Free Doctor Who: Rags by Mick Lewis Page B

results.’ He dropped the receiver in its cradle and picked up the remote thoughtfully.
     
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    ‘Blankety-Blank’s on, darling,’ he called and hit the on-button.
     
    Of course, when Jimmy heard the encampment was preparing to follow the cattle truck on the next leg of its tour, he was the first to suggest they should also follow it. Sin leapt at the idea eagerly.
    Rod leant against Jimmy’s camper van, saying nothing. Nick looked at Jo, who had joined them an hour before.
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘What are you asking her for?’ Sin blurted, jumping down from her seat on the camper’s step.
     
    ‘I’m asking everyone.’ Nick touched Sin’s shoulder placatingly.
    She shook him off, still glaring at Jo.
    Jo attempted a smile. ‘I really don’t mind,’ she stammered. ‘But I think it might be fun.’
    Nick walked away from the van, smoking a cigarette. The Damned’s latest album was playing on the van’s dashboard stereo: their best one yet, according to Jimmy. The music was fresh, fast and exciting; it smacked of spring-sunshine anarchy and drunken chaos. Yet the song playing now seemed like a warning - ‘I Just Can’t Be Happy Today’.Why did Nick feel he should heed it?
    Wasn’t that a stupid question, anyway? Of course he should be careful about what they did next. Three more people had just been murdered. And now that the band were tucked away again in their filthy truck, like children’s toys discarded for the day, he had lost some of the wild enthusiasm of the previous night. He looked at Sin. She looked sexier than he’d ever seen her: pert, sensuous, lascivious even. As if the events of the last few days had broken her free of her previous uptight inhibitions.
    The priests hang on hooks; the radio’s on ice, the telly’s been banned. The army’s in power; the Devil commands!
    ‘I say we go,’ Jimmy shouted over Dave Vanian’s croak.
    All around them, the dilapidated vehicles that had arrived throughout the night and much of the day were grumbling into life. The cattle truck had crawled on to the road, where it lurked, engine idling, waiting.
     
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    Waiting for them, Nick knew.
    ‘Let’s go then,’ he said, and flicked his cigarette away.
     
    Nobody noticed Charmagne as she wandered among the crowd of people who were now breaking camp and spilling into whatever vehicles would accept them. Why should they? Even though she didn’t exactly look part of the scene with her refined features and clean blonde hair, she wasn’t making any undue efforts to draw attention to herself. The only person she’d spoken to was Farris, the shaken landlord of the Oblong Box, and he’d told her all she needed to know. She didn’t need to bother any of the punks and hippies and general disenchanted youth who clung to the pub as if they were searching for some kind of meaning. She watched as the encampment broke up, turning into a convoy, and realised with a shock that she was shaking. Not with fear, but with the purest excitement she had ever known.
     
    It was only three in the afternoon, yet Kane was already in the gutter.
    He woke up with the sun blazing on his face and rolled on to his side, groaning. A beer can crumpled under his weight. He shoved it away, causing a hollow rattle like metal bones.
    He sat up. He was still too pissed to have cultivated a hangover.
    The church tower swung into his line of vision, rocking like a fat mast. He tried to focus on it, wondering what he was doing lying outside the churchyard. Ten pence rolled out of his pocket as he struggled to his feet, but nothing more. He looked at the squashed litter of cans around where he had crashed and grinned ruefully.
    ‘Sod ‘em,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Sod ‘em all.’ He stumbled towards the gate that led into the small village churchyard. If they wanted to treat him like the scourge of Cirbury, he’d bloody give ‘em the real thing... He picked the grave with the biggest bunch of flowers