Johnny and the Bomb Read Online Free PDF Page B

to.’
    â€˜Like grapes, you mean?’
    Johnny tried to picture Mrs Tachyon eating grapes. It didn’t work. ‘I’ll think about it.’
    The garage door swung back and forth, slowly.
    Inside the garage there was:
    A concrete floor. It was old and cracked and soaked in oil. Animal footprints crossed it, embedded in the concrete, suggesting that a dog had run across it when it was being laid. This happens in every patch of wet concrete, everywhere. There were also a couple of human footprints, fossilized in time, and now filled with black grease and dust. In other words, it was more or less like any piece of concrete. There was also:
    A tool bench.
    Most of a bicycle, upside down, and surrounded by tools and bits of bike in a haphazard manner which suggested that someone had mastered the art of taking a bike to bits without succeeding in the craft of putting it back together again.
    A lawnmower entangled in a garden hosepipe, which is what always happens in garages, and isn’t at all relevant.
    A trolley, overflowing with plastic bags of all kinds, but most particularly six large black ones.
    A small pile of jars of pickles, where Johnny had carefully stacked them last night.
    The remains of some fish and chips. As far as Guilty was concerned, catfood only happened to other cats.
    A pair of yellow eyes, watching intently from the shadows under the bench.
    And that was all.

Chapter 3

Bags of Time
    To be honest about it, Johnny didn’t much like hospitals either. Mostly, the people he’d gone to visit in them were not going to come out again. And no matter how they tried to cheer the place up with plants and pictures, it never looked friendly. After all, no one was there because they wanted to be.
    But Kirsty-Kasandra was good at finding out things and getting harassed people to give her answers, and it didn’t take long to find Mrs Tachyon’s ward.
    â€˜That’s her, isn’t it?’ she said.
    She pointed along the line of beds. One or two of them didn’t have visitors around them, but there was no mistaking the one belonging to Mrs Tachyon.
    She was sitting up in bed in a hospital night-gown and her woolly hat, over which she had a pair of hospital headphones.
    Mrs Tachyon stared intently in front of her, and jigged happily among the pillows.
    â€˜She looks happy enough,’ said Kasandra. ‘What’s she listening to?’
    â€˜I couldn’t say for sure,’ said the nurse. ‘All I know is the headphones aren’t plugged in. Are you relatives?’
    â€˜No. We’re—’ Kasandra began.
    â€˜It’s a sort of project,’ said Johnny. ‘You know … like weeding old people’s gardens and that sort of thing.’
    The nurse gave him an odd look, but the magic ‘project’ word did its usual helpful stuff.
    She sniffed. ‘Can I smell vinegar?’ she said.
    Kasandra glared at Johnny. He tried to look innocent.
    â€˜We’ve just brought some grapes,’ he said, showing her the bag.
    Mrs Tachyon didn’t look up as they dragged chairs over to her bed.
    Johnny had never spoken to her in his life, except to say ‘sorry’ when she rammed him with her trolley. He wasn’t sure how to start now.
    Kasandra leaned over and pulled one earphone aside.
    â€˜Hello, Mrs Tachyon!’ she said.
    Mrs Tachyon stopped jigging. She turned a beady eye on Kasandra, and then on Johnny. She had a black eye, and her stained white hair looked frizzled at the front, but there was something horribly unstoppable about Mrs Tachyon.
    â€˜Indeed? That’s what you think!’ she said. ‘Call again tomorrow, baker, and we’ll take a crusty one! Poor old biddy, is it? That’s what you think! Millennium hand and shrimp? Free teeth and corsets? Maybe, for them as likes it, but not me, thank you so much. Wot, no bananas? I had a house, oh yes, but it’s all black men now. Hats.’
    â€˜Are