by Guy N Smith
Throwback
Guy N Smith
Guy N Smith
Throwback
PART ONE
SUMMER
CHAPTER ONE
GRADUALLY THE girl came to the conclusion that she was ill. It could not be anything else.
She pushed her way across the pavement, stood with her back against a brick wall, felt the rough surface scraping her skin through her blouse and jeans. The brickwork seemed to move, like a piece of automatically operated emery paper. Up, down, up, down. Her groping fingers found a doorpost, gripped it; it was moving too. Up, down, up, down, gyrating.
People pushed past her, bumped into her. A woman clutched at her, almost pulled her down, but somehow she held on. Everybody was rushing, a seething mass of hastening humanity as though everybody was ill, that they were hurrying back to their homes before they collapsed in the street. A street that undulated like a slow-motion roller-coaster, had you clinging on to anything you could find, throwing up. Somebody had been sick, she could smell it. It might even have been herself.
Jackie Quinn just stood there, made a supreme physical effort to stay upright. That feeling of faintness kept coming and going, waves of black and red, hot and cold. Sweating and shivering. A hubbub of voices, louder, dying away, rising again, human voices crying out inarticulately, but nobody stopped; they all had somewhere to go. Maybe she ought to join them, stagger along with the shambling tide.
Her brain wasn't working properly, even her terror was numbed by a sense of incomprehension. Frightened one second, accepting the situation the next. I'm Jackie Quinn. I don't know who I am, where I am. Yes, you do, you're in Shrewsbury. Where's Shrewsbury? How did I get here, where am I supposed to be going? I don't know, just stay where you are, you can't do anything else.
She narrowed her eyes, exerted all her remaining will power in one big push to adjust her vision; pushed again and made it for a second or two. The street was a sloping bend, traffic at a standstill, some of the vehicles empty, abandoned by their drivers as they, too, joined the lemming-like stampede. Run, because you can't do anything else. But Jackie remained where she was.
There was definitely something wrong with her eyesight. Like tunnel vision, the tunnel becoming narrower and darker, people fleeing. Fleeing from her? An awful sensation of guilt; blurred faces glancing back every so often. She could not quite make out the fear in their expressions but she knew it was there. You've done this to us, Jackie Quinn.
No, that was damned stupid. Whatever was the matter with her was the matter with them also. Only I'm not going with you, wherever you're going. I'm going to stay right here, try and work it all out for myself. Then the tunnel darkened, blanked everything out. Who am I, where am 1? I don't know.
A shrieking wailing sound, a dazzling blue light that seared her eyeballs, the concrete beneath her starting to heave up again. She felt her stomach coming up, didn't try to stop it, turned her head away and let the spew come with its own force. Falling, hitting the hard pavement but still hanging on to that wooden post; if you let go you'll be swept away.
After she had vomited Jackie felt marginally better. Another flash of lucidity, much stronger than the last one, opening her eyes but the light was too bright. Not just the flashing bulbs of ambulances and police cars caught up in the stationary traffic but dazzling sunlight like you found in tropical areas. Squinting, determined to watch what was going on. Noise that had her wincing, cowering back. A police car, a red and white one, had ploughed into the standing cars and an ambulance had gone into the back of it. Vehicles were shunted, buckled.
People were screaming. Everybody had gone mad.
I'm mad, too, she thought. But what the hell is the matter with me? She had to find out, get help. Still holding on to that wooden upright she twisted herself round. People buffeted her as they streamed past but she managed to maintain her grasp. A shop window, some kind of display, but it did not register in her brain because she wasn't interested, only in the reflection in the glass. That familiar street scene but she forced herself to dismiss it, didn't want to see it again. Only herself!
Oh God! Her own image came at her, barely recognisable from the one she had studied in the mirror before leaving the house that morning.
Which morning?
It was her face. She pressed herself up against the heavy-duty glass pane in her anguish. Her smooth skin had become blotched and rough, almost raw in places. The eyes had sunk back into dark sockets, pinpoints of blue that glistened unnaturally. Her pert nose and lips were thick, squat, almost mongolotd in appearance. Smooth silky carefully groomed blonde hair was tangled and awry, coarser, as though a new growth predominated; darker too. Her breasts appeared to have inflated, she could feel them pushing against the restriction of her bra. And then the vision faded, darkened, and she thought she was going to pass out.
She sank down to her knees, sobbed. It was like a feverish nightmare where weird fantasy became macabre reality amidst a heap of sweat-soaked bedsheets. You kicked and tossed, fought your own battle, sweated it out, and eventually everything turned out all right. Closing her eyes, trying to pray only she could not remember the words, not a single one. Crying with frustration and fear, beating her fists on the hard pavement. The concrete should have been damp linen, it wasn't. It was concrete, real concrete. Reality!
She slumped against the wall, cried out with pain as a passer-by trod on her outstretched foot, kicked it in blind anger before stumbling on. She was trembling, pushing hard in an attempt to make her brain work, a motorist jamming his finger on the starter-button on a frozen winter's morning. Come on, for God's sake come on, you bastard!
It hurt, like a darning needle penetrating her brain, bringing with it blinding migraine pains, darkness streaked with crimson, a crazy reflection of the workings of her own mind, loose wires that did not connect. Fusing.
Then, without warning, everything came right again. You're ill and you're lying in a street, Shrewsbury. You came here shopping like you do every week but something went wrong. She could see, painful in the bright sunlight, but she could see all right. Oh Jesus, what was the matter with everybody?
Crowds everywhere, a shambling disorientated throng which surged one way then the other like mobs of rival soccer hooligans charging one another, climbing over the tangled heap of crushed metal where the police car and the ambulance had shunted the traffic jam, uniformed figures sitting motionless inside the vehicles seemingly oblivious to everything around them; they might even have been dead, held upright by their seat-belts. Fighting, falling, being crushed by motiveless feet.
Jackie pressed herself back against the wall, took a deep breath but did not close her eyes in case her vision went again. Try to think logically. It wasn't easy; a man with a blistered face came gambolling down the pavement, saw her and checked. Stooping, peering, tongue licking festered lips, eyes bright orbs that glowed with primordial lust. A hand reached out, would have grabbed her had not somebody bumped into him, sent him staggering. A shriek like that of a wounded animal at bay came from those diseased lips and then he, too, was swept up by the tide of relentless, purposeless movement, and was gone for ever.
Jackie scanned faces; wild and fevered all of them, a hopelessness about their expressions. Some fought, but only because others got in their way. A kind of exodus but nobody was going anywhere in particular.
They're ill, she thought, like me. But how can everybody be ill? Her brain threatened to blank out again, a flickering hesitating light bulb in a thunderstorm, a transformer that could not take the additional load. A helmetless policeman in the midst of a bunch of teenagers, his headgear a football, the game being played under elementary rules. Kick it, watch it bounce, kick it again. The officer joined in, booted it high into the air but nobody wen
t after it; everybody was too busy going nowhere in particular.
She told herself she could not stop here. I have to go home. Where's home? Thinking again, overloading her delicate aching thought-mechanism so that it bleeped and gave off a mass of red floaters in front of her eyes. Her home was up in the hills thirty miles away from all this madness. Jon, her husband, would be there, totally oblivious to all of this. Maybe he wouldn't even care if he did know because their marriage was finished and no doubt he had that Atkinson girl with him. A kind of mutual agreement that you came to when there was nothing else left between you. You both had lovers, made a pretence of keeping it a secret from each other but it was all a waste of time because you both knew anyway. A facade, a game you played. Go and enjoy your day's shopping, dear, I'll be OK (because Sylvia will get my lunch and I'll be able to screw her). Stop on late if you want and go to Tiffany's because you know I don't like dancing. I know you'll jive all by yourself. (If you find yourself a man for the night please don't tell me because it'll spoil our little game.)
But I want to go home! Maybe under normal circumstances she would have given way to hysteria. Women were crying and screaming all around her. Damn it, I'm going home!
She stood up again. Funny, she should have been weak, legs threatening to buckle under her, throw her back down to the ground. But she felt strong; ill but strong. It was illogical, too complicated for her to work out.
She held her bare arms out in front of her, gazed at them in revulsion. It was as though she had dipped them in a bath of scalding water, the skin peeling yet hardening, knitting together again in a strange kind of plastic coating. So rough, they didn't hurt half so much now.
Check your reflection again in that shop window. No, I don't want to see. Well, you can't stop here.
She found herself running, a crazy zig-zag sprint that took her across the road, weaving in and out of cavorting, stumbling men and women, reached the opposite pavement. A hand closed over her arm, grasped her wrist, but she threw it off. Keep going, up those steps to the church above. Don't stop.
It wasn't a church. She knew that only too well, had been in here often enough, every week in fact. St Julian's Craft Centre, much of the church edifice untouched, stalls where once there had been pews, the altar removed during the process of deconsecration. Stained glass windows that flickered brightly, had her turning her head away because her eyes hurt. So cool and refreshing, she could stop in here forever; die here!
No, you're not going to die. Pull yourself together. A man, the only occupant of the interior, features she recognised in spite of the awful disfigurement, but she had never known his name. He was to be found in here most weeks, a browser who wore a long frayed black coat, summer and winter alike, a long straggling beard giving him a bohemian appearance. Today he looked wild-eyed at her, acknowledged her with a smile that had spittle stringing down his hairy chin.
"They ... did ... this . . .'He had difficulty getting the words out, a physical effort like one who stammered, wrenching the sounds out of his throat.
'Who?' Jackie barely recognised the sound of her own voice, a nasal grunt that had her drawing in breath to refill her lungs.
He regarded her steadily, a look that said, 'You fool, you don't even know.' 'The Russians,' he said at length, leaned his full weight back against a creaking stall table.
She stared, tried to take in his words, let her own personal computer process the data, spit out the answer.
The Russians. Her mind threatened to go blank again; a familiar ominous word. The Russians! She had to fight to comprehend and it hurt. And then her smarting burning flesh went cold.
'The . . . Russians'
He nodded, closed his eyes momentarily, reminded Jackie of a drowsy bird of prey.
'Somehow. . . they've done . . . this.'His breath rasped in his throat. 'Not ... the bomb ... we wouldn't be here now if it was. Something . . . else . . . don't know . . . what.' Fighting for air, wheezing, holding hard on to that table. 'We're all going to ... die!'
The shock to her system blanked her out again and she moved away, walking unsteadily across the flagged floor, her footsteps echoing. An open door; she knew she had been through it before. A corridor; through another open door.
This time it was the aroma of cooking food which brought back her hazy powers of thinking, hit her like a whiff of smelling salts to a fainting person. Her brain whirred again, that starter-motor turning over sluggishly and just managing to fire; only just.
Of course, she was in Delany's. She came in here every week; baked jacket potato and cheese and a pot of peppermint tea. The familiar smell had revived her and in that instant she knew she had to eat. Whatever had happened to her body it still cried out for food.
The vestry restaurant in the old church was empty. Ovens steamed, a kettle was boiling dry. Jackie moved up to the counter. Everybody had gone, spilled out into the street leaving the food to spoil and waste, yielding to a sudden panic before their reasoning was blotted out. Hers would go soon, her system could not stand this stop-start much longer. Then she, too, would follow the masses, turn into a human lemming.
Some kind of nut shortcake in a long tray, divided up into square portions. She grabbed one, took a bite, chewing noisily and spilling crumbs. Christ, she was starving so she could not be as ill as she thought. A glance down at her hands and she jerked her eyes away. Her fingers were raw, thicker as though they were swollen, but not bleeding. Just unsightly, ugly.
Time wasn't on her side, any second she might click back into being a mindless moron again. Don't push too hard, thinking hurts but you've got to get the hell out of here. This place was hell. The car, it was parked on the big riverside park. She thought she knew the way, back down through the Riverside Shopping Centre and over the suspension bridge. But even if she managed to find it, would she be able to drive it? You might black out suddenly. The streets would be jammed with abandoned vehicles and crowds aimlessly blocking the way; mobs that would surely go on the rampage.
Despair. She wouldn't make it, neither could she stay here. In that case . . . and somewhere in the recesses of her confused mind she remembered the empty house in First Terrace. It was a long way from here, further than the car park down by the river, but it was out of town and maybe she would make it.
A year or two ago she used to go there quite a lot, in the days before Pauline's mother had died. A calling place, mainly to fill the afternoon in before it was time to go to Tiffany's. As far as she knew the place was still empty, some structural problems that had prevented the family from putting it on the market. Subsidence caused by the drought of 1976 had cracked the foundations and, accord-. ing to Pauline, the insurance company were being bloody awkward about it, looking for loopholes and trying to get the family to have a cosmetic job done and put it up for sale at a third of the market value. They were still arguing, which meant the place was still unoccupied. And for the moment that was the place to go.
In those few seconds before her mind fogged again Jackie had the foresight to fill her empty plastic carriers with food from the counter, scooping up anything within reach, regardless of how it broke or crumbled. The rest of that nut crumble, handfuls of fresh salad, some baked potatoes that were going cold. A morass, a bag in either hand, and then the mist came down again.
She wandered aimlessly around the restaurant, shied away from the steaming unattended stoves because fire terrified her; a creature seeking a way out from an unfamiliar place.
She found her way back into the main church. That man was still there but now she did not recognise him, did not remember having seen him before.
'They did this.' He regarded her with a glassy stare, still dribbling. The Russians.'
Fear; because she did not understand his words and his whispered tone frightened her. He was a threat to her safety. She ran blindly, not knowing where she was going, a panic-stricken flight that took her back outside into the hot dazzling sunlight, blinded her so that she did not see the flight of ston
e steps.
She screamed as she fell, felt the impact, but strangely it did not hurt; rolling, bumping, her inflamed body cushioning the blows, still clutching those carriers as they spilled scraps of natural wholefood in her wake. Landing on the pavement below where everything came back to her again. The fall had jump-started her brain, set her sluggish reasoning in motion once more.
People still milled about aimlessly, unintelligible shouts and grunts filled the air. Pushing, shoving, a young girl screaming as they trampled her, maddened cattle preparing to stampede.
Jackie Quinn pulled herself up, scrambled back up those steps, still carrying her squashed food. For a few moments, at least, she knew the way she had to go, through St Julian's again and out the back way; keep clear of the crowds and hurry whilst she still remembered which way to go.
There were fewer people on this side of town. A woman was slumped on a bench, she looked dead, and a man sat beside her apparently unaware of her presence. He looked up once as Jackie hurried by but he gave the impression that he did not even see her. He might have been blind.
It was amazing, frightening, how her strength had not waned. If anything she felt stronger, fitter, except for the smarting of her flesh and that constant thumping headache. In those first few awful minutes (hours?) she had weakened, felt abominably ill, but now that sensation had passed. She refrained from looking down at herself, didn't want to know; it was as if she had been given another body, a strong coarse squat butch frame. A sex change? God, she'd never look at herself again.
Hurry, your mind could go again at any second and then you'll be lost!
It was a long way, maybe two miles. Over the English Bridge, turning to the right, preferring to walk in the road because there were people about again, most of them sticking to the pavements, an instinct that was too ingrained in them for them to venture on to the highway. Yet.