‘Go inside, there’s wine and whisky and… I dunno, help yourself,’ I say. Shell squeezes my shoulder and vanishes into the house. Terry stays and folds his arms, his tight green shirt struggling to contain his ridiculous biceps.
‘We need to come up with a plan,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if we’ll be able to survive forever, but we have to do what we can. The women need protecting.’
‘Those girls don’t need protection,’ I say, jerking a thumb over my shoulder to indicate the gathered. ‘Shell once punched her ex-boyfriend in the face and broke his nose when he cheated on her, Kay spends half her life in the gym, and no one can ruin Ruby’s mood for long. If anything, it’s us that need looking after.’
‘Whatever,’ says Terry. ‘But we still need a plan. Do you have any weapons?’
‘Yeah, under my bed is my weapons cache,’ I say, with sarcastic enthusiasm. ‘Fourteen machine guns, nine pistols and a tank! Help me get them out, will you?’ Terry takes a moment to realise that I’m kidding. Jay is looking around at the other houses.
‘Do you think anyone here has a gun?’ he says. ‘If this was America, it would be easy.’
‘I’m not knocking the British laws against gun ownership,’ I say, ‘but this is one of those rare times when you sort of wish they weren’t in place.’ I think for a moment, then snap my fingers, remembering. ‘Three doors up, Mr Grossman. He goes off and hunts pheasants and rabbits and whatnot every summer. He must have guns.’
‘Right,’ says Terry, looking happy. ‘Let’s go and ask him for them.’
‘He’s probably not there,’ I say. ‘I haven’t seen him for days.’
‘I don’t reckon it’s going to be as simple as just asking for them,’ says Jay. ‘Is that Pete?’ I look up and Peregrina-and-Pete are thundering down the road at a considerable pace. They are followed by others, each with a face shaped by panic, terror. A couple of doors open across the road and neighbours dash for their cars.
‘Everybody inside!’ shouts Pete and, without giving it much thought, we bundle back into the house, Peregrina slamming the door shut behind her. We look at the two newcomers but, before they can speak, our attention is snatched away by activity in the street. People, neighbours, are running past the window at a fair speed. Some people jump into cars, in various states of half-dress. Some have bags, but most don’t. Panic is on the streets of South Greenfield and we turn back to Pete, knowing exactly what he’s going to say.
‘There’s a ship landed on the edge of town,’ he reveals. ‘The news is on the radio.’ Almost as quickly as it filled, the road is almost empty again, a few abandoned dogs following loyally behind the vanished crowd, sniffing one another, hoping that one of them knows what’s happening. A tremor of fear runs through the room as it becomes horrifyingly real.
‘Guys, I’m going to get some guns,’ I say. ‘Who’s coming with me?’
There’s a brief moment of inactivity, and then eight hands shoot into the air.
Thirteen
Jay-and-Kay
I count the freckles on my hands for the umpteenth time. Seven on the left, ten on the right. The food bag sits empty next to me. I drank the whole thing, and my hunger pangs have lessened substantially, but I would’ve rather had a bacon sandwich or a KFC bucket.
Actually, I could really do with a drink. Something strong and unapologetic. On the rocks. My mind plays in some lyrics to a track by Burnt Fudge, an indie band we all loved, which in turn leads it wandering to what I remember of the drunkest night of my life – the night I met Jay-and-Kay.
*
Jay and Kay Booker-Hines have to be discussed together because when I met them they already came as a pair. I met Jay first, at a party at Lara’s house five or so years ago. We were twenty-one, and Lara was partying for one final time before she moved back to Cardiff to do her master’s degree in Social Work.
I was an absolute mess, having got stuck into some vile Turkish alcohol that tasted of aniseed and regret. I found myself in the garden retching behind the rhododendrons, Burnt Fudge’s latest single blaring out the back door, when a soft voice rose up from behind me to ask if I was OK. I didn’t recognise it, so turned round and straightened myself up.
Jay was a few inches taller than me, helped by a grey trilby perched far back on his head, in danger of slipping off at any minute. I’d seen him on the edge of the party throughout the night but we hadn’t spoken, and I remember being struck by the kindness he displayed in that moment. Someone he didn’t know was in a bad way, so he tried to help.
‘I’m Jay, are you alright?’
‘Dexter,’ I choked out. ‘Hang on.’ I raised a finger and turned again, firing a stream of puke into the flowerbed. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and felt very shaky. Jay placed his hands on my shoulders.
‘Come on, mate, let’s get you some water, come on now,’ he said, and with the care of a nurse led me into the house and up to the bathroom where he sat me on the edge of the bath. A glass of water was thrust into my hand and he said, ‘I’ll get you some food, don’t move.’
By the time he came back, this time with Steve behind him, I had fallen backwards into the bath and the water from the glass had soaked my shirt. The boys hauled me back up again and sat me on the lid of the toilet instead. I was given a bread roll and, somewhat mournfully, I tore into it, supplementing each swallow with a gulp of water.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, and I might even have fallen asleep, but when I next looked up, Jay had gone but there was a small girl with sharp, foxy eyes sitting on the floor, a glass of red wine in hand.
‘Are you watching me?’ I asked, trying to smile. I think I thought I was flirting.
‘I was told to keep an eye on you,’ she said.
‘You’re not English,’ I said, listening to her accent. ‘Is that Welsh?’
She laughed and said, ‘No, I’m American. Are you feeling any better?’
‘I don’t feel great,’ I said. My glass was empty, so the girl stood, filled it up and handed it back to me.
‘What the hell have you been drinking?’ she asked. She clocked that I wasn’t in a fit state to answer and continued. ‘I’m Kay, by the way. You’re Dexter, right?’ I inclined my head in a weak nod a couple of times. I either asked or was told to go and lie down, so I found myself on the bed in the spare room, phasing in and out of the universe for a couple of hours. Sometimes when I opened my eyes, Jay was there. Other times, it was Kay. Once it was Lara, but she was even drunker than me and was trying to be quiet by hushing herself with the volume of a leaf blower, a finger pressed to her wine-stained lips. When she tiptoed out of the room, she fell over.
When I woke up again and my head had recovered enough to allow me to make a movement, I sat up carefully and realised that it was morning. Leaning against the wardrobe, her head on his shoulder, and his arm wrapped protectively around her, each of them half-covered in a blue blanket, were Jay-and-Kay. They looked sweet, and my brain thought how lovely it would be if they were to get together. Two of the nicest people in the world – my benefactors on the drunkest night of my life; it was only right that they should find each other.
The sun moved round to let a beam of light burst through the partially drawn curtains and it hit Jay right in the face, causing him to wake with a start. He looked up at me and smiled.
‘Hi, mate, how are you doing?’
‘Did you stay here all night?’ I asked. I was aware that my other friends who had been at the party – Lara, Ruby, Steve – were not present.
‘We were staying over anyway, and Lara was in no fit state to look after you herself,’ he said. ‘I volunteered to make sure you didn’t swallow your own tongue or something. You weren’t in a good way last night. Is everything OK? You don’t have to tell me.’
‘My granddad died a few weeks ago,’ I said, bluntly. A sad moment in anyone’s life, sure, but generally not one to get paralytic over. Jay intuited that there was more to it than that and nodded, not pr
obing any further. Kay stirred, rubbing her eyes with delicate short-fingered hands.
‘Oh, awake then?’ she grinned. ‘God, my back aches.’
‘Thank you both so much for last night,’ I said, standing up carefully. I felt wobbly but I needed to go to the toilet. ‘And it looks like some other good came out of it. You two should really consider going on a date. You’re both amazing.’ The pair looked at each other as if having a silent conversation told through smiles. Kay held up her left hand, and a diamond glinted in the morning sun.
‘We’re married,’ she grinned, wider than any Wonderland cat.
‘Bloody hell, that was quick,’ I said, scratching my head and walking off to the bathroom.
They’ve never let me live down that moment of utter stupidity.
*
Jay and Kay met seven years ago on a forum for Discworld fans. He had the username ‘LeicesterLewton’, she was ‘Woman_at_arms9’ and it was love at first keystroke. Their conversations dominated threads on the forum, to the point that other posters noticed and passed various comments on the situation. They didn’t care. It would’ve been perfect except for the slight issue that he was in Cardiff and she was in Brooklyn.
Because this is the twenty-first century, and it’s not possible to hold back true love regardless of how many border control officials stand in your way, within a matter of months Jay had flown into JFK International Airport to meet Kay in person for the first time. He didn’t return for a month.
Once he did make it back, there was a gap of about five weeks before Kay returned the favour and touched down in Heathrow. She didn’t return for two months. This kept up for a year or so, before they both conceded that living with almost perpetual jet lag wasn’t conducive to their lifestyles or bank balances, and decided that they were going to take a massive leap, hurry the relationship along and move in together.
I’m told the debate was fierce as to where they would live but, in the end, they decided on the UK, as Jay still had his degree to finish up, and Kay had dropped out of hers to work and was stuck as a barely paid intern at a publishing house. The next issue was that, while they could indeed live together, it wasn’t as simple as coming over and settling in. Kay needed to leap through a number of flaming hoops with immigration to get permission to stay in the country.
This was helped along by Jay proposing and the two rushing through a small wedding with the minimum amount of fuss. They still had to endure months of red tape and question-and-answer sessions in sterile government offices to prove they knew each other and that Kay, who is one of the tiniest and most inoffensive people in either the UK or the USA, wasn’t here to cause trouble.
After marriage, they decided to settle in South Greenfield because there was a plethora of cheap, but nice, places to rent, and they could both commute to London, where they worked as editors for rival publishing houses. The fact that they worked in the same industry but under different logos was probably the only point of contention they had, but it did mean they spent an inordinate amount of time at book fairs and launches sneaking off to hotel rooms and public toilets to have sex. On their return, when people asked where they’d been, they were able to say they’d been schmoozing with the enemy for insider gossip. It wasn’t strictly a lie, although their schmoozing actually occurred while they were making dinner or in bed.
Having never known them independently of one another, in my head I sometimes have difficulty prying apart their personalities. Because they are so similar in attitude and interests – if not in volume – as far as I can tell their relationship has been blissful from the moment they met. They bicker in that manner of middle-aged couples despite only being a year older than me, but I’ve always put it down to the fact that their whole relationship was rushed – they’ve got to the later stages of comfort and familiarity long before any of my other friends have.
They are so intrinsically linked as a unit it’s rare to find them separated, meaning that many intimate details of their relationship have never leaked out. Maybe they do hate each other, but I doubt it. You can’t fake it for that long.
Fourteen
Guns and Teeth
There is a short tussle and argument about who is coming. Peregrina explains that there is little point in everyone going as we’ll just get in one another’s way, which shuts everyone up, even if it doesn’t necessarily appease them. Terry, being the only one in the room capable of actually using a gun, is a logical choice and might have more of an idea about what we’re looking at. Since I have been designated host for doomsday, I insist on going too. Jay throws his hat into the ring and he’s too polite for anyone to contradict him.
‘I’ll be your fourth,’ says Ruby.
‘No, I’ll go,’ Alex says, grabbing Ruby’s wrist. ‘It’s not safe for you.’
‘Don’t you tell me what to do, Alex!’ she snaps, wrenching free of his grip. Her wrist is white – he must’ve been grabbing her tighter than we realised. From the image they project of their relationship, it’s very unlike them both. ‘We’re in danger here and if you think I’m going to play the little damsel in distress you’ve got another think coming. This isn’t a fucking Disney film, this is real life, so shut up and let me go.’ Without giving Alex time to get in a response, she storms from the room and Jay, Terry and I follow saying that we’ll be back soon. The others wish us luck (except for Kay who is still, understandably, crying into her sleeves) and we slip out of the front door and go up to Mr Grossman’s house.
Mr Grossman, Angus, was never the most pleasant of people to have living in your street – one of those wealthy eccentrics with the compromising problem that he no longer had any wealth. The story went that his family owned much of Berkshire or Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire, but he’d been written out of a will so, while he was still invited up to the estate every summer to hunt game, he didn’t have the money to indulge in his hobbies otherwise. And when you’re eccentric without having the money to back it up, people just think you’re mad.
I hope that the street’s evacuation means that he won’t be present. As we reach his front garden, the house looks quiet, but the front door remains closed.
‘Don’t think he’s home,’ says Jay. We pass through his creaky, paint-peeling gate and up the path. I knock twice, but there’s not so much as a curtain twitch, so I figure that we’re safe. We need to think of a way in.
‘Ruby, you’ve got small hands, see if you can reach the inside door handle through the letterbox.’ It’s the best suggestion I’ve got but even then the house will likely still require a key rather than just a tug of the handle. Besides, Ruby’s hands might be small, but her wrist would probably be required to be on backwards to do anything of use. Nevertheless, she gives it a shot and fails. Jay looks under the doormat, behind and inside a pair of mud-caked wellington boots, and runs his fingers through the topsoil of a wilting rose bush’s stone pot.
‘Nothing,’ is his dejected conclusion. He’s brushing his hands clean on his jeans when Terry shouts, ‘DUCK!’ We follow the order just in time and come within a hair’s breadth of being hit in the face by a ceramic gnome he has hurled at the large window of the front door. The window doesn’t break, but the gnome is no more, shattered into hundreds of tiny fragments peppering the doorstep.
‘Little more warning next time, yeah?’ I say, holding up my forefinger and thumb a tiny distance apart. I look at the shattered remains of the former garden resident. ‘Well, that didn’t work but we’re definitely looking at the right idea. Find something heavy and we’ll smash the window.’ The house next door to Mr Grossman’s, the one belonging to the Fisher family, has a rockery in its front garden, so Jay and Ruby run round and pick up a couple of large rocks. Jay hurls his at the window in the door but misses and it clatters against the wood and lands in one of the wellington boots. Ruby keeps hold of her rock and bashes it a few times against the glass until it shatters.
Carefully removing the sharp shards from around the edge, she reaches
in and opens the door from the inside. It swings open silently against the thick carpeting and the smell of an abandoned house escapes. The end of the world has been under way for mere minutes and already everything is decomposing? I shake the thought from my head. It’s ridiculous – Mr Grossman is clearly on holiday; the house has that fusty smell that holidaymakers leave behind.
‘Grossman, emphasis on the gross,’ says Ruby, sniffing the fetid air. ‘How long do you think he’s been away?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I say, moving forward to peering into the undisturbed living room. ‘Let’s hope it wasn’t a hunting trip and he’s left his guns. Otherwise we’re screwed.’
‘Aliens have landed, Dex,’ says Jay, patting my shoulder. ‘We’re already screwed.’
‘Where do you imagine you keep guns?’ says Terry. I can only picture those gun cabinets that popular culture would have us believe exist in every house in the southern United States, but that would be a tad tacky for the English, so I suggest they’re locked away upstairs somewhere. We make a cursory look around downstairs and head up to the next floor.
‘Is it me, or is that smell getting worse?’ says Ruby, grimacing.
‘Maybe a bird got in and died,’ I suggest, but already I know that the smell is too intense for a single bird, and an ugly thought pops into my head and sticks like Araldite. Terry has already reached the top of the stairs and pushes open a door. The intensity of the smell increases tenfold, and he scrunches up his shirt over his nose.
‘It’s not a bird,’ he says, muffled. ‘Keep her away.’ He waves vaguely in Ruby’s direction, although appears to have forgotten her name. I am not one to try and physically restrain any of my friends – it isn’t worth the effort – so Ruby instead marches forward out of spite and promptly gags when she passes into the room. She runs back out again a moment later, disappears into the bathroom and we hear vomit hitting porcelain.
The Third Wheel Page 8