Terry Pratchett - Johnny and the Bomb

"I happen to be the under-18 county champion," said Kirsty, unloading the gun. "But I'm not intending to use it. I just don't want him to get excited." She threw the pistol behind some dustbins. "Now, are we going, or what?"

Johnny looked around at Tom.

"Sorry about this," he said. "Can you, er, explain things to him when he wakes up?"

"I wouldn't know how to start! I don't know what happened myself!"

"Good," said Kirsty firmly.

"I mean, did I run down here or not?" said Tom. "I thought I saw the bombing but - I must've imagined it, because it didn't happen until after we got here!"

"It was probably the excitement," said Yoless.

"The mind plays strange tricks," said Kirsty.

They both glared at Johnny.

"Don't look at me," he said. "I don't know anything about anything."

Up Another Leg

What Bigmac said afterwards was that he'd never intended to help. It had been like watching a film until he'd seen people scrabbling at the wreckage. Then he'd stepped through the screen.

Fireman were pouring water on the flames. People were pulling at fallen timbers, or moving gingerly through each stricken house, calling out names - in a strange, polite way, in the circumstances.

"Yoo-hoo, Mr Johnson?"

"Excuse me, Mrs Density, are you there?"

"Mrs Williams? Anyone?"

And Wobbler said afterwards that he could remember three things. One was the strange metallic clinking sound bricks make as piles of them slide around. One was the smell of wet burnt wood. And one was the bed. The blast had taken off the roof and half the walls of a house but there was a double bed hanging out over the road. It even still had the sheets on it. It creaked up and down in the wind.

The two boys scrambled over the sliding rubble until they reached a back garden. Glass and bricks covered everything.

An elderly man wearing a nightshirt tucked into his trousers was standing and staring at the wreckage on his garden.

"Well, that's my potatoes gone," he said. "It was late frost last year, and now this."

"Still," said Bigmac, in a mad cheerful voice, "you've got a nice crop of pickled cucumbers."

"Can't abide 'em. Pickles give me wind."

Fences had been laid flat. Sheds had been lifted up and dealt like cards across the gardens.

And, as though the All Clear had been the Last Trump, people were rising out of the ground.

"I just hope the others are still there," said Kirsty, as they ran through the streets.

"What do you think?" said Yoless.

"Sorry?"

"I mean, maybe They're sitting quietly waiting for us or They've got into some kind of trouble. Bets?"

Kirsty slowed down.

"Hang on a minute," she said. "There's something I've got to know. Johnny?"

"Yes?" he said. He'd been dreading this moment. Kirsty asked such penetrating questions.

"What did we do? Back there? I saw the bombs drop! And I'm a very good observer! But we got down to the police station before it happened! So either I'm mad - and I'm not mad - or we-"

"Ran through time," said Yoless.

"Look, it was just a direction," said Johnny. "I just saw the way to go ... "

Kirsty rolled her eyes. "Can you do it again?"

"I ... don't think so. I can't remember how I did it."

"He was probably in a state of heightened awareness," said Yoless. "I've read about them."

"What ... drugs?" said Kirsty suspiciously.

"Me? I don't even like coffee!" said Johnny. The world had always seemed so strange in any case that he'd never dared try anything that'd make it even weirder.

"But It's an amazing talent! Think of the things you-"

Johnny shook his head. He could remember seeing the way, and he could remember the feelings, but he couldn't remember the how. It was as if he was looking at his memories behind thick amber glass.

"Come on," he said, and started running again.

"But-" Kirsty began.

"I can't do it again," said Johnny. "It'll never be the right time again."

Bigmac and Wobbler weren't in trouble, if only because there had been so much trouble just recently that there was, for a while, no more to get into.

"This is an air-raid shelter?" said Bigmac. "I thought they were all - you know, steel and stuff Big doors that go hiss. Lights flashing on and off. You know." He heaved on one end of a shed which had smashed into the air-raid shelter belonging to No. 9. "Not just some corrugated iron and dirt with lettuces growing on top."

Wobbler had rescued a shovel from the ruin of someone's greenhouse, and used it to heave bricks out of the way. The shelter door opened and a middleaged woman staggered out.

She was wearing a floral pinny over a nightdress, and holding a goldfish bowl with two fish in it. A small girl was clinging to her skirts.

"Where's Michael?" the woman shouted. "Where is he? Has anyone seen him? I turned my back for two seconds to grab Adolf and Stalin and he was out the door like a-"

"Kid in a green jersey?" said Wobbler. "Got glasses? Ears like the World Cup? He's looking for shrapnel."

"He's safe?" She sagged with relief. "I don't know what I'd have told his mother!"

"You all right?" said Bigmac. "I'm afraid your house is a bit ... flatter than it was ... "

Mrs Density looked at what was left of No. 9.

"Oh, well. Worse things happen at sea," she said vaguely.

"Do they?" said Bigmac, mystified.

"It's just a blessing we weren't in it," said Mrs Density.

There was a clink of brickwork and a firemen slid down the debris towards them.

"All right, Mrs Density?" he said. "I reckon You're the last one. Fancy a nice cup of tea?"

"Oh, hello, Bill," she said.

"Who're these lads, then?" said the fireman.

"We ... were just helping out," said Wobbler

"Were you? Oh. Right. Well, come away out of it, the pair of you. We reckon There's an unexploded one at Number 12." The fireman stared at Bigmac's clothes for a moment, and then shrugged. He gently took the goldfish bowl from Mrs Density and put his other arm around her shoulders.

"A nice cup of tea and a blanket," he said. "Just the thing, eh? Come along, luv."

The boys watched them slide and scramble through the fallen bricks.

"You get bombed and they give you a cup of tea?" said Bigmac.

"I s'pose It's better than getting bombed and never ever getting one again," said Wobbler. "Anyway, there-"

"Eeeeyyyyooooowwwwmmmm!" screamed a voice behind them.

They turned. Wobbler's grandfather was standing on a pile of bricks and looked like a small devil in the light of the fires. He was covered in soot, and was waving something through the air and making aeroplane noises.

"That looks like-"Bigmac began.

"It's a bit off'f a bomb!" said the boy. "Nearly the whole tail fin! I don't know anyone who's got nearly a whole tail fin!"

He zoomed the twisted metal through the air again.

"Er ... kid?" said Wobbler.

The boy lowered the fin.

"You know about ... motorbikes?" said Wobbler.

"Oh, no," said Bigmac. "You can't tell him anything about-"

"You just shut up!" said Wobbler. "You've got a grandad!"

"Yes, but there has to be a warder there when I go an" see him."

Wobbler looked back at the boy.

"Dangerous things, motorbikes," he said.

"I'm going to have a big one when I grow up," said his grandfather. "With rockets on it, an" machine guns and everythin'. Eeeooowwmmmm!"

"Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Wobbler, in the special dumb voice for talking to children. "You don't want to go crashing it, do you."

"Oh, I won't crash," said his grandfather, confidently.

"Mrs Density"s daughter"s a nice little girl, isn't she," said Wobbler desperately.

"She's all smelly and horrible. Eeeeeoowwmmm! Anyway, You're fat, mister!"

He ran down the far side of the heap. They saw his shadow darting between the firemen, and heard the occasional "Voommrnm!"