Johnny and the Bomb

by Terry Pratchett

‘What, us? We don’t know a thing,’ said Johnny miserably.

  ‘Especially about burgers,’ said Bigmac.

  Kirsty groaned. ‘Bigmac!’

  Wobbler glared at them.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he muttered. ‘It’s “wind up ole Wobbler” time again, right? Well, I’m going to stay with the trolley, right? It’s not going anywhere without me, right?’

  He stared from one to the other, daring them to disagree.

  ‘All right, I’ll stay with you,’ said Bigmac. ‘I’ll probably only get shot anyway, if I go anywhere.’

  ‘What’re you going to do up on Blackdown, anyway?’ said Wobbler. ‘Find this Mr Hodder and tell him to listen really carefully? Wash out his ears? Eat plenty of carrots?’

  ‘They’re for good eyesight,’ said Yo-less helpfully. ‘My granny said they used to believe carrots helped you see in—’

  ‘Who cares!’

  ‘I don’t know what we can do,’ said Johnny. ‘But … something must have gone wrong, right? Maybe the message didn’t get through. We’ll have to make sure it does.’

  ‘Look,’ said Kirsty.

  The sun had already set, leaving an afterglow in the sky. And there were clouds over Blackdown. Dark clouds.

  ‘Thunderstorm,’ she said. ‘They always start up there.’

  There was a growl in the distance.

  Blackbury was a lot smaller once they were in the hills. A lot of it wasn’t there at all.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could tell everyone what they’re going to do wrong,’ said Johnny, when they paused for breath.

  ‘No one’d listen,’ said Yo-less. ‘Supposing someone turned up in 1996 and said they were from 2040 and started telling everyone what to do? They’d get arrested, wouldn’t they?’

  Johnny looked ahead of them. The sunset sky lurked behind bars of angry cloud.

  ‘The listeners’ll be up at the Tumps,’ said Kirsty. ‘There’s an old windmill up there. It was some kind of look-out post during the war. Is, I mean.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ said Johnny.

  ‘It’s different when it’s now.’

  The Tumps were five mounds on top of the down. They grew heather and wortleberries. It was said that dead kings were buried there in the days when your enemy was at arm’s length rather than ten thousand feet above your head.

  The clouds were getting lower. It was going to be one of those Blackbury storms, a sort of angry fog that hugged the hills.

  ‘You know what I’m thinking?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘Telephone lines,’ said Johnny. ‘They go out in thunderstorms.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But the policeman said there was a motorbike,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Starts first time, does it?’ said Johnny. ‘I remember my grandad said that before you were qualified to ride a Blackbury Phantom you had to learn to push it fifty metres, cursing all the way. He said they were great bikes when they got started.’

  ‘How long is it till … you know … the bombs?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  Which means they’re already on the way, Johnny thought. Men have walked out onto airfields and loaded bombs onto planes with names like Dorniers and Heinkels. And other men have sat round in front of a big map of England, only it’d be in German, and there’d be crayon marks around Slate. Blackbury probably wasn’t even on the map. And then they’d get up and walk out and get into the planes and take off. And men on the planes would get out their maps and draw lines on them; lines which crossed at Slate. Your mission for tonight: bomb the goods yard at Slate.

  And then the roar filled his ears. The drone of the engines came up through his legs. He could taste the oil and the sweat and the stale rubber smell of the oxygen mask. His body shook with the throb of the engines and also with the thump of distant explosions. One was very close and the whole aircraft seemed to slide sideways. And he knew what the mission for tonight was. Your mission for tonight is to get home safely. It always was.

  Another explosion shook the plane, and someone grabbed him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s weird when you do that!’ shouted Kirsty, above the thunder. ‘Come on! It’s dangerous out here! Haven’t you got enough sense to get out of the rain?’

  ‘It’s starting to happen,’ Johnny whispered, while the storm broke around him.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The future!’

  He blinked as the rain started to plaster his hair against his head. He could feel time stretching out around him. He could feel its slow movement as it carried forward all those grey bombs and those white doorsteps, pulling them together like bubbles being swirled around a whirlpool. They were all carried along by it. You couldn’t break out of it because you were part of it. You couldn’t steer a train.

  ‘We’d better get him under cover!’ shouted Yo-less as lightning hit something a little way off. ‘He doesn’t look well at all!’

  They staggered on, occasionally lurking under a wind-bent tree to get their breath back.

  There was a windmill among the Tumps. It had been built on one of the mounds, although the sails had long gone. The others put their arms around Johnny and ran through the soaking heather until they reached it and climbed the steps.

  Yo-less hammered on the door. It opened a fraction.

  ‘Good lord!’ said a voice. It sounded like the voice of a young man. ‘What’re you? A circus?’

  ‘You’ve got to let us in!’ said Kirsty. ‘He’s ill!’

  ‘Can’t do that,’ said the voice. ‘Not allowed, see?’

  ‘Do we look like spies?’ shouted Yo-less.

  ‘Please!’ said Kirsty.

  The door started to close, and then stopped.

  ‘Well … all right,’ said the voice, as unseen hands pulled the door open. ‘But Mr Hodder says to stand where we can see you, OK? Come on in.’

  ‘It’s happening,’ said Johnny, who still had his eyes closed. ‘The telephone won’t work.’

  ‘What’s he going on about?’

  ‘Can you try the telephone?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’ said the boy. ‘We tested it out at the beginning of the shift just now. Has anyone been mucking about with it?’

  There was an older man sitting at a table. He gave them a suspicious look, which lingered for a while on Yo-less.

  ‘I reckon you’d better try the station,’ he said. ‘I don’t like the sound of all this. Seems altogether a bit suspicious to me.’

  The first man reached out towards the phone.

  There was a sound outside as lightning struck somewhere close. It wasn’t a zzzippp – it was almost a gentle silken hiss, as the sky was cut in half.

  Then the phone exploded. Bits of bakelite and copper clattered off the walls.

  Kirsty’s hand flew to her head.

  ‘My hair stood on end!’

  ‘So did mine,’ said Yo-less. ‘And that doesn’t often happen, believe me,’ he added.

  ‘Lightning hit the wire,’ said Johnny. ‘I knew that. Not just here. Other stations on the hills, too. And now he’ll have trouble with the motorbike.’

  ‘What’s he going on about?’

  ‘You’ve got a motorbike, haven’t you?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Good grief, man, you’ve lost your telephone! Aren’t you supposed to do something about that?’

  The men looked at one another; Girls weren’t supposed to shout like Kirsty.

  ‘Tom, nip down to Doctor Atkinson’s and use his phone and tell the station ours has gone for a burton,’ said Mr Hodder, not taking his eyes off the three. ‘Tell them about these kids, too.’

  ‘It won’t start,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s the carburettor, I think. That … always gives trouble.’

  The one called Tom looked at him sideways. There was a change in the air. Up until now the men had just been suspicious. Now they were uneasy, too.

  ‘How did you know that?’ h
e said.

  Johnny opened his mouth. And shut it again. He couldn’t tell them about the feel of the time around him. He felt that if he could only focus his eyes properly, he could even see it. The past and future were there, just around some kind of corner, bound up to the ever-travelling now by a billion connections. He felt that he could almost reach out and point, not there or over there or up there but there, at right angles to everywhere else.

  ‘They’re on their way,’ he said. ‘They’ll be here in half an hour.’

  ‘What will? What’s he going on about?’

  ‘Blackbury’s going to be bombed tonight,’ said Kirsty. Thunder rolled again.

  ‘We think,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘Five planes,’ said Johnny.

  He opened his eyes. Everything overlapped like a scene in a kaleidoscope. Everyone was staring at him, but they were surrounded by something like fog. When they moved, images followed them like some kind of special effect.

  ‘It’s the storm and the clouds,’ he managed to say. ‘They think they’re going to Slate but they’ll drop their bombs over Blackbury.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And how d’you know this, then? They told you, did they?’

  ‘Listen, you stupid man,’ said Kirsty. ‘We’re not spies! Why would we tell you if we were?’

  Mr Hodder pulled open the door.

  ‘I’m going down to use the doctor’s phone,’ he said. ‘Then maybe we can sort out what’s going on.’

  ‘What about the bombers?’ said Kirsty.

  The older man opened the door. The thunder had rolled away to the north-east, and there was no sound but the hiss of the rain.

  ‘What bombers?’ he said, and shut it behind him.

  Johnny sat down with his head in his hands, blinking his eyes again to shut out the flickering images.

  ‘You lot’d better get out,’ said Tom. ‘It’s against the rules, having people in here …’

  Johnny blinked. There were more bombers in front of his eyes, and they didn’t go away.

  He scrabbled at the playing cards on the table.

  ‘What’re these for?’ he said urgently. ‘Playing cards with bombers on them?’

  ‘Eh? What? Oh … that’s for learning aircraft recognition,’ said Tom, who’d been careful to keep the table between him and Johnny. ‘You plays cards with ’em and you sort of picks up the shapes, like.’

  ‘You learn subliminally?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘Oh, no, you learn from playing with these here cards,’ said Tom desperately. Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike.

  Johnny stood up.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I can prove it. The next card … the next card you show me … the next card …’

  Images filled his eyes. If this is how Mrs Tachyon sees the world, he thought, no wonder she never seems all there – because she’s everywhere.

  Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike even harder.

  ‘… the next card … will be the five of diamonds.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should have to play games—’ The man glanced nervously at Kirsty, who had that effect on people.

  ‘Scared?’ she said.

  He grabbed a card at random and held it up. ‘It’s the five of diamonds all right,’ said Yo-less. Johnny nodded. ‘The next one … the next one … the next one will be the knave of hearts.’

  It was.

  Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike very hard and swearing.

  ‘It’s a trick,’ said the man. ‘One of you messed around with the pack.’

  ‘Shuffle them all you like,’ said Johnny. ‘And the next one you show me will be … the ten of clubs.’

  ‘How did you do that?’ said Yo-less, as the boy turned the card over and stared at it.

  ‘Er …’ It had felt like memory, he told himself. ‘I remembered seeing it,’ said Johnny.

  ‘You remembered seeing it before you actually saw it?’ said Kirsty.

  Outside, there was the sound of someone trying to start a motorbike very hard and swearing even harder.

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘Oh, wow,’ she said. ‘Precognition. You’re probably a natural medium.’

  ‘Er, I’m a size eleven,’ said Johnny, but they weren’t listening.

  Kirsty had turned to Tom.

  ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Now do you believe us?’

  ‘I don’t like this. This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘Anyway … anyway, there’s no phone—’

  The door burst open.

  ‘All right!’ roared Mr Hodder. ‘What did you kids do to my bike?’

  ‘It’s the carburettor,’ said Johnny. ‘I told you.’

  ‘Here, Arthur, you ought to listen to this, this boy knows things—’

  Kirsty glanced at her watch.

  ‘Twenty minutes,’ she said. ‘It’s more than two miles down to the town. Even if we ran I’m not sure we could do it.’

  ‘What’re you talking about now?’ said Mr Hodder.

  ‘There must be some kind of code,’ said Kirsty. ‘If you have to ring up and tell them to sound the siren, what do you say?’

  ‘Don’t tell them!’ snapped Mr Hodder.

  “‘This is station BD3”,’ said Johnny, his eyes looking unfocused.

  ‘How did you know that? Did he tell you? Did you tell them?’

  ‘No, Arthur!’

  ‘Come on,’ said Kirsty, hurrying towards the door. ‘I got a county medal in athletics!’

  She elbowed the older man aside.

  The thunder was growling away in the east. The storm had settled down to a steady, grey rain.

  ‘We’ll never make it,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘I thought you people were good at running,’ said Kirsty, stepping out.

  ‘People of my height, you mean?’

  ‘You were right,’ said the young man, as Johnny was dragged out into the night. ‘This is station BD3!’

  ‘I know,’ said Johnny. ‘I remembered you just telling me.’

  He staggered and grabbed at Yo-less to stay upright. The world was spinning around him. He hadn’t felt like this since that business with the cider at Christmas. The voices around him seemed to be muffled, and he couldn’t be sure whether they were really there, or voices he was remembering, or words that hadn’t even been spoken yet.

  He felt that his mind was being shaken loose in time, and it was only still here because his body was a huge great anchor.

  ‘It’s downhill all the way,’ said Kirsty, and sped off. Yo-less followed her.

  Far away, down in the town, a church clock began to strike eleven.

  Johnny tried to lumber into a run, but the ground kept shifting under his feet.

  Why are we doing this? he thought. We know it happened, I’ve got a copy of the paper in my pocket, the bombs will land and the siren won’t go off.

  You can’t steer a train!

  That’s what you think, said a voice in his head …

  He wished he’d been better at this. He wished he’d been a hero.

  From up ahead, he heard Yo-less’s desperate cry.

  ‘I’ve tripped over a sheep! I’ve tripped over a sheep!’

  The lights of Blackbury spread out below them. There weren’t many of them – the occasional smudge from a car, the tiny gleam from a window where the moths had got at the blackout curtain.

  A wind had followed the storm. Streamers of cloud blew across the sky. Here and there a star shone through.

  They ran on. Yo-less ran into another sheep in the blackness.

  There was the crunch of heavy boots on the road behind them and Tom caught them up.

  ‘If you’re wrong there’s going to be big trouble!’ he panted.

  ‘What if we’re right?’ said Kirsty.

  ‘I hope you’re wrong!’

  Thunder rumbled again, but the four runners plunged on in a bubble of desperate silence.

  They were leav
ing the moor behind. There were hedges on either side of the road now.

  Tom’s boots skidded to a halt.

  ‘Listen!’

  They stopped. There was the grumbling of the thunder and the hiss of the rain.

  And, behind the noises of the weather, a faint and distant droning.

  Gravel flew up as the young man started to run again. He’d been moving fast before but now he flew down the road.

  A large house loomed up against the night. He leapt over the fence, pounded across the lawns, and started to hammer on the front door.

  ‘Open up! Open up! It’s an emergency!’ Johnny and the others reached the gate. The droning was louder now.

  We could have done something, Johnny thought. I could have done something. I could’ve … well, there must have been something. We thought it would be so easy. Just because we’re from the future. What do we know about anything? And now the bombers are nearly here and there’s nothing we can do.

  ‘Come on! Open up!’

  Yo-less found a gate and hurried through it. There was a splash in the darkness.

  ‘I think I’ve stepped into some sort of pond,’ said a damp voice.

  Tom stepped away from the house and groped on the ground for something.

  ‘Maybe I can smash a window,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Er … it’s quite deep,’ said Yo-less, damply. ‘And I’m caught up on some kind of fountain thing …’

  Glass tinkled. Tom reached through the window beside the door. There was a click, and the door opened.

  They heard him trip over something inside, and then a weak light went on. Another click and—

  ‘This phone’s dead too! The lightning must’ve got the exchange!’

  ‘Where’s the next house?’ said Kirsty, as Tom hurtled down the path.

  ‘Not till Roberts Road!’

  They ran after him, Yo-less squelching slightly. The drone was much louder now. Johnny could hear it above the sound of his own breath.

  Someone must notice it in the town, he thought. It fills the whole sky!

  Without saying anything, they all began to run faster—

  And, at last, the siren began to wail.

  But the clouds were parting and the moon shone through and there were shadows nosing through the rags of cloud and Johnny could feel the unseen shapes turning over and over as they drifted towards the ground.

  First there was the allotment, and then the pickle factory, and then Paradise Street exploded gently, like a row of roses opening. The petals were orange tinged with black and unfolded one after another, as the bombs fell along the street.