Read Doctor Who: Combat Rock Online
Authors: Mick Lewis
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Doctor Who (Fictitious character), #Comics & Graphic Novels, #Mummies, #Jungle warfare
Doctor Who: Combat Rock
COMBAT ROCK
Mick Lewis
Published by BBC Worldwide Ltd,
Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane
London W12 0TT
First published 2002
Copyright © Mick Lewis 2002
The moral right of the author has been asserted Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format copyright © 1963
Doctor Who and TARDIS are trademarks of the BBC
ISBN 0 563 53855 4
Imaging by Black Sheep, copyright © BBC 2002
Typeset in Garamond by Keystroke,
Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham Cover printed by Belmont Press Ltd, Northampton Contents
For Wina
Mercy
‘Where is the man?’
Power-rifles glint in the jungle sunlight, dappled by leaves, spotted with sweat. Birds shrill and animals boom and rustle.
A Kassowark nods through the bushes, comical coxcomb erect and purple, eyes staring with odd madness. It sees the men and is undecided whether to flee or attack. Its three-toed claws could unravel a man’s stomach with one kick. It stalks off, elusive, shy, deadly. The men do not even sense its presence.
They are focusing on...
The woman, beside the stream, where it bends through the clearing, knotted with ripples, dancing with Crouch-flies. She washes the primitive crockery, keeping one eye always on her baby son, giggling on a tussock within arm’s reach. Her face is broad and brown, her eyes large, dark and always curious.
There is a beauty in her that is reflected in the stream, the jungle, the colourful birds that stitch through the overhanging boughs. She is naked but for a grass skirt. She isn’t smiling, but her thoughts are warm and dwelling on good things.
Good things come to those who wait.
The soldiers emerge from the trees, weapons dangling casually, green combat clothes stained with their sweat and the sweat of the jungle. The leader swaggers forward, a loose grin on his face. The woman sees him now and instinctively gathers her son to her as the man approaches.
She stands. The soldier pushes her down on her haunches again with the muzzle of his power-rifle. He gestures with his head and the others make for the round thatch hut nestling on the far edge of the clearing. The leader waits patiently, eyes never leaving those of the woman. He is different from her, features more delicate, bone structure sleeker, similar to his men. His moustache glistens, as do his eyes. The men return and the leader is displeased to see they are alone.
‘So where is the man?’ The question is to the woman. She stares back without answering, clutching her child. She is too proud to beg for mercy. The jungle is with her. The mountains beyond, are with her. The leader looks disappointed that she will not ask for mercy. He shifts the muzzle from her breasts to the forehead of the child, the child that has begun to cry.
The question hangs in the air. He will not ask it again. She will succumb to his will.
The woman is silent. Slow tears track down her cheeks, but her eyes never flinch from those of the leader.
‘No mercy’ the leader says hollowly, as if pretending he has beaten her in this game, and, pushing the trigger with cold fury, knows he has lost.
‘How much further? My underwear is
dancing
with creatures.’
The plump woman in the garish Earth fashions scratched at her crotch demonstratively and lifted one leg in the air like an effeminate Sumo wrestler.
The guide rawked with laughter. ‘Not far, not far. But see all the lovely things along the way.’ He pointed at a yellow bird twitching on a branch above the narrow trail, its beak long and crimson and twice the size of its body.
The rest of the small group of tourists paused to marvel at the bird, which blinked stupidly at them and cocked its head to one side. It made a sound like a balloon deflating and then shifted to another branch with a delicate hop.
‘Didn’t come all the way to this sweathole of an island to see no
bird
,’ shrilled the Earth woman. She wiped sweat and mosquitoes off her brow and pulled her straw hat lower.
‘And I not bring you here to see birds,’ the guide said, leading the way forward again. He wove through the clutching leaves, hacking here and there with his machete where the jungle encroached too invasively for plump Earth woman passage. He paused frequently for his group to catch up. Seven of them in all. Earth woman and her companion – fat too, balding, dogged by a bad cough, both of them stomping through the rainforest as if determined to frighten every exotic creature from their path so as to be able to remain comfortably unimpressed by their journey.
The others: a rich Indoni businessman and his sinuous wife, exchanging the air con wrestling of corporate charades for the skinslick steaming of the most unexplored rainforest on Jenggel; a couple of satellite aliens with expensive cameras and the complacent air of born tourists – never seeming to be excited by anything, but restlessly snapping, snapping, as if their lives depended on what they took home with them, stolen forever from the jungle and captured on holofilm; the last, a tall, silent man whose race or planet of origin the guide could not determine, but who seemed the keenest wildlife observer in the pack. The guide warmed to him the most.
‘Here be Kassowarks,’ he said dramatically, gesturing around at the broad green leaves and vines that surrounded them. Of course, the huge flightless birds were all long gone, thanks to the Fat Stompers, but it did no harm pretending.
The tall man’s eyes bulged with excitement. ‘Where?’ His blue jungle suit was obviously straight from a city, but he was genuinely interested in the flora and fauna the guide was trying to offer them.
‘I’ll kick their asses, if’n I see one of ‘em,’ Plump Lady boomed and her husband tightened his belt as if in aggressive agreement. ‘Where’s the bloody village?’
‘We there,’ the guide said slowly, and stepped under a fat snake zigzagged with migraine colours that arched down from the vines above. The businessman’s sexy wife saw it and gasped. The guide was tempted to hold her small brown hand to comfort her, but something deterred him. Instead he prodded the snake with his machete until it rolled further up the nearest bole and disappeared into green. He stepped aside and ushered the tourists to precede him. They did so, albeit gingerly, as if expecting the snake to drop around their shoulders like a fat, colourful arm.
The clearing revealed a small cluster of mushroom-like thatched huts, embraced by a circular wall of bamboo. The guide led them towards the gate, and stepped inside the compound.
‘Oh my God, will ya lookit that,’ the woman rasped and squealed with laughter. Two men were emerging from the largest central hut to welcome them. The reason for the woman’s amazed delight was obvious to all the tourists: the men were completely naked but for long, thin, hollow vegetable gourds that were tied around their waists by string and positioned securely over their penises. Their features were similar to those of the guide: broad, animated, their hair tight and curly where it showed under net-like hoods. The delicate Indoni woman backed away a step as the two villagers approached. The guide met them warmly, embracing each in turn.
The two tourists with the sophisticated holocameras commenced snapping rapidly but dispassionately. The plump woman was still giggling. Her fat spouse stood with his belly heaving over his belt and said nothing. He was probably dreaming of somewhere cool and distant, maybe even dreaming of what he could do with the Indoni woman, or maybe what he could do with his wife and a machete. The guide surveyed them with a mischievous smile. Then he relented, and gave them what they had come to see.
The two villagers retreated back inside the large hut, to re-emerge a moment later carrying a shrivelled figure perched on a wooden stool. The plump woman wobbled forward, sunglasses slipping down her beaky nose as she stooped to peer more closely. The villagers set the black figure down on the earth, its withered knees drawn up under its hollow chin.
The arms, thin as rope, hung down on either side of the stool.
The mouth hung open in a deathless scream, a tunnel without teeth. The eye sockets were dry and huge. The net hat looked bizarre on the corpse, as did the penis gourd rearing up from the bundle of smoked skin and bones.
‘Mumi...’ the guide said proudly.
The cameras clicked and whirred.
The plump woman reached out an inquisitive finger to touch the desiccated mummy, gingerly though, as if fearing it might reach out an inquisitive finger to touch her too.
‘Mumi...’ the guide said again.
The woman turned round to grin at her husband. Behind her, a twitch. A twitch of one leathery hand. Then stillness again. Somewhere a bird shrieked with jungle alacrity.
The cameras.
Klick. Whirr.
Red sand, and purple sea. On the beach a box. Tall, odd, battered and blue. A light on the roof winked and faded. It should not have been there, this time and space-weathered thing, but it was, and no doubt had been in more incongruous locations than this crimson shore. The door was opening, and a young man emerging. The young man was stocky and healthy-looking, with a slight stoop and a rather incurious expression beneath the long, slightly unkempt hair. His initial suspicious look evaporated when he saw the sea, the sand and the cluster of palms nodding in a slight warm breeze just behind the box.