by Jeff Povey
‘Rev thinks she’s found the Moth,’ Johnson tells him.
‘I don’t see him,’ Non-Ape says.
‘He’s in her head,’ Johnson explains, and I already know what’s about to happen.
‘In her head?’ Non-Ape sniggers.
‘That’s a big head,’ the Ape adds sniggering as well.
‘Or a small Moth.’ Non-Ape laughs.
The Ape raps his knuckles on my forehead. ‘Hey, Moth! Hey! You in there?’
Non-Ape is laughing so hard the Ferrari is shuddering.
‘You need to go and pick up Carrie,’ I tell him. ‘Again.’
‘So you can put her in your head?’ the Ape laughs.
‘That’s a big head!’ Non-Ape climbs down from the roof of the Ferrari.
‘Who else you got in there?’ the Ape asks.
Johnson and I sit for a good minute while the Apes do big head jokes until they decide I’ve got the rest of the world in there.
‘That’s where they’ve all gone,’ the Ape decides. ‘They’re all in your head. The whole world.’
Non-Ape now has his hands on his knees and I swear he’s crying with laughter, his huge body shaking so hard the tunnel is rumbling.
‘Go and get Carrie!’ I snap at him.
Non-Ape straightens and tries to pull himself together, wiping his teary eyes with his huge knuckles. It takes him a few moments until he manages to collect himself. But for some reason the rumbling in the tunnel continues.
And grows louder.
Non-Ape sets off to collect Carrie.
The Ape scans the road, craning his great neck past the steering wheel. ‘Is that him?’ he asks.
‘Who?’ I squint.
‘Up ahead.’ The Ape points to a lone figure standing at the exit to the tunnel. ‘Is that the Moth?’
The figure stands like a statue but I already know who it is. This world is on constant repeat. We’re about to play out another mutated echo of what has come before.
‘Is that . . . ?’ Johnson asks.
‘Yeah,’ I nod. ‘It’s Non-Lucas. And I don’t quite think he’s dead any more.’
Up ahead and standing at the exit to the mile-long tunnel is a shimmering, human-shaped blur. The Ape is already instinctively tensing. He’s not scared or worried, but I can feel him tightening as his fighting instincts take over. I’ve seen it happen over and over; he turns into a Mensa candidate the minute there’s trouble, weighing all the angles at light speed, scanning for weapons while working out how he’s going to smash whatever’s coming his way. And all of it happens in the blink of an eye. The boy’s a genius when it comes to war. And luckily for us his doppleganger BFF who returns with the eternally broken Carrie is cut from the same cloth.
We’re a hundred metres from the blur, but I absolutely know who – and what – it is. Even if he is moving inhumanly fast while standing still, if that makes any sense. Which it doesn’t. He’s moving but he’s not moving.
‘I thought he was dead.’ Johnson shifts in his seat to get a better look. As he does the blur stops blurring. It settles and achieves a complete stillness. It’s definitely Lucas. Their Lucas, complete with claws and skin that turns into armour. ‘How can he be alive?’ Johnson asks.
‘Soon won’t be.’ The Ape revs the engine hard and the Formula One roar echoes down the sodium-lit tunnel. It’s now night outside, but inside the tunnel it’s as bright as day.
I place my cut and bloody hand on the Ape’s thick hairy wrist. ‘We were going to collect him, alive or dead. It’s not fair to leave him stranded here. So let me go talk to him.’
The Ape looks at me and for once he studies me, the few cogs in his brain reaching for something profound, and he nods. And then he touches my hand with his stubby finger.
‘Healed!’
The car shudders as Non-Ape bellows. His eyes are on Lucas as he raises a huge meaty paw.
‘Luke!’ he cries. ‘Hey Luke!’
Non-Lucas doesn’t move. He stands like a statue, just like he did when we first encountered him. The stand-off is almost identical to our previous meeting in this very tunnel. The resonances keep on coming in this world. Ripples of re-happenings, if there is such a word. The same thing, over and over, only slightly twisted and different. And usually deadly. He starts to blur again, moving so fast on the spot that he’s like a shimmer on a hot road.
Non-Ape hesitates. ‘Where’d he go?’ he asks.
‘He’s still there,’ I tell him. Then I try my best to turn to Johnson in the cramped confines of the low-slung sports car. ‘You killed him. I mean . . . He thinks you killed him; it was the other Johnson, but he might not understand that. So we need to get out there and explain.’
‘That’ll work,’ Johnson says wryly. ‘If he thinks I killed him, then he’ll definitely want to listen to me.’
‘But the good thing is he’s alive, so Other-Johnson didn’t get him properly. Maybe he’ll turn a blind eye.’
‘And maybe he’ll take us for tea and cake,’ Johnson says.
Non-Lucas was the first doppelganger to attack us but to be fair that was in self-defence. He was anxious and afraid, couldn’t find his friends and didn’t know who we were, even though we looked like the people he knew. The Ape didn’t help matters by immediately trying to kill him. Non-Lucas has a hair trigger, a fuse so short it isn’t a fuse. He does everything at great speed and his body can cloak itself in some sort of rubbery, oily black armour. I haven’t seen him turn into a blur before, but somehow or other he has attained a scary new level of velocity.
‘Hey!’ Non-Ape waves his arm again. ‘Luke!’
Non-Ape’s voice almost breaks the sound barrier with its echoing boom, magnified tenfold by the tunnel.
But as the echo dies away the rumble continues to grow louder and louder behind us . . . There is definitely something approaching.
‘Brace yourselves,’ Johnson tells us. ‘It’s coming.’ He’s learned to know danger when he sees it. Just like we all do. ‘Ape, floor it.’
‘Hey!’ Non-Ape bellows again at the blur. ‘Luke!’
I’ve learned by now that Non-Ape will say one thing over and over until he gets a response. Up ahead the blur moves. It goes so fast we barely see it travel fifty metres towards us in the blink of an eye, as if he’s passed through a wormhole in time. Non-Lucas comes to a stop, but remains a shimmering blur.
‘Hey!’ Non-Ape waves his great arm again.
The Ape revs the engine over and over; the deep throaty roar reverberates.
The tunnel lights flicker on and off, throwing dark shadows one moment and blinding us with a full-on glare the next. Non-Ape has to shield his eyes. A ripple runs from one of my shoulders to the other. Then it comes back again, a slow shiver. A very gentle alarm. But one that is silently screaming at me.
The Ape’s eyes find the rear-view and he nods slowly, appreciatively.
‘Classic move,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Classic.’ He almost purrs. ‘Trapped us.’
I try to look behind me but it’s almost impossible to manoeuvre in the tightly packed car.
Johnson is on high alert. ‘Ape?’
‘It’s Dazza.’
‘How fast can this car go?’
The Ape reaches forward and turns on the in-car music system. Typically something loud and heavy erupts from the expensive and powerful sound system. ‘The Hunter’ by Slaves. The song drowns out the jet engine that’s purring in the back.
‘Glad we didn’t take the bus,’ he says straight to my face.
Then he slips the car into drive, one hand on the hand-brake, revving the engine in time to the throb of the music. The Non-Ape starts to nod his huge head to the song, a slow measured headbang. But as the song builds so does the intensity of the headbang. Next to me the Ape is moving his head back and forth in perfect synchronisation with his brother-in-arms. It makes me think of the haka that Maoris do before war.
And war is definitely coming.
Johnson slips an arm round my waist as he breathes in my ear. ‘Stay in the car.’
‘What?’
Johnson uses his lithe alien body to open the car door and slide out from under me before I can react. ‘Johnson!’
He touches his finger to his forehead and cocks it my way, ‘We’ve got this,’ he tells me but is already looking past me to the Ape. ‘You’ve got to get her home.’
‘No!’ I shake my head at Johnson. ‘We’re in this together.’
‘Still are,’ he assures me. ‘But you’ve got to get home.’ Johnson’s eyes meet mine and I know I can’t change his mind. ‘When you do, take a moment, work it all out with your dad, then come back for us.’
The Ape hesitates; he wants to stay and fight. Johnson can easily read that in him. ‘We’ll be waiting for you.’
‘This wasn’t the plan, Johnson,’ I urge him.
‘Plan’s changed,’ he says, casually cricking his alien joints, limbering up for battle.
I can hear footsteps thundering down the tunnel from behind us. I say footsteps, but the closer they get, the more it sounds like a stampeding herd of cattle.
‘The Hunter’ is on repeat. Well, that figures. The opening chords, played in a low, ominous key, sounding the bugle.
‘ . . . it does what it needs to, to stay strong and to survive . . . ’
The lyrics echo the moment perfectly.
The Apes again nod their great heads in time to the song.
The stampede is coming fast. The lights in the tunnel keep flickering on and off. The blur waits up ahead.
Non-Ape opens the car door and stuffs Carrie and Evil-GG in with me. There’s barely any room in the back, but he squeezes them past me at impossible angles, almost folding Carrie in half as he wedges her in the tight space between my headrest and the massive revving engine in the back. He closes the door and one of Evil-GG’s feet sticks up level with my face. He wears cool pointy shoes that are covered in grit and grime from the hotel rubble. The real GG would have a breakdown if he saw the state they were in. But then again the real GG lost a shoe when he fell from the side of the train so if the fall didn’t kill him I’m pretty sure the shame would have done.
‘Find the Moth. Find GG,’ I tell Johnson and Non-Ape. ‘We’ll wait for you at the hospital.’
‘That wasn’t the second plan,’ Johnson says.
‘Plan’s changed,’ I echo. There is no way I’m leaving this world without him.
But the noise in the tunnel has swelled and I don’t know if they hear me over the thundering swarm of Black Moths. They charge along the tarmac, but some dig into the tunnel walls and scramble horizontally towards us, black panthers eating up the ground.
‘That’s not possible.’ My voice is lost in the thunder of noise. ‘They shouldn’t exist. They’re not real.’
Some of them are running upside down along the roof of the tunnel.
The Lucas-blur moves. I catch it in my peripheral vision and try to warn the Ape, but he’s seen it way before me and stands on the accelerator. The Ferrari roars forward, but not before Non-Ape tears the passenger door free. The car hurtles towards the blur, hitting sixty in a matter of seconds but the blur is quicker and Non-Lucas comes crashing through what is left of the windscreen.
Behind us Non-Ape hurls the car door like a frisbee and it hits the herd of Black Moths, scything through them before they can react.
‘YOWZA!’ I hear him bellow as he sets off, taking the fight to the Black Moths who should have blinked out of existence the moment Billie got her heart’s desire. They’re not real, I keep telling myself; stop believing in them and they’ll disappear.
Non-Lucas stops blurring as he lands between the Ape and me. His talons are out and he slides one a few centimetres from my right eye. ‘Stop the car, fatboy.’
The Ape glances at him, weighs up his next move. The talon is dangerously close to my eye.
‘I’ll put this right through her brain,’ Non-Lucas warns.
‘Yeah?’ the Ape dares him.
‘Oh, yeah.’
The Ape’s eyes meet with Non-Lucas’s as the speed climbs and climbs. We are already out of the tunnel.
All I can see is the sharp point of Non-Lucas’s talon blurring in my vision it’s so close.
‘Ape.’ My voice cracks.
Non-Lucas enjoys my abject fear.
‘Yeah?’ The Ape keeps piling on the speed.
‘Do as he says.’
The Ape hesitates then starts to slow. Non-Lucas grins. Relaxes. Which is when I make my move. He really thought I’d just give in? After all I’ve been through? I duck down as fast as I can in my seat and the Ape uses all his might to shove Non-Lucas straight out of the car. There’s no door to stop him and he flies from the Ferrari. Even his rubbery armour won’t do him much good as he goes into an ugly roll and strips of his dark black skin start to peel and fly off as his body meets with the unyielding road. Over and over.
‘Classic,’ the Ape purrs as he accelerates again.
‘Yeah. Classic,’ I agree. We’re so in tune now we know each other’s moves instinctively. I crane my neck and watch Non-Lucas roll to a halt, smashing into the short metal fencing that lines part of the road.
‘Classic,’ I repeat, just for good measure.
Behind us Non-Ape’s bellow booms from the tunnel. I can’t figure any of it out; the Black Moths, the Lucas-blur, it doesn’t make any sense.
And then Non-Lucas springs to his feet. Injured and hurting but upright.
He begins to blur on the spot.
‘Ape . . . ’
The Ape glances in his rear-view and looks impressed. ‘Reset,’ he says simply.
The music vibrates throughout the car.
‘ . . . Oh, it’s reckless and pointless, but it’s also very fun . . . ’
Non-Lucas starts coming after us.
‘Foot down,’ I urge the Ape, glancing back to try and see if I can spot Johnson.
The Ape’s foot slams down on the accelerator and the mighty car hits one hundred and twenty. But Non-Lucas is already gaining and the inrushing wind through the smashed windscreen is tearing at my face.
One hundred and thirty.
I can see the blur in the wing mirror as Non-Lucas gains more ground. Moth Two was fast when he chased down the train we were all on, but Non-Lucas is faster than light.
One hundred and forty.
We’re going to be travelling far too quickly to take the exit lane into town.
Non-Lucas keeps gaining.
One hundred and fifty.
The car judders, but it’s more from the onrushing wind pouring through the non-existent windscreen. There is no aerodynamic marvel to the car any more, especially when it’s also missing a passenger door.
Non-Lucas is closing on us.
One hundred and sixty.
The Ape’s hands remain steady on the wheel, his eyes buffeted viciously and his vision blurring as he blinks as rapidly as he can.
One hundred and seventy.
Signs flash past us.
Non-Lucas continues to draw closer, an insane blur looming in the rear view.
One hundred and seventy.
We’re not getting any faster.
‘Ape!’ I yell. As in, Over to you, buddy.
None of this makes sense. Non-Lucas was dead. I saw him die.
The Black Moths must be the ones who kidnapped our Moth from the train. They have somehow survived even though they don’t exist.
This is crazy.
One hundred and seventy-one.
I’ve never travelled this fast before. Never been in an aeroplane or a helicopter for that matter and I admit I like the feeling of raw speed. I like watching everything shooting past us. If it wasn’t for the fact that a murderous doppelganger was chasing us, I’d thoroughly recommend this to anyone. One hundred and seventy-one miles an hour. But then, to my shame, I realise I’ve been looking at kilometres per hour. The car is Italian made and the speedo has thrown me. I don’t know how to work out how fast we’re really going, but for a second or two I was travelling at the speed of light.
The Ape coaxes a little more from the screaming engine. We are a mile from our exit point.
Non-Lucas is almost upon us.
When did he get this fast? He’s practically at our bumper, blurring through time and space.
‘The Hunter’. I’ll never forget this song as long as I live, which might not be as long as I’d hoped.
Non-Lucas lands on the roof of the car.
The Ape reacts instinctively and tries to swerve to throw him from the roof. But the car, for all its incredible engineering, starts to lose traction and tip over. We are about to go into a roll that none of us will survive.
But the Ape yanks the wheel – another echo of when we nearly killed Carrie in a tiny Fiat that almost rolled over on its side. The Ape fights all the laws of physics as he flaps the paddles down through the gears, his foot easing off the accelerator, but the car is fighting back and even as the speed bleeds away we go into a frightening, dizzying skid that turns the car in circles. The airbags explode and balloon in our faces and I lose sight of everything as we hit the sickening roll that was always waiting for us. The Ferrari leaps into the air and turns on its head. I have no idea what happens to Non-Lucas because all I know is we’re rolling over and over along the road.
The airbags deflate and I look across to the Ape who seems to be in excruciating pain. Evil-GG’s pointed shoe is no longer level with my nose and I hate to think of the mess he and Carrie are now in. They’ve probably been fused together.
I know that people aren’t meant to move after car accidents, but I’m almost suffocating because I’m basically caught in a frozen cartwheel, with my legs bent back over the back of my head. I roll as gingerly as I dare and spill out of the open car door. I land hard and manage to get on all fours. Every bone aches and my neck feels like it’ll never move again; it’s rigid with pain. I cough and blood lands on the road. For a second I’m thinking punctured lung or heart, but when I wipe my mouth I realise I’ve bitten my tongue. The blood pools in my mouth and I try and spit it out.
