The Rain (34 page)

The whole world has gone crazy and still . . . you follow a bunch of cones.

The cones said no, you can’t leave here, at every exit we came to. And we obeyed. Cones mean order. Cones mean someone is in charge. But who?

Then the cones appeared on the road too; they funnelled us in . . . in and in and in until we were squeezed into the middle of the road. The motorway that was supposed to take me to London
stopped right there. Up ahead, they’d set up camp under the bridge, blocking the whole road, both sides.

They
were waiting to greet us: four, five, six, seven men in those same white suits and masks, all carrying . . . machine guns.

‘Hallelujah!’ said Darius, squinting through the windscreen.

That isn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking,
Oh my God
. . .

Sorry, Mum . . . but this thought, this one thought, I won’t replace with a
. I can’t; if I did, you might think I mean
some other word. In most cases that wouldn’t matter; in this case I feel it does. I thought it not because I believe in God (I don’t, I think, not after all this), but because what was
inside me was such a muddle it sort of made me wish there was something outside me that could help. So it wasn’t even swearing, really; it was for real. An instant muddle of fear and shock;
that’s what I felt. Let me name the parts of it:

There is another thing, a thing that won’t quite sit right in some kind of list. A thing that was bigger than that moment, bigger . . . and more scary and more shapeless
than anything else . . . and it was something like . . . was this how things were going to be? Men, with guns, loading people on to trucks. Men, with guns, telling people what to do. Was this what
the world was going to be like from now on?

The fast lane of the motorway was basically a car park. At our end of it, I saw the red sports car, ditched. I saw the silver car that had had that bloke in it, ditched. And I saw the men that
had been in them sitting in the back of an army truck under the bridge. A man in a bio-onesie sat with them. His mask was off, his gun laid across his lap; he was smoking and chatting with the men
in the truck.

These people – everyone – seemed relaxed. Like this was somehow
normal
.

The mum and dad, they’d stopped in front of us. They’d got out and were chatting with the men; they pointed at us a bit. The mum and dad got the kids out, shooed them over on to the
army truck, heaved luggage out of the car, beckoned us.

I looked at Darius, realised he probably couldn’t exactly see what was going on.

‘They want us to come,’ I said. My voice ice.

‘Let’s go, then!’ said Darius.

He helped Princess out of the car.

‘C’mon!’ he called, heading straight for those men.

I got out of the car. I’d been driving barefoot since we’d escaped from the pool. I opened the boot and hunted among the ten thousand pairs of knickers for the only shoes I had left,
the jewelled flip-flops I’d lent Darius. That mum, she came over to me. I know what parents look like when they’re about to go on about something, so I got in there first.

‘I have to find my dad,’ I said to her. ‘Please take care of them.’

We looked over to see Darius lifting the kid into the back of the army truck. The mum nodded slowly, like she meant it. The most shocking thing was I realised I meant it too. With all my
heart.

I put the flip-flops on. Before she or my stupid heart could get another word in, I split.

The Please Don’t Leave Me Girl left. Girl Gone. Gone Girl. I didn’t stop to ask anyone anything; I didn’t take anything – not one thing. I just ran.

‘Oh! No! Wait!’ shouted the mum.

I guess she hadn’t expected that I would just take off. That’s the way it’s got to be with parents sometimes: strike first. Otherwise they’re just going to bombard you
with should-dos and shouldn’t-dos and before you know it you’ll be not-doing.

I crashed through the jungle of weeds at the side of the motorway and scrambled over a wooden fence – ‘RUBY!’ shouted Darius as I busted through trees and bushes. I sort of
expected Swindon to be right there, but it wasn’t; what was there was a small field, then more trees.

‘RUBY!’

SHUT UP, DARIUS!
I thought. I glanced round to death-ray him, but it was pointless. Mr I-Spy was just shouting my name into space, not even looking in the right direction. Princess, in
the back of the army truck, rose to her feet, staring at me. That mum, who’d obviously blabbed to him, stood clutching his arm.

I pelted across the field. I thought I was going to get shot at, that at any second bullets would whizz. Instead, what came was:

‘STOP!’ blared a soldier’s voice on a megaphone. ‘COME BACK . . . WE ADVISE YOU TO COME BACK . . .
RUBY
, WE ADVISE YOU TO COME BACK.’

Great. Now I was being nagged by the British Army – AND they knew my name. I blamed Darius instantly. If I ever saw him again, I would be forced to punch him.

I hit the next band of trees and pushed on into it . . . another field on the other side – but bigger – too big to run across, too exposed. I stayed in the trees. I’d follow
them round the field.

‘THIS COLLECTION POINT WILL OPERATE FOR THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.’

And I’d still be there too, the way things were going. The trees got shrubbier and tanglier; brambles grabbed and scratched at my legs.

‘I REPEAT: THIS COLLECTION POINT WILL OPERATE FOR THE NEXT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.’

I hit the corner of another field; a short run and I’d get to another bunch of trees. I made a break for it. Harder to hear the megaphone shout now, but, still, I caught it:

‘THERE IS ANOTHER COLLECTION POINT IN HYDE PARK, LONDON.’

They knew my name; they knew where I was going. Probably the Spratt had blurted out everything he knew about me, kissing incidents included.

‘I REPEAT: HYDE PARK.’

In my mind, my fist collided with Darius Spratt’s nose.

It took me longer than it should do to find a car. For a start, Swindon wasn’t where it was supposed to be. If they’re going to put a sign up for a place, it should at least be
there. After that field was another field, and after that field was a lake.

Let’s just pause for a second here, because I did. Imagine it: sweaty girl with the stitch, all out of breath and scratched and frightened and angry and
thirsty
.

I mean, I don’t know whether I would have drunk from a lake even before everything got poisoned and I certainly wasn’t going to now, but . . . it looked so cool and sparkly and
inviting, as if you could just dive on in. OK, or at least dangle your legs in it a bit, just to cool off.

See how this world is ruined? How the things that were so beautiful are hateful and wrecked? Shimmering blue dragonflies dancing over a pool of death. A pair of swans a-swimming on it.

I paused for a second to curse it all.

I bent down to pick up a Sioux stone. I wiped it, but it still looked dirty. (Little tentacly bugs waving, ‘Hello, Ruby! Eat us!’) I flung it in the lake – and watched it trash
the reflection . . . of big fat clouds, looked like they meant business. I looked up and cursed them too and ran, skirting round the lake, hating the entire world.

Across a golf course, there were houses – posh houses – so that’s where I headed, pelting across fancy clipped golf grass towards the sunset. The beautiful sunset, running at
it as if I was running to catch up with the sun itself.

That’s all you ever want, isn’t it? If you’re not snuggled up somewhere safe and dry with plenty to drink and eat, you just want the sun to stay, for night not to come, for all
clouds – even sweet and innocent ones – to
clear off.

That posh estate, it was a very locked-up place: cars, doors, windows – even sheds – were locked. I had no tools with me, saw no handy-sized rocks lying about,
couldn’t even see any Greek ladies to smash windows with. I got more and more angry and frustrated – and desperate . . . and thirsty – I was so thirsty! – until I came
across MG man’s house: front door open, garage doors open, car inside, him lying dead in front of it.

A smarter girl than me – a girl like Saskia, for example – would have gone straight into the house, I expect. I went for the garage.

Thank you, mister, I thought, when I saw the keys in his cool little sports car. I started it up; I saw there was nearly a whole tank of petrol . . . and I would have taken off, but now that I
knew I had an escape route the urge to run eased off the tiniest, tiniest bit – which let the urge to drink grab hold. Grab hold and choke me, screaming in my face that I needed to drink and
drink NOW.

I paced at the garage door. From the looks of MG man, he’d died the way Simon had died; he hadn’t been rained on, but there was a mess round his lips that the flies liked.

The thirst thing, which had got seriously angry, was killing me so badly I did it. Like a psyched-up Dan gaming warrior launching into mortal combat, I roared something terrible at the world and
sprinted for the front door.

It was the first time I went in somewhere without knocking or shouting. I couldn’t have cared less whether the whole posh neighbourhood was hiding in there, drinking sherry and discussing
how
simply awful
everything was. (They weren’t.) I just barged in, went straight to the kitchen and ransacked.

It was rubbish, but it was brilliant – because there was something, at least there was something. I grabbed a bottle of squash. I swigged it, neat – disgusting – and carried on
looking. The fridge was cleaned out, but there was an unopened carton of melted chicken stock left in the freezer and an orange in the fruit bowl that looked just fine. I didn’t even peel it.
I just ripped it apart with my teeth and gored it dry while I rooted in the cupboards for something, anything else, to drink, the chicken stock churning in my stomach. Too much salt. And too dark
now. Silly Christmas candle on the table; I’d seen that, hadn’t I? Silly Christmas Santa candle and matches – I lit matches. Santa burned; nothing else left to drink . . . apart
from . . . I had a chemist’s flashback and sped up to the bathroom.

You wear contact lenses, don’t you? I know you wear them, I thought, pulling everything out of the bathroom cabinet.

MG man didn’t wear contact lenses. I looked at the toilet. I thought about the water sitting there in that cistern. I thought about all the poisoned water sitting all over the house,
locked in pipes.
Drink me.

Santa, his head burned off, crackled.

I looked at the toilet again. I considered the advice of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. ‘The RSPB does not recommend . . .’

And nor do I. But I will say that drinking your own wee is probably not anything like as bad as you might think. I mean, it is bad, but.

Refreshed – as much as I was going to be in that house – I had a burst of sensibleness. I looked out of the window; I studied the sky . . . only I couldn’t
see the sky – could I? – because it was dark. Cloud dark. That’s what clouds do; they cunningly make the night even darker than it should be, so you can’t see what
they’re up to.

It wasn’t raining, though, was it?

The old me – who wouldn’t have even looked and thought in the first place – had become a new me, who did look and think. But I was the even newer version of the new me; I
didn’t just look and think and decide, Hey, it’s not raining – let’s go! The newest version of the new me thought, Nuh-uh!