Guy Smith - Throwback

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 went after it; everybody was too busy going nowhere in particular.