Escape

by Jeff Povey

  GOOD TIDALS WE BRING

  Billie takes a run and leaps into the air, still gripping Other-Johnson like he’s her favourite rag doll. She bounds along the river walkway, heading past the bridge that Non-Ape uprooted barely more than a minute ago.

  The pleasure boat lurches violently; it’s going to flip onto its side at any moment. We slip and slide and all three of us, Johnson, the dying Ape and me, go crashing against the far railing.

  ‘Agh!’ The Ape groans mightily when my feet smack into his gutted stomach.

  Johnson, in his souped-up body, drags himself to his feet, but even as he does he spots something that freezes him. ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘What? What is it?’ I try to grasp the rail and Johnson grabs my elbow, easily hefting me to a precarious standing position. I look back down the river. I think it’s to the east, heading towards the coast, but that doesn’t really matter.

  Because coming our way is a tidal wave.

  Yes.

  A tidal wave.

  In London.

  This world truly despises me and its favourite method of torture is using the elements against me. It’s already burned me in a fire. It tried to freeze me in icy waters, and then conjured a snowstorm. I thought I’d pretty much beaten everything it could conjure up for me, but it’s left me a leaving present. A nice big wet kiss goodbye.

  The wave is coming fast, growing taller and speedier by the second. I have no defence, no ideas, no escape plan.

  ‘Johnson,’ I whisper.

  Now he’s in the body of Other-Johnson he might survive, but the Ape won’t. He won’t be able to swim in his condition and I make a silent pact to not let him die alone.

  The tidal wave rises higher and higher, gathering momentum.

  ‘Johnson,’ I whisper again. ‘Listen to me. Get to shore. Find the Moth or even my dad and the other Rev. Then get home. Get home and be safe.’

  ‘I can jump you both off the boat.’

  ‘There’s no time.’ I glance at the Ape. ‘And I can’t leave him.’

  The tidal wave is enormous by now, rising level with the buildings, both ancient and new, that line the river.

  Johnson slips his hand into mine. He’s not going anywhere either. ‘Like I’d leave you.’

  The enormous wave is going to smash down on us so I reach for the fallen Ape’s mighty paw and, even though it’s slippery with his blood, I cling on as we make a tiny human chain in the face of a thousand tons of Thames.

  ‘Dazza,’ I whisper to him, my eyes meeting his. This could be the last word I ever say to him.

  The river rises like a giant’s fist, curling to crush us.

  The boat lurches.

  And then rises sharply and steeply into the air, sending us tumbling back across the deck, sliding and skidding towards the bankside railings.

  A mighty bellow accompanies the violent lurch as the boat floats in the air. That bellow is something I grew to fear before truly appreciating it for its sonorous beauty.

  It’s the bellow of the Non-Ape.

  The boat rises higher as the Non-Ape starts pushing it towards the bank.

  The tidal wave closes faster and faster.

  Non-Ape’s mighty legs and arms propel the boat through the ever-shallowing waters as we’re sucked towards the tidal wave which is now only fifty metres away now.

  But the riverbank is closer.

  Non-Ape bellows again.

  The tidal wave closes on us, casting an enormous shadow as it blocks out the sky.

  The boat is within metres of the bank.

  ‘C’mon, Ape!’ Johnson adds his bellow to Non-Ape’s.

  ‘Throw it!’ I yell. ‘Throw the boat!’ Nop-Ape will survive any tidal wave because he’s stronger than an ocean.

  ‘Throw it!’ Johnson yells.

  The boat rises higher and then arcs backwards as Non-Ape’s strength defies the wildest imagination and he gets ready to hurl the boat out of the Thames. I swear I can feel his colossal muscles bunching through the timbers of the broken pleasure cruiser.

  He’s going to do it. Just like every Ape in every universe, he will save the day, because that is what every single one of them was born to do.

  But then the tidal wave hits, pounding down on us before Non-Ape gets the chance to launch us.

  The Thames smashes into the boat and wipes us out in a stained brown hurricane of water and abandoned shopping trolleys. Then, in one of this world’s crueller mocking coincidences, I see Carrie’s dead body coming straight for me.

  It’s impossible. Carrie’s body cannot possibly have found its way back to me. But then in this world the impossible has become the norm.

  SIGNED UP, SHIPPED OFF

  We live about half a mile from the school so I could have walked it in ten minutes, but New-Mum and Dad insisted on driving me.

  ‘Soon be there,’ my dad said from the back seat.

  ‘Two minutes,’ New-Mum smiled.

  She drove straight into the school grounds; usually that’s strictly forbidden, at least it is in my world, only teachers and official visitors can drive into the school. But New-Mum is keen to get me as close as she possibly can so there’s no chance of me not showing up for lessons.

  ‘We’re here,’ New-Mum says in her gentle, soothing voice. ‘And I know you’ll love it.’

  ‘Love it,’ Dad echoes.

  ‘I hate school,’ I tell them. But they aren’t listening to anything I say.

  ‘Only thing you need to think about—’

  ‘—and it’s a good thought—’

  ‘—is that we’re all back together.’ New-Mum pats my knee.

  Dad rubs my shoulder. ‘That’s all that matters,’ he tells me.

  It’s almost as if they have to touch me to make sure I’m real. That I’m actually there.

  ‘And listen, any problems call us,’ he adds.

  ‘We’ ll be here in seconds,’ New-Mum says as she offers me a brand-new mobile phone. It’s still boxed though the seal has been broken.

  ‘Open it then,’ Dad says.

  They’re very excited. It’s the only state they’ve been in since he brought me here. Pure unadulterated excitement for two whole weeks now.

  I’m not worried about the passing of time because the Moth had a theory that time happens differently on different earths. So even if it is two weeks here it can still be a microsecond in my real world. I could go back there and arrive just a moment after I left.

  My real world. Going home. It sounds so good I think it twice.

  ‘We already opened it and charged the phone for you.’ New-Mum’s smile is very similar to my real mum’s smile. The deeply protective and loving, yet perennially lost, mother who I’m determined to see again. New-Mum is much more fragile emotionally, more of a deep brittle than anything. She might look the same, but she isn’t and, more than anything, she is not someone I can see myself growing to love. So I’m going to wait until I can find an opening, a gap in the fabric of what’s real and what’s false. Soon as I do, I’m waltzing straight through it, no looking back, no getting hung up on a fragile mother whose life has just been made complete again. New-Mum is not my worry. So if I have to play games, to behave like everything is hunky-dory, I’ll do it to buy myself time until I can figure out exactly where I am and how to escape.

  Back in the empty world the liar had told me that he would fix everything. And I fought tooth and nail to keep him safe while he did that. We all did, human and doppelganger. We battled with everything we had just so he could send us all back to where we came from. He yelled at us to keep him alive while he opened the proper portal. Keep me safe, he shouted, I can fix this. I can fix it all. So the Apes found themselves in their greatest ever battle and they fought and fought. Our doppelgangers buried their grudges against us and joined the war, and even if some did fall, their healer, Another-Billie, was on hand to reanimate them. Although they were being overwhelmed, no one ever gave up hope. The threat came from everywhere, surging for
th with only one intention. To stop us, to cut us down. But the battle distracted us and we were all far too slow to see what my father was really doing.

  He had no intention of sending anyone but him and me home. All he ever wanted from the others for was to keep us safe. He whisked me away at the worst possible moment. They were dying in front of my eyes and he stole me away before I could stop him.

  I’ll never forgive him for that.

  Never.

  ONE MUDDY RIVER TO CROSS

  I’m underwater and I don’t know if I’m upside down or which way the surface is. I’m spinning in an endless cycle as if gravity no longer exists.

  I also have company.

  Carrie’s body has become entwined with mine. Her dead arms have bent and locked round my body. Her face is centimetres from mine and we are dancing underwater, twisting and turning, locked in an embrace like old friends reunited. But there’s something about this embrace that tells me Carrie would like to hang onto me so she can drag me down to the depths. Even in death she wants to kill me.

  I struggle to break free of her grip because I am not going to drown. Not today or any other day. I have a few seconds of air left and at some stage I’m going to work out where the surface is and I’m going to kick like a mule for it.

  The last five or so days have hardened me to everything. Even while I’m tumbling at fifty miles an hour as the tidal wave hurls me this way and that, I will not let it defeat me. I have a home somewhere; I have friends and family and a life. I can’t disappear; I can’t not be. This is not how my story is going to end.

  I shove hard at Carrie, desperate to untangle myself, when her eyes spring open.

  It takes my breath away – literally – as I open my mouth in astonishment and swallow a gutful of Thames. Her eyes are dark brown and very much alive.

  And now I remember. This isn’t really Carrie. She’s inside Evil-GG’s body, and Evil-GG is inside hers because Other-Johnson switched them after Evil-GG attacked us in a five-star luxury hotel.

  How he has survived inside Carrie’s dead, eviscerated body I don’t know. He was the one who cut her to ribbons in the first place. He was also the one who had a hotel crash down on him not long afterwards. But when Non-Ape was clearing away the rubble of the demolished hotel he accidentally grabbed Carrie’s body and tossed it into the river.

  The eyes stare at me with intensity. He can’t speak, he can’t move, but it’s definitely Evil-GG.

  Evil-GG was the worst of the doppelgangers by a mile. An outrageously bitchy killer who mocked and belittled us at every turn. Whip smart and more deadly than the rest of the doppels combined.

  Despite those awful staring brown eyes I force myself to grab for Carrie’s body and hold on as tight as I can. I can right this wrong, I think. I can hunt down Other-Johnson, rope Another-Billie in and hold some sort of healing-stroke-mind-swapping afternoon tea party to bring Carrie back. I can find GG somehow, the Moth as well. I can do all of these things as long as I don’t drown. That’s the one thing I mustn’t do.

  I cling on to Carrie’s stick-thin body and can’t get any bearing on what’s up or down and my lungs are already bursting. I read that when the Japanese tsunami hit, a survivor said he’d remembered reading that if you’re ever trapped in a water-related disaster that you usually surface twice, but if you go under a third time you never come back up. It’s a sort of universal law. Three strikes and you’re in for a watery grave. I haven’t been to the surface once so I’m pretty sure I have two lives left. See, there’s always a positive, you just need to look for it.

  I have no idea where Johnson has gone, or the Apes, for that matter. I don’t know if Non-Ape could have withstood the force of the tidal wave, but he seems to have a massive lung capacity because he was underwater for a long time while we were all on the boat. So I’m hoping he could probably ride this wave out and then stomp his way to the riverbank.

  Johnson might survive because he’s stronger now in his alien body; he could have the power to break to the surface and the speed to avoid being hit by debris. The wave will eventually peter out, so if he can just find a way.

  But the Ape . . .

  Suddenly my spinning, tumbling progress is halted by a sickening thud as Carrie and I slam into an ancient thick stone leg that holds up one of London’s many bridges. The impact is back-breaking but I’m cushioned by Carrie as she hits the bridge first. I follow and headbutt her so hard I almost knock myself out. My teeth jar and my neck is whiplashed back and forth as I give her the Glasgow kiss to end all Glasgow kisses. The torrent tries to drag us away from the bridge, but this is my one chance and I grab for anything that I can hold on to. I can’t see much beyond Carrie, but I find a metal loop, a rusted ring of steel embedded in the leg of the bridge, and I quickly slide my fingers in and hold on as tight as I possibly can. But I have no air left and begin to convulse. I haven’t ever felt pain like this, it’s agony and bleeds panic throughout me. I’m going to drown.

  I am at minus air now and every bit of me wants to open my mouth and breathe, even knowing that I’ll only breathe in water, the urge to try and gasp is overwhelming. Black spots are appearing in front of my eyes, but I locate another steel ring, higher this time and wrench myself upwards. Carrie comes with me. I could easily be heading downwards, but there’s a third ring and I heave on that as the tidal wave tears at me. Carrie is clinging on in her cruel embrace of skinny, dangerously pointed limbs, and I thank God it’s not the meaty Ape I have to carry with me.

  But then I hate God in the next non-breath because I so dearly wish it was him.

  Another rung and more black spots dot in and out of my vision; now they’re mingling and fusing, turning into small blinding clouds like oxygen-starved blinkers. How do you syphon oxygen from water? What if I purse my lips and suck the water through my teeth? Would that separate the molecules? Everything is turning dizzy, my brain is demanding that I take a breath and my lungs are screaming at me to do the same. Agony and panic are filling my brain, blotting out sanity and logic. They’re yelling at me, over and over.

  Another steel ring, another crash and the swell of thunderous river water smashes us hard against the leg of the bridge again. But Carrie is my saviour, my impact-cushioning saviour, whose brittle bones I’m probably snapping with each collision. Over and over she is crushed between me and the thick stone leg. A surge of river wrenches my hand away and for a second we’re lost again, swirling away from the great stone leg, and I can only see blackness. I flail out a desperately weak arm and somehow grab the steel ring again. I heave with all I’ve got. I’m blacking out and I desperately, desperately want to breathe. I don’t care that it’s water, I just want something, anything, to inhale.

  The waves keeping coming, following the worst of the tidal wave with their snide little reminders, crashing into us, but now lifting us . . .

  We rise sharply and I find another steel rung. They’re not rings, they’re a form of ancient ladder, I think. We slip down again, torn away by the thundering, swollen river. My lungs are dead; they are preparing for their funeral.

  I snake a hand out.

  I can’t find the rung.

  Where the hell is it?

  I’ve got to try and breathe. Just let me have one tiny breath. Everything is black now, inside and out. I can’t find the rung, and I don’t even know if we were being lifted. I just can’t tell. Maybe I’ve dragged us to the depths because I can’t see a thing. A darkness is reaching round us, urging me to take that breath because, yes, of course it’s entirely feasible to syphon oxygen from water through your gritted teeth.

  I take a breath and fill my throat and lungs with water. I spasm. It’s like I’ve been knifed in the chest and I try to close my mouth, but the knifing pain makes me gag and I start to choke to death on river water. Carrie’s eyes bore into mine and even in the darkness I’m pretty sure there’s a vindictive smirk behind them.

  I’m putting the Rev in revenge, she seems to be saying.

>   A wave hits again, harder than the ones before, but it squeezes us like a giant spot and we squirt upwards . . .

  . . . and hit the surface.

  London air is a different sort of air. I always think it must be some of the most used and abused air in the world. Millions of people breathing it in and out, at least in my real world. It’s usually a tired air, exhausted and limp and still, and laced with the dust of endless building and regeneration. But I suck it in now like it’s from the Garden of Eden. I gulp it. I eat it. I swallow it and then bite more great chunks of it. I’m panting while I dine on it. Feasting on it. No one has ever digested so much air in such a short space of time.

  I clutch on to the iron rung, not steel. How could it be steel if it’s rusted. The black spots are turning into crows; they’re spreading their wings and flying away. My vision is clearing as I cling on with everything I’ve got. Carrie continues to stare at me. I can’t help myself and I am so elated I lean forward and kiss her hard on the cheek.

  Another wave slams into us. But I’m better than that wave. I’m tougher and I’m stronger and I hold firm. The knifing pains are still making me want to curl up, but that’s not going to happen, not now, not ever.

  Waves continue to hit us, some threatening to send us under again, some pouring over our heads and thumping down on us as hard as they can.

  That iron rung is cold and slippery, but nothing is going to break my grip.

  Each time a wave hits, I ride it out and then take the chance to look for any sign of the broken pleasure boat.

  The Thames has risen so high I no longer recognise London. Familiar streets and landmarks have been submerged in the torrent. The taller buildings look shorter, as if the architects started halfway up and forgot about lobbies and entrances. Some buildings have cracked and broken and then fallen under the thunderous impact. Weirdly enough HMS Belfast is now on land, having been thrown on to what’s left of the Strand, and is now wedged into the side of a modern office building.

  But as for humans?