Storm (26 page)

“I read it in uh ook,” I breathe into the Spratt's face.

That he registers: ook.
Ook
means “book” means something Ruby read, not something she is making up or guessing at. I see that, but I need to gain complete confidence.
Thu Ess-Ay-Ess Sur-wy-wal Guide
.

I do not want to repeat those eses; I suspect the snake does not like them. In my mind's eye, I can see the whole page, all the advice about when to suck the venom out and when not, when to apply a tourniquet and when not… It's just I can't quite see which snakes they were talking about. All I remember is…

“Don't oove.” My eyes plead with the Spratt's eyes.

If we budge an inch, we are done for. So we wait. Face-to-face, trying to stop each other from shaking—all me and the Spratt can do is wait, staring at each other.

I blink, slowly, when I hear the helicopters.

They have come.

The Spratt blinks slowly back.

TRRR?!
the snake chips in.

Like, really, I am about ready to shout at it, but the
SAS Survival Guide
warns very specifically against any sort of agitated behavior when confronted by a frightened snake.

All I can do is stand, staring into the Spratt's eyes, listening. Way I hear it, the direction it seems to be…

The noise stops.

I want not to think it, but I know it. They've landed somewhere near my grandma's house.

The snake calms, goes quiet; still, we don't dare move because the snake won't do what the SAS promised it would do and CLEAR OFF.

I'm not holding the Spratt still anymore; we're holding each other up.

I feel a single, frightened tear slide down my cheek, but the SAS and the Spratt's gaze keep the rest back.

Don't. You can be strong. Ruby, be
strong.

Though of course I cannot know that for sure. The Spratt could really be thinking: DON'T START BLUBBERING, YOU
FREAK
, OR YOU'RE GONNA GET US BOTH KILLED! In that moment, I realize it is mainly me who thinks like that. It is harsh, sometimes, the way that I think about things, but perhaps it has its uses.

We hear something—not helicopters but a small, rustling something. I swivel my eyeballs slowly and see the something: a lizard, scuttling across dead leaves, probably wondering where the boy with the dead hamster snacks has gone. The snake doesn't swivel its eyeballs; it swivels its head. It spots dinner. Those leaves? Those butterfly wings? It hardly even ruffles them as it slides off after the lizard.

The Spratt and I reconnect eyeballs. Arms are squeezed—slowly. The blink of a yes is made.

We pelt out of that place, slamming the door shut so hard I can't be sure the gunshot that follows wasn't some weird kind of an echo.

It isn't some weird kind of an echo; in this new world—without many people, without people noise—sound travels.

When I hear the next gunshot, I flinch. Me and the Spratt stop where we are, hands on the doors of my dad's car.

Those people, those lovely, kind people—they've been found, haven't they?

They are being made to blurt; I thought they'd just blurt anyway, but it has taken a gun and a bullet—two bullets!—to make them do it.

We hear the helicopters start up.

We get in the car, and we DRIVE.

As I drive into town like a reckless speed-freak boy-racer psycho, killer,
lunatic (yeah, we had them, even in sleepy old Dartbridge), swerving with insane gear changes around stuff, and even above the roar of an engine that is being made to go like it was not made to go, and the screech of brakes burning that we only get the slightest whiff of because we are going TOO FAST, TOO FAST, TOO FAST, I see the helicopters—two of them (For lil' ol' me? Like, really, the army needs to get a life!), their searchlights on in the dusk that's so much more dark than it should be because—yeah, great!—IT IS GOING TO RAIN.

It is worse than that. It is coming on dark as night because it is going to POUR DOWN.

And I realize there is NO WAY we are going to make it to my dad's before them, not all the way around through Morecambe, unless…

I am thinking so fast right now. Get a boat, cut across estuary, get family to safety. Simple, simple, simple—AS IF!—screech, screech, screech.

Unless. There is no “unless.” By the time we make it to the slipway at the dock, the helicopters are landing, two fields away from the house. In the beam of their searchlights, a glimpse of the ponies (freaking out)…then they are down. I can't see anyone in the house, but the lights are being turned off, fast.

I kill the engine. I keep the power on though. We need it to see what is going on. We need it because we need the windshield wipers. It is raining.

Oh yes, the rain—
you, rain!—has shown up.

It pelts down, every tiny drop of it going “Ha!” as it hits the windshield.

From this place, we could have taken any old boat (there are tons of them, and it can't be that difficult to drive one, can it?); we could have gotten across the estuary to my dad's in minutes, so much quicker than the road…because the house is right there, right there in front of us, just across the water. That is high tide but turning; the earth and the moon are playing tug-of-war with the sea so hard that white rip-tide waves of foam froth in the gloom. But I would do it; I would cross that to get home. Right now, I would get out of this car and…

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.