The Rain (7 page)

MY MOBILE: priority mission. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That and I was thirsty – but the glasses of water were gone – and I was bursting, so I had to pee on top of last
night’s pee in the bucket and when I’d finished peeing I checked the computer; it was still on from last night and everything was still down. It still showed the time, though. I tried
to remember when I had come in, wondering how much longer I might get made to stay in that room if Simon got his way about keeping me locked up. It made my sore head muddle.

Then I opened the curtains. It was raining.

Surrounded by narrow beds of plants that sprouted crazily, there was a little square of grass outside; ‘the front lawn’, Simon called it. He mowed it, lugging the mower up the garden
from the shed and through the house – dropping grass cuttings everywhere – for the two and a half seconds it took to cut the patch. Then he lugged the mower back through the house
– dropping grass cuttings everywhere – and back down the garden to the shed. My mum said the front lawn wasn’t worth the bother – the grass didn’t even grow properly,
the way the shrubs muscled in on it – but Simon did it anyway.

If I felt anything about it, I felt that front lawn
was
Simon. The order in the chaos, something like that.

The front lawn, that small, tidy square of mown green, was muddy, torn up – clawed up, like an animal had been at it.

Mrs Fitch was lying on it. She had her back to me. The box of tablets lay next to her.

It was raining hard. It was raining on Mrs Fitch. Mrs Fitch wasn’t moving. I watched; Mrs Fitch didn’t seem to be breathing.

You know what? Even then I thought . . . I dunno: that she had . . . stayed out in the rain too long or something? That she was old anyway, so she could have just had a heart attack. Died of
hypothermia. Or had a stroke, like Grandpa Hollis.

I drew the curtains shut. I’d never seen a dead body before and I didn’t ever want to see another one. It was horrible; just horrible . . . and the curtains weren’t enough; I
shut ten thousand doors in my head and even then I couldn’t keep it out. I had no words to say to myself to make it OK; instead, it was my body that started to shout.
I’m
thirsty!
I’m thirsty and I’m hungry and I feel really skanky and . . . I am so not going to poo in a bucket. I want breakfast. I want a shower. I want my mobile. I want OUT.

Before I called I turned the handle of the door because you just would, wouldn’t you? The door opened.

‘Simon?’ I called softly. The house was quiet, you see, and I didn’t want to wake Henry. Come to that, the world was quiet. I could hear a few stupid alarms still, but no
sirens, no car horns, no shouts – or shouts that could have been screams. That was all I could hear: a few stupid alarms. And the rain.

I listened
hard
.

‘Simon?’ I whispered.

Henry had to be asleep. I peeked my head out of the door. The door to the sitting room was open. The TV was still on, sound down. You could see the reflection of it in the glass of all the
family photos on the windowsill; Grandma Hollis, smiling, TV flickers on her face.

Maybe Simon was crashed out in front of the TV?

‘
Simon?!
’ I hissed.

I tiptoed a few steps down the hall. Tiptoed, so’s not to wake Henry. I knew I wasn’t sick like killer-rain sick, so I kind of felt OK about it. Only, actually, I wasn’t that
sure that I wasn’t killer-rain sick. I wasn’t all covered in blood and groaning, but I knew how much I definitely didn’t feel right. I felt really, really thirsty and my head
hurt. I was hungry, too, but I felt sick at the same time – and a bit dizzy. Not good . . . but I couldn’t be sick
that way
. Surely? Could I be? No. Maybe. No.

The maybe made me scared.

‘Simon?’ I whisper-called.

Yeah. My head felt really swimmy and swirly.

I tiptoed further down the hall. I stood at the bottom of the stairs; I listened.

It was so, so, so quiet.

I peeped round the corner. There was no one in the sitting room, but for a moment the TV caught me there because I saw the pictures for the words I’d heard the night before. Now there were
no words, but because I had heard them already I thought I knew what they would be. I thought I knew what they’d be saying. The pictures . . . these I had not expected. Not even because of
what they showed, but because – well, it just wasn’t how they do stuff on TV, not even when something really serious is happening and they’re probably all in a flap. It was
amateur
. You know what it reminded me of? When me, Lee, Ronnie and Molly had done our media studies project together: a news report on a zombie outbreak. We should have given it to Zak to
edit, but Ronnie insisted. The costumes, the make-up, the location – the woods at Zak’s place – were brilliant. The edit was
rubbish.

(For information: we got a B. Zak and Saskia teamed up with some of the others and got an A* for a spoof washing-powder ad. Zak was supposed to be the producer, but somehow Saskia seemed to end
up doing most of that and most of everything else (voice-over; lead-role glamorous housewife; speccy-but-hot washing-powder scientist) . . . but, still, can you believe it? Wasn’t the whole
zombie thing, even with a
edit, a whole lot more creative? Ronnie said they didn’t care about that, and that’s pretty much
what the teacher said too – but I ask you, which project turned out to be more relevant, huh? How to survive a disaster situation v. how washing powder gets sold? I’m re-grading us to
an A*.)

Anyway, the TV. They were cutting in and out of a studio, where a woman behind a desk was talking to two men on screens behind her; it said they were in Manchester, and Edinburgh. In between,
they cut to stuff they’d filmed earlier . . . a hospital; a corridor filled with people, bloody, writhing, groaning. You didn’t have to hear it to know; just like Caspar. Back to Studio
Woman. Then shots of lines of cars. Back to Manchester Man. Then a clip of a politician . . . OK; I’m not all that up on political stuff, but it could have been the prime minister; some bloke
in a suit, trying to look like he really, really meant what he was saying and totally looking like he didn’t. Then a clip of the American president – him I knew – doing the same
thing. Then back to the studio.

And then a graphics thing – a rubbish graphics thing – of the world. As it rotated, weird red raindrops splopped on to countries . . . until it went back to the Europe bit –
splops already in place – and zoomed in on Britain. Splop, splop, splop. The whole of the south-west got covered in one big red tear-shaped splop.

Underneath, a stream of words said nothing much different to what I had heard the night before: STATE OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED . . . PUBLIC ADVISED TO REMAIN INDOORS . . . DO NOT CALL 999
. . . NO TREATMENT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE . . .

You know how normally when they do that ticker-tape stream of headlines along the bottom of the screen and they move from one subject to another? They didn’t. Same subject; it just kept
coming and coming, on and on . . .

. . . SCIENTISTS CLAIM BACTERIUM IN RAIN IS CAUSE . . . SYMPTOMS INCLUDE BLEEDING, SEVERE PAIN, NAUSEA . . .

And then they showed it: the thing. They put up this picture of this microscopic
thing
. This thing that looked so pretty: a little round sun with these wiggly rays. A little blob of a
thing, with squirming tentacles.

I had felt sick before; I felt even more sick now. I didn’t want to look at it. I wanted a cup of tea.

I went into the kitchen.

The house was so quiet I didn’t expect anyone to be there. Simon was at the table. Apart from the cooker and the table, every surface in that kitchen – and some of the floor –
was covered with every kind of container; all of them filled with water. That was weird, but I didn’t want to go there. I saw; I did not want to discuss.

When I walked in, he lifted his head up. His face . . . it was not normal. It was not stiff or shaky either. It looked all collapsed.

‘Hey,’ he said, really quietly.

He looked at me. Urk. Argh! Whoa! That look! What was
that
?!

It was too weird and intense – and I guess it was for him too, because he went back to his list. Yes, he was
writing a list
. That would have been a bad sign on any normal day
– plus he’d never, ever said ‘Hey’ to me in his life, so that was pretty weird as well . . . but from the way he looked you could tell he must have been up all night so his
brain was probably completely scrambled. That’s what I decided to think; Simon had been up all night (with Henry!), so best go careful . . . because, as well as the list, the laptop was on
the table. If I could just get him to let me use it, just for a second . . .

‘Hey,’ I replied, ready to be told to get back in my cell. ‘I called . . .’

‘Yeah,’ said Simon.

‘Um . . . Mrs Fitch is—’

‘I know,’ said Simon. ‘Try not to look.’

‘It’s horrible,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Simon, can I please just use the loo? And then please could I get some breakfast? And . . .’ I stopped, thinking now didn’t seem like quite the time to raise the mobile thing.
I’d have to work around to it – plus there was the laptop. I wanted to ask about the internet, but I couldn’t without revealing I’d already been on the other computer
without permission. (That’s how strict he was.)

‘I’m really sorry about last night,’ I said, thinking that might get me one step closer my phone, to my friends, to normal. To the things that counted.

‘It’s OK,’ he said.

Huh?!

‘You don’t have to stay in the front room any more,’ he said.

HUH?!
That was tricky, because I knew I didn’t feel OK even if I didn’t feel
that
not OK, but I knew I didn’t want another zillion hours waiting on my own
with Mrs Fitch dead outside and . . . then I thought about my mum, and Henry. I couldn’t make them sick.

‘I don’t really feel OK,’ I blurted. ‘I don’t feel
bad
bad, not like . . . you know. I just feel a bit bad.’

‘Ru?’ he said. He looked at me, worried, freaking me out. ‘What feels wrong?’

I told him. It annoyed me that he smiled when I said it; he smiled not some massive grin, but a definite flicker of a tired ‘Oh you, you’re so young (and stupid)’ smile. Only
sad-looking, somehow too – and not the usual ‘I’m so disappointed in you (oh you, you’re so young and stupid)’ sad look.

‘What did you have to drink last night?’ he said.

Yee-haa! I was just about to saddle up in outrage, deny I’d had a thing to drink and have a go at Simon for even thinking such a thing, when –

‘Zak made some punch,’ I said. Double blurt. At least I wasn’t to blame.

‘Punch? Oh dear! What was in it?’ he asked.

He was really weirding me out now, because normally if he even slightly suspected illicit activities he’d flip out, and that’d be it: me grounded and scraping poo, wee, woodchips and
hay out of the guinea-pig hutch; I could just see it . . . except I’d actually confessed and he wasn’t going ballistic. Weird.

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘Cider?’

He was looking at me so strangely I voluntarily blurted out more truth.

‘And gin,’ I said.

Quadruple confession. (A record!) Any minute now I’d be telling him I’d tried a spliff, had lied about the babysitting and was in love with Caspar McCloud, so I ransacked my brain
for something that would make it sound like I wasn’t as bad as some people.

‘Molly got sick on it,’ I said.

Sorry, Mol. Normally that would have been a great rage-deflection tactic, but Simon didn’t seem fussed.

‘I think you’ve probably just got a hangover, don’t you?’ he said, super-calm and gentle. ‘You need to rehydrate – and eat.’

On that we agreed. I grabbed the kettle; didn’t seem like enough water in it for the eight hundred cups of tea I was needing, so I turned to the sink.

‘Stop,’ he said, before my hand was on the tap.

I looked round at him.

‘I don’t think we should use the water any more,’ he said.

I looked at the tap – dripping like it had been for weeks, waiting for Simon to fix it – and then at the thousands of containers full of water all over the kitchen.