His hand left mine. I grieved for it, instantly, in the darkness and the emptiness.
Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
His hand came gently to my face. Fear shaking in our fingertips, tracing tears.
It wasn’t like the Caspar hot-tub thing. There was no BOMF. In the darkness, there was a kiss. There was a first kiss.
And because we might have had no time at all in the world, it seemed as if we had all the time in the world. We had all the time there ever was, and ever will be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
You wanna know how I know the thing about no one living for longer than three hours?
That’s how long we were in that cupboard for.
After a while, people stopped trying to get in, but we didn’t come out until the whole world was silent, until all those people were dead.
We wouldn’t have dared to . . . apart from anything else.
We shoved open the door. It would have been hard to have got out of there without treading in pools of gore, but there was a ton of those little elasticated blue plastic-bag things they make the swimming teachers and visitors wear over their shoes. We even put them on our hands, in case we had to touch anything, and we crackled out along the poolside, picking our way really, really slowly and really, really carefully through the hideousness.
All around us, inside that pool and outside, it was a scene of appalling horror. You really didn’t want to look at it.
I also really didn’t want to look at Darius Spratt’s face. Further appalling horror.
Yup. I wasn’t imagining it; in the middle of the nightmare of where we were and what was, this funny little goofy smile kept sneaking on to his face.
‘Stop it!’ I snapped.
‘What?’ he said.
Yup, there it was again.
Oh my . I was DYING from the sheer mind-melting horror of it. (I have to say that dying bit.) (It’s fully necessary and justified.)
‘That!’ I snapped.
What happened in the spongy-snake cupboard stays in the spongy-snake cupboard, that’s what I thought.
I had this dreadful, dreadful feeling like somehow I’d been tricked, only I couldn’t have been tricked, could I? He’d said kiss me, and I’d . . .
Oh my !!! It was too awful to think about . . . and in a way, it was just as well pretty much everyone at school must be dead because if what had happened in the spongy-snake cupboard ever got out my life wouldn’t be worth living.
I do realise that could sound a bit terrible, but it is also true.
At least he wouldn’t be able to say it was lousy. He wouldn’t be able to say that.
I blasted the goofy smile off the Spratt’s face with the mother of all death-ray ‘Say one word and I’ll kill you’ stares and flounced off round the fire engine to get to the car. (The flouncing bit wasn’t easy; there was a lot of water and gore about.) Darius trailed after me.
The smile, which had crept back on to his face, melted away all on its own when he saw the kid. Princess was still in the car, sitting there, rigid. Darling was asleep on the driver’s seat, so that seemed not right; the kid never seemed to want to let her go. I unlocked the boot to let Whitby out – oh man! There was a stink! – and Darius opened the kid’s door. She lurched out at him.
Kids – like Dan, when he was little – fling themselves at you, but I’ve never seen a kid do anything quite like that. She sprang at him like a wild animal and she would not let go.
Meanwhile the bad things Whitby’s bum had foretold came to pass . . . and were still passing. Set free, Whitby had a poop-fest.
‘We could just stay here,’ said Darius, the silent kid fastened on to him like a limpet.
The day so beautifully warm. Little cumulus humilis, still drifting about on high, making the world look storybook simple.
‘We could go back into Bristol. We could find someplace. Just for tonight,’ he said.
Part of me really did just want to stop and rest. But in those storybook stories, in fairy tales, that’s when it all goes horribly wrong, doesn’t it? I had a quest on my hands; I had a place I needed to get to. It’s important not to forget what you’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it? It’s important not to let yourself get sidetracked and distracted. It is important not to give up or give in. It is important to be strong, even if you have never felt so weak and so tired and so sick of being afraid. Isn’t it?
It was getting late, but there had to be hours left until night.
‘I’m going to London,’ I said. ‘You two can do what you like.’
Please don’t leave me.
‘It was just an idea,’ he said, prising the kid off himself and practically forcing her into the back of the car.
‘Yeah, well, I’ve had enough of you and your bright ideas,’ I grumbled. I handed him Darling and he handed Darling to the kid and shut the door.
‘Ru,’ he said.
I don’t know what else he was planning on saying. I didn’t want to know.
‘Just get in the car, would you?’ I snapped.
I opened my mouth to call for Whitby and got as far as ‘WHI—’ before I saw him. He was guzzling water from a puddle near the fire engine.
Me and Darius Spratt, we looked at each other.
Now it seems so obvious, that the dogs were a risk. And not just a bit of a risk but a MASSIVE risk. Even when I’d seen Whitby chowing down on dead people, I’d just thought, Urgh! I hadn’t thought . . . and nor had Darius; you could tell by the look on his face.
‘We’ve gotta get rid of him,’ said Darius.
‘No!’ I said, but more from the horror of the realising it.
Whitby raised his head up, water dribbling from his chops.
‘OK,’ I said.
Seeing us looking at him, Whitby bounded towards us. We both dived into driver’s seat and slammed the door.
‘Get over your own side!’ I shouted into Darius Spratt’s face.
He extracted himself and clambered into the passenger seat.
Whitby, the big dear darling old dope, didn’t get it; why was the door shut? He shrugged his doggy shoulders and lolloped around the car, tail wagging, looking for a way in. He barked at us: Hey, come on! Let me in!
I burst into tears – then caught Darius Spratt eyeing up Darling. Princess clutched her even more tightly and I spoke. I spoke for Darling, for me . . . and for the kid, I suppose.
‘No!’ I gasped. ‘Darling’s fine! She’s fine and we’ll be careful!’
That Princess kid, she swung it all on her own. She looked at Darius with those big, solemn eyes and she nodded. She actually nodded.
Seemed like that nod came out louder than anything I could have shouted.
The Spratt caved.
‘Hn,’ said Darius. ‘OK.’
It’s not YOUR decision, I wanted to shout at Darius. Whitby, outside, had started to whimper . . . and the sound of his crying, it was awful and I could feel I was about ready to totally yee-haa . . . and then . . . something kicked in, just for a second, about how . . . I dunno. How it’s so hard now to work things out it’s maybe easier to work them out with other people, but how being with other people is dangerous as well as safer . . . because you have to agree all the time . . . because if you don’t sort it out and you don’t agree, a lot of things can go wrong. Basically, people can die.
I didn’t think that then. Back then it was . . . So who did Darius think he was and he should just shut up because I’d got them out of Dartbridge, hadn’t I? But he’d stopped me from going out into the rain to get my stuff, even though it hadn’t really been about to rain or anything. And I’d got them out of that polytunnel and we’d got each other out of that pool . . . so . . . it all seemed so complicated, and like I should just shut up.
My eyes were so tear-blurry I could hardly even see Whitby running after the car, barking. Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.
I could hardly even see him until he was jus
t a tiny dot, sitting in the middle of the motorway, howling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As we zoomed towards London, Darius fiddled with the radio, skipping through miles of hiss in between repeats of the broadcasts that had not changed: ‘Stay home. Remain calm.’
Yeah right. Someone needed to tell them that advice really wasn’t working.
‘Can you turn that off now?’ I asked.
I asked it nicely, the first time; the second time, because he’d ignored me, I said it not so nicely.
‘Just a sec,’ he said, skimming through again.
So, third time: ‘TURN IT OFF!’ I snarled, and death-rayed him.
‘So how come you don’t want to know what’s going on in the world?’ he said, putting his naked feet up on the dashboard. Evening sunlight caught the hair sprouting on his toes. He’d used his window to peg his socks and mine out to dry. They flapped about together as we zoomed – with our clothes, still pool-damp, drying on our bodies.
‘I don’t want to not know,’ I said. ‘I’ve just heard all that stuff before, right? What’s the point?’
I wasn’t exactly comfortable – in my clothes or in my head. I kept shifting about.
‘Because they might be saying new stuff.’
‘Err. Hello? Hello? Who might? Have you not noticed? Everyone is dead.’
The second I said it I was waiting for him to DARE say something about my dad, but he didn’t. No need. I was thinking it anyway.
I felt sick and like I needed air; I hit the wrong window button and our socks left us. I hit the right window button and stared out of the window for a dangerously long time, breathing. Just breathing.
After that, we bickered about what music to listen to. The music collection in that car was a best-ofs bonanza (but at least it didn’t include The Carpenters), and I’ve noticed that in a lot of cars. It kind of supports my theory about how stressful driving is; you couldn’t cope with listening to anything interesting at the same time. I made him put some retro Best of the Eighties CD on and it flustered me instantly because every single song seemed to be about LURVE and kissing and suchlike, but luckily I discovered I had an executive control switch on the stick you would have thought would be for the windscreen wipers, so I kept skipping anything that sounded like it might be too slushy, which annoyed the Spratt.
‘Oh, come on!’ he whined when I did it yet again. ‘I was listening to that!’
He actually leaned forward and did a manual override on the CD player, skipping back to the lovey-dovey ballad. And he sang! The Spratt sang! And the worst and most annoying thing about the Spratt’s singing was that the Spratt’s singing was good. Not better than Caspar good; I will never say that.
‘I don’t like it,’ I said, skipping forward again.
‘Why’s it got to be what you want all the time?’
‘Because,’ I said. ‘I’m the driver.’
‘So?’
The Spratt skipped back; I skipped forward.
‘So we listen to what I want,’ I said. ‘Or we could always turn it off and play I Spy . . . that’d be fun, wouldn’t it? I spy with my little eye something beginning with DB.’
The Spratt looked confused.
‘Dead body?’ I said. ‘Or maybe CC? Crashed car! Oh look! It’s another DB!’
The Spratt went quiet. I felt mean, so I even though I wanted to skip the current track too because it seemed to be all about SEX (what was wrong with those eighties people?! They were obsessed!), I let it play. The Spratt lounged sulkily in his seat.
Honestly, what is it about songs, even rubbishy songs you wouldn’t normally bother to listen to, that makes you hear every EXCRUCIATING word when you most don’t want to?
But it gave me a brilliant idea. A Ruby genius idea.
‘I hear, with my little ear, something people won’t be able to sing about any more,’ I said.
‘Well, what does it begin with?’ the Spratt asked.
‘I dunno,’ I said, ‘but there’s bound to be one.’
The Spratt, I noticed, got a little less loungey. I could see his toes tensing. In the rear-view mirror I saw the kid perk up, listening.
(More than that, I’d see her poke Darius a couple of times, when a word was coming up. It turned out the Princess knew some of those songs.)
‘LB! LASER BEAMS!’ I shrieked.
I skipped forward.
‘Why can’t we listen to the rest of it?’ cried Darius.
‘Too bad!’ I said. ‘Winner chooses!’
‘Game on,’ said Darius, sitting up.
It was hilarious. It actually really was – once I’d carefully explained to Darius that it didn’t even matter whether stuff still existed or not, it was just stuff that would OBVIOUSLY never be the same again. (‘Look; it’s really simple, dummy! HITC. No one’s gonna sing about it being Hot In The City again, are they, you idiot? It doesn’t mean “hot” hot – as in “Ooo, isn’t it warm?” – it means exciting hot. So – point to me – next track, loser!’
CB (cocktail bar!). M (money!). ST (steam train!). T (telephone!). PR (phone rings!). E (electric!).
Darius got tetchy about the electric one. Even though I was prepared to admit that you’d still be able to get electricity from batteries and generators and whatnot, I decided it was perfectly allowable because it was perfectly obvious when people sang about electricity they didn’t mean electricity that came from batteries and generators and whatnot.
It came up loads of times, electric. Those eighties people were obsessed with that kind of thing too: electricity, atomic stuff, nuclear stuff . . . N (neutron!).
D (dime!). D (dollar!). I (industry!). T (tickets!). R (rent!).
We got silly (J! Jam! It doesn’t mean that kind of jam! It’s not about fruit!); we got picky (P! You can’t have phone again – you just had phone!). We had this mind-boggling row about whether FAM (four a.m.!) would still exist if all the clocks ran out or got bust and people couldn’t make clocks any more and weren’t bothered about what the time was anyway because it wouldn’t be like they had to go to school or work or anything, would it, and – anyway – what exactly is time?
(In a cupboard, at a swimming pool, it had ceased to exist.)
I.e. we had pretty much the kind of argument you’d have to use Wikipedia to solve. Only we didn’t have Wikipedia, did we? ‘I’ (internet!) never came up in any of those eighties songs. Not much of the stuff that was really important in our lives did. That’s why it was fun, I guess . . . I mean, even though it was terrible, it wasn’t really exactly completely now, was it?
‘M!’ shouted Darius. ‘Medicine!’
After a sec, he skipped to the next track, as the winner was allowed to do.
I had this thought. This thought about Darius and medicine and . . .
‘So how long will those tablets last you?’ I asked.
‘Shut up, Ru,’ Darius said.
He laid his head against the window. OK, so everything had all gone a bit weird. OK, so better not to ask.
‘Hey,’ I said. I reached out, and poked him. I should have just said sorry.
‘B,’ he said.
‘B?’
He didn’t even look at me; he just said it: ‘Braces.’
My braces aren’t the kind that come out. They’re glued on to my teeth. How would I ever get them off now? I was going to be wearing braces for the rest of my life. I was going to be sitting in an old people’s home eating tinned fruit, fretting about the weather and . . . still wearing TRAIN TRACKS.
‘Sorry,’ said Darius. ‘I’m sorry.’
Some band squawked on about lurve.
‘This is rubbish,’ I muttered, trying to eject the CD; the car swerved.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Darius. He took the CD out. ‘What do you want to listen to?’
‘Not that.’
‘This?’ said Darius, holding up some best-of classical music thing.
I thought he was just joking, so I said yes to annoy him.
&
nbsp; He wasn’t joking.
Actually, it was better not to hear people singing about stuff (like LURVE, for example) and the swoopy, sad violin music was a much better soundtrack for my mood, which had returned, completely, to deeply brooding and tragic.
And then I screamed.
I screamed because a car zipped past us. A little red sports car, travelling so fast I never even saw who was in it.
After that, I was too nervous to be tragic. I kept looking in the rear-view mirror. Over the next hour, there were three more cars. I saw two of them coming. The first one, a silver car, tooted as it cruised past, a bloke in it, alone.
‘Toot back!’ said Darius, craning out of his window.
I hesitated, then I tooted. I don’t know whether he would have heard. He didn’t stop.
Some way past the Chippenham turn-off I saw another car gaining on us from behind. This one didn’t zoom past; it came up steadily.
‘Look,’ I said.
‘At what?’ said Darius.
‘That car. Behind us.’
He turned.
‘Hn,’ he said, sitting back round.
Hn?! We were being followed! I glanced at Darius. Another penny dropped with a massive clunk.
‘Where are your glasses?’ I asked.
‘Polytunnel,’ he said.
‘Oh my . Can you actually see anything?’
‘A bit. Not much. Look – I can see things close up. I can see you, all right, so stop pulling that face. It’s not my fault, is it?’
‘I Spy!’ I squealed. ‘No wonder you didn’t want to play I Spy!’
‘Nothing I can do about it, is there? I can’t just walk into an optician’s and get a new pair, can I?’
‘Can’t you?’
‘No! They’re prescription glasses.’
‘What? Are your eyes sick too?’
‘No! It just means you need someone who knows what they’re doing – just like you and your braces!’
Tchuh! No wonder he wanted to stay at that farm! He’d have made us all hang around there until he got the guts to go back into that polytunnel and get them! No wonder he wanted to hang around in Bristol! If he was as blind as a bat he could hardly roam around, could he? But he had, hadn’t he? He’d roamed around with me! He’d put ME in danger!
The Rain Page 22
