‘OK,’ I say with relief, happy to have something to distract me before we formulate a plan to get more food and supplies. There’s definitely room in the whale for us, as a temporary measure at least, but how long can we stay here? For the first time, I become aware of the short-sightedness of my plan. I was determined to get here, but I hadn’t particularly given any thought to what happens next. It was only ever a thought exercise – I didn’t expect to live through the apocalypse. I suppose I figured we’d wait until the aliens got bored and took off again, but there was no evidence that that was in their plans. Maybe they were acting as pest controllers, wiping out humanity for unfathomable reasons.
‘OK, but I’m bringing my sword,’ says Shell. We agree that weapons are worthwhile and set out from the Large Mammals Room on a bespoke tour of the museum.
Our footsteps echo throughout the cavernous chambers as we explore the magnificent, huge interior. The dinosaur wing is lit by emergency lighting, giving the fossils and casts an even creepier appearance than usual. The animatronic tyrannosaur has shut down mid-roar, staring vacantly at a point on the far wall, tiny arms reaching out at nothing.
In another long room, hundreds of species of birds stare out of their glass cases at us.. I look at forlorn eagles, grumpy dodos, irritated hummingbirds and pissed off parrots and wonder if there’s any dignity in being the chosen member of your species to stand in a museum for the rest of time.
In the section of the museum dedicated to the physical sciences, we see remains from Pompeii, moon rocks and burnt-up meteorites and meet the families living in the earthquake exhibit. They have small children with them, who look far less terrified than one would imagine, but that might have something to do with the fact that they’ve been allowed free run of the gift shops and are surrounded by colouring books and oversized plush dinosaurs in lurid primary colours.
Whoever had been in the cafeteria has gone so we pass between the empty chairs and tables to see the fish, reptiles and invertebrates that were encased at the back of the museum. Crocodiles, lizards and fish stared back at us with their ancient eyes, and I realise that the whole planet is now a museum of a sort, as nothing is going to be improved on ever again. Even if there are survivors, they are never going to make the world as good as it was before, or at least not for centuries. Sure, it had its flaws, but on the whole, it was better than living in caves and in fear of bears.
As we look at corals and starfish, the day begins to feel like a regular day out, if a quiet one. We could be a group of untraumatised and freshly washed tourists out for a glance around the museum, with promises of a good dinner or a nice wine bar at the end of the day, provided we focus on the exhibits and don’t breathe in too deeply. The calmness is ripped asunder, however, when a flash of pine needle green pervades our eyes, followed by a blood red.
‘They can tell someone’s here,’ whispers Frederik. ‘They’re splitting up.’ We’re trapped – the only way out of this section is the way we came in.
‘Convince them we’re not here,’ Shell whispers back, her voice raspy and fearful. Frederik turns his head in the vague direction of the exit and projects out a shimmery pattern that crosses through our eyes. It’s a combination of browns and reds, and I take it at face value that Frederik knows what he’s doing. At least, he’s got more of an idea than any of us.
The colours subside and a reply comes moments later, more reds with some light purples interspersed. Frederik replies again, in orange this time, but his face suggests that something is wrong. There’s a sharp burst of emerald green and Frederik says, ‘They don’t believe us.’ Gavin steps in front of him and raises the rifle. The rest of us lift our weapons, moving back to the centre of the room.
They’re in front of us again, two aliens, four heads, skin the same disgusting, unnatural shade of pale blue, faces that are impossible to read. The feather-like appendages on their heads quiver nervously, as if caught in a breeze we can’t feel. The spacesuits of these two are ripped in places and the arm of one has been burnt by something. They hold no weapons, but each is gripping a small silver box on their belt, waiting to release a cloud of nanobots.
Four sets of narrow eyes glare at us, but before either alien can release their only weapon, Gavin fires and plants a bullet in the centre of the face of the left-most head. Its attached companion begins to project colour throughout the room; panicked shades of the rainbow that make me feel like I’m inside a kaleidoscope.
Seizing the opportunity, Peregrina rushes forward with her weapon, a dagger that once belonged to Henry VII, and stabs it deep into the chest plate of the already injured alien. The second alien shoves her aside with stubby fingers and kneels down beside its companion. The feathers on its heads have curled right up and are now merely red nubbins above where you’d expect to see an ear.
While one is distracted and the other lies dying, we take the opportunity to run, skirting around the side of the fallen pair. It’s only once we’re level with the fish again and have left the invertebrates room that I realise Frederik hasn’t come with us. He’s still standing before the aliens, his eyes turned to them but not seeing what is happening.
‘Fred, come on!’ shouts Gavin, throwing the rifle on a strap over his shoulder so it hangs diagonally across his back. ‘Follow my voice! We’ve gone, you have to come too!’ Frederik remains stationary. I become aware of flickers of colour dancing in the corner of my vision, orphaned colour swatches.
‘The dying one,’ says Frederik. ‘It had children. Three of them.’
‘Yes, but we did what we had to do,’ Gavin says, stepping forward again. ‘We can’t help it.’
‘They’re like us,’ Frederik is speaking barely louder than a whisper, but the aliens make no noise so there’s no trouble hearing him. ‘It was scared too. It didn’t want to come here. It thought it should stay at home and… it joined the force to make its parents happy.’ Tears sprung at his sightless eyes, but Gavin was close enough to him to grasp his wrist.
‘It’s done, and now is not the time to get emotional,’ he says, sounding almost robotic. ‘We have to go before we’re next.’ He tugs once and there’s no give, but a second tug and Frederik finally moves, navigating around the aliens and coming with us back to the Large Mammals Room.
There’s more waiting for us there, but this time they’re not aliens.
It’s Annie-and-Matt, still conjoined but nonetheless apparently content, despite the remains of their clothes being covered in stains that resemble dirt, ash and dried blood.
‘You have to come with us,’ they say, their voices in stereo. ‘We can get you somewhere safe.’
Thirty-One
Hellos and Goodbyes
I could have fainted, but Pete was standing behind me and caught me as I fell, which shocked me back into full, if dazed, consciousness. My recovery is also aided by the appearance of the alien we’d abandoned rushing in, wielding nothing more than its fists. Catching us off guard, it springs forward and rips Gavin’s gun from his hands, but it apparently has no idea how to use it, so begins to swing it around like a blunt instrument, hitting Pete in the face and smashing the lenses of his glasses, tiny jagged frames left around his bloodshot eyes.
We pile onto the alien who is the most tenacious one we’ve met so far, and is battered, bashed, stabbed and clobbered by us in turn, all the while reacting like Monty Python’s Black Knight. My rusted sword is snapped in half, with the blade sticking out of its leg, and Shell gains a fresh shiner around her left eye.
After one flesh wound too many, it finally keels over in front of the large taxidermied giraffe and stops breathing.
I feel my sore nose and realise it suffered in the skirmish and is bleeding again, so I pull my shirt up to stem the flow. The blood feels warm on my skin and I run my fingers over my chin and cheeks to make sure the rest of me is in one piece. I’m very aware of the thick stubble coating my lower face, somewhat uneven and rough.
Now I have to focus on the next issue, wh
ich is that Annie-and-Matt is here, with his body, her arms and both of their heads looking down from his shoulders, smiling at me. No matter how benign the expression, it’s weird. For people I never thought I’d see again, they seem to be coping very well.
‘How did you survive?’ I ask. ‘I mean, let’s not be rude here, but everyone else the nanobots have changed hasn’t survived.’ Neither head mentions the lack of Terry, Ruby or Alex.
‘Their technology has learnt a thing or two from ongoing experimentation,’ says Matt. As he speaks, Annie’s lips move along with him, silently framing his words. It’s disconcerting trying to look at them, and my eyes keep darting between each head, not sure which one I should be paying attention to.
‘When we realised that we were in one piece, we ran,’ says Annie, recapping on the last events of their lives we were present for. Now Matt’s lips are going through the motions. ‘We found some of the aliens and, well, whatever those robots did, we could understand them. They told us that we were safe and that they would look after us, and see no more harm came to us, provided we helped them. There were others there too, like us.’
‘And so we thought about it,’ both heads say at the same time. ‘We stayed with them for two days. They’re either deaf or don’t understand our words as a language, so we could talk freely. They kept an eye on us though. We tried to convince some of the others to escape, but they’d either decided that this was the only way they could survive, or they simply didn’t care enough to try.’
Annie’s head alone takes up the story, Matt’s mouth still forming the appropriate shapes.
‘We made a break for it yesterday while they were fighting some more humans. Half a housing estate was on fire. Some residents had tried to trap and kill the aliens with fire but it had got out of hand. In the confusion, we fled. Being able to understand them, however, means that we’ve been able to hide from them and throw them off the scent. We followed some messages leading here and knew it had to be you. Don’t ask us how.’ I look at the others, wondering if they’re having as hard a time processing this as I am. Frederik is sitting with his eyes closed and his head bowed, but the other four are indeed looking like someone has tried to explain quantum physics to them through the medium of semaphore.
‘Have you learnt anything more about them?’ I ask. ‘What’s with the body modification?’
‘At one point one of them mentioned that they didn’t understand why the nanobots hadn’t worked on humans,’ says Matt. ‘It seems that they do all start with one head, and then when they reach sexual maturity I guess, they’re blended and the single body can produce more offspring. None of them here look to be having kids any time soon, though. They were apparently shocked by our appearance and set about putting it right, as they saw it.’
It feels like the biological equivalent of forcing Christianity onto jungle tribes.
‘And what’s their purpose?’ asks Peregrina.
‘Materials,’ says Annie. ‘They’re here to mine for stuff. Earth is rich in whatever they want. They mentioned things that we guessed were elements or some kind of material that we have that they need, but we’ve no idea what it is. They first needed to see if humanity could be roped into helping out, or needed to be wiped out. There appears to be a lot of dissent among them on that. The ones trying to get us to “breed” aren’t actively trying to kill us. But even after two days with them, it appears that their attitude to humanity isn’t improving. We keep fighting back and they think we’re more trouble than we’re worth. Death will outpace merging now.’
‘Did you observe anything else about their biology?’ asks Gavin. It’s become a curious question-and-answer session, but it’s interesting. We might be minutes from death, but we’d quite like to know what exactly it is killing us.
‘Not directly,’ Matt and Annie speak together again, and then Matt on his own. ‘The feathers on their heads appear to be how they pick up their language. We saw one who had had his ripped off and he was clearly having difficulty communicating. It was basically shunned and the next morning it wasn’t there at all.’
‘So, what do we do now you’ve found us?’ I ask, trying to keep the hopelessness out of my voice. It’s been a fascinating conversation, but there are practicalities ahead.
‘There’s a safe space we’ve found,’ says Annie’s head. ‘In the V&A.’ The Victoria and Albert Museum sits across the road from the Natural History and Science Museums, dealing more with art and history. I’d been there once before on a school trip when I was about twelve, and my overriding memory of the experience was giggling at the naked statues of Greek gods and heroes.
I have matured a little since.
‘There are other human survivors there,’ says Matt’s head. ‘They’ve taken to us alright, despite the occasional bit of gun-waving and general fear to begin with. You’ll be safe there. It’s protected by gunmen, and they have good supplies.’
It doesn’t take much to convince us. Gavin has returned to his emotionless self and, after introducing himself to Annie-and-Matt, begins asking questions about how it feels being one and what happened to them while the change was taking place. The heads answer as best they can while we pick up the remains of our weapons, bags and food supplies, as well as whatever else Gavin-and-Frederik had managed to scrounge together and hide in the whale.
Pete-and-Peregrina head out first, muttering between themselves in a manner that I don’t much like. They have the air of people secretly plotting something, and that’s an uncomfortable feeling when a plot has already been decided on. Annie-and-Matt leads the rest of us out through the museum again. With one final look back at the whales hanging from the room’s vast ceiling, I contemplate clambering up to snap off the narwhal’s tooth to use as a weapon, but decide that I’m too far removed from my monkey-like ancestors to attempt the climb. Besides, would it do me any good in the long term?
Outside, night is falling; I have no idea how long we were in the museum. Time has stopped having any meaning. Time is a human construct and, with humans fast dying out, so is everything they came up with; time, electricity, religion, all slipping through the fingers of the remains of our species as we struggle to seek out hope in this hopeless world. Sure, we may find peace at the V&A but for how long? From now on, everything we do is a temporary measure.
Annie-and-Matt leads us to the stairs that will provide us with an underground entrance to the V&A, as the above-ground doors, Annie’s head informs us, have been locked and are heavily defended.
‘Better breathe through your mouths down here,’ says Matt’s head. ‘It doesn’t smell so good.’ Gavin pulls his shirt up over his mouth in preparation, revealing a skinny torso beneath and wisps of ginger hair around his navel.
‘Sorry, but we’re not going to come with you,’ says a voice, and it takes me a moment to realise that it’s Pete. I stare at him, not quite able to comprehend his words. ‘We’ve decided that we have to go our own way.’
‘What the fuck?’ I say, moving towards them, wondering how Pete has convinced one of my best friends to abandon me – us – at this time, given that he’s never shown any sense of domination over her before.
‘We have to go,’ says Peregrina, reaching out and grabbing my hands. ‘We’re not safe for you.’ I stare at her, swapping my gaze between her and Pete, but they both look imploringly at me, eyes filled with sorrow and regret for endeavours not yet done. They can’t be serious.
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘We’re the last couple standing,’ says Pete. Evidently, he hasn’t cottoned on to Gavin-and-Frederik and thinks they’re friends. ‘You know it makes sense. You have Annie-and-Matt to help you but, well, we’re only going to cause problems for you. We’ll go off and make it our own way.’
‘There’s no way we would have lasted as long as this without you,’ says Peregrina. ‘You were the one that kept us together; the one who thought of us as a whole, rather than focusing on one other person, as we’ve all been doing. Le
t’s be honest, even Pete and I are just about each other, really.’
‘That’s not true,’ I shout. ‘You care!’
‘Yes, we do,’ says Peregrina. ‘We do care, and that’s why we need to go and save you. You don’t need us. We’re trouble as a twosome.’
‘Our minds are made up,’ says Pete. I look at Annie-and-Matt, Shell, and Gavin-and-Frederik, but they look back with tired eyes and don’t say anything. Peregrina shakes her hands free of my grip and moves over to Shell, giving her a hug which she reciprocates numbly. Pete claps me on the shoulder, pushes his broken glasses up his nose and then takes Peregrina’s hand as she reaches his side again.
‘Good luck,’ I say, my voice dry and hoarse.
‘And you,’ says Peregrina, with the same smile she gave me many years ago when we first met in the nurse’s office at school. With nothing else to say, they turn and walk away down Cromwell Road to meet their fate. I hope they make it.
I shake the tears from my eyes and turn towards the stairs. As I reach the top of them, I feel a hand on my shoulder, put there for comfort, but I shrug it off and begin the descent, the smell of failed surgery already rising up to greet me.
Thirty-Two
Victoria-and-Albert
The tunnel, draughty and prone to echo but always somewhat grand in an understated way, is littered with bodies in various states of distress, decay and detachment. Most appear to have been merged to some degree or another, with varying levels of success, and the smell is almost intolerable, causing me to retch a few times.
Annie-and-Matt leads the way to the V&A’s underground entrance, stepping over the bodies, and the rats, mice and rooks that are tucking in to an unexpected feast. Under a poster for a film that I’ll never see, a husky is gorging on the remains of a man’s stomach, ignoring us as we pass.
The Third Wheel Page 19