by Jeff Povey
He is wedged into a shopping trolley while Non-Ape pushes him towards me and the dead, unmoving Carrie. They are lost in one of their never-ending, roundabout conversations that only they will ever understand. There is no sign of the Ape’s injuries. He seems to be completely unharmed. My jaw literally hits the floor.
‘So what was down there?’ the Ape asks.
‘Dunno. Something wrapped round me then I bit it.’
‘Teeth!’ The Ape exclaims.
They still haven’t noticed me. I want to intervene, to explain that Billie probably conjured some monster out of thin air to drag Non-Ape down. She made it so strong it held him there until she had eloped with Other-Johnson. But it would be like trying to explain the Theory of Relativity to a Dobermann and I decide to let it go. Besides I’m too ecstatic at seeing the Ape again.
‘Dazza!’ I all but scream and run towards them.
‘Boob Girl!’ Ape shouts, finally noticing me. ‘It’s Boob Girl.’ Of all the superhero names, that has got to be the worst one ever.
There is no sign of a wound or a cut or any blood loss on him.
And then it dawns.
I am so stupid. The Ape wasn’t hurt at all; Billie only made it seem that way. She used my own worst fear against me. She must have been laughing her socks off inside. She created a horrible fantasy just to get me to admit I didn’t want Johnson.
Non-Ape shoves the Ape towards me, but the trolley has a left bias and he shoots straight into the stone wall of the bridge before crashing and toppling over with a hefty whump. The Ape laughs as his still wet T-shirt rides up and reveals a perfectly normal, perfectly flabby, stomach. He points to his hairy belly.
‘I’m a healer!’ he declares.
‘He’s a healer!’ Non-Ape lumbers up, echoing the best friend he ever met.
‘Let me touch you.’ The Ape reaches out for me, his slab of a hand gripping my sinewy arm.
I try to avoid his big meaty hand. ‘No need, there’s nothing wrong with me.’
But he grabs my arm regardless. ‘Not any more!’ he declares.
‘He’s better than Billie!’ Non-Ape towers over us, casting a giant shadow. He knows his version of Billie can heal people, but hasn’t yet worked out that there’s now two of them on this planet. He thinks my Billie is his Billie and there is no way I’m wasting what will end up being the best part of a year explaining that he’s got it wrong.
The Ape touches me again. ‘Healed!’
I have nothing that needs healing. A few scratches, some burns, the odd loose tooth and all manner of bruises. But when he touches me nothing changes. All the aches and pains remain.
‘I’m not hurt.’ I tell them.
‘Not any more.’ Non-Ape repeats.
The Ape gets to his feet, looks around and then touches Non-Ape’s massive forearm. ‘Healed!’
Non-Ape looks down at his forearm and laughs in huge delight. ‘Yowza!’
There was absolutely nothing that needed healing on Non-Ape either.
The Ape touches the stone wall. ‘Healed!’
‘Bridges aren’t alive,’ I laugh.
He bends and touches the paving slabs. ‘Healed!’
‘Neither are paving slabs.’
But he’s not listening as he steps into the road and touches the tarmac. ‘Healed!’
Non-Ape pulls at his drenched, home-made toga. A bedsheet was the only thing we could find to fit him after he lost all of his clothes when the Black Moths attacked the train. ‘Heal this.’
The Ape takes a moment as if summoning some inner chi and then touches the toga.
‘Healed!’ Non-Ape laughs.
If there’s one thing that’s bound to drive a person totally and irrevocably insane, it’s two Apes having a good time.
I don’t know if I should try and explain that the Ape is not a healer or just let them enjoy themselves. In truth it doesn’t really matter. Billie made us all believe the absolute worst. For a while now I’d been imagining that this world, this empty, deserted earth, didn’t want me in it, so it set about attacking me. But Billie has been behind all of it. She wanted to be with Johnson, and she was ready to do anything to ensure that happened. She manipulates the biggest fears you have and makes you believe they are real. When the train was attacked by the swarm of rampaging and deadly Black Moths, they were just our imaginings. But the more we believed in them and the more we fought them, the more real they became. Just like the snowstorm back in town, and the tidal wave of course. If you see it and feel it, then you immediately believe it. And worst of all you fear it.
And she was the one who thought I should apologise? I should have seen through her lie and the fact that I didn’t hurt just as much as anything. She took me for the complete and utter idiot that I am.
The Ape touches Carrie’s lifeless body. ‘Healed!’
Billie did nothing but present me with my biggest mortal fear. That the Ape would die. And she knew I’d choose him over Johnson. She played me perfectly. It’s a strange thing when you realise your best friend is also your worst enemy.
I watch the Ape prodding and poking Carrie with his thick, stubby finger, bewildered that she hasn’t sprung dramatically to life.
‘You’re healed!’ he tells her. ‘Get up!’
Non-Ape prods her with his foot. ‘Hey! You’re all better.’
‘Hey!’ The Ape nudges her with his soaking shoe.
‘C’mon!’ Non-Ape bellows. ‘You’re not dead.’
‘No one dies.’
‘It’s just a video game.’
‘Reset.’ The Ape keeps touching Carrie’s thin arm. ‘Reset. New life.’
I remember now that the Ape told me he thought this world was like a video game and that he and Non-Ape never wanted to go home. Which is another hurdle I’ll need to . . . hurdle. Tearing them apart after they have become such great friends will be awful. Back in the real world the Ape wasn’t exactly popular. None of us really liked him until he showed us that for all his flaws he’s always the one to stand the tallest and fight until the bitter end. So, if I do find my dad and get out of here, I can’t leave the Ape behind.
I right the shopping trolley and wheel it towards the Apes and Carrie.
‘Maybe you need to recharge,’ I tell the Ape.
‘Billie has to do that,’ Non-Ape agrees. ‘Always fainting.’
The Ape presses his finger into his own forehead. ‘Yeah. Not getting nothing.’ He presses his finger into Non-Ape’s lowered forehead. ‘Anything?’
Non-Ape waits for a second that turns into the slowest minute ever endured before shaking his head. ‘Nothing.’
The Ape looks a little disappointed. ‘I’ll save it for GG,’ he tells me quietly. ‘I’ll be all powered up by then.’
The thought winds me. The Ape and GG should never be friends in any world, but somehow, because of this nightmare we’ve been thrown into, they formed a close connection. And right now, I wish that the Ape could heal because if we ever do find GG again I’m pretty certain he won’t be alive. He was swept from the side of a train doing at least ninety miles an hour. I watched it with my own eyes as he turned and twisted and we saw him float away. Those were his words. I’ll just float away.
I nod to the Ape, ‘Yeah, you do that,’ I tell him and sadness lingers between us for a long moment.
‘That’s the plan,’ he says softly.
I try and suck it up because we have to get moving. ‘We need to find Johnson,’ I tell the Apes.
‘I’ll heal him too.’
‘I’m sure he’s OK,’ I say quietly.
‘Will be,’ the Ape declares.
‘So will be,’ Non-Ape agrees.
I need to break through their strange, tortuous dialogue before it repeats for the next twenty years. ‘Let’s get Carrie into the shopping trolley.’ I do my best to try and bump their brains on to another subject.
Barely a second after I’ve finished speaking, Non-Ape has hoisted Carrie as if she weighed less than a
sheet of paper and slung her face first into the trolley. I think he’s become confused and believes he’s shopping in a supermarket.
‘Could you maybe sit her up?’ I ask.
Non-Ape looks at Carrie who is face down with her bony body all bent up behind her.
‘Butt!’ The Ape points at Carrie’s almost non-existent rear end as it sticks up.
Non-Ape laughs. ‘Butt!’
We haven’t got the time for this and I snap at both of them. ‘Give her some dignity!’ I yell.
The Apes stop sniggering and fall silent.
‘She’s still a person,’ I say in a quieter voice, seeing the hurt on their faces.
‘Moo-dy,’ Non-Ape whispers as he rearranges Carrie in the trolley.
‘Always moody,’ the Ape agrees with Non-Ape.
‘Mood Girl not Boob Girl.’
‘Should never have healed her.’ Non-Ape thinks I can’t hear him even though I’m standing less than a metre away.
The river has started to recede from the buildings and pavements. The tidal wave was real enough – at least I think it was – but already it’s dissipating and at some stage we’ll be able to venture from the bridge and into the heart of the city. Either that or we build a raft which I daren’t suggest to the Apes because they would destroy the equivalent of the Brazilian rainforest looking for wood.
The ever-gentlemanly Apes allow me to push the trolley carrying Carrie’s corpse while they throw anything they can find into the river for no reason at all. As I look down at Carrie, I think about the incredible odds of finding her again. Is it a sign, I think? Is this my cue to go and find everyone else? I’ve always had a plan of some description – never mind that most of them backfired – but what if I could find the Moth and GG as well? Even poor Lucas. What if we scoop them all into a metaphorical shopping trolley and then take them to Another-Billie so that she can bring them back to life? The thought gives me a new energy. I can make everything better, turn it back to how it was. I quicken my pace and start to believe that we will find Johnson slumped on a riverbank or gamely hanging on to a buoy. If we found Carrie, then we can find him. It’s that sort of a world—
‘Hey!’ A voice breaks through my thoughts. ‘Up here!’ the voice shouts. It’s a soaking-wet Johnson perched on the highest ledge of a ten-storey building. There are a series of puncture marks leading all the way up the face of the nineteenth-century building marking where he’s used his talons to climb to safety, sinking them into the brick and mortar.
‘I can see my house from here,’ he grins.
OK, I think to myself, just take some breaths and try and accept the implausible. Or am I dreaming? Imagining him there because I’m so desperate to see him.
Non-Ape hurls a rock at Johnson. ‘Johnson!’
Johnson moves like lightning to avoid the small rock and the Apes laugh.
‘It’s Johnson!’ The Ape shoves me hard as Non-Ape picks up another rock.
‘What are you doing?’ I slap his big meaty paw.
‘Throwing stuff,’ he responds, looking hurt, as if everyone knows you throw stuff at your friends for no good reason.
‘Rev!’ Johnson flashes a metal-toothed grin, and starts climbing back down the building, utilising the same puncture marks in the old stone. Even though I know it’s the real Johnson, it still feels like Other-Johnson is also somehow present, not in mind but definitely in body.
‘You made it,’ I manage to stammer.
‘You too.’ Johnson leaps the last five metres and lands with a light and beguiling grace in a deep puddle as more of the Thames seeps back to its banks. His movements, always silky, have taken on a new dynamic, and his tight jeans, even wet and clinging to his long thin legs, don’t hinder his snake-hipped progress.
The Ape immediately presses a finger straight into Johnson’s forehead. ‘Healed!’
‘Healed!’ Non-Ape backs the Ape up with a look of absolute conviction. He used to hate Johnson (well, Other-Johnson) until Billie told him to be nice to him and luckily Non-Ape doesn’t seem to bear any malice, but maybe that’s because he doesn’t have the room for memories in his tiny brain.
Johnson looks at me, not understanding what’s happening. The Ape isn’t wounded and Carrie is slumped in a shopping trolley.
‘The Ape was all cut up?’ he questions.
‘Nothing cuts Dazza,’ the Ape boasts. ‘Nothing.’
Johnson takes a moment to try and think of the hows and whys of what has happened, but he soon gives up and instead his eyes find the dead Carrie wedged into the shopping trolley. ‘Been shopping?’
CRINGE
The fourth lesson of the day is history. Carrie sits at the back of the class, but I have been very wary of making myself known to her. Lucas, or at least this version of Lucas, is in the class as well, but again I have had to remind myself that these aren’t people that know me.
Our Lucas killed himself in the empty world and out of all the shocking and unbelievable things that have happened this was possibly the most sombre and upsetting. Lucas was the boy with it all, a gorgeous, intelligent sporting god who was being monitored by Premier League football teams. But I guess having it all means you also have much more than the average person to lose. So, when he thought he’d been flung into a world that was absolutely devoid of family, friends and relatives, Lucas couldn’t take it. But seeing a version of him is pretty unsettling. There’s an instant reaction of relief and happiness and then a millisecond later I’m reminded of what happened to my versions of him. And then I remember all of the others that I lost and have to bite down on my index finger to stop the tears flooding from me.
Our teacher is called Mr Connors, and most girls swoon over him. He’s got a square jaw and sparkling mischievous eyes. He’s tall, broad-shouldered and used to play rugby before an injury curtailed his career. His blond hair is thick and wavy and sometimes falls over his eyes so he has to keep sweeping it back. He was the same in my world and I never liked him. I knew he was aware that most of the girls at school had a crush on him and he played on that. The sweeping of the hair, the not-so-subtle attentiveness to any pretty girl over the age of sixteen, the offer of private tuition. He may not have acted on any of it, but he sure did enjoy being the object of so many misguided affections.
This Mr Connors sits behind his desk and stares out of the window, watching the world outside. All he can really see is the sports field and then a row of trees that hide the steep path that leads down into town. He sits staring all through the lesson. He doesn’t say one word to any of us.
More remarkably the students don’t say anything either. Some sit hunched forward with their faces on their desks, others stretch back, fingers laced behind their necks, and the rest just doodle on their jotters. Carrie is writing in hers and I wonder if this version of her also writes the same dreary, clichéd poetry. Lucas looks more lively than everyone else; he shifts in his seat a lot and tries to get Carrie’s attention. He whispers to her but in this silent classroom he might as well be talking to her through a megaphone.
‘What you writing?’
‘Poems,’ she whispers back confirming my wonderings.
It’s enough for Mr Connors to drag himself away from staring of out the window. I can’t be certain, but he looks on the verge of tears.
‘Shhh,’ he says.
Lucas falls silent. In my world he was a model student, a perfect specimen with a perfect life. In this world he could be the same, but the fact that he was talking hints at something else.
I’m sitting right at the front, the new girl in the worst seat in the classroom. I turn my head and study Carrie and Lucas for a moment.
‘Want to read one?’ she asks Lucas.
Lucas knows that Mr Connors is staring at him with his red-rimmed eyes.
‘Better not,’ Lucas eventually tells Carrie. Maybe he’s not so different from the original after all.
Hurt by this rejection, Carrie scowls. So this version has at least got some of the well-
documented mean Carrie spirit in her.
I return my attention to Mr Connors, but he is already staring back out of the window, gazing into who knows what.
I dare to raise my hand, which he doesn’t see.
I clear my throat and feel tension rise around me. Kids look up from their desks; they unlace their fingers from behind their necks, some lean forward. Everyone seems on edge.
‘Sir,’ I say.
The swell of guardedness from the rest of the class is so palpable it feels as if it could knock me over.
Mr Connors may want to ignore me, but I’m not going to give up that easily, I clear my throat again and he is forced to turn and look at me.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Are you going to teach us anything?’ I say. Which I think is a reasonable question to ask of a teacher.
Apparently not though as the tension in the classroom grows, so much so that it feels like it’s pushing at the windows and the door. No one is enjoying this.
Mr Connors takes an age to respond.
I get into a non-conversation that the Apes would enjoy.
‘Sir?’ I repeat. ‘Sir?’
The anxiety in the room is nearly unbearable, but I persist. I don’t know what’s wrong with the people in this school. They are disinterested to a level I’ve never encountered before. And that includes the staff. No one seems to want to say or do anything. Can’t they see something is seriously off? Someone needs to question it and after all I’ve been through I’m not about to let it go.
‘Sir?’
He stares right through me.
I turn to try and see if any of the class will back me up and I realise they’re all looking at me, but not in an impressed way for winding up a teacher, more of a why-don’t-you-shut-your-mouth way.
I look back towards the front of the room and a paper plane zips past my nose, landing under Mr Connors’ desk. He doesn’t give it so much as a glance.
‘Sir, shouldn’t you be teaching us something?’ I press.
Another paper aeroplane swoops past me. I ignore it.
I can hear pages being torn from jotters and notebooks. A paper aeroplane hits the back of my head.