Johnny turned the silver medal over in his hands. There was a yellowing bit of paper with it, badly typed by someone who hadn’t changed the ribbon on his typewriter for years.
‘“Gallant action …”’ he read, ‘“… ensuring the safety of the people of Blackbury …”’
‘Some men from the Olympics came to see me after the war,’ said his grandfather. ‘But I told them I didn’t want any.’
‘How did you do it?’ said Johnny.
‘They said someone’s watch must’ve been wrong,’ said Grandad. ‘I don’t know about that. I just ran for it. ‘S’all a bit of a blur now, tell you the truth …’
He put the medal back in the box. Beside it, held together with an elastic band, was a grubby pack of cards.
Johnny took them out and removed the band.
They had aircraft on them.
Johnny reached into his pocket and took out the five of clubs. It was a lot less worn, but there was no doubt that it was part of the pack. He slipped it under the band and put the pack back in the box.
Grandad and Johnny sat and looked at one another for a moment. There was no sound but the rain and the ticking of the mantelpiece clock.
Johnny felt the time drip around them, thick as amber …
Then Grandad blinked, picked up the remote control, and aimed it at the TV.
‘Anyway, we’ve all passed a lot of water under the bridge since those days,’ he said, and that was that.
The doorbell rang.
Johnny trooped out into the hall.
The bell rang again, urgently.
Johnny opened the door.
‘Oh,’ he said gloomily. ‘Hello, Kirsty.’
Rain had plastered her hair to her head.
‘I ran back from the next stop,’ she said.
‘Oh. Why?’
She held up a pickled onion.
‘I found it in my pocket. And … I remembered. We did go back.’
‘Not back,’ said Johnny. ‘It’s more like there.’ The elation rose up inside him like a big pink cloud. ‘Come on in.’
‘Everything. Even the pickles.’
‘Good!’
‘I thought I ought to tell you.’
‘Right.’
‘Do you think Mrs Tachyon will ever find her cat?’
Johnny nodded. ‘Wherever he is,’ he said.
The sergeant and the soldier picked themselves up off the ground and staggered towards the wreckage where the house had been.
‘That poor old biddy! That poor old biddy!’ said the sergeant.
‘D’you think she might’ve got out in time?’ said the soldier.
‘That poor old biddy!’
‘She was sort of close to the wall,’ moaned the soldier hopefully.
‘The house isn’t there any more! What do you think?’
They scrambled through the damp ruins of Paradise Street.
‘Oh God, there’s going to be hell to pay for this …’
‘You’re telling me! You shouldn’t’ve left it unguarded! That poor old biddy!’
‘D’you know how much sleep we’ve had this past week? Do you? And we lost Corporal Williams over in Slate! We knocked off for five minutes in the middle of the night, that’s all!’
A crater lay in front of them. Something bubbled in the bottom.
‘She got any relatives?’ said the soldier.
‘No. No one. Been here ages. My dad says he remembers seeing her about sometimes when he was a lad,’ said the sergeant.
He removed his helmet.
‘Poor old biddy,’ he said.
‘That’s what you think! Dinner dinner dinner dinner—’
They turned. A skinny figure, wearing an old coat over a nightdress, and a woolly hat, ran along the road, expertly steering a wire cart between the mounds of rubble.
‘—dinner dinner—’
The sergeant stared at the soldier. ‘How did she do that?’
‘Search me!’
‘—dinner dinner Batman!’
Some way away, Guilty ambled in his sideways fashion through the back streets.
He’d had an interesting morning hunting through the remains of Paradise Street, and had passed some quality time during the afternoon in the ruins of the pickle factory, where there were mice, some of them fried. It had been a good day.
Around him, Blackbury went back to sleep.
There was still a terrible smell of vinegar everywhere.
By some miracle of preservation, a large jar of pickled beetroot had been blown right across the town and landed, unbroken and unnoticed, in a civic flowerbed, from whence it had bounced into the gutter.
Guilty waited by it, washing himself.
After a while he looked up as a familiar squeaking sound came around the corner, and stopped. A hand wearing a woolly glove with the fingers cut out reached down and picked up the jar. There was a series of complicated unscrewing noises, and then a sound like … well, like someone eating pickled beetroot until the juice ran down their chin.
‘Ah,’ said a voice, and then belched. ‘That’s the stuff to give the troops! Bromide? That’s what you think! Laugh? I nearly brought a tractor!’
Guilty hopped up onto the trolley.
Mrs Tachyon reached up and adjusted the headphones under her bobble hat.
She scratched at a surgical dressing. Dratted thing. She’d have to get someone to take it off her, but she knew a decent nurse over in 1917.
Then she scrabbled in her pockets and fished out the sixpence the sergeant had given her. She remembered him giving it to her. Mrs Tachyon remembered everything, and had long ago given up wondering whether the things she remembered had already happened or not. Take life as it was going to come was her motto. And if it didn’t come, go and fetch it.
The past and the future were all the same, but you could get a good feed off of a sixpence, if you knew the right way to do it.
She squinted at it in the grey light of dawn. It was a bit old and grubby, but the date was quite clear. It said: 1903.
‘Tea and buns? That’s what you think, Mr Copper!’
And she went back to 1903 and spent it on fish and chips. And still had change.
Read On
If you enjoyed JOHNNY AND THE BOMB, you’ll love THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS, winner of the Carnegie Medal.
Here’s the first chapter to get you started . . .
Chapter 1
– From Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure
RATS!
They chased the dogs and bit the cats, they—
But there was more to it than that. As the amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.
But Malicia Grim said it was a story about stories.
It began – part of it began – on the mail coach that came over the mountains from the distant cities of the plain.
This was the part of the journey that the driver didn’t like. The way wound through forests and around mountains on crumbling roads. There were deep shadows between the trees. Sometimes he thought things were following the coach, keeping just out of sight. It gave him the willies.
And on this journey, the really big willie was that he could hear voices. He was sure of it. They were coming from behind him, from the top of the coach, and there was nothing there but the big oilcloth mail-sacks and the young man’s luggage. There was certainly nothing big enough for a person to hide inside. But occasionally he was sure he heard squeaky voices, whispering.
There was only one passenger at this point. He was a fair-haired young man, sitting all by himself inside the rocking coach, reading a book. He was reading slowly, and aloud, moving his finger over the words.
‘Ubberwald,’ he read out.
‘That’s “Überwald”,’ said a small, squeaky but very clear voice. ‘The dots make it a sort of long “ooo” sound. But you’re doing well.’
‘Ooooooberwald?�
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‘There’s such a thing as too much pronunciation, kid,’ said another voice, which sounded half asleep. ‘But you know the best thing about Überwald? It’s a long, long way from Sto Lat. It’s a long way from Pseudopolis. It’s a long way from anywhere where the Commander of the Watch says he’ll have us boiled alive if he ever sees us again. And it’s not very modern. Bad roads. Lots of mountains in the way. People don’t move about much up here. So news doesn’t travel very fast, see? And they probably don’t have policemen. Kid, we can make a fortune here!’
‘Maurice?’ said the boy, carefully.
‘Yes, kid?’
‘You don’t think what we’re doing is, you know … dishonest, do you?’
There was a pause before the voice said, ‘How do you mean, dishonest?’
‘Well … we take their money, Maurice.’ The coach rocked and bounced over a pot-hole.
‘All right,’ said the unseen Maurice, ‘but what you’ve got to ask yourself is: who do we take the money from, actually?’
‘Well … it’s generally the mayor or the city council or someone like that.’
‘Right! And that means it’s … what? I’ve told you this bit before.’
‘Er …’
‘It is gov-ern-ment money, kid,’ said Maurice patiently. ‘Say it? Gov-ern-ment money.’
‘Gov-ern-ment money,’ said the boy obediently.
‘Right! And what do governments do with money?’
‘Er, they …’
‘They pay soldiers,’ said Maurice. ‘They have wars. In fact, we’ve prob’ly stopped a lot of wars by taking the money and putting it where it can’t do any harm. They’d put up stachoos to us, if they thought about it.’
‘Some of those towns looked pretty poor, Maurice,’ said the kid doubtfully.
‘Hey, just the kind of places that don’t need wars, then.’
‘Dangerous Beans says it’s …’ The boy concentrated, and his lips moved before he said the word, as if he was trying out the pronunciation to himself, ‘… It’s un-eth-ickle.’
‘That’s right, Maurice,’ said the squeaky voice. ‘Dangerous Beans says we shouldn’t live by trickery.’
‘Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about,’ said the voice of Maurice. ‘They’re so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them. We give them value for money. They get a horrible plague of rats, they pay a rat piper, the rats all follow the kid out of town, hoppity-skip, end of plague, everyone’s happy that no one’s widdling in the flour any more, the government gets re-elected by a grateful population, general celebration all round. Money well spent, in my opinion.’
‘But there’s only a plague because we make them think there is,’ said the voice of Peaches.
‘Well, my dear, another thing all those little governments spend their money on is rat-catchers, see? I don’t know why I bother with the lot of you, I really don’t.’
‘Yes, but we—’
They realized that the coach had stopped. Outside, in the rain, there was the jingle of harness. Then the coach rocked a little, and there was the sound of running feet.
A voice from out of the darkness said, ‘Are there any wizards in there?’
The occupants looked at one another in puzzlement.
‘No?’ said the kid, the kind of ‘no’ that means ‘why are you asking?’
‘How about any witches?’ said the voice.
‘No, no witches,’ said the kid.
‘Right. Are there any heavily-armed trolls employed by the mail-coach company in there?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Maurice.
There was a moment’s pause, filled with the sound of the rain.
‘OK, how about werewolves?’ said the voice eventually.
‘What do they look like?’ asked the kid.
‘Ah, well, they look perfectly normal right up to the point where they grow all, like, hair and teeth and giant paws and leap through the window at you,’ said the voice. The speaker sounded as though he was working through a list.
‘We’ve all got hair and teeth,’ said the kid.
‘So you are werewolves, then?’
‘No.’
‘Fine, fine.’ There was another pause filled with rain. ‘OK, vampires,’ said the voice. ‘It’s a wet night, you wouldn’t want to be flying in weather like this. Any vampires in there?’
‘No!’ said the kid. ‘We’re all perfectly harmless!’
‘Oh boy,’ muttered Maurice, and crawled under the seat.
‘That’s a relief,’ said the voice. ‘You can’t be too careful these days. There’s a lot of funny people about.’ A crossbow was pushed through the window, and the voice said, ‘Your money and your life. It’s a two-for-one deal, see?’
‘The money’s in the case on the roof,’ said Maurice’s voice, from floor level.
The highwayman looked around the dark interior of the coach. ‘Who said that?’ he asked.
‘Er, me,’ said the boy.
‘I didn’t see your lips move, kid!’
‘The money is on the roof. In the case. But if I was you I wouldn’t—’
‘Hah, I just ’spect you wouldn’t,’ said the highwayman. His masked face disappeared from the window.
The boy picked up the pipe that was lying on the seat beside him. It was the type still known as a penny whistle, although no one could remember when they’d ever cost only a penny.
‘Play “Robbery with Violence”, kid,’ said Maurice, quietly.
‘Couldn’t we just give him money?’ said the voice of Peaches. It was a little voice.
‘Money is for people to give us,’ said Maurice, sternly.
Above them, they heard the scrape of the case on the roof of the coach as the highwayman dragged it down.
The boy obediently picked up the flute and played a few notes. Now there were a number of sounds. There was a creak, a thud, a sort of scuffling noise and then a very short scream.
When there was silence, Maurice climbed back onto the seat and poked his head out of the coach, into the dark and rainy night. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Sensible. The more you struggle, the harder they bite. Prob’ly not broken skin yet? Good. Come forward a bit so I can see you. But carefully, eh? We don’t want anyone to panic, do we?’
The highwayman reappeared in the light of the coach lamps. He was walking very slowly and carefully, his legs spread wide apart. And he was quietly whimpering.
‘Ah, there you are,’ said Maurice, cheerfully. ‘Went straight up your trouser legs, did they? Typical rat trick. Just nod, ’cos we don’t want to set ’em off. No tellin’ where it might end.’
The highwayman nodded very slowly. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a cat?’ he mumbled. Then his eyes crossed and he gasped.
‘Did I say talk?’ said Maurice. ‘I don’t think I said talk, did I? Did the coachman run away or did you kill him?’ The man’s face went blank. ‘Ah, quick learner, I like that in a highwayman,’ said Maurice. ‘You can answer that question.’
‘Ran away,’ said the highwayman hoarsely.
Maurice stuck his head back inside the coach. ‘Whadja think?’ he said. ‘Coach, four horses, probably some valuables in the mail-bags … could be, oh, a thousand dollars or more. The kid could drive it. Worth a try?’
‘That’s stealing, Maurice,’ said Peaches. She was sitting on the seat beside the kid. She was a rat.
‘Not stealing as such,’ said Maurice. ‘More … findin’. The driver’s run away, so it’s like … salvage. Hey, that’s right, we could turn it in for the reward. That’s much better. Legal, too. Shall we?’
‘People would ask too many questions,’ said Peaches.
‘If we just leave it, someone yawlp will steal it,’ wailed Maurice. ‘Some thief will take it away! Much better if we take it, eh? We’re not thieves.’
‘We will leave it, Maurice,’ said Peaches.
‘In that case, let’s steal the highwayman’s
horse,’ said Maurice, as if the night wouldn’t be properly finished unless they stole something. ‘Stealing from a thief isn’t stealing, ’cos it cancels out.’
‘We can’t stay here all night,’ said the kid to Peaches. ‘He’s got a point.’
‘That’s right!’ said the highwayman urgently. ‘You can’t stay here all night!’
‘That’s right,’ said a chorus of voices from his trousers, ‘we can’t stay here all night!’
Maurice sighed, and stuck his head out of the window again. ‘O-K,’ he said. ‘This is what we’re going to do. You’re going to stand very still looking straight in front of you, and you won’t try any tricks because if you do I’ve only got to say the word—’
‘Don’t say the word!’ said the highwayman even more urgently.
‘Right,’ said Maurice, ‘and we’ll take your horse as a punishment and you can have the coach because that’d be stealing and only thieves are allowed to steal. Fair enough?’
‘Anything you say!’ said the highwayman, then he thought about this and added hurriedly, ‘But please don’t say anything!’ He kept staring straight ahead. He saw the boy and the cat get out of the coach. He heard various sounds behind him as they took his horse. And he thought about his sword. All right, he was going to get a whole mail coach out of this deal, but there was such a thing as professional pride.
‘All right,’ said the voice of the cat after a while. ‘We’re all going to leave now, and you’ve got to promise not to move until we’re gone. Promise?’
‘You have my word as a thief,’ said the highwayman, slowly lowering a hand to his sword.
‘Right. We certainly trust you,’ said the voice of the cat.
The man felt his trousers lighten as the rats poured out and scampered away, and he heard the jingle of harness. He waited a moment, then spun around, drew his sword and ran forward.
Slightly forward, in any case. He wouldn’t have hit the ground so hard if someone hadn’t tied his bootlaces together.
They said he was amazing. The Amazing Maurice, they said. He’d never meant to be amazing. It had just happened.
Johnny and the Bomb Page 17