Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [40]
His tone made me cold; I could tell he feared the worst.
That was the last I saw of the Doctor, Ben and Polly. I got out of there with Stimson and we beat it back to the Polo Grounds as fast as his heap of junk would go. He didn't talk to me all the way, too freaked out by everything.
The Human Be-In was just coming to an end when we made our way into the crowds, but most people were still hanging around, tripping, loving each other, feeling part of something big.
'What do we do now, chicklet?' Stimson said apprehensively.
'Just leave it to me.' I scanned the crowd; everybody was happy, beaming, talking, but in my trippy state I could feel it was about to happen. 'It's going down,' I said. 'Soon. Go to your boss ... see if he can get these people out of here quickly.'
Stimson nodded and ran off. I pushed my way through the bodies frantically.
And then it happened again: something half-seen that sent shivers down my spine. I backed up, searched vainly; I couldn't tell what it was. A second later it was there again, nothing more than an impression, perhaps a silhouette, or the shape of a craning neck; but it was enough. I headed towards it as fast as I could, scarcely believing the thoughts bursting like stars in my head.
A hand, a crook of an arm; a jigsaw-person slowly coming together.
The rest of the world slipped away. I emerged from a wall of humanity into a sphere of pure silence.
'Denny?'
He couldn't have heard my paper-thin whisper beneath the crowdnoise, but still he turned; and it was him. The late-afternoon sun was at his back and his eyes were bluer than I'd ever seen them. His hair was longer, and he had a scruffy goatee, his clothes home-dyed and scrawled with peace symbols. I ploughed into him hard, burying my head in his chest, trying to work out if it was another trip, if it was the Oval Office
in new form, feeling as if every bit of me was coming apart.
'I thought you were dead,' I whispered.
He prised me off, gripping my shoulders so he could look into my eyes. 'Summer? What are you doing here?'
'Looking for you.' Now I couldn't hold back the tears. 'Where've you been, Denny? What happened ... what ... they said you were dead.' For a second I thought my mind might actually wink out like a light bulb with too much power running through it.
'This isn't the time.' He pushed me to one side, uncomfortable, distracted. I staggered back a step and the surroundings fell into relief.
Some of the masked creeps were nearby, looking out across the crowd; waiting for the Blue Moonbeams to take effect. I don't know if it was a different group from the one that had been at the lab, but they hadn't seen me. I went to grab Denny's arm to drag him away. Until I realised he was with them.
For a few seconds my instinct and my conscious mind fought over what I wanted to believe and what was really happening.
Then a commotion erupted in the crowd nearby. A scream. People scrambling to get away, like ripples escaping a deep sea earthquake, slowly turning into a tidal wave. Denny looked towards it impassively. 'It's started.'
I had only a second to feel queasy from what I saw in his face before another pocket of panic erupted, and then another, and then in my section of the crowd there was chaos and I was swept away from Denny by the torrent.
Somehow I fought my way past the flow, thankful it was all confined to one small area; if the whole bag of Blue Moonbeams had been handed out it would have been disaster. But all I could think of was what happened to the Goblin at the last, and how bad it would be with even a few.
It would have been sensible to get the hell out of there, but I wasn't thinking, or maybe I was thinking too much. I got through to the horrible centre of the disturbance, where flesh and muscle had disappeared, and only staring bones remained, flailing, bad-tripping, terrified. I don't know what I expected to do ...