How I Saved the World in a Week

by Polly Ho-Yen

  ‘Yeah, if you see any Greys, then ring us straightaway,’ I say to Anwar.

  ‘How will I know if I see one?’

  ‘You’ll know,’ I tell him.

  * * *

  The hospital hums with beeps and the steady rhythm of low-toned voices.

  ‘It all looks pretty normal, don’t you think?’ I say to Angharad quietly as we walk by the person on reception who yawns loudly as we go past.

  Angharad nods.

  We head for the lifts and when we’re in there we look at the long list of names for all the different wards and floors of the hospital.

  ‘Where do you think we should go?’ I say. I want to ask her if she’s okay but she’s studying the map of the hospital, her hair swept over her face, and so I get the feeling she doesn’t want to talk.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Angharad reads the list. ‘Maybe Intensive Care… does that sound like where they would have been taken?’

  ‘Let’s try it,’ I say, jabbing the lift button.

  When we get to the right floor, we follow signs and walk down corridors. I try not to think about the last time I was in a hospital, when I saw Sylvia, but it keeps returning to me. My stomach twists and turns at the thought.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Angharad asks me when I stop walking all of a sudden.

  ‘Yes – it’s just – being here, in a hospital, makes me think about my mum.’

  ‘Do you want to go back?’

  ‘No, it’s okay. Let’s keep going,’ I say. We continue down the corridor.

  ‘I tried to tell my best friend at school about the Greys,’ Angharad says suddenly. ‘But she didn’t believe me. She told everyone else that I make things up to get attention. That’s why I’m feeling funny today. Sorry if I’m being weird with you.’

  ‘I guess it’s hard to believe it when you haven’t seen it,’ I say gently, although I can’t stop thinking of how Angharad backed me up to Julie and Steve when she hadn’t actually seen the fallen man.

  ‘But Anwar believed you right away, didn’t he?’

  ‘Well yes… but Anwar’s my… I mean he would always believe me because… you know he’s my best… Maybe this girl isn’t really your best friend?’ I end up saying.

  Angharad scoffs and wipes something from her eye.

  ‘Maybe. She’s definitely not as good a friend as Anwar is to you. I need to find someone like Anwar, perhaps.’ When I look again, she’s staring steelily into the distance. ‘What was it your mum would tell you? Trust no one?’

  ‘Yes. But then you said that we should trust each other.’

  ‘So maybe it’s more, trust the people you can trust,’ she says, screwing her face up. ‘That sounds so cheesy. But I should have known better than to trust her, you’re right – I don’t think she is my best friend. Maybe I don’t have one.’

  I don’t know what to say, so I’m a little bit relieved when I see that we’ve arrived at the Intensive Care Unit.

  But the double doors are locked.

  ‘Now how are we going to get in?’ Angharad says, but I think it’s more to herself than me.

  Just then, some staff come out through the doors. A man and woman deep in conversation. They rush right past us.

  ‘Let’s wait until someone comes out who looks like they will talk to us,’ Angharad says.

  The doors swing open and a short man wearing a white coat marches out. ‘Not him,’ Angharad whispers.

  After that a younger nurse walks out of the doors. She smiles when she sees us, the only one to have noticed us.

  ‘Are you two all right? Are you looking for someone?’ she asks.

  Angharad speaks up straightaway. ‘Our uncle’s in there. Our parents said we couldn’t come to see him but we just wanted to try.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, love, there are quite strict visiting hours for ICU. Maybe when he gets a bit better and he’s moved to another ward, you could come back all together.’

  Angharad goes on. ‘It’s just that we were worried because of those people who all got sick. The ones we saw on the news? We thought our uncle might have the same thing as they had.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ the nurse says. ‘That was all a bit of a mystery but touch wood – ’ her fingers lightly touch the fuzz of her hair – ‘we haven’t had any more cases. What’s your uncle’s name?’

  Angharad falters for just a second.

  ‘Bob,’ I say quickly. ‘Bob Belvedere.’

  ‘Hmm, I don’t know him,’ says the nurse. ‘Maybe he’s been moved out of ICU already. Come back with your parents during visiting hours and you might be able to see him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ we chorus as she walks away.

  We turn to each other.

  ‘So – no more cases,’ says Angharad. ‘Yet.’

  HOW TO GET IN TROUBLE (AGAIN): PART I

  My arms are outstretched and Bob runs from one hand, all along my arm, across my neck and across to the other arm.

  Anwar and I have snuck in to visit him again because we want to try him on one of Anwar’s new inventions for him. It’s a sort of maze made out of different-sized tubes. It’s massive and bulky and Anwar’s dad had to drop us off at school in his taxi because it was too heavy to walk with. Our teacher Miss Watson tutted and raised her eyebrows when it kept toppling off the shelf we placed it on in the book corner. In the end she moved some things off a side table so we could store it there. It took both of us to carry it to the Year 3 classroom where Bob lives.

  We hear someone’s footsteps coming down the corridor and I freeze, bracing myself for a telling off like we had from Mr Belvedere on my first day, but it’s the Year 3 teacher, Miss Pennyworth. She’s carrying a huge pile of books that she drops on to one of the low tables with a thump.

  ‘Can’t keep away, Anwar?’ she says when she sees us, smiling.

  ‘I just miss Bob too much,’ Anwar says back.

  ‘You are his most devoted servant,’ Miss Pennyworth says. ‘I mean… apart from the time you tried to drown him.’

  ‘He was never in danger, miss, honestly! Mr Belvedere just hadn’t appreciated what a brilliant boat it was.’

  ‘Well, no more watersports, okay? Now what have you made for dear old Bob today?’ She seems genuinely interested in the maze and suggests that we time Bob to see how fast he does it in and then we can see if he improves with practice. She even gives us a stopwatch to use.

  ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ she tells us. ‘And then you’ll need to go outside, okay?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ we mumble.

  We try Bob in the maze a few times. The first time he doesn’t seem that interested at all but when we drop some treats down he soon gets the idea. He scuttles along the tubes, his nose twitching this way and that.

  ‘So what are you and Angharad going to do next about the Greys?’ Anwar asks me, out of the blue.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I guess right now we just have to be prepared in case things get worse.’ Then I say, a little awkwardly, ‘Anyway, it’s not just me and Angharad, it’s you as well, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know. You were right about what you said when you first met her – she’s not very friendly, is she?’

  ‘She’s a bit like that at first. And yesterday she was upset. Her best friend from school didn’t believe her about the Greys and told everyone that she made up stories. She asked whether you believed me straightaway—’

  ‘Of course I did!’

  ‘I know, that’s what I told her. I said you believed me, because you’re… you know… you’re my really good friend.’

  Anwar punches me lightly on the arm. ‘Billy,’ he says, a wide grin spreading over his face. ‘We’re best friends, man.’

  I can’t stop myself from grinning. I feel a lightness growing inside me, I’ve never had a best friend before.

  ‘And Angharad’s okay, I suppose,’ Anwar says, scooping Bob out from the end of the tube and delicately placing him at the beginning again. He disappears
down a toilet-roll tunnel. ‘I think I just thought you might prefer hanging out with her… than me.’

  ‘No way,’ I say. ‘But it’s nice to be friends with both of you…’ As I speak the words I realize how much I mean them. Sylvia’s drilled it into me for so long that I shouldn’t trust anyone but finding people who want to support you feels so different. Unknown, but also kind of wonderful.

  ‘Maybe Angharad can help out with one of our experiments too. We could do with someone else around if we’re going to try and do the rocket launcher.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll ask her,’ I say. I can’t stop a smile creeping over my face. I’m glad that Anwar and Angharad are getting on better now. It’s weird to think that not that long ago even having one friend seemed impossible, and now I have two.

  We’re so lost in our conversation that we don’t hear the sound at first.

  It’s a scratching sort of sound.

  A clawing.

  A scraping.

  We think it’s just Bob’s paws scampering along the cardboard.

  Then I glance up towards the window.

  ‘Anwar!’ I shout.

  ‘What is—’ He stops as he looks up at the window.

  He sees.

  He sees them.

  I’ve never seen Anwar speechless before. His mouth drops open wide as he takes in what’s causing the scratching noise.

  They don’t look quite human, their arms are elongated and spiral out from their bodies in all different directions. Their skin is dulled like leaden metal.

  It’s a group of Greys.

  And they’re clawing at the glass to get in.

  HOW TO GET IN TROUBLE (AGAIN): PART II

  ‘We have to go,’ I say and start to stand, walking backwards to the door, not turning away from the window, not able to tear my eyes away from their sunken, steely faces.

  But Anwar hasn’t moved a muscle.

  ‘Anwar, Anwar!’

  ‘I have to wait for Bob,’ he says. ‘I’m not leaving him.’

  I glance towards the cardboard maze and see that Bob’s disappeared into a long tunnel section. I hold my breath.

  One of the Greys closes its giant, clawed hand into a fist. It pulls its arm back slowly and then in one supple movement, pounds its fist hard on the glass. The window does not break but it rattles in its frame.

  They strike the glass again. And again.

  The Grey that’s hammering on the window looks right at us.

  Its face is puffed up, and deepens in shade as it looks at us. Then it opens its mouth and a terrible shriek is roaring from somewhere deep inside it. It’s strangled and fierce and raw. I look again as the Grey plunges its fist against the glass once more and emits another screaming cry.

  At first I can’t see it but in the next moment, it is unmistakable: who the Grey used to be. It’s lost most of its hair, but there are still the remnants of a bushy moustache above the grey arches of its lips. Its eyes peer out from hollow sockets, glinting stonily.

  It’s Mr Belvedere. He has been turned into a Grey.

  I remember from this morning’s assembly that he wasn’t in and his class had a new teacher, a young man with floppy hair who didn’t know which way the hall was. My eyes quickly scan over the other Greys but I don’t recognize any of them, only Mr Belvedere.

  On his fifth hit, the glass splinters. It’s carved with cracks.

  I turn desperately to the mouth of the tunnel, willing with everything for Bob to appear.

  Mr Belvedere hits the glass again. This time it gives.

  The sound of glass shattering across the floor rings in our ears just as Bob’s twitching whiskers emerge from the end of the tunnel. Anwar grabs him and holds him close to his chest with both hands.

  We run.

  * * *

  We almost collide with Miss Pennyworth who’s running back towards her classroom.

  ‘What happened? Did I just hear glass breaking?’ Her eyes are wide with worry.

  We yell at her to stop. We try to stop her going in, we tell her not to, but she runs past us anyway.

  She disappears into the room.

  I look at Anwar and he looks at me. Without us having to say anything we turn back and follow her in.

  I don’t know what we were expecting to do. I don’t know how we thought that we could help. But when we rush back through the door, we only see Miss Pennyworth staring out at the broken wreckage of her window. The sunlight streaming past the jagged shards.

  There are no Greys in sight.

  ‘What happened?’ she asks again.

  ‘Did you see them?’ I ask.

  She turns to face us. ‘See who?’

  ‘The Greys,’ I say and then I remember that this is just the name that Anwar, Angharad and I have made up. ‘People who look like their skin’s turned grey and they can’t speak any more.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ she says. She sounds confused and lost. ‘Boys, why did you break my window?’

  ‘It wasn’t us, miss, I swear,’ Anwar says. ‘There were these things outside, they were trying to get in, they broke the glass.’

  ‘Things? And now these “things” have gone away? Anwar, I know you don’t mean to get into trouble but you really don’t help yourself when you make things up. And Billy… I don’t know why you let him drag you into these things.’

  ‘No, Miss Pennyworth, it’s not like that,’ I begin to say.

  ‘Enough,’ she says. ‘Just enough. I should never have let you stay in the classroom by yourselves. I can’t believe I thought that I could trust you. You are absolutely forbidden from being in here again. Put Bob back in his cage. I’m going to have to speak to Miss Watson and Mr Belvedere about what we need to do about this, but damaging school property is a very serious offence. And so is lying about it. Very serious.’

  I raise my head when she mentions Mr Belvedere.

  ‘I don’t think Mr Belvedere is in today, miss,’ I say.

  But what I want to tell her is that Mr Belvedere is no longer Mr Belvedere any more.

  HOW TO MAKE A PLAN

  Angharad insists on writing everything down in the small spiral notebook that she now carries around with her all the time.

  She’s ripped out all the pages she’d written in before, so now it’s just about the Greys and everything we’ve learned about them.

  ‘Tell me again,’ she says.

  ‘So the Greys were scratching on the window—’ Anwar says.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four?’ I say.

  ‘Five, I think,’ Anwar says.

  ‘Okay, I’ll write four or five,’ says Angharad. She jots it down in her notebook and then makes us repeat every detail of what happened at school, asking lots of questions along the way.

  Steve has banned me from seeing Anwar because of what happened to the window but when we came to see Angharad and Julie today, I told Angharad about the ban and she said she had an idea.

  ‘Mum, Steve,’ she said. ‘Would you mind if I showed Billy the city farm? He says he’s never been.’

  ‘Why don’t we all go?’ Steve suggested.

  Angharad fixed her mum with a look and some sort of unspoken conversation passed between them.

  ‘Actually, it would be nice for them to go together, don’t you think, Steve?’ Julie said. ‘Good for them to have some time to get to know each other, without us getting in the way.’

  Steve looked a bit disappointed but he agreed without a fight.

  As soon as we left the house, Angharad turned to me and said, ‘Okay, let’s meet Anwar. I’ll not say anything to anyone.’

  I messaged him and he answered straightaway. We decided to meet in the main city library which is halfway between Anwar’s house and Angharad’s. We had to catch a bus to get there but Angharad said she’d keep an eye on the time so it doesn’t seem like we’ve been gone for too long.

  So now we’re sitting across a table from each other, in a little corner that’s hemmed in by bookshelves to a
void being overheard.

  I’m glad that Angharad and Anwar seem to like each other much more now. It might have something to do with the fact that I told Anwar that it was Angharad’s idea to come and meet him and Angharad saying, ‘Well, we’re a kind of team now, aren’t we?’

  Anwar smiled his big old grin when she said that.

  ‘A team,’ he said back, in agreement.

  He doesn’t even seem to get annoyed that she’s asking so many questions.

  ‘Interesting,’ she says once she’s satisfied she knows everything there is to know, peering down at all the tiny notes she’s made. The words are cramped and filling up the page.

  ‘So what shall we do next?’ Angharad looks towards me. I can feel Anwar’s eyes on me too.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Well, we’ve got to be vigilant. Really vigilant. I mean it’s probably better that we avoid public places, really.’

  ‘We can’t not go to school though,’ Anwar says. ‘There’s no way our parents would let us stay home.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Until they understand how dangerous it is. I mean they just have no idea. We know they don’t believe us at all at the moment. But if we have some—’

  ‘Evidence!’ Angharad finishes the sentence and slaps her hand on her thigh. ‘We need some video footage of the Greys or something so we can show them!’

  ‘But we don’t want to get close to them, remember,’ Anwar says. ‘In case we get infected. So how do we video them?’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘And we don’t really know where they are,’ Angharad adds.

  ‘We could try the garages again? And if they are there, we could film them on our phones and keep as far away as we can?’ I suggest.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Angharad says, standing up. ‘I’ll text Mum and tell her that we’re going to have lunch in the café at the farm or something, to buy us more time. Come on!’

  Anwar stands up too and they both look over at me.

  In that moment, despite the worry and feeling scared, a rush of excitement comes over me. It’s a bit like I’m on one of my first adventures with Sylvia again, just the two of us, before things started to go bad.