Doctor Who: Combat Rock by Mick Lewis

tourists.
    New men. Santi is working girl!’ A raucous snort of mirth came from Drew at this. Santi snarled and clenched her fists.
    The Doctor stepped between the two girls. He could see beyond the surface of Wina’s spite and understood why she was provoking an entirely unnecessary argument: her shaking had stopped. She had something else to concentrate on, something she could understand that had nothing to do with Mumis that came to life and villagers being burned to death wholesale.
    ‘I think Kepennis is right about leaving here, Wemus,’ he said gravely. ‘But I must ask you to help us find our companion.’
    The guide looked at him, then at his friend Kepennis.
    Kepennis was silent for a moment, then nodded.
    ‘We will search jungle around village until nightfall. After that, we leave.’
    ‘There’s still something I don’t understand,’ Jamie said.
    Everyone shut up for once and looked at him. He pointed at the smoking remains of the Mumi. ‘How do dead things come tae life like he says?’ He turned to Kepennis for an answer.
    But it was the Doctor who gave him one.
    ‘They don’t, Jamie.’ He was still holding the purple fungus in his hands. ‘You should know better than that by now.’
    Kepennis met his gaze. ‘I saw the Mumi move and talk, stranger. The gods spoke, and then they killed.’
    ‘Yes,’ the Doctor replied. ‘There seems to be rather a lot of killing going on, doesn’t there?’
    His words were drowned out by Wina’s cry of terror. They all whirled around to see what had alarmed her.
    A bizarre and terrifying group of figures was emerging from the jungle. Their faces were hidden under balaclavas of leathery animal skin and fur, their dark torsos were naked, their legs covered by ripped khaki combat trousers. They were carrying machetes and bows and arrows. A couple even had old Earth-export rifles. They didn’t look very friendly.
    From the window of the first-storey landing, he could see all the madness.
    Agat was awash with blood.
    Civilisation had been discarded. Primitivism was restored.
    All the trappings of a modern world imported from Javee and Batu and even the worlds beyond were consigned to the flames of atavism. And while the clothes, the books, the papers burned and the technology fell apart under repeated blows, the bodies continued to collect. Indoni dead were everywhere; scattered like unwanted toys on the plankways; floating in the filthy waterways beneath. But there was one detail that wasn’t right about the corpses, and it wasn’t until Father Pieter peered towards the police but that he realized what it was: the small building was now guarded only by the Javee officer’s severed head nailed to the door. A chilly wind played through him. All the heads were missing of course, apart from the special gift awarded him earlier – and this one, left behind like a trophy, like a warning to the authorities to ever dare enforce regulation on savagery again. Further along the main plankway, the Indoni traders’ stalls were still manned by their prosperous owners, but now they were propped against their shelves of wares as if they were sleeping off a particularly heavy drinking spree – the blood marking their skin and clothes the only signs that all was not as before; that and the absence of their heads. The fruit trader’s severed hands were stacked alongside the papaya– like vegetables he had sold for such extortionate prices; the couturier from Batu was crucified in the doorway of his shack, his dismembered wife scattered beneath his hanging feet, along with the tatters of the imported clothes they had sold. Bagire, the hunchbacked Horrakbil bird, pecked amongst the bloody debris.
    Blood stained the mud beneath the walkways.
    Thirty years of education, culture and endeavour wiped out.
    Thirty years of Christianity...
    Gone.
    Father Pieter could see it all. He would lose his mind for looking; he would lose his life if he stayed here. They would fmd him. The