“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