It is raining.
I am the most cowardly freak in the universe. Though I have taken so many risks so many times, though I have lost count of the number of times I have stepped out of a car or a house without thinking, this is a very different matter. I find that I do not have the guts to get out of the car. My hand thinks about it, but all it is capable of doing is feeling its way around the door handle. My hand doesn’t have the guts to do it either.
Me and the Spratt, we sit there, watching. All you can hear is our breathing and the rain… “Ha-ha-ha-ha.” Every drop, I hear it. Machine-gun laughter.
“They can’t get out,” says the Spratt. It is the first time he has spoken since we left the Butterfly House. Either he has been thinking, or he has been terrified into silence by my driving, or both.
He is right. He’s got to be right. No one gets out of the helicopters. Inside, they are probably bickering about whose fault it is that they got here so late.
Brilliant.
For a second.
Then they get out.
I see them like a comic strip; strobe-freeze-frame glimpses of them, in between wipes of the pelting rain on the windshield. The rain is coming down so hard, it is a roar now.
FRAME ONE: Helicopters in the rain.
FRAME TWO: Helicopter door opens.
FRAME THREE: Figures in biosuits get out.
FRAMES FOUR TO FIVE: Figures in biosuits circle the house.
FRAME SIX: No one can be seen.
FRAME SEVEN: They are back where they started. They are outside the huge, scenic patio doors.
FRAME EIGHT: Where’d they go?!
FRAME NINE: This would be that picture where there is nothing but a great big explosion. A flash of white with zigzag edges, KA-BOOM! written on top of it.
FRAME TEN: .
Before the shattered glass from the huge, scenic patio-door windows has even hit the floor, I am out of that car.
I do not even shout at the rain; I haven’t got time. I need a boat—a boat—a…
I hear this weird, muffled scream; I look round. The car, the Spratt, they are not where I left them.
In the worst kind of slow motion you will ever, ever see, the car I just stepped out of is not where it was; it’s—I just catch a glimpse of it rolling off the dock and tumbling into…
“DARIUS!” I scream.
I am on the edge of the dock. It looks like the abyss. The nasty version. The dark, swirling waters are already closing around the sinking car—
Hiya, Ruby! yells the rain. Ha! Ha! Ha!
I am not even thinking—I am in that water before any part of me has any say in it at all. I leap straight off that quay. Before my feet even hit the water, my whole body screams that I am an idiot. I never read what the SAS had to say about water survival (Why would I? I only read the snake stuff because it was interesting. But water? I wasn’t planning on going anywhere near it ever again!); I am, however, fairly sure that they would advise against jumping into a surging tidal river at night.
Too late.
It is not quite so shockingly cold as you might expect. And that would be the only good thing to say about it. Before I’ve even popped up spluttering, I can feel the tide grab me. I have to start fighting it right away. I dive down into the dark, swirling water. I cannot see a thing, of course. I cannot feel a thing; my hands flail about in darkness. I surface, gasping, and I know two things: it is hopeless and…I am being sucked out to sea. I am not going to save my family, and the Spratt is dead. I am about to join him. In the dark, cold waters, we are lost.
Or not. As I try for the shore, I can just make it out: this figure that emerges from the water, clawing his way back up the dock like Spider-Man. (Obviously there must be a ladder up the wall.) I scream and shout his name. When he gets to the top, he screams and shouts my name. I can hear him so clearly, even with the roaring laughter of the rain, but I think he cannot hear me. I see him turning this way and that. I see also… Well, he’s alive, isn’t he?
My own chances of staying that way are fading. This estuary, the way it flows, it curves this way, then that—so fast it’s like being on a fairground ride.
Wheeee! Isn’t this fun, Ruby?! shrieks the rain.
It is not fun. And just like being on a fairground ride; it is too hard to fight against the way your body is being pushed. So I stop.
I am drifting free, being swept into the open mouth of the sea. On the shore, the helicopters are taking off. I see their lights sweep across the water. Not near me—they are far from me. The lights sweep across the water and hit the quay and hit the Spratt. This tiny little figure, waving.
Still looking pretty much alive, isn’t he?
I see one of the helicopters swing around and hover.
I see a biosuit winch down and grab something up. Not a something: Darius.
They’ve got Darius…and Darius is alive.
Could it be that I am not the only freak on Earth?
The shock of that…it’s almost enough to drown me.
The rain seethes. It pounds furiously on the water. I pull a sneaky move. I swim with the tide, but I am quietly cheating it; with every stroke, I claw just a little harder toward the opposite bank, and when the current swings around hard to finally spit me into the open mouth of the sea, I grab out at the water that has fallen off this ride. I grab out, kicking and clawing for the water that is more still, the water that is quietly rolling around laughing at what fun all this is.
They are looking for me now, I guess, the helicopter is crisscrossing the water—but this estuary is wide and dark. My hands find mud and, on my belly like a wriggling, flailing sea-thing, I haul myself up out of the water, away from the water, but too scared to try and stand because the mud is as sucky and as hungry as the sea. When my hands touch stones, I crawl and slip and stumble, then hit more stones—enough to run, hiding in reeds as the helicopter passes close…then gives up.
That wasn’t what you’d call a thorough search, was it? If I’d tidied my room like they just searched for me, I’d be made to go back and do it again.
I watch the lights disappear into the night. There is only me and the dark and the rain left. But it is not done yet, this horrible thing that is happening. It is not done yet. I blunder my way through the night, taking the quickest route to the house, a route that is full of mud, of pits and pockets and gulleys and places where you start to sink so deep you have to fling yourself down on it to crawl in search of the next more solid part.
On the bank, wet through to the bone, a small child sits, shivering, hugging her knees.
She looks up at me. My heart, my brain, it jolts at the sight of her—how it can be that the rain does not hurt her either—but no more than this, not now.
I run on. I run to the house.
The truth isn’t nearly so much like a comic strip when you see it. The scenic doors are indeed all smashed in. The house is dark, and no matter how much I scream, no one answers.
Outside, I scan the cars. I did not count them, did I? But there was a line of them, and now there is a gap in the line. One has gone.
My heart, my breath, my pain, my brain. I don’t feel any of them anymore.
I go back to the Princess. I crouch down in front of her.
“Where’s my dad?”
She won’t look at me.
“Did they take my dad?”
She lifts up her head.
“Was he even here? Was my dad here? Have they taken him?”
She shakes her head.
“No?!”
Rain pours down her face. Still, somehow, I know that face is weeping.
Oh no. Please no.
“Did they take my brother?”
The rain, it hammers down on us. It hammers down.
“You need to speak to me,” I yell at her. “You’ve got to
speak!”
But she doesn’t. I don’t suppose she can. What she does do is get up, like a little, shaky old lady, and she shows me.
My Dan, the Danster, brother-brat beloved, lies in a little Dan-nest of reeds, where he had curled up to sleep for the very last time.
When I take hold of his body, I feel how it is already so cold. Dark smudges all over his sweet boy skin run in the rain. It is not mud.
I grieve so hard, not even the rain is fast enough to wash away my tears. I grieve louder than the storm itself.
The summer is over. For my brother, it will never come again.
I get a blanket from the house. When I wrap him in it, I feel how my hands are almost as cold as his. Almost. Though he has got so big, and I am so weak and so tired, I wrap him in it and carry him inside. I will not leave my brother to sleep in the rain.
I take him upstairs and I put him to bed.
“Just give me a minute, will you?” I say to the Princess.
She is standing in the doorway, head down, shaking with cold. Or fear. I don’t know. Shaking.
Just for a second, something kicks in. I get Dan’s clothes: tracksuit bottoms, T-shirt, sweatshirt, socks. They will be too big for her. They are all we have. “You go to the bathroom,” I tell her. “You dry yourself off, and you put these on. Then go downstairs and put the kettle on the stove. Can you do that?”
She nods her head. I shove the clothes into her arms. She looks up at me. Her mouth moves like she wants to say something. But she can’t. She cannot.
“I just need a minute,” I tell her. “With Dan.”
She goes. I close the door and…oh, brother-brat beloved, I sang to you, didn’t I?
Dan would have hated it. He used to do this howling-dog impression whenever I sang. But as I sing, I know even Dan would get it, that this is all I’ve got for him. It is not the right thing. I know Kara, his mom, used to sing to him when he was little, but I never knew what. I never heard that song. All I’ve got is what my mom sang to me. And I think…maybe it doesn’t matter what song it is. Maybe the most important thing is that it is someone who loves you, wishing you sweet dreams.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I am robot Ruby. A machine, dead inside. I make tea; then I make noodles for me and the kid. I sit down. We don’t eat. I try to sort out the thoughts. The thoughts have no order. I make more tea.
I remember another time when a cup of tea seemed like the best idea, a time when all my friends were about to die from drinking it. I delete that thought. I sip the tea.
I try to think calmly. I cannot think calmly. I am in the middle of a massive twisty, swirling mess. For once, it’s not just in my head…but that’s not a good thing. It is real and it is all around me. And for some reason, I am in the middle of it; not because I want to be, but because I am. I just am.
I am bone tired. I feel exhausted—like I am tiredness itself—but I am at the center of this storm.
I shut my eyes. And the robot shuts down.
When I wake up, it’s light but still early. The Princess is just sitting there, staring at me, from inside a massive cocoon of blankets. I stumble to my feet.
The rain has stopped. I don’t know when it stopped. I make us more tea. I give my dad half an hour by the kitchen clock. I feel like we can’t stay here any longer; we have been safe for too many hours. Sooner or later, those could come back. I feel like…they are never going to stop. I have stopped caring about me, but I care about my dad, even though I don’t know where he is (again). And I care about this kid. This kid, this pesky kid.
I bite the lid off a pen and chew it to a plasticky pulp, thinking what to say. And all the time, all the time, hoping my dad’ll just come back—and then what, Ruby Morris? You’d still have to work out what to tell him.
I am no cure. I have saved no one and nothing. Darius? The Princess? I don’t know how come they are OK. I do not know how come the rain doesn’t hurt them. And I…do not feel OK. I feel I am a walking jinx, a human curse. That I bring terrible trouble to strangers and to people I love. To Dan, I brought death. I should not have come here. I should not have even left the army base. It would have been better for everyone if I had stayed locked up. I cannot bear to lose another person I love. I’m not telling my dad a thing.
I scrawl on the wall:
RUN AND HIDE. DON’T TELL ANYONE ANYTHING. STAY SAFE.
It’s that simple. It is what I wish I had told myself.
I do not write “Dad,” and I realize I must not sign my name or even write a kiss. I must erase myself. But if I ever wanted to find him again? If it was ever possible to do that? I rack my brains…I rack my heart. There is nothing to be done about that. There will be no more messages.
“We have to go now,” I tell the Princess.
She gets up; she is swamped in Dan’s clothes. There is not much I can do about it except roll up sleeves and trouser legs. I Scotch tape a big fat knot into the waistband of Dan’s tracksuit bottoms so they’ll at least stay up—and all the while, touching those clothes, I smell the brother-brat. Too young still for proper Spratt-style stinky pits, but his own special cheesy feet smell and wafts of general Dan-smell, of farts and pets and using the apocalypse as an excuse not to wash. I think my heart is broken.
“I’ll just say good-bye to him,” I tell her.
She looks at me, so upset—and like she wants to say something again…but the words won’t come.
I trudge upstairs. She follows me, right to his door.
“Do you want to say good-bye to Dan too?” I ask her.
She nods, the small, uncertain nod of a scared person.
“I can do it for you, if you don’t want to come in.”
She hesitates.
“It’s OK, you know,” I tell her. “You don’t have to do this.”
I open the door and go in. I leave the door open, and as I stand there breathing in the boy that lives no more and waiting for words that are big enough to speak this grief, she comes in after me.
For both our sakes, I keep it simple.
“Bye, Dan,” I tell him.
The Princess reaches down into the jumble on his floor and picks up a random soft toy, the kind of thing Dan must have outgrown years ago—or not. It is old and battered and loved looking, a teddy I have never seen before. It is possible, I suppose, that it was his most precious one. That it had perhaps never been allowed to leave the house before…until the rain fell.
I force myself to speak.
“Do you want to keep it?”
She shakes her head. She steps forward and gives it to my brother.
If I don’t leave this room, I feel like I will die of grief—or anger. I grab one of the Danster’s spray cans. His favorite color. My least favorite.
Right across the living room wall in massive, dripping, orange letters I spray:
RIP DANIEL WOYSLAW-MORRIS
And this pleases me and the Princess as much as anything could possibly do at this moment when there is nothing pleasing whatsoever in the whole wide world.
I shove the Princess’s feet in a pair of the Danster’s shoes, and she scuffs slowly out to the cars after me. This is the only sensible thing about this place, that at least my dad acquired cars. I am his daughter. I am my father’s daughter. But I have decided. That earthquake split in my head? I have chosen which side I must be on. I am not a little girl anymore. I am on the side where it rains, and I am going after Darius.
After we’ve stopped to let Dan’s pets out. It’s the Princess who reminds me—she just grabs my arm. I see the petting-zoo cottage. . The cute pets are still in there, aren’t they? (I mean, for crying out loud, can’t there just be ONE moment in this story—my story—when a thing doesn’t get messed up by another thing?)
“We cannot take them with us—you know that, don’t you?” I tell her. “We just can’t
.”
She nods solemnly.
“’s sake!” I swear—then apologize immediately. Not for the swearing, but for the sounding angry. “I’m not cross with you,” I tell her. “I’m cross because it’s like this. I’m cross about everything… I’m cross about Dan. Because I’m sad about Dan.”
Man, I can hardly say those words.
“C’mon,” I tell her, trying to get ahold of myself. “We’ll let them out.”
I get out of the car. I can hardly see the door through a blur of angry tears—but I will not let them pour, and this is not my heart crying, not really. It is some version of the troll me, spiny and raging.
We open all the cages. We pull apart the hamster city and set that down on the floor. We rip open every packet and sack of feed and dump it. And when we are done, we are left with two things: the Princess cuddles Pretty the ugly guinea pig, and I cuddle Grandma’s cookie tin.
The Princess kisses Pretty and puts her down on the floor.
We leave the cottage door open. We get back in the car.
There’s stuff in that cookie tin. I open it and smell Grandma. Slices of cake called “parkin.” Just a few of them left, but—wow—the Danster must have had some willpower to hold off. Though I notice the slices look nibbled. Brother-brat. Beloved.
“Want some?” I ask her.
She just stares at me. She is as lost and frightened and upset as I am. More. She is just a kid.
“My grandma made it,” I tell her, taking a slice. “She makes the best cakes.”
I bite into it and—for the gazillionth time—I wish, I wish, I wish things could be how they were. “And then I woke up.”
The Princess takes a slice too. She bites into it. There’s a pause; then it disappears into her chops superfast.
“You want another?” I ask her, holding out the tin.
My heart is hurting. I want to feed the kid. I want to feed me…but in a moment, the last thing my grandma ever baked on Earth is going to disappear. No wonder Dan nibbled.
The Princess, munching, taps on her window, pointing: a bunny hops out of the cottage door. I crane over her to see. Ha! Then Moses bolts out!
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