Peregrina shrieks as Pete whirls out, lifts her up and slings her across his broad shoulders. Her hand darts to her face to secure her glasses and suddenly she’s being jostled as Pete breaks into a run with her tossed like a rug over his shoulder.
‘I see one!’ she shouts, and Pete seems to speed up, panting heavily but not responding. The alien heads turn and see them getting further away, but there’s no colour and no grey cloud. It’s alone and unarmed. It still decides that there’s a chance though and breaks into a run, chasing them down. Peregrina screams, and Pete correctly interprets it to move quicker, but he’s tired and underfed and begins to slow down.
The pale blue faces of the alien get nearer and Peregrina is suddenly jerked to the left as Pete disappears down a narrow alley. He drops her onto her feet, which she gingerly holds her weight on, before turning back to see if their pursuer approaches.
Silently, the alien arrives at the alley and stops. Its faces are unreadable, the feather-like fronds on its heads curling up and down quickly. Apparently undeterred by Pete’s size and the lack of weaponry among them all, it moves in closer and Pete raises his fists.
The alien is quicker and lands a sticky fist on Pete’s chin. It’s not as solid as he feared, but it feels unnatural enough to confuse and disarm Pete for a moment. He staggers back into the wall, revealing Peregrina, who lunges out and aims a punch at one of the heads. She misses and catches it in the neck instead, but her engagement ring seems to have stung it, and it too steps back a little. She aims another punch, but as she steps forward, she lands hard on her twisted ankle and gasps in pain, missing entirely. The alien looks at the pair again, fists still raised, before sending out a stream of greens the colour of lawns, bottles and nauseous sailors. It departs, going back the way it had come.
Pete, still panting, looks at Peregrina and grins.
‘So that’s a vicar and an alien you’ve punched this week,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘Anything else you want to check off the bucket list while you’re here?’ Peregrina punches him in the arm too.
By the time they arrive at Madame Tussauds, it’s very dark, with only the occasional street lamp still working. The exhibition’s door sits open, and the lights inside are still on – another building running on a generator.
Peregrina limps over the threshold, with Pete just behind her, ensuring that no one is watching them enter. If they are, he can’t see them. Inside appears to be deserted. There are a couple of waxworks in the entrance hall; Alfred Hitchcock is tipped back against the wall, and laying at his feet is one that was possibly a member of One Direction, but he’s had his face stamped on.
‘It’s not quite what I imagined,’ says Peregrina, easing herself down onto a velvet-topped bench, looking at a series of figures lined up like fallen dominoes against the wall. Several bodies seem to have already been damaged, and among the melted, crushed wax there are remains of very real figures.
‘How’s your foot?’ asks Pete, kneeling in front of her to look at it. With care she tugs off her shoe and rotates her ankle a little.
‘It’ll be OK,’ she says. ‘Just feels a bit sore. Nothing broken – I’ll live.’ She realises what she’s said, hiccups back an uncomfortable giggle and immediately changes the subject. ‘Come on, let’s have a look around.’ Pete helps her get her shoe back on and helps her up, supporting her as they walk through the abandoned rooms, eking out the final joy of seeing those the world considered worthy once upon a time, now standing over drying pools of blood and congealing lumps of flesh.
‘I wonder if any of this lot survived,’ says Pete, waving generally over a vista of pop stars.
‘Probably in bunkers set aside for the rich and famous that us plebs would never even imagine,’ says Peregrina. ‘Half of London is underground – what’s a few more tunnels?’
A clatter from another room sets them both on edge, and the alien appears at the top of a flight of stairs just as they turn to look at it. Instinctively, they each reach out and grab the other’s hand. There’s no hiding. This is it.
The alien stares with its expressionless faces and pulls a silver box from the belt of its uniform. However, it can’t seem to focus on them, and is looking around at the large number of figures in front of it – Peregrina wonders if it can’t believe it’s luck. A whole room full of people ready to be combined and not moving. It presses a button on the box and the grey cloud of nanobots encircles the waxworks of Posh and Becks, but after a couple of laps realises that there’s nothing to work with and disperses, having a go at models of Colin Firth and Kate Winslet, who remain nonplussed about the whole situation.
‘They’ll run out of wax ones soon,’ says Peregrina. ‘We need to split up.’ Pete instead grips her hand harder and pulls her towards him, wrapping her in his arms.
‘It took me nearly forty years to find you – like hell I’m going to let go now.’
They’re still holding one another tight when they feel the first nanobots begin their macabre surgery.
The Third Wheel Page 23