Shift #2

by Jeff Povey

The Ape doesn’t want his and so Billie takes it instead, and as I reach over to Johnson, she takes that cup from me as well and presses it into his hands.

  She smiles encouragingly to him. ‘I made you this,’ she lies. ‘

  I never, uh, I never got to thank you for saving me from the other Ape—’ I try.

  ‘Rev, can you give us a minute?’ Billie turns to me and her eyes flick to black for a moment. ‘Please.’

  I utter a meek, ‘sorry, sorry,’ and back away. As I do Johnson finally looks at me.

  It’s not the look I was hoping for.

  I thought he might do that lazy one-fingered salute but instead he just nods once very quickly. It’s a non-gesture. A way of not really committing to anything. Or not committing to me. Instead he turns to Billie and brushes some hair from her eyes and takes her in for a long steady moment.

  ‘How’s my girl?’

  There’s something amiss. Something very wrong. I don’t know what it is but it seems almost insane for the Ape to have found Johnson in ten minutes. Exactly ten minutes. Practically on the dot. There was no way he could have done that in a blizzard. And yet he did. And not only that, he did it without Non-Ape seeing them. It’s just too incredible.

  Obviously I am thrilled and beyond relieved that they are both safe, but did that really just happen?

  It feels like someone is playing games. They’re twisting the truth, or at least plucking at it and making it bend in some freaky misshapen way. Or am I just saying this because I really can’t believe that Billie and Johnson are together? It makes perfect sense: they were trapped here for five months and of course something would happen between them. He’s amazing, Billie’s gorgeous – why wouldn’t they reach out to each other? Apart from the Moth there was no one else in this world. And even if the Moth is lovely, smart and wise, he also loved Carrie. She was always the girl for him.

  So maybe I should just get on and accept that I was torn between two Johnsons, but never actually managed to make up my mind. Yet Billie did. It’s as simple as that. She went for it while I dragged my heels. That’s what self-confidence does for you.

  Anyway, there’s so much more to figure out than my silly redundant feelings. We need a way home. Because this world isn’t safe. In some ways, it’s perfect: neatly parked cars to drive, our pick of clothes, food and all the things we could ever want, all of it for free. But it’s also appallingly violent. The gruesome deaths, the horror and heartbreak – and now the new revelation that a nuclear meltdown is imminent – tends to diminish the thought of this being some kind of secret nirvana.

  For a while I’d thought that the empty roads and clear railway tracks had meant that someone – or something – had planned everything, right down to the warm steak bakes that were sitting in the Greggs window. When we first came here it felt like a true motherworld and its mothering nature was taking care of us. To be truthful, it was exactly the place any father would want for his daughter. I don’t know how the laws of the multiverse work, but this used to be a world with a welcome mat. It certainly isn’t that any more.

  Which is why, while everyone else has settled down to sleep, I’ve been formulating another plan to get us out of here. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It is so blindingly obvious but I think I can be excused by the fact that I have almost died twice since I got back here. Three times if you count how I felt when Billie slipped her arm round Johnson’s waist.

  There was a bus parked in the street the first time I was here. I heard voices coming from it and when I went to check the door slammed shut in my face. I didn’t know what was really going on then and didn’t give it any more thought, but I’m pretty sure they were the same voices I heard when my father – or Rev Two’s father – came through from the burning world to try and find me. So that must be another escape route. It has to be. Another portal that could mean we don’t have to go to London and find some near impossible way of stopping the doppelgangers pouring through. We’ll just escape. They can show up but we won’t be here.

  I’ve checked the weather and the snowstorm has died away. The town is covered in white but it’s a gentle white, a cottony, cushiony layer of snow that almost seems inviting. There has been no sign of Non-Ape so I’m guessing he’s probably found somewhere to sleep before renewing his relentless search for Johnson. I’m half hoping he’s in the Sun Hotel where their room is.

  Getting Johnson away from Non-Ape is also the reason I’m going to find the bus. I need to do it now so that we are ready to leave first thing before Non-Ape is even awake. I think the bus is about half a mile away, if that. Rather than get everyone’s hopes up, I’ll do it now and when the winter sun comes up in the morning I can wake everyone up and deliver the good news. I’ll be a sort of hero. Maybe. And Johnson’ll see that I’ve saved him and maybe, just maybe, he’ll see I’m still trying my best. That I’m not just the fool that caused this mess, or if I am, I’m also the genius who can fix everything. This could even be a way of grabbing back some ground in our friendship. That’s right. Our friendship. Which is the best I can hope for now. But that’s better than nothing.

  I pull my new boots on as darkness blankets the snooker hall.

  The Ape farts loudly in his sleep and I’m scared it’ll wake everyone so I grab GG’s WAR(M) jacket and tiptoe as fast as I can towards the stairs that lead down to the street. There’s one lone lamp with a low wattage bulb casting pale orange into the snooker hall and it allows me to look back at my sleeping friends. The Ape sleeps face down on a snooker table and GG and the Moth are sleeping head to toe on the table next to the Ape’s. The Ape lifted the Moth there and GG found green plastic sheets that are used to cover the snooker tables at night and fashioned them into makeshift blankets. I should leave a note in case someone wakes and wonders where I am but the sight of Billie and Johnson asleep in each other’s arms on the banquette pushes me fast towards the door. The less time I dawdle here the better.

  The door creaks – obviously – and GG suddenly sits up in his sleep. He looks around and I duck quickly behind a snooker table. I see him cast his eyes into the dying orange gloom and listen for a moment. The old GG probably wouldn’t have stirred but he’s like me now, on high alert for anything. The night wind rattles a window and this seems to placate him and he settles down again. I’m impressed that he is so alert to any sign of danger or intrusion. Without knowing it, this world has changed us all. Probably for ever. God alone knows what sort of mental scars we’ll end up carrying around with us.

  When I get outside I realise I truly am a child of summer and the sun. The cold is appallingly brutal. The wind chill lowers the temperature further and if it wasn’t for an almost full moon glittering on the white snow I wouldn’t have a clue where to head for. But there’s enough illumination for me to make out the beginnings of the empty town square. The bus was parked on the side of a steep hill not too far from the centre of town, so I bunch my arms tight round me and pray that I find it soon. I’m imagining I’ll be gone twenty minutes at the most.

  The snow has deepened and it’s hard going ploughing through it. It saps my strength in minutes and I’m panting by the time I’m halfway down the high street. It is empty apart from banks of snow piling up against the buildings and shop fronts. There are cars but they’re buried under deep snow and it would take an eternity to dig them free. I just need to get my bearings.

  Snowflakes hit my face and with increasing regularity I have to spit them out of my mouth. I’m forced to shield my face and lower my head as a fresh snowstorm gathers. But I keep trudging because it’s only half a mile, and that’s nothing.

  I read somewhere that if you happen to be walking anywhere near the North Pole, say you’ve gone for a stroll and for some inexplicable reason you’ve ended up near the top of the world, then apparently you need to eat something like five thousand calories a day just to replace the energy you’ll expend trying to keep warm. Only now do I realise what it must feel like not to be replacing any of
those lost calories. Despite the cold, I am sweating from exertion. The snow is piling higher and higher and every step is becoming a laboured breathy conquest as I creep forward, bending ever lower to stop the snowflakes stinging my eyes and face.

  The blizzard is draining me of energy and I’m starting to feel giddy, nauseous. My stomach feels empty and my heart and lungs are working overtime as I gulp in air. But the air is really just a mass of snowflakes and I’m drinking it rather than breathing it. I can feel the freezing flakes melt and then slip down the back of my throat, bringing horrendous stabs of brain freeze. As soon as one unearthly pain stops, another one takes its place.

  I try to breathe through my nose but I can’t take in enough air and so I cover my mouth with a frozen hand. My skin looks mortuary blue under the moonlight. I stop swallowing snowflakes but my hand is now stinging and tingling with a thousand tiny pinpricks. God it’s cold. This was stupid. Another stupid idea in a long line of stupid ideas. I need to go back and try again in the morning. I need to get to the snooker hall before my body shuts down.

  I made this reckless decision because the truth is I can’t face Johnson and Billie being an item. But it’s not really a selfless act to rescue us. It’s a mean, envious thing. I don’t want them to be together. I want him to choose me. Jealousy is a horrible sneaky thing that you often don’t even know is there until it’s too late.

  What is wrong with me? Don’t I want my best friend to be happy?

  Maybe I won’t answer that.

  Or maybe I just did.

  I’m already shivering inside and out and I can’t see a thing thanks to the increasingly violent snowstorm swirling around me. I have no idea where to turn next. I can’t even retrace my footsteps because the cascade of snow has already obliterated the trail that leads back to the snooker hall. I try and get my bearings, looking for a familiar shop or a landmark. I think I’m still somewhere in the high street but I have no idea in which direction I’m travelling. I spin round, hoping I’ll see something that looks familiar. But the layers of snow change everything, and the moonlight distorts it further, throwing long shadows and giving rise to new mutated shapes that replace the world I know.

  I need to find shelter. Any shelter. Forget finding the snooker hall, I need to get out of this freezing hell. After everything I’ve been through I can adapt and change my plans on a whim, it’s the sign of a survivor.

  I think.

  I hope.

  I stumble and slip towards the only door I can make out. I think it’s the old Woolworths entrance. It’s now an oversized clothes shop. And that’s oversized clothes, not an oversized shop.

  My mind is spinning off at tangents. I can feel logic and sanity leaking away, retreating from the biting vicious cold. But oversized clothes sound so good right now. I start dreaming of huge thick coats and massive woollen jerseys. My blue-tinged hand reaches for the door handle and thank God it’s unlocked. But it moves about half an inch before the snowdrift piled a metre high against it prevents further progress.

  What the hell? I yank as hard as I can but the door won’t budge. I use both hands, desperate to get inside. Whatever strength I have left goes into getting that door open far enough for me to slide through. I yank and I yank, but it just won’t move.

  I think I let out a wail but I don’t know if the noise actually makes it past my bitterly chilled lips. Even my voice doesn’t want to take one step outside my mouth, thank you very much. I wish I’d thought this through. I really wish GG had spotted me leaving and talked me into not being such a lovelorn fool.

  I give up on the door to the shop. But when I try to take my hands off the metal handle I realise they are stuck. The cold has welded my skin to the door. I wrench as hard as I can, but I’m superglued to the handle. The snow is building around me and I have this crazed image of being found in the morning, a human shape under thirty centimetres of snow, looking like some over-desperate shopper who got up early to beat the rush. Only she stupidly got caught in a blizzard and now she’ll never know if that dress she spotted in the window will ever look good on her.

  No one should die like this. I can’t, I think, I can’t die outside a shop my gran thinks is the height of fashion.

  Come on, Rev.

  I wrench hard. I strain every sinew in my trembling, aching arms and get my left hand free. But the skin tears off and this time I definitely do howl. Like a wolf with a sore throat. Tears spring to my eyes and I swear they become icicles even before they reach my cheeks. I yank hard again and leave more skin on the frozen door handle as my right hand releases and I stumble backwards, landing face up in the snow. My mouth tastes of iron and I think I’ve bitten my tongue. I jam my agonised hands into the snow hoping for some relief or at least a numbing of the searing rawness. It’s the only good thing the snow has done for me as I feel my bloodied hands cauterised by the insane cold.

  I climb labouredly to my knees, breathing hard again, but at least I have a reference point now. The shop is at the far end of the high street and it’s on the north side. And I know the church is two streets behind on the south side. But what now? My brain is refusing to offer any coherent thoughts. It’s simple though. It’s got to be simple. I’m north and I need to go two streets south.

  South is south of north.

  I think.

  I climb to my feet and dredge up a memory. The Moth was down an alleyway when we found him a few days ago.

  I remember him calling out to us from the alley that doubles as a short cut to the next street. It runs between a shoe shop and a gift and card shop. Those shops are almost opposite the oversized clothes shop.

  I trudge across the high street, knowing for certain that the alleyway will take me one street closer to the church.

  The Moth had been trapped in his motorised wheelchair after the battery had died and the alleyway was right here . . .

  Only it’s not.

  There is no alleyway. There is no shoe shop or gift shop. There is only snow banked high against the buildings. Too high to see what those buildings are.

  I don’t know what to do now. I’m out of ideas. That was my only plan.

  And even that wasn’t the right plan. Why was I heading for the church anyway? Everyone is safe and warm in the snooker hall, not the church.

  This isn’t good. I’m starting to feel the first waves of panic. I can’t even scream for help because my voice would never rise above the gale that is whipping around me. It would grab my words and hurl them into a snowdrift, muffling them and silencing me.

  But . . . what if that’s what it wants?

  What if this world, this perfect welcome-mat world doesn’t want me in it after all?

  I didn’t drown in the river. The Non-Ape didn’t finish the job either, so the world is rolling up its sleeves with a deep sigh. If you want someone killed, then you may as well do it yourself.

  Wait. My phone. I can call for help. You don’t get me that easy!

  My fingers are so numb and frostbitten and skinless that it’s like using flippers to unzip GG’s jacket and fumble for the phone.

  I don’t give in though. I need that phone and I will get it.

  Every time I grab it, it slips out of my numb fingers. Time and again I almost have it until eventually, after blowing as hard as I can on my hands, I manage to get hold of it.

  Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes!

  I’m a phone call away from rescue.

  But the phone is dead.

  It doesn’t light up. It doesn’t do anything except reveal the drops of dank river water trapped behind the screen. The one thing you can’t do with a mobile phone is get it wet, and guess who fell in a river earlier?

  I let the useless phone slip from my hands.

  I can feel the panic rising again and try to squash it back down with the only thought that could ever keep me from giving up entirely.

  That my mum would never forgive me if I died. I can’t leave her to spend the rest of her life not knowing where I disappea
red to.

  I cling to this thought because there is nothing else in my frozen head.

  Don’t die.

  Over and over I repeat the thoughts.

  Don’t die. Make Mum happy.

  They fall into harmony with my steps.

  Do not die.

  That’s one step.

  Make sure Mum isn’t alone.

  That’s another step.

  Live.

  That’s yet another step.

  I’m gaining some sort of momentum.

  Live.

  Be.

  Exist.

  I reach the end of the high street.

  Don’t . . . Uh . . .

  I turn what I think is south.

  Die.

  I take another turn, which probably isn’t south but might be.

  See Mum again.

  I can hear an engine.

  I stop, which I shouldn’t do because I’ll lose the momentum and the mantra.

  I move towards the sound.

  Live, you idiot!

  I trudge faster.

  Live. And faster.

  Live, live, live.

  ‘Hey, Rev.’

  My overworked heart skips a beat.

  ‘Johnson?’

  My brain has finally had enough of me. My blood has started to freeze internally and somewhere inside my brain there is a voice that sounds like Johnson and it is being dangled in front of me like a hypnotist’s pocket watch. You failed, it’s saying. There is no fixing this. So why don’t you give up and let the cold claim you?

  I have stopped walking.

  But worse I have stopped trying.

  My knees give out first as I sink into the whiteness.

  ‘Rev.’

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ I tell the voice in my head.

  ‘Get up.’

  ‘I can’t move.’

  The engine stops. Or rather the noise stops. It was a figment of my imagination.

  ‘C’mon,’ Johnson says.

  I’m sinking further into the snow. The world is claiming me and I can’t stop it. Why did I think I could win?