Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias - Mark Michalowski [91]
He remembered dearly how UNIT had surrounded the warehouse, shot out the windows and had to kill one of the Ogrons before the others had been captured. He remembered crouching in the Brummie drizzle, watching the other lads as they passed around a ciggie – studiously avoiding giving it to ‘old Arseworth’ – and made comments about the birds they’d picked up in town the night before. He remembered having to force himself not to simply stand up, put down his gun, walk back to the truck and ask to be relieved of duty. He remembered being at the front of the team with Andy as they’d gone rushing in, smashing down the doors and racing across the vast expanse of concrete, the sound of booted feet on broken glass, orders barked in whispers. Only briefly, as he’d squatted down behind some sheets of corrugated iron, had he wondered if he were about to be picked off by some alien weapon; and if his brief, wasted life were to end there. But the Ogrons had been surprised, and only managed to let off three or four harmless shots before they were overpowered and dragged, grunting, off to the truck.
A ricochet from one of the other UNIT lads’ guns had left him with a small – but bloody – bullet graze to the top of his head, and Bennington had insisted that he’d got it seen to.
One small moment of kindness in three years.
He glanced at Ace, who seemed to be avoiding him, making small talk with Scar-face at the bar. He caught her eye, but she looked away quickly, almost disdainfully. Even as he thought about it, he felt angry: Ace was a nice kid, but what right had a kid to be telling him how he should be running his life? She didn’t know what his life had been like; she hadn’t had her head forced down army toilets as part of an ‘initiation’; she hadn’t had the mickey taken out of her when all the others pretended they’d been replaced by alien bodysnatchers, advancing on her in the darkness of the dorm, arms outstretched.
He remembered Sergeant Callow telling him that it was ‘just youthful high spirits’ and that they didn’t mean anything by it.
What had really hurt was that Callow had told him that his dad had probably gone through the same thing when he joined UNIT. Somehow Michael found that difficult to believe: the Great General Ashworth with a mouthful of piss. It would have been funny if it hadn’t made him want to cry. And some of them did cry.
And he remembered Andy, fresh in from the regular army just a couple of days after him. Michael had heard him screaming in the middle of the night, and had discovered him huddled in the corner of the room: in his bed was a shrivelled alien hand with three stubby fingers.
Michael put down his empty glass, watching a thin trickle of foam dribble back down the inside, and decided that there was nothing he could do here. He felt stifled and excluded and unwanted, and had the rest of his brandy and something half-decent to smoke back at his tent.
Suddenly, one of the windows of The Two Foxes shattered with a whumpf of compressed air and a spray of powdered glass; tiny, sparkling motes drifted languidly down like snowflakes.
Douglas dropped the pint he was halfway through pouring for Ace, startling Michael for a second time.
‘Get behind the bar!’ yelled Ace, pushing a table up against the heavy oak front door. ‘Everyone!’
She seemed like she was everywhere at once – authoritative, knowledgeable, in control. For a moment, he hated her. Really hated her.
But he didn’t need telling twice, and almost collided with Douglas as he ducked behind the bar. Birmingham all over again.
Ace raced around to join them, pushing Scar-face ahead of her, as another window blew in. Eddie stared round, frightened and confused, as Ace called to him to get behind the bar with the rest of them. He complied silently.
Michael watched her as she looked back at the Doctor, propped like a broken toy in the