Afterworlds: The 13th Horseman. Barry Hutchison

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СКАЧАТЬ felt a tickle as a bead of sweat formed just above his nose. It meandered all the way down to the tip, before dripping silently on to the scuffed floor.

      “Mr Finn?”

      “I had Frosties for breakfast,” Drake babbled. He bit down on his bottom lip immediately, trying too late to stop the words spilling out of his mouth. His eyes flitted between the six or seven stunned expressions in the front row, and for a few long moments the world seemed to stand perfectly still.

      Three boys, shorter than all the others, began sniggering at the back of the class. Drake leaped into the air as the teacher slammed his hands down hard on his desk and roared “BE QUIET!” No one else sniggered after that.

      “Well,” said Dr Black, composing himself. “That was… enlightening.” He unfolded upright and gave Drake a firm tap on the back of the head. “Now, if you could endeavour to contain your sugar high long enough to take a seat, the rest of you turn to page two hundred and forty-seven and we’ll find out what the history books have to say about my old pal, Attila the Hun.”

      Drake sidestepped through a narrow corridor left between two rows of desks until he came to the only empty seat in the classroom. He hurriedly sat down, desperate to blend in and no longer be the centre of attention.

      Almost at once, a skinny girl with big eyes and short hair leaned across from the next desk over and flashed him a smile. “Hi,” she whispered.

      “Um, hi,” he whispered back.

      “You shouldn’t eat Frosties,” she told him. “Do you have any idea what goes into those things?”

      “Sugar and cornflakes?” Drake guessed. This seemed to take the wind right out of the girl’s sails.

      “Right. Exactly,” she agreed. “And they exploit tigers,” she added, rallying somewhat.

      “Yeah, but… cartoon tigers, though,” offered Drake weakly.

      “Still tigers, though, innit?” the girl continued.

      “Er… I suppose so,” Drake shrugged. He noticed a brief flicker of a smile pass across the girl’s face. “Are you winding me up?” he asked.

      “Might be,” the girl admitted, and the smile widened further.

      “Right. Who are you, by the way?” Drake whispered.

      “Mel Monday,” beamed Mel, holding out her hand for Drake to shake. “I’m your new best friend.”

      It was around four hours later when Drake found himself hurrying through a twisting labyrinth of corridors, desperately hunting for the boys’ toilets.

      He’d spent the first fifteen minutes of the lunchtime break searching, and he almost yelped with delight when he finally spotted the familiar black outline of a man that signalled the end of his search.

      He was hopping from foot to foot as he pushed through the door and into the overpowering, yet strangely comforting odour of the toilets. Drake’s fingers fumbled with his trousers, finding it difficult to undo the safety pin that had held them up ever since his button broke off last term. The trousers were a size too small now, which only served to make the pain in his stomach ten times worse.

      With a triumphant cry, he finally managed to get them undone. Drake let out a loud sigh of satisfaction as a morning’s worth of pent-up terror sloshed past the lemon fragrance cubes and down the drainage hole of the stainless steel urinal wall.

      He was barely halfway through when something hit him heavily on the back. He stumbled forward, spraying his trouser legs with urine. Powerless to stop mid-flow Drake twisted his neck and looked down into the greasy, gargoyle-like faces of the trio of shorter boys who’d been sniggering at him in Dr Black’s class that morning. They scowled back up at him.

      “You shouldn’t have come here,” said the raspy-voiced leader of the group, his eyes little more than narrow slits in his pock-marked cheeks. “These are our toilets. No knob ’eads allowed!”

      

      HE SLITHERS THROUGH the walls between worlds, crossing dimensions in the blink of an eye. How many planes of reality has he traversed? One thousand? Five? He has no idea, nor any desire to know. He knows where he is going, and he knows, in time, he will get there. That is enough.

      The entirety of time and space surrounds him in all directions. He pays it no heed. Only one location matters. Only one destination is his goal.

      Shed, he thinks, though he does not yet understand the word’s meaning. I am summoned to the shed.

      

      TODAY, DRAKE WAS coming to realise, was not his day. First the three weirdos and their disappearing shed, now this.

      The boy scowled. “Like Frosties, then, do you?”

      “Yeah, they’re all right.”

      “I bet you do. I bet you love ’em.”

      Drake hesitated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “Shut up, knob ’ead !” barked another of the bullies. “Yeah, shut it, Frosties boy,” warned the third, smiling inwardly at his own comedy genius.

      A near-silence followed. Drake’s bladder continued to empty.

      “Right, this is taking too long,” the little group’s little leader snarled. “Get him, lads!” He stepped aside to allow his two henchmen a clear run at Drake. Neither of them raced into action.

      “I dunno, Bingo,” said the larger of the two. “Don’t you think we should wait? You know, until he’s finished?”

      “What?”

      “I’d prefer it if you did,” said Drake, glancing over his shoulder at the three tiny tyrants.

      “Shut up, no one asked you!” snapped Bingo. “Go on,” he barked, pushing his cohorts forward. “Get into him!”

      “Spud’s right, I don’t want pee on me,” said Dim, the third member of the gang. His dirty face frowned below a mass of greasy ginger hair. “My mum goes through the roof when I get pee on me.”

      “Right. OK. Fine,” Bingo sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. “Wait until he’s finished, then get him. Happy?”

      Spud and Dim seemed satisfied with this compromise. All four boys stood in silence, the only sound in the room the splashing of Drake’s slowly draining bladder. Bingo muttered under his breath as he impatiently tapped his foot on the tiled floor.

      “Can we hurry this up?” he spat. “We haven’t got all day.”

      “Sorry,” СКАЧАТЬ