by Jeff Povey
GG’s eyes widen at this. He’s been enjoying his newly healed body, checking himself in the small mirror screwed to the wall above the sink in the corner of the room. But his reflected eyes find mine. ‘When you say not empty . . . ’ he says.
‘There’s something out there,’ Another-Billie tells us. ‘In town. So we came back to the hospital. I thought maybe Rev would still be here and, if she forgave us, she could also try and help keep us safe. She’s who you need when you know there’s trouble coming.’
‘What was out there?’ Johnson asks the zillion-dollar question.
The Ape sits up straighter at this, instincts for the fight and the kill switching to high alert.
‘I dunno, but it got your dad, Rev. It . . . burned him,’ she answers. ‘I was fast and I got him back here. But things feel different. The air, the molecules, I’m not sure what exactly but this world has changed. I’m convinced of it.’
Her words linger for a long heavy moment as I think back to what the Moth said. What if the world has finally had enough of us? But worse, has it tried to destroy my dad, our best means of escaping?
‘Rev,’ Johnson touches my arm. As he does, I see the Ape touch Another-Billie and start to heal as fast as GG did.
‘Yowza!’
I look at Johnson and he is as fearful as I’ve ever seen him. ‘Your dad was our ticket out of here.’
I nod.
‘What if the Moth was right and this world is angry at us for being here and it’s given up waiting for us to find our own way home? What if it attacked your dad because . . . ’
‘ . . .that’s the best way to keep us here,’ I finish his thought for him. ‘It doesn’t want us to just leave any more, it wants to destroy us. It’s making sure we never come back here.’
Our eyes meet as the same thought strikes us. ‘The Moth!’ we say in unison. ‘It’ll go for the Moth next.’
BUS STOP
A few days have passed since my dad – I call him that because I don’t have another name for him, it’s all too confusing – burned his formula. I don’t know if his was the only formula that worked, or if he’s lying about all the other Reva dads running out on their families. Right now it doesn’t rank very highly alongside my other more pressing needs. I went to check to see how far the darkness had encroached, but it’s not really visible to the naked eye. We could have months left, we could have years. If ever there was a perfect description for the word futile, then this is it.
I always imagined that if you knew the world was coming to an end you’d go crazy, fly to Las Vegas, swim with dolphins and maybe try and steal a space rocket. But the reality is that you have to eat and drink. You have to live, despite the fact that you know you’ll be dying soon. That lounging around on your sofa, or going out looting, actually doesn’t mean a thing or make it any more palatable. Instead you just do what you always do, and secretly hope that the promised doom won’t happen. I expected Armageddon to consist of major chaos, round-the-clock screaming and buildings in flames, but the reality is much more mundane. Which makes it doubly ominous somehow. You can’t put up a fight when you don’t have anything to fight. So you go about your life instead and eke out your days. Until it all becomes too much.
The New-Moth and I have become best buddies already. I know he thinks there’s no escape from this world, but I have convinced him that not only was there a portal in the school classroom, but that there was one in the cabin of the lorry. We both went there during a lunch break, but again it refused to give away its secrets. I told New-Moth about the bus parked halfway up a hill which was another possibility for escape. New-Mum and my dad think I’m dating New-Moth and because Sad-Ape knocks on my door at all hours, they also think I’ve made a friend. They seem happy enough, but dad still has to bite down that horrible inner despair that he’s experiencing. I watch him when he’s on his own and I wonder how long he can endure New-Mum’s madness. She seems to have grown happier with each new repeated dawn.
My dad hasn’t spoken to me since that moment in the bedroom. Not properly anyway. I find him staring quietly at me sometimes, but usually he sits and talks about the simple things in life, like tea and toast and should we go out for a Chinese meal. He’s trying his level best to make this work. In a hundred years’ time I might have grown to accept it but I’m not like him. I can’t and won’t settle for this.
The New-Moth and I are on our way to find the bus. He calls me Rev now instead of Reva, as he grows more and more comfortable around me. The quiff has gone and he is wearing his glasses again. Today we’ve slipped out of school during lunch. I had to make sure Sad-Ape didn’t spot me because he lumbers everywhere I go. New-Moth and I start up the steep hill towards the bus. I can see it as we draw closer; it’s abandoned and silent, just like the one in the empty world.
‘I heard voices,’ I tell the New-Moth. ‘I definitely heard voices calling to me when I was last here.’
‘What did they say?’ he asks me.
‘I couldn’t make it out.’
The New-Moth nods again and purses his lips in thought. ‘I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is there might be another world we could reach.’
I like that the New-Moth is with me. He’s the only one I trust right now. Sad-Ape is totally trustworthy, but just doesn’t understand what’s going on. I’ve seen New-Johnson on a couple of occasions, once when he was driving on his motor bike with New-Billie clinging to his back, and once in school when he came straight up to me and didn’t apologise for dragging me from the truck’s cabin.
‘I saved you,’ was all he said. But there was something in the way he sought me out that made me think he’d been waiting for the right moment to tell me that again. He was gone before I could react, snake-hipping out of the school. I know it’s pretty much the same day happening over and over, but it must’ve been the equivalent of three days before New-Johnson made his move. I hadn’t seen him at school in all that time so part of me wonders if he made a special appearance just to tell me that. Which gives me a quiet thrill.
New-Billie and I talk all the time on the phone, usually late at night. I’m dying to tell her about my continued battle against the apathy that is crawling all over my skin. I want her to know I haven’t given up on the thought of escaping. I know I definitely can’t mention my dad or his burned formula as much as I want to, but the conversations we have keep us both going. I stay as optimistic as I can, trying to imbue her with hope. Sometimes it doesn’t always work.
‘I’m not sure I can take it, Rev,’ she said two nights ago.
‘Hey, c’mon,’ I said, hearing her voice crack. ‘There’s always tomorrow.’
She took a moment and I imagined her wiping tears from her eyes. ‘Nice joke.’
‘I try.’
‘But some days – boy – some days you just think maybe a few more seconds of this is all I can take.’
‘Yeah, but . . . ’ I trailed off.
‘But what?’
‘You’ve got the magnificent Johnson.’ The words were harder to say that I thought they would be. Johnson is Johnson whichever world you’re in. ‘You’ve got him and his motorbike.’
‘I guess. But some days we just stare at each other because we have literally run out of things to say.’
‘Talking’s overrated,’ I joked again.
I heard her laugh quietly. Then she changed the subject. ‘What’s your other world like?’
I almost asked which one she was talking about, but so far I’ve kept the thought of a multiverse from her. I’m still not sure I can quite believe it and I lived through them. ‘It’s pretty much like this, but we have pasts and we have futures.’
‘So what was your future?’ she asked and I swear I could sense her eyes lighting up at the thought of a future.
‘Well. I had plans. I was going to move to London, get a job, party a little, meet someone, have kids I guess.’
She let out a low whistle. ‘Wow.’
‘My
mum . . . ’ The thought of my real mum still stopped my heart. ‘I’d make her come with me. I’d have a house big enough for her as well as my little family.’
‘Keep talking,’ New-Billie urged me. ‘Keep telling me about what and who you’re going to be.’
And I did. I told her about a life I imagined. The life little four-year-old Reva might have had.
The bus is indeed empty and the door is locked. I peer in the windows while the New-Moth searches for the lever that can open the door in an emergency. ‘All buses have them,’ he tells me.
I have to get on to my tiptoes to see if there’s anyone hiding inside – or, more to the point, lying in wait. I’m too used to danger coming for me.
The bus doors hiss open.
The New-Moth stands back as our eyes meet. He’s nervous but not afraid. I join him at the open doors and take a moment. There are no voices. Just like there was no heat in the cabin of the lorry.
‘I’d better go first,’ the New-Moth volunteers.
‘You want to?’ I admire his bravery.
‘Not really,’ he grins. ‘But I’m a gentleman.’
The New-Moth places his foot on the first step into the bus.
He waits.
There are still no voices.
He reaches for the interior railing and hoists himself into the bus.
I strain to listen for voices, but apart from the roar of a motorbike in the distance the world is silent. No voices. No nothing.
The New-Moth turns back to me. ‘Stay there.’
‘No way. I’m coming on board.’ I reach for the railing.
‘I can do this.’ He holds up a hand, indicating that I should stay back. ‘Doesn’t need two of us.’
He has a point.
But there are still no voices and the bus is probably as useless as the lorry was. The New-Moth steps further into the bus.
The motorbike engine I heard a moment ago gets louder and I realise it’s heading our way.
The New-Moth stops to listen, searching for something, anything that will reveal a portal or a white light. He moves deeper into the bus.
‘Anything?’ I ask, even though I know he’d tell me if there was.
‘Not yet.’
The motorbike roars past the bus and carries on towards the centre of town. It’s New-Johnson. He didn’t spot us, but at least he’s riding alone and New-Billie is nowhere to be seen. She’s probably enduring a mindless lunch at a mindless table in the mindless school canteen.
The New-Moth stops suddenly. ‘Rev?’
I peer into the bus. ‘What?’
The New-Moth looks worried.
‘What is it?’ I ask him.
‘I think . . . ’
‘Yeah?’ I ask.
‘I think I can feel something.’
I climb on board the bus. As I do, I notice in my peripheral vision that New-Johnson has done a one hundred and eighty turn and is now heading back our way. Did he spot me in his wing mirror?
‘Stay back!’ the New-Moth tells me.
‘What have you found?’
‘It’s not an actual thing, it’s a presence, a feeling.’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘Rev, please, let me make sure it’s safe first. It might be nothing; it might just be my nerves, or my imagination. But then again . . . ’ He turns slowly, trying to zero in on whatever it is that he thinks he’s sensed. ‘Then again . . . ’
New-Johnson’s motorbike pulls up outside the bus. He kicks the stand down and slides easily off the bike.
‘School’s out?’ he asks as I step off the bus.
‘Yeah,’ I tell him and block his view of the doorway. Whatever the New-Moth has found is our little secret.
New-Johnson takes me in and his gaze electrifies me. This Johnson is pitched somewhere between the original Johnson and Other-Johnson. He’s got the darkness of Other-Johnson, but I’m also convinced he’s got the real Johnson’s hesitance.
‘That bus won’t take you anywhere,’ he tells me.
‘I know.’
‘Sure about that?’
‘I said I know which would indicate that I’m totally sure.’ I have to focus on escaping this town and don’t need any more complications so I’m trying to avoid thinking about how quickly he makes my heart beat. I also don’t think I’ve got room in my heart for a third Johnson, so, as much as I might need his help at some point, I don’t want any more than that from him.
‘You always this rude?’ he asks, slipping a cigarette between his lips.
‘Copying you.’
‘What are you doing, Reva?’ The voice is my dad’s. I spin round expecting to see him standing right behind me, and he is – in a way. He shimmers like a projection, and it’s the same as when I first saw him at the train station. I thought it was a dream then, but now I know this dad can do these things. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’
‘MOTH!’ I yell. ‘Get out of there!’
‘What’s wrong?’ New-Johnson asks. No one can see my dad when he does this, apart from me, and my strange outburst has knocked even New-Johnson’s cool attitude off kilter.
‘Reva, don’t!’ My dad’s hovering image looks extremely worried. ‘You’ve got to trust me; you can’t leave. I burned the formula to save you!’
‘Moth! Run!’ I scream.
Even before I turn, the warning bleeps that signal the bus doors are closing start. The New-Moth is charging back down the bus’s aisle and I reach for the doors and try and stop them closing.
‘What’s happening?’ he shouts.
‘We’ve got to get him out of there!’ I shout at New-Johnson and he grabs the edge of a door with me as we fight with all of our might to keep it from slamming shut. But the door mechanism is too powerful and even our combined strength is barely stopping it from closing. The New-Moth’s hands join ours, but the door is dragging all of us with it. New-Johnson’s boots scrape on the tarmac and the New-Moth is slipping and skidding on the shiny bus floor.
‘What’s with this door?’ New-Johnson asks.
‘Rev!’ the New-Moth yells again, a different look in his eye now. He sticks his head through the gap that’s left and his eyes meet mine, desperate but determined. ‘Rev? Don’t look! Please – don’t look! This is not the way out. Turn away—’
The door slams shut.
And I don’t think I can or want to describe the result.
But it does make me think back to a different time and place where another Moth got run over by a train.
I reel backwards, my heart drowning in despair and bewilderment. New-Johnson isn’t faring much better as he staggers away, grabbing me by the waist.
‘Don’t look, don’t look,’ he repeats over and over. ‘Don’t look, Rev.’
I can’t breathe, I can’t feel, I can’t do anything as New-Johnson draws me to him, cradling me, pulling my head into his shoulder.
‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Jesus.’
The horrible thing about a hill is that, if there’s nothing to stop an object’s progress, it can roll all the way down, picking up momentum until it reaches the bottom, in this case to career across a carpark before tumbling down stone steps that lead to a meek little river. I don’t know how I can even hear the resultant splash from so far away but I do. And New-Johnson hears it too. I look up and his bright blue eyes have turned a dull grey, the life drained from them. The horror of what just happened may mean that they never regain their colour again.
‘Rev,’ he says quietly, holding me tight.
I try and look for my dad’s apparition, but it’s gone and instead I look back at New-Johnson. ‘Get me out of here!’
I’m on the back of New-Johnson’s motorbike. He leans into a corner and I lean with him the way Other-Johnson taught me. I have my arms wrapped round this Johnson’s waist and I can feel his taut stomach through his jacket and T-shirt; it’s like a washboard and I hang on to him as tight as I can. Shortly after the New-Moth perished, New-Johnson dragged me kicking and scream
ing away from the bus and hoisted me on to his motorbike. He was pale and his eyes were still grey but at least he was moving and thinking and trying his best for me. He didn’t breathe a word as he climbed on to the motorbike, kicked the stand up and fired up the engine.
He swept down the main high street of the town and accelerated through every red light. Taking bends at great speed, we’ve raced on towards the edge of town. I know that’s where he’s heading and I know he’s going to drive straight into the nothing. The shock of what happened to New-Moth has triggered all kinds of distress and despair in him.
The motorbike is screaming towards the void. And I’m starting to think that it will be a welcome relief. Seeing New-Moth die like that has broken my resolve. Can I really keep going? Fighting. Running. Killing. I’m so tired of it all. Worn out and worn down. All of my friends are dead. I’m not going to see my real mum ever again because even if I escape from here I have no way of knowing how many worlds are out there. So why not leave the multiverse to get along without me? That’s what it wanted all along, right?
The nothing is upon us and I’m going to let this Johnson drive me into its oblivion. I know the liar was trying his level best, but he went about it in completely the wrong way.
‘Do it!’ I yell to New-Johnson.
‘You sure?’ he yells back.
‘You have to,’ I tell him, gripping him tighter. His hand rests on mine as he steers the bike towards the nothing. But even as I say it I feel the motorbike start to slow, the speed bleeding away.
‘Johnson?’
New-Johnson is braking.
‘No, don’t stop!’ I yell. ‘Please. I’ve had enough. I’m done, I’m through.’
But the bike keeps slowing. The nothing is looming up in front of us. He applies the brakes and we roll to within a centimetre of it and the bike falls to the right until New-Johnson kicks his leg out and stabilises us.
‘You can’t stop,’ I almost cry.
New-Johnson turns and looks back at me, his eyes level with mine. The blaze of blue is creeping back into them.
‘Can’t do it, Rev,’ he tells me.