Doctor Who: Combat Rock (17 page)

Whatever, he must have sweated there staring at the black curtain for maybe half an hour. Maybe more.

Eventually, it was his own shame that goaded him forward.

He fumbled with the curtain, looking for some parting, his hand trembling. His heart was an engine, and it was going to blow. He shuffled along the curtain in the semi-darkness, reached the wall, where feeble shafts of daylight chinked through, and pulled the curtain to one side.

Beyond, of course, was more darkness. Thicker darkness even than in the antechamber.

He’d hesitated enough, and passed inwards before his dread could stop him, and make a coward of him again.

The bone knife was clenched oh-so tight in his right hand; the only reassuring thing in his life at that moment. More chinks in the walls let cracks of light pierce the darkness, which was becoming not so complete now as he waited for his eyes to catch up.

Absolute silence.

He’s not here, Wayun told himself. Relief was like a draught of cool, fresh water. He’s not here. I don’t have to do this.

He could see more now. The room had nothing in it. Apart from three dark silhouettes occupying the centre of the room.

None of them moved. The smell was fetid, and it reminded Wayun of the smell of the heads impaled above the landing pier. Rot. Death.
Wrongness
.

He’d been right to come then; the smell confirmed that.

This was the heart of their cause, and it was just a heart of badness. Of dark, and of wrongness.

But the Krallik wasn’t here, so his bravery was all in vain.

He would have to return, and did he have the courage and stamina to put himself through all this again?

He strained his eyes, focusing on the three motionless shapes. One was bigger than the other two, and it was placed in between them, as if in a position of command flanked by servants. A big shape, yes. Maybe something sitting in a chair.

But not moving, so it couldn’t be the Krallik, no. The shape was somehow
wrong
, like the smell. Irregular, not like that of a normal man. Or was that just down to the unnatural position in which it was slumped on what had to be a chair?

It was moving.

The dark silhouette of a head, raising itself, disjointedly,
wrongly
.

Run, boy. Run.

This was no place for heroes.

Run...

It had been an entire day, and only now Father Pieter began to think about emerging from his hiding place.

He had not heard any sounds of violence for some time now. His vision through the missing slat in the attic where he had hidden himself was limited; he could only see a slice of the plankway in front of his house, a couple of stalls beyond, a stretch of the harbour, a few smashed motor canoes belonging to Indoni traders, and the floating body of one of the owners, his feet nudging the stilts of the pier in the filthy swell.

He edged open the hatch to the attic, wincing at every creak the wood made. His ears ached with the silence.

Composing himself further, he gingerly lowered the ladder down to the floor of the landing below, and levered himself onto the rungs.

He froze on the landing, ears straining for any indication of possible violence.

Nothing.

He crept to the window, back pressed against the wooden wall, darting a quick glance out through the pane.

A gorgeous sunset was falling over Flamingo Bay. Agat had the best sunsets in Papul. Better than any Father Pieter had ever witnessed on Earth.

A golden, pink-candy radiance emblazoned the landing. It gilded the walkway below, the corpses scattered across it (he would not look at those he would not look at those he would not). It burnished the bay, hand-painted the trees crowding down to the sea on either side of the shanty town. Normally, Father Pieter would have been transfixed by its beauty. Now it just filled him with horror. He had to get out.

Out of Agat.

They would kill him – he knew that. If they came back, they would kill him.

Maybe it would even be Julius, his old friend, the one he had entrusted with so much learning, so much responsibility.

Was his God so easy to reject, after so many years, and in such a brutal fashion?

He risked another glance through the window, half hoping to see a boat chugging towards the shanty town. A boat carrying his beloved friend Father Tomas. Half-praying for this event, and half-fearing it, because although it might mean his own salvation, it could just as equally result in Tomas meeting the same fate that would almost certainly be handed out to Pieter. He couldn’t let his friend see what had happened here, all their great work turned to blood and butchery. But there was no boat chugging into harbour.

There was nobody here to help him.

White man in jeopardy. The hell of the south, preacher.

He had to get out of Agat.

He moved to the top of the stairs, still straining his ears, moving as quietly as he could, but the stairs conspired to betray him, creaking with what seemed like hideous volume with each foot he placed on theni. Down, into the living room of the small colonial-style house.

‘Where is your God now, Christian?’

A headhunter was sitting in his armchair, where so often before Father Pieter had pored over religious texts and doctrines, spending many, many evening hours in pleasurable toil.

Jamie had been watching the sunset too.

He was sitting inside the battered Indoni cruiser, flanked by Papul warriors with grim faces and determined stares, not exactly the brightest of companions. They had spent the entire day at a secret location, or at least that was how it had been described to Jamie by the guerrillas. To the Scot, it looked just like any of the other Papul villages they had passed over.

But he’d been treated well and fed well, which was some consolation for losing Victoria and being separated from the Doctor. They’d even entrusted him with a machete, obviously taking him at his word that he knew how to use one, and that he was in sympathy with their rebel cause. He hadn’t actually
said
that, though, had he? Just that he’d once fought a load of English bastards who were trying to murder his people, but he guessed there was some kind of analogy here, even though he wasn’t quite sure where to look for it, or even precisely what an analogy was. The Doctor had used the word when they were hiking through the jungle and Jamie had been holding forth on rebellion in general.

The Doctor... Aye, well, that was one reason why he wasn’t going to use his machete on the Papul guerrillas accompanying him on the flight to Wameen. They said they’d kill the Doctor if Jamie tried anything, and he knew enough of their fervour to suppose that they would do just that. The other reason was, well, there were just too damn many of them.

The sun filled the cruiser cabin with pink light, suffusing it with a cherubic, unsullied atmosphere it hardly warranted. A hint of angels, the Scot thought ruefully, his heart yearning for kinder times. He glanced around at the unshaven, smelly, dishevelled warriors filling the cramped cabin and sighed. He hoped Victoria was in more amiable company.

Victoria...

How did they always end up getting into messes like this?

He couldn’t blame the Doctor. Not really... Och, alright, he
could
, because he was the one that had brought them both to Jenggel in the first place and then to this godforsaken jungle. But blaming people didn’t solve anything, did it? It just made him feel a little less grumpy, that was all.

He declined the offer of a cigarette from the guerrilla next to him and sipped instead from a bottle of water.

All right, so the guerrillas weren’t half-bad when you got to know them, he supposed. They’d actually treated him with some respect and a little kindness all day long. In the village, he’d been taken to a large central hut, apparently the chieftain’s, and treated to some delicious soup cooked in front of him in an enormous pot. He guessed the reason behind their kindness was something to do with the fact that he would be fighting alongside them soon.

They’d been cruising above the treetops for a little more than an hour. The plan was obviously to attack the town at nightfall, and Jamie wondered, certainly not for the first time, what the hell he’d gotten himself into – just because he’d been stupid enough to open his big trap. He had nothing against the Indoni army, even if they did seem to be a bunch of murdering sassenachs every bit as wicked as the English redcoats. But they hadn’t done anything to
him
yet. Or the Doctor, and hopefully not to Victoria either...

Now he was expected to fight, and kill, for a cause he didn’t understand, and could feel no involvement with.

Still, here he was, heading into battle with a machete in his hands, as well as the Doctor’s fate. He was a McCrimmon, and McCrimmons never flinched from battle.

‘Craig a duir,’ he muttered, and felt embarrassed at how half-hearted he sounded.

‘You’ve come to kill me?’

An echo, a whisper.

Wayun
felt
it more than he heard it, like it was a shiver in his blood, a coldness of the bones.

He squeezed the bone knife in his fist for reassurance, for guidance. ‘You’re a monster,’ he hissed, addressing the dark figure, whose head was still indistinguishable. ‘You’ve gone too far.’ He sounded like a teacher admonishing a naughty child and the ludicrousness of the idea robbed him of more of his dwindling purpose.

The Krallik was laughing. A distant, off-kilter laugh as if the Krallik were not here at all, as if he were removed from this time, this place.

‘This is war,’ the hushed echo came again. ‘Nothing can go
too
far. War is kill. Blood dribbling from the mouth of the victor as he tears the throat in his hands. It is dismemberment, it is total denigration of foe. It is to convert warm flesh to cold.

To revel in fear. Instil it in all. Fear is control. Both sides must fear. Fear the Krallik.’

The words were barely comprehensible to Wayun, and he must dismiss them if he was to do what he had come to do. He had to fill his mind with the one thing that mattered.

‘You killed my brother!’ The words met no reply, as if the Krallik were thinking about them, or maybe he had gone? Had he ever been here? The shape was there, although the head had not moved since it had initially lifted in response to Wayun’s presence.

‘There was no need!’ He was shouting now, and the thought that the guerrillas below might hear him and come up to stop him made him lower his voice. But then they
knew
what he was doing anyway, and none of them had made any attempt to follow him. Why? Because they were so afraid of the Krallik – or because they
wanted
Wayun to do it? In a more controlled voice, he continued: ‘There was no need to kill my brother. He revered everything you stand for. He believed in our independence as much as you.’

A pause, then a shudder of words, sometimes faint, sometimes strong. ‘There was every need. He questioned an order.’ Now there was another laugh, more of a crackle as of a bonfire devouring twigs, and with a jolt Wayun realized he could see the Krallik’s eyes dimly in the semi-darkness. Pale bleached eyes, holding a thousand-yard stare that did not blink. Empty, empty eyes. The laugh was suddenly unnaturally loud and then cut off, and the hiss was back.

‘An order? Discipline in war.’ The figure was moving. It was beginning to rock gently, then more urgently, the head twisting from side to side as if succumbing to some meditative silent chant. ‘Rules. Morality. Sickness. How can there be rationality in obscenity? Obscene. Carnage.
Obscene
!’

This was an open display of madness, and Wayun needed no further prompting to carry out his purpose. He was moving forward automatically, raising the knife, hardly even thinking what he was doing any more, only that he had to stem the flow of insanity, of wrongness.

The body of the Krallik continued to rock in the darkness and as Wayun reached for it, the face looked up into his, and then he could see it all.

And the Krallik was still repeating:

‘Obscene. Obscene.’

Obscene
.

The headhunter was Julius.

The museum curator had returned then, no longer a keeper of the past, but a living embodiment of it. He still wore the fierce body mesh and mask, one of the human jawbone necklaces was still around his neck, and a stone axe was in his hand. All relics from his previous vocation, now called into use in his new role.

Father Pieter could not see Julius’s face through the mask, only the eyes, but he knew it to be his friend. Strangely, he felt almost calm.

‘Have you come to kill me, old friend?’ he asked, and his voice too was without fear, resigned, weary.

Instead of replying, the headhunter lifted something for the missionary to see. A lump of purple fungus, the edible growth that had become so popular as a delicacy in Agat over the last year or so, thanks to the efforts of a few Papul traders from further east along the coast. Pieter stared at it in bewilderment. He had expected some new atrocity – another severed head maybe, but not this. Therefore he had nothing to say in response to the gesture.

‘Eat it, Pieter.’ the headhunter said with no emotion in his voice.

The missionary remained where he was, standing in his own living room with the night pushing through the shattered window, and silence outside on the streets of Agat, as if the town had been deserted.

‘You know I never eat it, Julius. You
know
that.’ A deliberate attempt to remind Julius of their former closeness, but if the headhunter understood the missionary’s intention, he gave no sign of it.

Father Pieter continued: ‘You remember how many times I tried to warn the townspeople against it?’ He was trying to make the situation as mundane as possible, to make it safely everyday instead of surreally lunatic, and maybe then Julius could revert to his old, cheerfully pragmatic self. But even as he spoke, something was beginning to dawn on him, and the realisation filled him with a bitter new horror. ‘Brain deteriorating elements in it, Julius... and I thought you listened to my advice.’