"Smith, Guy N - Throwback" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

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.

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.