Doctor Who: Rags Read Online Free PDF Page A

walls for protection against the encroaching bleakness. Whitewashed walls and gardens bursting with spring flowers marked a determined effort to shrug off the all-pervading mood of the moor.
     
    They passed the houses and turned a corner to find themselves in the high street. There was the pub, over to the left; there was the prison looming in the distance; and there was the band playing on the moor beyond the town.
    ‘Oh great, there’s a fair on!’ Jo chirped delightedly. The Doctor swung Bessie into the kerb beside the pub and sat for a moment with the engine running, staring in the direction Jo was pointing.
    ‘That’s no spring fair,’ he said gravely. The tone of his voice made Jo turn. He looked suddenly very old. When the device on the dashboard began to glow, ever so slightly, the lines on his 26
     
    face deepened with his frown.
    Jo forgot about her hard-won maturity. ‘What is that thing for, Doctor?’
    ‘It’s a tracking sensor, Jo. And it means we’ve come to the right place.’ He was dropping his avuncular attempts at protecting her from the truth and, rather than making her afraid, this only made her feel relieved. She wasn’t easily fooled, despite her innocent, goofy, surface act, and maybe he was beginning to realise that.
    The Doctor transferred his gaze from the fluttering glow within the translucent sensor column to the band. He switched the engine off, and they could hear the music.
     
    The music rose into the spring air with a lazy gusto that belied its vehemence. A breezy but sinister crunch of guitar, bass and drums married to the uncompromising growls of the singer. The four musicians looked like fancy-dress trolls gatecrashing an Old England fête.
    ‘Scum,’ belched the singer. ‘The scum of the earth.Scum, scum, scum of the earth.’
    Nick gaped. Sin stared. Rod and Jimmy began to feel like smiling, but couldn’t quite do it. There was something too unwholesome about the lurching stride of the anti-tunes, the latent viciousness of the musicians. This band dealt out attitude like an axe in the face. And yet, somehow, it felt right. Rod and Jimmy started to let themselves go, release tensions and resentments that had been folded away inside. Let go.
    Nick felt the same liberation blast through him. It was simultaneously breathtaking and terrifying. The lyrics spoke to him, the music spoke to him, in a cacophony that spat on melody while also courting it; a murder of song that paradoxically threw out hooks of harmony at once irresistible and repulsive.
    And the band played on.
     
    The Doctor was watching the musicians play. He and Jo stood on the fringe of the crowd, beside the wall. Jo was staring, and she 27
     
    was sweating. Something yawned in her, a gulf opening wide. She didn’t feel the Doctor’s hand as he touched her arm. She had forgotten he existed.
     
    The Doctor withdrew his hand. Jo was trembling, and even though she was dressed as usual in a skimpy miniskirt and impractical trendy top, he knew it was nothing to do with the cold. He glanced round at the rest of the crowd. Tension, fear and excitement were jolting through them like electricity. He could taste the unease like bitter wine.
    The band finished a song. A death rattle of evil guitar vibes, then silence. The green-haired singer sent a missile of phlegm into the crowd. Nobody offered a protest.
    ‘It’s time.’ the singer rasped, ‘for the scum... to inherit... ‘
    The band blasted into another number.
     
    Prison Officer Evans seized hold of Eddie Price’s shoulder. ‘Did you hear what I said? Move it!’
    Eddie didn’t blink an eyelid. Pemo Grimes was rigid beside him.
    The ten cons were watching the band: the music carried easily across the moor, a tremble of subversion in the sunshine.
    Officer Evans had reached the limit of his patience. He whipped out his stick and brandished it before Eddie’s eyes. ‘You got a choice, Price. You move, or you do a month in the hole.’
    ‘Join the