Chapter 12

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.

Firemen 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 Trumpet, 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 Yo-less.

‘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 Yo-less.

‘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 Yo-less. ‘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.