Storm

by Virginia Bergin

  I do recognize that I am now in extreme danger, but I am also pretty off.

  “I WAS JUST GOING TO TELL THEM TO STAY IN THEIR CARS!” I shout grumpily at the light.

  Apparently the British Army is not interested in what I was doing.

  “KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND APPROACH THE GATE,” I am told.

  They’re having a laugh, aren’t they? How am I supposed to get off this hood without using my hands? What do they think this is, a PE lesson? I lower my hands to get off the hood and—

  “KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR OR WE WILL SHOOT!” screeches the loudspeaker voice.

  These. People. Are. Really. Annoying. Me.

  Nevertheless, I recognize the key signs of someone wigging out (screechy voice, unreasonable demands), so I do it, what they say. I put my hands back up in the air and turn to position myself and…out of the corner of my eye, I see it: in the jam on the road coming from the other direction, there is a bright pink stretch-limo.

  I can’t see who’s inside.

  I do this really ungainly plunk of a jump down off the hood.

  “APPROACH THE GATE.”

  Oh…oh no…my stuff. They’re going to make me leave my stuff. I glance down at it; all my goodies, the rain poking its nose in my stuff.

  “I’VE GOT THINGS,” I shout at them.

  “APPROACH THE GATE.”

  “I’VE…GOT…STUFF.” I do a little pointy thing with my finger—but it’s useless, isn’t it? They can’t see what’s down on the ground…I suppose, looking at it from their point of view, I could have a rocket launcher or something—but honestly, do I look like the type?

  “APPROACH THE GATE!”

  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a wig-out situation.

  You , I think, as I walk away, hands in the air, from my rained-on stuff. And this thought explodes in my head like the rocket launcher I seriously do wish I had right now, I’m so annoyed. Darius was right: I have no weapon against these people, except the only weapon I guess I’ve always had. My mouth.

  “There’s a cure,” I say out loud.

  But not loud enough. My mouth is afraid. So my heart jumps in and shows it picture after picture after picture after picture of things that do not give it courage—I feel no courage—but of the things that make me angry enough to dare to shout.

  My mom, my baby brother, my stepdad, Simon—the people I have seen die, the bodies that are turning to skeletons—and Dan. Dan, lying dead in a nest of reeds.

  “THERE’S A CURE! THEY’VE GOT A CURE! THERE’S A CURE! THERE’S A CURE!” I shout, at the top of my voice, all the way to that gate.

  And when they open the gate, I still don’t stop.

  “THERE’S A CURE! THERE’S A CURE! THERE’S A CURE!” I shout as I am bundled in.

  “THERE’S A CURE! THERE’S A CURE! THERE’S A CURE!”

  I get stuffed into the back of an ambulance by biosuits and driven away at high speed from the honking, tooting chaos that has broken out behind me.

  I can’t see where we’re going, but we drive way farther than the hospital. We stop somewhere; then we carry on, bumping along. I am guessing we must be on the track where I had that set-to with Beardy, the soldier, and the driver. We bump until we hit smooth tarmac. And then we turn right.

  You know what? All the way I keep it up: “There’s a cure, they’ve got a cure, there’s a cure,” I tell the biosuits over and over, until finally we stop and the doors of the ambulance open up. A canopy outside, the rain streaming down around it.

  I step it up: “There’s a cure, they’ve got a cure, there’s a cure,” I say over and over and over as I am led inside, through security doors, through more security doors, and into a…I don’t know what you’d call this place…

  A pet shop for scientists?

  The lights are low, but in the gloom, you can still clearly see that there are rows and rows and stacks of cages of all sizes filled with all kinds of creatures. I detect the gentle stink of guinea pig amid the waft of other beasties (amid the waft of disinfectant).

  And I seem to be about to join them.

  There is a short corridor of cells. We can call this area the human pet shop for scientists.

  The first cell door is open, a reading light inside it is on, and it is filled with a mess I can only describe as “scientist’s bedroom”; every inch of floor and bed space is covered in books and papers.

  “Hello there!” Prof Beardy calls cheerily.

  All the other cell doors are shut—locked, I presume. I am shoved in my very own cell and told to shut up or else.

  The last of the biosuits that brought me in turns out to be a woman; she hangs back to inform me that they’ll bring me some food and some proper clothes shortly—which I could feel fairly insulted about as I spent a long time creating this particular outfit. (Not to mention the fact that there are several bags of other lovely clothes getting rained on out in the revolutionary traffic jam.)

  She hesitates. “I don’t know whether you’re brave or stupid,” she says quietly, “but you might want to think about keeping your mouth shut.”

  And before I can open my mouth to tell her what I think about that, the door is closed and locked.

  I burst into tears.

  So, that’s Plan R for you. It went terribly well, don’t you think?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I called the Spratt’s room in the Apocalypse Lite army camp a cell, but it was just a really small room. This really is a cell, “hospital issue,” with a bed, a table, a lamp, and a window—that’s got bars on it.

  I tell you, I’m gonna go nuts in a day here, never mind the rest of my life.

  The fact that it is possible I have already gone nuts is beside the point.

  I lie down on the bed. I am wet, still, but I am not cold. This place is airless and boiling. They switched the overhead light off when they left, but I’ve got one of those super-duper hospital-issue point-it-where-you-like reading lamps—which is fairly seriously marvelous because I could not handle being in this place in the dark.

  I pull the lamp right down in front of my face and pretend I am somewhere else. On a beach, is what I try to think—but not a Devon beach. A beach someplace far, far away where there is no rain.

  It is not even a Spanish beach. It is not anywhere in particular. It is just a beach. No one I know is there. I am alone. I am not even Ruby anymore. I am just a girl on a beach. There isn’t even a palm tree for company. There is only the girl, the sand, and the sea.

  Every time my brain starts up, I just shh it right back down. I shh and shh and shh—and sometimes it’s my mother’s voice I hear, and sometimes it’s the sea.

  And for a while it works, and then it doesn’t.

  Shh, shh, shh, I tell myself…but the beach won’t come; the sea won’t come.

  All there is, is the girl. The girl lying on crisp white sheets, on a bed, on a floor, on some ground, on an island, on a planet.

  The planet lies among stars and is turning.

  !

  I bat my lamp away from my face, leaping off the bed in fright as—KZZZZ!—the overhead lights snap on and some biosuit bursts in and dumps a bundle of clothes (that I know instantly there is absolutely NO WAY I will be wearing), then ducks outside and comes back again with my din-dins: a measly bowl of very un-chef-y looking soup (canned?!) (that I know instantly there is no way I will be eating) and a plastic bottle of water (for comedy value, I expect).

  And that’s it. The biosuit leaves again without speaking so much as a word.

  The overhead lights snap off, and I pull the lamp back in front of my face and try to get back to the beach…but it seems to have been moved to a war zone.

  At first I think I am imagining it, but then it comes again… GUNSHOTS. Distant, but—again! It must have stopped raining…because the revolution has surel
y started!

  The SAS would have a fit, because instead of taking cover (which I’m sure is the sort of thing they would advise), I shove my lamp out of the way to get to the window—and I am greeted by the horrific sight of my own reflection.

  My hair may be an excellent pink, even in the reflection I can so see that…but I have zombie mascara runoff in the bags under my unsleeping eyes. My head looks like a death skull. And when I grin at it, to reassure it, it’s worse: my missing tooth and the glint of braces complete the effect. I press my forehead against the skull’s, then cup my hands around my face; I see through her, through the bars, to the shadow of me on the wall of the building opposite. This is my view: a tiny gap and a blank wall.

  And on that wall, there she stands: my shadow in a square of light. There is another square of light next to my square of light, and from that square of light that comes from the cell next door, another human shadow stares out.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think…I wave at the other shadow. It waves back.

  Oh my heart! It pounds. That nerdish shadow…

  It fumbles with its lamp, and on the wall opposite I see a shadow-puppet dog appear, made by a nerdish hand.

  Hn. I find a smile. It is him. I smile bigger. HE IS ALIVE.

  I get my lamp angled and—ha! My silent, happy shadow dog appears on the wall.

  His dog tips up its head. It howls love for me.

  My shadow dog howls back.

  KZZZZ!

  In an instant, the dogs are gone, zapped into oblivion as the overhead lights in my room snap on. I don’t even have time to make a dive for the bed before my cell door is yanked open.

  “Hello, Ruby,” says Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB. “How nice to see you’ve finally found a friend.”

  I switch the light off. My legs feel a little shaky. I have to sit down on the bed. Gunshots in the distance. Ms. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB (she is immaculate, as usual) frowns at me.

  “You’ve caused us a lot of trouble,” she says.

  That’s the sort of thing they say in films, isn’t it? The sort of thing they say before something really awful happens…torture, most likely, followed by death.

  “But we’ll discuss that in the morning, eh, Ruby?” she says—and yawns. She actually has the nerve to yawn. “After I’ve had a chat with your little friend next door.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me,” I tell her…but really I am telling myself.

  “I haven’t even started,” she says, and goes to shut the door. “Oh! Wait! I almost forgot!” She chucks a pad and pen down on the bed—my pad and pen; there’s the page full of death-ish doodles. “Just in case you remember something useful.”

  “I don’t know how I got like this,” I tell her—and I swallow, tasting the memory of a rotten apple that came from a well filled with water that only people more doomed than me believed could help them.

  She hesitates, gazing steadily at me. I swallow again, wishing the rotten taste would just go.

  “Oh, Ruby…you’ve remembered something, haven’t you?”

  I stare right on back at her, trying to produce THE GRIN OF INDIFFERENCE but failing. Failing. Failing.

  “Hn,” she says.

  I feel a freezing chill crack through my bones as she smiles—icily—and shuts the door.

  The second it locks, I grab my lamp. Who else in the world says “Hn” except the Spratt?! She’s been on to him—questioning him—already! I need to communicate with him. I need to—Stop, my brain tells my hand, and the message reaches my heart, and my heart agrees. I make myself wait for the overhead lights to go off.

  They do not go off.

  After a while, I notice it: what I can only assume is a camera, hidden inside a small, dark, glass bubble, up above the door.

  The SAS really would be ashamed of me. Very, very poor reconnaissance.

  I lie down and shut my eyes.

  After a while longer, the overhead lights do go out.

  I am not asleep, not at all, but even though the darkness terrifies me, I do not switch my lamp back on. I roll over. I stare at the window. So dark in that nowhere space between the buildings, you’d hardly know there was a wall right there. But I know there is, and I know Darius is also staring at the wall. I wish we could just at least be together. I wish it so hard I can see invisible shadow dogs howl.

  There is no let up. Every half hour, a biosuit snaps the overhead lights on and comes in to “check” on me. I know it’s every half hour because when I got snappy and said, “Weren’t you here ten minutes ago?!” my keeper checked his clipboard and his watch and said, “Twenty-eight minutes.” Then, when he came back what felt like five minutes after that, he said, “Thirty-three minutes,” before I’d even opened my mouth about it. “I’ll try to make it thirty-four next time,” he said. (Great, I am SO being guarded by comedians.)

  Sometime, when it’s still dark—proper dark, not even vaguely dawn—I hear some kind of alarm or siren join the random gunshots. I feel sick. This place, everything about it, makes me feel sick. Everything about everything makes me feel sick.

  The darkness chokes me. Still, I will not switch on that lamp. I will not let them see my fear or my feelings…for the boy next door.

  The overhead lights come on yet again; a biosuit pops his head around the door.

  “Who’s fighting?” I ask him before he can go again. “Out there—who’s fighting?”

  “Pretty much everyone,” he says.

  I crack. “Please! Don’t go! PLEASE.”

  He ducks out of the door and switches off the lights. Ducks back in.

  “There’s a little bit of a disagreement about who should be in charge,” he whispers, “and unfortunately the people who are in charge aren’t that keen on discussing it. Do you understand?”

  As a basic scenario, I get that.

  “It’s the army, isn’t it? They’re the ones in charge.”

  “No,” he says. “But they are the ones with the most guns, so it’s quite important that they make the right choice. Just be patient, sweetie,” he whispers.

  Sweetie. He called me sweetie.

  “And try not to be afraid. You’re safe here.”

  “Ibrahim?!”

  He is silent.

  “I’m scared,” I tell him. “I don’t feel safe.”

  “This place,” he says, thumping the wall, “is bombproof.”

  Now I really, really don’t feel safe—we could get bombed?!

  “And we have security,” he says. “Watching at all times. Trust me, sweetie: everything’s going to be OK.”

  He leaves and I lie back down. I try to sleep. I do the colors/shapes thing… It refuses to work…to begin with…but trust me: no matter how troubled you are, just keep going with those colors and shapes and… Trust me: just keep going. Just keep going.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ah. Here we go. This is what a revolution is like when you’re not involved in the exciting parts.

  This is what a revolution is like when you are in the eye of the storm:

  Nothing happened. (To begin with.)

  I finally fell asleep and I actually slept because…after Ibrahim left, no one came back. No one woke me up again until I woke myself up. In a somewhat cranky state. I’d be cranky anyway (who wouldn’t be?), but honestly…more gunshots, more sirens went off as I prowled circuits of my cell, just like you see poor animals do in zoos.

  Still, no one came.

  You know what? Why keep quiet any longer?

  It was annoying.

  I yell and kick at the cell door.

  There is a gap at the bottom of the door, a gap just big enough to shout out of.

  “Hey?! HEY?! HELLO?! HEY!” I shout…just like I heard prisoners in Dartbridge Police Station shout—a lifetime ago, seems like.

  And now I truly g
et how terrifying that must have been. What if no one comes?

  I hear Darius kicking and shouting back.

  I kick hell out of my door again.

  I hurt my toe. I really hurt my toe.

  I’m sitting on my bed, nursing that hurt toe, when Beardy opens the door.

  I rush to get out, and he does this terrified, “No! Don’t get me!” cowering thing that Dan would have done (which would have made me get Dan even more. Brother-brat beloved). But this is a grown-up, the most important microbiologist left in the country. I’m not about to get him, so I get a grip—the second the door is safely behind me.

  “Ruby?! Ruby?!” Darius hollers.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Beardy.

  “Time to go,” he says, walking off.

  I trot after him. (Going past the prof’s cell, I see it’s in an even worse state than it was before. Less in there, but oh so much more messy. It’s kind of impressive.)

  “Go where?”

  “RUBY!” yells the Spratt.

  “Yeah—just a sec!” I yell back. “Go where?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” he says.

  Excuse me…

  “I fired off a few emails…”

  You’ve got email?! The army has got email?!

  “And, well, it could all end up being a little awkward, really.”

  Awkward?!

  “The Americans are keen to have us—”

  Us?! Who?!

  “—but the Russians aren’t going to let us go without a fight. They’ve got the real phage expertise, you see.”

  Excuse me?!

  “Still, you’d hope that under the circumstances, day and age, etc.… I suppose it could be China… How would you feel about China?” he says to me, marching past cages of cute pets.

  Ahead of us, there is a glass wall, a laboratory inside. Behind that, there is another glass wall: huge steel tanks inside…that look like…like a brewery. Seen drums like that before at Buckfast Abbey, when me, Mom, and Simon stopped off on a tedious walk…and then Mom had to walk back and get the car and drive us home because Simon sampled too much of the monks’ lethal concoction.