Doctor Who: Combat Rock (25 page)

Pretty Boy threw an empty beer bottle at him. ‘You’re as crazy as a cockroach with groin itch, Twist.’

‘Combat rock. Let’s all play.’

Combat rock. Yeah.

Everyone’s insane. We’re diving of the high one, and there
ain’t no water below.

Everyone’s insane, and our minds are burning. There’s no
one here to stop the madness. Clown... Where was Clown? Not
here, that’s for sure. Absent without leave, or was that Missing
in Action?

He no longer remembered. He no longer cared. Had be
ever? Clown was missing, and that meant their conscience
was missing too. Missing in Action while the Combat Rock
played on...

The storm was sudden and vicious.

Rain lashed in through the ragged gaps in the grass walls, lightning turned the jungle white for flashes of electric time.

Thunder came heartbeats later, and the cannibals huddled around their fire, waiting for the gods to stop their roaring.

Jamie and Santi did their own huddling. But at least they were relatively dry, and the fire provided plenty of warmth.

The interior of the but consisted of one main room, in which half a dozen cannibals were gathered, all of them staring at the travellers without expression. There was obviously another room behind a thatch flap because every now and then a wail emerged disconcertingly. Jamie didn’t even want to think about what was causing that. Next to him a pregnant naked woman lolled on the bamboo slats that formed the floor, an infant playing with her toes. Above her head, ceiling ornaments dangled.

Jamie looked away quickly. He didn’t like those ornaments, and didn’t like the idea of sharing a house with anyone whose idea of good interior design included human skulls and leg bones hanging from hooks in the ceiling. He tried not to concentrate on what was being roasted over the fire, suspended on a long spit above the flames, while the tribespeople sat around in eager anticipation. It was just as well his view was partially blocked by the back of one of the naked men.

Santi let out a piercing squeak that made him jump. She was up on her feet and pulling her muddied skirt even further up her legs, forgetting her modesty in the face of some new peril that Jamie was momentarily blind to.

‘Kechouak!’ she wailed in utter misery

‘What?’ he asked rather helplessly. The natives were turning to see what the problem was too.

Instead of answering, Santi pointed towards a dark corner of the hut near where she’d been sitting. Her face was contorted with repulsion. Following her gaze, he could make out something moving in the shadows. He crawled nearer to get a better look.

Cockroaches. Cockroaches the size of carpet slippers. At least four of them, scaling the bamboo walls happily, antennae questing, armoured wings folded, carapaces throwing back the firelight.

‘Santi not like,’ the Indoni wailed miserably as another one trickled across the floor missing her bare feet by inches.

‘Jamie not like either,’ the Scot said, instinctively hitching up his own kilt and tip-toeing back to his former position as far away from the beasts as he could. The tribespeople were cackling with glee at their discomfort, and the man whose back had obscured Jamie’s view of the fire had now moved aside enough for the highlander to be able to see exactly what they were intending for their evening meal.

He promptly forgot all about the cockroach monsters.

Panic bolted through him, urging him to fling himself right back out of the door into the full fury of the storm, and waste no time sliding down the tree trunk. But the sheer horror of the moment fastened him to the bamboo floor.

Rationality kicked back in. He would never be able to get both himself and Santi out of there before the natives caught him anyway. All he could do right now was to try to prevent Santi from seeing what was cooking, and hope that it would prove sufficient for the tribe’s appetite.

He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her head onto his chest, ostensibly to comfort her in her fear of the cockroaches. Santi being Santi, however, she refused what she assumed were his attempts at intimacy, and pushing him away happened in the process to glance towards the fire, and so was treated to an unobscured view of what was left of Ussman slowly being rotated on the spit.

His blackened face stared at her in greeting, eyes boiled into spitting fat by the flames, hair seared away, but the features were still recognisable as belonging to their friend.

Jamie tensed, waiting for the inevitable screaming frenzy.

It didn’t come. She stiffened, and her mouth fell open, but she said nothing. Didn’t move. Even when one of the cannibals sliced away a portion of Ussman’s belly with a bone knife and passed it to a naked man with grey hair who was obviously the head of the tribe. The Indio chiefs eyes reflected the fire as he sank his teeth into the hunk of flesh, juices trickling down his chin. Jamie stared, along with Santi. Stared in sickened fascination at the pink-red meat under the charred surface layer, and one thought only played in his mind:
meat.

That’s all it was, all it comes down to; all we are.

Meat.

Soon every man in the hut was offered their share, and still Santi said nothing. Jamie thought better of trying to talk about it. What was there to say? They were stuck forty feet up in the storm-lashed sky, sharing a tree-house with a room full of cannibals who were happily engaged in eating their friend.

What was he supposed to do – crack a joke to lighten the atmosphere?

The men had all received their fine portions of breast, belly, leg and arm. Now it was the women’s turn. The cook rotated the spit and worked his bone knife on Ussman’s blackened backside. He then handed out slim portions of cooked buttock to the three women in the hut, two of whom were swollen with naked pregnancy, the third being a wizened hag. They accepted their lot gratefully.

It was only at this point that Santi broke her silence.

‘Huh! Women always get bum deal!’

Jamie gaped. Nothing should have surprised him about Santi by now, certainly not her grasp of Earth slang. That was understandable after all, considering the number of offworld tourists she’d consorted with in the dancing dubs of Batu. But the rapidity with which she’d managed to overcome her horror of the cannibalism of her fellow Indoni, someone she’d been joking with, even flirting with, only a day before, left Jamie at a loss for words. He blinked at her in disbelief, wondering whether it was just her way of coping. She was frowning in irritation more than shock, however. He thought about reminding her of the severity of their situation, but the Indio had heard her comment and was approaching her on his haunches in a peculiar squatting shuffle. He fixed her with his crazed eyes – and they
were
crazy – and uttered something in a tongue unfamiliar to Jamie.

Santi responded in Indoni, pointing at the women and what they were eating with a haughty expression of disdain on her face. The cannibal obviously understood because he responded in turn by giving her a cuff around the head, as if he were administering punishment to a particularly naughty child.

Santi screamed in fury, and Jamie only just managed to grab her arms and pull her back. The cannibal shuffled backward in amazement at this show of disrespect from a mere woman, and some of the other men laughed.

‘They can understand what you’re saying?’ Jamie asked, amazed she could actually converse with this isolated and primitive tribe of cannibals. He gripped her tighter until her struggles became more subdued.

Santi was silent for a moment. The Indio smirked at her and continued eating, watching her closely, his eyes drawn to the curve of her smooth, brown thighs. Jamie noticed this new, unwelcome interest with dismay.

‘Santi understand a little. Some words same as Indoni.

Only some. He understand me. Not like what I say.’

‘Well, be careful what you
do
say. You’ve seen what they’ve done tae poor Ussman. We don’t want tae be next, now do we?’ A thought struck him, and he turned her face towards his with one hand.

‘Can ye ask him where we can find the Krallik, or where men with hats of animal skin live, because that’s where the Doctor is going, and maybe they’ll know, living in the same jungle and all.’ It was obviously a vain hope, because even if the cannibals did know, they were hardly likely to change the habits of a lifetime and suddenly come over all hospitable to strangers. But at this point anything was worth a go.

Santi looked at him dubiously ‘You wear skirt too long.

You crazy, man. They want eat us, not give us directions.’

‘Just ask them. Say we’ll pay them, I dunno. Bribe them.’

‘What they do with money in jungle? You very foolish man.’

‘Look, can you think of a better plan? ’Cos right now I’m all out of good ideas.’

‘You have good ideas when?’

‘Lassie, this is hardly the time to show off your wit. Just ask the man.’

The Indio was observing this conversation with some interest, while finishing off the hank of belly greedily. His eyes never left them.

Santi gave in, and turned to the cannibal. She spoke in her own language slowly, as if addressing a child. The cannibal stared at her, and slowly a grin lit up his face. He turned to his tribe and repeated what Santi had asked. They all laughed.

Even the women. It was obviously a good and hearty joke for them.

Santi turned to Jamie with an ‘I told you’ expression. The Indio shuffled closer to them and spoke to Santi while actually looking at Jamie. His words were guttural yet musical, a fluting jungle language that was pleasant on the ear, even if the sights around them were certainly not pleasant on the eye.

Santi grunted, as if surprised. She looked at Jamie with a defensive glare.

‘Well?’

‘He tell us where men with hats of animal live.’

‘You see?’ Jamie squawked delightedly. ‘What did I tell you. Everything’s worth a go.’

‘He say they hide in temple at pool of evil purple flower –

no, not flower, I not understand word. Evil purple...

something... that make men mad who eat them. Santi not understand all. He speak with cannibal tongue. He crazy. But he say pool not too far by canoe through swamps.’

Jamie rubbed his hands together. Now they were really getting somewhere. ‘And will they take us there?’

Before Santi could ask, the Indio spoke again. Santi gaped at him for a moment, and Jamie had to shake her shoulder vigorously.

‘They say we not go there. We have more important...

fate.’

Jamie didn’t like the sound of that. His optimism began to slide again. ‘And what’s that?’ he asked, not at all sure he wanted to hear the answer.

‘Santi become his tenth wife and man in skirt will be killed and eaten in honour of our wedding ceremony.’

The jungle was waking.

Dawn. Ice cream-pink skies, symphony of awed nature, and Victoria woke with the stink of a soldier’s empty boots right next to her nose. She rolled over on the grass mat that was her bed and came face to face with Agus who was sitting up, watching her.

The shelter had been erected to provide room for all ten men in Agus’s squad. And Victoria. There were no niceties in the jungle, no room for modesty. She’d been forced to sleep right alongside the men, listening to their snores and smelling their smells. Agus had snored happily along with the rest of them, and Victoria had finally sunk into a worried dream-ragged sleep a mere hour or so before dawn.

The smell of freshly boiled coffee was the most important thing to her at that moment. She accepted the steaming mug that Agus held out for her. He smiled and handed her a plate of rice and vegetables that had been cooked while she still slept.

She shook her head, not sure she would be able to hold it down. Her whole body ached from the uncomfortable sleep she’d endured, and her feet were sore and blistered from the previous day’s hiking through the jungle. On top of that her eyes were crusted and dry, her throat prickly and uncomfortable, and she could smell the stale sweat on her own body. Her sense of propriety was even more compromised by the fact that Agus was watching her so closely, and was himself immaculately turned out, looking for all the world as if he’d just spent the night in a luxurious hotel.

‘You must eat.’ Agus told her. ‘We have more walking through jungle to do today.’

‘What’s the point?’ she protested, heart sinking at the thought of more heat, more insects, more walking.

‘What is the point in anything?’ he replied, smiling, smiling. ‘President Sabit wishes for us to find the OPG, and rescue your friends, of course. I have already told you. You are here as a public relations exercise, to see for yourself what the OPG are capable of, and to report it to your world.’

‘I can also report what I’ve seen in your prisons, Agus,’

she reminded him pointedly.

‘Yes, of course you can. But President Sabit seems to think you won’t want to.’ He finished his coffee and stood up, barking orders at his men to break camp. Victoria frowned at him. What did he mean? That didn’t sound very good at all.

Would Sabit resort to holding either the Doctor or Jamie hostage should they find them, just to make sure Victoria only said what they wanted her to say?

She brushed a hand distractedly through her hair, dislodging a bug that clung to her finger tenaciously before being shaken off to skitter off into a corner. She suppressed a sob. She really
needed
to see Jamie and the Doctor’s faces more than ever.

The squad was on the march again, with Agus and Victoria at the head. The path was a little wider than before and progress was easier, but soon the heat became as oppressive as ever as the morning wore on. The insects came out to play again, forming an incessant cloud around Victoria’s hair. Once their path led across a stream spanned by a tree trunk, and she was forced to teeter precariously across it, looking down into the fetid water beneath and not at all relishing the prospect of slipping and falling into it. She imagined all sorts of giant leeches and snake things and other even less savoury creatures lurking beneath the surface.