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2. Exit From Nowheresville

I watched Johnny with an amused smile as he reacted to being inside Papa’s vehicle: the smell of upholstered leather made supple with nap oil, the luxury of the satin cushions, the fridge containing energy drinks laced with spirulina and ginseng root. In short, a womb of mercy.

I leant forward. “Dominic,” I told the driver. “We’re going to see Cheri.”

He steered north across the river. I told Johnny not to worry. No one could see us through the tinted windows.

To say he looked odd would be an understatement. It was shocking at first to see someone with no face; instead just a constantly shifting array of pixels obscuring his natural features. No eyes, no mouth, no nose. My mind conjured visions of how the rest of him might be transfigured.

But I was getting used to it surprisingly quickly. His lanky ginger hair concealed the piteous details of the transition. I felt a surge of pity for him. I’d got off lightly by comparison.

I liked how he used the screen to express his feelings in an ironic, witty way. When he’d removed his tube from the third bottle, a bloated smiley face appeared. I blew out my own cheeks and smiled back. I asked him if Johnny Online was his real name.

“No, it’s something they gave me in a role-play game when I was eleven and it stuck after I got Creep. I don’t want to remember my real name. I’m not the same person any more, know what I mean?” His voice was like a train announcement and seemed to come from beneath his chin. He’d chosen one that was neutral, midtone, with only slight inflection, perhaps deliberately to make himself like a robot. He continued: “When Creep hit I was eleven but I didn’t catch it till I was twelve. I left home a year later.”

I nodded. “Me too. But what a terrible story. You’re a Grey, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said proudly. “Don’t know how but I’ve managed to stay unregistered for two years. I’ve learnt how to keep my head down.”

He reached in the fridge again and started on a strawberry yogurt. I couldn’t believe how hungry he was. I tried to see where the tube went—it seemed to disappear into his throat through a hole in his neck.

“It must be terrible being a Grey,” I prompted.

“It’s probably better than being a Red though. The Gene Police take them to the Centre for Genetic Rehabilitation and they’re never seen again.”

The streets passed by outside: Russell Square, Camden High Street, all quiet. Dominic pulled over to let an armoured ambulance, its blue lights flashing, pass by. Johnny ducked instinctively.

“I know I’ve lived a rather sheltered life,” I began hesitantly. For some reason I felt the need to apologise. “I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be homeless…”

I told him how I’d been protected by my parents’ money and status, and until recently lived a life of careless ignorance. Then I too got the plague and began to find out how awful the world could be.

He listened to my story without comment. Then “Why pick me?” flashed on his screen with a picture of a blue face in a sea of yellow faces.

“I found your blog on the net. I-I thought you might be able to help me.”

“Help you what? Find a cure?!” he snorted and flashed up a cartoon of a detective with a giant magnifying glass, then smashed it with a hammer. I smiled.

“No, that’s Papa’s company’s job. But I’ll tell you why later. First, we’re going in here. Dominic?”

I’d timed it nicely. We were in West Hampstead and the car pulled up opposite a rambling, red-brick Victorian house with brown, smoked-glass extensions, surrounded by a few trees and a high security wall.

“Where are we?” asked Johnny.

“Don’t you know?” I was surprised. “It’s where they can help you.”

“Hey. What makes you think I—”

“Oh, I’m sure you can remain anonymous if you like. A troubled soul checking in briefly from out of the cold. This is Salvation House.”

“No way,” he said petulantly.

“Oh, come on, Johnny. This is a hospice. It’s run by my aunt. Everybody’s heard of it. It’s the most hybrid-friendly place in the country. The council’s always threatening to close it down but they can’t because there’d be a riot.”

“Not interested,” he intoned in an annoying, flat voice. His screen had gone blank.

“They’ll clean you up, give you a medical…” I sighed. I didn’t think he’d be like this. “Look at the state of you. You could die on the streets any day. The vigilante gangs, no money—”

“I can look after myself.”

He kept saying this until I got the message. But Sally House was so nice. It was cosy and right at the heart of the struggle for the rights of Creep victims. My Aunt Cheri treated it as her family, her cause. Her heart was as big as London. He’d no right to turn down my offer of help. It could only be because he didn’t know how marvellous it was. He registered my disappointment. His screen came alive again with a picture of wild mountains and clouds. A wolf howled at the sky. Was this how he really saw himself?

“Very well,” I said coldly. “Can we drop you off somewhere?”

“Home.”

“Home?” I didn’t think he had a home.

He gave the location to Dominic, who impassively restarted the engine and took the car away from West Hampstead, back, back towards the river.

Johnny didn’t want to know what I wanted to ask him to do. I felt hurt by his lack of curiosity. I’d been wrong about him. He was perverse. Perhaps he was more machine than boy. There was no heart beating beneath his synthetic casing. He’d been claimed by the creeping inorganic world. No amount of care could warm a heart that didn’t exist.

There was a sullen silence throughout the journey.

I walked with him from the car along the side street. We were in a nowheresville, the anywhere of a 1930s suburban estate.

It had seen better times; the hedges straggled, untrimmed. Grime sucked the colour from all surfaces. Lace curtains drifted, ragged and unwashed. Litter snagged in the weed-claimed flower beds. Grey pebbledashing, like an old mask, had fallen from walls to reveal the shame of naked brickwork.

“You live here?” I asked.

“Sure. I like it. It suits me. See? Leaky houses once full of happy young families. The only things living here now are ghosts.” And he explained how what he called their old comfort blanket had changed into a blanket of fear. “Who knows when this happened? Sometimes I think it began when they tarmacked the front gardens for their second or third cars, or perhaps it was when the kids and their mums and dads stopped playing together and disappeared into their bedrooms for hours on end to play computer games, watch TV, press buttons. Anyway, conversation stopped. Then I imagine how the children left, sucked down telephone wires or satellite cables into another dimension. Hear it now? No sound, no wind, no movement, no people. Just planes passing overhead and the distant complaints of sirens. Here we are,” he announced.

It was a dark, semi-detached house with its windows and doors all boarded up. I held my nose against the stench of blocked drains. We clambered through a hole in a board nailed over the back door. Johnny threw a connection switch on an electricity meter, telling me he’d wired it to a street lamp outside—free electricity. “Don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this.”

The lights blazed on and the blackness shrank into sharp shadows. I couldn’t hide my shock. He took my hand as I stumbled over rubbish on the floor—wet, broken plaster, rotten floorboards, plastic bags, empty bottles.

“But what is this?” I asked naively.

“A squat, of course,” he said, and I could tell that if his voice had been human, it would have betrayed a trace of contempt at my ignorance. “How d’you think I survived for two years?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“The first few weeks were the worst. Looking back, I was lucky I wasn’t killed. One night I slept in the middle of a traffic island! I hid in the bushes, but it was hard to sleep cos of the noise.”

“That’s awful!”

“Then I met this guy, Turney. He was older, been homeless a while. He kind of took me under his wing. Saved my life really. Took me down to Southwark and found me a squat—the first of a string of them. To begin with I was sharing with about twenty others. At least I’m alone here. Turney showed me where you could get free food and clothes, and who was dangerous and who would be friendly. You see, there are cafés and shops which don’t mind hybrids coming in; some are even run by hybrids. He showed me how to keep away from the vigilantes who come hunting for us, the Gene Police, the drug pushers and the pimps.”

“Was he a hybrid?” I asked.

“No. But he kind of liked hanging out with them. He was about twenty, but he seemed a lot older. He used to say, ‘Johnny-boy, if I’m going to get it, I’m going to get it. Don’t matter what I do, my number will be up. So I ain’t going to let some crummy virus scare me’.”

Johnny led me upstairs: there were no carpets and our footsteps seemed too loud.

“He sounds nice. What happened to him?”

“Dunno. One day he just disappeared and I never saw him again. I looked for him at his usual haunts, but I never found him. Maybe he was picked up by the Gene Police and sent to the CGR just for the hell of it.”

Suddenly he froze. He signalled me to be silent. I could see daylight coming in from a bedroom. We continued slowly, treading on smashed glass. Johnny rushed into the back bedroom and I followed.

The room had been ransacked. I pinched my nose at the smell and saw excrement was smeared on the furniture. Graffiti on the walls shouted “Bye bye freaks”; “We’ll get you next time”; “Hybrid control—mission accomplished”. I saw Johnny stagger and rushed to support him, easing him on to a chair.

“My computers…back-ups…all gone…” he said. Equipment lay smashed on the floor. Papers were everywhere.

“What a mess,” I said. “Do you know who did it?”

He looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there.

“What does it matter?”

“Did they take much?”

“All my files—writing. My databases, programs, all my hardware…No, not much.”

“Haven’t you got it backed up somewhere?”

“Well, yes and no. Some of it, almost, a bit.” On his screen a picture of an underground cave system momentarily replaced his standard screensaver of a stoned smiley face.

I began to poke around in the mess. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, no?”

“Yeah, but it was my rubbish.”

“At least you weren’t here when it happened.”

“I can look after myself.”

“I don’t think so. Come on.” I took a last look round, picked up a few papers and marched out of the bedroom. This time, he followed.

It was when we got into the front yard that they pounced. I think there were three of them. They must have only just left the house when we arrived, and had seen us, returning for an ambush. Screaming, they charged at us from the side passage, waving baseball bats and a crowbar.

I let out a shriek, grabbing Johnny’s hand instinctively. We ran towards the gate, hotly pursued just a few metres behind.

But Dominic had seen what was happening and had coasted the car up to the house. The 4x4’s brilliant lights flashed on and with a scream of tyres he swerved it across the road on to the pavement to illuminate fully the front garden.

Startled, our attackers paused, shielding their eyes against the glare. Dominic leant on the horn. We didn’t need a second summons. Racing through the gate, we jumped into the open door and Dominic crashed the gears into reverse, lurched back into the road, and then, with another squeal of tyres, sped off down the street, leaving the vigilantes staring at our tail lights.