Shift (14 page)

Before I can react, her body goes limp and she pitches forward, collapsing at my feet in a big deathly heap of stillness. It’s pretty wimpy I know, but after all we’ve been through
in the last day or so, I feel it’s OK to scream.

Billie is unconscious and I can’t get her to wake up.

‘Billie, hey, Billie . . .’

‘The hammer, Rev, the hammer,’ Johnson calls over to me.

‘What hammer? What are you talking about?’ Does he want to hit her on the head?

‘The emergency hammer.’

I spot the hammer. It’s above the door Billie is now lying beside. But I can’t seem to move. I’m stuck, paralysed. Billie is just lying there and I’m scared out of my
wits.

Carrie steps past us and starts hitting the small plastic security box the hammer is encased in. Then she stops, takes dead aim and punches the perspex as hard as she can. Her fist goes straight
through the perspex.
So much for her being brittle
, I think. The girl is harder than diamond.

She grabs the hammer and tosses it to Johnson. He rushes to the locked train driver’s door and starts hacking at it.

‘Is she OK?’ Carrie looks down at us.

I look back at Billie, whose eyes suddenly open and are now as black as Moth Two’s eyes. I gasp, but after a split second she blinks and they return to normal.

Johnson chops savagely at the door until it swings open. GG yelps when he sees Johnson. Yes. Yelps. Like one of those little yappy dogs women in Los Angeles carry inside their purses.

‘Want to put the brakes on?’ he tells, rather than asks, GG.

‘It’s for the best – I know it, you know it,’ GG says, his voice small but controlled.

Johnson stares hard at GG and he buckles within a heartbeat. ‘All right, all right . . . I’m stopping the train, I’m doing it now.’

Within a few seconds the train is easing to a halt.

I help Billie into a sitting position and she takes a moment to collect herself.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah, brilliant,’ she pants.

‘What about me?’ asks the Moth who has fallen on the floor again without any of us noticing. ‘Hey, hello, hey!’

‘It’s all me, me, me with you, isn’t it?’ Carrie aims a venomous look his way, but helps him up anyway.

A text comes from the Ape.
Hey!

Followed by another.
Rev.

And another.
In Tesco makin more weapons.

Together Johnson and I manoeuvre Billie gently into a seat.

Rev?

Hey!

FU!

No one can face the relentless messages echoing tinnily around the carriage and I turn my phone to silent.

Carrie sits down opposite the Moth. ‘It’s time you used your big space brain, Hawkings.’

The Moth looks surprised. ‘Me? And it’s Hawking!’

‘You’re the best we’ve got.’ Carrie stares straight into the Moth, challenging him. ‘So come on. Tell us what’s happening.’

The Moth realises that we are watching and waiting for him to do just that. He looks back to Carrie and I sense that he sees this as a chance to impress her. ‘OK, OK, OK. Let me think.
Right. The only way out of this is to work out exactly what has happened, and is currently happening.’

‘We know that bit, doofus,’ Carrie says scornfully.

The Moth tries again, more determined this time. ‘We need to break it down into its component parts and attack each part with logic and sense. Don’t forget that everything that
happens has a reason for happening.’

‘You lost me at “the”,’ says GG.

The Moth sits up taller as, willed on by his desire to impress Carrie, he becomes more dominant. ‘I know that you want to help the Ape, Rev, but I don’t think going back is going to
achieve anything. Sorry.’ He can see I’m ready to respond but cuts me off. ‘It’s clear we can’t talk to these – these doppelgangers – because they’re
more savage and brutal than we are. And it doesn’t seem like they know any more than we do. So going back is ultimately futile. Not to mention extremely dangerous.’

The words leave an ominous feel in the air and I can see I’m not going to get things my way. The Ape is going to be left behind and I’m already debating how to tell him. It
won’t be with a
that’s for certain.

Johnson gazes at the floor. His lips are pursed and his eyes have narrowed in thought.

‘I can’t do it,’ he says eventually.

‘Can’t do what?’ asks Carrie.

‘Leave him.’

I sit up straighter.

‘We’re going back,’ declares Johnson.

‘Are you insane?’ Carrie is wide-eyed.

‘You did hear what I said?’ The Moth is as stunned as Carrie is.

‘We’re going back.’ Johnson is adamant. ‘GG, get us moving. We’re not leaving the Ape.’ He gives me the tiniest of smiles as he speaks.

I am so taken by his declaration that I instinctively touch my finger to my forehead, copying the Johnson salute.

As I do so, the small smile on his face grows, and
right now
, I think,
right now is a moment we’re going to remember
.

We’re heading slowly back to town, hoping that a slow-moving train will attract less attention. GG explained that trains can push and pull, so basically we are reversing.
We have moved to the far end of the train now, so we can at least see if anything is lying in wait for us.

The Moth still smells and Carrie is now waving her hand in front of her nose and making a big show of it. ‘Thanks for ponging out first class.’

‘You have issues,’ responds the Moth. ‘Deep, deep issues, you know that? All this aggression, there’s a reason for it.’

‘What I have is a gag reflex.’ Carrie kisses her teeth at him and waves more of his smell away. Despite the savage comments she has thrown his way, the Moth refuses to buckle.

‘No one is like that on purpose,’ he says, quietly confident. I am starting to marvel at the Moth. Everyone at school thought that Lucas was just his friend because he felt sorry for
the Moth, but I’m starting to see how resilient and capable the Moth truly is. Lucas was fragile and paper thin underneath the near God-like exterior – he proved he didn’t have it
in him to cope, but the Moth has had his best friend die and he hasn’t crumbled. Maybe it was him who felt sorry for Lucas and not the other way round.

I switch my phone from silent to normal and it immediately beeps with more texts from the Ape.

Rev U R here.

Not u tho.

I don’t think.

Knowing there’s another me, and that she’s living and breathing less than five miles away, is the scariest most confused feeling I’ll ever have. I want to go and see her but I
also don’t want to, as in ever.
I’m
Reva Marsalis, not her.

She found the burned man.

‘What’s he been texting?’ asks Billie, who sits across from me.

‘I’m in the supermarket,’ I say. ‘Well Me Two is,’ I clarify.

‘Tell him to stay out of sight,’ Johnson says.

I text exactly that.

I’m sick of hiding

My heart lurches.

I can take these things.

New weapon is awesome.

I read the last text out loud to the others.

‘Text him no. Tell him not to fight them,’ Carrie says, revealing more concern in that one statement than she has in the last four years we’ve been at school together. She aims
a look at the Moth. ‘C’mon, what are you doing? You should have all of this worked out by now.’

‘Why d’you think I’m so clever? Because I’m in a wheelchair? Is that it? Being in a wheelchair turns you into a scientist?’ he snaps. They share a look of mutual
scorn before the Moth backs down and softens. ‘I wish I was, I really do,’ he tells Carrie rather than the rest of us. ‘Then I’d be able to get you safe . . .’

It’s a tiny moment, but something flickers across Carrie’s face as she registers that the Moth might actually care about her.

The Ape phones and already he has forgotten to stay quiet.

‘Yowza!’

‘Get off the phone!’ I urge him. ‘They’ll hear you.’

‘I snuck into the manager’s office. Got a row of screens in front of me – can see the whole shop.’

‘I’m hanging up,’ I tell him. ‘Stick to texting,’ I hiss.

‘This other Rev’s boobs look bigger than yours. Just going to zoom in to check.’

‘How can he not understand what’s going on?’ asks the Moth.

‘Well, you don’t!’ Carrie snaps.

‘I’m not Stephen Hawking!’ he squeaks shrilly.

‘So stop making out that you are and that the rest of us are stupid.’

‘But I’m not!’

Carrie looks totally disgusted and the Moth, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. He’s probably too used to liking girls and not getting anywhere with them.

‘I’ll think of something,’ he promises. ‘Just give me time. But I will come good, I will.’ He says all of this to Carrie and it seems that despite her unwavering
hostility towards him, he’s going to keep trying to prove his worth to her.

Johnson talks to the Ape. ‘Try and keep your voice down, but what’s the other Rev doing?’

‘Hang on, I’m still zooming.’

‘Ape!’ I say impatiently.

‘OK, OK, I’m now unzooming. Coming away, coming away, coming away some more.’ The Ape pauses. ‘Still coming away, still unzooming. Ah.’ He pauses again and we wait
what feels like an excruciating eternity.

‘You’re crying,’ he says eventually.

‘Why’s she crying?’ I ask him.

‘I stole all the chocolate,’ he jokes. No one laughs.

‘Is she still with the burned man?’

‘She’s sitting beside him. Whole body’s shaking. Yow-za! She is shaking ’em!’

Billie mouths ‘shaking ’em?’ to me, then she gets what the Ape is looking at. ‘Oh, that’s just crude.’

‘Who sits around with a burned dead person?’ asks Carrie. ‘What sort of freak does that?’

‘I touched him,’ I say to her.

‘Ugh, you’re both freaks.’

‘I had to.’

‘Freak squared.’

‘What I mean is, I wanted to – like, I felt compelled to.’