Escape

by Jeff Povey

  This is dedicated to my illustrious in-laws:

  Owen Stewart, Jayne Povey, Alastair Evitt and Helen Allen.

  It’s also for everyone who read the first two novels in the series.

  Thank you.

  THE TRUTH IS NOT OUT THERE

  There’s a liar staring at me. He’s sitting on a sofa in a small flat and a homemade ‘Welcome Home’ banner is hanging limply from the off-white ceiling above his head. Crumbs from a celebratory cake (caterpillar-shaped because apparently I had an unnatural desire to actually be a caterpillar when I was four) have been trodden into the ancient rug that slumps, exhausted, between the worn sofa and the small telly.

  I’m trying to ignore everything. From the sound of laughter in the room to the thoughts that are lighting a hundred small fires in my brain. How could it all have gone so spectacularly wrong?

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask the liar, but he doesn’t reply. He’s too busy laughing and smiling with the woman who sits next to him.

  It feels like they’ve been laughing ever since I arrived here thirteen days ago. They laugh and smile while I lurch from bedroom to lounge to kitchen and back again, restless and lost. They say that I should really start thinking about going back to school. I’ve had enough time off as it is. I think that’s supposed to be a joke, but then again they say everything as a joke because all they ever do is look at one another and start laughing all over again.

  How did this happen? I think. How did I let things turn out so badly?

  WORLDS OF HURT

  I am standing on a sinking pleasure boat in the middle of a perfect copy of the Thames and I have less than five seconds to reply to a question that I can’t possibly answer.

  ‘It’s your choice, Rev.’ My now-very-ex best friend Billie tells me. ‘You can try and save Johnson or the Ape. But you can’t save both. So make your wish.’

  I’m so stunned my mind goes completely blank before retreating instantly to somewhere safe and warm. For some reason it’s an image of me as a little kid making a Christmas Wish List. There I am writing on a piece of paper and slipping it under a tree decked with baubles, chocolates in foil and fairy lights.

  Dear Santa,

  I would like to not be here on this sinking boat. I would like instead to be back in my own world, on my own earth with all of my friends. I would like everyone to be alive again. Not scattered or lost or drowning or dead. I want Billie to be my best friend again and not be super-powered and superhumanly vindictive with it. I want my precious Ape not to be bleeding to death because a savage, snarling evil version of our friend, Moth, gutted him. I would like to go on a date with Johnson rather than having to make a decision that means I will never see him again. I would also like Other-Johnson and his band of merry doppelgangers to stop causing us so much trouble and go home, back to their own vicious copy of earth. I would like, in absolute truth, for everything to not have happened. And also I’d like some new foundation and more electric-pink hair dye. And maybe some vouchers for Top Shop.

  Yours sincerely,

  Reva Marsalis

  (Old before her time)

  I’ve lost track of days, but in the not-too-distant-past me and a group of misfit teenagers were transported from our world to this one. A world that looks, smells and feels exactly like our own but, to put it bluntly, just isn’t. It’s empty of all life, animal and human, but the buildings and the towns and everything else you can imagine are exactly the same as they are on our version of Earth. All thanks to a yet-to-be-explained flash of light during an after-school detention. After the shock of being transported here, I did momentarily wonder if this new world was a sort of paradise. Until seriously antisocial creatures turned up and tried to kill everyone they came across. Creatures that looked just like us, in truth were us, but with subtle differences, like having talons and steel teeth and powers that I would call super until you’re on the receiving end of them.

  Us being me, Rev, sixteen-year-old female of the electric-pink hair and questionable heroism; Billie, my former (given the turn of events) forever best friend; Carrie, the girl who has always hated me for no apparent reason (so definitely not someone I wanted to be stuck with in a world populated by just seven other people – excluding our doppels, of course); the Moth, a brainbox in a wheelchair who has surprised us all with his steely resolve; Darren aka, the Ape, the boy who has repeated school year after school year and in this empty world has become my fearless, hairy-backed protector; GG, gay, forever loyal and as ultra-heroic as he is fashion-conscious; Lucas, the very model of teenage perfection who didn’t survive very long in this world; and finally Johnson, the casual rebel who makes my heart thump.

  There are only three of us left now. Me, Johnson and the Ape. The Moth is nowhere to be found; Lucas is dead after hanging himself. Carrie was killed by one of our dopplegangers and GG fell off a speeding train so, even though we don’t know for sure, the likelihood is that he didn’t make it either. And Billie may be standing in front of me, but she’s not the Billie we all know, not now she’s mutated into something spectacularly cruel.

  The Ape is still trying to get to his feet, despite his laboured breathing and the death sweat pouring from him. He wants to keep fighting, because the big buffoon has no idea how to give up.

  ‘I got this.’ He pants the catchphrase I’ve come to love, as he slips and slides in his own blood.

  Billie wants to trade his life in return for Johnson eloping with her. She firmly believes that Johnson and she are star-crossed lovers after creating a reality where the two of them had been trapped for months together in this empty world. In her mind they had reached out to each other in their darkest, loneliest hours. She could even describe the romantic walks they went on, the raindrop that hit the back of her neck when they were sheltering from a rainstorm under a large oak tree. She didn’t know, at least I don’t think she did, that it was actually her newfound powers imagining what she wished to be true into reality. But she now blames me for tearing down her dream romance and smashing it to smithereens right in front of her. She has remembered that I also like Johnson and that has added to her anger at me. Basically she can no longer tell what’s real and what’s fantasy any more.

  ‘Who’s it going to be, Rev?’ Billie says. The sinking boat is going to drag us down into the murky brown depths of the river if I don’t make the biggest decision of my young and previously non-dramatic life soon.

  Johnson already told Billie that he’d stay with her in this empty world. He knew she would kill us all if he didn’t. But Billie wants to hear it from me. I have to let Johnson go and I have to say it to his face, breaking any and every connection I have with him.

  What makes it all the more insidious is that Billie knows which Johnson I want to be with. Thanks to the fact we’ve been faced with our dopplegangers from another universe, there are two Johnsons and both are standing on the deck of the sinking boat. They look the same, they sound the same, although Other-Johnson’s voice can sometimes be deeper and richer, especially when he’s got me fixed in his black-eyed gaze. They even dress the same, apart from the fact that Other-Johnson likes hats.

  It’s not Billie’s fault that this is happening. After being attacked by Lucas’s doppelganger, she was transformed into something half human, half talon and all mean. I know this is selling it a bit short, but to sum up, she isn’t quite herself any more.

  Billie points at the Ape who slips and slides on the ever-reddening deck. ‘The gorilla’s going to be extinct soon. Look at him,’ she says.

  ‘I’m coming, Rev,’ the Ape boasts, but his words are mumbled and faded.

  ‘Rev, pick the Ape,’ Johnson says. He’s standing beside Billie on the opposite side of the boat. Brown river water pours into the holed hull, pulling us down further and further
by the second.

  ‘You hear that, Rev? He’s giving you up,’ Other-Johnson whispers into my mind. This once doppelganger turned out to be more of a lover than a fighter and can talk to me telepathically. He can also swap people’s minds into different bodies and take control of anyone he likes. But since kissing me in the town square he’s been on our side, helping to keep us – well, me more than anyone – alive.

  He claims I’m like no other girl he’s ever met, including the version of me he’s currently dating from his version of earth. Confused yet? This is just for starters: it gets more complicated, trust me.

  ‘You have to save the Ape.’ Other-Johnson knows me better than I do myself. I can’t let the Ape die.

  I look across the deck and can tell Billie is becoming impatient; she wants an answer. The seconds are bleeding away almost as fast as the Ape’s life is.

  THIS IS NO LAUGHING ANTI-MATTER

  How did this happen?

  Over and over those four words keep galloping round my head, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but these horsemen are bringing Horror, Fear, Loathing and Panic instead of their infinitely more acceptable War, Pestilence and whatever the other two are.

  All I did was turn up for a school detention and somehow got flung into another universe alongside seven other kids.

  One minute I was in a classroom, enduring the mindless waste of time that is detention, then a white light came and swept us all to Neverland.

  That identical, empty world should have been Eden. Nirvana. El Dorado. Or is that a city of gold rather than a heavenly paradise? Whatever, it should have been beautiful rather than the vicious arena of death and mayhem that it turned out to be.

  Of course it wasn’t as empty as we first imagined; that would’ve been too much to ask. And I’m not just talking about the replicas of ourselves that we met. No. There was something far worse than them. Something that had the power to destroy everyone, friend and doppelganger alike.

  And still the liar and the woman can’t stop laughing. After twelve years apart, I can understand how their happiness has turned into a euphoric delirium. That every time they set eyes on one another – and on me, I suppose – they practically have to pinch themselves because surely it can’t possibly be real. We can’t be together again after all this time.

  ‘Hey, you,’ the liar says to the woman at breakfast.

  ‘Hey, you, right back,’ she says in return.

  The same words every morning.

  Every.

  Single.

  Morning.

  ‘Toast?’

  ‘You sit there, I’ll make it.’

  ‘How about we make it together?’

  Their voices blend into one another in a harmony of eyes meeting eyes and lips turning up at the corners.

  ‘I’ll get the butter, you get the bread.’

  Every.

  Single.

  Morning.

  ‘Reva, would you like some?’

  I always nod. I mean, I have to eat, right?

  ‘Toast for three coming right up.’ The woman opens the freezer compartment of the fridge because that’s where she keeps the bread. It’s rock hard and the cellophane wrapper has tiny icy crystals on it, but they melt with the warmth of her hand as she opens the bag and snaps out the frozen slices.

  ‘Toast and butter and jam,’ she says. ‘You can’t beat it.’

  Since I arrived here, I’ve been roaming from lounge to bedroom to bathroom, trying to shut out the sound of their undiluted happiness. I sometimes peer out of my small bedroom window that looks out on to a street of terraced houses. I have yet to see anyone who happens to wander past look remotely happy. But the handsome liar and his wife make up for that in spades. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m going stir-crazy stuck inside, but it feels like I could set my watch by the comings and goings of the people outside my window.

  I badly need to get out of this flat. I have to go and meet the life that’s waiting for me out there.

  You see this is it for me now. This is the end of my adventure. There’s no need to run any more.

  Because, according to the liar, he has brought me home.

  And that makes every tragic thing that happened to my friends all my fault.

  ANSWER THE *%!?^& QUESTION!

  Billie stares at the Ape. Her eyes, once a bright sparkling blue, have turned as black as Other-Johnson’s. In the doppelganger world everyone has coal-black eyes. Though I’d venture to say Billie’s are blacker than anyone’s. It’s like looking into the darkness of space, and they’re just as empty of humanity.

  ‘Time’s up, Rev.’

  She doesn’t bother looking at me when she says this. I don’t warrant a glance, just a barely heard whisper crossing the width of the boat as it keels to one side and slumps towards the river’s cold currents. I slip on the wet wooden deck and Other-Johnson snakes out a hand to help me keep my balance.

  ‘Make the call. End this.’ His hypnotic tones fill my head. ‘Let that Johnson go. You’ve still got me.’ I wish I knew why he likes me so much when he’s got the exact equivalent of me in the shape of Rev Two. He did try to explain it but I never know if anything he says is true, or just a manipulation.

  ‘Let him go and you’ll find out.’ Other-Johnson transmits, always reading my mind and always ready with an answer.

  There shouldn’t be a difference; both Johnsons are everything I could want: a rock star, a movie star, a star amongst all the stars. But in the same way that Rev Two isn’t the same as me for Other-Johnson, he’s not the Johnson I truly want either. As heroic and dark as he is, he’s just not the one.

  ‘I got this,’ the Ape pants as beads of sweat mingle with the gathering pool of his lost blood. Even he, the world-champion fighter of every world, can’t win this one. Billie is super strong and faster and more lethal than most in her souped-up, hybrid body.

  ‘You’ve got a Johnson, I’ve got a Johnson,’ Billie mocks. ‘We both win. We both get the boy. C’mon, Rev, they’re the same person.’ She absolutely knows they aren’t.

  I start to hope that Non-Ape, the bruising, monstrous version of the Ape, makes a miraculous appearance and saves us all. He’s somewhere at the bottom of the Thames, drowning or even drowned by now. Billie’s reality-bending power has conjured some unseen thing that has dragged Non-Ape to a watery grave.

  Or has it? Can anything be more powerful than the Non-Ape?

  ‘Can you read for Non-Ape?’ I transmit to Other-Johnson. ‘Can you hear his thoughts? Is he still alive?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he sighs after a moment.

  I refuse to believe it. Non-Ape and the Ape are the same. So he won’t give up, won’t ever be beaten; he knows only one way, and that’s to win. Any second now he will explode from the Thames and end this horror.

  Yes.

  Any second . . . now!

  Make that ten seconds.

  Twenty?

  Billie’s new metal teeth glint as a sliver of sun squeezes between the grey September clouds. ‘Johnson or the Ape?’ she says. ‘This is getting boring now.’

  I look at my dying Ape, the best friend I never knew I had. My greatest protector trying to hold what’s left of his life together just so he can launch one final attack.

  ‘I’m coming for you,’ he splutters at Billie.

  I look at Johnson and he knows what’s about to happen. I can see him tensing, ready to make the sacrifice and disappear with Billie. He hasn’t got any mind-reading telepathic powers, but even from where I’m standing, some five metres away, I know what he’s thinking.

  He’s telling me to forget him.

  SOMEWHERE THERE’S A PLACE FOR US (BUT THIS ISN’T IT)

  The man and the woman stop laughing for a moment and the apocalyptic migraine in my head eases a little. Until they look at one another and start laughing all over again.

  ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘I’d love one.’

  ‘Reva?’

  ‘Sure,’
I nod.

  ‘I’ll be two minutes,’ she says.

  ‘Make it one,’ he says with a loving glint in his eye.

  My head is going to explode. And I wish it would. I don’t want to have any memories or thoughts or feelings. I can’t shut my eyes at night because that’s when I see all of the very worst things that happened on the empty earth. Replaying over and over.

  The woman returns with a scratched and dented tray carrying three mugs and an open packet of Rich Tea biscuits.

  ‘Drink up,’ she smiles.

  ‘And eat up,’ the liar smiles, crunching into a Rich Tea.

  ‘Please,’ I try again. ‘I’m going crazy. You can’t do this to me. Neither of you can.’

  They stop laughing. Finally. And my mum and dad look at me.

  That’s right. The liar and the woman are my parents. At least they look like them.

  My mum gestures to the half-fallen down homecoming banner – the one she put up for me and my dad.

  She smiles. ‘Let me say it one more time because it sounds so good. Welcome home, Reva.’

  My dad continues to clutch my mum’s hand and they laugh again. More fires explode in my head as I fall to my knees, and let out all the melodramatic diva I can muster. ‘PLEASE STOP LAUGHING!’

  Don’t they care that all of my friends are dead?

  THE END OF THE END

  I brace myself.

  ‘Billie!’ I call out.

  I suck in a deep breath, but find I can’t look at Johnson. I just can’t do it. My voice is going to crack and I might even cry.

  The Ape is rising as best he can. ‘Dazza’s all over this,’ he coughs.

  ‘Want me to swap?’ Other-Johnson’s voice booms in my head and it catches me completely off guard.

  ‘With Johnson? You’d do that?’ I splutter out loud without thinking, so shocked by the suggestion.

  ‘This was meant to be a private conversation,’ he quickly transmits.