The Third Wheel

by Michael J. Ritchie

  ‘Likewise,’ he says, giving a half-smile. ‘Of all the whales in all the world, eh?’

  ‘Beyond ridiculous,’ I say. ‘How did you end up here?’

  Gavin answers this, extracting himself from my grip and wiping his eyes with open palms. He’s trying to restore the emotionless order that his body is used to.

  ‘Do you remember when we came here one day, the two of us?’ he says. ‘You wanted to show me around and you said that there was a trap door in the whale and, should there ever be a zombie invasion, that was where you’d go to hide.’ I don’t remember telling him that, but I must have done. Gavin continues, ‘And I guess, well, I hoped, that if you had survived it, maybe you’d still end up here.’ It’s an impossibly optimistic attitude to have, but I’m glad he has it anyway.

  One could mistake his desire to see me one final time as a sign that he has feelings for me, but I know him better than that. It’s simply that he doesn’t have many friends. I adore him, but he rubs a lot of people up the wrong way, so people don’t stick around very long. I think he wanted to see me again because he thought I might be the only person left, other than Frederik, who would care that he survived.

  Besides, if he did like me as anything more than a friend, Frederik would’ve left him long ago.

  The four of us sit down on the floor. I sit cross legged like in a school assembly; Shell hugs her knees and tries not to make eye contact with anyone.

  ‘Is it just the two of you?’ asks Frederik.

  ‘No, there’s two more of us kicking around,’ I say. ‘Peregrina-and-Pete. You’ve met her before a few times.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ says Gavin, but it’s clear he doesn’t remember. ‘What have you done with them?’

  ‘They were exploring the primate section upstairs,’ I jerk my head up in their supposed direction. ‘I told them to meet us in here.’ Gavin nods, chewing over an idea in his mind. He doesn’t share it. There is an awkward pause, an end-of-the-world moment of rest.

  ‘How did London empty so quickly?’ I ask.

  ‘Sheer numbers,’ says Gavin, tapping on the butt of his rifle. ‘There were loads of them, thousands, swarming from their ships like a wave of magma, destroying everyone in their path. A lot of people headed to the Underground system like during the wars, but that trapped them. The aliens wiped them out in days. You must’ve seen it – London is a ghost town.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I interrupt him. ‘You say they’re destroying everyone. Are you sure?’ I relay our theory about the nanobots and aliens wanting to attack couples.

  ‘That fits, actually,’ says Gavin. ‘Most of the dead bodies are merged to some degree, and those that aren’t look like they suffered blunt force trauma of some kind.’

  ‘And children?’ asks Shell.

  ‘We saw a few, huddled together,’ says Gavin. ‘I don’t like to give that much thought.’ Nor do I. I can’t work out how to feel about the lack of children. Either they’ve already been killed by another means, or they’re at home or in hiding, waiting for parents who will never return. Frankly, I don’t know which is worse – it’s the choice between a quick death and a slow one. I change the subject before the images become too concrete.

  ‘Is there anyone else here?’ I say, gesticulating to the museum around us.

  ‘Yeah, there are others,’ says Frederik. ‘There are some people up in the earthquake exhibit, and a few more in the ecology section. There are also a couple of people in the cafeteria who were rationing the food between residents, but there’s not much left. Some people have tried to eat exhibits but, well, you can imagine how well that went down.’ We each grimace, wondering what makes anyone think that’s a good idea.

  Another thought occurs to me.

  ‘Where’s Oscar?’ I wonder if their beautiful golden dog has vanished like Catsby.

  ‘He’s around,’ says Gavin. ‘We couldn’t keep him with us in case he made too much noise and revealed our location, so we set him free. Obviously, he’s not a wild animal, so he lives out in the gardens here and pops in now and then. The city belongs to the aliens and the dogs.’

  With little else to say, we absorb the quiet of the museum. It isn’t entirely silent. There’s a dripping coming from somewhere, and I notice Gavin’s breath is somewhat ragged and sharp. If there are any other noises, however, we are deaf to them. It’s a big museum and we’re deep into it.

  ‘So if they took over the whole city,’ says Shell, ‘how did you survive? It can’t be because you were hidden up in the whale.’ I turn to look at Gavin, expecting him to give his story as to how he managed to convince the aliens that they were harmless – it’s the sort of thing he’d have found a way to do – but instead Frederik speaks.

  ‘That’s my fault,’ he says, smirking. ‘I realised that I was experiencing these bursts of colour in a different way to Gavin and others we spoke to. These were the first colours I’d ever seen, and I was pretty amazed, but I think it was a definite advantage.’

  ‘Fred had no preconceived notion as to what the colours meant,’ Gavin says, taking up the story. ‘We see red and we think fire or love or whatever, but he sees red and realises that it means ‘turn left’ or ‘there’s something in that room’ and so on.’

  ‘It completely depends on the shade,’ says Frederik, ‘and I don’t think I’m exactly right on a lot of it, but it started to make a lot of sense. I could tell where they were and get us hidden accordingly. Without Gavin to steer me though, I would never have lasted.’

  ‘That’s pretty impressive,’ I say, having to go for litotes instead of hyperbole, what with being English. ‘So, you’ve been following their plans?’

  ‘Such as they are,’ says Frederik. ‘I mean, I could be way off and it’s luck, but if that’s the case then celebratory cigars all round anyway. But what good is it doing us in the end? All we’re doing is postponing the inevitable.’

  ‘You haven’t told them the best bit,’ says Gavin, grasping Frederik’s hand with a vice-like grip. ‘Tell them what else you can do.’ Frederik looks embarrassed and his eyes move unseeingly to a stuffed ibex in a glass case.

  ‘It doesn’t always work,’ he mumbles. Gavin tells us instead.

  ‘He can talk back,’ he says, his mouth stretching into a wide grin. ‘How cool is that? He can project certain colours back at them and they understand. There were several of them following us in here when we first got into this room. We snuck up into the whale and Fred thought out a message that said we’d gone or something, but did it as if he was one of them. They didn’t notice the difference and left!’

  ‘So we’re safe?’ says Shell. ‘If they find us, you can redirect them?’ Frederik sighs and runs a hand through his short black hair.

  ‘But for how long?’ he says. ‘Even if they leave, the planet is in ruins. There aren’t enough of us left to survive. We don’t know how to grow crops or run power plants or anything useful.’ His words mirror the conversation Shell and I had had while wrapped in blankets on Derek-and-Josephine’s dining room floor. What good are we? If humanity had had some preparation, who would they have saved? The politicians and CEOs, or the farmers and scientists? The wealthy or the useful? I think I know.

  There’s a noise, much too close for comfort. We jump up and swivel our attention to the nearest doorway.

  I raise my sword and Gavin brings up his gun as two heads appear around the corner.

  Twenty-Nine

  Gavin-and-Frederik

  Oh, hang on, I just realised I never explained how I met Gavin, or how he met Frederik. Much as Gavin is one of my best friends and favourite people, because he’s not local and I see much less of him than the others, I do sometimes forget to include him when telling people or thinking about my friends.

  Gavin Napier came to my attention when we were working together at Starbucks for a brief while, although the exact moment that we met has been deleted from my internal hard drive – one day I didn’t know him, and the next he was pivotal to my existence.
I was twenty and had got a job alongside university and school placements simply because I needed a bit of extra money. I don’t remember sleeping much that year, and I certainly don’t remember pursuing any hobbies.

  Gavin got his job around the same time as me. He was seventeen; a lanky redhead with so many freckles it wasn’t unthinkable that Ron Weasley had found a way out of the Harry Potter books and joined us in the real world to make coffee. However, unlike Ron, Gavin had his head screwed on and wasn’t distracted by such trivialities as being popular or even liked, especially. He had already locked in a sense of style and was the sort of person who would rather lose his job than be seen with a hair out of place.

  One of the most shocking things to me about adulthood was that no one ever handed me a book on how to do it, which I know is a ridiculous thought but, when you’re a child, you assume that your parents and everyone else knows exactly what they’re doing. When you get there yourself, however, you realise that everyone has been making it up for the last ten thousand years of human history. I mention this because if there was a guidebook, the only person who might have owned one was Gavin. Hell, he might be the author.

  Self-assured, never wrong (as far as he was concerned, anyway), and despite my seniority in time spent on the planet, Gavin always had an answer to and some advice for every scenario I or anyone else threw at him. And, frustratingly, he was right on every occasion, giving him an air of absolutely deserved cockiness.

  There was something magnetic about him. Sure, his righteousness could grate a bit, but I still wanted to hang around with him, listen to his wisdom like he was some kind of ginger oracle, and after a while my feelings got conflated with something else. I’d been going through a questioning phase anyway, as I think pretty much everyone does at one time or another. It’s part of growing up. We got closer, starting hanging out in some of my rare free hours, and one night did end with a kiss, but it was a kiss which told us both what we needed confirmed: that was never going to happen.

  While I’m pretty sure in most cases that would’ve also spelt the end of the friendship, I still enjoyed spending time with him, and he was too mature to let something so petty get in the way of us being friends. When I left Starbucks, we stayed in touch and he left not long after. While he later moved to London for university (art history, of all things), we stayed in close contact and he is the youngest of any of my friends, never afraid to make a snide comment about me being ancient and decrepit, despite an age gap of only four years or so.

  He’s ridiculously perceptive, able to pick out any fault or flaw in someone’s personality and hold it up under a spotlight, but at the same time knows exactly how to motivate people and tell them what they need to hear, even if they don’t want to hear it. He speaks without a censor, never worrying too much if he’s offending someone.

  *

  I was with Gavin when he met his boyfriend, the wonderfully named Frederik van Oorschot. Gavin was in his second year of university and I’d popped up to London to meet him after a morning lecture to take him out for lunch. He’d been struggling for a while with life – his father was terminally ill, his grades were slipping, he was missing shifts at work due to stress –so I’d been trying to be the best friend I could.

  Unfortunately, Gavin is not someone who is especially receptive to acts of emotional generosity, running as he does on logic and reason rather than letting his feelings have control, so I couldn’t be sure if I was helping or being a nuisance, and asking risked an answer like blunt trauma. Until today, I’ve seen him cry once, a month after his father’s funeral. It was like watching Mount Everest crumble.

  I met Gavin outside his lecture hall and, for the first time I could remember, he had initiated a hug with me. He always had trouble making friends who would stick around and put up with his, shall we say, insightful comments about their personalities and situations, and maybe he was grateful that I was willing to deal with it. I’ve always figured that, throughout everything, I’ve been a pretty good friend to everyone I consider worth my time.

  A couple of corridors along, we found a figure on his hands and knees feeling around for his bag, apparently unable to see it despite it being just two feet in front of him. Then we noticed the white stick that lay a bit further away and realised that he couldn’t see his bag. Gavin, far nicer than it sounds like I give him credit for, darted forward and crouched down next to the boy.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said, gently. ‘Are you alright? My name’s Gavin.’ I stood back and watched the scene unfold. I’ve never been able to explain it, but I felt that something was going on that day, and I didn’t want to interfere. I was an audience of one to the unfolding play, and I wasn’t about to start heckling.

  ‘Is my stick there?’ said the boy, glum indifference in his voice. It was tinged with an accent, sort of American, sort of European. We found out later that it’s Dutch.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got it here, and I’ve got your bag too,’ said Gavin. He slid an arm to the boy’s elbow and helped him up. ‘Come on, there we go.’ Once standing, the boy was at least six foot tall and built like a rugby player, although his green bomber jacket may have been making him look bigger than he was. He didn’t wear black glasses like some blind people, so we could see his glassy green eyes as they looked at a point a few inches to the left of Gavin’s face.

  ‘Thanks,’ said the boy. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What for?’ said Gavin, and there was a genuinely puzzled hint in his voice.

  ‘Holding you up, I’d imagine,’ the blind boy said. He sounded like this sort of thing happened regularly and he was used to feeling like a burden. ‘Someone shoved into me, knocked my bag off and then carried on. I was hoping someone was going to help me.’

  ‘Well, of course I was,’ said Gavin. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Frederik,’ said the boy, holding out a hand. Gavin moved his own to shake. Already, without knowing that Frederik was bisexual, I could tell that they made a good couple.

  ‘Frederik, would you like to join me and my friend Dexter for lunch?’

  ‘Oh, no, thanks, I’m not going to impose,’ Frederik said quickly. His head turned a bit to face where he thought I might be. Despite me being silent so far, it wasn’t a bad guess. ‘I should be going. Thank you though, I can find my way back to my dormitory from here.’

  ‘You’re not imposing,’ said Gavin, smiling. ‘Is he, Dexter?’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ I said. I’ll admit, though, that I was a bit pissed off. I wanted to talk to Gavin about an issue I was having with my then girlfriend, Jess. However, you can’t get annoyed with a disabled person without looking like an arsehole, and he was evidently quite sweet. Gavin had taken a shine to him.

  After a little more cajoling from both of us, Frederik took us up on our offer. They chatted like they’d known each other for years and I was the one who’d been picked up off the floor. Frederik was going to be far more effective at taking Gavin’s mind off his problems than I was. I made my excuses and left. Gavin tried to protest, but it was half-hearted. I didn’t take offence; I’ve seen often enough how love envelops someone and the rest of the world becomes irrelevant to them. To Gavin’s credit, he later called and apologised for abandoning me. Our own uninterrupted lunch took place a week later, and he didn’t even hold me to my original promise of paying.

  Three-and-a-half years later, they’re still together, living in London with Frederik’s guide dog Oscar. Rarely has there been a sweeter couple – one who sees nothing and one who sees enough for the both of them.

  Thirty

  They’re Back

  It’s Peregrina-and-Pete. Still, thankfully, unconnected, save by one hand each.

  ‘Jesus, don’t do that to us!’ I say, clutching at my chest. ‘Did you find anyone?’

  ‘There’s a few people lurking, but they’re human and for the most part unarmed,’ says Pete. ‘Who have you found?’

  ‘These are my friends, Gavin, and that’s Frederik,’ I say, poin
ting at each, still unable to believe that the words are true. ‘They… they were here.’

  Gavin moves forward to shake Pete’s hand and embraces Peregrina awkwardly, and then they’re introduced to Frederik. Gavin has met Peregrina on a few occasions, but otherwise they’re as good as strangers, connected though me.

  Frederik suddenly acts like we’ve surprised him and Gavin at home and offers us something to eat. Gavin bounds over to the whale and hauls himself up into its cavernous stomach, reappearing a few moments later with a blue rucksack. He divides out food that must have been several days’ worth of rations – bottles of lukewarm water, bananas, crisps and a packet of cheese biscuits. The last meal we ate feels days ago, but it was only the previous night. Still, nearly eighteen hours without food is more than enough. The six of us wolf down our food while I quiz Gavin-and-Frederik on their experience.

  Have they been here since it started?

  Where did they get the gun?

  Has anyone else they know survived so far?

  The boys answer my questions. The gun came from a specialist store somewhere in Kensington, and as far as they know, both of their entire address books have been rendered useless, present company excepted.

  ‘After even the first day, most of London had been eclipsed by these things,’ says Gavin. ‘They used their little grey clouds to do that thing of whisking up people together and it caused a lot of mess. We decided to come here the next day. It’s a miracle that we made it.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ says Pete. ‘It’s desolate out there.’

  ‘We’re among the last survivors,’ says Gavin, turning to Frederik and squeezing his hand. ‘Not that I imagine two queer guys are really what the repopulation effort needs.’ A small chuckle passes around the group. Gavin continues, ‘Anyway, if everyone’s eaten, how would you like a tour? It’s very different here without the teeming crowds.’