Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [41]
move ... but it was just me and them.
This time I saw the transformation in all its sickening glory. As the bones flickered and grew translucent, there was an instant where everything froze and then the body started to put itself back together again: reforming muscle, shaping horns and wings, making terror out of nothing, but painting it with all the colours of the rainbow.
I should have run, but by then it was too late and, perhaps, I thought, it didn't really matter anyway. I was transfixed by the wild, crazy weirdness of it all. And then they moved for me, faster than I could have dreamed. I closed my eyes and waited.
There were colours behind my lids, in my head, colours everywhere. And I waited, but nothing happened.
And when I looked again, the strangest thing was happening, even crazier than everything before. The Colour-Beasts were unfolding, turning back into the poor freaks they had been before, wings and horns stripping back, colours flying away into space.
I felt a whisper in my head, saw dust motes in a sunbeam, and turned to see JFK watching me from the stage. I couldn't say he really smiled, but there was something ... a connection. The Doctor, Ben and Polly had done whatever they needed to do, and that wonderful thing was free to fly and take all the madness with it.
Except there wasn't a happy ending, not for me, or for the world. Not long after, I found Denny in the shadows of the stands. I'd like to think that he waited for me, that he at least owed me that, but I'm sure he was just skulking until he had his moment to get away. The rest of the creeps were gone, faded into the background like their kind always did. Those who saw what happened would talk excitedly about it for a day or two, but in the Capital City of Trips, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
'They work for the Government, don't they?' I looked at him hard, by that stage too strung out at the end of the trip to feel anything other than hurt.
'No.' Denny was adamant. Then: 'Not directly. They work for the people who really run the country.'
'The Combine,' I said.
Denny snorted contemptuously. 'Stupid hippie name for it!'
'What were they ... you ...' I said that with venom and I was happy to see he flinched, 'trying to do?'
Denny said nothing, but I already knew. It was the war, the one that had started in Dallas, and they were gradually eliminating the enemy, one-by-one. That day, a new threat was going to be derailed. They wanted to keep reality their way – not our way. My way.
'That thing they captured is like the bomb!' Denny laughed. 'With that behind them, they can do anything.'
'What did they do to you, Denny?'
He tried to laugh off my comment, but all I heard was a terrible guilt, and that made his words even harsher. 'This is the real world, Summer. You've got to wake up to it. All that peace and love shit –'
'You believed in that!'
He shrugged. 'Maybe, for a while, yeah. But then you open your eyes.'
'You sold out! They gave you ... what? A bundle of cash and promises?'
'So what? At least I know which way the wind blows. I'm not living in a dream like you, Summer. They're gonna win, and you might as well be on the winning side. They offered me a job, that's all – '
'To get in tight with what was going on here in the Haight,' I said, watching it all come together. They must have approached him the moment he arrived. I couldn't have stayed in his memory for more than a day. 'To spread the poisoned tabs.'
Denny looked out into the dark where a few strands of mist were forming.
'I found your shirt at the Goblin's, covered in blood.'
'He realised what I was doing there, cut me with that shiv before I got out.'
'Trying to screw up his business.'
'We needed to get rid of him so there was a shortage of good stuff. More demand for the Blue Moonbeams.'
'You've really mastered your capitalism lessons, haven't you?' I felt like my heart was breaking. How could I have been so completely wrong about him? What does that say about