Levi nods.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Jonah taps the side of his nose. “You’ll see, boy. You’ll see.”
I enjoy riding with Jonah more than I like to admit. My muscles sing with the strain of holding myself inches from the murderous road. The motorbike seems faster and more lethal in the morning light. I imagine what would happen if I fell: shoulder first, then my head slapping on to the tarmac and bouncing back, my momentum rolling me forward, smashing my collarbones one at a time as each shoulder hit the road in turn, twisting my spine until it tore and my legs flailed out at hideous angles and my knees hinged backwards. The image plays over and over in my brain, so vivid it draws me towards the ground.
“You did good last night,” Jonah shouts over the wind. The words whip around me like scraps of cloth, only enough to get the meaning. “Standing up for your girl like that.”
“She’s not my—”
“It’s the right attitude,” Jonah continues. “That attitude will keep you alive in this place … if it doesn’t get you killed first.”
Threat or compliment? I’m not sure. I shouldn’t care what Jonah thinks but it’s hard not to. It’s instinct, I suppose, survival of the fittest. Millions of years of evolution have taught me that craving Jonah’s approval is what will keep me alive here. But there’s something else … a connection I don’t understand. I know he feels it just the same as I do. I think it might be why I’m here.
The piercing wail of Tongue’s bike follows close behind, shadowing us. He needs to be close – it’s him, or his understanding of engines, that keeps us running. I don’t know how close he needs to be; the lights faded last night as soon as Ose went to bed. They seem to be taking no chances though. I catch glimpses of Tongue from the corner of my eye as he drifts closer and closer. I hope to hell he has a good working knowledge of angular friction and tyre pressure tolerances.
“We are the Founding Fathers, Kyle,” Jonah shouts. “This place belongs to us. You and me. We can do anything we like. We define this world.”
We accelerate into the turn and keep accelerating. I wonder if motorbikes are always this fast or if Jonah or Tongue somehow will them to move more quickly. A feeling swells inside my throat. A kind of rapture. Like a stone skimming across the surface of a lake.
“Faster,” I whisper, the words coming from somewhere else. “Faster.”
And does the bike accelerate? Do I feel the kick of extra speed, sense Tongue falling back and fighting to keep up?
Jonah lets out an ecstatic howl. “Yes! Yes!” he hollers, laughing. “Yes!”
It’s over too quickly. I lurch forward as the bike slows, pinned briefly against Jonah’s back. We veer to the left and the woods give way to a housing estate. Boxy brick house-hutches flash past as we weave down first one side street and then another.
They remind me of home. Our tiny little house filled with tiny little people. Mum at the tiny kitchen table making margin notes in her bible. Me, upstairs, working through GCSE notes, wondering what the point of it all is if I’m never going to leave this place anyway.
We stop outside a bungalow with a scruffy, overgrown garden. Jonah flips down the kickstand and I step shakily on to solid ground.
“You like that, eh?” Jonah grins, stepping off. “I can tell.”
I allow myself a weak, trembling smile and Jonah slaps me on the shoulder. “Don’t look so nervous, Kyle. You’re with me now. You’re safe.”
“What are we doing here?” I say.
Jonah sniffs sharply. “Don’t you smell that?”
I sniff. Nothing. In the other world you might smell bins, or cars, or stale grass, or dog mess. Here: nothing. I shake my head.
“You do smell it,” Jonah says. “You just don’t understand it yet.”
He takes a crowbar from the pannier on his bike and cracks open the front door as swiftly and simply as if he’d used a key. Tongue stays with the bikes. He’s leaning a little to one side like he’s still in pain, but his colour is better than it was yesterday.
I follow Jonah inside.
This house isn’t empty.
Jonah heads up the narrow staircase, I follow him. I feel like a thief, but I know we’re not here to steal anything. Jonah pauses halfway up the stairs and whistles. That soft, fluting warble. The same sound I heard in the hotel.
“Not everybody has the courage to adapt to this world,” Jonah murmurs, his nostrils flaring. “Some people hide away. They need our help.”
I know which door he’s heading for before he takes another step. He presses his finger against his lips, his eyes wide and alert. He turns the handle. Now I smell it. Except it’s not really a smell, it’s more like a feeling, a sense of nausea, a memory…
My mind is running at a thousand miles per hour, I take in the details of the room in a second. The television bolted to the wall; the window looking out on to a small, square patch of lawn that tessellates against the other lawns around it; the chest of drawers; the pile of dirty laundry heaped up against it like a snow drift; the bed with the crumpled grey sheets; the mirrored doors of a fitted wardrobe in which I see the terrifying silhouettes of Jonah and myself.
“Help… Ple … ase … he … lp…” a dry, breathy voice calls out.
Jonah moves to the bed. The man who’s lying there looks to be in his sixties or seventies – thin and attenuated. He’s not under the sheets, his pyjamas tent around his thin frame. Jonah leans close, combs his hand through the man’s thin grey hair.
“You’re OK, mate,” he says softly. “I got you.”
“I’m … I’m sick.”
Jonah nods. “You’re very sick, mate.”
“I need a doctor.”
“Oh, you’re way past that,” Jonah says coolly.
“Please … help.”
“I know, I know,” Jonah whispers, still stroking the man’s hair. Jonah glances around, takes in the meagre room. “Pretty nice place you got here, my friend. Are you some kind of businessman?”
The man coughs a wry laugh. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
