Between the three of us, we select seven bikes that are capable of doing the job. They’re all sturdy and look like they could cross open countryside with few problems, although I’m trusting Shell’s advice as I’ve not ridden a bike in years. Mine’s a sporty looking thing in red and gold.
Alex found a rucksack left in the staffroom of the bakery and has filled it with crisps and bread. Turns out it’s impossible to maintain a no-carb diet in the event of an alien invasion. We are learning so much. There are some meat sandwiches in the chiller but no one wants to risk it. Shell advises that anything that should have been frozen should already be avoided, just in case. The last thing we need is anyone falling sick.
We set off on the bikes in the direction of Fairmill, still aiming for the school and hoping that in the media blackout we’re enduring we haven’t missed the news that the aliens have beaten us to it. As we pedal out of Blackpond, down deserted streets, I turn for one final look and see a spacecraft hoving into view, looking ready to land in the village. I open my mouth to tell the others, but decide they don’t need to know. We pedal faster.
The journey takes longer than I envisioned, because while the train line would take us directly there, we’re travelling via winding country roads that haven’t been maintained for years and are pockmarked with potholes, making it feel a bit like traversing a teenager’s acne-ridden face. We don’t see a single other person or vehicle the entire way. After an hour or so and very little talking, my legs are burning up as I see the first houses of Fairmill come into view. The school is uphill, next to the train station, so I power through the pain for the last few minutes, arriving at the playing fields third behind Shell and Alex.
For some reason, my first instinct is to run to my classroom, as if there’s nowhere else in the building that would be a good place to hole up. However, Ruby is the one smart enough to point out that if there are people in the building, they will have gone to where the food is. We make our way to the cafeteria.
As we get nearer to the rugby pitch and then the playground, signs of life become more prevalent. While there are no people visible, there are cars that have been abandoned rather than parked, piles of bicycles and roller skates, even a couple of skateboards, and litter swirling around in disgusting eddies. I hazard a silent guess that once you arrive, you don’t leave, or not at any pace quicker than a run, anyway.
Flickers past the windows suggest that there are people inside, although I don’t get a good look at anyone, instead catching blurs out of the corner of my eyes. I feel like I’m in a particularly creepy episode of Doctor Who.
The doors nearest to the cafeteria are wooden with a couple of glass panels in the top, and given that they’re usually open during school hours, I assume they will be now and barrel into them, achieving nothing but a sore shoulder. They shake a bit, attracting attention from the inside, as a lock clicks and the left-hand door opens.
Out steps a very tall guy who I haven’t met on many occasions, but his picture has flashed up on my Facebook often enough.
‘Will!’ I cry. ‘You’re alive! Is Iris here too?’ The potential survival of Iris-and-William is a boon and I feel a surge of adrenaline force its way through every cell. William is well over six foot tall, much like Alex, but has long scraggly black hair, iron grey eyes and is altogether far less welcoming as a person. Iris must see something in him, but while I can tolerate his presence, I always get the feeling he thinks he’s too cool to be seen with any of us. He appears to be a perpetual teenager, despite being in his early thirties.
‘Yeah, she’s here,’ he says, deadpan. He doesn’t move aside, nonplussed by the fact he’s outnumbered seven to one and determined to stand his ground.
‘Let us in then,’ says Terry. I don’t think he and William have ever met.
‘Did you get followed?’ he says, tucking his hair back behind his shoulders, revealing his neck and its messy hodgepodge of white and shrimp-pink scar tissue.
‘No, there’s nothing behind us. Come on Will, let us in,’ I step forward again, but William is immovable. ‘What the fuck, come on!’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘There’s quite a lot of us in here already, and food is running out. Do you have food?’
‘We’ll go to sodding Tesco and loot it!’ snaps Terry. ‘Let us in the bloody door!’
‘Will? Who are you talking to?’ There’s a voice from somewhere behind him and Iris pops her head out under his armpit. ‘Oh my god! Ruby! Dexter!’ She launches herself at Ruby with such force that Alex has to keep them both upright. Iris pulls off her, now crying, and hugs me too. I squeeze back and breathe in her sweaty tang.
‘How did you get here? Why did you come here?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It felt a sensible, secure place to go. Is it?’
‘Yes, there aren’t any aliens here so far,’ she says, elbowing William out the way and leading us into the chilly corridor. ‘There’s about fifty people here, I think. We run a rota of people on look-out duty, guarding the doors and windows. We’ve still got limited power too, thanks to some backup generators. Not that we’ll be able to do much if we are attacked. But you…’ She notices the guns. ‘Where did you get those?’
‘Neighbour of mine,’ I say, glancing at the pistol and disliking how it looks in my hand. I should be holding a pen or a sandwich, not a gun. Iris turns to William. ‘Stay here and watch the door. And let people in for god’s sake!’ William looks suitably chastised and turns away, sulking like a petulant teenager. Iris looks back at us, grinning and crying at the same time. ‘You won’t believe who else is here!’
After we’ve thrown our bicycles into the pile of abandoned transportation, we are led upstairs to the library, the door of which hangs open. A man in his thirties patrols the upstairs corridor, armed with a cricket bat. The library feels cool and being surrounded by books makes me feel a bit safer. There’s something very comforting about them. Iris walks ahead, the rest of us trailing behind, and when she gets to the centre of the room, she speaks. ‘Guys, have I got a surprise for you!’
From out of the stacks, four people emerge. Priti-and-Art, Annie-and-Matt, all four looking in good health, albeit rather tired and, in the case of the guys, unshaven. There is much yelling, hugging, crying and rejoicing at this small victory as we grab each other and talk at three thousand words a minute, wondering how all this was possible. After a few minutes, we sit down at the reading tables in the centre of the library and tell our stories, lit by the feeble emergency lighting overhead.
Pete, Shell and I share the duty of telling what happened to us, trying not to make a big deal of the deaths of Jay-and-Kay, or getting caught up in an evil cult. Priti tells the story of the others, although there’s little to tell. Iris, Annie and Priti live in Fairmill, as do their other halves. It was actually Annie who had gathered them together, which came as a shock to me, as she’s always been so passive, quite content to let others make decisions and go along with them.
‘Annie figured that there was safety in numbers,’ says Priti, ‘and Iris suggested the school as a decently fortified location. Most of the town doesn’t have electricity any more, but there are still functioning generators here. There’s food, lots of space and we have patchy Internet connections.’
‘Is it global?’ asks Pete.
‘Pretty much every country has been hit,’ says Art. ‘There’s less online than you’d hope, but I suppose people are trying to survive rather than update their statuses. Still, there’s always some.’
‘The President is still threatening the use of nukes, but it’s a lost cause,’ says Matt, squeezing Annie’s hand. ‘The Prime Minister is dead, by the way.’
‘London?’ I ask.
‘London has basically been emptied,’ Iris interjects. ‘There are pockets of survivors according to Twitter, people by themselves in abandoned homes and offices. The aliens have begun to leave, although no one can answer why with any more ease than they can explain their arr
ival. They obviously don’t feel the need to continue. It’s the towns that are facing the next onslaught.’ It’s then that I tell them about Blackpond, seeing the ship land there, and the news is greeted with a moment of silence.
As we talk, night falls around us, and we do our best to make ourselves at home among the stacks, having taken rolls of fabric from the textiles department and towels from the swimming pool to wrap up in and construct makeshift beds. Everyone is paired off and, once again, I find myself alone, leaning against the hard wall in the biology stacks. My phone is down to 24% battery. I switch the mobile data on for a moment, and a few Facebook updates from people telling their families and partners how much they love them come through.
In the aisle next to me, physics and chemistry, I can hear Ruby-and-Alex talking, words so quiet they’re barely speaking them. They sound so close to one another that they may be passing the words directly into one another’s mouths. And then I hear a word that I know I wasn’t supposed to hear, which removes any sense of sleepiness from me.
I get up, tuck my phone back into my pocket and whisper to Priti and Annie that I’m going for a walk.
‘Art and Matt are on patrol,’ whispers Annie. ‘Art’s down in the history department, and Matt is guarding the gym entrance. Go keep them company if you want.’ I nod that I will, but I know I won’t. I actually want to be alone right now. I decide to go to my classroom.
When I arrive at it, I find one of the lights on and am annoyed that someone has already taken it for their own. I run a finger across my name on the door, wondering if anyone will ever call me Mr Scithers again, and push it open. The tables have been pushed to the back of the room, away from the windows. There’s a nest made of sheets, pillows and a sleeping bag tucked between my desk and the whiteboard. At the sound of my arrival, a face peers out from it, haloed by green hair.
It’s Georgina.
Twenty
The Reason I'm Single
There are more tears, but once again not from me. If I start, I’ll never stop. Georgina throws herself around my neck, burying her face into my collarbone. When Iris did this a few short hours ago, my natural reaction was to hug back. Now, I just feel awkward.
I broke up with Georgina eight months ago after she went mad because I was never free enough for her. She has (or is that ‘had’?) a tedious office job doing something repetitive with accounts, and was never willing to accept or understand that I couldn’t simply leave my work when I came home. Anyone who says that teaching is an easy job is lying or doesn’t understand. Alright, the act of teaching takes up a surprisingly small amount of my time, but so much else is given over to training, lesson planning, marking, preparing tests, meetings and research into recent educational theory. Don’t give me any crap about those ‘long, languid six-week holidays’. They’re still six weeks too short to get everything done.
I give a half-hug back, which makes her cling even tighter, like a barnacle in a rock pool, and I wonder if I’ll get her off me without the use of a crowbar. I’m pleased I didn’t reply to her text saying that I loved her. I decide to immediately introduce a topic that should make her see sense.
‘Where’s Marcus? Is he here with you?’ Marcus is Georgina’s boyfriend of six months, a tall, broad-shouldered rugby player who splashes his parents’ cash like he’s Brooklyn sodding Beckham. Any brains he had were in his balls and, if the rumours are true, they’ve shrunk to the size of peas thanks to years of steroid abuse.
Here’s the thing though. People think it’s weird that I’m so vehemently against the idea of someone dating my ex-girlfriend, even though I ended it with her, but I still like Georgina, even if not in the way she wants, and Marcus bullied me on and off throughout secondary school. I don’t have anything against her being in a relationship, but I don’t think it should be him. She can do so much better.
‘He’s gone,’ she says, extracting herself from me and sitting back on the desk. ‘He and his family vanished as soon as the aliens… I called him, and he said they were going. He didn’t even say goodbye properly.’ Fresh wails and more tears. I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Whatever the case, that’s a shitty thing to happen.
‘He didn’t ask after you?’
‘He was like, “Yeah, stay safe” and that was it,’ she says, hugging herself. ‘End of the world and I’ve been fucking dumped. Again. Didn’t even ask me if I was OK. Didn’t even call me.’ Georgina, like me, is parentless, but her loss was much more recent. Four years ago, she lost her father to cancer, and three months after that her mother had a fatal heart attack. Stress induced, the doctors decided. More than anyone else, she knows what I’m going through, and I understand her. We’ve ended up alone together, and it feels weird.
‘Have you heard from Lara?’ I ask, anxious to change the topic.
‘No, of course not,’ she says. With a weak smile, she adds, ‘That must be one of the shortest marriages in history.’
‘If I knew anything about current popular culture and who was married to whom, I’d have a smart rejoinder to that,’ I say. She giggles through tears, takes me by the hand and leads me to her sheet-and-pillow nest. It feels rude to resist. We sit down and she puts her hand on my knee. It doesn’t feel untoward; I think she wants to have some human contact.
‘Who are you here with?’ she asks. I reel off the list of people I have; feel a stabbing guilt that she’s alone. I don’t see how I’m going to leave here without destroying her further. We talk into the night, our quiet words like mice scuttling over one another in a cage. We sleep together, in both senses of the phrase, although throughout I fear being discovered. I can’t decide if I’m more worried of being found in this position by aliens or by my friends.
I’m woken the following morning by a loud, persistent mosquito buzzing next to my ear. I reach out a hand to swat it and hit my phone instead. It’s ringing.
It’s ringing!
I sit up, unwrapping myself from sheets and disentangling Georgina from my legs. She’s clinging to me like a koala afraid of dropping out of its tree. I snatch up the phone.
‘It’s Lara!’ I cry out.
‘What?’ says Georgina, half through incomprehension, half through sleepiness.
‘Lara’s calling!’ I gape, swipe the screen to answer the call and…
Black.
The phone has died, the battery run down to nothing.
My whole body is plunged into Arctic waters and I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I feel sick. I turn it on again but it turns itself off before the loading screen even passes.
I stand up, still cold but sweating, wearing nothing but boxer shorts. I pick up a chair and throw it at the wall, shouting as I do. Arms appear around my waist and I feel the pressure of a smaller figure behind me, gripping me, whispering that it’s OK.
I turn around, hug Georgina back, and let a few tears fall, before taking a deep breath and slapping myself hard a couple of times.
‘Enough,’ I say firmly. ‘Enough of this. We have to be strong.’ Georgina doesn’t say anything. She grips me a little tighter. She’s naked from the waist down, wearing nothing but her top. Her skirt is bundled up somewhere in our nest with my jeans and shirt.
‘We have each other,’ she says, and that’s enough to bring me back to reality. She’s right, we do have each other, but we can’t have each other if we want to survive. Last night’s sex – probably the last sex I will ever have – was a mistake, and a very dangerous one too.
‘We’re not a couple,’ I say, the words thudding the air, dropping like stones into mud. ‘We cannot be a couple, Gee – there’s too much at stake.’ She pulls away from me, looks hurt again.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks, as I get dressed again, getting ready to leave. I’ll take her with me, certainly, but I don’t know if she’ll ever understand. She repeats her words.
‘Look, didn’t you notice on the television? Did you see those first deaths?’ I say, pulling on my shirt and jumper. ‘Those nanobo
ts –’ (I’d filled her in on Jay-and-Kay’s theory the night before.) ‘– only went for people who were paired up. Maybe it’s a genetic thing, or a hormone thing. I don’t know, but I think that if you and I were to enter into something again, we’d end up dead too. The aliens will find us and I think that they specialise in pairs.’
‘But…’
‘No, I mean, look at the aliens themselves! Two heads! What if they originally had one each, and when they pair up, they literally pair up? The nanobots are trying to do the same to us. I don’t know why the aliens would want that to happen, but it’s what is happening. Very badly.’
‘They might do any two people,’ Georgina proposes as I buckle my belt. ‘You might have to be standing near to someone else.’
‘But I don’t think that’s the case,’ I say, lacing up my boots. Georgina has made no effort to get dressed yet. ‘When Jay-and-Kay got merged, there were more of us there right next to them. Shell, Pete, me… no couples. We were left unscathed. Had Terry stayed, maybe he and Shell would be no more by now, too. There’s something the nanobots can detect. They know when people are already mentally joined. They come in to do the rest.’
Georgina looks at me blankly, eyes red raw. Without make-up on, her face looks innocent and confused. She’s a child, trapped in an adult’s body, unable and unwilling to grow up. She croaks, ‘Are you going to leave me, too?’
‘No, I’m not,’ I say, picking up her pants and skirt. ‘Get dressed, we’ll go back to the others. We’ll keep you safe.’ And at a safe distance, I think. Without a word she dresses and we haul up the sheets and pillows she’s been using, taking them with us to form another bed in the library.
Priti is guarding the door to the library when I arrive, and I’m greeted with a firm slap to my left cheek. I drop the armfuls of pillows I’m holding and clasp a hand to my face.
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