Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [90]
He stood within the blue box and for a moment he didn’t react.
It was barely larger than a cupboard, equipped with telephone and police-instruction notice. It was a box, and nothing more.
Perhaps it never had been anything more. Perhaps his past, Gallifrey, his travels - everything had been but a dream within a dream. Perhaps there had never been anything more than this box, and his delusions to fill it.
He slumped into a corner and put his head on his knees.
We’re gonna smash it up till there’s NOTHING left! roared Dave Vanian, as Captain sensible’s guitar wailed joyously, Algy Ward’s bass bounced and leapt and Rat Scabies’ drums galloped like a herd of rhinos determined to break free from the tinny speakers Jimmy had set up in the camper van.
Jimmy was grinning madly. Mad? He wasn’t mad. He was livin’
it: for the first time in his life he had a purpose and was pulling out all the stops to achieve it. This was his finest hour, this was Jimmy’s exclamation against the world that had always tried to hold him back, to throw him in the slammer, to tell him no.
Well, now he was shouting back. Yes, yes, YES!! You can’t stop me now! He sang along to The Damned’s tribal anthem, and it was everything he’d ever believed in. Of course it was. He’d never been a creator, had Jimmy. Destroying was much more fun.
Destroying pomposity, vanity, pretension. Bring it all down! Bring it all down!!! There was a devil in him, always had been.
Today it was having its day, that was all.
Mad dog, comin’ down the way.
The camper van tore along the road at more than seventy miles an hour. Jimmy could see the sacred circle of stonehenge on the 215
horizon, lit by moon and stars and surrounded by the green garbed protectors of the Establishment. Encroaching against that barrier, there were the rebels. The outcasts.The outsiders whonever belonged.
Time to change all that, Jimmy thought, and put his foot down even further.
‘It’s only rock ‘n’ roll,’ he sang crazily as the tape ended and the monument loomed larger in his windscreen.
But I like it.
Soldiers. Pigs in different uniforms, that’s all they were.
Withrifles ‘stead of truncheons. Oh well, no problem: here comes the
pig farmer. Run for your lives, boys, it’s porky-arse-kickin’ time.
The camper van took out a gate leading on to the plain without slowing. Splintered wood confettied around the windscreen and Jimmy hollered with glee. The van pounded over the grass, bouncing and lurching as the speedo flickered around fifty-five, sixty. Jimmy tore The Damned tape out of the player, tossed it over his shoulder, rammed The Ruts in. ‘H-Eyes’. Turned it up fullblast.
He was lurching past the parked convoy vehicles now; couldsee the crowd of hippies and punks and losers and outlaws all turning to stare as he howled, accelerator glued to the floor, and the music took him away...
AND THE BAND PLAYED FAST, PLAYED FASTER...
And now he was past the travellers and hurtling towards the ancient stone circle, towards the cordon of soldiers ringed around it, some of whom were unshouldering their rifles, taking tentative aim at Jimmy as he sat in the driver’s seat and screamed his reb yell and his soul took flight and this was the most glorious moment of his life and Malcolm Owen was screaming back a him:
‘You’re so young, you take smack for fun; it’s gonna screw, your head, you’re gonna wind up dead!’ and he aimed the purple camper van at a trilithon directly in front of him, the soldiers in his way forgetting about shooting and throwing themselves aside as Jimmy howled ‘How’s this for anarchy and
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chaos you bastards!’ and Jimmy...
Jimmy...
Jimmy drove the camper van at sixty miles an hour into a huge sarsen and the world went red, white and...
Black.
The camper van erupted into a mushroom of flame as it steamrollered into the ancient standing stone, slamming it over on to its back. The UNIT troopers hugged the grass and a great roar went up from the crowd of travellers as they saw what Jimmy had done, and that