The Rain

by Virginia Bergin

  I couldn’t get up the exit way because it was blocked with cars, so I went up the way cars came down on to the motorway – see how smart I am? We couldn’t get any closer, but that was OK; at the top of the slope you could see the pool. There was a queue outside. It was very orderly; it felt OK.

  We tipped out every container we had. When we’d cleared out my mum and Simon’s car, we’d grabbed everything and done it so quick we’d even scooped up all the empty bottles from the Ashton shop. Then we’d cleared out the truck and done the same thing again. We tipped out my looted bags, dumping ten thousand pairs of knickers into the back of the car. We loaded the bags with the empty bottles. Still, it didn’t seem like anything near enough. I tipped the vodka out into the gutter, wondered what else we could use and . . . remembered . . .

  At the farm, I’d picked up Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton . . . I’d put Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton on the driver’s seat to pick up when we’d finished loading the farm truck . . . and . . .

  I left Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton on the driver’s seat . . . at the farm.

  I am a bad person. I am a very bad person. Please let someone have found Fluffysnuggles; please let someone have taken pity.

  In the film of this book – after the end credits, probably, when most people have left, weeping, there should be this extra little storyette. Just for the people who have stayed, weeping. Some random cows will wander out of the field. I didn’t shut any gates, so they’re bound to. These random cows will have a mooch about the farmyard; the bravest and boldest and most inquisitive of them will wander down the track. It’ll get to the car; it’ll poke its head inside. (I left the car door open too.) It’ll knock Fluffysnuggles’s mint-chocolate-chip carton to the floor. The carton will bust open. Fluffysnuggles and the cow will consider each other, nose to nose. Then, as the cow plods off to eat its way through a polytunnel full of flowers, Fluffysnuggles will climb out of the car. He’ll drop down on to the track, sigh, and begin his epic journey home.

  We left Princess locked in the car in the care of Whitby and Darling, or the other way round. That was how confident we felt; apart from the kids’ drawings of clouds, the sky looked blue as blue can be. We wouldn’t be long. We’d be close by.

  As we joined the back of the queue, this random boy, must have been Darius’s age, came to check our bags. Then he climbed into the back of a Girl Guides’ minibus and handed us these big plastic containers, two each. They were like the kind of containers Simon had once bought cider in on the way home from some awful walk, back in the time before Henry was born.

  (The next day, my mum went around the house clutching her head and saying, ‘Never again.’ Until she explained it was the cider, I thought – hoped – she meant we’d never have to go on another walk. Fat chance.)

  And then we waited. More people came and joined the queue behind us. We seemed to wait for a very long time.

  First thing I noticed was . . . maybe Darius Spratt had been wrong, about how many people had survived – because there was a lot – A LOT – of people there, shuffling in, thirty at a time. That’s what I counted. (Yes, I can actually count, in fact.)

  The other thing I noticed was it seemed like there were only four people ‘in charge’ at the pool: that random boy outside; some random bloke inside; this Girl Guide Leader woman, who paced around inside and out; and this girl, my age, also in a Guide’s uniform, who was trying to make sure everyone stayed in line. The random bloke inside didn’t seem too good at his job; you could hear him shouting ‘Stop!’ when people tried to grab too much water, and if they didn’t stop – which they often didn’t – he shouted ‘Melissa!’ and the girl pushed past us all and shouted ‘STOP!’ too. And if they still didn’t stop, the girl pushed back past us all and the Girl Guide Leader came in and shouted. Then they stopped.

  Honest? I’d been in Guides. I can still remember the Guide Law – and when you think about it, if this disaster wasn’t going to be the moment teenagers took over the Earth, power should have been handed over to the Guides. For why?

  A Guide is honest, reliable and can be trusted.

  A Guide is helpful and uses her time and abilities wisely.

  A Guide faces challenge and learns from her experiences.

  A Guide is a good friend and a sister to all Guides, (but there probably would have been a vote to include a few other people on account of the global disaster).

  A Guide is polite and considerate.

  A Guide respects all living things and takes care of the world around her.

  Being a Girl Guide is not easy. Probably there are religions that are easier . . . but I don’t think there are any religions that are more fun, or with as many different things to do. Still, I had to stop doing Guides, didn’t I? I’d loved it . . . and then I hacked it out of my life in the hobby-cull I carried out at the end of Year 8. I should have done it at the end of the summer, but – DUR – I did it at the beginning. Leonie was still a Guide, going off, doing this and that. Tumbleweed blew across my social life . . . and, like my dad was to blame for it, that’s when I started going on about going up to London all the time, about going on crummy holidays with Dad and Dan. (Crummy? That was the summer my dad let me drive the car!)

  I think I never was a very good Girl Guide. But I did try. I tried.

  I had enough time to think all this. We had plenty of time. For the first ages, we were queuing on the street. For the next ages, we were queuing inside the building. We edged down the stairs. Step by step, we came closer to it: that pool, that lovely water.

  People didn’t really talk much. I suppose it was the sort of situation where people would normally have gone on about the weather; that was off limits, and what else was there? May Meltdown.

  I didn’t feel worried at all. Swimming pools, that was a thing I knew about. That’s a thing kids do: queuing up to get into a pool. The chloriney smell, the echoey sound, the heat. I remembered queuing in Dartbridge, holding my mum’s hand when I was little. Then in primary school, queuing with Leonie, giggling – all the way up until the brutal Year 8 hobby-cull – your towel and your cozzie and your pocket money in your bag and just wishing they’d hurry up and let you in . . .

  I wrapped and rewrapped that dead girl’s cardigan round my waist, make-up melting in the heat.

  ‘My wife is sick!’ some posh bloke started going on. ‘Now look here, you people! My wife is sick!’

  ‘Sick of you,’ some woman said.

  We giggled; everyone giggled. That’s what you do when you’re waiting, excited, in the queue for the pool.

  And then . . . these sirens closed on in. The way the steps went down to the pool, we had this weird view of the world; we could just see the legs of the people outside, so we had to crouch down and crane our heads to get a good look at the fire engine.

  WOOP! WOOP! – WOOP! WOOP! the siren went.

  The men that arrived on it weren’t firemen. There were men you could see straight off were drunk, clutching bottles, clambering about . . . but there were other men, who looked just normal. Normal like normal people’s normal dads.

  WOOP! WOOP! – WOOP! WOOP! the siren went.

  Us queue people, we didn’t budge. We stayed where we were. We heard the men had come to take water; they’d come all the way from Gloucester to get it. The people in the queue said there wasn’t enough water.

  The arguing started up. The Girl Guide, Melissa, she looked at me. I saw that she was scared. Maybe she wished she was me, standing there in a sequiny dress and red hair and free to run if she wanted . . . and not her, stood there in a uniform with no make-up and this mass of people expecting you to be helpful and use your time and abilities wisely, etc.

  Truth? I looked away. There. I’ve said it. I looked away from that girl. I couldn’t stand it, but I should have looked back at her. Seems to me, maybe sometimes the least you can do for another person is to show that you have seen them. No matter how scared it makes yo
u. The arguing got louder. Melissa, she went outside. What badge do they give you for that? Community Action? Water Safety?

  You brave girl, Melissa. you should get Brave Girl – Advanced!

  I should get Ostrich – Advanced!

  I don’t know how you know, how you just know in your guts that something really bad is about to happen, but I knew it. And I ignored it; I didn’t get out while I still could because no one around me seemed to want to get out – until it was too late.

  The rowing outside turned to scuffling. At knee height we saw it. We saw men running back and forth. We saw what feet and legs do when men fight.

  KER-PLSSSSH!

  Water jetted and streamed down off those windows. They must have turned on the fire hoses. We saw the first man fall. Everyone on those stairs did; we saw him fall and we saw him claw at the glass – at us: he was right in front of our faces. We saw . . . that he was bloody, but not in a fight-way bloody and we understood that the water in that fire engine, in the hoses that had been turned on, that were jetting everywhere . . . that water was bad.

  A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties.

  The people in the queue panicked. Everyone wanted to get out and all the people who’d been queuing outside wanted to get in.

  See how it was: there was already a load of people in there, in that pool, and there was already a load of people waiting on the steps. And then even more loads of people came in from outside.

  Me and Darius Spratt, we had no choice. We got pushed and shoved and pushed towards that pool until we were stuck on the side of it, bunched in with all these other people and some of them still trying to fill up their containers when the screaming started up by the entrance and this people-ripple spread and it had nowhere to go. It had nowhere to go. There was a fire exit down the end of the pool; you could see the little white man sign above it, that picture of the little white cartoon man leaving, only no one else could. People battered at that exit door but it must have been locked. All that could happen, all people could do was – PLOOSH! – the first person, just a kid, fell into the pool – but it was OK, because that water was OK; and everyone kind of got that and – PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH – a whole bunch of other people jumped in too because it was the only place left where there was any space.

  Me and Darius Spratt, we jumped in.

  It was colder than a pool should be. I remember that. How cold it felt. But we glugged that water. Treading water and glugging.

  There was this weird couple of minutes of thinking that maybe it’d actually be OK, that maybe all those panicky, pushy people would get a grip. I even got a grip myself; my make-up would have been done for anyway, so I had a scrub at my face with the dead girl’s cardigan.

  ‘What are you doing?!’ gasped Darius.

  ‘Mind your own business!’ I spluttered back, half drowning.

  Then there were more screams – bigger screams, closer screams – and this time there wasn’t a people-ripple, but a surge. PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH.

  We all saw him: the useless random pool bloke standing there at the top of the pool, people trying to back off all around him because he was bloody with the sickness. He had these keys in his hand and he tried to get round the side of the pool – to open that fire escape, I bet; he tried to do it, but he came too near people and someone shoved him away.

  The useless random pool bloke fell into the pool.

  Panic exploded. People didn’t care now; they wanted to get out and get out fast. Me and Darius, we hauled ourselves out of that water, nearly trampled as we scrambled to our feet . . . and . . . and the sickness spreading all around us . . . Like one minute it was just water dripping off someone and the next minute it was blood. The pool wasn’t a pool any more; it was a giant vat of invisible wavy-tentacled space micro-blobs: replicating, attacking, killing.

  Where we’d come up, the other side of the pool, there was some big woman lying groaning and behind her was this door with no little white cartoon man running, but it was a door so I yanked it open – never mind the poor woman, not even thinking ‘the poor woman’ – just enough so’s I could drag Darius in and what we got into was a cupboard – it was just a cupboard, a stupid cupboard full of kids’ pool toys – and the door shut and it was pitch black.

  Other hands yanked at the handle and me and Darius Spratt we pulled back on it as though our lives depended on it, which they did.

  I thought I was going to die. That was it, plain and simple: I thought I was going to die.

  I said my dad’s address over and over and over again. Making Darius repeat it, over and over and over.

  ‘If you get out of here, you go find my dad and you tell him.’

  Tell him what? That I had died in a cupboard full of floaty spongy pool snakes?

  ‘Tell him I love him,’ I sobbed, and made Darius say the address again. And again. And again.

  ‘OK – your turn,’ I told him.

  ‘You gotta take care of Princess,’ he said.

  Ouph! I hadn’t even thought about the kid once since things had kicked off.

  ‘And . . .’ he added.

  Whoa! A last request is a last request, right? It’s not a last to-do list!

  He spouted numbers. I was so terrified I didn’t even realise to start with that it was a date of birth. His date of birth.

  ‘Got it?’

  ‘Yeah!’ I said, even though it had gone straight out of my terrified head.

  ‘I want you to find my mum.’

  ‘But—’ He’d said his whole family was dead . . .

  ‘My birth mother.’

  Someone yanked on the door, hard; we yanked it back.

  ‘I was gonna find her, after the exams and—’

  The door got yanked again – before we got it shut I saw his face for a moment in the light and I saw that he was crying too and when we got the door shut the tiny pea-sized bit of brain in my head that still had any thoughts at all said, ‘You’re adopted?’

  ‘YES,’ said Darius.

  I didn’t know what say, so I said the numbers again.

  ‘That’s wrong!’ cried Darius. ‘Look, you don’t even have to remember it. Just go to the school, get it from my records.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ he said. ‘You need to find the adoption certificate.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, already the pea in my head was thinking that, as last requests go, it all seemed kind of tricky. ‘How would I do that?’

  Someone thumped against the door and we tightened our grips.

  ‘I don’t know how it works,’ blurted Darius Spratt. ‘I was gonna do it all online.’

  Our hands were locked together, straining on that handle.

  ‘You can find out, can’t you? You can try?’ pleaded Darius.

  ‘Yes!’ I cried.

  It was pretty much the world’s worst and most complicated and most impossible last request – and I knew it . . . and he knew it. I knew he knew it. I knew he knew I knew it.

  It was bad, what you could hear going on out there. It was very, very bad.

  ‘Darius, if I couldn’t do that,’ I said. ‘Let’s just say if for some reason I couldn’t do that . . .’

  Someone yanked on the handle; our knot of hands held it shut.

  LIKE WE’RE BOTH GONNA DIE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, IN THIS CUPBOARD, I thought.

  ‘Is there something else I could do?’

  AND MAKE IT EASY! I thought.

  Darius Spratt was silent for a moment.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he said.

  THE CHAPTER OF SHAME – TO BE DELETED

  I kissed the Spratt. We were in a cupboard. I thought I was going to die.

  So I did the deed. He asked me to kiss him, so I kissed him.

  I took one hand off the door handle. I grabbed his head for the purposes of ensuring a quick delivery and I mashed my lips against his – like BOMF! – in the dark.

  There. I had fulfilled his last requ
est.

  End of.

  ONLY IT WASN’T!

  OH, WHO CARES IF I TELL THE HORRIBLE TRUTH?

  ME! I DO!

  Someone yanked on the door; light flooded in for a sec, for long enough for me to see his face looked sad and grim and scared and weeping . . . and not at all how it was supposed to look (GRATEFUL) when I, me, Ruby Morris had just kissed him.

  ‘You could say thank you,’ I said when the door-yanker gave up.

  ‘Oh, yeah, cheers,’ said Darius.

  Cheers? I thought. Cheers?!

  ‘I just kissed you!’ I blurted . . . meaning I, me, Ruby Morris had just kissed . . . a SUB nerd.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Darius. ‘Thanks. Or whatever.’

  WHOA. OH WOW. OH MY .

  ‘Or whatever?!’

  ‘I mean, you know, thanks. It was OK,’ said Darius.

  ‘OK?!’

  ‘Yeah . . . it was OK.’

  ‘OK?!’

  ‘Yeah, Andrew Difford said you were an OK kisser.’

  ‘WHAT?!’

  ‘Get over it, Ru. Now would be a really good time to just . . . get over stuff.’

  ‘WHAT?! WHAT?!’

  ‘Actually he said you were lousy.’

  ‘Andrew Difford said that . . .’

  ‘Yeah . . . he told everyone.’

  ‘He told everyone . . . He’s a tramp; he’s a total tramp. He’s a gutless, lying, lowdown, blabbermouthed, tittle-tattling . . . a lousy kisser! He’s a lousy kisser!’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’m a brilliant kisser!’

  ‘Hn.’

  ‘I AM a brilliant kisser!’

  ‘Prove it to me, Ruby Morris,’ said Darius.

  Someone yanked on the door. In the flood of light I saw his face, like mine: the fear and the hopelessness. The door slammed shut.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered.

  I took one hand off the door handle.

  I laid my hand, trembling with fright, on his face.

  He took one hand off the door handle. He put his hand on my hand. Our fingers linked, steadying each other. He turned his head, and, softly, kissed my palm. We stayed like that, for a moment. His lips, so still. The terror and the grief flowing between us. The power in our hands. Like we could make it all stop. No. Like this was all we had. All we would ever have. Our fingers squeezed.