H2O

by Virginia Bergin

  5. So I felt, immediately, like I was in trouble.

  6. And that it might be better to run.

  7. But that if I did they might shoot me.

  8. And, if I ran, I’d have to run alone.

  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 onto 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 highway was basically a parking lot. At our end of it, I saw the red sports car, ditched. I saw the silver car that had had that guy 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 mom and dad, they’d stopped in front of us. They’d gotten out and were chatting with the men; they pointed at us a little. The mom 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, realized 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 trunk and hunted amongst the ten thousand pairs of underwear for the only shoes I had left, the jeweled flip-flops I’d lent Darius. That mom, 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 mom nodded slowly, like she meant it. The most shocking thing was I realized 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 mom.

  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 highway 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 around 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 mom, who’d obviously blabbed to him, stood clutching his arm.

  I sprinted 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 around 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 have 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 a stitch in her side, 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 little, 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 rock. 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 that looked like they meant business. I looked up and cursed them too and ran, skirting around the lake, hating the entire world.

  Across a golf course, there were houses—fancy houses—so that’s where I headed, sprinting across fancy, clipped, golf grass toward 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 fancy housing development, 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 around, 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 gas…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 gotten 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 shou
ting. I couldn’t have cared less whether the whole fancy neighborhood 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 all junk, but it was brilliant—because there was something, at least there was something. I grabbed a bottle of cordial. I swigged it—disgusting—and kept 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 pharmacy 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 pee 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 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!

  Even though it was just a quick dash to the garage and the car, I got geared up; I did a Darius Spratt special and taped a thousand garbage bags over my body, I shoved my feet into Mr. MG’s walking boots and taped them over too, where the gaps were. If he had an umbrella, I couldn’t find it, so I got a baseball cap and taped together an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Garbage Bags rain hat. Finally, I turned my hands into black plastic paws.

  Brilliant. Good to go, Ruby, good to go. And I was going. See, the newer version of the new me still didn’t want to stay in that house. I snuffed out Santa—mid-belly, his buckle starting to sizzle—chucked him and the matches in a plastic bag, and—

  BOMF! I slammed the door shut behind me—like you do—and—

  SCREECH!

  Seems wrong if this comes across like something out of a cartoon. There wasn’t anything even remotely cartoony about it.

  A millimeter from my face, rain streamed down.

  poisoned rain.

  poisoned rain, teeming with a million billion microscopic killers.

  (So, definitely cumulus congestus then.)

  I flattened my back against that front door, the measly little porch above. One frightened hand crept around behind me and went to open that front door. That front door wouldn’t open. The porch I was under was so narrow I was too scared to even turn around and yank on that door—but that wouldn’t have made any difference, because the door was well and truly closed. Closed, shut, slammed shut—not going to open ever.

  I tried to get Santa relit. My black plastic paws fiddled around, panicking; I dropped matches, I nearly set myself alight, and when I got one struck and managed to keep hold of it, I saw it: this little single glistening bead of rain hanging from the brim of my Indiana garbage-bag baseball hat. I dropped Santa and the match. I reached behind my head, grabbed the back of that hat, and flung it into the darkness.

  Then I had this really bad few minutes thinking I could feel my hand wet, burning, bloody under the plastic… Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? That, really, a bunch of garbage bags and some sticky tape…would you trust them? Even before I’d dumped the hat there was NO WAY I was going to go wandering out in that rain. Garbage bags, waterproof gear; the only use they might—might—have is that they’d maybe buy you a few seconds. Who would risk longer? You may as well parade around naked if you think that stuff is going to save you.

  For ages, it felt like, I stood pressed against the door in that porch. If the wind changed, if the wind picked up, if the stupid measly porch LEAKED…I would have been done for.

  Not good, Ruby Morris, not good. NOT GOOD. Rain streamed down right in front of my face.

  “It’s you and me now,” I whispered at it. “You and me.”

  Sooner or later, rain always stops. It stops, but it’s laughing at you.

  I can come back any time I please. Perhaps the second you step out from under this porch.

  When it did stop, I waited. I got Santa and I relit him. I watched drips fall from the roof of the porch. I didn’t wait for as long as I should have. I just waited for a while. I waited like I could trick the rain…or trick myself into believing it could be safe.

  Without giving myself or the rain any kind of warning, I launched myself out into the dark, roaring something terrible.

  It had been good, then, that I had looked at the garage first. I knew what was there. I stuck Santa on the roof of the car. I heaved and shoved the dark lump of MG man out of the way with a garden fork. I snuffed Santa out. I got into the car; I started it up and I got the out of there.

  It was the journey from hell.

  Going to Zak’s and back on the bike, that was easy in comparison; on the way there, I’d been too freaked out and frantic to think about anything, and on the way back, I’d been too shocked to really understand what a dumb thing I was doing. Plus, I was somewhere I knew. Now, I had no clue. There was a road map in the car and still I had no clue…but if there hadn’t been a map, I’d have been sunk from the start. I’d probably still be driving around…wherever it was I was.

  There was no light in that car and I had to keep stopping and lighting and relighting the Santa candle to work out where I was. Apart from Oxford, it was all places I’d never even heard of: Kingston Bagpuize; Monks Risborough; Great Missenden. Were they making these names up?! Who had ever even heard of them?! And—no probably about it—I should have found a different car. When I’d seen that car, a tiny part of me had thought…I dunno, how cool that’d be, to drive it. How cool it’d be to turn up at my dad’s in a sports car.

  Yes, an MG is a sports car, but it’s a really, really ancient one; not zoomy or souped up at all. In the Ruby Morris Guide to Disaster Survival, a book I hope I’ll live long enough to write, I will have to include a special chapter on picking cars.

  There was no light and there was no CD player. All I had was the rattling boom of the engine and, below that, the rattling boom of my own heart. Bodies, dumped cars, burnt-out stuff, smashed-up stuff—I zigzagged my way through all that; and as far as I could tell I was zigzagging, period. Left turn, right turn. Stop the car, light up Santa, check the map. Right turn, left turn. Stop the car, light up Santa, check the map.

  What I suppose I should have stopped was me. Plenty of places to do that. Endless plenty of places to stop and hole up for the night. Plenty of places to have at least stopped and found a better car. And something to eat. And something—please—to drink. But no. All I could think was, I’m going to see my dad.

  Last match gone; Santa, stuck to the dashboard, burned down to his boots and went out.

  It took a thousand hours before I got som
ewhere I recognized. I knew I’d gotten to London—houses and apartments closed in—but it wasn’t until the road rose up into an overpass that I knew for sure(ish) where I was. I saw that building with a gigantic bottle on the side of it that poured sparkling neon liquid into a neon glass. Only it wasn’t pouring anymore.

  Like me, the MG was groaning with thirst. Probably I couldn’t have gotten much farther anyway… It’s just that I wouldn’t have chosen to stop right there, on top of that overpass. The road, which had gotten more and more difficult to drive along, was finally completely blocked. I grabbed the map and I got out.

  It wasn’t raining anymore, but you’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d have at least tried to look at the sky first. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d have realized I needed to do that by then. Not me, no. I stepped out of the car, then I thought that thought, then I looked at the sky. I saw stars, tons of stars.

  Stars, beautiful stars…how you never, ever saw them in London, where the sky was always a dirty orange…and a moon, full—like an O.

  Like an O!…O! Look! No clouds!

  NO CLOUDS. BRILLIANT.

  No way down off an overpass; no way other than forward. (Because no way was I going back.) So that’s what I did. I walked on; if I couldn’t get around the cars and bodies that were in my way, I clambered over them. I’m going to see my dad; I’m going to see my dad; I’m going to see my dad.

  When the road came to ground level again, I started trying cars. I tried cars even when there was no point in trying cars. I tried cars that were boxed in. I’d stopped thinking straight. All I did was keep on walking. I saw things, I heard things, I saw people. Live people. I kept on walking.

  I realized I was at Euston Station. I turned left. That was how to get to where my dad lived: Kentish Town. Soon be there. I walked… I walked; I didn’t even bother trying for cars, I walked…faster and faster…until I ran and I ran. I’m going to see my dad.