The Third Wheel

by Michael J. Ritchie

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she shouts. ‘You absolute idiot, walking off like that and not coming back! We’ve had people out all night checking across the school! We thought you’d been taken or something.’

  ‘I was with Georgina in my old classroom,’ I say, picking up pillows again, my face stinging. ‘Clearly no one looked very hard.’ Priti pushes the door open, grumbling to herself, and lets Georgina and I pass in. More shouting and chastising. Terry, Shell and William are missing, out watching entrances somewhere. Nonetheless, they treat Georgina kindly, mock when I ask if anyone has a phone charger on them – mine was the last to die – and fill me in on the events of the evening, which mostly involved a small family arriving with two cats at around midnight and taking up their place in an empty classroom in the history corridor.

  The mention of cats makes me think of Catsby again, which I can’t bear right now, so I volunteer to go and get some rations from the canteen. Annie and Ruby insist on coming too. They’re worried I’m going to wander off.

  It’s quite orderly, although there’s the same sense of doom surrounding the school that was in the church. People have given up hope, and I suppose I can understand why. We’re trapped – just redecorating our house in Pudding Lane the week before London goes up in flames. The day passes with all the speed of a sloth with lumbago. The Internet works for a couple of hours, and then connections die. No amount of turning things off and on again brings back a web page.

  We collate the information we have, spend the day taking it in turns to patrol corridors and doorways. Annie and I keep an eye on the music department for a couple of hours after midday, and I spend another hour or two with Peregrina on the flat roof of the assembly hall, watching the skies for any activity.

  There is nothing of any particular note about the day, unless you consider the apocalypse still worth mentioning, until I return from the toilets at around eight o’clock that night to find Georgina’s bed empty.

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ I ask the library as a whole, but no one has an answer for me. Priti thought she’d gone to the toilet; Art, the canteen. Someone notices that one of the rifles is missing, too. I rummage through her sheets to see if she’s left anything and find a battered paperback of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Inside the front page are scrawled two words in a handwriting I recognise as Georgina’s.

  Her last words are Goodbye, Dexter.

  She’s decided that she’d rather be alone than with me.

  Twenty-One

  Evacuation

  The first we know of the incoming danger is someone running past the library, screaming something incoherent. Annie-and-Matt are the first to react, jumping up, clutching one another and hobbling to the library door like participants in a three-legged-race. They’ve been together such a short time, it is unfair to potentially see them snuffed out before they get a chance to go through the motions of breaking up or finding out if this is the real thing.

  The shouts and screams are translated and we are given the news that one of the aliens’ ships has been spotted coming in to land on the north end of Fairmill. The school is in the southern end of the town but at this point that doesn’t feel like it should matter. All that matters is that we get away. We gather up our bags, shoving in leftover food and supplies. Terry checks that the remaining guns have been reloaded. There are thirteen of us in the library, and while I’m not superstitious, the number still worries an irrational part of me.

  It’s stupid.

  ‘We’ll go and grab bicycles and move on,’ I say, as everyone packs. There’s nodding and cries of ‘I was going to say that!’ as everyone sorts their meagre possessions out. We leave our phones behind – they serve no use other than as expensive paperweights.

  ‘Where are we going to go?’ asks Peregrina.

  ‘Back to South Greenfield?’ suggests Terry. ‘Aliens should be done there by now and moved on, right?’

  ‘No, dangerous to go back on ourselves,’ I say, stroking my chin. ‘Plus, there’s the nutters in Blackpond to deal with on the way, if they’re not dead yet. No, we’ll go to London.’

  ‘London!’ shouts Priti. ‘Are you actually funny in the head? You want to go to the capital that’s crawling with aliens and become even more of a sitting target?’

  ‘Be fair, Priti,’ says Art. ‘We know that the aliens were abandoning London. And it’s the perfect place to go and play hide and seek with a rival species. They won’t be looking for us because they’ll already think they wiped it out, and even if they do, we can best them.’ Priti looks unimpressed with him.

  ‘London it is,’ says William. ‘Let’s go, I’m not sitting around here to be killed any longer.’ Iris-and-William leave the library first and the rest of us follow on behind, filing like termites out into the playground and picking up bicycles that look in decent condition. My original one is gone. This one is a poisonous green.

  The race begins and we pedal for our lives back out of town, but it’s when we’re near the edge of the furthest-out estate that we become aware that we’re not alone. A gold and silver shimmer of colour attacks our eyes and distracts some of us enough that we fly off the bikes and crash. I power into the back of Art and the two of us go over, taking out Shell, Matt and Annie in the process. Everyone else stops before the same happens to them, and only then, ahead of us, do we see four aliens emerge from the side of a house. Their eight heads turn to look at us, wide eyes and mouths looking grotesque. Four of the heads have the red and gold feather-like thing.

  ‘Everyone split up! Don’t stand with your other half!’ I shout, but that’s easier said than done because the natural reaction when in danger is to cling like a barnacle to the thing that you love. The first cloud of nanobots is fired towards us and I duck down behind some shrubbery, not daring to look at who was too slow to move. Priti-and-Art are next to me, so they’re OK. I can hear the footsteps of the aliens getting closer, running towards us. There are colours popping in front of my eyes at super speed. I risk a peek up over the shrubs.

  It’s Iris-and-William. The merged version of them has his height, three eyes and one arm, the others scattered around their feet. Iris’s torso has been attached to the front of William’s, their chests pressed together. Half of her head, the right half, hangs on William’s shoulder. Her hair has been attached around William’s neck, giving him a sort of blonde frill. The surprise in the three eyes – two of hers, one of his, and one of them embedded in his right cheek – is palpable. Worryingly, despite the disgusting mess, this is a cleaner fix than Jay-and-Kay was, or the first ones on the television were.

  The nanobots are learning.

  There’s a gunshot, and another. Two of the aliens fall to the ground, clutching their chests. Terry has taken them out at great risk to himself and a second cloud of nanobots heads towards the shrubbery he and Shell have hidden behind. But as the Iris-and-William thing falls to its knees and keels over from blood loss, infection or simply shock, I realise that the nanobots are changing direction.

  The grey cloud whips over their heads and instead shrouds and begins to devour a tearful Annie-and-Matt. Alex fires his gun – my hands are shaking too hard to hold the pistol properly – and takes out another one of the aliens.

  A huge burst of cerise pink attacks our eyeballs and one gets the feeling that no good can come of that. The colour feels too cheerful, and not for the right reasons. Those reasons become clear when I look over and catch sight of Annie-and-Matt.

  With very little excess blood, they now stand as one. Matt’s main body is complete, but has been adjusted to have Annie’s arms and her head perches on his shoulder, looking otherwise completely normal. It still moves and blinks. As Annie-and-Matt spins around, trying to look at itself and work out what has happened, I note that their clothes have been ripped at the back and there are scars around their necks and down their spines, suggesting major surgery has taken place in a very short space of time.

  Their spare legs and arms rest neatly in a pile,
the cuts cauterised and therefore no longer bleeding. The whole endeavour is too precise to be welcome. The nanobots have obviously been busy with many people and have had time to reprogram their understanding of human biology.

  Alex takes out the final alien, and does so by blasting it through the head, allowing blue blancmange to pepper the driveway. Given that he wasn’t included in Terry’s basic gun training, it’s a terrifyingly impressive shot. I put it down to multiple paintball weekends for his friends’ birthdays and stag parties.

  Annie-and-Matt remains standing, looking at itself in shock, the heads turning to look one another in the eyes and, while they look like they want to say something, they don’t know what it is. With one final look at us, Annie-and-Matt takes off at a run – on Matt’s legs – back the way we came. If any of us thinks about trying to stop it, none of us makes an attempt to do so.

  Once Annie-and-Matt is out of sight, we get up from our hiding places, taking in the moment of quiet to study the remains of the alien bodies, and pointedly ignore the bits that used to be attached to Annie, Matt, Iris and William. Speaking of, Iris-and-William sits in a bloody, crumpled heap on the driveway of a house that looks like it belongs to people who would rather die than be involved in anything like this. The house remains silent, but other doors creak open and a few people emerge. I want to shout at them, blame them for what happened and say they’ve been cowards, but thinking about it, I can’t really begrudge them staying out of harm’s way.

  ‘We need to bury Iris-and-William,’ I say, looking at the body out of the corner of my eye. ‘I’m not leaving anyone else to the elements.’ Terry shouts over at a middle-aged couple who have materialised from their front door.

  ‘Can we bury them in your garden?’

  It’s blunt, and the looks on their faces suggest that it’s not a welcome proposition. Fortunately, Priti and Shell have slightly more tact and approach them to ask in a more respectful manner. I see small children at a couple of windows, and regret that they have to see such a horrible mess.

  As Priti says that the couple – Dennis and Josephine – have agreed to have their garden become a grave site, I catch sight of something small and orange by some bins. At first, I think it’s a further sign of alien life and go to shout at the others, before I realise that it’s something terrestrial.

  ‘Catsby!’

  Somehow, in the middle of this mess and mayhem, after seeing four more of my friends taken out by the alien menace, I manage to feel a moment of true euphoria. Catsby doesn’t hesitate and runs for me, letting me scoop him up into my arms. He nuzzles his face against my neck. ‘How did you find us, mister?’ I ask him, but it’s not like he’s going to answer. After fussing over each other for a little while – providing a welcome distraction and brain-cleanse while Iris-and-William is taken round the side of Dennis and Josephine’s house, and Pete, Peregrina and Art emerge from another house with large spades – Catsby gets restless and wriggles free of my grip. He meows a few times and, alright, it sounds weird, but I know what he’s saying.

  Like Georgina, he’s going his own way. He arches his back and allows me to stroke him one final time, top to tail and, with a final lick of his rough tongue on my knuckle, he turns away and scampers off. Tears well up in my eyes and I gulp them back. Never try to tell me that animals aren’t clever. They have emotions and personalities like humans and are intelligent in ways that we can’t understand. He’ll be fine. He’s a smart cat.

  A hand rests on my shoulder and I flinch.

  ‘Where’s Catsby gone?’ says Ruby. I turn and don’t answer, but instead pull her into a hug, wrapping her and her secret up, the secret she doesn’t know I know. The word I heard in the library.

  I let go and together we go to the back garden where Iris-and-William is to be buried, along with their remaining limbs and those of Annie-and-Matt, a decision that has been reached in my absence, but one I agree with.

  Art, Shell and Dennis are digging, while everyone else looks on with paralysed looks on their faces, ignoring the packet of custard creams that Josephine has put down on the patio. We work in shifts to dig a big enough hole, each of us caked in mud and sweat a couple of hours later, but it feels right. Terry, Peregrina, Pete, Dennis and I put the body in the hole. We return to activity, filling the hole in again.

  Once the hole has been covered and flattened as best we can, we stand around the impromptu grave, heads bowed. Everyone holds onto their significant other. I stand alone, as usual.

  ‘Should someone say a few words?’ asks Ruby. No one knows what to say. I wonder how far Annie-and-Matt got before shock and blood loss overcame them (them? it?) and did for them.

  ‘You must stay tonight,’ says Josephine, and there isn’t anyone about to argue with her. The house has two spare rooms and two large sofas in the living room. Shell, Terry and myself draw the short straws and are put up in the dining room, wrapped in any remaining duvets and blankets Josephine finds. Dennis offers us a tent in the garden, but given the events of the afternoon and what we’d be sleeping on top of, no one fancies it.

  Josephine does us a basic dinner, but none of us can remember the last time we ate, so it is wolfed down gratefully. I watch the older couple as we eat, looking sad at the head of their kitchen table. Dennis has the figure of a man once muscular, but it has gone to seed and he’s deflated like a soufflé, his hair vanishing as quickly as his definition. Josephine is still mostly blonde, although grey at the roots and her eyes look like they’ve seen things that people shouldn’t see. I’m not even talking about the recent events – there is great sadness in those eyes, but I don’t know her well enough to pry.

  Once everyone has retired to their quarters and Terry is using the loo, I find myself alone with Shell for the first time in a long time. She reaches into her pocket for her phone, but checks herself when she remembers we left them behind.

  In silence, we lie down and wait for Terry to return.

  ‘Did you know,’ I say, words piercing the silence like a stalactite, ‘that in Pakistan, children bury their baby teeth in the garden in the hope of a new sibling?’ She doesn’t reply and I wonder if she’s asleep, but then she speaks.

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ she asks. I prop myself up on one elbow and look at her.

  ‘I’m trying to prove that sort of trivia is absolutely useless,’ I say. ‘Always was, really, and it’s not likely to be relevant ever again. Pakistan will be a wasteland pretty soon, if not already, or overrun with two-headed humans, and Pointless isn’t about to be recommissioned.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Shell scrunches her face up and as if trying to read small print on my chin.

  ‘Catch-22 was originally called Catch-18. A billion seconds is over thirty-one years. Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy. You can get out of pretty much any maze by keeping one hand on the hedge at all times. That’s the sort of stuff I know. I don’t know how to do first aid, or make a fire, or maintain a gun. Unless there’s a pub quiz coming up, I’m useless. When it comes to the end of the world, doubly so.’ Shell sits herself up too.

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ she says. ‘We’re working together here. None of us know what we’re doing. Terry’s in the army, but I know for a fact that he never shot anyone before all this happened. Look at the rest of us. Teacher, chef, journalist, graphic designer… humanity got creative and screwed itself over. The end of the world needs builders and doctors. We don’t know any of them, but we’ll do our best.’

  ‘Remember Melissa?’ I say, thinking of a girl we knew from way-back-when at school who one day upped and eloped with her boyfriend of three months and we never heard from again. ‘We should have kept hold of her.’

  ‘She was a dental nurse,’ says Shell. ‘That’s hardly going to qualify her to deal with whatever injuries or illnesses we might get.’ She pauses and sighs. ‘We need to try and get some sleep if we intend to be in London by tomorrow evening.’ Terry clatters back in at this poin
t, stubbing his toe on a heavy doorstop and cursing, and slips under a duvet next to Shell.

  Sleep is slow in coming, but deep and dreamless when it does.

  Twenty-Two

  Pub Brawl

  The next morning, I wake up before Shell-and-Terry, who are enveloped in one another’s arms on the other side of the floor. I shuffle out of the duvet, making as little noise as possible, slip into the kitchen and open the back door. I cast a quick glance at Iris-and-William’s impromptu grave and decide it’s best to pretend it isn’t there.

  A chill dances through the air, but I tug my jacket tighter around me and sit down on the patio, stretching my legs out and watching the birds at the feeder dangling from the shed roof. They don’t seem bothered by my presence, but when the door opens again, they flit away.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t expecting…’ says Josephine as I turn to look at who’s joining me.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know if I was allowed out here,’ I say, scrabbling up.

  ‘Sit down, sit down.’ Josephine gives a weak smile, and after a moment’s pause, I resume my seat. Her hair sticks up at the back and she’s wearing a dark blue dressing gown, thin legs sticking out the bottom finished off with men’s checked slippers. She brushes some soil off a metal chair and perches herself down.

  ‘We can’t thank you enough for letting us stay, Mrs Saltmarsh,’ I say, using my politest voice. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just blinks and looks at a fearless sparrow who has decided it’s safe to return.

  ‘Josephine, please,’ she says, rather stiffly. ‘And it’s alright.’ I wonder if I’ve offended her and she looks like she’s considering saying something else. We watch the birds for a few moments more before she offers, ‘Not that it matters, but I’m not Mrs Saltmarsh.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, shielding my eyes from the rising sun as I look up at her again. ‘I saw Mr… Dennis’s university diploma on the wall. I assumed that was your surname.’