for taking me on Interstellar Overdrive too many times. Come back, come back...
To the real Dead Boys: Sid (again),