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

PART ONE

SUMMER

CHAPTER ONE



GRADUALLY THE girl came to the conclusion that she was ill. It could not be
anything else.

She pushed her way across the pavement, stood with her back against a brick
wall, felt the rough surface scraping her skin through her blouse and jeans.
The brickwork seemed to move, like a piece of automatically operated emery
paper. Up, down, up, down. Her groping fingers found a doorpost, gripped it;
it was moving too. Up, down, up, down, gyrating.

People pushed past her, bumped into her. A woman clutched at her, almost
pulled her down, but somehow she held on. Everybody was rushing, a seething
mass of hastening humanity as though everybody was ill, that they were
hurrying back to their homes before they collapsed in the street. A street
that undulated like a slow-motion roller-coaster, had you clinging on to
anything you could find, throwing up. Somebody had been sick, she could smell
it. It might even have been herself.

Jackie Quinn just stood there, made a supreme physical effort to stay upright.
That feeling of faintness kept coming and going, waves of black and red, hot
and cold. Sweating and shivering. A hubbub of voices, louder, dying away,
rising again, human voices crying out inarticulately, but nobody stopped; they
all had somewhere to go. Maybe she ought to join them, stagger along with the
shambling tide.

Her brain wasn't working properly, even her terror was numbed by a sense of
incomprehension. Frightened one second, accepting the situation the next. I'm
Jackie Quinn. I don't know who I am, where I am. Yes, you do, you're in
Shrewsbury. Where's Shrewsbury? How did I get here, where am I supposed to be
going? I don't know, just stay where you are, you can't do anything else.

She narrowed her eyes, exerted all her remaining will power in one big push to
adjust her vision; pushed again and made it for a second or two. The street
was a sloping bend, traffic at a standstill, some of the vehicles empty,
abandoned by their drivers as they, too, joined the lemming-like stampede.
Run, because you can't do anything else. But Jackie remained where she was.

There was definitely something wrong with her eyesight. Like tunnel vision,
the tunnel becoming narrower and darker, people fleeing. Fleeing from her? An
awful sensation of guilt; blurred faces glancing back every so often. She
could not quite make out the fear in their expressions but she knew it was
there. You've done this to us, Jackie Quinn.
No, that was damned stupid. Whatever was the matter with her was the matter