The Rain (31 page)

Me and Darius Spratt, we had no choice. We got pushed and shoved and pushed towards that pool until we were stuck on the side of it, bunched in with all these other people and some of them still
trying to fill up their containers when the screaming started up by the entrance and this people-ripple spread and it had nowhere to go. It had nowhere to go. There was a fire exit down the end of
the pool; you could see the little white man sign above it, that picture of the little white cartoon man leaving, only no one else could. People battered at that exit door but it must have been
locked. All that could happen, all people could do was –
PLOOSH!
– the first person, just a kid, fell into the pool – but it was OK, because that water was OK; and
everyone kind of got that and –
PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH
– a whole bunch of other people jumped in too because it was the only place left where there was any
space.

Me and Darius Spratt, we jumped in.

It was colder than a pool should be. I remember that. How cold it felt. But we glugged that water. Treading water and glugging.

There was this weird couple of minutes of thinking that maybe it’d actually be OK, that maybe all those panicky, pushy people would get a grip. I even got a grip myself; my make-up would
have been done for anyway, so I had a scrub at my face with the dead girl’s cardigan.

‘What are you
doing?!
’ gasped Darius.

‘Mind your own business!’ I spluttered back, half drowning.

Then there were more screams – bigger screams, closer screams – and this time there wasn’t a people-ripple, but a surge.
PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH PLOOSH
.

We all saw him: the useless random pool bloke standing there at the top of the pool, people trying to back off all around him because he was bloody with the sickness. He had these keys in his
hand and he tried to get round the side of the pool – to open that fire escape, I bet; he tried to do it, but he came too near people and someone shoved him away.

The useless random pool bloke fell into the pool.

Panic exploded. People didn’t care now; they wanted to get out and get out fast. Me and Darius, we hauled ourselves out of that water, nearly trampled as we scrambled to our feet . . . and
. . . and the sickness spreading all around us . . . Like one minute it was just water dripping off someone and the next minute it was blood. The pool wasn’t a pool any more; it was a giant
vat of invisible wavy-tentacled space micro-blobs: replicating, attacking, killing.

Where we’d come up, the other side of the pool, there was some big woman lying groaning and behind her was this door with no little white cartoon man running, but it was a door so I yanked
it open – never mind the poor woman, not even thinking ‘the poor woman’ – just enough so’s I could drag Darius in and what we got into was a cupboard – it was
just a cupboard, a stupid cupboard full of kids’ pool toys – and the door shut and it was pitch black.

Other hands yanked at the handle and me and Darius Spratt we pulled back on it as though our lives depended on it, which they did.

I thought I was going to die. That was it, plain and simple: I thought I was going to die.

I said my dad’s address over and over and over again. Making Darius repeat it, over and over and over.

‘If you get out of here, you go find my dad and you tell him.’

Tell him what? That I had died in a cupboard full of floaty spongy pool snakes?

‘Tell him I love him,’ I sobbed, and made Darius say the address again. And again. And again.

‘OK – your turn,’ I told him.

‘You gotta take care of Princess,’ he said.

Ouph! I hadn’t even thought about the kid once since things had kicked off.

‘And . . .’ he added.

Whoa! A last request is a last request, right? It’s not a last to-do list!

He spouted numbers. I was so terrified I didn’t even realise to start with that it was a date of birth.
His
date of birth.

‘Got it?’

‘Yeah!’ I said, even though it had gone straight out of my terrified head.

‘I want you to find my mum.’

‘But—’ He’d said his whole family was dead . . .

‘My birth mother.’

Someone yanked on the door, hard; we yanked it back.

‘I was gonna find her, after the exams and—’

The door got yanked again – before we got it shut I saw his face for a moment in the light and I saw that he was crying too and when we got the door shut the tiny pea-sized bit of brain in
my head that still had any thoughts at all said, ‘You’re
adopted
?’

‘YES,’ said Darius.

I didn’t know what say, so I said the numbers again.

‘That’s wrong!’ cried Darius. ‘Look, you don’t even have to remember it. Just go to the school, get it from my records.’

‘And then?’

‘I’m not really sure,’ he said. ‘You need to find the adoption certificate.’

‘Oh,’ I said, already the pea in my head was thinking that, as last requests go, it all seemed kind of tricky. ‘How would I do that?’

Someone thumped against the door and we tightened our grips.

‘I don’t know how it works,’ blurted Darius Spratt. ‘I was gonna do it all online.’

Our hands were locked together, straining on that handle.

‘You can find out, can’t you? You can try?’ pleaded Darius.

‘Yes!’ I cried.

It was pretty much the world’s worst and most complicated and most impossible last request – and I knew it . . . and he knew it. I knew he knew it. I knew he knew I knew it.

It was bad, what you could hear going on out there. It was very, very bad.

‘Darius, if I couldn’t do that,’ I said. ‘Let’s just say if for some reason I couldn’t do that . . .’

Someone yanked on the handle; our knot of hands held it shut.

LIKE WE’RE BOTH GONNA DIE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, IN THIS CUPBOARD, I thought.

‘Is there something else I could do?’

AND MAKE IT EASY! I thought.

Darius Spratt was silent for a moment.

‘Kiss me,’ he said.

I kissed the Spratt. We were in a cupboard. I thought I was going to die.

So I did the deed. He asked me to kiss him, so I kissed him.

I took one hand off the door handle. I grabbed his head for the purposes of ensuring a quick delivery and I mashed my lips against his – like BOMF! – in the dark.

There. I had fulfilled his last request.

End of.

ONLY IT WASN’T!

OH, WHO CARES IF I TELL THE HORRIBLE TRUTH?

ME! I DO!

Someone yanked on the door; light flooded in for a sec, for long enough for me to see his face looked sad and grim and scared and weeping . . . and not at all how it was
supposed to look (GRATEFUL) when I, me, Ruby Morris had just kissed him.

‘You could say thank you,’ I said when the door-yanker gave up.

‘Oh, yeah, cheers,’ said Darius.

Cheers?
I thought.
Cheers?!

‘I just kissed you!’ I blurted . . . meaning I, me, Ruby Morris had just kissed . . . a SUB nerd.

‘Yeah,’ said Darius. ‘Thanks. Or whatever.’

WHOA. OH WOW. OH MY
.

‘Or
whatever?!
’

‘I mean, you know, thanks. It was OK,’ said Darius.

‘
OK?!
’

‘Yeah . . . it was OK.’

‘
OK?!
’

‘Yeah, Andrew Difford said you were an OK kisser.’

‘
WHAT?!
’

‘Get over it, Ru. Now would be a really good time to just . . . get over stuff.’

‘
WHAT?!
WHAT?!
’

‘Actually he said you were lousy.’

‘Andrew Difford
said that
. . .’

‘Yeah . . . he told everyone.’

‘He
told everyone
. . . He’s a tramp; he’s a total tramp. He’s a gutless, lying, lowdown, blabbermouthed, tittle-tattling . . . a lousy kisser! He’s a
lousy kisser!’

‘Whatever.’

‘I’m a brilliant kisser!’

‘Hn.’

‘I AM a brilliant kisser!’

‘Prove it to me, Ruby Morris,’ said Darius.

Someone yanked on the door. In the flood of light I saw his face, like mine: the fear and the hopelessness. The door slammed shut.

‘Please,’ he whispered.

I took one hand off the door handle.

I laid my hand, trembling with fright, on his face.

He took one hand off the door handle. He put his hand on my hand. Our fingers linked, steadying each other. He turned his head, and, softly, kissed my palm. We stayed like that, for a moment.
His lips, so still. The terror and the grief flowing between us. The power in our hands. Like we could make it all stop. No. Like this was all we had. All we would ever have. Our fingers
squeezed.

His hand left mine. I grieved for it, instantly, in the darkness and the emptiness.

Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

His hand came gently to my face. Fear shaking in our fingertips, tracing tears.

It wasn’t like the Caspar hot-tub thing. There was no BOMF. In the darkness, there was a kiss. There was a first kiss.

And because we might have had no time at all in the world, it seemed as if we had all the time in the world. We had all the time there ever was, and ever will be.

You wanna know how I know the thing about no one living for longer than three hours?

That’s how long we were in that cupboard for.

After a while, people stopped trying to get in, but we didn’t come out until the whole world was silent, until all those people were dead.

We wouldn’t have dared to . . . apart from anything else.

We shoved open the door. It would have been hard to have got out of there without treading in pools of gore, but there was a ton of those little elasticated blue plastic-bag things they make the
swimming teachers and visitors wear over their shoes. We even put them on our hands, in case we had to touch anything, and we crackled out along the poolside, picking our way really, really slowly
and really, really carefully through the hideousness.

All around us, inside that pool and outside, it was a scene of appalling horror. You really didn’t want to look at it.

I also really didn’t want to look at Darius Spratt’s face. Further appalling horror.

Yup. I wasn’t imagining it; in the middle of the nightmare of where we were and what was, this funny little goofy smile kept sneaking on to his face.

‘Stop it!’ I snapped.

‘What?’ he said.

Yup, there it was again.

Oh my
. I was DYING from the sheer mind-melting horror of it. (I have to say that dying bit.) (It’s fully necessary and
justified.)

‘That!’ I snapped.

What happened in the spongy-snake cupboard stays in the spongy-snake cupboard, that’s what I thought.

I had this dreadful, dreadful feeling like somehow I’d been tricked, only I couldn’t have been tricked, could I? He’d said kiss me, and I’d . . .

Oh my
!!! It was too awful to think about . . . and in a way, it was just as well pretty much everyone at school must be dead
because if what had happened in the spongy-snake cupboard ever got out my life wouldn’t be worth living
.