Johnny and the Bomb (7 page)

‘Where did you go?'

‘Back in time … I think. There was a man building this place, and a dog.'

‘A dog,' said Kasandra. Her voice suggested that she would have seen something
much
more interesting. ‘Oh, well. It's a start.'

She shifted the trolley. It was standing in four small grooves in the concrete. They were dirty and oily. They'd been there a long time, too.

‘This,' said Kirsty, ‘is no ordinary shopping trolley.'

‘It's got Tesco written on it,' Johnny pointed out, hopping up and down as he replaced his shoe. ‘
And
a squeaky wheel.'

‘Obviously it's still switched on or something,' Kirsty went on, ignoring him.

‘And that's time travel, is it?' said Johnny. ‘I thought it'd be more exciting. You know – battles and monsters and things? And it's not much fun if all we can do is—
don't touch it!
'

Kasandra prodded a bag.

The air flickered and changed.

Kasandra looked around her. The garage hadn't changed in any way. Except—

‘Who repaired your bike?' she said. Johnny turned. His bike was no longer upside down with a wheel off, but leaning against the wall, both tyres quite full.

‘You see, I notice things,' said Kasandra. ‘I am remarkably observant. We must have gone into the future, when you've mended it.'

Johnny wasn't sure. He'd torn three inner tubes already, plus he'd also lost the thingy from the inside of the valve. Probably no time machine could ever go
so
far into the future that he'd be good at cycle repair.

‘Let's have a look round,' said Kirsty. ‘Obviously where we go is controlled by some factor I haven't discovered yet. If we're in the future, the important thing is to find out which horses are going to win races, and so on.'

‘Why?'

‘So we can bet money on them and become rich, of course.'

‘I don't know how to bet!'

‘One problem at a time.'

Johnny looked though the grimy window. The weather didn't look very different. There were no flying cars or other definite signs of futurosity. But Guilty was no longer under the bench.

‘Grandad has a racing paper,' he said, feeling a bit light-headed.

‘Let's go, then.'

‘What? Into my house?'

‘Of course.'

‘Supposing I meet me?'

‘Well, you've always been good at making friends.'

Reluctantly, Johnny led the way out of the
garage. Garden paths in the future, he noted, were made of some gritty grey substance which was amazingly like cracked concrete. Back doors were an excitingly futuristic faded blue colour, with little dried flakes where the paint had bubbled up. It was locked, but his ancient key still fitted.

There was a rectangle on the floor consisting of spiky brown hairs. He wiped his feet on it, and looked at the time measurement module on the wall. It said ten past three.

The future was amazingly like the present.

‘Now we've got to find a newspaper,' said Kirsty.

‘It won't be a lot of help,' said Johnny. ‘Grandad keeps them around until he's got time to read them. They go back months. Anyway, everything's
normal
. This doesn't look very futuristic to
me
.'

‘Don't you even have a calendar?'

‘Yes. There's one on my bedside clock. I just hope I'm at school, that's all.'

According to the clock, it was the third of October.

‘The day before yesterday,' said Johnny. ‘Mind you, it could be the clock. It doesn't work very well.'

‘Yuk. You
sleep
in here?' said Kirsty, looking around with an expression like a vegetarian in a sausage factory.

‘Yes. It's my room.'

Kirsty ran her hand over his desk, which was fairly crowded at the moment.

‘What're all these photocopies and photos and things?'

‘
That's
the project I'm doing in history. We're doing the Second World War. So I'm doing Blackbury in the war.'

He tried to get between her and the desk, but Kirsty was always interested in things people didn't want her to see.

‘Hey, this is you, isn't it?' she said, grabbing a sepia photograph. ‘Since when did you wear a uniform and a pudding-basin haircut?'

Johnny tried to grab it. ‘And that's Grandad when he was a bit older than me,' he mumbled. ‘I tried to get him to talk about the war like the teacher said but he tells me to shut up about it.'

‘You're so
local
, aren't you,' said Kirsty. ‘I can't imagine much happening here—'

‘Something did happen,' said Johnny. He pulled out Mrs Tachyon's chip paper and jabbed at the front page with his finger. ‘At 11.07pm on May 21, 1941. Bombs! Real bombs! They called it the Blackbury Blitz. And this is the paper from the day after. Look.' He rummaged among the stuff on his desk and pulled out a photocopy. ‘See? I got a copy of the same page out of the library! But this paper's real, it's new!'

‘If she
is
… from the past … why does she wear an old ra-ra skirt and trainers?' said Kirsty.

Johnny glared angrily at her. She had no
right
not to care about Paradise Street!

‘Nineteen people got killed! In one night!' he said. ‘There wasn't any warning! The only bombs that fell on Blackbury in the whole of the war! The only survivors were two goldfish in a bowl! It got blown into a tree and still had water in it! All the people got killed!'

Kirsty picked up a felt-tipped pen, but it didn't write because it had dried up. Johnny had a worldclass collection of pens that didn't work.

She had this infuriating habit of appearing not to notice him when he was excited about something.

‘You know you've still got Thomas the Tank Engine on your wallpaper?' she said

‘
What?
Have I? Gosh, I hadn't realized,' said Johnny, with what he hoped was sarcasm.

‘It's OK to have Thomas the Tank Engine when you're seven, and it's quite cool to have it when you're nineteen, but it's not cool at thirteen. Honestly, if I wasn't here to help from time to time, you just wouldn't have a clue.'

‘Grandad put it up a couple of years ago,' said Johnny. ‘This was my room when I stayed with them. You know grandparents. It's Thomas the Tank Engine until you die.'

Then there was the click of the front door opening.

‘Your grandad?' hissed Kirsty.

‘He always goes shopping in town on Thursdays!' whispered Johnny. ‘And Mum's at work!'

‘Who else has got a key?'

‘Only me!'

Someone started to climb the stairs.

‘But I can't meet
me
!' said Johnny. ‘I'd remember, wouldn't I? Yo-less says if you meet yourself the whole universe explodes! I'd remember that happening!'

Kirsty picked up the bedside lamp, and glanced at the design on it.

‘Good grief, the Mr Men, you've still got Mr—'

‘Shutupshutupshutup. What're you going to
do
with it?'

‘Don't worry, you won't feel a thing, I learned how to do this in self-defence classes—'

The doorhandle turned. The door opened a fraction.

Downstairs, the phone rang.

The handle clicked back. Footsteps went downstairs again.

Johnny heard the phone picked up. A distant voice said: ‘Oh, hi, Wobbler.'

Kirsty looked at Johnny and raised her eyebrows.

‘Wobbler phoned,' said Johnny. ‘About going to the movies yest— tomorrow. I just remembered.'

‘Were you on the phone long?'

‘Don't … think so. And I went to get a sandwich afterwards.'

‘Where's your phone?'

‘In the front room.'

‘Let's go, then!'

Kirsty opened the door and darted down the stairs, with Johnny trailing behind her.

His coat was on the coat rack. He was also wearing it. He stood and stared.

‘Come
on
,' hissed Kirsty.

She was almost at the bottom when the door started to open.

Johnny opened his mouth to say: oh, yes, I remember, I had to go and get my wallet to see if I'd got any money.

He desperately wanted not to meet himself. If the entire universe exploded, people would be bound to blame him afterwards …

… and there was a flash in front of his eyes.

The black car slid surreptitiously out of a side road just before a sign indicating that it was about to enter BLACKBURY (twinned with Aix-et-Pains).

‘Nearly there, Sir John.'

‘Good. What time are we in?'

‘Er … quarter past eleven, sir.'

‘That wasn't what I meant. If time was a pair of trousers, what leg would we be in?'

It occurred to Hickson the chauffeur that this might be quite a difficult million pounds to earn.

‘They all got mixed up today, you see,' said a voice from the seat behind him.

‘Right, sir. If I see any trousers, sir, you just tell me what leg to drive down.'

Chapter 5
The Truth is Out of Here

Johnny was still on the stairs. Kirsty was still in front of him. The door was shut. His coat wasn't on the coat rack. The Blackbury Shopper, which was delivered on Fridays and stayed on the hall table until someone threw it away, was indeed on the table.

‘We've time travelled again, haven't we,' said Kirsty, calmly. ‘I think we're back to where we started. Possibly …'

‘I saw the back of my own head!' whispered Johnny. ‘My actual own back of my own head! Without mirrors or anything! No one's ever done that since the Spanish Inquisition! How can you be so calm about this?'

‘I'm just acting calm,' said Kirsty. ‘This is even worse wallpaper, isn't it? Looks like an Indian restaurant.'

She opened the front door, and slammed it again.

‘You know I said that if you started getting too interested in mysterious occult things these men in black cars turn up?'

‘Yes? Well?'

‘Look through the letterbox, will you?'

Johnny levered it open with a finger.

There was a car pulling up outside. It was black. Utterly. Black. Black tyres, black wheels, black headlights. Even the windows were darker than a pair of Mafia sunglasses. Here and there were bits of chrome, but they only made the blackness blacker by comparison.

It stopped. Johnny could just make out the shadow of the driver behind the tinted glass.

‘'S … just … coincidence,' he said.

‘Your grandad often gets visitors like this, does he?' Kasandra demanded.

‘Well …' He didn't. Someone came round on Thursday to collect his football pools coupon and that was about it. Grandad was not one for the social whirl.

The car door opened. A man got out. He was wearing a black chauffeur's uniform. The car door shut. It shut with the kind of final, heavy
thonk
that only the most expensive car doors can achieve, because they are lined with money.

Johnny let go of the letterbox and jumped back. A few seconds later, someone banged heavily on the door.

‘Run!' whispered Kasandra.

‘Where?'

‘The back door? Come
on
!'

‘We haven't done anything wrong!'

‘How do you know?'

Kasandra opened the back door and hurried down the path and into the garage, dragging Johnny behind her. The trolley was still in the middle of the floor.

‘Get ready to open the big doors and don't stop for anything!'

‘Why?'

‘Open the doors now!'

Johnny opened them, because practically anything was better than arguing with Kirsty.

The little garage area was empty, except for someone washing their car.

Johnny was nearly knocked aside as the trolley rattled out, with Kasandra pushing determinedly on the handle. It rattled across the concrete and lurched uncertainly into the alleyway that led to the next road.

‘Didn't you see that programme about the flying saucer that crashed and these mysterious men turned up and hushed it all up?' said Kasandra.

‘No!'

‘Well, did you even
hear
about the flying saucer crashing?'

‘No!'

‘See?'

‘All right, but in that case how come there was a TV programme about it, then?'

A car edged around the corner into the road.

‘I can't waste time answering silly questions,' said Kasandra. ‘Come
on
.'

She shoved the trolley as hard as she could. It rolled down the sloping pavement, the squeaky wheel bouncing and juddering over the slabs.

The car turned the corner very slowly, as though driven by someone who didn't know the area very well.

Johnny caught up with Kir-Kasandra and clung to the handle because the trolley was rocking all over the pavement.

The trolley, under its heavy load, began to pick up speed.

‘Try to hold it back!'