Doctor Who: Combat Rock (10 page)

He positioned the Mumi on its log so that it faced the semicircle of tourists, brushing a fly away from the silently screaming maw. He was proud of this Mumi. It was a direct ancestor of his, of course, and maybe when he died, he would be revered enough by the villagers to be smoked and preserved for all time. But somehow he didn’t think so.

It was certainly a gruesome object. Its hands were clenched around its withered knees as if in agony. The head was thrown dramatically back, accentuating the impression that the three hundred rainseason-old chieftain had died horribly. Perhaps he had, but the headman really couldn’t remember the stories. There were so many other things in this modern world to think about.

The Mumi’s eye-sockets were pooled with sunlight now as the holocameras whirred and clicked. The commander stepped up to the Mumi as if judging it and then moved aside slightly for the pictures to be taken.

When the scream came, the headman was sure it was an animal, a Babi maybe, from the village compound. But the look of horror on the faces of the tourists in front of him was too excessive for that to have been the cause. The soldiers looked startled too, and raised their weapons nervously. The commander whipped around and glared at the headman and his Luger was level with the Papul’s head.

The scream came again, and this time it was so obviously eerie and unfamiliar that the headman wondered how he could have thought it was an animal in the first place.

It was coming from the Mumi.

Something else came from the Mumi too, as the headman and Emul remained locked in their shocked tourist-friendly pose beside it. A deathsnake, thin as a Babi tail, green as the jungle. It flailed across the three yards separating the Mumi from the commander and clasped onto its prey.

The commander’s gun fired at the same time as the tiny fangs sank into his adam’s apple, the attack throwing his aim off so wildly it was Emul’s head that received the Luger blast.

The headman watched the soldier and his brother-in-law flop into the dust of the compound simultaneously. The commander writhed, his face darkening into a leafy green, his eyes bugging, veined with green too. Emul didn’t move, his head blown apart like an egg smashed by a spoon.

The Indoni second-in-command was rushing forwards, barking orders to the stunned squad of soldiers. He readied his pulse rifle but a snake got him first as the Mumi moaned again. With the reptile fastened to his left eye, he fell back into a soldier behind, causing the scared trooper to fire, blasting the arm off a nearby tourist.

Screams. Pulse rifles began to spit and blaze. Although quite what they were firing at the headman wasn’t sure, as he dashed panic-stricken towards the safety of his hut. He threw a look over his shoulder and the Mumi was a squatting torch of flame. Tourists were scattering like a herd of Babi frightened by a berserk farmer. He could see a couple of tourists burning on the ground, their wriggles fading. They’d obviously been hit in the wild fire, and the headman thought that was probably a good thing: Sabit would certainly have a lot of explaining to do.

Another thought struck him, and this one wasn’t so good: there would be nobody paying to see Jikora’s Mumi now.

Then something else struck him, and he hit the dirt ablaze with Pulse energy, one arm stretched out towards his hut as if seeking the assistance of his pregnant wife, his mouth a screaming maw, his eye-sockets pooled by fire.

The soldiers retreated, letting Jikora burn.

The hand was gone from her mouth. It wasn’t the first time this particular indignity had been forced upon her, and Victoria was sure it wouldn’t be the last while she was in the company of the Doctor; but it was becoming increasingly tiresome. Although at least this time the man responsible seemed to pose no immediate threat. He was a soldier after all, and weren’t they supposed to be gallant and chivalrous towards ladies?

Then again, he was an Indoni soldier, and Victoria remembered the look of fear on Wemus’s face when the Papul guide had been approached by the two soldiers on Batu. Yet she was being treated well enough so far. Admittedly the leader had shoved a rather large muzzle at her when he had first removed his hand, and his face had been stern and uncompromising. But after he had made sure she was not going to scream he had lowered the weapon and explained (in unbroken English) that she was in a very dangerous situation here in the jungle with cannibals, bloodthirsty rebels and voracious wildlife all around her, and that it was in the interests of her own safety that she be escorted to a location more harmonious to her well-being. This despite all the protestations on her part that she was being led away from her friends and that she must rejoin them immediately. The officer had been adamant, however, and her declamations had fallen upon decidedly deaf ears. Victoria was not a stupid woman; it did not take her long to realize that she was unofficially a prisoner of the Indoni army.

One part of his story seemed to be verified, however, by the obvious wariness the squad of soldiers displayed as they moved through the steaming jungle. And it was steaming: wisps of condensation lifted around them, sometimes revealing lengths of garishly coloured reptile that bore a passing resemblance to the snakes Victoria had seen in books at home: that is, if the snakes back home had been blessed with heads like the business end of a gardening rake – flat and wide and eyeless. Such grotesqueries apart, Victoria saw little to be really frightened of during the journey. There were some ominous crashings in the undergrowth, and the twitchiness of the troopers bore witness to the potentially threatening nature of their origin, but really it was only the oppressive heat and the insects – forever clouding her vision and biting, biting, biting – that she had to contend with.

After their first sweaty introduction, the officer in charge proved to be exceedingly polite to her, which came as something of a surprise, after seeing Wemus’s reaction to the soldiers. He spoke astonishingly eloquent English (she had to keep reminding herself that he was an
alien
, and not just a foreigner). He even offered to hold her hand to steady her progress, but of course she wasn’t going to allow
that
. His brown face was angular and, with the clipped moustache and dark, intelligent eyes, she had to admit, rather handsome. But then, as her father had constantly reminded her, she always did have a bit of a wild streak, and had always had a penchant for people and things that were rather out of the ordinary. Well, she’d certainly got to satisfy
that
particular whim since encountering Jamie and the Doctor, she reminded herself ruefully, and wondered exactly how panic-stricken they must be right now, once they had realized she was missing. They would find her, she comforted herself.

They always did.

Budi and Ussman were all for returning to Batu. The Doctor and Jamie were obviously just as adamant to remain, in order to search for Victoria. Drew said nothing, watching Wina and Santi’s terrified reactions to the massacre with something akin to sadistic pleasure on his ratlike face. His blonde moustache lifted above his lips like a spiky caterpillar as he savoured their fear. Jamie resisted thumping him as he noticed the offworlder’s evident enjoyment. Santi was crying, but desperately trying not to do so in front of Wina. Wina was shaking as if gripped with some fever, and desperately trying not to in front of Santi. Wemus looked as worried as the rest of the group, including the Doctor, who was trying to assert some calm over everybody, but acting increasingly like a nervous mother hen himself. It was Kepennis who took control.

‘We must leave here.’ he said slowly. His face was drawn and haunted-looking. He held his machete like a weapon and not a tool now. ‘We must head into the jungle away from soldiers and Dogs.’

The Doctor held up his hands frantically ‘We must find Victoria!’ he beseeched. ‘And the soldiers will be able to help us to do that!’

Kepennis smiled grimly. ‘They only help you to die. We must move from this place. Maybe they return.’

‘I want go home!’

The Doctor turned, and Santi had stopped crying, and was now endeavouring to assert some self-control. He held out a hand to comfort her, but she flinched backwards.

‘Santi must go
home!
‘

Wina smiled rather cruelly. ‘Santi scared. She not care about your friend.’

‘Aye,’ Jamie added. ‘We must stay and look for Victoria.

I’m no going anywhere until we do.’

‘Santi not scared!’ the Indoni girl hissed, glaring at the slighter, taller Wina. ‘I must go back Batu. Need money to live.’

Again Wina stepped in. ‘She needs meet new tourists.

New men. Santi is working girl!’ A raucous snort of mirth came from Drew at this. Santi snarled and clenched her fists.

The Doctor stepped between the two girls. He could see beyond the surface of Wina’s spite and understood why she was provoking an entirely unnecessary argument: her shaking had stopped. She had something else to concentrate on, something she could understand that had nothing to do with Mumis that came to life and villagers being burned to death wholesale.

‘I think Kepennis is right about leaving here, Wemus,’ he said gravely. ‘But I must ask you to help us find our companion.’

The guide looked at him, then at his friend Kepennis.

Kepennis was silent for a moment, then nodded.

‘We will search jungle around village until nightfall. After that, we leave.’

‘There’s still something I don’t understand,’ Jamie said.

Everyone shut up for once and looked at him. He pointed at the smoking remains of the Mumi. ‘How do dead things come tae life like he says?’ He turned to Kepennis for an answer.

But it was the Doctor who gave him one.

‘They don’t, Jamie.’ He was still holding the purple fungus in his hands. ‘You should know better than that by now.’

Kepennis met his gaze. ‘I saw the Mumi move and talk, stranger. The gods spoke, and then they killed.’

‘Yes,’ the Doctor replied. ‘There seems to be rather a lot of killing going on, doesn’t there?’

His words were drowned out by Wina’s cry of terror. They all whirled around to see what had alarmed her.

A bizarre and terrifying group of figures was emerging from the jungle. Their faces were hidden under balaclavas of leathery animal skin and fur, their dark torsos were naked, their legs covered by ripped khaki combat trousers. They were carrying machetes and bows and arrows. A couple even had old Earth-export rifles. They didn’t look very friendly.

From the window of the first-storey landing, he could see all the madness.

Agat was awash with blood.

Civilisation had been discarded. Primitivism was restored.

All the trappings of a modern world imported from Javee and Batu and even the worlds beyond were consigned to the flames of atavism. And while the clothes, the books, the papers burned and the technology fell apart under repeated blows, the bodies continued to collect. Indoni dead were everywhere; scattered like unwanted toys on the plankways; floating in the filthy waterways beneath. But there was one detail that wasn’t right about the corpses, and it wasn’t until Father Pieter peered towards the police but that he realized what it was: the small building was now guarded only by the Javee officer’s severed head nailed to the door. A chilly wind played through him. All the heads were missing of course, apart from the special gift awarded him earlier – and this one, left behind like a trophy, like a warning to the authorities to ever dare enforce regulation on savagery again. Further along the main plankway, the Indoni traders’ stalls were still manned by their prosperous owners, but now they were propped against their shelves of wares as if they were sleeping off a particularly heavy drinking spree – the blood marking their skin and clothes the only signs that all was not as before; that and the absence of their heads. The fruit trader’s severed hands were stacked alongside the papaya– like vegetables he had sold for such extortionate prices; the couturier from Batu was crucified in the doorway of his shack, his dismembered wife scattered beneath his hanging feet, along with the tatters of the imported clothes they had sold. Bagire, the hunchbacked Horrakbil bird, pecked amongst the bloody debris.

Blood stained the mud beneath the walkways.

Thirty years of education, culture and endeavour wiped out.

Thirty years of Christianity...

Gone.

Father Pieter could see it all. He would lose his mind for looking; he would lose his life if he stayed here. They would fmd him. The attic! Hide from this obscenity Julius had been only the first; madness had spread like a virus through the once peaceful shanty town. The usually amiable and even rather docile Papul had become ravenous monsters, ripping away the clothes they had once been taught to be proud of, tearing away the layers of civilization Pieter and his fellow missionaries had spent so long insulating them with.

What had happened to the Word of God? Was it then so fragile to be rejected so suddenly, so savagely? A belief system refined and sophisticated was being butchered, and its initiator could do no more than cower and weep.

The way had been opened to barbarity. The jungle had reclaimed its children. Brutal gods reigned once more over their heathen domain.

How long would it be before They came looking for him?

Wemus and Kepennis looked terrified.

The aggressive-looking figures held machetes to the throats of the guides and shouted at them in a guttural local tongue. The Doctor made an attempt to communicate with the warriors, who were obviously Papul from what could be detected of their features under the fur balaclavas. A battered-looking rifle barrel stopped his progress.

‘Oh, I see...’ he said ruefully, raising his hands with a worried expression on his face. ‘Jamie, don’t do anything silly,’ he added, as the Scot began to protest vociferously behind him

The warriors encircled the little group of tourists, their faces hard and uncompromising. Santi and Wina stood together, and the Doctor tried to smile encouragingly at them, guessing what would be going through their minds: they were two attractive Indoni girls trapped in the middle of the Papul jungle by a group of hostile guerrillas. It didn’t take a great imagination to guess their possible fate.