Doctor Who: Rags (34 page)

The Doctor stroked her head but said nothing. There wasn’t an awful lot he could say.

A grey, dismal dawn found Brigadier AlaistairLethbridge-Stewart striding through the battlefield that was Stonehenge. Probably for the first time in his life, he was wondering why he had become a soldier.

Bodies were strewn everywhere. Between the bluestones, on top of each other, draped over UNIT jeeps.

Everywhere.

UNIT troopers, hippies, punks - the numbers of the dead were 247

roughly equal on both sides. The living staggered away from the site of so much hate and fury, eyes locked and strange.

Dazed and confused.

The Brigadier paused in the centre of the ancient monument, surveying the carnage. At his feet lay Corporal Hannah Robinson, eyes wide and scared, mouth frozen in a hate rictus. Her hands were fastened tightly around the throat of the chief roadie, whose hands in turn were clasped around a knife buried deep in the corporal’s chest. The Brigadier heard a scuffle of boots and glanced up.

Benton stood dishevelled and bleary beside him. The Brigadier found he could not meet his sergeant’s eyes, and dropped his glance. Another first. Benton stumbled away, his right sleeve ripped and soaked with blood.

The lawless survivors - hippies and punks, Rastas, bikers, outlaws and outsiders - staggered away from the stone circle, and towards an uncertain future.

Cassandra found herself unable to leave the standing stone. Her right hand played softly over its uneven surface, as if trying to trace an outline. An outline of a face.

‘He’s still there,’ she said to nobody. ‘I can see him.’

Jo was bandaging Captain Yates’s shoulder, but paused to look up. She wondered who the strange dark-haired beauty was, and what she thought she could see in the lodestone. It was just a rock.

Nothing to see.

‘He was so full of hate,’ Cassandra said, stroking the rock more passionately.

‘The summer of hate’s all over now.’

Cassandra turned, tears tracking down her cheeks. The Doctorsmiled kindly at her, then addressed the travellers who were still milling around the field, shocked and horrified and above all very, very confused.

‘You can all go home now,’ he said.

248

The travellers stared stupidly back at him.

The Doctor rubbed his chin, realising what he had just said. Jo joined him, putting an arm around his waist, seeking comfort in her loneliness. He smiled sadly at her...

‘I know exactly how they feel,’ he said.

Overhead, storm clouds were gathering blackly. The first few drops were already beginning to fall.

On the distant hillside, the white horse waited patiently for the rain.

249

To Mum and Dad for putting up with me when I was bad, for NOT

disowning me when I was 12, and for everything really. It can’t be fun to pick up your son from a police cell,Dad, but you were great about it. But am I still good for nothing, Mum? Two books out doesn’t change that, surely? Lazy Bones sitting in the sun...

To Tash: Sorry. For everything. But your mum always said I was no good. Thanks for standing by me.

To Justin Richards for his incredible enthusiasm and great suggestions.

To Aleanna Mason for the brilliant cover design inspiration.

To Johnny R for the attitude, and to Sidney for showing me the mayhem.

To the Anti-Nowhere League for being an uncontrollable Beast of a band, and for giving me beer when I was young and alone.

Jesus giving water to Ben Hur ...? Okay, perhaps not.

To the Damned, of course, for 20 years of anarchy, chaos and destruction, and for finally writing new songs.

To syd for showing me how to Flame, and for taking me on Interstellar Overdrive too many times. Come back, come back...

To the real Dead Boys: Sid (again), Stiv, Malcolm, and my old mate Jason. (Ten years ago, but not forgotten.) To all my friends - in Wotton or Bristol or wherever - odd sods all of ‘em. Bless Ya.

250

Abou

o t the

h au

a tho

h r

Having visited real stone age tribes in Irian Jaya, New Guinea, and lived with treehouse-dwelling former cannibals (they stopped eating human flesh five years before!), Mick Lewis could be said to have travelled back in time without the aid of a TARDIS. He intends going back to what the missionaries have called ‘the hell of the south coast’ shortly, this time to visit the dreaded village of Korfar, whose inhabitants still practise cannibalism and who greet every approach by missionaries with storms of arrows. As well as clearly having a death wish, Mick is obviously drawn to the dark side of things - his first novel The Bloody Man centred on the legendary 17th century cannibal Sawney bean (in whose supposedly haunted cave on the east coast of scotland he stayed alone one night for research) and he was recently ignominously sacked from his job as a gruesome actor at the York Dungeon for being too scary and making too many kids (and adults) cry!

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