Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [35]
'That's her,' she snapped, jabbing one black-nailed finger at me. 'The little bitch who gate-crashed the party. I thought you dealt with her.'
One of the masked men muttered to her, but she flapped him away furiously. Mathilda put on a fake smile for the benefit of the crowd. It was all street theatre; however I reacted, there would be no response. Her thugs started to circle, ready to grab me. I could see they were all on edge, afraid I would do something to ruin their carefully laid plan. Then, as I backed away, I noticed the bag filled with Blue Moonbeams and decided to do something stupid.
Lunging forward, I snatched the bag from loose fingers and then forced my way back into the crowd. Mathilda screamed like I'd stabbed her in the belly.
Her monkeys came after me, but I was smaller and wirier. I weaved through the bodies while Mathilda's men stumbled and got caught up. I fell straight into the Doctor, almost knocking him over in my panic. He noticed the bag of tabs instantly.
'Come on, quickly, we must hide.'
He pulled me behind a group who had stripped off their clothes and were dancing naked, painting each other's bodies with flowers. We sprawled on the ground, watching the masked men searching futilely. Eventually they gave up and returned to Mathilda. Her face was a picture of fury and soon after they moved away, clearly leaving the event.
The Doctor gripped my forearm enthusiastically. 'Well done, Summer!'
'They've already given a few out,' I said. 'How long do you think we've got?'
'There's not much we can do here –'
'But we have to do something!'
'And we will,' he said calmly. 'But not here. I now know the source of all this, Summer, and we must finally face up to what lies behind it.'
The music floated over Golden Gate Park and out into the world as we scrambled out of the crowd just in time to see Mathilda and her cronies clambering into a long black limo with smoked windows.
Ben and Polly were waiting nearby with Stimson. He was sitting crosslegged on the bonnet of a beat-up, rust-stained car, his cigarette holder sticking out jauntily. He gave a theatrical wave when he saw me.
'Ben and Polly found our good friend Jack in the journalists' pen,' the Doctor said as an aside, 'and convinced him to give us a ride.'
'Are you going to explain that last thing we saw, Doctor?' Ben said drily as we clambered in.
'Oh, you mean you didn't work it out?' the Doctor replied, teasingly. Ben sighed with irritation, so the little man quickly continued: 'The symbolism was even plainer than on previous occasions. In 1906, San Francisco was devastated by an earthquake. Many of the pre-earthquake streets and buildings still exist beneath ground – the new city was simply built over the top of them. Somewhere within those hidden streets hides the source of all this.'
'I don't understand what this has to do with Mathilda,' Polly said.
'Whatever's going on, we need to sort it out quick,' Ben said. 'You think there's some way to stop those kids turning into monsters, Doctor?'
'I think,' the Doctor began, 'that we have to explore every avenue.'
Stimson snapped his fingers at the wheel. 'Sounds like a great story here, people. But you've gotta give me something more to go on. Where are we headed?'
'There'll be a sign; the Doctor replied. 'I'm sure of it.'
While Ben and Polly attempted to fill a disbelieving Stimson in on what had happened, the Doctor turned to me and said gently, 'You seem quiet, Summer.'
Through the window, the colours of the Haight had given way to the
brown blur of the straight city. I was wrapped up trying to make sense of what I'd seen that had affected me so much; it was so slight it didn't register on my conscious mind, but it was wriggling away frantically at the back of my head.
'I'm okay. I just feel ... tired. This whole thing is getting me down.'
He nodded slowly and thoughtfully.