Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [92]
Two troopers helped him up, their faces shocked and scared.
Yates gazed at them blankly while the world slowly settled into place once more. He wondered distractedly why UNIT was recruiting such pale-faced, callow boys into the task force, but then remembered he’d been one once himself. He was sure that, in the Brigadier’s eyes, he still was. Then shock and absurd ruminations drained away and he was the trained man of action again as he shook himself free of the well-intentioned soldiers and unholstered his revolver.
‘Right! Follow me!’
Action.At last.
He led the five troopers along the path that led from the car park, alongside the silent school and towards the field of stones.
Through the gaps in the cedars that fringed the path he could see the mob surging around the mummer band again, and the music was still pumping out into the night air.
Yates could feel it peeling layers of sanity from inside his skull as he ran - or was that just his natural horror at everything he had witnessed today. The five soldiers jogging alongside him were silent, rifles cradled tightly, their boots crunching reassuringly on the gravel of the path.
They reached the stile and Yates didn’t hesitate to vault over it, landing amongst the daisies in a defensive stance, revolver 219
levelled. He was scanning the crowd for Jo, but the medley of heaving bodies was so confused he couldn’t pick her out. He waited for the others to clear the stile, then set off at a jog towards the crowd, bearing slightly to the right so as to skirt the mob and lead the troopers around to confront the band. He was going to pull the plug on those bastards and it was going to be the most satisfying thing he ever did in his life.
Kane had been watching the proceedings from the edge of the field for some time. He saw the policemen torn apart with abstract amazement. He listened to the band playing and the amazement, the fear, the madness began to level out. He felt a calm steal over him, and he knew peace of mind for the first timein...
For the first time in years.
He gazed at the mummer standing next to the blonde woman, and all his paranoia, all his self-doubt vanished. When you’ve pissed and puked your way to the bottom of the pile, there’s really nowhere left to go, no stone left which hasn’t already been lifted and crawled under. Debauchery had betrayed him. It was never as good as it sounded. He had watched people first laugh with him, then laugh at him, then no longer laugh at all. He had been watching himself die without realising it. Now he stood beside a puddle of gore from a ruptured bobby and listened to the music call, and felt suddenly clean. The mummer had seen him, and beckoned him to join him near the big standing-stone behind theband.
Kane began trudging through the field to answer the summons.
He ignored the soldiers who leapt over the stile a few hundred yards behind him. His eyes were fixed on the mummer, and for the first time in front of his fellow villagers he could hold his head up high. They parted to let him pass, and there was respect and awe on their faces.
Kane was no longer a bum.
There was the towering barman from his local, the Falcon, 220
extending a warm hand of friendship. Kane took it, a smug grin on his face. The vicar whose font he’d spat in the other day, here he was now, his dog collar spattered with blood and patting Kane on the back. Ha! My old friend the librarian - don’t we go back a long way! Give me a hug you old trout! So many faces that had always despised him, now stepping forward to claim some acquaintanceship with him. And Kane lapping it up as he strode through the crowd, heading for the mummer, jeans crusty with urine, stubbled and wild-eyed, hair dishevelled; he was the sorriest sight you ever saw, and yet tonight he was the big man, apparently. Kane didn’t stop to wonder why, he just let it come.
Right at the front of the crowd... Cassandra: gorgeous, always aloof, now gazing at him with a lascivious glint in her eye, her cheekbones exquisitely hewn, hair a dark, shining