I said urgently, ‘Dave …’
I wanted to tell him to hold on, that I’d get him out of this, that he’d be OK, but there was no time. I saw the exact moment the light left his eyes and he died and a small part of me went with him.
I wriggled out from beneath him and ran for cover.
Behind me, Professor Rapson and Dr Dowson had left the pod and were still wielding their homemade flamethrower, playing bursts of fire at everything they perceived as the enemy. God knows how they were still alive. The Doctor was shrieking, ‘Awake! Awake! Hereward the Wake!’
And then, the shit, quite literally, hit the fan. Or the flamethrower.
The Professor had acquired a considerable amount of mixed dung. Not knowing how much he’d need, he had gone for quantity. Obviously, they’d located it as far away as possible from the pods, at the north end of the canyon. But not nearly far enough. It was steaming when he’d obtained it. It had festered in the sun for a few days. It had got hotter. And more active. We had methane. And now we had a flamethrower. It was inevitable. St Mary’s could explode a sack of soggy tissues.
A long way away, I heard Guthrie shout, ‘Look out, Professor.’
I threw myself to the hot sand, assumed the traditional foetal position, and tried to make myself as small as possible.
An endless second passed. A huge inhalation sucked the air from my lungs. Everything went black, and then red, then a crack, then a roar, then more heat and I flew through the air. I hit the ground hard and half a mountain fell on me.
Once, when I was a kid, I was playing on a see-saw and the kid on the other end got off while I was still in the air. I can still remember the shock as I hit the ground. The impact knocked all the air out of my lungs and I lay on the ground, desperate to breathe and knowing that the next breath would be agony. This was exactly the same, but scaled up.
I left it as long as I could, but eventually you have to breathe in, so I did. And again. And again. Red hot barbed wire tightened inside my chest.
I could see, but my eyes stung badly. I tried blinking to bring up some tears, but my eyelids felt like sandpaper. Not that there was much to see. Dark clouds of heavy dust hung around. A lot of other people were on the ground as well.
I turned my head very gingerly. I lay on and under a pile of rubble. My left arm was gone. I couldn’t see it anywhere. I was pleased at the lack of pain. My right arm I could see and it was still attached, as were my legs, although nothing seemed to be working properly. I felt my eyes close …
Something grabbed my ankle. The shock jerked me awake and that set the pain off. Every single inch of me hurt. Even my missing left arm. The grip on my ankle was released and something grabbed my leg instead.
Lifting my head again, I could see a dusty figure dragging itself across the rubble and using handfuls of me to pull itself forward. I wished it would stop. I was in enough pain without this as well. An arm reached up and grabbed at my tee. As it did so, it lifted its head and I knew I was in serious trouble.
Izzie Barclay.
I didn’t waste time thinking about how she got there. The main issue seemed to be what she was going to do now she was here. As if she read my mind, she scrabbled one handed and came up with a rock.
She looked bad. Her nose was a funny shape and she bled from deep gashes on her head and arms. Blood ran into her eyes and every now and then, she shook her head to clear them. Despite this she never took her eyes off me and her intentions were very, very clear. I’d never seen such blind, vicious hatred. I wasn’t going to get out of this.
She said something. I saw her lips move.
I said, ‘I can’t hear you,’ and watched her look puzzled. She was deaf too.
She raised her arm and brought the rock down. At the last moment I turned my head and she missed. It wasn’t a powerful blow – she was all over the place, but sooner or later, she wouldn’t miss and she would beat my face to a pulp. Her lips were moving continually. I guessed she was telling me how much she’d always hated me. She pulled herself up until she sat astride my chest and held her rock with both hands above her head. This really wasn’t the way I wanted to die.
And, as it turned out, it wasn’t.
I became aware of a cooling breeze drying the sweat on my face. I sighed in relief. I was dead.
Mrs Partridge sat on a rock and regarded me impassively. Her dark hair was bound up in loose ringlets secured by a silver clasp. She wore an exquisitely draped robe. Her feet were bare. She held a scroll.
I said, ‘I’m dead, aren’t I?’ Which is not a phrase you get to use that often.
She shook her head.
All right, maybe hallucinating, then.