Storm (12 page)

If there's one thing I learned in school it's that in potentially traumatic and difficult situations (“Did you copy this homework from someone, Ruby?”) it is best, at least to begin with, to show no emotion whatsoever. That is OK, because I am not aware of feeling any emotion. It is also best, at least to begin with, to stick to your story (“No, I did not copy this homework”). Words! Oh, words! You come back to me now!

“I've just come to see my friend,” I tell them. “Her name is Saskia Miller. I brought her in. Last night. Someone chopped her foot off.”

“No visitors are allowed here.”

No. I expect not, eh? I expect not.

“I will be five minutes,” I tell them. “And then I will go.”

THEY—ARE—STILL—FREAKING.

“
I'LL GO
. I promise you
I'll just
go
.”

“I'm sorry,” the desk nurse says. “Your friend died.”

I. FEEL. SICK.

“No! She was OK! She was going to be OK! They said she'd be fine!”

They won't look at me.

“Did you
kill
her?”

Obviously, the ideal answer to this question is no…but that's not what they say. In fact, they don't say anything.

“Oh my
. It's true, isn't it? It
is
true! You're killing people!”

“You need to leave,” I get told.

Too right, I do. I blunder back into the Sunnyside ward of kids.

“You gotta come with me,” I tell them.

I grab at them, the loose kids. They are terrified of me.

“Just go—please go!” the nurse says.

“Not without them,” I tell her. I get hold of the nearest kid, who—smart kid—smart, dumb, lovely, hurt, doomed kid—twists out of my grasp and squeals, “But we don't wanna go with her!” Which sets the rest of them off, crying and whining about how they don't want to go with me.

“Just GO,” the nurse yells at me.

And I turn and I run for the door. The fire door, the emergency exit that is now shut.

I shove it open. Before she can scream, I run out.

All those times I've gone outside and forgotten to look up at the sky?

I look up at the sky.

“Oh,” I whisper.

Hiya, Ruby!
yells the rain. It is falling on my face.

It is pouring down. Where'd that come from?

It is pouring down. I feel each drop—I swear, EACH DROP—land on me.

I am going to die.

I AM GOING TO DIE.

“Sorry,” I say to myself, to my life…to the nurse, who's standing—looking utterly horrified—at the door.

But I don't want to die!
this!
!
No.
NO.

I'm coming back in—right, Nurse? And you're gonna cure me.

I don't want to die. I do not want to die.

That nurse sees me coming, and she'd love to shut the door, but she can't because she'd have to reach out into the rain—but her face—her face. The terror on it!

Too bad, lady—comin' in
… She looks down; I look down. I see small kids coming up, clustering around her. I see the terror on their faces and—

“Hey,” I say.

I stop where I am…right in front of them all, getting rained on.

I'm great with kids, me.

I try to smile at them. “Hey.”

My own stupidity pours down on my head harder than the rain itself.

What did I think they'd be able to do for me anyway? Cut my head off?

I am
.

.

I'm
.

I feel…how I suppose Simon, my stepdad, must have felt…how a ton of other people must have felt…like I just wanna go home. To die. Only I will never make it home.

I'm never going to make it home.

I sit down. I do not fall to my knees. I just sit. And it rains on me.

Hiya, Ruby!
shrieks the rain.

“
,” I hear the nurse swear, calling on a God I can't seriously believe she believes in anymore. She pulls kids away from the door. “
,” she says.

I am not offended. I am not
emotionally
hurt in the slightest. I'm going to die. That's all.

I get it.

Who would want to see this?

Those kids shouldn't have to see another person die.

I stare into the face of the sky. To every side of me, I can see scraps of blue sky, clouds that have yet to decide to become killers.

But—hey!—hello you, cloud that is raining on me.

Cumulus congestus. I get the difference between congestus and mediocris now. Yeah, I get it.

I stumble, roaring—finally roaring!—through the rain…and around the corner…

“RUBY!” I hear this shout so muffled it seems to come from somewhere inside my own head. “
RUBY
!
”

I turn. I look. I see this wibbly-wobbly shadow person, hands pressed against the plastic of an army polytunnel walkway.

D-A-R-I-U-S    S-P-R-A-T-T

Wibbly-wobbly shadow Spratt.

“DARIUS!” I run at him—

His hands and mine, they press together through the plastic, palm to palm.

“You were right,” he is shouting. “Saskia was right. I checked. They're killing people. They're killing kids. The numbers I was crunching, they're doses. Bacteria doses, survival rates—oh, Ruby, I…”

I'm doomed. It's going to hurt a lot.

I wipe my hand across the plastic so, for one last moment, I can see his face more clearly. He has no words left, so I must find some for us both.

“Get out of here,” I tell him.

The rain pours down between us.

“JUST GO! PLEASE, DARIUS! JUST
GO!”

I close my eyes. I do not want to see this…but I feel it anyway. My heart lurches at the change of pressure. The gentle warmth under my palms is lost. He has gone.

I open my eyes.

Gone.

I saw a film once, where a guy who was going to die saw his life flash before him—and it made him smile, because he knew that although his family had annoyed him, it had been good. And he could feel like that because the people he cared about were still alive.

I can only hope Dar lives.

The rest of the people I care about are all dead. Most of them.

My dad. I'm never going to find my dad.

I wasn't going to find him anyway. Not him—not the Dan brother-brat.

I cannot die happy picturing people in the future feeling sad because I am not there (obviously).

I've got nothing. I've got nothing left.

I just wonder how bad it's going to hurt.

I sit down.

I am not even crying.

Hey, rain! Look! I am not even
crying
.

Who cares?
laughs the rain, tumbling down my cheeks.

Yeah, well—whatever.
WHATEVER
.

I hit the rain with THE GRIN OF INDIFFERENCE, a smile known to teens all over the world as it is often our last defense against some appalling outrage. Of course, it is fairly completely and utterly useless as a form of defense, since it is generally likely to provoke intense anger in the recipient and make things a whole lot worse… But it's what you do, isn't it? When there's nothing else you can do.

There
is
nothing else I can do.

The rain couldn't care less.

So I think of a thing I can think about. My one last thought. I think of the plants and the creatures and the planet, and about how all that…about how all those things will go on.

(Apart from Whitby, almost certainly possibly…but he was just limping, wasn't he? Wasn't he?! He could still be OK, couldn't he? And apart from Darling the Chihuahua… Can't bear to think about that… And apart from the guinea pigs Gimli and Prince Charming—whom Ruby the Cat may have eaten… And apart from Fluffysnuggles the hamster whom I left in a mint-chocolate-chip ice-cream carton in an abandoned car. He WILL make it home.)

It's a pretty desperate image, snatched out of the dripping, glinting, sharp-toothed jaws of death, but it is all I have right now. That's it. That's all I have: the planet is going to go on. Like a lonely merry-go-round in the middle of space, but with not enough people left to enjoy the ride.

I lie down on the tarmac.

You
are
a stupid, stupid girl!
laughs the rain, pouring down on me.

I start to get cold.

In fact, I am freezing cold and really wishing the whole hideous, painful death thing would just hurry up and get on with it when a bunch of people in biosuits stomp out and pull me up off the tarmac and drag me into the building.