Storm (30 page)

I carry on with what I was doing. Yes, that's right. While they have been cooking up the PLAN OF PLANS, I have not only hatched out but almost fully executed my own plan. The back of the shed is in a terrible state. The wood is very rotten. I have picked and picked and picked at it. When things got really shouty, I even snapped off big chunks. Now it is raining, and they are trapped inside. There is no need to be quiet about it. I kick a Ruby-sized hole in the back of it.

I should just flee, but I can't resist it; I go up to the sitting-room window…there they all are inside, going over the PLAN OF PLANS yet again, I shouldn't wonder. I actually have to knock on the window to draw attention to myself.

Psycho Catherine jumps up—to get the gun, I'll bet—but Bridget grabs her arm. Too right. Even if Psycho Catherine manages to clip me (rather than shoot me dead) it might only result in me—their only hope—bleeding to death in the rain on the front lawn.

“I AM GOING TO GET DARIUS AND THEN I WILL COME AND FIND YOU,” I inform them, mainly for the Princess's benefit.

Priti
. I must remember to start calling her Priti.

There is nothing they can say (although obviously they do anyway; I ignore every word of it) and there is nothing they can do. I turn away.

I turn back because the kid bangs on the window.

I look at her and she does a super-shrug, the kind of “dur!” shrug you shrug to idiots.

Ah. That's when I remember to ask:

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” I yell at them.

If this wasn't the apocalypse, this would be fairly embarrassing.

Bridget comes to the window.

We look at each other, this craggedy old-young woman and I.

“Spain,” she says.

I hear the people behind her groan and kick up and complain. Not because they don't want a Spanish holiday, but because they don't want me turning up and spoiling it, I suppose—just in case the British Army is right behind me with their beach balls.

“We are going to—”

For the sake of those involved, I will not repeat the name of the place, and I had trouble repeating it at the time. Bridget spelled it out. As we know, I am
superbe
at French, but we didn't do Spanish at school. I struggled.

I seriously struggled.

She gave up on the spelling and she just said it…over and over, and I repeated it, over and over…until I had it.

We smiled at each other through the glass.

I keep saying it.

I get into one of their cars and leave.

I keep saying it.

Plan R has commenced.

It is a horrible drive. The rain has a right old laugh with me, coming down so hard I can hardly see the road, then easing off, then starting up all over again. When I have to get out of the car to look for another one (twice—this is not a good day), it's pretty consistently mean; it pours down on me, even throwing in some hail for fun, so by the time I get to the army base:

1. I am in a foul mood.

2. I am more concerned about getting a nice cup of tea than the consequences of what I am about to do.

Of course, (2) is not really true (though there is a microscopic amount of truth in it). The weather did hold me back, but I also dillydallied. Quite severely. It involved clothes shops (several) and a stop at a gym where I used up all the water and every can of drink inside their drinks machine and about a million towels
and
wrecked the exercise studio floor dyeing my hair an excellent shocking pink.

I looked, briefly, like a pale-faced human matchstick, so I plastered on a ton of makeup to even things out. No fake tan; I'm not messing with that again. I then sat and painted my nails, admiring myself in the mirror. Best I'd looked in months.

Seriously, I looked so good even the Danster would have said, “S'pose you look all right.”

Don't get me wrong; though I let my head toy with the idea, there was never really any question about where I was going. So that's why I did all that dillydallying, you see? On the off-chance that when I rocked up to the army base they weren't just going to let Dar go, and on the off-chance that I was probably going to end up locked up in some hideous hospital room being poked at all over again, and probably for the rest of my life, I just felt like I wanted to grab a little bit of life while I still could.

I suppose there was another off-chance that I might end up dead. (There: that will teach you not to run away.)

So, yeah, any way you looked at it… Well, as far as I'm concerned, the whole thing was completely justifiable. Necessary, even. It was necessary. I'm fifteen years old, and I've had everything taken away from me. This was what I took back.

This was all there was to take back.

So I rock up in a foul mood, the way anyone would be when they've run out of stalling time and just have to get on with something they pretty much know for sure is not going to be very nice and could be very not nice indeed.

It's dark already, and it's
raining. AGAIN. To cap it all, the road to the gates is rammed full of cars and people (in the cars), and it's possible that things have really heated up in my absence because in among the normal cars and caravans and stuff that you'd expect, there are a few more serious-looking vehicles: a couple of those bulletproof, tinted-window monster cars that celebrities and criminals drive, a massive truck, and even a tank I guess someone must have nicked from somewhere…that's stuck behind a VW van, surfboards still on top of it.

And I look at it all and I don't think,
Oh yippee, maybe there's a revolution brewing and everything's going to be OK!
, I don't even think,
Wow, this could be a little scary
. I look at it and think,
For
's sake!
—because you know what? I can't get the car through it. I am going to have to get out and walk.

I have spent what might be my last few precious hours of freedom EVER making myself look utterly spectacular and now I am going to get soaked. After hammering uselessly on the horn for a bit and realizing, for sure, that no one has the slightest intention of moving out of my way (in fairness, there is nowhere for them to go), I clamber about inside the car, stuffing my loot (I have provisioned myself for an indefinite future behind bars) into whatever bags I have, but one plastic bag must be sacrificed for the purposes of fashioning a crude rain-hat. (This word
fashioning
, it clearly has nothing to do with the word
fashion
.) And then I get out.

The reaction is immediate. There is hooting and tooting and shouting and screaming and—oh my word! Was that a camera flash?! I turn, dazzled by headlights, that flick off and on again.

Hn.

I can't resist. I do a superb, carefree,
Sound of Music
twirl in the rain—only I've got shopping bags where that nun-woman carried a guitar.

WHAT AM I LIKE?

I KNOW WHAT I FEEL LIKE, I FEEL…NOT LIKE ANY KIND OF THING I HAVE FELT BEFORE. I am not a cavewoman; I am not a troll; I am not a panda. I am not a shadow-being; I am not a witch-fairy; I am not a plasticky-rubbery ghost. I am not a robot… Mom, I am still breathing. I am Ruby Morris.

I am floating free in space. I am free.

The mob goes berserko! Headlights, horns—people pound on car windows; a whole busload of mean-looking guys start jumping about—but in a nice way, boinging up and down on seats. And everywhere, everywhere, amazed faces are pressed to windows.

I see a car door ahead of me crack open—whoa! NO! WAIT! I race to slam it shut.

“Noooo!” I bellow at the lady inside.

OH MY
! WHAT IF THEY ALL DECIDE TO DO THAT?! LIKE, REALLY, I HAVE GOT ENOUGH ON MY CONSCIENCE WITHOUT SOME MASS DEATH INCIDENT.

All around me is tooting, hooting, howling, flashing insanity—I gotta put a stop to this, right now. I dump my loot and clamber up onto a hood and scream:

“
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
!
”

at them all.

“
STOP IT! SHUT UP!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
!
”

—flapping my arms and tearing off my rain hat. And flapping and flapping and flapping my arms again until it quiets down—at which point, before I can open my mouth to shout at them all to
STAY IN YOUR CARS!
the pesky British Army chips in.

“DO NOT MOVE,” a loudspeaker voice instructs.

Of course I do move, because I don't know they mean me, do I? I turn to look where the voice is coming from and nearly slip off the hood.

“PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.”

Oh now, see…I think they must mean me. Up at the gates, in the floodlights, I can see soldiers crammed in the gatehouse, jammed in vehicles, standing at the gates in biosuits…with guns. I have made myself a perfect target, haven't I? That's what I think even before the spotlight hits me. I put my hands in the air, squinting into the brilliance of the light with the rain coming down like fireworks fall, a torrent of sparkling flecks of light.

I do recognize that I am now in extreme danger, but I am also pretty
off.

“
I WAS JUST GOING TO TELL THEM TO STAY IN THEIR CARS
!
” I shout grumpily at the light.

Apparently the British Army is not interested in what I was doing.

“KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND APPROACH THE GATE,” I am told.

They're having a laugh, aren't they? How am I supposed to get off this hood without using my hands? What do they think this is, a PE lesson? I lower my hands to get off the hood and—

“
KEEP YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR OR WE WILL SHOOT
!
” screeches the loudspeaker voice.

These. People. Are. Really. Annoying. Me.

Nevertheless, I recognize the key signs of someone wigging out (screechy voice, unreasonable demands), so I do it, what they say. I put my hands back up in the air and turn to position myself and…out of the corner of my eye, I see it: in the jam on the road coming from the other direction, there is a bright pink stretch-limo.

I can't see who's inside.

I do this really ungainly plunk of a jump down off the hood.

“APPROACH THE GATE.”

Oh…oh no…my stuff. They're going to make me leave my stuff. I glance down at it; all my goodies, the rain poking its nose in
my
stuff
.

“
I'VE GOT THINGS
,” I shout at them.

“APPROACH THE GATE.”

“
I'VE…GOT…STUFF
.” I do a little pointy thing with my finger—but it's useless, isn't it? They can't see what's down on the ground…I suppose, looking at it from their point of view, I could have a rocket launcher or something—but honestly, do I look like the type?

“APPROACH THE GATE!”

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a wig-out situation.

You
, I think, as I walk away, hands in the air, from my rained-on stuff. And this thought explodes in my head like the rocket launcher I seriously do wish I had right now, I'm so annoyed. Darius was right: I have no weapon against these people, except the only weapon I guess I've always had. My mouth.

“There's a cure,” I say out loud.

But not loud enough. My mouth is afraid. So my heart jumps in and shows it picture after picture after picture after picture of things that do not give it courage—I feel no courage—but of the things that make me angry enough to dare to shout.

My mom, my baby brother, my stepdad, Simon—the people I have seen die, the bodies that are turning to skeletons—and Dan. Dan, lying dead in a nest of reeds.

“
THERE'S A CURE! THEY'VE GOT A CURE! THERE'S A CURE! THERE'S A CURE!
” I shout, at the top of my voice, all the way to that
gate.