Doctor Who: Combat Rock (31 page)

Hello, what’s this?’ A tiny metallic object could just be detected, attached inside the open mouth of the missionary head. ‘Well, well, well: a minute microphone speaker, of course. Telepathically activated, I shouldn’t wonder.

Extraordinary. Much more effective than the tape recordings in the Mumis. A wonderfully ghastly puppet... but where’s the puppetmaster?’

The Doctor placed the head gravely back on the shoulders and turned to face the little group, his fingers templed in front of him, eyes shrewd and expectant. ‘You might as well come forward now, Kepennis. Or should I say... the Krallik?’

Kepennis seemed to relax for the first time in days. ‘Was it that obvious?’ he asked, smiling thinly.

‘Not really, no. But you did give yourself away with little things. Speaking a little
too
emotively about your homeland being spiritually raped, for instance. And then there was your dramatic fainting fit – I take it that was necessary to focus all your concentration on mobilising the Krallik here.’ The Doctor glanced at the corpse of the young Papul rebel, Wayun.

‘Looks like the Krallik defended itself only too well. All the same, it must have been hard on your mental energies, all that long-distance ventriloquism. But I first began to suspect you long before then, of course. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten the burning Mumi at Akima. It was rather puzzling why you had to be first on the scene to inspect it. Destroying the evidence of your little devices, perhaps?’ He blinked at the ‘guide’

reproachfully. ‘Well, you certainly fooled Tigus all this time.

But I must confess I’m rather surprised you managed to keep it from your best friend for so long, though...’ He inclined his head towards Wemus.

Wemus was shaking his head slowly, as if struggling to understand.

Kepennis took a step towards him. Wemus put out a hand to stop him, still unable to speak.

‘Surprised, my friend? But then how long have you known me? Three years, maybe four? Before you knew me I was a hunted figure. You could not understand the horrors I experienced. My family, Wemus...’ His face was hard with the memory of his own suffering. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like to return home to find your wife and child dead? My baby son’s head was burned away, Wemus. My wife naked and strangled.’ He turned away from his friend, who still had not uttered a word.

‘I evaded them for months.’ There was a shuddering sigh, almost lost in the crackling from outside as flames drew nearer to the temple. ‘Hiding in the jungles near my home. Soldiers tortured and killed my relatives, my friends. Not one of them betrayed me. Can you believe their loyalty? They died for me.

The Indoni knew I was dangerous, that I had sabotaged their mining equipment, destroyed their logging tools. But they didn’t know how dangerous I would become...’

The torture. Carried in a metal box too short for him, his
legs folded, arms cramped, neck squashed at an angle. They
kept him like that for days, without food, without water. The
only air sucked in through one small hole in the lid. Lying in
his own waste, suffocated by his own fear. Then the
interrogation: who were his accomplices, did he have foreign
allies? Laughing, laughing madly at that of course.

Accomplices all dead, you bastards: you killed them when you
murdered my brothers, my cousins. Foreign allies...? No-one
outside of Papul cared, some governments even supplied
weapons to Sabit. More torture. Then his escape. Away from
his spiritual home in the west. South. And East.

Into the cannibal swamps.

The purple lake.

The fungus.

‘The gods spoke to me, Wemus. They told me how to fight back. I communed with them for three years here on the island I made my home. And after that... I emerged from hiding with a new identity – a perfect one, don’t you think? How else could I rig the Mumis, or encourage the people of Agat to buy the Godgrowth, other than by being a humble guide, seemingly under the yoke of the Indoni tourist harness? Very easy to tamper with revered trophy skulls then, believe me... I would never have been allowed to wander so freely otherwise.’

He was standing very still, only the candlelight moving in his eyes. ‘Of course my loyal OPG warriors never saw the real me. A full head balaclava was essential for when I needed to come here in person. Easy to convince them of the necessity for secrecy concerning my identity. Better for them, better for me. Better for you too, Wemus.’

Wemus opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t. He turned away from his friend, then pulled himself together enough to be able to whirl round to confront him again, and this time he had found his voice.

‘You don’t even sound like Kepennis!’ It was an absurd accusation, but it was only Wemus’s way of coming to terms with the shock of discovering his beloved partner in mischief was somebody else entirely. This man who had shared his jokes, his drunkenness, his extortion of the tourists – was actually the dreaded Krallik, the feared head of the OPG used to scare Papul children to their beds, and powerful enough to shake Sabit in his palace of comfort. Then again, it explained all the little things that had perplexed Wemus too. The sudden fits of anger over Wemus’s affection for Wina, his disdain towards the Indoni girl herself...

‘Yes, your English does seem to have improved somewhat, Kepennis..’ The Doctor had a protective arm around Victoria now, and was once again making slow and careful backward steps towards the antechamber.

Kepennis detected the movement. As the Doctor watched in horror, the composite corpse of ‘The Krallik’ rose stiffly from the wooden chair, still holding the candle. It shuffled with a grotesque, wooden gait towards the time traveller, the flame bleeding backwards from the outstretched candle. It was a macabre and grisly sight, made infinitely worse when the missionary head, dislodged by the movement, tipped forward and bounced on the floor. The dead white eyes held Victoria petrified from below. One of the whore hands twitched towards the belt fastening the khaki trousers, and when it lifted again it was clutching a gnarled and dirty Kassowark bone knife. ,

The Krallik was three yards from the Doctor and Victoria.

Her involuntary scream shattered the spell both were under.

‘Move again, and I will saw your companion’s head from her shoulders, Doctor!’ Kepennis ordered, his face frowning with the mental energy he was using to manipulate the Krallik.

Without taking his eyes off the composite corpse, Kepennis spoke to Wemus.

‘My friend: you must let her go.’

Wemus, understanding Kepennis’s meaning, merely clasped hold of Wina’s hand even harder.

‘She is Indoni. A blight, a pollution. A working girl selling her filthy wares in our pure land. Without her you can stand at my side as we free Papul forever. But you must prove your loyalty by killing the hostages. The Indoni whore must die first.’

Wina shrieked in indignation, twisting like a snake in Wemus’s grasp. ‘I no working girl!!’ she bellowed, her hands claws raking the air in her desperation to get at Kepennis. She pulled Wemus forward towards the ‘guide’, so determined was she to vent her anger.

The Doctor tried to intervene, dodging around the now motionless figure of the Krallik.

‘Peaceful solutions are always the better option, Kepennis.’

‘We have discussed this already, Doctor.
Extreme
solutions are the only ones that count.’

Kepennis took his eyes away from the Krallik for a moment, raising an eyebrow at Wemus.

‘No? This is your answer? You choose a whore over your own people’s freedom? Then you are cockroach too..’ He stepped back and passed a hand in front of the nearest Mumi’s eyes.

The Mumi emitted a horrible wail, and coughed a snake up from its desiccated throat. It didn’t have far to travel, catapulted through the air by the spring mechanism inside. Its fangs found the scalp beneath Wina’s long, glossy hair and pumped venom through the skin into the bloodstream beneath.

Now Wina was writhing in agony instead of fury, dancing, dancing one final time. Wemus was still clutching her in a firm embrace, clutching a green dead thing that had writhed its last, both in pleasure and pain. He did not let her fall, but held her still, staring into her mottled jungle face.

More snakes were raining onto the bamboo flooring as Kepennis waved a hand in front of the second Mumi, and then took his place on the seat vacated by the Krallik. The Doctor pulled Victoria to the floor hastily. He felt a slim serpent flick past his ear and emitted a yelp of consternation.

‘Oh my giddy
aunt
!’

Victoria’s screams drowned out any further utterance from the time traveller. Only Wemus’s cry could pierce her almighty shrieks.

‘
You won’t free Papul. You’ll only kill us all
!’

Wemus finally let Wina fall, moving forward through the hail of snakes. And they were all missing him. He dived towards Pan’s body, rolled, came up brandishing the mercenary’s machete, threw himself at Kepennis, still sitting in his chair.

Kepennis proved his long years of jungle combat experience by leaping from the chair, twisting around behind Wemus and thrusting the guide towards the nearest Mumi.

Wemus reacted just as quickly, using Kepennis’s push to propel himself at the desiccated chieftain. The corpse, squatting gruesomely on its log stool, withered head drooped over bony knees, lifted both arms to embrace him.

The blade flashed out, deadheading the Mumi, taking one withered arm off at the shoulder for good measure in the same swipe. From his huddled position on the floor, the Doctor could see snakes questing up from the headless torso. The tiny serpents wriggled from the neck-hole to slide down the Mumi’s body.

The Krallik lurched into motion again; Victoria screamed again. Two lumbering strides and the headless corpse was upon Wemus, slashing with the bone knife. Wemus spun to fight. The machete chopped down. The hand holding the candle dropped to the floor. The flame continued to flutter, the candle still held by the nerveless hand. The Krallik rammed the femur knife into Wemus’s mouth, and out through the back of his neck. Wemus doing St Vitus’ Dance, two snakes attached to his back. He pulled the Krallik down with him, straddled the corpse even as he turned into one himself, slamming the machete through the torso. He collapsed, face the colour of rainforest leaves, across the twitching body of the Krallik.

Kepennis released it from his will strings, turned his attention upon the remaining Mumi. The Doctor raised his head long enough to see the dead chieftain unfolding from its crouch. The head that had been thrown back in a permanent death scream twisted slowly from side to side, the arms lifting like withered sticks.

If they didn’t get out now, they were going to die, the Doctor realized. He yanked Victoria up, protecting her from the Mumi’s line of fire with his own body. The Mumi had dragged itself from its log now, and although its legs were useless, was pulling itself along the floor by its hands, huge dried eye sockets pointing at them like cannon barrels of dead flesh. The mouth yawned.

Kepennis was behind it, orchestrating its attack. The Doctor turned with Victoria to run from the room, but the corpses of Wemus and the Krallik were blocking their exit.

They would have to leap over the obstacle, and the Doctor wasn’t sure Victoria could manage that. There was no way past them to the left because of the proximity of the wall. The Mumi was humping itself along to the right, preventing egress that way.

Kepennis’s eyes were betraying his madness truly for the first time. The candlelight was inside them, fluttering like insane moths, the pupils vast tunnel-mouths leading nowhere.

‘This is the carnage we deal in. Roll in it, glorify the obscenity. The entrails of hate and combat around your fists as you delve them deep, deeeeeeep into the warm cavity of man.

Doctor, do you see the beauty, the absolute beauty of it?’ As he spoke, he ripped free the machete buried in the Krallik’s torso.

An arrow took him in the right shoulder, pushed him back across the room. He didn’t make a sound.

The Doctor, trapped against the wall, clinging tightly to Victoria, heard the babble of alien tongues and the sound of more arrows leaving their strings – the dry pock! pock! of them hitting the Mumi.

‘
Doctor! Victoria
!’

The Doctor was sure it was the cannibals calling his name at first, because that was all he could see in the confusion – a group of naked warriors with leaves gummed around their penises, clutching bows and stone axes with wooden handles.

He wondered stupidly at their amazing ability to mimic a Scottish accent, and then Jamie was emerging from behind them, forcing his way through the throng now filling the room.

Smoke was squeezing in through the gaps in the walls fast now, and the Doctor’s eyes were already beginning to stream.

‘Get down, Jamie! Watch out for the Mumi!’

His warning was too late for one of the tribesmen. A snake had propelled itself right into his open mouth. He convulsed in a twisted dance, having completely swallowed the diminutive serpent. Two natives sprang forward, stone axes rising, falling, slamming into the crawling Mumi. The axe heads might have been stone, but they were sharp and very strong. Between them, the two cannibals soon bludgeoned the chieftain into a leathery mess on the floor. They backed away in superstitious awe when they saw the snakes winding through the desiccated wreckage.

Kepennis vaulted nimbly over the bodies of the Krallik and Wemus and straight into Jamie’s arms.

‘Kepennis...’ Jamie said, startled. ‘What’s going on?’

Instead of replying, Kepennis thrust him hard into Santi, who had forced herself into the room despite the protests of her cannibal proteges. Both Scot and Indoni dancer tumbled together in an undignified heap on the floor. Kepennis raised the machete with his good arm, aiming for Jamie’s head.

Then, abruptly, Kepennis froze. He tried to take a step forward as the cannibals continued to retreat from the snaky bundle of dried flesh that was the Muni. There was no-one to stop him. He dropped the machete. He swivelled slowly to face the source of his torment.