Wendy and I parked the electric van in the college car park that is reserved for both students and teachers alike.
The strange onion-shaped, ultra modern 6th form college block where I’m studying for my A-levels is part of a complex that includes the secretarial college. It is opposite St. Jude’s, but 6th form college as I soon discovered is a world away from school. There are no uniforms for a start. They let you wear your own clothes. I dress casually, throwing on jeans or little skirts with T-shirt or cropped tops and trainers. What’s more, they treat you like adults at 6th form college. They call you by your first name. It’s a relaxed, easy-going atmosphere; nevertheless, we all work extremely hard here. You have to if you want high grades, and as I’ve already mentioned, I do.
I met Wendy in the atrium at lunchtime. Although there’s a fine restaurant in the college, we still prefer to eat out. It has always been our way.
We left the electric van by the park gates. Wendy and I sat on a bench by the lake in the local Crystal Palace Park demolishing our burgers and fries that we washed down with cold Coke. We needed to recharge our batteries. I call it mind food. Yeah, I know, junk food again.
When I glanced at the sickly sky, I noticed that it had suddenly darkened, puzzling me.
“Anyone special entered your life recently, Jade?” asked Wendy out of the blue.
“Pardon?”
“Boys, Jade. You know, you’ve seen them about in college. They usually wear trousers or jeans.”
“I wear jeans,” I remarked.
She ruffled my short hair playfully.
“You should grow it longer, Jade. It’d make you look more feminine.”
I was annoyed. “Are you suggesting that I’m butch, Wendy Robinson?”
She giggled nervously. “No, of course not, Jade. Don’t be so defensive all the time. You’re rather pretty. You should show it more.”
“What for?”
She nudged me. “So boys would look at you more.”
I explained wearily, “I don’t really care if boys never look at me. I don’t have time for them, Wendy. My studies are much more important to me at the moment. I want to do well in my A-levels and go on to university.”
Wendy didn’t understand. “You should go out more in the evenings, Jade. It’d help you relax. You’re up tight too much of the time these day.”
“Exams make me up tight, Wendy. Once I’ve got through them, I’ll be a better person.”
“Why don’t you come to Kev’s 20th tonight?” suggested Wendy, trying to be helpful.
I shook my head. “Revisions.”
I wasn’t going to blow my chances of high grades by attending Kev’s 20th birthday. It’d have to be a rain cheque, I thought, which is an Americanism.
We slipped into one of our silences.
I stared hard at the sky frowning again. I became aware of it after awhile as my eyes adjusted to the strangeness of it all. The clouds, this alien phenomenon that straddled our world, weren’t still as I had once thought. Was this really earth? It was almost imperceptible to my senses, yet it was happening. The clouds were moving. They were moving. They were nudging one another, forming a pattern of weird concentric circles. It was almost hypnotic to watch. It vanished as quickly as it had begun.
A single droplet of rain struck me on the nose. I brushed it off. I was puzzled when Wendy giggled.
“What?”
“You’ve got a dirty smudge on your nose, Jade.”
“Simple things please simple minds,” I retorted. I opened my bag and took out a Kleenex wipe.
It happened without warning. The sky was filled with huge thunderbolts and lightning. It was terrifying. Then the heavens opened. We both screamed when the dirty rain hit us ferociously. VENUS PEBBLES!! We were caught out in the open. It hadn’t happened like this before. There was worse to come. We ran all the way to the park gates to our electric van. We gratefully threw ourselves into the dry and safety of the cab. We were covered in the muck. We sat there for some moments in silence watching in awe at the lightning and the dirty rain. It was like being caught in the middle of a horror movie. Someone had unblocked the drains in heaven, but it was more like hell. It turned day into night. You couldn’t see through it. It was like trying to look through a dirty window pane, but it wasn’t, and we decided that it was too dangerous to drive through if you could. I found a dry towel in the back. I wiped my face. When I wiped Wendy’s face, tears filled her eyes. I stroked her face reassuringly and kissed her lips.
Although the black rain had abated, the sky remained dark and brooding. We couldn’t return to college in our state, so we decided to head home for a change of clothing.
I flicked on the headlights and the windscreen wipers, clearing away the black muck that had been deposited on the windscreen. Squeezing the accelerator pedal gently, we swung out from our place by the park gates. We drove down the road in our van. The electric motors hummed reassuringly. The feeling of dread remained however. The parked cars on either side of the street were now covered in a film of black slime. As we turned the corner, we witnessed some of the devastation that the black rain had caused. A car was lying on its roof with its engine still running. We caught a glimpse of the driver behind his shattered windscreen. He was still strapped in his seat, and his face was covered in blood. I thought he was dead. We didn’t dwell.
It began as light hailstones. It quickly developed into something else. The heavy hailstones fell from the black skies, pounding the roof of our van. We were vulnerable in the small van, and we needed to get under cover quickly. I remembered the old railway bridge on Lockwood Avenue. It was in the opposite direction to which we were travelling. I put the van in reverse and swung her around twisting the steering wheel urgently as the large hailstones exploded on the road all around us. Wendy screamed when a dirty hailstone the size of a golf ball shattered our windscreen. ZOOTWOSOME! VENUS PEBBLES too! We were driving blind briefly. I hesitated before I punched a hole in the shattered windscreen. I was unaware of the pain as the broken glass split my skin, and the blood ran freely down my injured hand. The electric motors whined in protest as I put my foot through the floor racing through the ferocious hailstones. Wendy sat huddled beside me, shivering. When we stopped under the railway bridge, we hugged each other gratefully. There we sheltered until it stopped much later.
When mother opened the front door and saw us, she was shocked. We looked a mess. We were almost in tears. It had really upset us. We flew upstairs, tore off our dirty things, and showered. Then the floodgates really opened. We hugged each other through the tears. We were so relieved to be safely home.
When we stepped out of the shower, our pink skin tingled. We felt cleansed. It was a wonderful feeling. Mum entered the bathroom and wrapped us in warm, soft cotton towels that she had taken out of the airing cupboard. She fussed over us, drying our damp hair. She made us feel like little girls again, but we didn’t care, for we were simply grateful, drawing strength from her.
Then mum bandaged my injured hand.
As mum combed our damp hair in front of the dressing table mirror in her bedroom with the curtains drawn in the afternoon, we talked about other things to take our minds off it. We remained confused and scared. I was wrong. The coming of the comet was beginning to affect our lives.
When daddy arrived home later that day, we blurted out the whole story to him. We wouldn’t forget our first experience of being caught out in a black rain shower in a hurry.
Dismissing the events of the day from my mind in the early evening, I got down to some serious swotting in my room with a cold Coke and some cheese-pickle sandwiches to keep me going. I had some catching up to do. I’d missed an afternoon of class at the 6th form college. I couldn’t allow a little thing like a black rain shower to put me off my studies very long. It didn’t.
I saw it out of the corners of my eyes. It silently slid under the door.
I took a break from my work and picked up th
e crayon drawing, wearing a wry expression on my face. The other had written some words in a childish scrawl beneath the matchstick men.
It said:
“Tommy loves Fade”
I counted six kisses beneath the words. I shook my head amused.
When I opened the door, he had vanished, puzzling me briefly till I spotted him hiding behind the banisters at the top of the stairs. When I beckoned him over, he ran out excitedly, put his arms around me, and gave me a big, loving hug. Tommy, who is four now, is growing up fast. He has a mop of blonde hair and big, blue eyes. He’s handsome. I think it runs in the family. It’s in the genes.
I took him into my room. He helped me finish off my sandwiches and Coke.
Tommy, who heard it first, looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face, which mirrored my own. The noise wasn’t in the house. It was coming from outside. It was like a roaring sound. What on earth was it? It sounded familiar. I looked out of the window. I was horrified when I saw what it was. A torrent of black water rushed down the Close.
It engulfed our front drive and swept away the sandbags, our flood defences that we had put up earlier. All our hard work over the weekend had disappeared in a torrent of black water. I saw debris and things carried along by the tide of filthy water as it swept down the street. Then I saw the body of an old man.
OH, DROKK! ZOOTWOSOME! VENUS PEBBLES!!
I locked Tommy in my room and ran downstairs. I froze when I saw the black water coming through under the front door. Wendy stepped behind me.
“Jade,” she whispered.
Mum, who was ashen-faced, appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “Jade, where’s Tommy?”
“I’ve locked him in my room, Mum,” I answered.
It reassured her.
“Let’s get as much stuff as we can upstairs,” said dad with urgency in his voice.
We did, but we couldn’t save the carpets and some furniture. The black water continued to rise, flooding downstairs.
We sat in silence in our parents’ room. Then the lights went out. Tommy started sobbing in the dark. Mum comforted him, kissing and cuddling him. He was scared. We all were. Daddy found some candles in a drawer. He lit them, giving us some light. I saw it in the others’ faces.
“Dad, what do you think has happened?” I asked because I needed reassurance that this wasn’t the beginning of the end.
He replied, “The floods have probably knocked out the sub-station.”
I looked around at the others in the eerie candlelight. Mum looked strained. Tommy’s wide eyes stared at me. They were full of fear and confusion. He didn’t understand. Wendy bit her nails nervously. I knew what she was thinking. How would she explain this to Kev? It didn’t matter anyhow because the party was off. Father was smoking his pipe. He remained calm. When he caught me watching him, he winked at me. I blinked my eyes to reassure him. Things would be all right in the morning. It was very quiet outside. It was the calm before the storm.
Tommy started sobbing again when the hailstones hit the roof suddenly, sounding like thunder. Mum gave him a comforting cuddle. It was starting once more. We rarely got hailstones twice in one day.
“They’re big ones all right,” remarked dad.
Wendy screamed with fright, making me jump right out of my skin, when a particularly large hailstone shattered the window. They were even bigger than golf balls this time and dirty too. I pitied anyone out in it. We had been earlier, and it had been a scary experience. Daddy leapt to his feet and threw the curtains shut. Although it would give us some protection, it wasn’t enough.
Daddy crossed the room, casting a giant shadow in the candlelight. He stood by the wardrobe. “Come on, girls; give me a hand over here.”
Wendy and I stirred.
We puffed out our cheeks as we helped daddy push the tall, heavy wardrobe up against the window. More came in, exploding like small bombs. Although one or two found their way in occasionally, we were safe behind the big wardrobe, which did its job, deflecting the large hailstones.
An urgent call of nature woke me. I blamed it on the cold Coke I’d earlier. The others slept in the big room. It was very late. The hailstones had stopped awhile ago; however, the power hadn’t been restored to the houses in our street. The sub-station remained down. Daddy didn’t think we’d get power put back on till morning, if then. I picked up one of the candles and slipped out of the room without disturbing the others.
I bit my lip as I nervously crossed the landing with only the candlelight to guide me. I created a giant, ghostly shadow. I hate dark houses. I prayed that the flickering flame on the candle wouldn’t go out.
“Demons of the night leave me alone,” I pleaded in a whisper, looking around me wide-eyed. When I heard a sound on the stairs, I fled into the bathroom.
I was behaving foolishly. The old house often creaked and groaned in the stillness of the dead of night.
The hailstones started again as I came out of the bathroom. I gazed up at the attic. Something puzzled me. I was worried, and I wondered if I should call daddy. I didn’t want to disturb him however. Perhaps it was nothing at all, but I had to be sure, so I decided to investigate on my own. I pulled down the steps and climbed up into the attic.
The hailstones sounded much worse in the attic. It scared me a little. I thought the roof was going to fall in. I was concerned that father’s expensive equipment in the attic would get damaged. When I held up the candle, I saw what it was for the first time. There was a gaping hole in the roof. Something drew me beneath it. I realised later what it was, stupidity and foolishness. Then it seemed to fascinate me oddly. I could see the black sky beyond the hole in the roof. The wind blew out my candle. It didn’t make any sound. I saw it as a vague shadow falling towards me. What was it? It struck me on the side of the face, splitting open my cheek, yet strangely enough, I didn’t feel any pain. More hit me in the face, shoulders and arms. Then nothing.
I learnt later from the others that daddy had found me in the attic lying still in a pool of blood. When he first saw me, he thought that I was dead. He carried me down to my room and laid me gently on my bed. Mum and Wendy cleaned me up; bandaging my wounds, while father tried to get through to the doctor, but the line was dead. We were cut off by the floods. I slipped in and out of consciousness. Time had no meaning to me. I was somewhere in limbo. When I started falling down a black tunnel, someone reached out to me with a giant hand, pulling me back up. Was it God? He had decided that it wasn’t my time yet. The horror of the night before came rushing back to me briefly.
I opened my sticky eyelids. When I heard the door, I turned my head. Wendy entered with a bowl of soup on a tray. She set it down by my bed.
She smiled. “How are you feeling this morning, Jade?”
“Fine,” I answered in a weak, croaky voice.
“Can you manage some hot soup?”
I nodded weakly.
She helped sit me up, propping some pillows behind me. I remained poorly.
Wendy fed me. I was the little girl again. The soup was hot and spicy and homemade from one of mum’s own recipes. It slid down my throat easily, quickly filling me with a warm glow.
“You had us going back there, Jade Robinson,” said Wendy sternly. “The doctor called in yesterday to look at you. He said your wounds were mostly superficial. It was shock. You won’t have to go into hospital. We’re all relieved.”
“What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
I’d been out of it for two, whole days. I was concerned. “College?”
“It suffered extensive ground floor flood damage,” revealed Wendy, “and it’s closed for the week, the secretarial college too.”
My sister sounded almost pleased.
She added, “Daddy’s been off also. He’s been up on the roof all day. The storm or whatever it was took off a few tiles. He’s repaired the hole in the roof.”
I shivered when I remembered.
&
nbsp; “The black flood waters have gone down. Mum was almost in tears when she saw downstairs.”
I desperately wanted to change the subject. My sister was beginning to depress me with all of her bad news.
“How’s Tommy?” I asked.
“You could ask him yourself,” replied Wendy with a big grin on her face. “He’s been mad with worry.”
Something stirred beside me in my bed. His mop of curly, untidy blonde hair appeared from beneath the covers. He looked up at me sleepily and grinned.
Wendy laughed suddenly. “He insisted upon it.”
“Tommy loves Fade,” he declared once more.
Then he gave me a big, wet kiss on the lips.
When the others had gone later, I peered through the curtains. A black sludge covered the land.
Welcome to the brave, new world, Jade Robinson, I thought.
ZOOTWOSOME!
8. THE ROAMERS
I woke with a start.
Something was wrong. It was the silence in my room. I looked at my radio alarm. It hadn’t gone off. It had stopped at 2.15 a.m. There had been another power cut during the night. I looked at my watch. It was 7.45 a.m. I was late. Oh, DROKK! I thought.
I flew out of bed in the half-gloom of my room, almost tripping over one of Tommy’s soft toys that he left all over the house. I opened the storm shutters that daddy had fitted recently. The dull, sickly yellow of morning sunlight slipped uneasily into my room. An acrid smell of burning also crept into my room. I was troubled when I remembered. I’d heard the Roamers during the night. They had taken advantage of the power cuts.
Dismissing it from my mind easily because I’d other things to worry about, exams, which were due soon, I stepped out of my room. I met Wendy on the landing. She had bags under her eyes. She didn’t look so pretty this morning. How did I look?
“Sis.”
She grunted.
I let another yawn slip.
I put my arm around her, and we vanished into the bathroom together.
As I shrugged out of my dressing gown, Wendy turned on the shower.
She tried it. “Fairly hot,” she declared. “The power’s back on.”
The Citadel and the Wolves Page 11
