H2O

by Virginia Bergin

  “Awww…” sighed the court.

  The preppy boy pinged a finger on the window of the truck; Whitby went crazy.

  “Have fun,” King Xar said to me through the din. For a second, he looked down at me, straight into my eyes, cocked his head just a little—like a dog does when it’s trying to figure you out. I looked at my shoes. He laughed—a quick and quiet ha-ha of a laugh—then opened the door to the limo wide; who knows how they’d all crammed in there because it was rammed with bottles and containers of water.

  “Come, children,” he told the court.

  Whining like disappointed kids, they piled back into the limo—and Darius— Darius!—reached out and grabbed King Xar’s arm. Really, that whole manhandling thing was a very bad habit. Sooner or later someone (anyone?) was going to deck him for it.

  “Where’d you get the water?” Darius demanded.

  King Xar removed Darius’s hand by his shirtsleeve, picking it off like it was a speck of something unpleasant. He got into the limo and shut the door. There was a pause, one of the blacked-out windows slid down. Granny Lycra popped her head out, with what was obviously a joint in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.

  “You need…to go…to the swimming pool,” she instructed us—in a lazy voice, in between sips and puffs.

  “Which swimming pool? Where?” Darius demanded.

  It seemed like he was about to snap. He leaned in and put his hand on the window. Seriously, I thought the next thing he’d do would be to grab hold of her feather boa. Granny Lycra blew smoke into his face. The Spratt—oh my —coughed.

  “We…don’t know…where the swimming pool is,” he said, mimicking the chilled-out tones of Granny Lycra.

  On reflection, it was fairly—weirdly—a tiny bit impressive. At the time, I thought I’d die of shame in my killer heels. (I mustn’t say things like that.)

  “We’re from Dartbridge,” I blurted—and instantly wished I hadn’t; the passengers tittered.

  “Oooo-aaaar!” someone inside the limo mocked, trying to sound like the kind of country farmer-type you just don’t really get in Dartbridge.

  The skater dude—who really was hot—leaned forward to speak to me. ME—not Darius. “Go into town, and follow the signs for the highway,” he said, pointing.

  “You…can’t…miss…it,” purred Granny Lycra, blowing another hit of smoke into the Spratt’s enraged face.

  The skater dude smiled at me (hot, hot, hot!), and then they both sat back, into the darkness of the limo, and the window glided up. The enraged Spratt pulled away his fingers—in plenty of time. He brandished them, embarrassingly, at the blacked-out glass, as if they’d wanted to trap him and he’d outwitted them. I could have died on the spot. (I mustn’t say things like that either.)

  “You…can’t…miss…it.”

  That, unfortunately, turned out to be true.

  “What a bunch of jerks,” spat Darius as the limo pulled away.

  I was just working out a scathing reply to that—something like “it takes one to know one,” but without saying anything that might make it sound like I thought those people were jerks, because I didn’t—when he started in on me.

  “Ruby…” he said.

  “No!” I said, working my way along the line of parked cars, tons of them…some locked, some unlocked…none with keys.

  “But, Ruby…” said Darius.

  He went on. He went on—and on—about how we really should get some water while we could, about how we couldn’t carry on drinking junk, about how we wouldn’t have to go breaking into places if we did, about how it’d just be a lot easier if we just went and got some now…on and on and on. I ignored him. I just kept on hunting for a car with Darius trailing behind me whining, and then I found a car—one of those massive family cruiser–type things—and I ignored him while we shifted all our stuff from the truck to the new car.

  Only I wasn’t really ignoring him. Skilled though I am in the art of blanking out all manner of stuff I don’t want to know about, whether it’s stuff in my own head or stuff coming out of other people’s mouths, his going on about the water was quickly driving me nuts. It was like…when you really need to pee and your idiot (lovely!) friend tortures you going “guuuuuuuuuussssssh” until you feel like you’re going to burst.

  But I am Ruby, and I am tough. So I kept my dry-as-dust mouth shut.

  Until I caved. The thing that tipped the scales was when he said we could maybe even get enough water to wash.

  Now I’d already fully got my head around the baby wipes deal—you can do a lot (so much more than you ever could have imagined!) with them—but I’d seen my face in the mirror in that shop and had been shocked again at how orangey I looked (in spite of the foundation). It was the sort of major orange only serious, prolonged scrubbing avec soap will remove.

  “OK,” I said.

  SO. THIS IS IT: THE GOOD PART… (THAT’S GOOD AS IN DEEPLY BAD, BY THE WAY.)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We followed the signs.

  As we came down a long hill lined with smashed shops, you could see the city ahead of us: here and there little smudges of smoke rising almost straight up into the warm, still air, reaching up for—and getting nowhere near—the sweetest, teensiest clouds. Cumulus humilis, they must have been. They look like the little puffy clouds kids draw. Like the world is a storybook and no harm will ever come to you.

  We weaved our way through the city center, saw a lady pushing a cart full of bottles filled with water. Didn’t stop to ask. Didn’t need to. The highway, it starts in the city center. One minute there are houses and offices and shops, and the next minute… It wasn’t a highway like other highways are—not three lanes each side in the middle of nowhere, and you can’t even tell where you are—it was two lanes each side and a ton of dead cars to get around. And even if we hadn’t seen the sign hanging off the bridge saying “WATER” with a great big arrow pointing where you should go, we would have known where to go because there were other cars ahead of us, pulling in at the junction and people wheeling carts and lugging bags over the bridge above.

  No one—no one—coming into or out of that city could have missed that sign:

  I couldn’t get up the exit ramp because it was blocked with cars, so I went up the way cars came down onto the highway—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 line outside. It was very orderly; it felt OK.

  We poured out every container we had. When we’d cleared out my mom and Simon’s car, we’d grabbed everything and done it so quickly 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 poured out my looted bags, dumping ten thousand pairs of underwear into the back of the car. We loaded the bags with the empty bottles. Still, it didn’t seem like anywhere 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 movie 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 stroll around 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 onto 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 around. 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 line, this random boy, must have been Darius’s age, came to check our bags. Then he climbed into the back of a Girl Guides’ van and handed us these big plastic containers, two each. They were like the kind of containers Simon had once bought hard cider in on the way home from some awful walk, back in the time before Henry was born.

  (The next day, my mom went around the house clutching her head and saying, “Never again.” Until she explained it was the cider, I had 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 line 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 guy 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. 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-ditching I carried out at the end of junior high. 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 vacations 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 in line on the street. For the next ages, we were in line 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: lining up to get into a pool. The chloriney smell, the echoey sound, the heat. I remembered lining up in Dartbridge, holding my mom’s hand when I was little. Then in elementary school, lining up with Leonie, giggling—all the way up until the brutal junior high hobby ditch—your towel and your swimsuit and your allowance in your bag, and just wishing they’d hurry up and let you in…

  I wrapped and rewrapped that dead girl’s cardigan around my waist, makeup melting in the heat.

  “My wife is sick!” some fancy guy 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 line for the pool.

  And then…these sirens closed 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 line 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 line 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, standing there in a uniform with no makeup 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 you. 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 gut 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 fighting 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 bloody in a fight way, 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 line panicked. Everyone wanted to get out and all the people who’d been lining up 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 toward 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 contain
ers 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 at 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 makeup 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 guy 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 around 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 guy 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 anymore; it was a giant vat of invisible wavy-tentacled space micro-blobs: replicating, attacking, killing.