Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [101]
Ahead of them Justine was struggling with Artie but when she saw the fireball bouncing towards them she stopped resisting. Together with Artie she ran back and helped half drag, half carry Vincent over a low wall running beside the street. The girl and the three IDEA men tumbled after him, just as the fireball swept past, brushing a metal traffic sign and leaving it sagging from its pole like a sheet of melted toffee.
The fireball rebounded and hit the opposite side of Orange Street. Inside the shop called Siegi’s the fat man and the two thin men were still standing in the window, staring, when the fireball hit. The glass parted, splashing like water, liquified in the fantastic heat of the fireball. The three men inside the shop ignited like origami dolls made of cigarette paper. Feeding on their mass the fireball swelled and imploded, destroying the whole shop as a huge belch of flame floated scorched comics out into the air like big, black‐winged birds. Then the fireball burst back into the street, swollen and blazing, rolling back the way it had come.
Back towards the cathedral. Creed and the others picked Vincent up and headed for the van. There was nothing they could do to stop it, and it seemed obscene to stay and watch. Not to mention dangerous.
Creed later learned what happened the way most people did, watching newscasts taken by helicopter and satellite, showing the smoking crater where the great cathedral had been. Commentators compared the disaster to Chernobyl. The official explanation held that a freak weather effect had created ball lightning which somehow detonated a pocket of gas in the city’s ancient sewer system. No one believed the official explanation. Everyone had their own guesses. The reporter for the Fortean Times probably came nearest the truth. He also got the best photograph, the one of the naked children running, clothes blown off by the blast, with the mushroom cloud of smoke and dust and pulverized antique masonry rising behind them.
Creed saw that mushroom cloud. He watched it dwindling in the rear‐view mirror as they sped away from Canterbury in the black IDEA van. The girl, Justine, was sobbing. She was wearing the handcuffs which had been on her husband. He didn’t need them any more. He was now heavily anaesthetized and wired up to a life‐support stretcher. Webster had done the connections wearing thick plastic gloves.
Webster kept trying to explain about Vincent, about the files he’d discovered in the computer at the King Building. He had read all about the power Vincent had. Webster kept saying they had to be careful and Creed didn’t have any trouble believing him after what they’d seen in Canterbury.
But Creed was pretty sure that Vincent was harmless now. A spent force. After all, he and Webster had both touched the guy when they first picked him up and carried him.
Creed didn’t point this out. He thought Webster might freak out when he realized what could have happened. Creed didn’t want Webster freaking out. He had two team members dead and they’d kidnapped a civilian and the guy’s wife wouldn’t stop crying and now God only knew how many other people were dead back there in Canterbury. Creed didn’t want any more problems. He pushed down the accelerator and aimed the van towards the vanishing point on the motorway. He just wanted to get to Thanet airport and get the hell out of this country. To get back home and try to find some pieces of his life that didn’t seem ruined.
Creed glanced into the rear‐view mirror. He could see Justine crying and Artie’s worried face under his black baseball cap and, behind both of them, the rising pillar of smoke that marked the spot where Canterbury Cathedral had once stood.
* * *
Chapter 23
Dieter reflected how strange it was that vast changes in someone’s life could be signalled by the sight of some tiny thing. A note left on a table announces the