The Rain (18 page)

I got my charger and I went back to the sitting room, to the nest, and I sip, sip, sipped – the birdwatching DVDs playing over – as I charge, charge, charged everyone’s phones
– with my charger, with Simon’s, with my mum’s. All those phones, lined up. All those people’s lives – on the coffee table, in one long, neat row. People (like Simon)
go on about people (like me) not being able to be apart from their mobiles. They’re missing the point; it’s not the mobile, it’s the life that’s in it you don’t want
to be apart from . . . even when they don’t work any more. That phone is your diary, it’s your photo album. Your memory is crammed into its memory. But with the handy option to
delete.

The only thing I couldn’t charge up was Caspar’s MP3, so I made myself switch it off. I wanted that battery to last. I’d already got a bit muddled with some of the phones
– whose was whose – which I felt a bit bad about. It didn’t look as if anyone had any missed calls or unopened texts; though I also felt bad about snooping I would have had a look
anyway, at least to help work out which phone belonged to which person, but I couldn’t guess their password locks. Only Ronnie’s had no lock on it – yep, that’s right: Mr
Conspiracy von Paranoia had zero phone security . . . but there was nothing: no calls or messages from the evening the rain had come, and nothing since. His last text was from Zak, from earlier on
the day of the party. I won’t say what that said. It was meant to be private. It was sweet.

Sometime or another, I fell asleep. I woke up because a phone beeped at me; I thought it was a message!!! Someone’s phone was all lit up! I grabbed it; the screen said it
needed charging.

Huh?!
I checked the connection – nothing happened.
Huh?!
The DVD had been on, I was sure. It was off . . . so were the lights, which I was also sure had been on. I was
half asleep, waking fast. I stumbled into the kitchen, clicking on the lights – only the lights didn’t click on.

How stupid I am is that for a moment I thought that I’d somehow drained the power, or caused something to short-circuit, from charging the phones. Thanks to Simon, I knew what to do; I
dragged a chair from the kitchen to the fuse box in the hall. Thanks to Simon, there was a torch there. I grabbed it and switched it on. The beam shone across the fuse box. Nothing was popped out,
but what did I know? Electricity’s kind of a scary thing, but I jiggled stuff; I switched switches on and off. I climbed down from the chair. It was so so so dark.

Drip
,
drip
,
drip
, went the kitchen tap.

Oh! I had this gasping moment of panic.

I ran into the kitchen.

Where Dartbridge had been – its lights, its street lights – there was darkness. The poisoned world had gone pitch black.

Drip
,
drip
,
drip
.

The first thing you want to do, when there is no light, is to get light. I had the torch, and we had candles, we had matches, we had lighters. We had these things –
candles, matches – by the fireplace, in the fuse box, in the kitchen drawer. In the bathroom, because my mum (and me!) liked to take baths by candlelight. I could get them . . . I stopped; I
thought about the man in the big house, the supermarket men. I was thinking the way Simon said to THINK.

Better the dark.

I switched off the torch. I looked out of the kitchen window. I watched and I waited. Not one house lit up. I got Simon’s binoculars; I scanned about for lights, for even the flicker of
candlelight.

On the other side of the house, there was also nothing. The hill rose above our road, so there wasn’t much of a view from the front-room window, but from the houses opposite, no light
shone. You could still see the shape of Mrs Fitch, though, lying in our front garden – then movement (
! I panicked!) . . . another
small shape, sniffing around her. Ruby: Mrs Wallis’s Siamese.

I ran to the front door. I opened it.

‘Ruuu-by!’ I whisper-called.

The cat shape stopped her sniffing.

‘Ruuu-by!’

I switched the torch on for a second – and in the beam of it I saw her eyes light up in that scary cat way, and then she sauntered off, weaving silently through the garden gate.

‘Suit yourself,’ I whispered.
Please don’t leave me.

I shut the door, locked and bolted it. I went back to the kitchen. I watched; I waited. I got all obsessed, thinking I could see flickers of light, zooming in on houses with Simon’s
binoculars; watching, waiting . . . then thinking I had been mistaken, or that maybe I’d caught a glimmer of light out of the corner of my eye. Zooming in on that, watching, waiting . . . The
Sun and Moon . . . That bloke could still be there? Watching, waiting . . . I dunno for how long; for hours. Somewhere out there, there had to be someone I could go to, someone to help. Someone
kind.

It was still dark, just, when a very weird and horrible thing happened. I was still watching out of the kitchen window when the mobiles all went off. All of them. There was
this burst, this blaring mental chorus of beeping, of alerts, of music, customised – that crummy dance track Ronnie liked. I jumped out of my skin – and ran to get to them. It stopped,
but I was already on to it. I grabbed my phone first; hit on the messages, saw one from my dad, hit call sender before I’d even read it. Unlike times before when there was nothing, there was
now a voice saying ‘Network Busy’. I hit redial. ‘Network Busy’. I hit redial. Again, again, again. I tried my mum’s phone; I tried Simon’s; I tried
Ronnie’s. I tried them all, calling my dad. Network Busy.

In between times, on the phones that were locked, I hit emergency dial; discovered it really won’t let you ring any other number but 999.

999.

Network Busy.

999. 999.

999. 999. 999.

999. 999. 999. 999.

My dad: Network Busy.

I put them all on speaker phone. I would get through.

999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999. 999.

Network Busy.

I tried my dad again – Network Busy – then from my mum’s phone I tried Leonie’s mum’s landline. It paused, like it was going to connect.

Buuuuuuuuur
.

From our landline I tried Molly’s parents’ landline.

Buuuuuuuuur
.

I tried Ronnie’s parents’ landline.

Buuuuuuuuur
.

I tried to call my mobile from my mum’s mobile.

NETWORK BUSY.

I tried every number I had on every phone I could get into the dial-pad on. I tried them all, over and over and over . . . until I got so desperate I dialled the same on each one, over and over
and over:

999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999; 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999; 999, 999, 999,
999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999; 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999; 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999, 999,
999, 999, 999 . . .

It was light when even that stopped. The lines went completely dead again. Nothing, not even a
buuuuuuur
. I cursed myself for not having even tried to get the
voicemails – but at least I had the messages. I looked at them, the messages on my phone, on my mum’s, on Simon’s, on Ronnie’s. And you know what . . . what all of them,
what they all said, maybe not the exact words, but pretty much what they all said was:
ARE YOU OK?!

To my dad, I texted back, just in case it would get through:

Coming to you. Ruby x

I hit
send
; the message failed.

No problem: I had a plan.

Just in case I saw anyone I knew alive, I went up to the bathroom to sort my make-up out. I got another fright then: even in the dim light of dawn, I saw my eyes were small and red and puffy and
piggy, serious bags underneath. The Caspar-snog scab on my chin was much reduced and flaking off. OK; it had been itching and I might have been having a slight pick at it. The skin underneath was
baby pink. I smoothed a couple of wipes over my face, then plastered on the wonder-foundation I’d rescued from Zak’s, went in heavy with the mascara and slathered my hair with the last
of the glittery dry-shampoo. The only way around the ‘Is it glitter or is it dandruff?’ problem was to go for maximum coverage. I slicked on frosted pink lipstick.

I looked a bit space-age babe, but that was OK. I didn’t even pack, I just shovelled all the mobiles, Caspar’s MP3 and my purse into my bag. Good to go.

I suppose I could have stood in the road and screamed my head off until someone, anyone, came . . . but I’d thought about the man up at the big house, and the supermarket gunmen.
‘Someone, anyone’ was not a good idea . . . so I’d go to the police. That’s what they’re there for, isn’t it, to help people? That’s what they HAVE to do.
Oh! Oh! Oh! I could picture it: how I’d tell them what had happened, and about how I had to get to London, and how a policeman would say, ‘All right, love, no need to worry. We’ll
take you.’ They’d pretty much have to, wouldn’t they? I mean, even if there were just a couple of them left they couldn’t just leave a girl who was only just fifteen years
old on her own, could they? They’d have to help.

I think I can pretty much say that was the last normal thing I ever tried to do.

When did I realise it was hopeless? When the garden gate clanged shut and I heard all the neighbours’ dogs start up? When that made me remember – dur – to
look at the sky? (Which was OK, it was OK. I remember it as fine and clear – but you know what? Really – unless you live in some gorgeously rainless desert – when have you ever
seen a perfect clear blue sky? There always seems to be some little blobby wisp or smudge of something hanging around somewhere.)

Did I realise it was hopeless when I tried to whizz down the hill on my bike like I’d usually do only I couldn’t because – hey, remember? – there were cars and dead
bodies everywhere? When I didn’t see a single living soul the whole way there? Or perhaps when I got there? Yes, definitely then. There was a police car parked sideways across the driveway
and a whiteboard notice propped against it; whatever had been written on it had slid to streaks of black and red in the rain.

I tried the main door. It was all locked up. A part of me I didn’t much want to listen to had known it would be. The other part of me, the part that didn’t know that, stared at that
building – and realised. On the front of the police station and spreading around the sides, there was a wall of messages people had left. Most so rain-blitzed you couldn’t tell what
they said – but the photos . . . on even the most rain-blitzed you could still make out faces, blobs of faces that had once been real people: snaps from holidays, portraits from school,
photobooth photos, a photo that showed a bride and groom. I wandered up and down. People I didn’t know; people I thought I sort of recognised; people I thought I definitely did.

Photos of people who were probably dead put up by people who were also probably dead.

I stalked back to the main door. Safe inside a glass case: their stupid police notices about terrorism and pickpockets and rabies and Neighbourhood
Watch.

I kicked the front door.

How DARE they not be there? How COULD they not be there?

Worse than the frantic bark of a scared and hungry dog is the cry of a human, trapped.

If there’d been traffic on the road, if the world had been halfway normal, I don’t suppose I would have heard them. But in the silence I did. I did and my heart lurched with dread. I
pressed my ear to the door. I could hear men shouting for help . . . so muffled I felt like maybe I had gone crazy and was hearing things – but no; I could hear them.

‘
HELLO?! HELLO?!
’ I screamed, top of my voice, kicking that door, battering my fists against it.