The Rain (30 page)

‘You . . . can’t . . . miss . . . it.’

That, unfortunately, turned out to be true.

‘What a bunch of
jerks
,’ spat Darius as the limo pulled away.

I was just working out a scathing reply to that – something like ‘It takes one to know one’, but without saying anything that might make it sound like I thought those people
were jerks, because I didn’t – when he started on me.

‘Ruby . . .’ he said.

‘No!’ I said, working my way along the line of parked cars, tons of them . . . some locked, some unlocked . . . none with keys.

‘But, Ruby . . .’ said Darius.

He went on. He went on – and on – about how we really should get some water while we could, about how we couldn’t carry on drinking rubbish, about how we wouldn’t have to
go breaking into places if we did, about how it’d just be a lot easier if we just went and got some now . . . on and on and on. I ignored him. I just kept on hunting for a car with Darius
trailing behind me whining, and then I found a car – one of those massive family cruiser type-things – and I ignored him while we shifted all our stuff from the truck to the new
car.

Only I wasn’t really ignoring him. Skilled though I am in the art of blanking out all manner of stuff I don’t want to know about, whether it’s stuff in my own head or stuff
coming out of other people’s mouths, his going on about the water was quickly sending me nuts. It was like . . . when you really need a wee and your idiot (lovely!) friend tortures you going
‘Guuuuuuuuuussssssh’ until you feel like you’re going to burst.

But I am Ruby, and I am tough. So I kept my dry-as-dust mouth shut.

Until I caved. The thing that swung it was when he said we could maybe even get enough water to wash.

Now I’d already fully got my head around the babywipes deal – you can do a lot (so much more than you ever could have imagined!) with them – but I’d seen my face in the
mirror in that shop and had been shocked again at how orangey I looked (in spite of the foundation). It was the sort of major orange only serious, prolonged scrubbing
avec
soap will
remove.

‘OK,’ I said.

SO. THIS IS IT: THE GOOD BIT . . . (THAT’S GOOD AS IN DEEPLY BAD, BY THE WAY.)

We followed the signs.

As we came down a long hill lined with smashed shops, you could see the city ahead of us: here and there little smudges of smoke rising almost straight up into the warm, still air. Reaching up
for – and getting nowhere near – the sweetest, teensiest clouds. Cumulus humilis, they must have been. They look like the little puffy clouds kids draw. Like the world is a storybook
and no harm will ever come to you.

We weaved our way through the city centre, saw a lady pushing a trolley full of bottles filled with water. Didn’t stop to ask. Didn’t need to. The motorway, it starts in the city
centre. One minute there are houses and offices and shops and the next minute . . . It wasn’t a motorway like other motorways are – not three lanes each side in the middle of nowhere
and you can’t even tell where you are – it was two lanes each side and a ton of dead cars to get around. And even if we hadn’t seen the sign hanging off the bridge saying
‘WATER’ with a great big arrow pointing where you should go, we would have known where to go because there were other cars ahead of us, pulling in at the junction and people wheeling
trolleys and lugging bags over the bridge above.

No one – no one – coming into or out of that city could have missed that sign:

I couldn’t get up the exit way because it was blocked with cars, so I went up the way cars came down on to the motorway – see how smart I am? We couldn’t get
any closer, but that was OK; at the top of the slope you could see the pool. There was a queue outside. It was very orderly; it felt OK.

We tipped out every container we had. When we’d cleared out my mum and Simon’s car, we’d grabbed everything and done it so quick we’d even scooped up all the empty
bottles from the Ashton shop. Then we’d cleared out the truck and done the same thing again. We tipped out my looted bags, dumping ten thousand pairs of knickers into the back of the car. We
loaded the bags with the empty bottles. Still, it didn’t seem like anything near enough. I tipped the vodka out into the gutter, wondered what else we could use and . . . remembered . . .

At the farm, I’d picked up Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton . . . I’d put Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton on the driver’s seat to pick up
when we’d finished loading the farm truck . . . and . . .

I left Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton on the driver’s seat . . . at the farm.

I am a bad person. I am a very bad person. Please let someone have found Fluffysnuggles; please let someone have taken pity.

In the film of this book – after the end credits, probably, when most people have left, weeping, there should be this extra little storyette. Just for the people who have
stayed, weeping. Some random cows will wander out of the field. I didn’t shut any gates, so they’re bound to. These random cows will have a mooch about the farmyard; the bravest and
boldest and most inquisitive of them will wander down the track. It’ll get to the car; it’ll poke its head inside. (I left the car door open too.) It’ll knock
Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton to the floor. The carton will bust open. Fluffysnuggles and the cow will consider each other, nose to nose. Then, as the cow plods off to eat its
way through a polytunnel full of flowers, Fluffysnuggles will climb out of the car. He’ll drop down on to the track, sigh, and begin his epic journey home.

We left Princess locked in the car in the care of Whitby and Darling, or the other way round. That was how confident we felt; apart from the kids’ drawings of clouds, the
sky looked blue as blue can be. We wouldn’t be long. We’d be close by.

As we joined the back of the queue, this random boy, must have been Darius’s age, came to check our bags. Then he climbed into the back of a Girl Guides’ minibus and handed us these
big plastic containers, two each. They were like the kind of containers Simon had once bought cider in on the way home from some awful walk, back in the time before Henry was born.

(The next day, my mum went around the house clutching her head and saying, ‘Never again.’ Until she explained it was the cider, I thought – hoped – she meant we’d
never have to go on another walk. Fat chance.)

And then we waited. More people came and joined the queue behind us. We seemed to wait for a very long time.

First thing I noticed was . . . maybe Darius Spratt had been wrong, about how many people had survived – because there was a lot – A LOT – of people there, shuffling in, thirty
at a time. That’s what I counted. (Yes, I can actually count, in fact.)

The other thing I noticed was it seemed like there were only four people ‘in charge’ at the pool: that random boy outside; some random bloke inside; this Girl Guide Leader woman, who
paced around inside and out; and this girl, my age, also in a Guide’s uniform, who was trying to make sure everyone stayed in line. The random bloke inside didn’t seem too good at his
job; you could hear him shouting ‘Stop!’ when people tried to grab too much water, and if they didn’t stop – which they often didn’t – he shouted
‘Melissa!’ and the girl pushed past us all and shouted ‘STOP!’ too. And if they still didn’t stop, the girl pushed back past us all and the Girl Guide Leader came in
and shouted. Then they stopped.

Honest? I’d been in Guides. I can still remember the Guide Law – and when you think about it, if this disaster wasn’t going to be the moment teenagers took over the Earth,
power should have been handed over to the Guides. For why?

Being a Girl Guide is not easy. Probably there are religions that are easier . . . but I don’t think there are any religions that are more fun, or with as many different
things to do. Still, I had to stop doing Guides, didn’t I? I’d loved it . . . and then I hacked it out of my life in the hobby-cull I carried out at the end of Year 8. I should have
done it at the end of the summer, but – DUR – I did it at the beginning. Leonie was still a Guide, going off, doing this and that. Tumbleweed blew across my social life . . . and, like
my dad was to blame for it, that’s when I started going on about going up to London all the time, about going on crummy holidays with Dad and Dan. (Crummy? That was the summer my dad let me
drive the car!)

I think I never was a very good Girl Guide. But I did try. I tried.

I had enough time to think all this. We had plenty of time. For the first ages, we were queuing on the street. For the next ages, we were queuing inside the building. We edged
down the stairs. Step by step, we came closer to it: that pool, that lovely water.

People didn’t really talk much. I suppose it was the sort of situation where people would normally have gone on about the weather; that was off limits, and what else was there?
May
Meltdown
.

I didn’t feel worried at all. Swimming pools, that was a thing I knew about. That’s a thing kids do: queuing up to get into a pool. The chloriney smell, the echoey sound, the heat. I
remembered queuing in Dartbridge, holding my mum’s hand when I was little. Then in primary school, queuing with Leonie, giggling – all the way up until the brutal Year 8 hobby-cull
– your towel and your cozzie and your pocket money in your bag and just wishing they’d hurry up and let you in . . .

I wrapped and rewrapped that dead girl’s cardigan round my waist, make-up melting in the heat.

‘My wife is sick!’ some posh bloke started going on. ‘Now look here, you people! My wife is sick!’

‘Sick of you,’ some woman said.

We giggled; everyone giggled. That’s what you do when you’re waiting, excited, in the queue for the pool.

And then . . . these sirens closed on in. The way the steps went down to the pool, we had this weird view of the world; we could just see the legs of the people outside, so we had to crouch down
and crane our heads to get a good look at the fire engine.

WOOP! WOOP! – WOOP! WOOP!
the siren went.

The men that arrived on it weren’t firemen. There were men you could see straight off were drunk, clutching bottles, clambering about . . . but there were other men, who looked just
normal. Normal like normal people’s normal dads.

WOOP! WOOP! – WOOP! WOOP!
the siren went.

Us queue people, we didn’t budge. We stayed where we were. We heard the men had come to take water; they’d come all the way from Gloucester to get it. The people in the queue said
there wasn’t enough water.

The arguing started up. The Girl Guide, Melissa, she looked at me. I saw that she was scared. Maybe she wished she was me, standing there in a sequiny dress and red hair and free to run if she
wanted . . . and not her, stood there in a uniform with no make-up and this mass of people expecting you to be helpful and use your time and abilities wisely, etc.

Truth? I looked away. There. I’ve said it. I looked away from that girl. I couldn’t stand it, but I should have looked back at her. Seems to me, maybe sometimes the least you can do
for another person is to show that you have seen them. No matter how scared it makes you. The arguing got louder. Melissa, she went outside. What badge do they give you for that? Community Action?
Water Safety?

You brave girl, Melissa. you should get Brave Girl – Advanced!

I should get Ostrich – Advanced!

I don’t know how you know, how you just know in your guts that something really bad is about to happen, but I knew it. And I ignored it; I didn’t get out while I still could because
no one around me seemed to want to get out – until it was too late.

The rowing outside turned to scuffling. At knee height we saw it. We saw men running back and forth. We saw what feet and legs do when men fight.

KER-PLSSSSH!

Water jetted and streamed down off those windows. They must have turned on the fire hoses. We saw the first man fall. Everyone on those stairs did; we saw him fall and we saw
him claw at the glass – at us: he was right in front of our faces. We saw . . . that he was bloody, but not in a fight-way bloody and we understood that the water in that fire engine, in the
hoses that had been turned on, that were jetting everywhere . . . that water was bad.

A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties.

The people in the queue panicked. Everyone wanted to get out and all the people who’d been queuing outside wanted to get in.

See how it was: there was already a load of people in there, in that pool, and there was already a load of people waiting on the steps. And then even more loads of people came in from
outside.