by Jeff Povey
‘Then get off the bike and I’ll do it myself,’ I tell him.
‘What happened on that bus?’ he asks.
It’s a simple question, but I’m blank so New-Johnson tries again.
‘Rev, do you know what was going on with that door?’
‘I thought it was an escape route,’ I mumble.
‘A what?’
‘I came from somewhere else, I don’t quite know how, but if I got here then I thought that maybe there’s a reverse trip.’
I slide off the back seat and approach the nothing. It’s just that. A dark nothing. I stare at it for at least a minute before New-Johnson speaks again.
‘When you say somewhere else,’ he probes.
‘I was in a detention on another world.’
‘Another world? Yeah, right.’
‘I don’t care if you believe me. That actually doesn’t matter to me. Not right this minute anyway.’ I wipe tears from my eyes. ‘I was in a detention; a version of you and the others were there as well. A white light came and – after a journey I can barely comprehend – I ended up here.’
I stare at this version of Johnson, his blue eyes laced with disbelief. But I can tell that he wants me to give him something that he can hang on to. The shock of what happened to New-Moth has left him rudderless.
‘Tell me more,’ he says.
‘All my friends died.’ My voice is barely a whisper.
‘But you didn’t.’
‘I’m the last survivor.’ I offer him an empty smile.
New-Johnson may believe me, he may not. ‘Have you told anyone else?’
‘Billie.’
He raises an eyebrow at this. ‘She kept that quiet,’ he murmurs.
‘With good reason. It sounds ridiculous,’ I tell him.
‘A day that repeats forever runs a close second,’ he responds.
‘I was hoping to surprise her,’ I add. ‘To show her a better exit than the one she has planned.’
He muses on this for a moment. ‘Yeah, I can feel she’s giving up.’ He stares into me again. ‘So the Moth believed you?’
I nod.
New-Johnson turns and looks at the darkness. ‘Is it me or is that edging closer?’ He squints into the void. ‘Or is that wishful thinking?’
I reach out and place a hand on his shoulder. I feel him immediately relax a little. ‘That’s not how a Johnson thinks.’
He reaches up and lays his hand on mine. He doesn’t pat or squeeze it, he just rests his hand on mine. It’s enough.
‘I want out of here,’ he says as if daring the darkness to hear him.
THE GATHERING
Lucas is still in a daze.
Yes.
I did say Lucas.
The same Lucas from my world who hanged himself because he couldn’t face the empty world.
His house was on the way back to the station so we ducked in and grabbed his body. We found him exactly where we left him and put him into the shopping trolley so that Another-Billie could climb in with him and start to weave her magical healing powers to raise him from the dead. It took a lot out of her and she has a migraine as a result. Right now she is the most important person in this world. She’s under armed guard: Johnson with his talons and the Ape with his five-pointer knuckles. GG is bringing up the rear.
‘I don’t know what it was,’ Another-Billie tells us. ‘I mean, I do. It was a bolt of lightning. But the sky was clear – there was no thunder, there was just this lightning bolt . . . But it was so quick I can’t honestly be sure.’
The more she talks, the more we quicken our pace.
‘Like from God?’ Johnson asks wryly.
‘Or Thor,’ GG adds excitedly. ‘Go on. Please let it be Thor. Let it be a big muscly man with a big meaty hammer.’
As ever, GG is joking, lightening the gloom as best he can. But he can’t lift it like he used to.
‘But it didn’t hit you?’ I ask Another-Billie.
She shakes her head. ‘Just your dad.’
I check the sky and there’s no storm coming. No sign of meteorological doom heading our way.
‘Let’s get the others and go.’ Johnson speaks up.
Another-Billie snatches a secret glance at Johnson and withers a little. ‘It’s definitely changed; the world’s shifted, I can sense it.’ She glances all around her. ‘I should have fixed your dad again and then gone straight to the school.’
‘You’ve got me.’ The Ape swishes the air with his five-
pointer. His way of telling her he’ll protect her.
Another-Billie isn’t convinced. ‘We’re all going to burn,’ she says quietly.
When Lucas came back from the dead and saw GG, the Ape, Johnson, Another-Billie and me, he looked completely stunned. He couldn’t get a grip on any of it. At first he thought his attempt to hang himself had failed and that we’d just turned up and shoved him into a shopping trolley for some reason.
‘I was going to kill myself.’
‘You did,’ GG told him.
‘Can’t believe I was going to do that.’
‘You did do it,’ Johnson added.
‘I thought I was a whole lot braver than that.’
‘You’re not.’ GG reached out and patted him on the head. ‘But hey, we all get a little scared now and then.’
‘I thought everyone had gone. Disappeared.’ Lucas is open-eyed and slack-jawed.
‘We have,’ Johnson tells him.
‘Funny guy Johnson,’ Lucas replies.
‘We have gone, my handsome friend,’ GG backs Johnson up. ‘We’ve fluttered away to another world.’
‘Where’s the Moth?’ Lucas asks, knowing that his best friend will be able to explain everything to him. I’m all for hurrying that reunion along.
‘You might get a tiny little surprise when we reach the train station,’ GG tells him. ‘In fact you may actually wet yourself. But we’ll understand.’
I look at Johnson who is scanning the surrounding area as the sun rises higher, illuminating us, wondering when the attack will come. We decided that my dad, not as badly burned as the first time, could wait to be healed. Our logic is that if he’s already dead no one is going to attack him again. You don’t kill people twice. Though recent events might argue against that. The unseen enemy that Another-Billie is convinced is out there could well be training their evil intent on us.
‘See anything?’ I ask Johnson.
‘Zip,’ he says.
‘Feel anything?’ I ask.
His eyes find mine and he can’t hide a smile. ‘That’s a leading question.’
The Ape has been quiet the whole way. Every now and then he lurches forward and swishes the air in front of him. Practising his lunges. Lucas can’t figure out what the Ape could possibly need such a vicious weapon for, but I guess, at least for now, ignorance is bliss.
‘What sort of a surprise?’ Lucas asks.
‘A good one,’ GG tells him. ‘And a bad one. And maybe an inbetweenie one.’
Another-Billie is extremely anxious. I can feel the fear emanating from her. ‘This is so the worst idea ever. Being out here, exposed like this,’ she mumbles. ‘The worst.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t see anyone else out here?’ I ask.
‘I told you I didn’t.’
‘So how do you know it wasn’t Rev who threw a lightning bolt – assuming it was that?’ Johnson asks her.
‘Because she can’t do stuff like that.’
Which leaves only one obvious question.
‘So who can?’ I ask.
‘Thor can,’ GG quips.
The Ape swishes the air, rehearsing his attacks, and, as I watch him, I get the sense that he knows something is coming. He’s too quiet, too focused. He’s a fighter and he knows when things are about to turn bad.
THE PLAN TO END ALL PLANS
New-Billie is uneasy. She doesn’t like missing lessons and she doesn’t like the thought of getting detention even though she gets it every day of
her life. In this world anyway. We’re in the girls’ toilets, hiding during lessons. New-Johnson is smoking and looks a little anxious as he sucks deep on his cigarette and then blows smoke to the tiled ceiling. He is sitting in one of the cubicles, toilet lid down, legs stretched out in front of him. His black boots leave scuff marks on the polished floor. Sad-Ape stands by the door, guarding against entry. He may be mentally fragile and missing an eye, but he’s still powerful and I’ve told him that he can’t let anyone in. If he does, it’s a friendship-breaker (not really, but I need him at his all-conquering best).
‘Oh my God,’ New-Billie says, dry-mouthed from shock. ‘Poor, poor Moth.’
‘Still can’t take it in.’ New-Johnson’s tone is still easy and almost lazy, but his brain has been rewired by what happened to New-Moth. It has jolted him into more of the Johnson I know. Correction. Knew.
‘And Rev,’ New-Billie points at me, ‘still thinks she can get us out of here?’
‘She came here somehow,’ New-Johnson tells her, cementing the idea that I haven’t been lying to her.
New-Billie casts her eyes over Sad-Ape. ‘How come he’s involved?’
I step forward, giving Sad-Ape a reassuring look, pushing myself off the sink I’ve been leaning back on. ‘You’ll be glad he is. Trust me.’ I’m convinced Sad-Ape will come good. It’s like I said. Destiny means we’re meant to be in this together and somehow it’s in his DNA to come to our rescue.
‘Rev thinks we should round up the others.’
New-Billie doesn’t like that New-Johnson and I have been talking. But she lets it go because what good will falling out over a boy do for either of us? ‘The others?’ she asks quietly. The death of the Moth has really scrambled her brain.
‘GG, Lucas, Carrie and . . . ’ I was about to add the Moth to the list but that’s not going to work. ‘Those three,’ I correct. ‘Those three and us four.’
‘Because that’s how the universe decrees it?’ New-Billie asks.
‘And thus it is written in the stars,’ I reply, hoping to break through her shock at what happened to New-Moth.
‘I don’t want to stay here any more,’ New-Johnson says to her. ‘Do you?’
‘But say we do get out, where do we go?’ she asks.
Someone pushes at the toilet door, but Sad-Ape shoves it closed. ‘Get lost,’ he tells them.
There’s a pause outside the door and whoever is outside is clearly thinking, Why is there a boy in the girls’ toilets? They try the door again.
Sad-Ape places his two meaty palms on the door and, using his mighty man-arms he keeps the door from opening. As he does, I am transported back to the school in the empty world, to my Ape and how he charged into his last battle. I shake myself from the memory, I can’t get tearful now. I need to hold it together.
‘I’m pooping!’ Sad-Ape tells the person outside the door. They groan and retreat. Sad-Ape looks pleased. Mission accomplished. ‘I’m not really pooping,’ he tells everyone.
New-Billie looks back at me. ‘Why us though? Why not just go on your own?’
‘I owe it to you all.’
‘You don’t even know us.’
‘I sort of do,’ I tell her. ‘And I want to try and make up for something that happened. Something I’m not ready to explain yet because I’ll never get the words out.’
My guilt is driving this and I never realised that before. The guilt that I abandoned my friends. I didn’t plan to, but the result was the same. I left them all behind to perish.
‘I want to make amends,’ I tell them all.
New-Billie looks at New-Johnson and she knows he’s sold on the idea of escape. He would be. He’s the type who walks against every tide.
‘I’ve got my dad here,’ New Billie tells us. ‘Am I meant to just disappear and never see him again?’
I was waiting for this. This world is killing us all slowly, but the others will likely have people here that they don’t want to leave behind.
‘If we find another world, then we can come back here for anyone and everyone.’ I don’t actually know if that will be possible, but I try to look convincing.
She turns to New-Johnson. He doesn’t try and influence her answer in any way, he just waits, his blue eyes unblinking.
‘That makes sense to me; if we could do that, then yeah, I’d love to leave,’ she says.
‘Good, because I want to go as soon as I can,’ I tell her. I can’t afford to lose momentum.
‘You’ve got a plan then?’ she asks.
Sad-Ape looks over and stands just a little taller than he usually does. ‘You’d better leave. I do need a poop now.’
Which is the best sign yet that the real Ape is emerging.
I look at New-Billie. ‘The last thing I remember before I came here was fighting my way to the classroom where we have detention. I think – I can’t be sure – but the answer could be there.’
‘It hasn’t been so far and we end up there every day.’
I’m not sure how to respond to this obvious flaw in my plan, but luckily I’m saved by a loud knock on the door. It’s the music teacher – Mrs Crow.
‘I’ve been told there’s a boy in here and I can smell cigarette smoke. Whoever you are,’ she calls from outside, ‘you’re all getting detention.’
Yeah.
We all kind of knew that by now.
THE TRAIN OF HOPE
Another-Billie is exhausted. She has given her all and reanimated everyone who needed reanimating. She sits slumped and dizzy in a first-class train seat while GG tends to her, brushing her hair from her eyes and telling her how amazing she is.
‘Seriously,’ he tells her, ‘from a chipped nail to a body with ghastly holes in it, you can fix everything. Though maybe I could have a squarer jaw. Do you do plastic surgery as well?’
Another-Billie is too weak to respond. Other-Johnson and Johnson have swapped back into their rightful bodies and can’t help but pick on each other.
‘Where’s my hat?’ Other-Johnson asks.
‘What hat?’
‘The hat I was wearing.’
‘You weren’t wearing one.’
‘I always wear a hat,’ Other-Johnson says.
‘Then you know what you can do,’ Johnson tells him.
‘What’s that?’
‘Go back to London and find it.’ I can tell from the dry lilt to his voice that Johnson is being ironic. ‘We’ll wait for you.’
Lucas’s face is a mixture of bewilderment and downright open-mouthed shock. The Moth is trying to explain everything to him, but Lucas just stands with his eyes wide open and his chin all but touching the floor of the carriage. He keeps glancing back and forth from Moth to Moth Two who is now sitting across the aisle. Lucas can’t take in what he’s seeing.
Another-Billie healed the Black Moth we rescued from the collapsing shopping centre. It was in the animal panther form until she and Other-Johnson managed to coax the real Moth Two out of the monster and transformed him back to normal. Well, as normal as the dopplegangers get anyway. It means we now have a backup to our escape plans. Two super-science Moth brains are better than one. Though I still can’t figure out why Moth Two exists if he was merely a figment of Billie’s imagination.
‘As long as we believe in him,’ the Moth stated, ‘then I’m pretty sure he’ll exist. Assuming what you told me about Billie’s power holds up.’
‘I think I should have hanged myself properly,’ Lucas mumbles.
‘You did,’ GG tells him for what feels like the hundredth time.
‘Can we start again?’ Lucas asks, completely bewildered.
‘There’s no time,’ both the Moths tell him in perfect unison. ‘And, if we escape, then you won’t need to worry about anything. Everything’ll go back to normal.’ The Moths are talking with the same voice and the exact same words at the exact same time which is pretty freaky, to be honest.
Lucas’s eyes land on the Apes. ‘He punched a hotel to the ground?’
&n
bsp; ‘And a Shopping Centre,’ the Moth adds. Lucas slumps down and puts his head in his hands. Non-Lucas watches him and then smiles. ‘I knew I was hot, but this is smoking hot,’ he tells himself, revelling in his reflected perfection.
Carrie’s body was the hardest to heal and we thought she was beyond help, but Another-Billie wrung almost every last drop from her healing power and brought my ex-arch-enemy back. Other-Johnson then swiftly swapped Evil-GG back into his own body and we watched Carrie take a deep breath and sit up. She took a while to work out where she was, but when she saw the Moth she got to her feet, ignored the rest of us and staggered to his side and kissed him. But she actually kissed Moth Two and when she felt his metal teeth on her tongue she recoiled and slapped him.
‘How dare you?’ she yelled at him, even though he’d done very little.
‘I’m over here,’ the Moth told her, yet again overlooked. Carrie took a moment, weighed the Moths up and then slid with barely any embarrassment towards the Moth.
‘You’d better have real teeth,’ she warned him.
The Moth almost fell out of his seat, but Carrie kissed him for at least half a minute before she broke away.
‘I have no idea why I just did that,’ she said to him.
‘No need to question it,’ the Moth smiled hopefully and then Carrie turned her pointy features my way.
‘Remind me. Do I hate you or did we make up? I can’t remember.’
Evil-GG came back from the dead and sprang to his feet behind me, unsheathing his talons, ready to take on anyone. ‘Okey-doke, now who wants a little taste of GG steel—’
Before he could finish Non-Ape backhanded Evil-GG through one of the train windows. He flew out on to the track and landed hard on the steel tracks opposite.
‘Ow!’ Evil-GG groaned. ‘Ow, ow, ow! You wretched oaf!’
There’s still no sign of Rev Two but my biggest worry is Billie. The last to be resuscitated. Her eyes have returned to normal, from black to blue, and there’s no sign of her talons either. The moment she woke up I went straight to her.
‘Billie.’
‘Rev?’ Billie looked unsteady and dazed.
‘How you feeling?’
‘Uh. Odd.’ Then she dredged up a smile. ‘But you look terrible.’