The Rain

by Virginia Bergin

  A smarter girl than me – a girl like Saskia, for example – would have gone straight into the house, I expect. I went for the garage.

  Thank you, mister, I thought, when I saw the keys in his cool little sports car. I started it up; I saw there was nearly a whole tank of petrol . . . and I would have taken off, but now that I knew I had an escape route the urge to run eased off the tiniest, tiniest bit – which let the urge to drink grab hold. Grab hold and choke me, screaming in my face that I needed to drink and drink NOW.

  I paced at the garage door. From the looks of MG man, he’d died the way Simon had died; he hadn’t been rained on, but there was a mess round his lips that the flies liked.

  The thirst thing, which had got seriously angry, was killing me so badly I did it. Like a psyched-up Dan gaming warrior launching into mortal combat, I roared something terrible at the world and sprinted for the front door.

  It was the first time I went in somewhere without knocking or shouting. I couldn’t have cared less whether the whole posh neighbourhood was hiding in there, drinking sherry and discussing how simply awful everything was. (They weren’t.) I just barged in, went straight to the kitchen and ransacked.

  It was rubbish, but it was brilliant – because there was something, at least there was something. I grabbed a bottle of squash. I swigged it, neat – disgusting – and carried on looking. The fridge was cleaned out, but there was an unopened carton of melted chicken stock left in the freezer and an orange in the fruit bowl that looked just fine. I didn’t even peel it. I just ripped it apart with my teeth and gored it dry while I rooted in the cupboards for something, anything else, to drink, the chicken stock churning in my stomach. Too much salt. And too dark now. Silly Christmas candle on the table; I’d seen that, hadn’t I? Silly Christmas Santa candle and matches – I lit matches. Santa burned; nothing else left to drink . . . apart from . . . I had a chemist’s flashback and sped up to the bathroom.

  You wear contact lenses, don’t you? I know you wear them, I thought, pulling everything out of the bathroom cabinet.

  MG man didn’t wear contact lenses. I looked at the toilet. I thought about the water sitting there in that cistern. I thought about all the poisoned water sitting all over the house, locked in pipes. Drink me.

  Santa, his head burned off, crackled.

  I looked at the toilet again. I considered the advice of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. ‘The RSPB does not recommend . . .’

  And nor do I. But I will say that drinking your own wee is probably not anything like as bad as you might think. I mean, it is bad, but.

  Refreshed – as much as I was going to be in that house – I had a burst of sensibleness. I looked out of the window; I studied the sky . . . only I couldn’t see the sky – could I? – because it was dark. Cloud dark. That’s what clouds do; they cunningly make the night even darker than it should be, so you can’t see what they’re up to.

  It wasn’t raining, though, was it?

  The old me – who wouldn’t have even looked and thought in the first place – had become a new me, who did look and think. But I was the even newer version of the new me; I didn’t just look and think and decide, Hey, it’s not raining – let’s go! The newest version of the new me thought, Nuh-uh!

  Even though it was just a quick dash to the garage and the car, I got kitted up; I did a Darius Spratt special and taped a thousand bin bags over my body, I shoved my feet into Mr MG’s walking boots and taped them over too, where the gaps were. If he had an umbrella, I couldn’t find it, so I got a baseball cap and taped together an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Bin Bags rain hat. Finally, I turned my hands into black plastic paws.

  Brilliant. Good to go, Ruby, good to go. And I was going; see, the newer version of the new me still didn’t want to stay in that house. I snuffed out Santa – mid-belly, his buckle starting to sizzle – chucked him and the matches in a plastic bag and -

  BOMF! I slammed the door shut behind me – like you do – and –

  SCREECH!

  Seems wrong if this comes across like something out of a cartoon. There wasn’t anything even remotely cartoony about it.

  A millimetre from my face, rain streamed down.

  poisoned rain.

  poisoned rain, teeming with a million billion microscopic killers.

  (So, definitely cumulus congestus then.)

  I flattened my back against that front door, the measly little porch above. One frightened hand crept round behind me and went to open that front door. That front door wouldn’t open. The porch I was under was so narrow I was too scared to even turn round and yank on that door – but that wouldn’t have made any difference, because the door was well and truly closed. Closed, shut, slammed shut – not going to open ever.

  I tried to get Santa relit. My black plastic paws fiddled about, panicking; I dropped matches, I nearly set myself alight, and when I got one struck and managed to keep hold of it I saw it: this little single glistening bead of rain hanging from the brim of my Indiana Bin-Bag baseball hat. I dropped Santa and the match. I reached behind my head, grabbed the back of that hat and flung it into the darkness.

  Then I had this really bad few minutes thinking I could feel my hand wet, burning, bloody under the plastic . . . because that’s the thing, isn’t it? That, really, a bunch of bin bags and some sticky tape . . . would you trust them? Even before I’d dumped the hat there was NO WAY I was going to go wandering out in that rain. Bin bags, waterproofs; the only use they might – might – have is that they’d maybe buy you a few seconds. Who would risk longer? You may as well parade about naked if you think that stuff is going to save you.

  For an age, felt like, I stood pressed against the door in that porch. If the wind changed, if the wind got up, if the stupid measly porch LEAKED . . . I would have been done for.

  Not good, Ruby Morris, not good. NOT GOOD. Rain streamed down right in front of my face.

  ‘It’s you and me now,’ I whispered at it. ‘You and me.’

  Sooner or later, rain always stops. It stops, but it’s laughing at you.

  I can come back any time I please. Perhaps the second you step out from under this porch.

  When it did stop, I waited. I got Santa and I relit him. I watched drips fall from the roof of the porch. I didn’t wait for as long as I should have done. I just waited for a bit. I waited like I could trick the rain . . . or trick myself into believing it could be safe.

  Without giving myself or the rain any kind of warning, I launched myself out into the dark, roaring something terrible.

  It had been good, then, that I had looked at the garage first. I knew what was there. I stuck Santa on the roof of the car. I heaved and shoved the dark lump of MG man out of the way with a garden fork. I snuffed Santa out. I got into the car; I started it up and I got the out of there.

  It was the journey from hell.

  Going to Zak’s and back on the bike, that was easy in comparison; on the way there I’d been too freaked out and frantic to think about anything, and on the way back I’d been too shocked to really understand what a dumb thing I was doing. Plus I was somewhere I knew. Now, I had no clue. There was a road map in the car and still I had no clue . . . but if there hadn’t been a map, I’d have been sunk from the start. I’d probably still be driving around . . . wherever it was I was.

  There was no light in that car and I had to keep stopping and lighting and relighting the Santa candle to work out where I was. Apart from Oxford, it was all places I’d never even heard of: Kingston Bagpuize; Monks Risborough; Great Missenden. Were they making these names up?! Who had ever even heard of them?! And – no probably about it – I should have found a different car. When I’d seen that car, a tiny part of me had thought . . . I dunno: how cool that’d be, to drive it. How cool it’d be to turn up at my dad’s in a sports car.

  Yes, an MG is a sports car, but it’s a really, really ancient one; not zoomy or souped up at all. In the Ruby Morris Guide to Disaster Survival, a book I
hope I’ll live long enough to write, I will have to include a special chapter on picking cars.

  There was no light and there was no CD player. All I had was the rattling boom of the engine and – below that – the rattling boom of my own heart. Bodies, dumped cars, burnt-out stuff, smashed-up stuff . . . I zigzagged my way through all that; and as far as I could tell I was zigzagging, full stop. Left turn, right turn. Stop the car, light up Santa, check the map. Right turn, left turn. Stop the car, light up Santa, check the map.

  What I suppose I should have stopped was me. Plenty of places to do that. Endless plenty of places to stop and hole up for the night. Plenty of places to have at least stopped and found a better car. And something to eat. And something – please – to drink. But no; all I could think was, I’m going to see my dad.

  Last match gone; Santa, stuck to the dashboard, burned down to his boots and went out.

  It took a thousand hours before I got to somewhere I recognised. I knew I’d got to London – houses and flats closed in – but it wasn’t until the road rose up into a flyover that I knew for sure(ish) where I was. I saw that building with a gigantic bottle on the side of it that poured sparkling neon liquid into a neon glass. Only it wasn’t pouring any more.

  Like me, the MG was groaning with thirst. Probably I couldn’t have got much further anyway . . . it’s just that I wouldn’t have chosen to stop right there, on top of that flyover. The road, which had got more and more difficult to get along, was finally completely blocked. I grabbed the map and I got out.

  It wasn’t raining any more, but you’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d at least have tried to look at the sky first. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d have got that by then. Not me, no. I stepped out of the car, then I thought that thought, then I looked at the sky. I saw stars, tons of stars.

  Stars, beautiful stars . . . how you never, ever saw them in London, where the sky was always a dirty orange . . . and a moon, full – like an ‘O’.

  Like an O! . . . O! Look! No clouds!

  NO CLOUDS. BRILLIANT.

  No way down off a flyover; no way other than forward. (Because no way was I going back.) So that’s what I did. I walked on; if I couldn’t get around the cars and bodies that were in my way, I clambered over them: I’m going to see my dad; I’m going to see my dad; I’m going to see my dad.

  When the road came to ground level again, I started trying cars. I tried cars even when there was no point in trying cars. I tried cars that were boxed in. I’d stopped thinking straight. All I did was keep on walking. I saw things, I heard things, I saw people. Live people. I kept on walking.

  I realised I was at Euston Station. I turned left. That was how to get to where my dad lived: Kentish Town. Soon be there. I walked . . . I walked; I didn’t even bother trying for cars, I walked . . . faster and faster . . . until I ran and I ran. I’m going to see my dad.

  I don’t know what time it was when I found his flat. It was pitch black, had been for hours. Only the ‘O’ of the moon and the stars, twinkling. The door was open; not open open, but open – unlocked. I burst in.

  ‘DAD! DAD! DAD!’ I screamed. ‘DADDY!’

  He wasn’t there. I was an empty person in an empty house and just to make good and sure there was nothing at all left inside me I lay down on his bed and cried out every last tear I had.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Like I was already learning how to tell stuff from bodies, about the way people had died and how long they had been dead for, these days I can tell stuff from houses. There’s the obvious things – how much of a panic the people were in, whether they’d been out looting stuff – and then, most importantly, there’s whether someone else like me has been there, and how recently. There are so few of us left that it’s rare we cross paths, and it’s always a shock when it happens. It’s usually in the kitchen that you find the signs, by looking closely at how dried up stuff is, and what is rotting. There is, for example, a whole disgusting rainbow of moulds that come along at different times. If you find food frosted with white fur, I’d say that house has had a visitor in the last week, depending on how thick the fur is. Even if there’s just some crumbs on the table, press them – if there’s just the slightest tiny softness to them you should get out of there immediately unless you’re feeling brave enough to stop and have a chat.

  In the morning, at my dad’s, it was the start of that learning how to look and to pay attention. Not how I’d looked at Saskia’s, which was just snooping, or in the poor dead farmer-girl’s room . . . but looking properly, and thinking.

  When I woke up, I felt really ill. Ill in my heart and my head, but ill ill too: the pounding headache and killer thirst of dehydration. Dad had nothing to drink, so the first thing I had to do was get out and work my way through the neighbours’ houses looking for something, anything, to quench my thirst. I looked through the window; I saw a dazzling day. I stripped off my bin-bag armour and I went out.

  I found the usual.

  I came back and sat in my dad’s bed and wasted precious body fluids on the production of tears and snot at the same time as I sipped in life: grapefruit juice from the neighbours, mixed with a little sugar and salt. Puketastic.

  It was there, sitting in that bed and feeling like a one-girl mega-disaster that I started to notice stuff. His wardrobe was open and it looked half empty. He was kind of messy – like me – but there were small piles of clothes left on the floor, rather than a general scatter. The clothes looked clean and smelt clean, so I deduced the piles were not pre-laundry sorting heaps. I checked the drawers in his dressing table; stuff was gone. Looked like he’d packed, and not in some kind of frenzy, but thoughtfully (for my dad).

  Same story in the bathroom; no toothbrush, no toothpaste . . . none of the usual stuff you’d expect to find. I hadn’t thought to check when I’d gone looking for something to drink, but now I wandered outside up and down the street. I couldn’t see his car – but the parking, as he always said, was a nightmare, so it could have been miles away. I went back in and checked coat pockets – no keys, and in any case the jacket he always wore, his tatty favourite, was gone.

  In the kitchen, my numb, dumb head buzzing, I sipped on the puke mixture while I analysed the rubbish, worked out what he’d had to eat and drink. Looked to me like, if he hadn’t been pigging out, he could have been holed up for a few days. Like us, he’d snacked on tinned fruit – but the crucial thing was the freezer. Normally it’d be crammed with all sorts of random stuff. Any odd bit of food left, he’d chuck it in there. It was the land of frozen mysteries – cos most of that stuff was my dad’s experimental cooking, and pretty hard to identify. Stuff had gone from it, that was for sure, but the stuff that was left, the melted stuff, was in bowls and pans, some in the fridge too. All of it was heading towards being disgusting (although most of it probably had been in the first place).

  It was a revolting sight – that filled my heart with joy and hope. It meant – it had to mean, surely? – that he had still been alive when the power went down. That he’d realised stuff would melt and make a mess, so he’d put it in bowls – and left it in the freezer and the fridge where it’d at least keep cool for a bit longer. I looked at what was left; I looked at what was festering in the bin; I looked at what was festering on plates and in the sink.

  What I concluded was that my dad had not been killed when the rain had first come (and my dad had worked out that the tap water was bad), that he had been alive when the power went down. If it was the same in London as it was in Dartbridge, that meant, up until three days ago, my dad was still alive.

  I don’t think he ate much from that freezer. (I don’t blame him.) He had packed his bags, carefully, and gone.

  He wouldn’t have got far. He couldn’t have. It made my heart ache to think that . . . one of those thousands of cars I had passed in the night must surely have been his. He would have had to have got out and walked, like I did. He would have walked and he would have found another car. He would have go
ne to find Dan first, I suppose. That made sense; Dan was in London. I just didn’t know where. He would have gone to find Dan and then . . .

  Three days ago . . . why hadn’t he come to get me?

  Because he would have got stopped, I thought.

  He’d have got stopped, like me, at Swindon. If he’d had Dan with him – maybe Kara too – he’d have taken them to the army base. I didn’t like those men with guns one bit, but I could kind of see how someone with a kid would feel like that’d be the best bet; that they’d be safe, I suppose (from other men with guns). Maybe . . . maybe he thought that’s where I’d be too. That’s probably what he thought. That’s what I told myself, That’s probably what he thought.

  My head hurt even more from thinking it all out. I had not wanted to believe that Darius Spratt could be right before, and now I certainly absolutely couldn’t and wouldn’t think my dad was dead. I refused to believe that something awful must have happened – no matter how many times I’d seen by then – and would see again and again – how easy it was for people to die in this new poisoned world. The way I saw it, what I had to do was simple. I didn’t even have to go all the way back to Swindon, either. All I had to do was get to Hyde Park.

  I kind of knew my body was even more done-in dog-tired than the day after cycling to Zak’s. Probably my body was even more done-in dog-tired than it EVER had been in my entire life, but I didn’t care. It didn’t bother me. Only the thirst did. Seemed like every smashed-in shop I passed was robbed of everything, but I found two packs of home-freeze ice pops and swigged the plastic tubes of coloured, sugary water as I went. I cut up over the park and saw how the city was.

  Sitting up there in the park, among the barbecues surrounded by dead people, I wondered . . . had London ever been so quiet? Like Bristol, you could see smoke from fires rising . . . so somewhere in that city maybe things weren’t so quiet. The only sound came from the buzz of a lone helicopter, one of the kind with two sets of propellers, that crawled its way across the sky like some nasty big fat insect and set itself down somewhere green.