The Third Wheel

by Michael J. Ritchie

  ‘It’s his,’ she nods. She isn’t looking at me. ‘I don’t suppose any of this is relevant any more. My name is Turner. Until this week, I lived next door.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. Is she about to embark on an excerpt from her unwritten memoirs? I get the feeling that she’s been bottling something up and the cork is struggling to maintain its hold in the neck.

  ‘Dennis has always been very kind to me,’ she says. ‘We’ve both lived in the cul-de-sac for about thirty years. My husband left me last year for a younger woman. Some bit of stuff at his office. I don’t know exactly who she was. He upped and went one day.’ My mind drifts back to Georgina. She puts a finger to her lips as if considering whether she wants to go on, or perhaps steadying herself to do so.

  ‘Dennis was never married,’ she continues, ‘but he was sweet. He took care of me, but I suppose I’m old fashioned. I didn’t know what the neighbours would say if we courted. But now, it doesn’t matter. We’ve decided to grip the bull by the horns and spend our last few days together.’

  ‘That’s lovely,’ I say, and decide that she’s not someone who needs to hear the theories regarding the nanobots.

  ‘The thing is, Dexter,’ she says, at last turning to look at me, ‘there’s no shame in being single, and nothing wrong with it, as long as you aren’t lonely. Surround yourself with people you care about and who care about you. That’s all that matters, I think.’ I don’t know how to respond to that, but I’m saved from having to do so by Shell opening the back door and appearing for a breath of fresh air. Whatever passed between Josephine and myself dissipates, and she says she’ll do a round of tea and coffee for everyone.

  As we pack up our stuff, my brain alternates between singing ‘Life on Mars’ by David Bowie and replaying my conversation with Josephine, and neither helps me concentrate. It’s weird to me that normal things like earworms and croissants (Josephine provides a very filling breakfast) still exist.

  Guns at the ready, with vague protests from Dennis and Josephine who feel they’re obliged to stop us but obviously don’t want us sticking around to use up their supplies any further, we set off towards the train station. We have decided to follow the tracks into London.

  Bicycles are abandoned again to save further accidents and Shell-and-Terry are leading the way armed with the rifles. Priti has the pistol. With my hands now free, I shove them deep into the pockets of my jeans. I feel caked with filth and I noticed a small blister on my toe this morning. I had a quick wash in the bathroom sink when I got up, but it’s not enough. The girls’ faces are devoid of make-up, and the guys are revealing which of them grows facial hair the quickest (it isn’t me).

  There are no big shapes in the distance, suggesting that the aliens have left Fairmill. We’d probably be safe here, for a while at least, but I still think I’ve done the right thing by suggesting we go to London. More supplies, more space, more chance of survival. Maybe.

  The nine of us move with slow determination, not speaking much. The couples mutter to each other now and again, but I walk in silence, consumed by my thoughts. These keep repeating the same images, each of them as unpleasant as the last.

  I think about Jay-and-Kay, and then Iris-and-William, and then Mr Grossman’s rotting body swims into view, followed by the caved-in cranium of the dog Kay killed, then the abandoned legs and arms of Annie-and-Matt, which in turn morphs into an image of the people falling down dead in the church. I think briefly of Georgina and my heart skips a little, but it’s replaced by imagined fates of Lara-and-Steve and Gavin-and-Frederik, as gory and foul as those I’ve witnessed. So much death in such a short space of time. My life has been one death after another, I notice. Maybe everyone’s is. Things keep changing and the universe doesn’t wait for anyone to keep up. At the moment, it appears to be working overtime.

  I wonder how my students are faring. The thought of abandoned children flares up in my mind again. I’ve hardly seen any children since the aliens arrived, except those who have stayed with their parents. What’s happening to those who have been orphaned? Given the aliens seem to be merging couples, children are exempt from that, so either we’ve misunderstood what the aliens are doing, or we’ve simply not encountered any children yet. I’m not sure that I want to.

  ‘We’re here,’ says Art, feeling obliged to break the silence as we arrive at the train station and hop down onto the tracks. We don’t even bother to check them this time – we haven’t seen a single functional light all morning. We set off along the tracks, in single file, aware of every chirp, crack and chatter from the low shrubs, wondering if one of them bodes something more dangerous than a sparrow.

  Humans, as a species, at first glance seem to have few decent survival traits, aside from our intelligence. We can’t climb trees very well, we’re poor swimmers, we have no natural defence against the cold, we don’t move very fast and most of us can’t hunt with our bare hands. However, humans do have one trait that not everyone may realise, but it’s one that is about to make the day slightly less painful. Humans have greater stamina than practically anything else on the planet.

  Hell, given enough time and distance, we can outrun a horse.

  Fuelled by adrenaline, we plough on. Outside of Fairmill we spot a lone alien, two heads looking in different directions but neither at us. Terry takes it out with a bullet to the chest. As it dies, we see a vivid flash of violet.

  ‘Do you think they recognise the train tracks as a path?’ asks Ruby. ‘If we’re following a prescribed route, it wouldn’t take much for them to follow us down.’ The thought is enough to spook us, and at the next station we climb back onto the platform and continue the journey cross country. We’re exposed, but so are any aliens.

  We press on, across golf courses and fields of cows, past isolated farmhouses with no sign of human activity and cars abandoned on the sides of country roads. We see the occasional alien, but they are either unarmed or don’t notice us until one of us has stuck them with a bullet or two.

  In yet another unidentifiable field, after clambering over another splintery fence and spooking a rabbit, Priti hands the pistol to Art and drops back to keep pace with me.

  ‘You need to stop it,’ she says, looking ahead to the others rather than at me.

  ‘Stop what?’ I ask.

  ‘Stop thinking about how you intend to save the human race.’ She gives me a patronising look. ‘This isn’t Doctor Who or something, and you’re neither responsible for the planet nor capable of saving it. We’re all in this together, and we’re all screwed.’ Priti speaks less than Gavin, but shares his bluntness.

  ‘I’m not planning on saving the human race,’ I retort, although I was wondering how I would react if selected to be the ambassador of mankind. ‘I would like to stay alive and see what happens next.’

  ‘What happens next is that we die anyway,’ says Priti, shrugging her small shoulders. ‘It would be nice to survive, obviously, but survival is only going to be short term, let’s be honest.’ If nothing else, she’s a realist. There’s no sugar-coating anything with Priti.

  ‘I’m annoyed that I’m going to die and not find out how my book ends,’ I say, thinking of the copy of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik that’s sitting on my bedside table. ‘Still, if we find a bookshop, I might help myself to a copy and finish it up one night.’ I feel a spot of rain on my cheek. Priti has felt something too and pulls her leather jacket tighter around her frame. There are a few more spots, then nothing.

  ‘Do you remember that rabbit?’ I ask, trying to pull up some happier thoughts from my memory banks.

  ‘What rabbit?’ Priti says.

  ‘That rabbit we had at the school that time, when we met,’ I say, thinking back to it. ‘We were about five and we got to stroke a really cute rabbit. It’s the first time we spoke.’

  ‘I thought the first time we spoke was when I took your scarf?’

  ‘No, it was definitely the rabbit,’ I assert. Priti looks like she’s processing that information, then s
hrugs again.

  ‘To be honest, Dex, I don’t remember much that happened before I graduated from university,’ she says. ‘It’s easier to block out the past, don’t you think? Surely you must try that more than most.’ She pauses and clears her throat. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK. I like the past,’ I say, half-smiling. ‘I like it a damn sight more than I do this present.’

  ‘That’s fair,’ she says. Art drops back at this point to speak to her. His facial hair has taken on the appearance of an unmaintained garden. His moustache is outpacing his beard, and rather a lot of hair is beginning to encroach on his neck. His once-neat goatee is lost among the sprawling foliage. Sensing that a couple always prefer being by themselves than with a third wheel – a feeling I know is always there somewhere, despite somewhat obligatory protests – I slink forwards, taking the pistol from Art and letting them discuss whatever they need to discuss.

  Rural changes to urban as we start making our way through little towns and villages that have tacked themselves onto the edge of the capital so that the residents can say, ‘Yeah, I live in London.’ Ruby and I are in the middle of a conversation about which of our colleagues would fare best in a battle with extraterrestrials (the PE teachers tend to come off very well, armed with cricket bats and hockey sticks) when we meet the next band of aliens.

  There are five of them – ten heads – and they’re standing in the middle of the street around a burning car and several mangled human bodies that haven’t survived the merging process. Terry is the first to see them, doing a cartoonish double take and ushering us into a front garden with a large box hedge to keep us out of sight. The lawn is spongy beneath my feet. I wonder if anyone still lives here, but the door looks locked and the curtains are drawn.

  ‘If we take out one, it will alert the rest,’ whispers Terry. ‘Do we have enough ammunition?’

  ‘I think so,’ I say, shrugging off my rucksack and pulling out what remains. There’s a lot less than we first thought, and I realise that we’ve lost more than we’ve fired. William had some in his bag, and I remember Kay putting some in hers too.

  ‘Fill everything as much as we can,’ I say, and we load the guns to full capacity under Terry’s instructions.

  ‘Maybe we should hide,’ says Art, pointing at a pub in the next street called The Goose and Gander. Skulking low to the ground, we creep gibbon-like into the pub – the door opens with a single push – and settle down in the booths. There’s no electricity, so while Peregrina-and-Pete go to find torches or candles, Shell and I set about pouring out warm wine and vodka. There’s a pervading smell of something rotting somewhere nearby – I assume the owners and the pub’s last clientele didn’t get far – but we pretend we can’t smell it and carry on. Peregrina informs us, on their return, that there is some mangled flesh in one of the back rooms that may once have been the landlords.

  We light a few candles, although it’s not quite yet dark enough that we can’t see one another, and the alcohol buoys us. For a moment, we forget about the terrible situation that we’re in. Terry starts telling jokes, and we’re laughing, which still feels an odd sound in this new environment. I’m standing by the door, peeking through the green frosted glass in case of movement, but the street is deserted.

  None of us thinks to watch the back door, or even check if there is one.

  In the small hours of the morning, the existence of an accessible back door becomes apparent when a solitary alien stumbles in. I leap from my curled sleeping position in one of the leatherette booths and it takes a moment for both my eyes to unglue themselves and for me to realise I’m holding the pistol the wrong way up.

  It becomes clear, however, that the alien is in trouble. Indifferent to us and not an immediate threat, it collapses to the floor, leaning against the bar. It seems to be struggling to breathe and is gripping its torso tightly. Terry has his rifle up, ready to fire, but Peregrina has rushed forward and makes soothing noises at it.

  ‘Out of the way!’ shouts Terry, but she ignores him. Pete reaches out a large hand and presses the rifle down so that it’s aiming at the floor.

  ‘Are you OK?’ says Peregrina to the alien, as if it was nothing more than an injured kitten. Ruby and Shell join her, the three of them kneeling before the two translucent heads of the intruder. Close up, despite the double head, it is far less scary. It looks more scared of us than we are of it, clutching at its side with both hands, something dark and sticky oozing from the suit. The four eyes dart between our faces, not focusing on anything. If I could ascribe an emotion to it, and it’s not easy, I’d suggest it was overwhelmed.

  ‘Is there anything we can do?’ Peregrina continues, stretching out her palm to pat the alien’s arm in comfort. It looks at her in horror and flinches back, causing her to do the same. ‘It’s OK, we don’t want to harm you. Are you hurt?’

  The alien clearly has no idea what is being said, but it is too weak to do anything. It loses the strength to hold itself up and slides sideways down. We get three flashes of colour – cyan, magenta and cyan again. It’s dead.

  ‘Saved a bullet,’ says Art, grinning. The smile vanishes from his face when everyone glares at him and he realises it was an inappropriate comment. I look back at Peregrina, open mouthed at her behaviour. She is just about the only person I know who would try to care for an enemy that wants her dead.

  But, I realise, this particular alien was not an enemy. War is futile, as has been said before, because it trains people who have nothing against one another to kill. You can’t generalise. This alien may have been forced along, like so many were in the wars of our own planet.

  My philosophising is abruptly ruined when several windows of the pub are smashed simultaneously. I leap up, the others coming round and staggering to their feet as well, trying to work out what’s happening. Pale blue hands appear on the sill and an alien sticks its heads up to look in, signals in three short primary coloured bursts and clambers in the window. Other faces appear at other windows and within seconds there are at least half a dozen in the room, shepherding us together in a small group near the bar. Everyone clings to someone else, although no one clings to me.

  No nanobots are released though.

  The aliens blast colour at one another, some pastel, some neon, an apparent conversation that looks like one of the bigger boxes of Crayola crayons on the market. They look at us too, as two of them pick up their dead comrade and carry him out of the front door. The remaining aliens, three of them, stare at us and then charge. Apparently with no nanobots at their disposal, they have to make do with other means.

  I punch and kick, trying to do any damage possible, my ideas of war being stupid flung aside as I try to save my own skin. There’s screaming, but I can’t tell who it is as we shove and lash out. I stumble back over the legs of a bar stool and catch myself on one of the booths, and an alien follows me. It’s unarmed and has been hurt; a deep cut in one of its necks is matted with a dried blue liquid. One of the heads watches me, but the other is turned to look at Priti, who is coming for one of the others with a smashed wine bottle, gouging a chunk from clothes and skin. A few of my blows hit alien skin, and it feels tacky and unpleasant, sort of like freshly chewed bubblegum. The alien lashes back, hitting with thick, three-fingered hands, gnarled nails on the tip of each.

  I shove it back and into the booth, but it rights itself in one quick movement and clambers onto the table, aiming kicks at my chest and face. I can’t reach to hit back, so pick up a pint glass nearby and throw it hard. It misses. The alien jumps off the table and onto Terry, who drops his rifle in surprise and knocks his head hard against the metal rail around the bar.

  We don’t manage to kill any of them, and with a peppering of blue and red words, they make a run for it, one of them carrying a screaming Art over its shoulder, and the other dragging an unconscious Priti along by her hair at speed.

  ‘Hey!’ I shout and run after them, but the third, who is not burdened by the weight of one of my frie
nds, turns, raises a rifle – one of our rifles – and jabs it into my face, hard.

  I hear my nose crack, and everything goes dark.

  Twenty-Three

  Recalibration

  I look at myself in the cracked mirror over the sink the following morning. My hair is flat on one side and sticking up with sweat and blood on the other. Purple bruises cover my arms and neck, alongside further smears of plummy alien blood. My eyes are red and ringed black. My nose is definitely broken, casting a weird shadow over my cut lip. I reach up and touch it, wincing as my fingers graze it.

  When the alien jabbed me in the face with the butt of the rifle, the shock knocked me out and it took half an hour for me to wake up. While I was out, Shell wanted to head out into the night and find Priti-and-Art, or what was left of them at least, but given that the aliens took our guns, she was talked out of it, or perhaps shouted down. I don’t know, and I don’t want to. Since then I managed to have about another half hour’s sleep, but no one was able to doze off for long, fearful that something else was coming. Much as we had originally delighted in having free rein of the pub’s alcohol, we realise that it’s probably not the best thing to be wandering the streets of the apocalypse half cut, so limit ourselves to water and bottles of Coke.

  We estimate that the Tube should start about half an hour’s limp away, and from there we’ll follow it into the centre of the city. After a breakfast of warm orange juice and smoky bacon crisps, we pack up what remains and sneak out into the streets, bidding farewell to The Goose and Gander, wishing it had kept us a bit safer than it did. With two more of our party given over to our invaders, there are seven of us left, all in various states of sleeplessness, anxiety and pain.

  The hole left by the absence of a friend I’ve had for over two decades is both instantaneous and enormous. Priti and I could go weeks without speaking to one another and know that we’d pick up wherever we left off once our schedules cleared again, but it’s only been a matter of hours and loss pervades every atom in my body in a way nothing else has quite yet. I feel homesick.