The Rain

by Virginia Bergin

  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.

  ‘Not those either,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to make do with what’s left in the kettle. There’s orange juice and milk in the fridge.’

  I put the kettle back. I kind of stared at it, and then the tap, and then the sea of containers. What?! Was that disgusting little tentacle-y space thing in the house?!

  ‘Don’t touch any of that water,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll get rid of it.’

  I was too thirsty and muddled to start thinking. I flicked the kettle on, poured myself a glass of orange juice and glugged it down. My stomach gurgled horribly.

  ‘I’m just gonna go to the loo,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You’ll have to use the bucket,’ said Simon, staring at his list.

  ‘What?!’ I said, but not a yee-haa ‘What?!’. It was just a ‘What?!’ kind of what, the kind of ‘What?!’ that comes out of your mouth when your brain doesn’t get it.

  ‘We don’t know whether the water’s OK any more. It’s too risky.’

  ‘But . . . I need to . . .’ I wasn’t going to put my bum in the loo, just on it.

  ‘Sorry, Ru. Use the bucket.’ He added something to the list then.

  I poo’d in the bucket (too much information?). I thought I wouldn’t be able to, but I was desperate and anyway I told myself . . . well, it was just like one of the rubbish camping trips Simon took us on before Henry came along: rain pouring down, squatting on a plastic toilet thing. (We didn’t go to the kind of campsites where there were showers and toilets and swimming pools and entertainment. Or even other people. We went to cold, windy fields in the middle of nowhere.) I piled layers of toilet paper on top of my poo . . . and even though it was my own and you can’t smell that like you can smell other people’s – can you? – I felt so embarrassed. I felt . . . so . . . humiliated. Like it was so unfair – on me.

  Bristling – that’s what you call it, when you’re trying to not be cross even though you’re raging – I went back to the kitchen. Simon was making scrambled eggs.

  ‘I suppose I can’t even wash my hands,’ I said, bristling, as I sat down at the table and poured out the last of the orange juice.

  ‘Or have a shower,’ Simon said, pointing at a pack of Henry’s baby wipes across the table.

  NO SHOWER?! ARE YOU KIDDING?!

  Mobile, friends, Caspar. Priorities, Ruby, I thought, priorities. I wiped my hands, bristling.

  Simon put a pile of toast and eggs in front of me, plus butter and jam and the secret stash of peanut butter. He’d also made a cup of tea.

  ‘Last cup in the kettle,’ he said as I slurped.

  ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, feeling totally, bristlingly depressed.

  Simon didn’t eat. He just kept staring at his stupid list. He didn’t add anything to it; he just kept looking at it.

  When I had finished, I got a glass of milk.

  ‘Feel better?’ he asked.

  It was harder to bristle; I did feel better.

  ‘Yes. Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  I glugged down the last of the milk – well, almost; I did what you always do, which is leave this little bit in the bottom of the bottle so’s you’re not forced to wash it up and put it in the recycling. I felt about ready to tackle it; how I was going to get Simon to take me to Zak’s – though I reckoned it would be pretty hard to persuade him until the rain had stopped. I looked out of the window; it was coming down in sheets, pouring down, from the kind of low, grey sky that’s got no hope of sun in it.

  That’s nimbostratus; I know that now. I didn’t then. All I knew was it looked like the kind of gloomy total cloud-out that means forget it: you’re going nowhere.

  But I could in a car; if we could just get into the car without getting wet – like if we took that massive umbrella my mum used to keep her and Henry in his stroller dry – and then we could just drive into the carport at Zak’s place . . . but maybe I should try for the laptop first, check the chat and see what had been going on and –

  ‘Ruby,’ said Simon. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Here we go. Now I’m gonna get it.

  That’s what I thought, you see. The whole world was in some kind of hideous death-fest space-bug meltdown . . . and I was still on the page before, still stuck in yesterday. I still thought . . . I dunno what I thought! That everything – if it wasn’t exactly the same right now, that it would still be the same . . . later? Tomorrow?

  I’m not stupid; I knew something really bad was happening, but at that moment in time I just wanted to see my friends. I wanted my mobile back so I could call Caspar, which I’d never actually done before – we’d just texted and done the whole virtual flirtation thing a bit – but felt I could now on account of the kissing and the suffering. I just wanted to ring him, almost as much as I wanted to ring Lee . . . but did Caspar even have his phone, or had he left it at Zak’s? I could get it and take it to him and –

  ‘Ruby! You need to pay attention,’ said Simon.

  I sure did! I was going to have to charm my way out of there; I helpfully grabbed my plate and had my hand on the tap before –

  ‘No!’ Simon bellowed. ‘Don’t use the tap!’

  I sat back down with my plate and smiled sweetly at Simon. Look contrite, I thought – which means looking really sorry, even if you’re not. He sighed – not in a nasty way, in a sad way – and pulled his chair round next to mine.

  ‘I need you to really listen,’ he said.

  OK, I thought, humour him. I nodded, contritely.

  ‘No one really knows what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Not for sure. But until we know we need to stick to these rules.’

  That’s when the list came out. It was basically a to-do list from hell. A hideous, death-fest mega-crisis do-this-do-that tick-list, only it was all don’ts and no dos. You can imagine what was on it: all the stuff that had been on the radio. All the stuff I’d been trying to block out . . . plus a few things I hadn’t even remembered hearing and that, later on, I realised was stuff Simon must have thought of.

  DON’T GO OUT IN THE RAIN.

  (Dur! I thought.)

  DON’T TOUCH ANYONE WHO’S TOUCHED ANY WATER. OR ANY ANIMAL. OR ANY THING. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING THAT’S TOUCHED ANY WATER.

  It felt like his list was already losing it a bit, but I did get what he meant. I could imagine that horrible microscopic bug thing creeping about everywhere.

  ‘Zak’s mum said not to touch the car door,’ I said (to pick up some Brownie points).

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  Maybe he’d just let me use the laptop; it was sitting right there, right in front of me and –

  ‘Ruby! Please! You need to concentrate.’

  I peeled my eyes off the laptop and focused on the list. The next item was the freakiest:

  DON’T TOUCH ANYONE WHO’S SICK. OR DEAD.

  ‘That’s horrible,’ I said.

  He grunted.

  DON’T TOUCH OR DRINK ANY TAP WATER.

  He rattled on for a bit then, about how although no one had actually said the tap water was bad already it probably was or would be very soon because people had probably panicked like he’d panicked and emptied their water tanks, which would just speed up sucking the bad water into the pipes unless you could shut the water off, which he couldn’t because he’d have to go outside to do that, so even though the water he’d filled up every last container in the house with was probably OK you couldn’t be sure, could you?

  ‘No, Simon,’ I said, and before he could go on about it any more I read the next bit out loud.

  ‘DON’T USE THE TOILET. NO BATHS. NO SHOWERS.

  DON’T EAT ANYTHING
THAT’S BEEN OUTSIDE. NO FRESH FRUIT, VEG, FISH, MEAT.’

  There was a question mark at the end of that, but the meat bit annoyed me; technically, apart from eating fish, I was a vegetarian . . . it was just that it was a bit hard to keep it up sometimes and there’d been lapses – that Simon knew about and went on about.

  ‘Yup. Got it!’ I said brightly.

  ‘And, Ru, this is the most important thing.’

  At the top of the list, he wrote one word, in capitals, underlined. Then he wrote over it again, and again. One word:

  THINK

  ‘Do you understand?’ he asked.

  It was too horrible; I just wanted to get this mini-lecture/test thing over with, but I knew ‘OK!’ wouldn’t cut it.

  ‘Like filling the kettle?’ I said.

  ‘Like filling the kettle,’ said Simon.

  Phew. Comprehension test passed. But no –

  ‘Do you understand, Ruby? You have to think. You have to stop and think, whatever it is, whatever you feel, you have to stop and think.’

  ‘I get it,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What do you get?’

  ‘That I’ve got to think,’ I said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About . . . I dunno, about the water and stuff.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He turned and held my face in his hands; it scrunched the Caspar-kissing sore patch a bit and made it hurt, but I was too freaked out to even say ‘Ow’.

  ‘Ruby,’ he said. ‘You have to think.’

  It was the worst eyeballing he’d ever given me.

  ‘You have to think about yourself,’ he said. ‘You have to put yourself first.’

  Huh?! My whole life, I’d been told I was selfish. Simon, he’d just say, ‘Will you please stop being so selfish?!’ – while my mum would say something like, ‘Oh, Ruby,’ and I just knew she meant the same thing. And now?

  ‘You have to think about yourself first, Ruby. About your survival.’

  Yup, he’d gone from weirding and freaking me out to full-blown scaring me out. He wouldn’t let up.

  ‘Before you do anything, what are you going to do?’ he asked.

  My chin hurt.