Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [73]
‘Good,’ said Creed. ‘Good dogs. Keep coming. Give me a clean line of fire.’
The sound of his own voice reminded him that he had to send a transmission to Roz and Redmond. They needed to be notified of this development.
But Creed would never send that message.
Because he was reaching for the microphone when he looked up at the screen again and saw the woman.
Chapter 25
Ricky left Pangbourne’s office and stepped into the corridor.
He was making his way towards the lunchroom when he realized that, for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing that a visit to the principal’s office could have lasted longer.
For some reason, this thought made him think of Creed.
Ever since the confrontation in the kitchen on Saturday night he’d been trying to tell himself that he didn’t have a father; that he had no idea who his real father was.
But the truth was that he still thought of Creed as his father. And no matter how hard he tried to sustain his feeling of rage and grievance, he couldn’t even remember what their argument had been about. He just knew that his father was gone, supposedly on business, and his mother was miserable.
He remembered driving out to the Agency office on Sunday morning, his mother frantically packing them into the station-wagon so they could rush out to say goodbye to his dad before he left. Racing at a breakneck speed that had Ricky and his sisters uniquely silent in the back seat, as Justine sped along the long looping curves of the road through Gaines Woods.
And they still arrived too late, just in time to see the helicopter containing Creed disappear into the bright approaching cloud-front of the new day. Ricky remembered how he’d refused to get out of the car and wave goodbye.
Now he felt that he’d behaved like a sulky little prick. He wished he’d waved goodbye to his father. To Creed.
Whatever you wanted to call him.
His ‘real’ father was supposed to be his genetic father.
Some guy he’d never even met.
To hell with that, his real father was Creed.
Ricky was absorbed in these thoughts as he stepped into the warmth and food-smell of the lunchroom. The big room was full of the clamour of kids eating. Trays and cutlery crashed like percussion above the steady rumble of conversation, boy-laughter and girl-laughter rising from one table or another.
Ricky found a table where he could sit with a couple of kids from his maths class: Tommy Barretta and Phil Mendick.
Neither of them were total geeks — the school geeks were established at a table nearby — but both were outsider-types, which was pretty much the way Ricky classified himself.
Tommy Barretta was an outsider because of the flaming acne that pockmarked what would otherwise have been a handsome and square-jawed face. Phil was ostracized purely on the basis of his last name. Ricky wondered what the hell kind of parents would send their kid to school with a name like Mendick. It virtually begged for penis and homosexuality jokes. Of course, maybe his parents were proud of the old family name and refused to change it just to silence the mockery of a stupid bunch of kids. But it was a shame that Phil had to suffer due to his parents’ pride. And even Ricky thought it was a stupid-sounding name and could only be improved by being changed to virtually anything else.
Just thinking about it now made Ricky feel enraged on Phil’s behalf. Phil was a pretty good athlete, but no amount of prowess in the gym or on the playing field would ever outweigh the stigma of those snickers every time the coach yelled out ‘Mendick!’ during Phys Ed. How could Phil’s parents be so insensitive? To Ricky it was just one further example of the gulf of incomprehension between parents and their children. Nothing could get across that gulf.
After grabbing a chair with Phil and Tommy, and leaving his books on the table to save his place, he selected a tray and headed to join the line