Shift #2

by Jeff Povey

  Also by Jeff Povey

  SHIFT

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2015 Jeff Povey

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Jeff Povey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-1870-8

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-1871-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset in the UK by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  This is for my big sister Mandy Evitt, and my little brother Tim Povey. Bet you weren’t expecting that.

  CONTENTS

  HOW TO KILL AN ENTIRE TOWN

  THREE ONE-WAY TICKETS TO THE MULTIVERSE

  THE MIND HAS A THOUSAND EYES

  THE SQUARE DANCE OF DEATH

  END OF THE ROAD

  DON’T MESS WITH MUM

  ARE WE THERE YET?

  SNOW ANGELS AND A BROKEN HEART

  I SWEAR I’VE DONE SOMETHING SIMILAR BEFORE

  ALL KINDS OF RELIGION

  REALITY IS A HALF-EATEN SANDWICH

  GUTTED, OF NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR

  YOU JUST KNOW IT’S COMING . . .

  CHURCH OF THE BROKEN SOUL

  ONE GIANT, ONE GIRL, ONE ENDING

  THE CURVES DON’T WORK

  IN OFF THE RED

  YOU ARE KIDDING, RIGHT?

  DYING IS EASY

  I’M WITH STUPID

  BOY ON A MOTORBIKE

  NIGHT SCHOOL

  TWELVE LONG AND SHORT YEARS

  DAD, IT’S ME, LOOK HOW I’VE GROWN

  SO THAT’S WHY HE WAS WEARING THE SAME CLOTHES

  NON-APE WUZ HERE

  AND THEY SAID DEATH WAS NOT THE END

  HELL HATH NO FURY

  WHAT ON EARTH WAS I THINKING?

  AND HERE WE ARE AGAIN

  ALL ABROAD THE CHOO-CHOO

  CRAZY TRAIN

  MOTHS 2,3,4,5,6,7, ETC.

  FIGHT

  BULLET TRAIN

  THERE’S NO GG IN GOODBYE

  LEST WE FORGET

  THE TRACKS OF OUR TEARS

  CROSS OF KINGS

  NO ONE KOWS

  PUKUS ERUPTUS

  NO ONE EVER SAID IT WAS GOING TO BE EASY-PEASY

  UNBIDDEN

  DARK TIMES

  OMG

  THREE FOOLS IN A BOAT

  THIS REALLY IS END OF THE ROAD

  THE END OF THE END

  There’s an alien staring at me.

  And trust me, that’s not as weird as it sounds.

  I’m sixteen, I have dyed pink hair and I have seen and done things I still can’t really explain. There were nine people in school detention. Eight pupils and a teacher. But typically the teacher got up and left a second before a bright light whisked the rest of us away to an empty world. Empty that is, but for extreme copies of ourselves. Creatures I am now calling aliens. Super-powered and from a world that is exactly the same as ours – only it isn’t.

  Of the original eight only three of us made it back alive.

  Me. Reva Marsalis.

  GG. A glorious gay who it turns out is braver and more determined than almost anyone I know.

  And the Ape. A lumbering, rude manboy who fought everyone and everything to keep me safe and alive.

  Lucas the boy wonder died first. Hanged himself. Thought he was all alone in the world and threw in the towel. God, that still turns me inside out. Lucas had everything to live for and if we’d just got to him a few minutes earlier . . . He was still warm when the Ape and I found him.

  Mean girl Carrie died in London. Cut down by the utterly evil alien version of GG. Sliced to ribbons by steel talons that will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. All of the aliens possess them. That and metal teeth. Their dentists must double as metalworkers.

  For a while I thought Billie, my best ever friend, the Moth, a brainy paraplegic, and Johnson, the only boy I could ever call world class, had also died. Buried under a thousand tons of rubble when the alien version of our Ape punched a hotel down around them.

  That’s right.

  He punched it.

  BOOM! That was the sound his punches made. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

  To my eternal shame we were convinced they were dead and ran for home, back to our world. Only problem with that is we never actually made it home. Instead we were shifted back to the alien world.

  And, if that’s not bad enough, we then learn that Johnson, Billie and the Moth aren’t dead after all. They’re still trapped in the empty world. So that’s two major wrongs and they certainly don’t make a right.

  ‘Talk to me, Reva.’ The alien version of my mother is now standing right in front of me, gripping my wrist tight.

  I’m tingling all over. My personal alarm is going off like a thousand sirens.

  Wait.

  Did I mention Other-Johnson? The exact copy of the world-class Johnson who stole my heart?

  ‘Reva?’

  I’ll have get to Other-Johnson later.

  If there is a later.

  ‘What?’ I ask her. I mean it.

  The alien looks identical to my real mum. She is a carbon copy from head to toe. Just like I’m an exact copy of her real daughter.

  ‘Where did all those cuts and bruises come from? Have you been in a fight?’ she asks.

  Have I been in a fight? There’s an understatement to end all understatements.

  ‘A fight? Me?’ I say and try to look perplexed and condemning in the same breath. ‘When did I ever get into fights?’

  My non-mum is scanning me now, taking in all of the little cuts and bruises, her maternal worry animating her face. I can feel the low throb of the beginnings of a black eye from where GG punched me in the face – not because he wanted to, but because it was the only way he could get me to leave the others behind. I also have about a hundred other burns, scars and bruises, all of which I didn’t have when I left for school this morning.

  It seems that no time has passed in this world. I’ve come home from detention at the exact same time I would have done on any normal day. But I’ve spent at least two or three days fighting for my life.

  So time happens differently in different worlds. That’s something to tell the Moth when I see him again. He’ll like that. It’ll excite his big space brain.

  But I won’t get to tell him anything if I don’t get out of here. I seriously need to find the Ape and GG because I left them to go home, or at least to what I thought were their homes.

  ‘Anyway – uh, Mum – I was reading Dad’s papers, you know, that thesis thing he wrote,’ I tell her. The same thesis thingy that has turned my world upside down, not to mention, inside out. But it’s the only thing that can help.

  ‘You were? When?’ My non-mum frowns.

  ‘The other day.’ I shrug, trying to sound as calm as I possibly can. ‘Found it and started flicking through it.’ I’m trying to sound casual and I thi
nk it’s working.

  ‘But you can’t have been.’

  I stop dead.

  ‘No?’ My voice catches.

  ‘They’re not here any more. There was a charity collection so I looked out some old clothes,’ she continues, ‘and found the papers at the bottom of the wardrobe. I don’t know why, but as soon as I saw them I felt like I wanted them out of the house. So I rolled them up and shoved them into the sleeve of one of your dad’s old leather jackets. Seeing them almost made me cry, Reva.’ My non-mum has the same look in her eyes as my real mum when she talks about my dad – which is actually pretty much never these days. The same sadness and pain from twelve years of not knowing why her husband left without a word and never came back. ‘You helped me pack the clothes into a bin liner. Remember?’

  This is migraine-inducing. In the empty world Other-Johnson had found the papers in this very flat. Or a copy of them. In what he said was Rev Two’s – my hugely inferior double’s – bedroom. But that isn’t this world. Which means I can’t have been reading them.

  Which also means I’ve made Huge Mistake Number Three.

  ‘Duh, what am I like.’ I force a smile and then remember that’s not a good idea. Like I said, in this world people have talons and metal teeth, and God knows what would happen if my non-mum saw that I don’t have either. They are a violent and aggressive race and tend to slash first and ask questions later.

  My phone beeps with a message.

  It’s lying on the floor on charge but I can still make out the text. It’s from the Ape. My big hairy hero who is probably the only reason I’m still alive.

  where r u?

  I slip free of my non-mum’s grip, grab my phone and text as rapidly as I can.

  don’t talk to any1! don’t look at any1! wait 4 me!

  ‘Anyway.’ I turn back to her, pretending to be chatty and sweet. ‘What charity shop was it?’ But there’s an unmistakable quiver in my voice. I’m surprised she can’t hear my vocal chords twanging.

  ‘Just one of the shops in town. I forget which.’

  I do a quick Google Earth search in my head and come up with at least four charity shops in the town centre alone. My insides are churning now. If I don’t find my dad’s papers – no, not my dad’s papers, they’ll actually be my other-dad’s papers . . . God this is worse than sudoku – then it is officially game over.

  I glance at my phone. It’s only charged to three per cent but I yank it and the charger from the wall and pray the small amount of power will hold until I find the Ape and GG. I rush past my non-mum and step out into the hallway. As I dart past her, I catch a faint whiff of her understated perfume. It’s the same brand my real mum wears. So weird.

  I head down the hallway with my non-mum padding behind me. The talons on her bare feet click-clack on the fake parquet floor and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Why have her talons come out?

  ‘Reva,’ she says. ‘I know when something’s wrong.’

  But I can’t stop now. I’m out of here, I’m going, I’m running, I’m . . . I’m not moving. I can’t move a single muscle. I can’t even blink. What the hell is this?

  ‘Wait.’ My non-mum’s voice is gentle, caressing. She’s doing this. This must be her power. She’s frozen me to the spot, wrapped me in invisible bonds. The perfect power for any parent with an errant teenager.

  All of the aliens we have encountered so far seem to have a special power. To them it is normal, but to us meek humans it is horribly scary. And it doesn’t help when you don’t always know what that power might be.

  Her hand lands lightly on my shoulder and I feel her talons slide out and curl round me.

  Her grip tightens. ‘Talk to me, Reva.’

  But even if I wanted to, I can’t tell her anything because I can’t even move my jaw. I am completely immobile.

  My non-mum comes round to face me. Even though my eyeballs are as frozen as the rest of me, in the periphery of my vision I can see her talons. Is this it? Is she going to cut me down?

  She takes me in, scrutinising me. ‘Sorry,’ she whispers.

  I try my best to move but it’s like I’m encased in concrete.

  ‘I shouldn’t do this.’

  I feel the bonds she has trapped me in slip away and I’m mobile again.

  She looks a bit ashamed. ‘I know I’m stupidly overprotective, but you’re all I care about.’

  I was sure she’d realise I wasn’t her Reva, but maybe her eyes only take in what they want to see. I’m – well, the other me – is all she’s got in the world and that’s all that really matters to her. But that doesn’t stop me secretly looking around for a weapon. Thanks to the Ape and his remarkable instinct for fighting and violence, we discovered that these versions of ourselves have a major weak spot. Go for the throat hard and fast and you’ve got a chance of beating them.

  I can’t believe I’m looking for something sharp to drive into any version of my lovely-loving mum. But I’ve seen what these creatures can do.

  My non-mum blocks the way to the front door. But I have to get out of here. Now.

  So I do the only thing I can.

  I hug her.

  I couldn’t hurt this alien, this woman, in a million years. So I slip my arms round her and give her the most loving, caring hug I can.

  ‘I love you,’ I whisper.

  Which distracts, maybe even surprises, her because when I look into her eyes, there are tears in them.

  She smiles awkwardly. ‘Silly.’

  I hold her gaze. ‘I do,’ I tell her. ‘I really do.’

  There’s something clawing at the back of my mind. If I do get away from this world, then this woman might never see me or her real daughter again. She’ll spend the rest of her life wondering where her Reva Marsalis disappeared to. She’s already spent twelve years wondering where her husband went and she’s about to lose a daughter too.

  I look into her warm eyes and I feel my eyes tearing up now.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Yes?’

  But no words come. I just stare at her and wish this was so different.

  I head swiftly down the concrete steps that rise alongside the rows of nineteen-fifties flats, taking them two at a time. As I do I phone the Ape. He takes an age to pick up and I’m worried I’ll never get to say what I want before my charge gives out.

  ‘Yowza to the yowza.’ His deep man’s voice booms across the airwaves.

  ‘Did you phone GG?’

  ‘Nah, couldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘Ape?’

  ‘Gotcha!’ He laughs.

  This is no time to make stupid jokes, but the Ape has a mindset that only he will ever understand. Though even that is doubtful.

  ‘I’m right here, Rev.’ The sound of GG’s voice lifts me as he takes the phone from the Ape.

  ‘OK, listen, meet me at—’

  ‘Use your own phone!’ The Ape snatches the phone from GG. ‘I’m on Pay As You Go.’

  ‘And Rev called you, so it doesn’t matter,’ replies GG, snatching the phone back. His voice is panicked, an octave higher than usual. ‘Rev, I went home and no one was in. But then I saw my next-door neighbour . . . She came out of her house, yacking on her mobile, and she had teeth that could chew through an aeroplane!’

  ‘We came to the wrong world, GG.’ My voice is flat and lifeless.

  I hear him suck in his breath. ‘I am never doing a bad thing ever again. No more detentions for GG.’

  ‘Meet me at the charity shop next to the perfume shop on the high street. You know it?’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘I might have a plan, but listen—’ I lower my voice. ‘You have to be so careful. They don’t know we’re not the same as them. But the second they do . . .’

  ‘It’s Talon Time,’ GG finishes for me.

  I hang up. There are aliens everywhere and after spending a few days in a completely empty world it feels weird being back amongst people again. Only trouble is there seems to
be lots of them. This might be a small town, but from what I can tell it must be a summer market this evening and that seems to have brought a flood of visitors.

  I half jog, half walk past a huge second-hand car dealership and cross a busy main road to reach a packed car park that sits directly opposite.

  A car horn sounds, making me jump. I glance up at the driver to gesture an apology for walking into his path, but he winds his window down and yells at me furiously.

  ‘IDIOT!’

  See. I told you they have the shortest fuses in the universe.

  I scoot between two more cars before finding the steps that lead down to the market. A small shallow river curls past the busy stalls and flows around a huge fourteenth-century church that dominates the town. Three teenage boys head my way and, recognising one of them from school, I bow my head and pretend to browse a music stall until they pass.

  After they’re gone, I head as quickly as I dare through the market and walk up a small arcade of shops before emerging into the cobbled town square where a tall blue clock stands proudly. I scan the area, looking for GG and the Ape.

  Where the hell are they?

  A young mother and her chocolate-devouring four-year-old brush past me and I yelp. Even with the merest of contact, she’s electrocuted me in some way. She turns, looking surprised, as if I shouldn’t have reacted like that, or she doesn’t know why that happened. Her coal-black eyes scrutinise me and I quickly turn away.

  I keep walking, feeling her eyes on me as I do. All of the aliens have black eyes, dark pools that are definitely not windows to the soul. Which shows how much my non-mum only saw what she wanted to see. Mine are bright blue.

  ‘Hey!’ the electric woman calls out.

  ‘Stop looking at me,’ I mumble to myself. ‘Please, I’m nobody.’

  ‘Hey, Pink Hair!’

  I decide that now is the time to run but I’m saved by the woman’s little boy screaming his head off. The noise is so ear-piercing that it makes nearby windows rattle. The mother forgets about me and possibly electrocutes her kid, because he stops screaming quite suddenly. She’s probably got some taser power and set herself to ‘stun’.

  I start dialling the Ape’s number, but before I can finish I see him and GG emerge into the square. GG is tense beyond words.