Shift (34 page)

GG, wearing his clothes freshly laundered under his
WAR(M)
jacket, is setting up a midnight picnic beside the Moth. ‘I’ve been thinking. How come there’s static on the
TV and radio but we can still get a phone signal?’

‘I think, and I’m only guessing, but the signal came with us. It’s trapped just like we are – it was taken as well. One of us must’ve been using our phone at the
exact same time the light appeared.’

‘That’s a hundred lines for someone,’ tuts GG.

Johnson opens a bottle of wine and fills five glasses. We pick at slices of brie and salami that GG found in the hotel kitchen. I try to swallow an olive even though I hate them, because Johnson
says he loves them and I want him to think I’m just like him.

The moment I’ve just shared with Other-Johnson is still at the forefront of my mind, but being near my Johnson again means he’s squeezing back into my thoughts too. It’s like
I’m two-timing the same person.

As we were riding the elevator to the top floor I caught him studying me in the mirrored interior.

‘You’re amazing,’ he’d said, so quietly that at first I hadn’t realised he was talking to me. When I did I immediately blushed. That’s all he said. He
hadn’t even made a move towards me. Just one simple sentence, no huge romantic sentiments like the Other-Johnson, but it’s everything.

GG has spread out the blankets and duvets and we are sitting on them while we stare out across London. Up here it’s like we’re kings of everything we survey. The city is all ours.
Even the Moth has managed to counter his fear of heights.

‘How did you even know you had that fear?’ asks GG. ‘You know, what with being sat down all the time.’

‘I’ve been up high before.’

‘Where?’

‘Went in a glider once. Two-man. I was at the front while this man piloted it from the seat behind me.’

‘A glider,’ echoes GG wistfully. ‘Would love to be in one right now.’

‘I threw up in my lap,’ admits the Moth, and it sets us off laughing. The wine helps loosen all the tensions. I feel Johnson’s foot touching mine and quietly leave mine there.
‘I was never asked back.’

I laugh some more, falling back and looking up at the sky as the moon rises high into the night. The stars twinkle and I plan to count them, but for no reason other than thinking that if I angle
my head in a certain way Johnson will see my poised and profound profile and be unable to resist. The wine is wrapping my brain in a warm fuzzy feeling and while my foot touches Johnson’s I
feel totally relaxed.

‘So you read it all,’ says Johnson to the Moth finally.

‘Every word. I did it for Carrie. I made her a promise which I can’t keep now, but I said I’d find a way.’ The Moth says this with an awkward sadness.

‘Is that a person?’ says the Ape, who is way too close to the edge of the roof, peering down into the darkness.

I rise up a little, but my movements are sluggish now, impaired by the wine.

‘A person?’ asks Johnson.

‘Hang on . . . It’s a lamp post,’ says the Ape.

I silently curse him and look back at the Moth. ‘So how do we get home?’ I ask, getting everything back on track.

‘Well,’ replies the Moth, ‘we need to go back, back to the classroom I mean.’

‘Well that’s good, isn’t it? That we know what we have to do?’ I say.

‘Yeah. It should be,’ he says, but there’s no excitement in his voice.

‘But?’ Johnson’s foot moves away from me and we lose our precious contact as he sits up.

‘Well Rev’s dad wrote the paper, OK? Which means he got back in order to do that. Where he went after he disappeared, I don’t know. But there’s a rule we need to obey. A
simple straightforward rule. We have a forty-eight hour window from the point that we were first shifted, and we
have
to be exactly where we were when we were sent here. A fracture in time
and space will open up and we’ll be swept through it. But if we don’t get back within the forty-eight hours then we don’t go back. Ever. Or at least not unless we want to try what
Rev’s dad tried and get all burned up.’

‘Forty-eight hours means we’ve still got time. Not loads, but enough,’ Johnson responds.

‘But we can’t go back,’ the Moth says.

‘What d’you mean? We can’t stay here!’

‘Think about it, Johnson. How do we take Carrie back? She’s in that other body. Dead. How do we explain that? Because time will not have passed in our world and Mr Allwell will walk
back in after the fire alarm has been switched off and he might just notice there are now two GGs and no Carries.’

‘I’ll get the other Johnson to put her back into her own body,’ I tell him.

‘And then we’ll have Evil GG reanimated and coming after us.’ The Moth looks hopelessly troubled and I go to him and try my best for him.

‘Then we have no choice. We’ll have to leave her behind.’

‘I’m not prepared to do that, Rev. I promised I’d get her home, she might be . . . gone, but I don’t want to break my promise.’ The Moth’s words linger in the
air for a good minute while we try to accept what he’s saying.

Johnson is the first to break the silence. ‘I don’t have an answer to that, Moth, but what I don’t understand is how come the other versions of us weren’t at the school
just after the flash? They were doing the same detention that we were. Shouldn’t we have all shifted, or whatever, to the same spot?’

‘I don’t know,’ says the Moth. ‘Is it even important?’

‘I’ve just got this feeling that more is going on than you’ll ever find in that paper.’

‘I own this city!’ The Ape is still dangerously close to the edge of the roof as he gazes out across London. ‘How many people can say that and it’s actually
true?’

No one is really listening to him.

‘We’ll go first thing in the morning,’ says Johnson. ‘We’ve got till four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. We’ll go as soon as it’s light, make sure
we’re not seen and GG can drive us back on the train. With any luck we’ll do all that while the other usses are searching London for us. We have an advantage now – we know
there’s a time limit and we know what to do and we know where to be.’

The Moth looks hurt by this. I know he’s still thinking about Carrie and how we’ll have to leave her here.

GG senses it as well and tries to console him. ‘What else can we do, Mothy? Seriously. We have no choice.’

‘I own this city,’ says the Ape again.

‘We’re trying to talk,’ I snap.

‘I need a leak.’

‘C’mon, Moth, we can go home. You’ve got to see that, right?’ says Johnson.

‘As long as we get the timing right.’

I hear the Ape belch and laugh as he unzips his trousers. ‘Look – it’s raining.’

‘But only if we make it to the classroom before the others,’ warns the Moth. ‘Because if they do somehow figure it out, or see us and chase us down, then we’ll have to
hold our ground against them.’

‘We will,’ says Johnson in a way that sends a thrill shooting through me. I tingle all over as the strength and determination in his words lift my spirits. He just keeps believing
and I’m going to stand right alongside him. I can’t not, no one can.

‘Yeah,’ I say, backing Johnson up. ‘We’ll get there and we’ll hold it if we have to. We’ll hold that classroom.’

GG claps his hands excitedly. ‘This is our very own Braveheart moment.’ He then adopts a thick Scottish brogue. ‘We will hold! We will hold the classroom!’

My heart is racing. We have a plan, an escape route.
W e can do this
, I think. I can feel a swell of optimism breaking out around us.

I glance over at the Ape and if there’s anyone who can hold a classroom then it’ll be him.

Though right now he is too busy peeing over the edge of the hotel.

‘Ape!?’

‘Shh, I’m trying to hit that man,’ he laughs.

Everyone is on high alert when he says this.

‘What man?’ asks the Moth.

‘Him down there.’

‘What are ye talking aboot mon?’ says GG, still doing his Scottish brogue.

GG, Johnson and I head quickly over to the rooftop. I don’t get too close because I don’t really want to see the Ape’s penis as it sprays a torrent of urine down onto what is
most definitely a person.

‘That’s not a man,’ says GG.

‘Looks like one, but it isn’t,’ says Johnson. ‘It’s a girl.’

The person is showered in the Ape’s urine and when it looks up I know immediately who it is.

‘It’s Carrie,’ says GG.

The Moth hears this and speeds over. ‘Did you say it was Carrie?’

‘Not our Carrie,’ I say, turning to him.

But his forward gear sticks again and I realise he is coming right for the edge.

‘Stupid thing!’ The Moth hammers at the control.

‘Moth!’ I yell.

Johnson and GG turn and the Moth is now three metres from the edge and he can’t get his wheelchair to stop.

‘Back up! Back up!’ I scream.

‘I can’t!’ yells the Moth as he sails past me. I grab on to the back of his chair and dig my feet in.

‘Grab him!’ I shout to the others.

The Ape turns and finally catches on to what is happening. ‘Hawkings?’

Johnson and GG grab the Moth and heave him out of the wheelchair while the wheels fight against my grip. As soon as they’ve pulled him clear I let the chair go and we watch as it powers
straight over the edge of the roof. I hurry after it in the undying certainty that there’s only one place that wheelchair can possibly land.

My gut instinct is totally correct because when I peer over the edge I see Carrie Two sniffing her hand and then recoiling as she realises she has just been urinated on from a great height. She
shrieks and turns to look up but all she sees is a heavy motorised wheelchair blotting out the sky as it crashes down on top of her.

It seems that no matter how many different worlds there are, and how many hundreds of me and Carrie there might be, I will always, always do something to ruin her life.

The solidly built wheelchair, complete with its heavy battery attached, flattens her, smashing her otherworldly body into a mass of pulp and black oily blood. I can barely take it in as Johnson
looks down at her misshapen outline lying hundreds of feet below us.

‘You’re lethal,’ he says quietly.

‘Earlier I was amazing.’

‘That hasn’t changed.’

The Ape zips up behind me and then ruffles my hair with his urine-smelling hand. ‘Teamwork. I set them up, you flatten them.’

‘That’s divine intervention,’ says GG. ‘And oh so divine at that. Someone wants us to find our way home. I don’t even need to tap my heels together.’

The Moth reaches for a glass of wine and takes a sip before raising his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Carrie.’

He is about to take another sip when the glass is knocked clean out of his hand by a thunderous shunt to the hotel.

‘What was that?’ GG’s eyes widen.

I try and look over the edge but Johnson pulls me back. ‘Careful.’

There’s another great shunt and the hotel seems to move.

I stagger and then regain my balance.

‘Earthquake?’ asks Johnson.

I tread carefully back to the edge of the roof.

‘Rev!’

‘I need to see.’

I creep ever closer to the edge.

There’s another tremor and this one sends me tripping towards the edge. I reach out, my arms flailing, and as my loss of balance drives me towards oblivion Johnson catches my ankle and
drags me back. I land hard on the shale covering the roof, but at least I get a great view of what’s down below us.

Standing with splattered Carrie Two at his feet is the Non-Ape.

A Non-Ape that is flooding with rage. He’s finally found someone in this horribly empty world. But thanks to me she’s smeared across the pavement before he can even say hello.

He lets out an almighty roar that can be heard all across London.

This cannot possibly be good news.

The Non-Ape takes aim at the side of the hotel again and punches it.

The whole building shakes.

‘He’s trying to knock it down!’ I scream. ‘He’s actually trying to knock a hotel down!’

GG grabs the Moth by the arms and starts dragging him backwards through the shale towards the door that leads off the rooftop. Which is when we feel the first major structural rumble as another
of the Non-Ape’s rage induced punches hit home.

Boom!

That’s what it sounds like. A great big boom. It’s quickly followed by another.

Boom!

This one is harder and the roof trembles like it’s just been hit by a small earth tremor. The bottle of wine breaks and something called Pinot Noir spreads out, ruining our picnic
blanket.

‘He’s lost it,’ says Johnson, who reaches for my hand and pulls me to my feet. He holds on tight as we make our way to the door.

‘He’s gone loco,’ wails GG.

Boom!

The roof quakes again and knocks us clean off our feet.

‘No one’s that strong,’ screams GG. ‘No one!’

‘He gets angry,’ I tell him as I climb back to my feet.

‘Very angry,’ adds Johnson.

GG’s face sags and he looks totally forlorn and desolate. ‘We were beating them,’ he says. ‘We had them.’

Boom!