Shift (35 page)

The Moth flails and skids across the tottering roof. GG grabs him again as another punch opens a huge rift in the roof. The Ape reaches the doorway to the roof first and kicks it open, almost
taking it straight off its hinges. It was unlocked but he can’t help himself.

Boom!

Johnson helps GG drag the Moth through the door, then takes my hand again and drags me inside.

Boom!

There are six steps to get the Moth down before we reach a fire door that leads to the top floor.

Boom!

The tremor shakes me off my feet again and I start to go over the banister when Johnson grabs me and hauls me back. Twice in twenty seconds he’s saved me. The Ape reaches out to the wall
as if he can somehow brace it and stop the hotel from shuddering under the impact. But the next punch rocks the hotel so much that flakes of cement and dust come loose and shower us.

We barely make it through the fire doors, trying to time our movements between impacts.

The Non-Ape is working his way steadily around the building, punching it over and over, his anger seeming to grow with every punch.

We carry the Moth down the next flight of stairs and reach the top-floor landing only to feel an almighty shudder ripple through the entire building.

‘This is a five star hotel,’ babbles GG. ‘It should be holding.’

Boom!

‘He’s destroying an entire hotel!’ The Moth turns pale with astonishment. ‘Doesn’t he realise it’ll fall on him as well.’

‘But it won’t hurt him,’ I say. ‘I don’t think anything can.’

Boom!

The punches are growing in strength and the last one sends all of us careering towards one wall. GG cracks his forehead and howls in agony.

With no one holding on to him, the Moth is forced to ride the next tremor alone and the shockwave sends him tumbling down the hallway. He slews to a stop outside one of the lifts.
‘Down,’ he says. ‘We have to go down.’

‘I’m not taking the lift,’ says Johnson.

Boom!

We are thrown across the hall as the Moth pulls himself up to a near-sitting position, jabs out a hand and calls the lift. It’s the same one we used to come up to the roof, so the doors
open immediately for him.

‘Moth, don’t!’ I call out. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

He glances back at us and a brief sadness flickers across his face. ‘You can’t carry me the whole way down those stairs.’ He heaves himself into the lift.

‘Moth!’

The doors close silently behind him.

Boom!

The elevator starts down.

GG clutches his aching forehead. ‘This hotel is supposed to be luxury upon luxury!’ he tries to joke as we ride the next tremor and are flung towards the stairwell at the far end of
the hallway. We have forty flights to try and get down before the hotel collapses. The Non-Ape’s punches are coming every five or so seconds and ugly cracks are starting to appear in the
walls. His monumental strength is staggering.

Boom!

‘See what happens when you don’t make a reservation,’ says GG, who is obviously going to go down quipping.

The Ape is leading the way towards the fire doors and kicks them open. Every now and then he glances back to make sure I’m close by.

Boom!

The hotel lurches again and we are thrown into a mass of tangled limbs as we flail along the landing. The Ape is first to his feet and he crashes through another set of fire doors and finds the
stairs.

‘Rev!’
Other-Johnson enters my head.

‘Can’t you stop him?’
I call telepathically to him as we clamber to our feet and start running down the stairs.

‘It’s the Ape,’
he responds.

‘No kidding.’

Boom!

Again the hotel lurches and we hang on to the banister as best we can while the floor literally shifts several feet to the left.

‘
Get in his head, swipe his brain, whatever it is you do.’

‘Don’t you think I’m trying?’

‘So try harder!’

‘But it’s the Ape! He barely has a brain.’

Boom!

We hit the thirty-seventh floor and watch a crack appear down one wall and then run all along the landing. More cement crashes down and this time there are whole chunks of it.

‘This is taking too long! We have to take the lift,’ says Johnson.

‘We can’t,’ I say. ‘We’ll get trapped.’

‘We’ll be trapped anyway.’

‘Where’s a parachute when you need one?’ asks a breathless GG.

The Ape stands waiting for the next impact – even he is a little bewildered by the inhuman power of the Non-Ape.

‘I could still take him,’ he tells me. ‘I could.’

Boom!

Part of the floor and stairwell slips away and crashes down onto the floor below.

‘Stop him, Johnson!’
I scream in my head at Other-Johnson.

‘I’m trying!’
he yells back.

My Johnson grabs my wrist and we head through another set of doors and back into a hallway lined with rooms. We trip and stagger towards the lift situated in the midpoint of the hallway.

‘We’ve got to go quick,’ he tells me.

‘I don’t want to die trapped in a lift,’ I reply, fear obvious in my eyes.

‘I don’t want to die period,’ says GG.

Boom!

The ceiling above us erupts into a mass of cracks and then starts to come apart. Johnson calls a lift as we watch the ceiling breaking up.

The Ape yanks me close to him and puts his great hairy arms around me, sheltering me as best he can.

‘I got this.’ And I hope to God he has.

Boom!

The ceiling gives way above us and GG screams, but Johnson is already pushing us into the opening doors of the lift. The Ape smothers me completely as chunks of hotel rain down on us.

‘Yeah, I got this!’ He barrels me into the lift a half-second before the entire ceiling collapses behind us.

The lift starts down without the doors closing and for a second I think that this is going to be OK – it’s going fast, we’ve got a chance.

But it’s moving far too fast and the truth is we’re now in free-fall. The lift has been shaken from its mechanisms and whatever holds it up, and is now plummeting straight towards
the ground.

Johnson looks both confused and shaken. He has made the first bad call of his entire life and he can’t understand what’s happening. This is not how it should end.

But GG is babbling behind me. ‘They’ve got brakes,’ he says. ‘They have, these fancy lifts have got special brakes, they’ll kick in, they will. They’ve got
brakes. God? You listening? They’ve got special brakes. Do your magic!’

But if there is a God, he’s obviously not listening right now, because if anything the lift seems to be gaining more speed and GG whimpers.

The Ape is still half wrapped around me and his bear-like arms seem intent on keeping me from harm as they tighten. ‘I got this, I got this,’ he says over and over. Quietly. Gently.
Soothingly. It’s the first time he has seemed afraid, or even aware of what is actually going on. He and Johnson are having a mutual epiphany, but at the wrong time and for all the wrong
reasons.

‘It’ll slow down,’ says Johnson.

‘Yeah,’ I say from under the Ape’s smother.

The lights on the console have been damaged in the free-fall, so we have no way of knowing what floor we’re at now, but it can’t be long till we hit the ground floor at what feels
like a thousand miles an hour. Suddenly a weird fact pops into my head. I think I read somewhere that just before the moment of impact you should jump up in the air and that when you land
you’ll be all right. You just need to time it right. It seems like such a stupid thing to try, and there’s no way gravity and the G-forces are going to allow that anyway.

Boom!

We are rocked again and Other-Johnson’s voice comes into my head. He is distressed but not for himself.
‘I’ve got Billie.’
He tells me.
‘We’re
getting out.’

‘The Moth?’

‘Haven’t seen him. But, Rev . . .’

‘ Yeah?’

‘If not in this one, I’ll find you in another world.’

These are the last words we share because the elevator hits and, despite the brakes kicking in like GG said they would, they don’t do quite enough to avert the impact.

Boom!

Only this time, the boom is not a punch from the Non-Ape, it’s us hitting the ground floor hard and fast. The Ape does his best to protect me, but it’s not enough. The last thing I
see before everything goes black is Johnson crying out and clutching his head.

As I tumble headlong into unconsciousness I wonder how come my big violent angel didn’t manage to save me this time.

‘How’s your head?’ a voice says.

‘I’ve still got a head?’

‘Just about.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Like?’

‘A body. Arms. Legs.’

‘Let me count. Yep. You’ve got all of them.’

‘Can’t feel them.’

‘No?’

‘Nope.’

‘Wiggle your toes,’ the voice instructs.

‘I’ve still got toes?’

‘If you’ve got legs, chances are you’ve still got toes.’

I try and wiggle my toes but feel nothing.

‘Well?’ I ask.

‘Try again.’

I have another go.

‘Mmmm,’ the voice says.

‘Mmmm? That doesn’t sound good.’

‘Again.’

‘OK. But I don’t think . . .’

There’s clapping and another voice joins the first one. ‘There they go, wiggle wiggle.’

‘That you, GG?’

‘Haven’t got amnesia then?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Ho ho ho. She can even make jokes.’

I’m not sure where I am, but I can sense that I’m moving, or being moved. At pace.

‘My head hurts,’ I say.

‘We all hurt,’ says the first voice.

‘Johnson?’

‘Hey you.’

‘Stop!’ a deep voice calls out. It’s the Ape, I’m sure of it. I feel myself come to an abrupt halt.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s the other me again,’ he whispers now. But it’s a bit late I think, shouting one second and then whispering the next. Typical Ape.

‘Can you drive a taxi?’ whispers GG to the Ape.

‘If it’s an automatic,’ comes the reply.

‘There’s one over there, so fingers crossed.’

I imagine GG is pointing and then I feel myself being turned through one hundred and eighty degrees. My stomach lurches with the speed of it.

‘Yes, that’s an automatic! First lucky break in two days.’

‘We need to get to King’s Cross station,’ says Johnson.

‘No need, I’ll drive us all the way home.’

‘But what if we meet that other Ape again?’

The Ape’s brain takes another age to formulate an answer. ‘I can take him.’

‘Let’s stick to the King’s Cross plan.’

‘More trains,’ says GG with undisguised glee.

‘More trains,’ agrees Johnson.

I try to open my eyes, but my head is so sore and everything seems to hurt so much that I can barely lift my eyelids without a blinding pain.

‘The Moth?’ I ask.

‘Shhh,’ says GG.

‘Yeah, keep it down,’ orders the Ape.

‘Billie?’

‘We think they got away. Her and the other me,’ says Johnson.

I can taste cement in the back of my mouth. When I touch my arm it feels like dry dust is clinging to my skin, but I still can’t open my eyes to check on how I am. I hear a car door open
and I’m lifted from the trolley I’m on – it must be from the hotel, a luggage trolley – and placed gently along the back seat. The car slumps down at the front as someone
– I’m assuming the Ape – gets in behind the wheel.

I hear the seats behind the driver’s cubicle flip down and GG and Johnson take one each. One of them stretches a seatbelt around me.

‘We can’t go without Billie.’

The taxi starts up and pulls away.

‘Wait, we have to get her! And the Moth!’
And Other-Johnson
I want to add, but I don’t because I know Johnson wouldn’t appreciate it. I also can’t feel
Other-Johnson in my mind and I start to fear the worst for him.

‘You there?’
I ask silently.
‘Hey.’

I wait, but nothing comes back.

‘We’re going to the school,’ says Johnson.

‘But Billie won’t know we’re doing that. She wasn’t on the roof. Didn’t hear the plan.’

‘Rev . . .’ says GG. But stops because he can’t say what he wants to.

‘What? What is it!?’ I all but scream. But I already know.

I have the biggest migraine I have ever felt and when I finally open my eyes the moonlight is sharp enough to force me to squint. I look over at Johnson and GG. In the low interior car light
Johnson has a pale dust-covered face and he is holding his arm awkwardly. GG is wiping his face free of the same dust and shaking it out of his hair. He looks remarkably unscathed but not
unshaken.

‘We looked for them,’ Johnson says eventually. ‘We did, I swear.’ He won’t meet my eyes.

I blink as rapidly as I dare considering it sends bolts of pain through my temples.

‘How long have I been unconscious?’