Johnny and the Bomb

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Read On

About the Author

Also by Terry Pratchett

Copyright

About the Book

It’s May 21, 1941, thought Johnny. It’s war.

Johnny Maxwell and his friends have to do something when they find Mrs Tachyon, the local bag lady, semi-conscious in an alley… as long as it’s not the kiss of life.

But there’s more to Mrs Tachyon than a squeaky trolley and a bunch of dubious black bags. Somehow she holds the key to different times, different eras – including the Blackbury Blitz in 1941. Suddenly now isn’t the safe place Johnny once thought it was as he finds himself caught up more and more with then…

TERRY
PRATCHETT

A JOHNNY MAXWELL story

JOHNNY

AND THE

BOMB

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Meteorological Office, the Royal Mint and my old friend Bernard Pearson – who, if he doesn’t know something, always knows a man who does – for their help in the research for this book. When historical details are wrong, it’s my fault for not listening. But who knows what really happened in the other leg of the Trousers of Time?

Chapter 1

After the Bombs

It was nine o’clock in the evening, in Blackbury High Street.

It was dark, with occasional light from the full moon behind streamers of worn-out cloud. The wind was from the south-west and there had been another thunderstorm, which freshened the air and made the cobbles slippery.

A policeman moved, very slowly and sedately, along the street.

Here and there, if someone was very close, they might have seen the faintest line of light around a blacked-out window. From within came the quiet sounds of people living their lives – the muffled notes of a piano as someone practised scales, over and over again, and the murmur and occasional burst of laughter from the wireless.

Some of the shop windows had sandbags piled in front of them. A poster outside one shop urged people to Dig For Victory, as if it were some kind of turnip.

On the horizon, in the direction of Slate, the thin beams of searchlights tried to pry bombers out of the clouds.

The policeman turned the corner, and walked up the next street, his boots seeming very loud in the stillness.

The beat took him up as far as the Methodist chapel, and in theory would then take him down Paradise Street, but it didn’t do that tonight because there was no Paradise Street any more. Not since last night.

There was a lorry parked by the chapel. Light leaked out from the tarpaulin that covered the back.