The Journey and other Short Stories: Short Stories, #1

By Elaine Jackson

Short stories with a science-fiction twist.

Eva and Tom emerge from a train wreck to discover a deserted and partially destroyed London. What has happened to Tom's family?

Gideon wakes to find himself lying in a ditch on a lonely country road. Is that his real name, and why can't he remember his life from before?

Journalist Marc Harrison bends the rules to get a place on the first manned mission to Mars - and lives to regret it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neon Sky Books
• Release date: Oct 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386914587

Elaine Jackson

Author of 'The Journey and Other Short Stories' and 'The Methuselah Paradox', Elaine Jackson (writing as EJ Jackson) studied creative writing with Faber Academy and  editing and screenwriting with The Writer's Workshop. She also has the singular distinction of being the founder of the only official appreciation society for 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy', ZZ9, which she started in 1980 and which is still going strong today.  Elaine lives in Surrey, in the United Kingdom, with her husband and son, and is a voracious reader. Her first brush with science fiction was 'Star Trek', which led her to creating a local discussion group in her home town of Aldershot in her late teens. She was soon editing newsletters and fanzines, and has also been known to illustrate - although these days she prefers to leave the artwork to the professionals!  Elaine is proud to be an author member of the Alliance of Independent Authors.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to everyone who helped along the way: Jinxed, Billie G, Marit, Barbara Rogan, Eloise Millar, Harry Bingham and everyone at The Writers Workshop; Helen and Kris and my fellow students at Faber Academy, Harry Saxon for his brilliant cover, and Graham and Sam for their patience.

ELAINE JACKSON

Camberley, July 2014

{ 1 }

The Journey

Weary bodies jammed together, an aura of suppressed frustration building as the tube train slowed yet again. Swaying gently with the movement, Eva King settled against the back wall of the carriage, resigned herself to standing. Interpol’s ‘Pioneer to the Falls’ filled the tiny headphones, carrying her away from the daily commute to a job she still wasn’t sure she wanted, to a miserable and lonely room she was meant to call home, to a life she definitely didn’t want but had little choice about anymore. She would have –unless the delays continued- roughly until ‘The Lighthouse’ before she got to her stop. East Finchley was a far cry from the familiar and genteel - but too reminiscent of Bad Things- town of Farnham, Surrey. She pushed the memory away.

By ‘Rest My Chemistry’ they were at Archway, two stops from ‘home’, and the crowd had dispersed. Eva had been seated since Kentish Town. She felt weary, but was unable to relax. It was always like this when she remembered Farnham; what she’d had there, what she didn’t have anymore. Then her determination to accept this new life would waver. But she couldn’t go back - forward was the only way.

There were just two of them in the carriage now; Eva, and a slim man of roughly similar age, sitting at the other end of the carriage. He had looked up just once, wary eyes sliding over Eva then back to the book resting on the black leather briefcase on his lap. It matched the smart wool coat. He must be baking in that thing...she was too far away to tell if he might be sweating, and she wondered what he did for a living; a banker, perhaps, or a salesman...something about him struck her as familiar. Her curiosity brought a surge of guilt to her throat – she swallowed it, and looked away. She told herself that she was not sufficiently interested to give him any further thought; and besides, it didn’t pay to study other passengers too closely. She had witnessed a stabbing on the tube in her teens, when boundaries had not been observed; she had no plans to risk the life she had, even if she had not yet decided whether to endure it for very much longer. Two pointless deaths had brought her to this place, to this miserable existence...she wasn’t certain if she had the nerve for another.

The train shuddered and slowed beneath her and she blinked, grateful for the distraction. The lights went down then up again, and she knew a moment of fear – but risking a glance in the direction of her fellow traveler, she was barely comforted; he didn’t seem concerned, but was still reading in a determined manner which Eva suddenly felt convinced was forced. She looked away, her mouth suddenly dry.

Although a native of the suburbs – her father George (stubbornly living hand-to-mouth in the face of more enthusiastic competition) still ran the same corner-shop-come-hardware-store near Putney Bridge where Eva had grown up – it had been several years since she had last used the tube to commute on a daily basis. She had forgotten the cadence and minutia of underground travel, and discovered it to be dirtier and altogether more depressing than she remembered from her childhood.

The train had crawled into and begrudgingly left Highgate, and Interpol had got started on ‘Who Do You Think’ when the lights flickered once more and then died. The train shuddered to a halt, throwing Eva from her seat. Unable to resist the forward momentum, she hit one of the support poles with her shoulder and stumbled across the aisle, where the impact of her forehead against the toughened glass of the doors sent pain ringing from one side of her skull to the other. Interpol continued to play as she slumped to the floor, the taste of blood in her mouth. She thought she heard a man’s voice, shouting unintelligibly, but before she could drag a response from her whirling brain to her mouth, her consciousness faded.

Something touched Eva’s shoulder in the darkness. She flinched, panic taking her breath before she remembered the man with the wool coat.

He was now crouched down beside her, close enough for Eva to smell his cologne. He was talking, she knew, but the words refused to make sense.

‘Sorry?’ Her own voice sounded thin and frightened.

‘I said, are you okay?’

His voice was deep, quite pleasant, and with a hint of an accent she couldn’t quite place. It reminded her of Peter in a way she didn’t want to remember. It took long seconds to cajole her brain into conjuring a response, longer still for her mouth to give it voice.

‘Think so...’ She didn’t know what ‘Okay’ was supposed to mean. Not dead? She tasted blood. ‘I bit... my lip...’ Her body felt strange: head tight, senses stretched thin, a high-pitched whistling sound scattering her thoughts before they could properly form. Think – what was the correct response? Finally, it came to her: ‘Are you... all right?’ She swallowed, and the whistling sound went away.

He was silent for a heartbeat, perhaps two. ‘I’m fine, thanks – but you really went flying. I couldn’t see, but I’m pretty sure you were unconscious for a minute or two.’ He sounded calm, in control, but his breathing was fast. He coughed, a quality to it that told Eva he was a smoker.

‘What happened? Did we hit something?’ She felt vulnerable, wished he would not sit so close, but had no idea how to say this without giving offence. As if he had sensed it, she heard him move away.

‘No, I don’t think so – didn’t feel an impact, anyway. I think the power just failed – maybe we jumped the points, or something. Christ, we could be here for ages.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Can’t get a signal on my mobile, either. Power must be out across the board.’

The emergency lighting flickered into insipid life. Eva discovered that she was still lying by the door. Her head began to throb in earnest when she sat up, and sudden nausea made her retch. She fumbled for a tissue, then realised that the man was holding his hand out to her.

‘Here...’

Eva accepted the tissue,