Shift #2

by Jeff Povey

  ‘It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause this,’ he says gently.

  I’m grateful for his concern.

  ‘I don’t understand how you escaped,’ I tell him. ‘A hotel fell on top of you.’

  The Moth tries to draw alongside me, reversing his wheelchair, then going forward, then reversing some more. He parks like my mum parks. Sometimes a shopping trip to Asda can last days because she spends so long parking.

  ‘Johnson was switched into that other version of himself, the stronger one, and he moved so quickly . . . Well, quicker than we could, and he found us and got us out. Me and Billie anyway. I begged him to go back for Carrie . . .’ He falters at the memory. ‘But the hotel was coming down around our ears. Can you believe someone could do that? With a punch? Anyway, it was coming down and Johnson dragged us away.’

  Poor Carrie. By the time the hotel fell, she was already gone, sliced apart by Evil-GG. He too will be buried under all of that rubble and my only regret is that that monster is sharing a tomb with Carrie. She and I weren’t exactly friends but she doesn’t deserve that.

  ‘What happens if we find her as well?’ he asks me, but with a faraway look.

  I can’t answer that. Only the Moth can.

  I give him a moment to allow the lump to leave his throat.

  ‘I was thinking,’ I tell him. ‘We should go to the classroom, maybe I’m the reason the white light happens. It could be connected to me, because Rev Two came here as well. Maybe it’s linked to my dad and there’s something special about us.’

  The Moth weighs the thought for a moment. ‘It’s possible.’ Then he becomes more animated. ‘We put up a tent and camped in the classroom for the first month, hoping the light would happen again. But it never did. So perhaps you’re right: you could be the key.’

  ‘You’d been living up there?’

  ‘Didn’t you notice?’

  ‘I wasn’t really taking anything in when we came through,’ I tell him. But when I replay arriving back in the classroom I swear there was no sign of people having been living there. But we were only there for a few minutes and we were so keen to escape. I wasn’t really going to notice too much. Not even a tent, it seems.

  The Moth nods to himself. ‘If you are the key then that could give us an edge.’ He whirrs away. The battery of his chair must be dying because he crawls along at about one mile an hour.

  I watch him go, then feel Johnson’s eyes on me. When I look away my empty stomach rumbles loudly in the least appealing and ladylike manner. What timing.

  I immediately blush. ‘Haven’t eaten for ages,’ I offer weakly. ‘Actually what have you been living off?’ I ask Johnson, trying to distract him from my loud stomach. But Billie answers before he can.

  ‘All the fresh stuff has perished so it’s mainly tinned food now. We have tons of it in our room. Don’t we, Johnson?’

  Our room.

  Johnson releases a metal talon from his fingertip. ‘Great can openers.’

  ‘Your room?’ I hardly dare ask.

  ‘We moved into that hotel down the side street with the cobblestones outside. The Sun. Which is pretty ironic considering all the snow.’

  Billie attempts a grin and I’ve got to admit, it’s great to see her smile again.

  ‘The Moth is in the room next to ours,’ she adds.

  ‘We’ve got the whole bar and dining room to ourselves,’ Johnson says.

  ‘Want to see?’ Billie is almost too keen to show me. ‘Our room and that?’

  It still pierces my heart to think of them together but suck it up. Rev, you’re not a factor any more.

  ‘Maybe later,’ I say.

  Billie lowers her voice. ‘It took a while for Johnson to get used to his new body,’ she whispers to me. ‘I tried to help him adjust though. Took some time but we got there.’

  We.

  The word turns my stomach inside out.

  Johnson gets to his feet. ‘We need food and warmth. I vote we grab what we can then head to The Sun. I’ll go find GG and the Ape and we’ll get some supplies.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I offer.

  ‘You crazy? You’ll die of cold out there,’ Billie says and I’m sure she emphasises the word ‘die’. ‘Leave it to us.’ She definitely emphasises ‘us’, hanging on to the word for as long as she can until I swear she sounds like a hissing snake.

  Johnson nods to me. ‘Any requests?’

  ‘Just make it warm.’

  Johnson nods again, his eyes lingering on me for a moment too long.

  ‘Don’t get burned out there,’ I add, hoping Johnson might remember what he said to me once.

  ‘I’ll try not to.’ Johnson responds with his customary salute. It’s a small thing in the face of ‘we’ and ‘ours’, but I’ll take it.

  He heads for the door and Billie hangs back for a second and she is about to say something to me. But whatever it is she decides against it and turns to catch up with Johnson.

  ‘Coming, lover.’ She leaves the words to echo around the church. I guess she said what she wanted to after all.

  Half an hour passes before the Ape arrives with some sort of metal hiking pole with him. He kicks the huge wooden door open and lets every drop of heat escape.

  ‘What’s with the pole?’ the Moth asks.

  ‘It’s got a sharp point.’

  ‘I can see that, but why have you got it?’

  ‘Watch this.’ The Ape looks around, spots the statue of Jesus and gives a demonstration. ‘Come on then!’ He jabs and pokes and stabs in the general direction of Jesus, which is unutterably blasphemous.

  The Moth looks equally at a loss. He turns to me. ‘Where does it all come from? All these violent oafy thoughts? He’s got an endless supply of them.’

  ‘Got to have a weapon,’ the Ape boasts. Then he starts sparring at the statue again. ‘Come on, if you think you’re hard enough.’

  GG stumbles in, covered in snow and bright red in the face. ‘He had to roll me in the snow, just had to.’

  GG slips a mountaineer’s rucksack off his back and slides it across to me.

  ‘New jeans, new boots, new look.’

  I look inside the rucksack and pull out black jeans and black leather boots. There’s a thin red cardigan to go with it.

  GG blows into his frozen red hands. ‘Warmest thing I could find. It’s still the summer sales here.’

  Another thirty minutes pass and Johnson and Billie still haven’t returned. I sit up, dressed in my new clothes, draw my knees into my chest and stare at the church door, willing it to open. Johnson and Billie should have definitely done their supply run by now, so where are they? Has whatever came back with us found them? Or worse, have they detoured to their room . . . ?

  ‘They tend to go off a lot these days.’ The Moth can seemingly read my thoughts. It can’t be difficult because my worries must be plastered all over my face.

  I look up to the ceiling and try to gather my thoughts. A giant chandelier made of glass and shimmering silver dominates the church and for a second I think it quivers. Just the tiniest amount.

  ‘Did you see that?’

  The Moth and GG look up at the ceiling. The Ape looks anywhere but.

  The chandelier trembles again.

  ‘It’s just the wind,’ the Moth says and wheels over to the church door and closes it.

  The chandelier moves again. The tremble is a shudder now.

  GG looks around. ‘There must be a draught.’

  The chandelier shakes.

  ‘OK, maybe not a draught.’

  The chandelier swings now and I feel a tremble run from the floor and up through my toes. GG feels it as well.

  The Moth might be cushioned in his wheelchair but he knows something is very wrong.

  ‘Earthquake?’ I say.

  The Ape has fallen silent and still. His senses are on high alert.

  ‘Told you,’ he says. ‘Told you I heard someone.’

  The chandelier rocks above
us and we watch until it settles.

  Nothing moves.

  The world breathes a sigh of relief and relaxes. The tremor has passed.

  I breathe out. ‘OK. OK. Panic over.’

  ‘You think?’ the Ape asks and as soon as the words leave his lips the chandelier starts shaking back and forth, swinging wildly above our heads.

  The Ape is right.

  Something is coming.

  The shaking stops.

  The chandelier eventually comes to a rest.

  Everything falls silent again.

  It had to be an earth tremor; we had one once, a few years ago, and people got excited because that sort of thing never happens in this town. They got excited until some of them realised their roofs had collapsed.

  Something hits the side of the church with a hard thud. For a moment I think I’m just imagining it but another harder thud hits the church. Then another.

  We instinctively fall silent. We have learned the hard way that quiet is best.

  ‘What is that?’ GG whispers.

  There are six stained-glass windows running through the church walls and I slip as quietly as I can from the pew and tiptoe towards the nearest one.

  Another harder thud impacts the outside wall.

  The stained-glass window is too high for me too see out of so GG helps me push a pew under it. We do it as soundlessly and delicately as possible as the thuds get progressively harder and harder. The chandelier continues to rock back and forth above us.

  The Moth hasn’t budged and he looks worried. The Ape must be able to sense his fear because he places a large hand on his shoulder, probably not even realising he’s done it.

  GG and I climb onto the pew and try and peer out of one of the giant windows without being seen.

  ‘Oh my Goddy God!’ GG’s words ride the quiet breath that escapes him. ‘It had to be him.’

  Standing outside making snowballs is Non-Ape.

  The giant version of our Ape. Correction. The giant, unstoppable version. He must have seen all of our footprints and worked out that there are people to be found in this church. One of them, not mentioning any names – you fool, Ape! – also built a huge snowman, which is the equivalent of sending up a flare.

  GG gasps quietly. ‘He’s back.’

  Non-Ape scoops up a huge shovelful of snow, compacts it until it’s as hard as ice and then hurls the resultant snowball at the church. I have no idea why he is attacking the church.

  Until he bellows.

  ‘JOHNSON!’

  A snowball fizzes straight towards the window and we have to duck quickly as it smashes straight through the stained glass, showering us in broken images of Mary and Jesus.

  ‘JOHNSON!’

  Another snowball hurtles through the broken window and GG and I drop to the floor, landing in the shards of stained glass. At the speed he’s throwing them, if one of those snowballs hits us it would take our heads off.

  The Moth, as tough as he has to have been recently, looks worried and the Ape tightens his grip on his shoulder.

  ‘I got this,’ he tells the Moth.

  GG and I scurry back to them, bewildered, disbelieving. ‘What the hell? I thought you said the aliens had gone?’ GG whispers.

  The Moth has fallen silent. His mouth opens and closes but no words emerge.

  ‘JOHNSON!!’

  The bellow is ear-splitting.

  ‘Did he come back with us? He’s huge, how could we have missed him at the school?’ GG whispers heatedly.

  ‘What if he never went back?’ I say. ‘Maybe they left him here.’ Although I can’t work out how the others haven’t seen him for five months. He’s not exactly the shy retiring type.

  A snowball crashes through another window.

  ‘Fair point, Rev. Would you take him back home with you?’ GG hunkers down as snowballs missile into the church. ‘I don’t mean to sound like a bitchy-bitch type but I’d definitely think twice about it.’

  ‘HEY, JOHNSON!’

  ‘Keep your voices down.’ The Moth finally manages to speak. He knows only too well what’s coming if we don’t stay totally silent.

  Another snowball pounds the church wall.

  ‘Someone made this snowman!’ Non-Ape yells.

  I immediately look accusingly at our Ape but he shrugs. ‘Snow is snow, you gotta build a snowman.’

  ‘I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, JOHNSON!’

  Which is completely wrong and I have a good mind to go out there and tell him he’s wasting his time. Yeah, that would so work, Rev.

  A snowball flies like an Exocet through another stained-glass window, shattering it. The window is roughly three metres tall and a metre wide, a feat of great artistry and reverence that’s probably been in the building for decades. The snowball shatters it in a heartbeat.

  ‘YOU’RE COMING OUT OR I’M COMING IN!’ he roars.

  The Ape’s large snowman flies straight through another window and lands on a row of pews, covering them in snow and scattering the small pebbles that the Ape had used for its coat buttons. A strangely fresh-looking carrot lands at my feet. Shards of stained glass fly off in all directions and as snow explodes around us there is no way that we can stay here. Non-Ape will quickly grow bored of hurling snow so we’ve probably got less than a minute to find an exit.

  ‘Is there a back way out of here?’ I whisper to the Moth.

  ‘Got to be.’

  He engages drive on his electric wheelchair and tries to move away. But the second he does the wheelchair emits a low excruciating whine and the battery dies. He jabs repeatedly at the controls but that heavy wheelchair isn’t going anywhere soon. Moth’s batteries have a knack of running down at the worst possible moment.

  ‘Rev,’ he says, for some reason thinking I’ll have an answer. His frightened eyes plead with me. ‘Get us out of here.’

  Me? I think. Why me?

  ‘There’s got to be another door,’ I whisper as the bombardment of snowballs stops for a minute.

  The faint half-imagined echo of the last thunderous impact drifts into silence.

  The chandelier stops rocking overhead.

  I hold my breath.

  He’ll be crashing in here any second now.

  The Ape is searching for something he can use as a weapon, but a weapon doesn’t exist that can stop Non-Ape.

  I have to think. There’s got to be a back way.

  But the Ape’s eyes are looking all over the church until they settle on the large wooden cross standing tall at the back of the altar.

  He can’t use that, I think. Can he?

  The Ape smiles.

  His eyes meet mine. ‘No,’ I mouth to him. ‘You cannot fight him!’

  His eyes light up. ‘NO!!’ I mouth again.

  His eyes slide back to the large wooden cross. ‘Yeah,’ he purrs and lumbers towards the far end of the church.

  ‘Go, Mothy, go!’ GG says as he grabs the handles of Moth’s wheelchair and shoves him past the stalls, where the choir would normally be belting out a hymn, and on towards a dark wooden door at the rear of the church. ‘Wait for us; we have to grab the Ape!’

  The Ape is already trying to work the heavy cross behind the altar free from its plinth.

  ‘For God’s sakes!’ I whisper, coming right up behind him.

  He slips his large arms round the cross and bends his knees in a back-breaking effort to wrench it free.

  ‘You can’t fight him!’ I’m speaking through gritted teeth and wondering if I really just said that.

  A lump of weathered stone flies through one of the already broken windows and smashes hard against the opposite wall. The Non-Ape has uprooted someone’s ancient headstone and hurled it into the church. This is desecration on a horrendous scale.

  ‘MEET THE DEAD!’ he bellows from outside.

  The Ape finally manages to yank the wooden cross free and all I can wonder is how did everything become so unholy so quickly.

  Another long faded and nameless heads
tone crashes through a window. Then another and another. The Non-Ape bellows again.

  ‘RIP!!’

  One of the headstones hits a thick plaster column that helps to hold the church roof in place, and plaster and brick explode around me.

  It is so time to leave.

  ‘Go!’ the Ape yells at me.

  The Ape has strained every muscle in raising the heavy wooden cross and he now braces himself to use it as a weapon.

  ‘You can’t fight him,’ I urge, joining him at the back of the altar. ‘You can’t go out there.’

  ‘Move,’ he says.

  ‘If I run, you’re running with me,’ I tell him.

  Another headstone explodes around us.

  ‘I’ll get him in the throat,’ the Ape assures me.

  ‘No, no you won’t,’ I whimper.

  ‘I’ll get them all, Rev.’

  Two flying headstones lay waste to a second column and it starts to collapse. The ceiling groans and bows above us.

  The Ape hefts the cross and marches for the exit.

  GG is racing back towards us. ‘There’s a kitchen, there’s a door, there’s a way out!’ he cries.

  ‘Ape!’ I shout, but another headstone enters the church with unbelievable force and drowns me out. ‘Ape!’

  The Ape has almost reached the large wooden entrance and I charge after him, grabbing the tail of his big black coat. Another headstone decimates more of the church.

  ‘No way,’ I tell the Ape. ‘You are not going after him.’

  He keeps ploughing forward and I tug as hard as I can but my feet are skidding and slipping on the polished stone floor. ‘No!’ I yell. ‘No!’

  GG joins me. ‘There’s another door!’ He grabs the Ape’s coat as well. ‘You hear that, big man? There’s a way out.’

  A headstone cuts clean through another badly damaged column and part of the roof comes down behind us. Non-Ape has some serious issues with buildings.

  ‘JOHNSON!’ he bellows again.

  I don’t get it. I don’t know how anyone can spend five months bellowing the same thing over and over.

  ‘Please!!’ I screech at the back of the Ape’s head, but even GG and I combined can’t hold him back. ‘Fight him another time.’