An owl hoots.
I let one thought—ONE THOUGHT—in, and I weep for a while, thinking how much Simon, my stepdad, would have loved this nighttime nature stakeout…and then I unravel. The hiss in my head tunes in to the shrieking panic: What am I going to do?!
I get out of the cab—for one second, even through that biosuit, I feel the wildish night wrap itself around me, and I shrug it off and open the back door to the ambulance.
I’d have said sorry to the Princess for waking her, but she is sitting awake in blue light, wrapped in one of those silver-foil blanket things they give to marathon runners.
So no one has slept.
“Hey,” I say.
I slam the door behind me. She scrambles down from the bed for the patient, so I can sit.
“It’s OK. You stay there,” I tell her, reaching behind her to try other switches—there are tons of them—but now only this blue light in the middle of the ceiling works.
I have to respect what she has done. In my absence, she has been through that ambulance; a little pile of stuff she hasn’t touched lies next to her: teensy cartons of water, even teensier clear plastic tubes of—I can’t even tell what it is; the light is too dim and I can’t be bothered to read it. And the showroom creamer, also untouched.
“You did a good thing,” I tell her, thinking about how she tugged that soldier’s sleeve. “You were brave.”
She does not respond.
“This all we’ve got?” I ask.
I rummage where she has rummaged, find clear plastic tubes of other stuff. I look at her; she shakes her head, telling me no. I look closer. “Saline”—that’s what I see on the label. Wouldn’t want to drink that. Smart kid.
I split our pile, peel and glug a mini water carton first.
Breaking into the next one when I see she’s not drinking, I look at the sign around her neck—and it comes to me, what it means: “Nil by Mouth.” No food, no drink. That’s what they make people do before operations, isn’t it? Like when Simon had to have his knee messed with. (Bird-watching accident, overly hasty exit from a private wood. Chased by angry landowner. Tripped on own binoculars. Didn’t like that part being mentioned because he shouldn’t have had them off his neck anyway. “Keep binoculars on neck at all times” is one of the many bird-watching rules.) (I might have mentioned it anyway—that and the trespassing.)
“Halfsies,” I tell her.
She shoves the whole pile at me.
This is why they chose kids to experiment on, isn’t it? Not just because kids trust adults…but because they have no choice but to trust them. Those kids back there in that “hospital,” they would have just done what they were told. That’s what kids do, isn’t it? They trust adults until…they can’t trust them anymore. And still, they trust them.
Ah, my ripped-out heart.
I hardly feel like any kind of adult—but to the Princess, I am. I must be. And not only that, but she has also realized she needs to keep me alive.
I get it, kid. I get it. Ripped-out heart hates it—ripped-out heart says:
“Halfsies.”
And shoves half the pile back.
It is more than half the pile. I am not saying this to make myself look good; it’s what I did because it’s what Simon, my stepdad, did for me—made it look like we were sharing, equal, when he went without.
Yeah, right. I am so thirsty I could force her to swallow those mini creamers whole so I don’t have to see them. I swig down my next water carton and crash out on the floor.
! ! ! !
Just knowing she’s there, just sitting there, is going to keep me awake.
I sit up.
“Look, kid, I can’t do a story right now.”
The Princess just stares into space. She’s probably relieved; I do remember my last story didn’t go down too well.
“I can’t…you know. I just can’t. And I can’t talk about any stuff either, OK? I just can’t. I can’t…”
What the is this? My voice is going all…wibbly-wobbly. I tune out a million thoughts. I’m great with kids, me. Argh—my Henry. Babiest brother-brat beloved. Dan. Brother-brat beloved. Tune out, tune out.
The Princess just sits there.
“How about a song?” I ask the kid.
I can’t read what the kid thinks like Darius could, but I am guessing that face is a no. I don’t blame her. I do remember—though I can hardly bear to—the last time I sang to her…and it was awful, and not just because I can’t sing, but because…it was a lullaby—same as my mom sang to me…same as any kid’s mom would sing.
“Yeah—you go to sleep or I start singing,” I threaten. Empty threat: I want my mom so bad I couldn’t sing if I tried.
She lies down and shuts her eyes. She is so not even slightly asleep.
I lie down. I am freezing cold.
How did this ever come to be? How did it ever come to be that I am lying on the floor of an ambulance in the middle of the woods, freezing cold, and…
I shut my eyes. I want to sleep. I just want to sleep. (“And then I woke up,” etc.) I cannot sleep.
“What you have to do,” I tell her, as much as I am telling myself, “is shut your eyes.” I look to see whether hers are shut—they are open again, just staring into space. “You SHUT your eyes,” I tell her.
She does shut them.
“And you see what’s there. Not the scary things. You don’t look at those; you just look at the colors and the shapes…and all you do is tell yourself what the colors and the shapes look like.”
I shut my eyes. I have to.
“So there they are,” I tell her. “The colors and the shapes. Every time a bad thought comes into your head, look away from it—just look at the colors and the shapes. Tell them to yourself. Tell yourself the colors and the shapes.”
Bad thoughts, bad pictures come into my head.
That’s how come I discovered this in the first place. When you can’t put your head anywhere else, “See only the colors and the shapes. Only the colors and the shapes.”
Am I telling her or telling me?
“There’s a blue-speckled orange mist,” I say out loud, “a blobby slide of black over a green blob…gray diamondy things with purple blotches…a red soup with pink flecky bits.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The kid pokes me awake. I’m not great in the mornings anyway, but…
I know it’s late; the door to the ambulance is open and the heat of a sunny day is cooking up the greenery outside. The scent of warmed forest wafts in, of trees and leaves and moss that are thinking quietly about winter, and must have had their most peaceful, people-free summer for thousands of years, I guess—up until last night, when an ambulance came crashing through. I don’t suppose the SOUND OF A HELICOPTER FLYING OVERHEAD bothers them too much—BUT IT BOTHERS ME.
HOW DID I SLEEP THROUGH THAT?!
I’m up on my feet, peering out of the ambulance door—can’t see the helicopter for the trees, but that’s fine. I can’t see it, so it can’t see us. I don’t know whether it is anything to do with us, but I do know WE HAVE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.
I’d go nuts at the kid for not waking me sooner, but…I can’t. A couple more creamers have been drunk. The rest of the tiny pile? She hasn’t touched it.
“It’s OK,” I tell her. “It’s OK. You drink that stuff. It’s yours. You drink it.”
I am desperate to glug it. All of it. I look at one of the little tubes full of clear liquid—sucrose solution. Takes a nanosecond to swig it down.
Really…could life be any more horrible?
“Just drink up, huh?” I say, as I go to try to restart the ambulance.
It’s pointless. We are out of gas. It makes nasty noises.
Nice day for a walk.
I return to the back of the ambulance and grab the map.
“C’mon,” I tell the kid. “We gotta walk.”
She hesitates for a second. She’s right. I’m in a biosuit, aren’t I? She’s in a hospital gown.
I rummage. I find scissors and…great big super-tough bags.
I can’t fool myself; they’re body bags.
Well—great. They’re strong, and there’s tape too, also pretty strong stuff, and so I can make her some body-bag shoes and a nice, snug suit.
“All done,” I tell her when I’ve taped that plastic suit tight around her, complete with hood.
“C’mon,” I say, stepping down from the ambulance.
I offer my hand.
She takes it.
What do either of us feel? Not much. A moment of warmth through tape and plastic.
She hops down. Lets go of my hand. I pull on my plasticky-rubbery helmet. I’ve taken enough chances.
We walk out of the forest, me and that kid. I go first. With gloved hands and the scissors from the ambulance, I snip brambles in our path.
It is a slow journey.
We reach the main road. It is quiet…but I know which road this is. It is the road to the army base; any second, they could come.
“We’ve gotta run now,” I shout through the helmet at her. I am so thirsty, the words feel sticky in my mouth. “Can you do that?”
For the first time, the kid nods at me.
And we run; boy, do we run.
The breath of life pants in and out of my lips, of her lips. All you can hear is our muffled breathing, our muffled panting as we run; our muffled feet, slapping muffledly on the silent road and the map; our map, the only thing we carry, flapping. Muffledly—I can hardly hear it…but I do hear a vehicle. Yes, I feel the Princess’s hand squeeze mine; she hears it too. We dive off the road and hide, panting, in bushes at the roadside as an army truck passes.
We wait until it is quiet again.
We run on.
It’s hopeless, this. A couple of minutes later, we hear another vehicle. We dive off the road again. We wait, flattened, cowering… In front of my eyes, I see earth, insects scurrying to flee the human apocalypse that’s just landed on them. I watch one tiny bug run, screaming tiny insect screams, and see—behind us, through a hedge—there’s a field…other side of that, there’s houses.
The ambulance scissors won’t cut barbed wire, but—OK. I pry it open so the Princess can get through. Me, I have to scramble over it—and the wire rips the thigh of my suit and a glove.
The Princess grabs my hand and we run around a field of corn. I suppose because I am a FREAK, I could just run straight through it even with holes in my suit—but I don’t.
I’ve got a kid to think about.
We hit the outskirts of a town, clamber over a fence, and—
It is a bit of a nightmare. I’m sure it would have all been very charming and all that—cute town green, charming church, ye olde shops—but it has been so visited (not by ye tourists, but by ye desperate people like us, heading to or from the army base) that nearly everywhere has been broken into already. All ye stuff—ye anything to drink, ye snacks, ye cars—has gone.
We leave the main street, wander along this suburban road.
We may as well be in a desert. There are no cars left. I don’t even have to go look in those houses, doors smashed open, to know there will be nothing left in there. The way it is (and I am sorry to have to say this), even the dogs have abandoned this place; what bones remain are picked clean and scattered.
Marlborough—that’s where we are—twinned with the Sahara. If a camel came wandering down the street, I wouldn’t even think I were hallucinating.
I know I’m not hallucinating that helicopter. We duck into a stinking house until it passes.
It’s hopeless. There’s nothing but a school at the end of the road. I turn around. The kid doesn’t follow.
She looks back at the school.
“What?! You’re kidding me?”
She doesn’t budge.
“Seriously?”
The thing to know here is despite all my finely tuned looting skills and experience, the one thing I really, definitely, totally avoid at all times…is schools. It is not because of the terrible memories of mathematical humiliation. It is not even exactly because I imagine the beeps of cell phones and kids all over the country going, “Hey, someone in Dartbridge just texted me to say this guy called Andrew Difford says Ruby Morris is a lousy kisser.” It is because. It is just because.
We stroll into that school via the kitchens. Everything is gone—but not in your usual Marlborough way, smash-and-grab chaos, but in a neat way. I suppose the French chef at the army base could have sent out a raiding party, then thrown a tantrum at the sight of so many giant cans of baked beans, etc., but taken them anyway.
The kid doesn’t seem as devastated as I am; she just goes wandering off through the school, and I follow. Something isn’t right here, because I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be following me…but that thought fades as the real reason I don’t go into schools comes battering down on me. And it’s bigger than just every classroom, every bank of lockers, every wall display of artwork we pass reminding me of my friends—MY FRIENDS—who are now all dead… All that is bad enough, to be reminded… But what squeezes my heart tight with hurt in this place is the thought that it was the same here, the same in every school, everywhere. Rubys and Leonies and Saskias and Caspars—and even nerd-boy Spratts—were free to roam these corridors.
Well, not free—but you know what I mean. Giggling about longing for the next party, for the summer—or for the next math class, depending.
I mean, obviously, I am unique (that’s right, because I am a FREAK), but you take my point. (We were all unique.) It is the most unfair thing, what has happened to the world—and to us, most especially. Kids, I mean. Young people. We never even got a decent share of life.
The Princess stops outside a door. The staff room. I am too done in with sorrow to do much more than raise my eyebrows. She tries the door—locked. I shuffle off…but she’s not going to budge. Stubborn little thing, stood there in her body-bag outfit. My squeezed heart loosens, just one tiny bit. I cave, pathetically—become the kind of “mother” I so often wished mine had been, one who does just exactly what her kid wants, all the time.
I shouldn’t be doing it, because we need to conserve energy here, but I do a fire-extinguisher job on the door. It swings open onto enemy territory: tables, textbooks, and comfy seats, where teachers can relax as they prepare for the next round of torture.
Looks like the executive desert to me. “There,” I say, setting the fire extinguisher down, but the kid has already gone in.
Staff rooms, I notice immediately, tearing off my helmet, smell different than the rest of the school—which is no bad thing right now. Even though no one much has been here for months, it still smells different. In the corridor, there is still your classic school smell: dinners and kids, and then janitors mopping up after it all. Inside the staff room…there’s an alien smell. Not mold, not anything like someone’s been here any time recently, but… T-E-A-C-H-E-R-S.
I wedge the door shut behind us, just to block out the scent of the past for a moment—and I hear this beautiful, beautiful gurgling.
WATER COOLER!
WATER COOLER ALERT!
The kid must have been in an even worse state than I realized because she’s managed to get her little head shoved under the tap, gulping what she can. I grab teachers’ mugs, peel her off the tap, and fill one, hand it to her, and fill one for myself—then have to give that to her because she’s already drained hers. She’s gulping as I fill another and I remember something…
“Just slow down,” I tell her.
She’s not going to, so I have to take hold of her hand on the mug and pry it away from her face; she glares at me.
“
Slow down or it might make you sick,” I tell her.
Her stomach, agreeing with me, gurgles violently.
“Like this,” I say.
It’s killing me to demonstrate, because all I want to do is gulp too, but I sip—pause—sip. In the next pause, I release her hand; she eyeballs me as she takes a sip that’s more of a glug, then pauses for a trillionth of a nanosecond, then takes another gluggy sip.
It’s only when we’re on our next mugfuls that I bother to think about whether that water will be OK. It’s not going to have the killer-bug in it (What do I care? I am a freak), but it has been sitting there for so many months… Water can go funny after a while. I’m peering into it, looking for any worrying signs of greenishness or reddishness (i.e., badishness), when the Princess wanders off, gluggy-sipping, then wanders back, still gluggy-sipping but managing to clutch an enormous family-size tin of cookies—which she dumps on the floor. Luxury, chocolate cookies.
Our greedy hands dive in.
A helicopter flies overhead. It doesn’t stop or anything freaky like that; still, it’s scary…but not scary enough to make us lay off the cookies.
Cranked up on sugar, we revive and carry out a thorough search of the staff room.
We discover the Lost Property box.
The kid has no choice but to work out an outfit of sorts from it, and I cut her out of her plastic so she can dress. She looks like a secondhand-store kid. She is walking lost property.
Me? Kids my age are more careful. I can’t find stuff big enough to fit me. I am forced to dress in teachers’ clothes—specifically, the PE teacher’s clothes. An absolutely dreadful tracksuit, and sneakers that aren’t much better.
In an effort to console myself, I am also forced to contemplate using teachers’ makeup, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. I put it to one side as emergency reserve and carry on rummaging.
We pull together a brilliant haul: tons more cookies, sweets, chips, fizzy drinks, boring crackers (but, hey, there’s jam too!). Plus, there’re three whole other unopened drums of water for the cooler. Awesome! The frustrating part is that there’re cans of soup and dried noodle snacks, but obviously, no electricity to work the microwave or kettle to make them truly yummy. The kid seems not to mind and is ladling cold soup into her face (I really am worried she’ll make herself sick) when I have a brilliant idea of my own.
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