The Third Wheel

by Michael J. Ritchie

  Frederik stops to throw up, his sense of smell heightened by his lack of vision. He’s having a more difficult time of dealing with it than the rest of us.

  ‘Nearly there,’ promises the joint voice of our leader, navigating around an obese pair with bodies ripped asunder, clothes and flesh stained with dried blood and worse.

  ‘How many aliens were there? Do you know?’ I ask Annie-and-Matt, trying to take my mind off the walk. This used to be a quick walk, done in a minute or two, but now it requires stepping over (and in) the bodies of those who had retreated to one of the many underground parts of London in an attempt to save themselves.

  ‘Thousands, hundreds of thousands,’ says Matt’s head, although he doesn’t sound certain. ‘The spaceships appeared all over the planet. Each one contained hundreds of aliens. Maybe there were millions of them. We’ve seen some take off, seen others talking about their comrades who were leaving. Some have stayed to finish clearing up and, well, finish us off.’

  ‘They want our planet for their own,’ chimes in Annie’s head. ‘But they don’t want our stuff.’

  ‘They’ll take whatever metals they find precious,’ adds Matt. ‘But humans and our personal achievements? They don’t mean anything to them.’

  We reach the entrance tunnel to the V&A, and Annie-and-Matt leads us into the first corridor of the museum. Like in the Natural History Museum, emergency lighting is on in here, giving everything the pallid look of a man on life support. Although the room is devoid of dead bodies, some of the statues have been knocked over and smashed into fragments. A Persian rug that has seen better days is bunched up in a corner, as if someone had tried to steal it but thought better of it. Things take on a very different sense of worth when you’re hanging onto civilisation by a knife edge. I realise that I haven’t seen any money since we left my house.

  The thought of my house brings with it an image of Catsby and then the random thought, ‘Did I lock the front door?’ I don’t suppose it matters. I wonder if anyone thought it worth looting.

  I feel at my lowest ebb as Annie-and-Matt leads us through the long hall to the room of Japanese artefacts at the far end, which they tell us is the safest room in the building.

  Shell leads Frederik by the arm in front of me, and Gavin has dropped back to walk level with me, although there’s nothing he can say. I can tell that he wants to speak, but I don’t want to encourage him – while he’s a good friend, he’s occasionally inappropriate about when he chooses to dish out his words of wisdom.

  However, it is he who notices what the rest of us have failed to.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ says Shell, turning her head back to look at him.

  ‘Annie-and-Matt said that the upper doors were locked and guarded, which I took to mean that there are people in here worth guarding.’ He stops and raises his rifle again, pointing it at the entrance to the Japan room. The realisation hits Frederik first.

  ‘It’s a trap.’

  ‘We’re so sorry,’ says Annie-and-Matt, not actually sounding all that sorry, before blasting a jet of lurid lime green from their minds into ours and, as it turns out, into the minds of the four or five aliens – it’s hard to tell with those heads – in the Japan room, armed not only with their belt boxes of nanobots, but also samurai swords. They’ve realised that humans can be fought hand to hand, which means we’re in the shit, as there’s just one gun left between the four of us.

  I launch a punch at the nearest head, while Gavin fires his rifle indiscriminately, and by some rather large miracle he takes out two aliens in rapid succession, as well as a statue of some philanthropist or other, the remains of which topple down onto an enormous burial casket. Shell pilots Frederik back down to the entrance as quickly as she can, while Gavin and I launch our attacks. I grab the snapped-off marble arm of a Greek god and use it to club a couple more heads.

  Half a dozen more appear. Screaming, either in rage or terror, I can’t tell, Gavin charges at them, his slender frame somehow being enough to topple a few, one smashing a head open on a glass case, and he disappears off through the back of the exhibition hall. I elbow my way through the throng after him. Turning left, there’s a small flight of stairs leading up to more exhibits, and that’s where I spy Gavin. He’s halfway up a roped-off wooden staircase, moving backwards and waving a sword around at the alien who’s following him up.

  The staircase looks old and the sort of thing that Do Not Touch signs were made for. With a final swipe, the alien is tipped back and falls hard, the step cracking in half thanks to years of weathering, neglect and woodworm. The alien crashes to the marble floor below, where it stops moving. Gavin’s breathing is fast and heavy, as he realises he’s trapped halfway up an old staircase.

  ‘How did he get up there?’ says a voice behind me, and I turn to see Annie-and-Matt, looking up at my trapped friend. Their presence infuriates me and, without giving it much thought, I swipe around and jab their joined body in the gut with the fist of my stone arm. Matt’s head wheezes and Annie’s head gasps, and the body falls to the ground.

  ‘We’re sorry,’ they say in unison.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I snarl, whacking Matt’s head with the arm. It connects with his skull with a loud crack, his head bouncing off Annie’s. Unconscious, he tips forward and, unable to stop it, Annie screams as her head goes down too, smacking hard against the ground, blood spurting out from her nose and mouth. A tooth skips like a hockey puck across the floor and clatters against the wall.

  I will be the most loyal, loving friend on the planet if it’s reciprocated, but no matter how close you were to me or how many secrets we shared over the years and whatever depths of friendship we plumbed, if you hurt any of my other friends or betray my trust, my feelings about you can change in an instant.

  Annie’s still crying, but I can’t deal with that now. I’ve got to get Gavin down and there are still two aliens in sight, coming at me armed with what look like table legs. I swing the statue’s arm around again, but one of the aliens grabs it and yanks it from my grip. I punch out and the alien staggers back into his friend.

  ‘Dexter! Catch!’ Gavin shouts behind me, and I turn as he throws his sword in my direction. I yelp and decide not to try and catch it lest I slice my palm open on the blade, letting it clatter to the floor before picking it up and swiping it at my foes. It nicks one on the cheek and blue blood spurts out like a drinking fountain, but it’s not enough to hold it back, and we engage in sword-to-statuary combat for a moment, until I finally manage to jab forward once more and pierce its body in the spot a human heart would be. Whether it has a similar organ there, I don’t know, but it’s enough to create a bigger bleed and the alien topples over. The second stares blankly at his fallen comrade, then at me, before running away.

  ‘Gavin, try and jump down, I’ll catch you,’ I say, finally free for a moment to focus on the important things. Gavin sits down on the edge of his step and pushes himself forward. I drop the sword and stand beneath him, but the fall is higher than it looks, and so rather than landing in my arms, he instead lands boots-first on my chest, pushing me to the ground. We both roll and, aside from bruises, aren’t hurt any further.

  ‘Right, let’s get out of here,’ he says, helping me to my feet. I hand him back his sword and pick up my god’s arm and we make our way back to the Japan room. Except we don’t, because we’ve turned too soon and are in a room full of huge statues, with a large plaster replica of Michelangelo’s David in front of us.

  ‘Woah,’ I breathe. ‘That’s enormous.’

  ‘Not from this angle,’ chuckles Gavin, pointing up at the plaster genitals. I roll my eyes but laugh anyway. Laughter still seems the most foreign noise of all in this new world.

  Then we hear footsteps and, looking up, I see three aliens on the upper balcony. Two step up and over the wall, descending silently the way the first aliens disembarked from their ship a matter of days ago. It feels like years. The third, however, has
no such patience and instead simply leaps awkwardly, but instead of landing on us, hits David hard and the whole statue wobbles.

  While Gavin swipes at the two slow-descenders, I bash the third around the head as it slides down the statue’s enormous body and lands with an ungraceful thud on the floor. More blue goo, and we’re finally in the clear again. We run for the main entrance, more aliens appearing from who knows where. We sweep up Shell and Frederik, who are waiting in the atrium, and burst out of the front door and onto Cromwell Road.

  A flash of pink in front of us spooks me, but I realise that it’s not an alien message but a panicked flamingo, another escapee from the zoo. The aliens chase us out and we dive behind an abandoned car. A rainbow of colour pervades our vision again, lighting up the rapidly darkening sky.

  ‘They know where we are,’ says Frederik, ‘and they’re going to end us the easy way.’ However, that’s only Gavin-and-Frederik in trouble.

  There’s a bark and we turn to see a muddy dog, still golden furred beneath the crap, running towards us. It’s Oscar, Frederik’s guide dog, excited at seeing his masters again. We can’t stop him and he bounds towards us, closing in on Gavin who’s closest and leaping onto his lap, covering his face in rough licks. No one notices the grey cloud until it’s too late.

  I’d never given any thought to what would happen if a human got connected to an animal in this situation, but it turns out that the result – after forty or so seconds of tiny mechanical whirring, Shell and I looking on in horror and Frederik pretending that he can’t hear anything, and scrunching his eyes up tight anyway – is not pleasant.

  Oscar’s body remains mostly intact, standing on the remains of his master, but his head is discarded, replaced instead with Gavin’s. Patchy skin grafts show where the work was done. One of Gavin’s arms sticks out of Oscar’s flank like a special effect gone wrong, and we three remaining humans scramble up as Gavin-and-Oscar works out what has happened to it.

  With good reason, he’s not happy and indicates so with a furrowed brow. Gavin opens his mouth to speak but the words catch like a fish hook on the back of his throat, and instead he growls. He barks, and the effect is startling – humans should not make that noise.

  More in fear than anger, he leaps for me, but I manage to turn in time and knock him sideways with my elbow, causing him to yelp. He rights himself while we break into a run, but he’s fast behind us, blood trickling from his wounds that haven’t been fixed quite as neatly as first appearances suggest.

  Frederik seems to have an almost psychic ability to run without crashing into anything, but Shell is keeping a close pace behind him, leaving me to drag up the rear, now unarmed, being chased by one of my best friends and his dog. The intelligent spark in his eyes is gone, replaced by something animalistic and cruel. I don’t know how to stop him from chasing us. Will the bodies reject one another and collapse of their own accord? I can’t take that risk.

  I jerk to a halt and raise my foot, kicking Gavin squarely in the face. His nose explodes in a mess of blood and snot – about time that happened to someone other than me – and he whimpers again, falling back. He slows to a meander, before collapsing on the tarmac. Sacrificing sensible behaviour for sentimentality, I approach him.

  He lies still, looking shocked and dejected. His eyes aren’t cruel, they’re scared. I reach out a hand and stroke his fur. It’s probably the weirdest thing that has happened to me thus far, and we’re getting into some pretty stiff competition in those stakes already. Frederik joins me, having been led by Shell, and kneels beside his boyfriend-dog. Gavin looks at him and gently extends his tongue to lick Frederik’s hand, the only affection he can give. He whines and looks at me with his wet eyes, as if asking why I did it.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, tears brimming at my eyes, shocked at having lost another friend. ‘I really am, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do any more.’ It feels more real than ever. Gavin emits a weak little howl and closes his eyes. Frederik mutters words of love over and over again, holding himself back from reaching down and hugging the hybrid.

  ‘I’ll look after Frederik,’ I say. I wipe my eyes with my palms. ‘I’m pleased I got to see you one last time.’ Gavin snuffles again, and a combination of shock and goodness knows what else takes its toll. He dies.

  There is no time to grieve.

  I stand up and realise one of the aliens has hold of Shell. Two more are coming for us, grabbing our hands and holding them behind our backs. I have no energy to resist.

  ‘They know that we’re incompatible for their machines,’ says Frederik, his voice dulled by events that he couldn’t see but didn’t need explaining to him. I wonder if he forgives me. ‘They’re taking us away. We’re prisoners.’

  We are marched through the streets of London, the aliens not even bothering to restrain us – where would we run? Each of us is silent, alone with our thoughts, crying tears for the lost and the fallen.

  Thirty-Three

  The Tower

  The Tower of London is lit up with artificial lighting; small orbs of pure brilliant light hover about twenty feet above us. There are four or five, and they light the courtyard up like the floodlights at Wembley. The three of us have been standing at the end of a line of people and, according to Frederik’s translation – the aliens can’t detect sound, or if they do, they don’t mind him speaking – we are waiting for more prisoners to join us.

  Frederik seems cold and detached, and selfishly I worry if it’s because I, to all intents and purposes, just killed Gavin, but I imagine it’s more to do with the fact that Gavin is dead, we are being held captive by a race from another world, and things are bleaker than the promise of another Hollywood remake.

  The walk through London’s streets was slow and depressing. We saw other humans though. The adults, I guess, were the few remaining singletons of the city, but each was being led by an alien or two in the same direction as us. Worse to see were the children. With no one left to combine, the planet is now awash with orphans and the aliens had managed to corral them into behaving by tying thick strands of a purple, rope-like material around a limb of each child and carting them off to who knows where. We see three groups like this, each of sixty or more children, wailing and crying, from little toddlers who keep tripping up to stony-faced young teenagers. If they do survive, at least puberty will be a cakewalk compared to this. They look like refugees fleeing a war zone, and in many respects that’s exactly what they are, but it’s one thing to see dirty, weeping children on the news and quite another to see them enchained in reality.

  There are a hundred or so of us lined up in the castle’s grounds, some sobbing openly, some looking stoic and one even looking like he’s fed up and waiting for his train. Other small groups keep arriving, and, weirdly, I’ve never felt so much like I belonged. These are all the single people in London – for all that’s going on, I don’t feel like the only single person left any more. Not that any of that matters now – we can be but a short time away from death.

  From the White Tower, more aliens lead more humans and among them I see a face that I had never expected to see again. Priti has survived, and is being led by an alien towards us in the small crowd. The left side of her face has been hit hard, plummy purple mixing into her dark skin, and she looks down at her feet. I call out her name, perhaps foolishly, but neither the aliens nor Priti react. I wonder what happened to Art.

  And then I see him too, led by a different alien further back in the crowd. His hair and beard are out of control, having had no maintenance or product on them for a few days, and he looks scruffier than I’ve ever seen him. While Priti looks upset, his face is one of defiant anger, eyes staring forward as if seeing nothing. On top of everything else that already feels unreal, this feels even more so. How have they managed to survive?

  Along with the other survivors, they are lined up with us until we form a rough rectangle, line after line representing the battered, worn-down remnants of humanity. Every few minute
s an alien brings another two or three people over and they obey without complaint. If we’re counting heads, the aliens outnumber us two to one. Occasional flashes of colour flicker across my eyes as I stand between Shell and Frederik.

  A couple of people near the front shuffle and one reaches out to grab her neighbour, either for security, or to feel like she’s not alone and dreaming this. The aliens are on her within seconds, bashing her hard around the head with a fist. They stand her straight again, a couple of feet from the man she’d reached out for. He doesn’t move a muscle. The woman cries, louder than the other people here who are sniffing and sobbing.

  We are powerless. No one is going to get out of this alive. The aliens keep us standing like privates on parade, some of them stationary around us, others circling the ranks, holding guns they’ve stolen from humans, spitting out coloured flecks of communication and casting their narrow eyes over us, as if daring another one of us to try and move. No one is apparently that stupid.

  I, however, am stupid enough to try and speak to Frederik, given that the aliens haven’t reacted to any other audio signals as of yet.

  ‘What are they saying?’ I mutter out the corner of my mouth, like a drunk in a betting shop giving a bad tip to a gullible novice. Frederik doesn’t respond for a moment, his eyes fixated on the ground, and I wonder if he’s heard me. I go to risk a second try, but he gets there first.

  ‘They have deemed us incompatible with one another,’ he says, the words almost imperceptible, like the final line of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ that everyone forgets on karaoke nights. ‘I think they’re waiting for instructions about what to do with us.’

  ‘Kill us?’ I breathe.

  ‘Probably,’ he says. The single word falls like a stone in dirt.