Aggy and the Dinos

Chapter 25

In the end a journey back that should have taken all of twenty five minutes took six hours. At the same moment as Aggy declared her intention to educate the Regent about animal rights, a Dino stuck its claws into the front tyre of the bus. Now, one Dino is not much of a problem for a bus full of people who are armed up to the eyeballs, but thirty Dinos are. But this wasn't the kind of chaotic scene that Aggy witnessed during the carnage at the flat or in the farm house. Every person grabbed a weapon, and as the first Dino forced its head through the front door Blackwood was already opening them. Then he was out of the driver's compartment and shooting it in the face, kicking its body into the beast behind it. The noise was drawing the interest of the other 28, so Aggy skirted around the back of the bus and took aim, picking off three from behind. She heard someone scream but pushed the sound out of her head, running forward before a Dino had the chance to sneak up on her. She slipped slightly on some oil, and looked up see a man about to fire his gun at a Dino just in front of the bus.

"NO!"

The world was transformed into orange pain. She was aware of hot air blasting her face, and the noise of crunching metal, of chaos and agony. As her face hit the tarmac the air felt momentarily cooler and she opened her eyes, taking a ragged breath. She saw a person on fire, and lying not far from her was the body of a Dino, ripped wide open. She tried to turn her head but there was a ringing in her ears that kept her pinned to the ground. Then there was another flash of white hot light, and then only blackness.

She dreamed, and in her dreaming she was taken far back into her memory. They were in the flat, another flat, part of an oblong monument to poverty where she had grown up, just she and her mother, 100 feet above the ground. Her mother was in the kitchen, dancing and cooking, and Aggy stayed in the doorway, anxious to enter because the fact that the woman was dancing did not mean that it was safe to do so. Her mother turned around and looked at her, still bobbing to the reggae beat in the background.

"What are you doing there?"

"I don't know. Where's Geezer?"

"I don't know, baby. Come and help mummy."

Aggy walked into the room, which she could see from a child's height even though she had been 17 when she left, and approached the cooker.

"What happened to you?" She asked.

"I was moved on, darling. On to the next big adventure, past the mortal veil."

"You're dead then?"

"Yes, if that's how you want to define it."

"And you're still making pasta bake in this flat?"

"Only for you. You're not ready, Aggy, not ready to accept what must come next. Will you ever be ready, I wonder?"

Aggy stirred the pasta in the pot aggressively, feeling tears sting her cheeks. It was so like her mother to make her feel inadequate, and so like her to be so easily affected. She was sorry that this was all the time they would get together. The sky outside was the hazy orange that you get in London when smog is illuminated by street lighting. The Great West Road rumbled by in the background.

"I'm the kind of ready that few people ever are," she said, eventually.

"Like you are," snorted her mother, lighting a thin rollup. She drew in the smoke, and Aggy could tell that she was about to go off on one.

"Look, whatever you're going to say next, don't." she said. Her perspective of the room had changed; she was no longer at child level, but looking at her mother as an adult.

"You were a fucking nightmare. And I'm sorry that I couldn't save you, I really am. I'm sorry and I love you. But you're probably not even real. Either I'm alive and dreaming or I'm dead and really here with you, but either way I'm going now."